tiny sparks, big changes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our book club read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks where we slowly and thoughtfully explore this book together. You can also listen on Spotify & Apple Music. These episodes are meant to help translate dense theory into everyday language and to connect the science to real life, real patterns, and real change. We also gather twice during each book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time - our next live meeting is Saturday, April 25th at 11 am EDT. If you’d like to learn more about getting unstuck and making lasting change in your life, join my upcoming class: 5 Steps to Change this Sunday (recording will be available if you can’t attend live!).This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most important mechanisms for understanding how lasting change actually happens. It helps explain why insight alone is rarely enough, and how healing can occur after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up in environments where our emotional needs were not consistently met.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience. That includes our live sessions, ongoing discussions, and the complete archive of past reads, such as No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this space possible, and I’m genuinely grateful you’re here and reading along with me.Hello and welcome back to our read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. We are making our way through the final chapters of this book where we are looking at different models of psychotherapy like somatic experiencing, internal family systems, and this week we will be looking at psychedelic assisted therapy, specifically looking at a case that is using ayahuasca. I would like to give you a quick note and a warning that the case that we discuss here does mention someone who dies by suicide and I know that can be triggering to us for a variety of reasons and so please know that you do not have to listen to this case to get anything out of the book club.This is just another way of looking at memory reconsolidation. Please take care of yourself and know this will be here in the future if you decide to come back to it, but you don’t have to listen to it right now.And as we are reviewing these we are being curious about that thread that this book hypothesizes leads through all different types of psychotherapy and really all different types of change and that is memory reconsolidation and the therapeutic reconsolidation process that Bruce Ecker lays out for us in this book here.

Hello and welcome back to our book club read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks where we slowly and thoughtfully explore this book together. You can also listen on Spotify & Apple Music. These episodes are meant to help translate dense theory into everyday language and to connect the science to real life, real patterns, and real change. We also gather twice during each book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time - our next live meeting is Saturday, April 25th at 11 am EDT. If you’d like to learn more about getting unstuck and making lasting change in your life, join my upcoming class: 5 Steps to Change.This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most important mechanisms for understanding how lasting change actually happens. It helps explain why insight alone is rarely enough, and how healing can occur after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up in environments where our emotional needs were not consistently met.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience. That includes our live sessions, ongoing discussions, and the complete archive of past reads, such as No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this space possible, and I’m genuinely grateful you’re here and reading along with me.This week, we’re doing a little recap of what, exactly, memory reconsolidation is, how it creates long-term change, and how we can learn to provide ourselves with new present-day experiences that activate that process. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our book club read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks where we slowly and thoughtfully explore this book together. You can also listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These episodes are meant to help translate dense theory into everyday language and to connect the science to real life, real patterns, and real change. We also gather twice during each book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time - our next live meeting is April 25, 2026, at 11 am EDT!This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most important mechanisms for understanding how lasting change actually happens. It helps explain why insight alone is rarely enough, and how healing can occur after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up in environments where our emotional needs were not consistently met.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience. That includes our live sessions, ongoing discussions, and the complete archive of past reads, such as No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this space possible, and I’m genuinely grateful you’re here and reading along with me.This week, we’re continuing with the section of the book that walks through different therapy modalities, examining how each creates transformational change through the same underlying mechanism: memory reconsolidation. Today, we’re focusing on ISTDP, Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, a framework developed by Habib Davanloo that looks at how our suppressed emotional experiences drive symptoms, sometimes psychological, sometimes physiological, and sometimes both at once.What I love about going through these cases together is that it keeps reinforcing that it doesn’t matter which modality a therapist uses. What matters is whether they are working with the neurobiological mechanisms of change. And those mechanisms, again and again, look remarkably similar underneath the surface, no matter the type of therapy. These mechanisms are things we can also access in our own lives by practicing observing and being curious about our experience - how cool is that!

Hello and welcome back to our book club read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks where we slowly and thoughtfully explore this book together. You can also listen on Spotify. These episodes are meant to help translate dense theory into everyday language and to connect the science to real life, real patterns, and real change. We also gather twice during each book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time. This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most important mechanisms for understanding how lasting change actually happens. It helps explain why insight alone is rarely enough, and how healing can occur after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up in environments where our emotional needs were not consistently met.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience. That includes our live sessions, ongoing discussions, and the complete archive of past reads like No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this space possible, and I’m genuinely grateful you’re here and reading along with me.This week, we’re continuing into the section of the book that walks through different therapy modalities, looking at how each one creates transformational change through the same underlying mechanism: memory reconsolidation. Today, we’re focusing on interpersonal neurobiology, a framework developed by Dan Siegel in the 1990s that looks at how our early attachment experiences shape these mental models, these big books of rules about how the world works, how relationships work, and how safe we are allowed to feel inside of them.What I love about going through these cases together is that it keeps reinforcing something I think is so important: it doesn’t matter which modality a therapist uses. What matters is whether they are working with the right mechanisms. And those mechanisms, again and again, look remarkably similar underneath the surface. In this episode, we’re going to look at how interpersonal neurobiology activates the reconsolidation process, and we’re going to follow a case that shows something I find genuinely fascinating: how the patterns we carry aren’t always just ours. Sometimes we are holding something that traveled through the people before us.(0:00 - 4:07)Hi and welcome back to our book club read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. We are doing a deep dive into this book that tells us all about memory reconsolidation, transformational change, and the therapeutic reconsolidation process. And what all of that means is we are looking at what the mechanisms of change are within therapy.What is it that allows us to actually create long-lasting change versus feeling like we always have to manage, to be managing our habits, to be managing our behaviors, to be reframing our thoughts. There’s a time and a place for those activities. But this book guides us into deeper understanding of how we can actually create transformational change and work with the root cause of our thoughts, emotions, body sensations, behaviors, and patterns in the present, rather than having to try to whack-a-mole down the symptoms that stem from them.So it’s a really exciting book. It puts together a lot of research into this process. And we are now in the part of the book where we are diving into different modalities, different types of therapy, and looking at how memory reconsolidation plays a role in their process of creating transformational change.This week we’re going to be talking about interpersonal neurobiology. This is a type of psychotherapy that was created by Dan Siegel in the 1990s, and it too has an exploration into emotional implicit schemas that have been formed in response to patterns of distressing interaction that we might experience in our infancy and in our childhood. So Dan Siegel has done a lot of wonderful work in this field, and let’s look at a little bit of how interpersonal neurobiology uses memory reconsolidation to create long-lasting change.And before we dive in, if you are new here and you’re not familiar with some of these terms like memory reconsolidation or transformational change, you can go back and listen to the full archive where we have gone through each of these terms and talked about what that means from a mind-body component. So you can see a theme in a lot of these modalities that we’ve discussed so far, that there is this idea of schemas, patterns, parts, survival strategies, and interpersonal neurobiology holds that same idea that these mental models form by an individual and are part of what create our symptoms or our patterns in the present. Think of these mental models like a big book of the rules of engagement.It’s all of the ways that you learned to interact with the world, positive, negative, and neutral. Not all implicit learnings or rules of engagement are negative. Some of them are pro-social, meaning they are about how we behave in the world to be kind to others, to be in community, to be in connection.Others are about ourselves, our self-concept, how we see ourselves in the world and relating to others, and they can be pieces of our identity. And others are around trying to stay safe and in connection and prevent damage. And those are the ones that can generate symptoms in the present that come from this early, ongoing, insecure attachment in relationship.And sometimes we can think about that as harm that we experienced in our early lives. And for some of us, it was very clear that there was harm. And for others of us, it’s less clear.There wasn’t necessarily a direct harm experience, but perhaps like that earlier book we read, we had emotionally immature parents. Perhaps our parents were under a lot of stress themselves. So we got that slot machine parent where we never knew whether we were going to get love and connection or withdrawn or snapped at and sent away.