Welcome to the universe is your therapist. We are your hosts, Dr. Amy Hoyt, and Lena Hoyt, we are sisters. Take a seat and let's dive into this week's episode.
When I was practicing, as a therapist, one of the things that I developed in working with some of my clients was the concept of benevolent curiosity. And self compassion has received a lot of traction in the mental health field in the last 10 or 15 years. And I found that working with some clients, they could not do self compassion, it was like their, their inner critical voice was so powerful and so mean and loud, that they couldn't figure out how to be kind to themselves. And so I developed this idea around benevolent curiosity. And the concept is that we instead of becoming reactive to our reactions, so instead of me becoming angry, that I lost my temper or that I spoke in haste, what I want to do is I want to become genuinely curious, within the framework of benevolence. So the benevolent idea is that it's always for the good of someone or ourselves, and how can I be curious about my behavior, emotions, or thoughts in a way that doesn't encourage the inner critic to get louder. And if I can be curious, then I'm actually more in my prefrontal cortex. And I'm more connected to my wise self. And I can use that to help myself find out answers to what was happening for me when I behaved in a way I didn't like. And when we engage in benevolent curiosity or self compassion, it allows us the opportunity to learn that while we are one person, we have a lot of different parts. And I'm not talking about multiple personalities. I'm talking about what happens when we argue with ourselves. So have any of you had the experience of thinking, Well, part of me knows that I shouldn't eat that pint of gelato, to lenti gelato, which is so delicious, by the way, in my freezer, but there's another part of me that is just so tired and so exhausted, and just wants comfort food, or there's a part of me that thinks I really should move and exercise, it's better for my body. And then there's this other part that's like, screw that I'm gonna read for another hour. So if you think about how we have these different parts of us that show up, that is very common for all of us. And there is a therapist who developed a theory and a system around this in order to help people make friends with the different parts of themselves. And his name was Richard Swartz. It is Richard Schwartz. He is the founder of internal family systems. And that approach allows us to identify that we all have different parts of ourselves that got developed in certain or through certain experiences throughout our lives. And he categorizes them in a couple of different categories. So one is he calls them manager parts. And those are the parts that are always trying to get us to be on our best behavior, trying to make sure that we do exactly what we're supposed to do so that we don't fall behind or everyone will be happy with us, the part that wants to make sure that we never say anything embarrassing, or problematic. And then we have another category of parts that he identifies as vulnerable parts. And these parts came about when we had embarrassing or challenging situations in our childhood, and as a result of the embarrassing or challenging situation, we decided to not be vulnerable ever again. And so these parts we've actually exiled into kind of a different box within us. What happens is that the the exiled or the vulnerable parts can start arguing with the manager parts and the manager parts are tend to be very hypercritical, almost mean, and if you think about it, if you think about somebody who has been really critical of you in your life, whether it was a teacher or a friend or a family member, if you can pause for a second, you'll recognize that a lot of your own inner critic, and the things that are said, and the tone that the inner critic uses, is from those experiences that you had. And we want to be able to understand that all parts are welcome, and that every part of us, regardless of how it came about, has good intentions. And so this part of me that is arguing with myself about exercising has good intentions. But this also this part of me that just wants to relax and feel comfort, also has good intentions. And Amy mentioned the very beginning of our workshop that we're trying to be come friends with our past experiences with our current symptoms and with the idea that we have a whole self and that the parts that have been brought to life through difficult experiences can block our Indyk Schwartz calls it our capital S self. So the concept of self that is true and real. And he talks about how we're all born with this. And then we have experiences that create blocks from our real capital S self, our truest self. When we think about this, we we understand that there are some parts of us that are really kind and generous and beautiful, windy when you are reading that, that came from a part of you that didn't come from outside of you. Okay, and one exercise that we have for you guys is to imagine someone who loves you unconditionally, and accepts you for who you are. Now, if that's difficult to do, then see if you can come up with a fictional character somebody from movie book or tv. Or if you can imagine somebody who can present as unconditionally loving and accepting and with your paper and pen. We're gonna give you three minutes to write a note to yourself as if it is from this person who loves you unconditionally, wholly, and completely and values you as you are right now.
Thank you for listening to the universe as your therapist this week. If you have any questions or looking for more information, you can find us at many trauma on Instagram, as well as mending trauma.com Our website and if you're enjoying our content, we'd love it if you could rate review and subscribe to the show. We'll see you all next week.