(4:08 - 9:52)All of those insecure moments in an attachment relationship can create these thought, emotion, body sensation patterns of us trying to figure out how to stay safe in this confusing world. So interpersonal neurobiology holds that same idea. They also, much like AEDP and some of these other modalities, hold the idea that the therapeutic relationship, the experience between the therapist and client, can create that reparative attachment experience that can help upgrade our brain functioning in the present.So as we saw earlier in the AEDP model, the experience of being reflected to from the therapist or having the therapist be this safe, curious person when these patterns or emotions arise in itself is a disconfirming experience. And remember that disconfirming experience is where something different happens from what our brain is expecting to happen. In the predictive brain model, we call that a prediction error.So if your brain is predicting that, for example, someone’s going to hurt you or send you away when you feel your emotions, and then you get to be present with this therapist that not only doesn’t send you away, but is so curious about them with you, that reflects them with you, that rides the wave with you, that is an experience where your brain predicted you would be hurt or sent away, but instead you get someone who stays in it with you. So a lot of therapeutic modalities hold the idea that that therapeutic relationship is in itself a disconfirming experience, which is part of the memory reconsolidation process. So then interversal neurobiology relies on the client’s felt-sense experience of the therapist’s empathetic emotional attunement, the guidance from the therapist for attending to, noticing, and naming these quote-unquote right brain activities where those implicit learnings are held or unconscious learnings are held, guidance for how to identify the way current triggers might resemble past experiences, and then cultivating all of that into an integrated awareness of what was suffered in the past, the idea being that that will end the projection of the past onto the present.So again, we see very similar experiences between some of the models we’ve talked about so far, internal family systems, AEDP, EMDR, somatic experiencing, and this is why I always want to emphasize, and I love that this book goes through all of these modalities, it doesn’t matter what modality you choose, as long as they are focusing on these mechanisms of change, and as long as you feel connected to the model and the therapist, then you have everything you need to make a change, because they all kind of hold these same unifying concepts of the therapeutic relationship and the therapeutic reconsolidation process using memory reconsolidation, and interpersonal neurobiology is the same. Now this case is slightly different from some of the other cases we’ve seen, just because of the way that interpersonal neurobiology publishes and shares their information. This is a recounting of a therapist named Bonnie about their case, so it’s not quite as in-depth as some of the other cases we’ve seen.However, I think it’s important to go through nonetheless to look at how interpersonal neurobiology might help us understand how we can activate this reconsolidation process. So in this case, the client’s name is Cerise, and Cerise came to therapy because all of her close relationships ended in her pulling away whenever the emotional intimacy became intense. So remember, this is step A of the process, symptom identification.And I just want to make a little note about that off the start, that some modalities start with the symptom identification, others start with desire identification. So instead of what they want to move away from, they look at what they want to move toward. And I think interestingly enough, moving toward the desire is always the way that I have worked and found myself working in my own life and with my clients, because very often people will come in thinking that they have a very clear idea of what their symptoms are.And again, we know symptom identification is step A in this process, but that doesn’t mean they know what they want. That doesn’t mean they know where they want to go. And because we know so much of the process of trauma, of having emotionally immature parents, of existing in the world in these difficult states, is that we get very disconnected from knowing what we want because of those lenses from our implicit learnings that color and change the way we view the world.And so very often if I do ask people what they want, they might say something self-critical, or it might be around wanting other people to change their behavior, which of course makes sense. But it’s fairly typical that they might not have a sense of what they actually want for themselves. Because we are often disconnected from choice and flexibility and having needs, let alone having wants and desires, it can be really interesting to start with desire, what we want to move toward or wants, rather than what we don’t want to move toward.Both are acceptable and valid, but since you’re listening to this not only for, you know, there might be some therapists who want to help their clients, but for yourself, it’s something you can be curious about too as you’re identifying all of your symptoms in step A of this process. You can be curious about what you might want for yourself that might reveal even more deeply held implicit learnings. You might not even be able to identify what you want for yourself.(9:52 - 10:11)That in itself becomes the curiosity. What learnings do I have around wanting something, desiring something? So that’s a little side note from me, but models start differently, and I just want to notice that as we’re going together. And you are trying to apply this in your life to understand, starting with the symptoms makes sense, it’s part of this process.(10:12 - 14:08)We can also be curious about what we’re wanting for ourselves, and very often our brain will then reveal even deeper symptoms there. Okay, so back to the case where they have identified that Ceres often pulls away when emotional intimacy becomes intense. And so in interpersonal neurobiology, they’re working their way through these childhood memories in which she had felt overwhelmed by her mother, but they didn’t really notice any change from working through these memories.And so they tried to go deeper and deeper into this source of her fear, and she felt this backing away when she saw an image of her parents in their avoidance, so her parents avoiding each other. And so in memory reconsolidation process, the next step is looking at the underlying emotional learning. This is step B, right? So in this case, this self-protective distancing from her parents’ difficult relationship was looking alongside of, oh, that’s her pattern, right? She observed that in her parents, and then her pattern is distancing herself from her own potential relationship.So there’s something about a learning here, about an expectation that being in any relationship, any romantic relationship, will have some entrapment into the misery that she saw her parents experience, right? So we know we’re always looking for the deeper learning. What are the rules we learned in our lives? And here we can see it wasn’t just about this avoidance that she experienced from her mother, but her parents’ relationship was so difficult, and she would have felt all the difficulty and pain in that as a child, and so her brain developed a learning that said, if I get myself into a romantic relationship, I too will be stuck in this suffering. So isn’t that interesting, right? We’re always looking for what does the brain think will happen? So if I let myself get close to someone, what does the brain think will happen? Do I even want to have a close relationship? That’s why I like looking at a desire approach.So if you’re pulling away from emotional intimacy, do you want it? Do you want to be in a relationship? Is that what you’re really wanting for yourself? Because that would be revealing too. If that’s not what you really even want, why? And that’s where we might get to that learning too about any relationship being a trap. So I just want you to see that you can start in multiple directions and still come into that curiosity of what does my brain think will happen with this symptom? What is it protecting me from? What is this strategy? What is the lesser of the two sufferings? Remember, coherence therapy holds the two sufferings idea.So there’s some suffering that is better to choose, in this case, better to kind of rupturing my own relationships when I get close to emotional intimacy, than letting myself get into this deep relationship and being trapped in misery. And we can see that laid out here. So as this case progresses, they’re looking to work with the quote unquote child states of mind and looking at these inner parents and talking about what was hurting or scaring them.So many types of therapy use this idea of a child state. In internal family systems, we have the idea of parts, we have exile parts, manager parts, firefighter parts, all of which could represent these child experiences. In NARM, which is not discussed in this book, but we read the NARM book, if you want to go back and listen to that, they often refer to it as the child consciousness.I want to emphasize here, implicit learnings can be acquired at any point in our lives, not just our childhood. But because there’s so much rapid development and attachment happening within our childhood, that’s very often why we look back there to see what we might have learned. We’re starting from scratch when we’re born, right? So we’re acquiring a lot of learning very quickly, which is why there’s often this focus on our experience when we were children, and what rules and learnings we may have acquired then.(14:08 - 14:40)But of course, you can also gather learnings in your adult life too. When we’re talking about the consciousness or the child mind, what we’re really talking about is getting to that implicit knowledge, in this case, relating to her parents, looking at what she might have learned from this experience. And so in this interpersonal neurobiology case, the therapist is eliciting her knowledge and using the parent, each of the parents, as a representative of this process.(14:40 - 15:16)So we’re connecting with this emotional learning that we didn’t know was there because it’s unconscious, right? So in this sense, they are connecting first with her father. So they’re looking at what has she internalized? What did she learn after observing with her father? And in this case, Cerise started to notice her body feeling that behavioral impulse to pull away when she felt a romantic partner coming in, wanting more connection. So this seems to imply that she learned that self-protective response of distancing from her father’s example.(15:16 - 15:40)Okay, so that continues our information in step B of the process of memory reconsolidation, looking for those underlying emotional learnings. So they stay with this moment in the case, and they let her father know that they would stay with him. And she could feel this frightening loss of connection that her father had felt in the connection with her, with his depressed mother.(15:41 - 21:42)Okay, so for her father’s experience, it wasn’t just about his relationship with her mother, but there was an experience he had with his own mother in which she was depressed and pull away from him. So her implicit knowledge, she learned from her father, who learned it from his mother’s emotional disconnection. So he learned to use that emotional disconnection to protect himself from the feeling of abandonment.You can really see in this case how the patterns pass through generations. And this is the underlying quote-unquote schema, right? The pattern driving her relationship. So this ties up step B. We now know that there’s an expectation of emotional abandonment, and that is what needs to be unlearned.So in this state, if you’re familiar with IFS The Parts work, which we talked about last time, the part in this case they are referring to as her father, you know, and that makes sense in this context where they really prioritize the early attachment figures, but this could just as easily be a part of us, right? We take on what we have observed and experienced, and we create our own internal parts. In this model, what they’re offering to this father part is this understanding, this comfort, this connection, things that had been missing for him throughout his childhood. And so that’s an ego state of her, as the authors call it.Think of it as a part, a child consciousness, a survival strategy that she picked up and internalized from her father. And they are now offering to that part of her connection from herself, from her adult consciousness. She is offering to herself what she didn’t receive, which is that connection, that secure attachment from her quote-unquote adult ego state, right? The self with a capital S. And that is providing the disconfirming experience in this case.So remember, in the therapeutic reconsolidation process, we find the symptoms, we find the emotional learning, we reactivate the experience, which they’re doing by going into this part. We provide the contradictory experience, which in this case is the secure attachment from the adult self and also from the therapist. And when we go into step three, it’s that we can hold both of those states at once.And when we do that, the brain then reconsolidates the learning, meaning it updates the learning and says, oh, what happened in the past isn’t the same as what happened now. And she could feel this emotional release in the of that feeling of wanting to pull back. And so that disappearance of the somatic feeling that she was feeling, this desire to pull back, is the marker of transformational change.It’s what lets us know that the learning has been updated. As the case goes on, they then work with her mother part, so the internal experience from her mother’s state. And this one doesn’t come quite as easily.And I’m really glad that they both named this. It sometimes takes layers and layers and layers of work because the implicit learnings are tangled together to protect us, and because they all stack on top of each other through our lives. I always think of it like an archaeological dig.We’re going through layers, and based on the era in which the layer developed, there will be different findings, different thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviors associated there. And so in this case, they were talking about how as they worked with her mother part, they noticed the inner father watching the process and being curious. So that fearful response of withdrawing is no longer there.And as they worked with the emotional layers from the mother, the internal mother, there was able to be this internal connected relationship. That dance of avoidance was over. And so after this happened, then her encounters with her parents and other memories, the clients, Cerise, they were softened.They were turned down. The big emotional charge was not still there. So that is what this case looks like, and how we know transformational change has occurred is the symptoms are turned down.The somatic symptoms, the cognitive symptoms, the emotional symptoms. Then she doesn’t have that same behavioral impulse to need to back away. And that is the final step, V, in this process, the behavioral and emotional freedom.I just want to review again that this idea of the parent part, the adult part, and the child part are in many, many models of therapy. For example, transactional analysis is another one that includes those kind of ego states as parts. You can figure out what works best for you.If you like thinking about it as your internal parent, if you like thinking about it from an IFS model with managers and firefighters, if you like thinking about the adult consciousness versus the child consciousness, it’s all about what works for you. I personally like to think about that idea that all of these schemas are really representations of what? Bundles of thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviors related to the rules of engagement that we learned in our lives. And so each of those parts just represents different learnings like that archaeological dig, different layers of our experience developed at different times in our lives that our brain uses to predict what’s going to happen in the present versus what’s going to happen in the past.I just so enjoy continuing to go through these cases with you because it gives us such a rich opportunity to learn together that there is no one right way to heal. There is just curiosity, observation, connection, excavation, and then building new experiences for ourselves. And very, very often the new experiences that we start with are internal, meaning how we relate to ourselves.(21:42 - 22:05)And that gives us back so much agency, choice, power, and flexibility because we no longer have to rely on other people to give us those new experiences. Let me be clear, it is reasonable and makes sense to want the people around us to be safe and to meet our needs. And as we have agency, choice, and flexibility, those are the relationships we will feel drawn toward.(22:06 - 22:57)But we do not need other people around us to give us the new experience that we’re wanting to be able to complete this memory reconsolidation process. And very often as we learn to meet ourselves in a different way, we will shift the way we show up in relationships in the present. And that very often leads to a change in that relationship as well.So thank you again for being here. What a rich and interesting case this was. Based on your feedback, I think we’re going to go through all the cases.We’re going to go through all the chapters and I’m so excited. I think I continue to learn so much. It’s my fourth or fifth time reading this book from these cases and I think it is the best way to see it applied.It’s not just theoretical, then we really get to see it step by step. So I’d love to hear your thoughts, curiosities, what you learned from this case, and what you’re exploring. Wishing you a good week ahead. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our book club read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain. If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks where we slowly and thoughtfully explore this book together. You can also listen on Spotify. These episodes are meant to help translate dense theory into everyday language and to connect the science to real life, real patterns, and real change. We also gather twice during each book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time. If you’d like to learn more about getting unstuck and making lasting change in your life, I have two upcoming classes: 5 Steps to Change and Finding a New Story. This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most important mechanisms for understanding how lasting change actually happens. It helps explain why insight alone is rarely enough, and how healing can occur after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up in environments where our emotional needs were not consistently met.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience. That includes our live sessions, ongoing discussions, and the complete archive of past reads like No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this space possible, and I’m genuinely grateful you’re here and reading along with me.This week, we’re continuing into Part Two of the book, where the authors begin walking us through different therapy modalities and showing how they create transformational change through memory reconsolidation. Today, we’re focusing on Internal Family Systems. This section of the book is especially meaningful to me because one of the most common questions I get is how to know what kind of therapy actually helps people change. What matters most is not the name of the modality, but whether the therapy engages the mechanisms of change the brain requires in order to update old emotional learnings.Different therapies can look very different on the surface. They may use different languages, structures, or techniques. But underneath, when real change is happening, they are often doing something very similar. They are helping an old emotional learning become active while something genuinely different is experienced at the same time. That process is what allows the brain to reorganize and let go of patterns that once made sense but are no longer needed.In this episode, we’ll walk through case examples from IFS to see how this process unfolds in real sessions. We’ll look at how observing and being with ourselves in an emotion can help rewire old learnings we may have held for decades. My hope is that by the end, you’ll have a clearer sense of what to listen for, whether you’re choosing a therapist, doing your own inner work, or simply trying to understand why certain approaches finally help when others haven’t.(0:00 - 2:51)Hello and welcome back to our read-along book club where we are reading Unlocking the Emotional Brain. It is the book about memory reconsolidation and coherence therapy and we’re walking through it together where I guide you and translate the information in this book, talk a little bit about what it really means beneath all of the technical terms, and share with you how you might apply this in your life. I think this part of the book is one of the coolest parts of the book because it’s where they take their time and they go through these different models of therapy.This week, we’re going to look at internal family systems and examine how that transformational change of memory reconsolidation takes place using that model. I love this so much because one of the most frequent questions I get is about what type of therapy should I do if I’m an intellectualizer, if I’m a professionist, if I’m self-sabotaging, and of course the answer is at the end of the day there is no one right type of therapy modalities. And even the type of therapies discussed in this book, the therapist may not always be using the steps for transformational change, but it is possible because these modalities have all the things required to make that memory reconsolidation process happen.When we’re talking about these types of therapy, we’re not talking about the organization itself. There’s been a lot of things in the news recently about internal family systems and things that have happened within that organization. Just know when we’re talking about IFS, what we’re really talking about is parts work applied in this specific way.Parts work also comes from schema therapy. Coherence therapy in its own way uses parts work, though it may not refer to it as such. But when we think of parts work, parts are really a story humans have given to bundles of thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviors in our brain.So all of those rules of engagement that we develop over our life, all of those implicit learnings are stored with context. And that context is the thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviors that we experienced when they were happening. The choices we had to make about how to show up in our lives, to stay safe, to stay in connection.All of those things are stored in our predictive brain. And they’re bundled together often in these patterns that go together. So for example, an intellectualizer part may be a part of you, quote unquote, that is a bundle of implicit learnings where you learn to turn down your emotions, disconnect from yourself.Maybe you feel sort of numb or nothingness in your body. You analyze and ruminate and think all of the time. And the behaviors might be that you never slow down, you never fully connect with yourself.(2:51 - 7:23)You’re always going to the next to-do list, the next planner, the next thing. So we might call that a part in certain types of therapies. We might call that a schema in coherence therapy.We might call that a survival strategy in NARM. But all of those things mean the same thing, which they are those rules of engagement of the way that you learn to be in the world. And we can have different experiences of those rules of engagement based on what’s happening in front of us.For example, you might be an intellectualizer, quote unquote, that might be the part of you that you’re most familiar with. Those might be the strategies that you’re using in your everyday life. But you may also have a part that is a people pleaser.So based on the relationship you have the person who is in front of you, you may shift out of that intellectualized state and shift into this part of you that is very hypervigilantly attuned to other people and trying to make things okay for them. Or you may also have a part of you that is very critical alongside of an intellectualizer. Remember, again, these parts are just bundles of thoughts, emotions, and body sensations.So when we’re talking about these therapeutic modalities like internal family systems, we’re not talking about the organization itself because I’m not really qualified to make comments on it because I’m not involved in that organization. But we’re talking about the modality and how parts work might be used to make transformational change. Now one last thing before we dive in, we’re actually getting pretty close to the end of this book.We have a couple more weeks of talking about these different therapeutic modalities. But then there’s a really interesting part three where they go through some of these cases. And so I’d love to hear from you if you would like us to go through some of these cases together.I think it could be really interesting to really dive into some of these cases and look at these unique ways that they’re using coherence therapy. And so as long as that sounds good to you, then we will keep going. But if you would rather curtail part three and not go into the cases and move on to another book, it’s okay to let me know that too.So please feel free to comment, hear a reply, and let me know about going into part three. If we go into part three, it’s if we don’t, it might be closer to the end of March. And then you can also let me know if there’s another book you’d like to see about what comes next.I have some ideas in mind, but I’d love to hear from you. Is there a book about a therapeutic modality or boundaries or having needs or whatever it might be that you’re curious about? You would want to know how we can apply this lens to it of implicit learning, survival strategies, and making change? Let me know and we can start looking toward what comes next. So back into chapter 10, which is talking about internal family systems, and they lay out for us here right off the bat, how much this idea of parts or sub-personalities has been used in the therapeutic world.Of course, this very early idea from Jung, which many of you may have heard of, of the archetypes, right? But this has been a part of many types of therapy, transactional analysis, ego state therapy, gestalt therapy. There’s been parts work and sub-personalities and ego states all throughout the history of psychotherapy. If you were with us when you read No Bad Parts, then you might already be familiar with this, but Internal Family Systems was developed by Dr. Schwartz using that parts language to talk about parts of our experience that carry that emotional memory, referred to as a burden, of these unresolved intense sufferings, of these ruptures that we’ve experienced in our lives.And so they are kept away from our consciousness. And so the parts of us that are kept away in Internal Family Systems are called exiles. And then there are other parts that operate to protect those exiles, to prevent them from being accessed.And we have those two parts called managers. And so managers are kind of like those intellectualism, perfectionism, people-pleasing parts. And then firefighters, which are the emergency response part of us.And so those parts might hold bigger experiences like dissociation, rage, substance use. They’re really trying to suppress any distress that might come up because, again, they’re all protecting those exile parts of us. The exiles are the part of us that hold the deepest, hardest emotional memories of the sufferings we have experienced in our lives.(7:24 - 9:09)In IFS, the therapist is working with the client to access the self, the consciousness, the observer in NARM, the adult consciousness, so that we can unburden the exile. We bring the exile into our direct awareness by observing it, and it can be unburdened by feeling and expressing all of that distress that it has held for so long. And much like the other therapies we’ve explored so far, the client and therapist relationship is a key piece for potentially facilitating this therapeutic process.But the primary experience in IFS is the relationship between the self and the parts. So this is actually an interesting case because the client themselves is a therapist, and they are coming to see this therapist for supervision, because they noticed when they were doing work with a client who was feeling rage, she started feeling a very intense fear within herself that she knows doesn’t make sense in the present context. She knows the client’s not dangerous, she’s not at risk, but she really notices this reaction in her body, specifically in her stomach.So remember, the first step of identifying something to make a change using memory reconsolidation is to figure out the what and the when. And so we can see in this case here, the what and the when is this tension and upset in her stomach that feels like fear when her client starts to get rageful. And so we can see that in internal family systems, much like the modalities of therapy we’ve explored together in this book and in the past, there’s this curious observation.(9:10 - 12:33)There’s not an assuming or an immediate trying to make meaning or manage what’s happening, but there’s this curiosity, this noticing. And so there’s this meeting of this part that feels scared, and it’s felt scared for so long. And so this might indicate in some way that that emotional learning, that anger from other people is dangerous, has been with her for a very long time.And so we’re identifying this in internal family systems as a part, and so we’re letting that part know that we’re the adult now, we’re here now, we are the self. Just the same way as we might identify our adult consciousness in Narm, or our self, our consciousness in any other work, we want to make sure a foot of us stays in the part of us that is observing, even if the rest of us feels very intensely of that other part. And so we’re just asking and we’re being curious, what does this part want us to know? Why is it holding all of this fear? And so in IFS, this is a key piece to look at the distress held by the exile.We want to know why this part is holding on to all of this fear, this exile part, so that we can move toward the therapeutic reconsolidation process of step B, the emotional learning. Remember, the reason why it’s so important to get to that emotional learning is because that emotional learning is what is requiring the symptom. The emotional learning is the thing that says this bad or dangerous or hurtful thing will happen if I let myself, whatever it may be, in this case, if I let myself be comfortable around other people’s anger, something will happen, something dangerous will happen if I’m around other people’s anger.That is the emotional learning that requires the schema, the schema that brings up fear, anxiety, and terror anytime someone else feels anger. This cannot be addressed behaviorally. No amount of telling ourselves, it’s okay if other people are angry, it’s okay if I have a need and it upsets other people is going to address that.Because remember, there’s this idea of two sufferings or in Narm, the core bind. That’s what we’re going to explore here in this case to figure out what is this suffering that she is avoiding when this part of her is choosing to brace and be afraid. We have to figure out what that emotional learning is to see why the schema or the part is bracing so hard against the anger.And that’s key in our own process too. We might think we have a sense of why we do this. We might think we know what the quote unquote core belief is, but without really identifying specifically what that learning or learnings are underneath, we can’t target them with this process.No behavioral change, no thought reframing, no regulating your nervous system will shift that emotional learning without targeting it specifically. So in this case, when she’s asking this part, what’s happening, this part is saying that she learned it’s safer to be silent, not to make demands, not to stand up for herself. So making demands would be standing up for herself and it wouldn’t be safe to do that.(12:33 - 12:50)So we see this emotional learning coming out that standing up for herself is unsafe. And so that feeling is powerlessness. But right now we don’t know the full emotional learning because we don’t know a full description of the suffering she’s trying to avoid.(12:51 - 15:04)So they’re going to continue to be curious about that, right? This young part that’s frightened, a close part that’s saying, don’t make demands, don’t stand up for yourself. And in IFS, that is the manager. The manager is the one saying, don’t make demands, don’t stand up for yourself, because it’s trying to prevent the distress that would come for the exile part.And here’s a really important piece to understand here. In this therapeutic reconsolidation process, there’s an idea that there are two things we learned when something hurtful happens. Number one, this hurts.And number two, here’s what I do about it. And those two learnings get fused together. So in internal family systems, the exile is the hurt part, the part that says this hurts, it’s vulnerable, it’s wounded, it’s feeling all of the pain.And it got tucked away because it was too hard, too much to feel all that pain consciously. The protector part is the other response. What do I do about this? It is the coping part, the behavior, the strategy, the defense, however you’d like to think about it, that developed specifically to prevent that hurt from being felt again.They’re not actually separate problems. They’re two sides of the coin. The protector exists because of the exile.The what do I do about it exists because of the hurt. So we’re really noticing when we’re observing ourselves in this way, we’re looking at is what I’m seeing the hurt itself? Or is it the armor protecting it? Often the thing we might notice first is the armor, the intellectualization, the people pleasing, the perfectionism. But we know that’s not there for fun.It’s not because we enjoy walking around in those strategies. It is protecting us from whatever the hurt is that lies beneath. And so that’s why we get curious about what is the deeper emotion, the deeper learning underneath the strategy.The strategy is armor, the hurt is underneath. So again, things like intellectualization are not the problem, but we often target it as the problem. Intellectualization is the solution.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comEpisode OverviewIn this episode, we continue exploring Part Two of Unlocking the Emotional Brain, examining how memory reconsolidation works within two powerful therapeutic modalities: Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Through detailed case studies, we unpack what "changing emotion with emotion" actually means and why bilateral stimulation in EMDR creates lasting change.The Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process Step A: Identify symptoms (what and when) Step B: Uncover implicit emotional learnings (the gut-level beliefs) Step C: Access contradictory knowledge (the juxtaposition that updates the brain)This is the same engine of change across all effective therapies and in self-directed work.Practical ApplicationsObserver StancePractice slowing down and watching for subtle patterns. Self-criticism, helplessness, and hopelessness often hide in language that sounds very adult and rational. Notice statements like:"I never follow through because I'm an idiot" (sounds factual but reveals an implicit belief)"There's nothing that can be done" (helplessness)"That's just how I am" (resignation)True accountability sounds different: "It's been challenging to follow through, and I'm curious why, because I genuinely want to do these things."The Core BindMost of us hold both the old learning and the contradictory knowledge simultaneously. This is the bind that keeps us stuck. Therapeutic work (or self-work) is about consciously experiencing both at the same time so the brain can update.Different Paths, Same MechanismWhether you journal, walk, do somatic work, or attend therapy, the mechanism of change is the same: identifying implicit emotional learnings and creating experiences that contradict them. Find the approach that works for your nervous system and trust level.Important NotesNot all therapies work for all people at all timesComplex trauma may make highly emotional approaches (empty chair, intense EMDR) overwhelmingThe practitioner, your trust in them, and your current capacity all matterThese approaches never focus on symptom management (breathing, grounding) during the reconsolidation work itself - they target the underlying templates creating the symptoms

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comUnderstanding AEDP and Memory Reconsolidation: A Deep Dive into Transformational TherapyEpisode OverviewThis episode explores Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) and how different therapy modalities create transformational change through memory reconsolidation. Using the case study of "Daniel," a 40-year-old divorced father, the discussion illustrates how therapeutic presence and attunement can help clients update deeply held emotional learnings about relationships and safety.Key ConceptsMemory Reconsolidation ExplainedThe process allows the brain to unlearn old emotional patterns that no longer serve usUnlike exposure therapy (which builds distress tolerance), memory reconsolidation actually updates the original learning generating the emotionRequires accessing both the belief/cognition AND the feeling that makes it powerfulThe emotion is how our brain makes meaning out of original experiencesAEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)Core PrinciplesFocused on transformational change from attachment traumaEmphasizes experiential process - there must be activation and feeling in the presentBased on reparative attachment through corrective attachment experiencesThe therapeutic relationship itself can create memory reconsolidationThe Experiential ComponentWhy experiential matters:Needs activation - a feeling in the present of these learningsNot enough to only intellectualizeEven just talking and being in relationship with a therapist activates emotions, body sensations, and memoriesThe secure base of the therapeutic relationship is incredibly important for creating changeThe Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process in AEDPHow AEDP Implements the StepsUnique approach: Steps 2, 1, 3, V, and A & B occur intermittently throughoutActivation of the disconfirming experience: Therapist constantly asking "How is it for me to say this? How is it for me to be here with you?"Reactivation of symptom schema: Repetitions of "how it was versus how it is now"Observation (Verification): Noticing what is different - how the activation is different, how symptoms are different, increased easeFor TherapistsThe Containment Strategy:Don't follow yourself or your client down into strategies and symptomsAlways come back to the presentAlways notice: "What are you actually noticing? What's actually happening for you in this moment?"For Self-WorkWhen working on your own:"What's it like to let myself name that it's sad right now?"Even without tears or body sensationsSlow down from intellectualizationThis seemingly small step is actually quite significantMemory Reconsolidation vs. Exposure/HabituationExposure Therapy:Builds distress toleranceBrain learns "I can feel this and survive"Useful but doesn't update original learningStill have to do management strategiesMemory Reconsolidation:Updates the original learning generating the emotionTouches a piece of the feeling WHILE simultaneously holding contradictory evidenceBrain reorganizes data modelProbability of old pattern decreases (99% → 70% → eventually almost nothing)The Split Screen MetaphorImagine a movie screen split down the middle:Left side: Old experienceRight side: New experienceBoth held simultaneously for brain to reorganizeKey TakeawaysDisconfirmation experiences don't have to be as big as you think - even tiny moments of noticing difference matterThe therapeutic relationship itself is transformational - co-regulation with therapist creates new experiences for the brainTitration is key - little bits at a time, not flooding with emotionPresent moment focus - constantly bringing awareness back to "what's happening right now"Spaciousness over pushing - allowing room to notice differences rather than demanding full emotional expression

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comChapter 6 pulls back to show us the bigger picture: how all the different therapy approaches - IFS, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and more - work through the same underlying process when they create real, lasting change. We explore the decades-long specific factors vs. common factors debate in therapy research, and what it means for your own healing journey.In This Episode:Why different therapy modalities are like different vehicles crossing the same terrainThe Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process (TRP) steps - a quick refresherThe therapy research debate: Is it the techniques or the relationship that matters?Why feeling safe and understood is essential but often not enough on its ownMemory reconsolidation as the mechanism of change - and why the mechanism isn't the whole storyWhat this means for your therapy or self-healing workKey Takeaways:When deep, lasting change happens in therapy, the same underlying process is occurring - regardless of which modality is being used.The therapeutic relationship creates the safety you need to do vulnerable work, but the relationship alone usually isn't enough to produce transformational change. You need both.Memory reconsolidation is the engine of change, but you also need fuel (safety, readiness), a road (observation, curiosity, awareness), and often a driver (therapist or your own developed capacity).What looks like sudden or accidental change is usually the result of lots of prior groundwork, including building a felt sense of safety and capacity to observe ourselves differently through metacognition.It's okay - and even helpful - to understand what your therapy is actually doing. It's your brain and your healing.Connect the Dots:To NARM: The adaptive survival styles in NARM are examples of the implicit emotional learnings we've been discussing. The TRP framework helps explain how those survival styles can be transformed, not just understood.To IFS: When you're working with parts in IFS, the moments of transformation often involve the same juxtaposition experience - an exile holding old pain encounters new evidence (often through Self-energy or an updated understanding) that contradicts the old belief.To Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: The terms of attachment we discussed in Chapter 5 - those unspoken rules about what's allowed in order to stay connected - are exactly the kind of implicit learnings that need to go through this reconsolidation process to truly shift.Questions to Sit With:In my own therapy or self-work, am I getting to the feeling of the old learnings, or mostly talking about them?Have I had experiences in my life that contradict my old beliefs or where something different happened than what my brain predicted? What happened when I did?Where in my life am I doing the observation and curiosity work, even if change hasn’t happened yet in the way I want it to?Coming Up Next:Part 2 of the book walks through case examples from different therapy approaches - showing how the TRP unfolds in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, IFS, and more. We'll get to see the theory in action!

(0:00 - 1:23)Hello, my friends, and welcome back to our Substack Book Club. We have a lot of new people here, and so this is going to be a free episode for everyone to listen to, to learn a little bit more about what we do in our book club here. Just to catch you up, we’re currently reading Unlocking the Emotional Brain, which is the seminal book on coherence therapy and memory reconsolidation.Memory reconsolidation is the process by which we can update the old learnings in our brain. So if you found your way here because you consider yourself an intellectualizer, a people pleaser, a perfectionist, you find yourself stuck in traditional therapy because you already understand a lot of things. Maybe you’ve tried nervous system regulation, but you can’t quite seem to get unstuck.It’s likely because you have old unconscious learnings referred to as implicit emotional learnings that are like pathways in your brain. They are things that happened to you in your past that formed roads in your brain that said, this is the safe road to go down. So if every time you had emotions, or you had needs, or you were yourself, you were criticized, or sent away, or punished, or bullied by your peers, or you had parents who, for whatever reason, couldn’t show up for you, then over time, the learning would be, if I have my needs and I am myself, I will be criticized, or I will lose connection.(1:24 - 2:28)And so then that shows up in the present where we mask, we put our true selves away, we stay up in our thoughts, and no amount of insight will change that process. So this book really helps us to understand how we can make long-term change. If you join our book club, you also get access to all of the old episodes where I have gone through Healing Developmental Trauma, a wonderful book covering NARM therapy and helping us understand this process a little bit more, No Bad Parts, a book on internal family systems, another book that can support memory reconsolidation, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, which is often very important learning for many of us to understand how our early experiences may have shaped our present-day lives.So thank you so much for being here. Whether you are a free or paid member, you help support my work just by listening, liking, engaging, and commenting, and it’s truly an honor to get to share this information with you. This is going to be a recap episode of what we have explored in Unlocking the Emotional Brain so far, and next week we will dive back in.(2:30 - 3:03)So many of you have read every chapter and taken notes along with me, and some of you may be listening while you do the dishes or go on a walk, and you haven’t cracked the book just once, and that is all completely welcome here. You get to show up in the book club at the level that your system has capacity for, and I love getting to translate these books into everyday understanding to help us actively make change in our lives. So let’s walk through some of these ideas together, and I do want to name again that Unlocking the Emotional Brain is not exactly an easy, cozy read.(3:03 - 6:00)It can be pretty clinical and dense in places, but the reason I chose this book anyway is it’s because something so incredibly important, which is transformational change in therapy, transformational change in mental health, transformational change in how we show up in the world, not just symptom management, not just insight, not just telling you that for the rest of your life you’re going to have to use force and fear and to regulate your nervous system every single day just to be in the world. Now, of course, if you know me, you know that I support nervous system regulation work, and I support insight, and all of those things are wonderful, but they alone do not create transformational change. We have to figure out how to shift these patterns at the root because journals and planning and coping skills do not address the root of why we have these learnings, and this process for transformational change is called memory reconsolidation.We can think of it as if we’re updating the maps, the atlas, the GPS in our brain. Underneath those metaphors is the same basic idea that our brain can revise old emotional learnings from memories of things that happened to us in our lives under certain conditions, and that is the core of what this book is about. Think about your brain as a big excel spreadsheet or a big filing cabinet.In all of the experiences in your life, your brain files away and stores the data, and it puts it into themes like a big zip file. So if you had a series of memories that again told you that when you experience emotions, people will pull away from you, then those get filed into a big folder, and because the potential to lose connection with others is coded as survival, because it is in our brain, because we are wired to have connection, then that learning gets moved to the top as a critically important survival learning. So all of these memories the brain sorts through and said, this has happened a lot, so frequency, so this is something I want to hold on to, and then this has happened and it was really intense, so intensity.So frequency and intensity are what the brain uses to categorize what is an important memory to hold on to versus what isn’t. This all happens unconsciously, so you yourself may not have memories of these specific events, but your brain puts them into a file and then creates a learning. Think about a learning like a rule.The brain is using the data to say, I’m going to predict what’s going to happen in the present and the future based on what’s happened in the past, and I’m going to use that to shape the way that you yourself see the world. It changes the lenses through which we perceive reality to try to keep us safe. Because if the brain is predicting that feeling our feelings and being authentic is going to lead to losing connection, being sent away, being punished, which feels survival oriented, then of course the brain is not going to want to let us be authentic and connect easily.(6:00 - 6:47)So then, for example, we might perceive the people around us as more critical than they are. We might perceive situations as dangerous, like going to meet new people, because if we are ourselves we won’t get to form a new connection, when in actuality they are not dangerous. This all happens below the surface and forms these patterns or parts that we as humans have learned to call intellectualization, people pacing, perfectionism, my anxious part, we have a lot of different names we’ve given to it.But those are all bundles of memories and emotions that create rules. If we in the present want to update those rules, we have to follow this process called memory reconsolidation. And that is one of the key neurobiological mechanisms for change.(6:48 - 16:23)This book walks us through that process. So let’s break down what we’ve covered so far in learning about this process. What we talked about in the very beginning is the difference between symptom reduction and transformational change.So it is possible to reduce our symptoms or to change our experience through behavior change, through force, through willpower, through quote-unquote motivation. So therapy could help you maybe feel 20% less anxious, or feel fewer panic attacks, or go to the gym more often, and that’s absolutely not nothing. Those reductions in symptoms can feel like a really big relief.But oftentimes that reduction happens through management. So we learn how to use strategies to manage our brain and what a gift that we can do that. But I’m guessing if you’re here, you don’t want to have to spend the rest of your life doing symptom management and using force.The reason why that thing that gives you a reduction doesn’t change the pathway in your brain is because it’s still in contradiction with an old learning. So going to the gym every day to take care of yourself through management strategies, habits, and force doesn’t contradict an old learning that says taking care of yourself is selfish. So it requires vigilance at all time to use the strategies to override your brain, which is often why we fail quote-unquote at setting new habits, or we do it for a couple of months and then we stop, or we use management strategies but we still kind of feel stuck, empty, disconnected, or unsure of ourselves.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Transformational change is completely different. In these moments when we can create transformation, we are rewiring the learning that we had. We are rewiring our brain itself so that the brain updates its prediction.It updates its data model. It is so cool that we know now that we can do this. It’s not just about having new experiences.I want to be super clear about that because it’s kind of the in thing right now to talk about how you don’t need regulation, you just need to have new experiences, but they are missing a key part of the process, which is that the new experiences must explicitly target the old learning and they must be incremental, meaning they have to be little bits at a time. But as we do this process, we can update through transformational change these emotional learnings and then we don’t have to use management strategies, force, fear, every single day because the old learnings that say if I’m not perfect I will lose love, if I have needs I’m selfish and I’ll hurt others, if I show feelings people will withdraw, those things can be rewired and the learnings can be updated. So now instead of predicting a 99% chance of something dangerous is happening, the brain realistically says maybe there’s a 5% chance that something could happen if I myself and I have needs.And then what happens is if we have needs and someone criticizes us or doesn’t support our need or whatever it is, we get to experience it through present-day lenses, through our adult eyes, where we can say that still hurt, that didn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel good to be hurt or unseen or criticized or whatever it might be, but it’s not dangerous. And that is the transformational change where we can exist in the present without the past landing onto the present. Another really big part of this book is moving away from seeing symptoms as pathological or self-sabotaging and instead seeing all symptoms as coherent.That is the idea upon which coherence therapy and other types of therapy are based. Every symptom, every strategy, every protective part is coherent because it lines up with an underlying emotional learning. In other words, it makes sense.We spend a lot of time in the future, in the present, sorry, telling ourselves that, well, this symptom doesn’t make sense. I’m not in danger if I have a need. No one’s going to think I’m selfish and if they do, I don’t care.Okay, that’s your rational mind or your intellectualizer mind talking, but that’s not what your emotional learning is. Deep inside, there is a part of you that learned those things do feel dangerous. They do risk connection.They do create suffering. And so we know through this book that there is this idea of two sufferings, that when we have these overwhelming experiences, these intense experiences, these big emotional survival-based experiences, our brain is very quickly categorizing, based on the data it has, what will be the lesser of two sufferings. And so if the suffering is I shut down my own needs, I turn my back on myself, I abandon myself, or the other suffering is I lose connection with people around me, that is actually the far more terrifying suffering.It is far more terrifying, especially as children, to feel that our caregivers would not be okay if we don’t take care of their needs, or our caregivers will withdraw from us if we are our silly, playful selves. That actually creates a feeling of life threat versus the other suffering, which is shutting down our own needs, shutting down our own emotions, going up into our head. We are always choosing between two sufferings.You don’t know you’re doing this. I can’t emphasize enough that this all happens in the unconscious, and it’s not rational. People will try to tell me, well, that doesn’t make sense.That doesn’t matter. These are emotional learnings, and emotions, by their very definition, do not have to be founded in rationality. They are feelings, they are not thoughts.So whatever solutions we came up with in those times of two sufferings, that made sense in the context of the emotional experience and the nervous system experience we had at the time. So if you learned that confident, loud, opinionated adults hurt people, shut other people down, stomped all over them, your brain might come up with a symptom of staying small and doubtful and silent. That symptom might hurt you in the present, it might get in the way of you having the life that you want, but it is the lesser of the two sufferings.If the other option is to turn into the parent or the teacher or whoever it is who terrified you, that is coherent. It’s not random. It’s not a character defect.If every mistake you made as a child was met with shaming, withdrawal, rage, or just disruption and dysfunction in the family system that relied on you to be good, to make them feel okay, then your system will file mistakes as dangerous. So driving yourself to be perfect, never resting, not feeling safe to come down, is fully coherent. It is not something that can be managed solely through behavior because the emotion says that it’s unsafe.We know that these symptoms are adaptive, protective, survival strategies, and they are not the enemy. Instead, we’ve learned through this book to use them as clues to what the emotional learnings are that we want to update. So again, wonderful news that we know about this process now to update these learnings because it wasn’t that long ago that we thought once you had these learnings that they were permanent.You might be able to cope. You might be able to reduce the intensity, but you were stuck with them. Thank goodness through research and science now we know that this is not true.That these old emotional memories can be activated in the moment and then they become flexible or pliable. That data or that file becomes updatable. We can open the spreadsheet.We can update the data. We can add new data through new experiences, but we can also make it so that the brain waits the old data less. And this is the coolest thing in the world to know that we can revise these learnings.We activate it. We introduce what’s called a disconfirmation experience or a congruence experiment that introduces a prediction error. These are all fancy words and what they mean is when we activate the old learning, like if I have a need, I’ll be punished, shamed, or abandoned.And we touch into some of that sadness or fear or terror or anger, whatever it might be. And then we have a new experience where let’s say we might try on telling the barista they gave us the wrong drink and asking them to remake it. Your system may react as if something very dangerous is happening.Your heart might race. You might feel nauseous. You want to bolt.You want to just take the drink you paid $7 for and not say anything. But then you do it and they say, oh, sorry about that. I’ll fix it.Or even if they say, fine, I’ll fix it. You get to observe in real time. You get to take off those old lenses little bit, maybe look over the top of the lenses and say, oh, okay, that sucked.I didn’t enjoy that that much, but it wasn’t dangerous. And in that moment, that is what updates the memory. That is what updates the learning.Now, not every new experience can be that simple. It takes time. And sometimes we start with imaginal experiments, meaning we just think in our mind about what it would be like if that happened.But these prediction errors, when they match and are targeted to the old learning, can update it. So it’s not helpful to just slap an affirmation on and say, I am completely safe to have needs, because you don’t believe it. That is way too big in connection to that old emotional learning, and you haven’t learned that it’s true.(16:24 - 20:16)But when we can try these little steps on at a time of like, oh, part of me expected disaster in that moment, and yet nothing terrible happened. When we hold the both, what we expected and what actually happened, that is what opens the door to reconsolidation. We introduce the mismatch, we juxtapose the old learning and the new learning, and over time and repetition, that learning gets updated.And this structure is laid out in this book for therapists as well, and it’s called the Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process, and it works very similarly. So if you’re a therapist curious about how to activate this in your own work, you can go back and look at that chapter and listen to that episode, or of course, listen on, because we will continue to explore in updating chapters. So a very helpful case in this book, which you heard me reference, is the case of Richard.And Richard comes in because he’s struggling with self-confidence. He’s having a hard time speaking up in meetings, and he comes in thinking, how do I get unstuck from this? And so you might think, oh, he has self-esteem, he doesn’t like himself, he doesn’t trust himself. But what we actually learned is that his father was a very outspoken person, but he was also an aggressor.And so what his learning was is, I must have no confidence at all, or I will become harmful and dominating, and everyone else will hate me. And so in the book, as they move into the transformation phase, Richard was able to practice observing in his day-to-day life when other people speak up in meetings and have good ideas, and everyone responds with relief and appreciation. And that becomes contradictory knowledge for him, a lived experience that can update that learning.And then over the course of our lives, we get verification, which means we get to see it happen over and over again, and then we get to see the shift within ourselves. This is through observation, which is also called metacognition, learning to observe ourselves like a wildlife documentarian with curiosity and neutrality. We also use interoceptive awareness, where we track both our mind and our body.And then we use this memory reconsolidation process to introduce prediction errors, aka new experiences, to make a change. It is normal because we can have many, many learnings for this to take time. It’s normal for there to be partial shifts, or to find a deeper learning when we thought we were working on learning A and another learning pops up.And so noticing is the work. Observing is the work. Continuing to observe and be curious is what will help you with this process over time.This is why I love getting to do this podcast together and to explore and be curious and go slow, because just thinking about things in this different way, shifting the lens a little bit, being curious, observing what happens as you listen or read, that in itself can be a new experience. That in itself can be an opportunity for you to have a moment where it clicks and you say, oh, maybe I’m not doing this because I’m bad or I’m not trying hard enough or whatever it might be. When you observe that and notice that, oh, moment, that can be a new experience we’re introducing to your brain, where you learn to observe yourself versus criticize yourself.And so we know that this process takes time. To take it more slowly, to learn to observe things in a different way, we do have to take it slowly. We do have to process little by little.That is the way the brain and nervous system work. Unfortunately, we can’t rush or push towards this huge change that we might see on social media, even though a part of us might want to. And the part of us that wants to be this big, huge change can also be a part of a deeper learning that says, I’m not acceptable as I am.(20:17 - 21:19)But if we zoom out and we notice that we can learn to be in connection with ourselves, to let our symptoms and strategies make sense, to learn to be more neutral and observe our experience, to insert a tiny pause in between a stimulus and a response, and then to learn to have new experiences that allow us to see things as they are in the present and how they were in the past, that we can update our brain, we can update our learnings, and we can change our lives in that process. So we’re not here to memorize these steps as a formula, but just to notice, maybe 1% more, that your experience makes sense. There is a pathway for change that doesn’t require force and fear and bullying.Your brain and nervous system are wired to learn. They are neuroplastic. They are able to change, but they need the right conditions.(21:20 - 22:26)So as we continue to work through this book together, we’re going to keep coming back to these foundations. We’re going to look at how different therapies you might already know, like somatic work and IFS, are all using versions of this process, even if they use a different language for it, and we’ll keep talking about how this applies to our real lives, how to implement this in our day-to-day. So check in with yourself.Notice in your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations what might be coming up as you listen. Is there a symptom or a pattern that comes up where you say, oh, that might be true for other people, but not about me, or where some part of you wants to figure out how to take this information and make a spreadsheet, make a plan, make a checklist? Then maybe just for a moment, you could notice, this is coherent. This strategy makes sense.This symptom protected me in some way, even if I’m not clear on what it is right now, and there may be new routes ahead, even if I can’t see them yet. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening and reading, and I’m so grateful we get to walk this road together.wishing you tiny glimmers ahead,trishap.s. If you’re interested in learning more about how to apply this IRL, you can still join me for my 5 Steps to Change Live Class (also recorded!). I’d love to see you there! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our book club read-a-long of Unlocking the Emotional Brain! If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks, where we explore a chapter from the book together (you can also listen on Spotify!). I help translate the theory into everyday language and show you how to apply it in your own life. We also gather twice per book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time.This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most powerful mechanisms for true and lasting change. It helps us understand how healing actually happens after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up with emotionally immature parents.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this kind of work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience, including live sessions, current discussions, and the complete archive of past reads like No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this community possible, and I’m so grateful you’re here.This week, we dive into chapter 5, which goes further into attachment and the role it takes in shaping the way we see the world as adults. We know it’s not always attachment, that other things like societal and existential concerns can also create trauma patterns and survival strategies, but attachment sure plays a significant role! This chapter is incredibly dense, but it can help us continue to observe ourselves with more neutrality and understanding (and maybe even compassion!) when we’re examining behaviors we don’t like in the present day. Let’s dive in and learn more!(0:00 - 4:15)Welcome back, read-along friends, and thank you so much for being here. If you’re new here, this is our book club, where we dive into different self-help and therapy books, and every two weeks I release a little podcast episode, breaking down a chapter for you and helping you to understand how you might apply this in real life. You can read along with me, but you don’t have to.You can never pick up the book at all and still get the gist from these episodes. So I’m so glad you’re here as we continue to dive into Unlocking the Emotional Brain, an incredibly dense and incredibly informative book, and I think actually today we’re going to continue our exploration of chapter five, and we may not even get through it all. We’ll see.I want to, but it’s such a dense chapter and such an important chapter that I want to make sure that we take our time. Don’t forget that we have our first of two live meetings for this book coming up on Sunday, December 14th, and that is at 12 p.m. Eastern Time. You’ll receive the link in a separate email coming this week, but that’s 12 p.m. Eastern Time, Sunday, December 14th.Don’t worry if you can’t attend live. The recording will be sent out to all paid members, and thank you so much for being here and supporting my work. So you may remember, as we just briefly touched into chapter five last time, the chapter five explores attachment, and is it always about attachment? And so we know that, especially in modern discourse, there’s somewhat the idea that all roads in therapy and all problems that present in therapy can be tied back to attachment with our parents, and this chapter really dives into some of the attachment science and looks at this idea that there’s often more going on to our experience than just attachment with our parents.It doesn’t mean that attachment might not be involved in some way, meaning our connection to the world around us, to peers, etc., because we know that we are pack animals and we are biologically wired to want to stay in connection with those around us. But does it always come back to a childhood attachment experience with parents? And let’s talk a little bit about that. We know that unlocking the emotional brain is all about emotional learnings and how the experiences we have in our lives and those emotions that go along with them form implicit, meaning unconscious, memories and learnings within our brain that direct our behaviors in our present-day lives.Those learnings can come from, certainly, attachment relationships with caregivers, but they can also come from social contexts like schools, friendships, bullying, racism, layoffs, and also existential experiences. And this is what I don’t see talked about too often, so I’m so glad they mentioned it here, like illnesses, accidents, loss, or confrontation with our own mortality. All of those experiences can create these schemas, and you can think of schemas like templates within our brain, for thoughts, emotions, behavioral sensations, and behaviors.And those schemas hold up those if-then rules. If this happens, this is what I must do to stay safe, to stay in connection, to be loved, to be well, etc. And those all get held in the same place, that emotional, implicit, unconscious memory.And this is part of the emotional coherence framework. So instead of arguing about whether attachment or social class or temperament or whatever is more important, instead we know that the brain doesn’t care which category the experience falls under. If something happens, and you might have heard me say this, if it’s frequent or if it’s intense, no matter the source of the experience, then the brain will file that as a learning in the brain.(4:16 - 4:36)And so that could include, like, implicit learnings and procedural learnings could include riding a bike, handwriting, things that don’t really have a lot of emotion stored alongside of them. But when there’s emotion stored alongside of them, then those emotional, implicit learnings become even stronger. So it’s all these rivers flowing into one wide delta.(4:36 - 10:06)One river might be attachment. One might be social experiences. One might be existential experiences.One might be your innate genetic sensitivity. But once those rivers meet in the delta, all of that water blends together. And so what we’re living with in the present is our felt-sense experience of all of the things that make us us.And this can be important because sometimes people will ask me, well, is it possible that this didn’t come from my childhood? And the answer is yes, of course. We can experience environmental, emotional, developmental, and attachment ruptures at any time in our life because we’re always developing. We’re always experiencing the world and relationships around us.And you may remember the case of Raul, which we discussed briefly last time, where he experienced a major rupture in his adult life that created this sense of intense rage. And it didn’t come from a chaotic childhood. It came from a major betrayal from a business partner in adulthood that wrecked his career and threatened his security.And so his emotional brain learned in his adult life after this rupture that broken agreements destroy lives and that rage would protect him from feeling powerless. And that if he let go of rage, that felt like giving up on justice. Those are the implicit emotional learnings that came out of this adult experience.It’s much more than a simple mom, dad, caregiver experience. And so if the therapist had assumed that that had to come from the parents, then classic sort of reparative attachment work would not have touched the schema. So whether you’re a therapist listening or whether you’re an individual who wants to do this in your own life, I think it’s important to hold that lens of curiosity.And that’s why I’m constantly emphasizing curiosity, neutrality, and observation. If you’ve listened to any of my work, you’ve heard me say a million times about observing, observing, observing. Observing is the work.Noticing is the work. And you’ve heard me compare it to an archeological dig or to being a wildlife documentarian. In this book, they call it an anthropologist, that we are learning how to observe and gather data without making assumptions, without letting all those lenses color our experience.And so that’s why it’s very important, therapist or individual, to observe ourselves with this curious lens instead of trying to project what we think the experience might be about. That’s why we use all of these different experiences. Like if you’ve looked in my five steps to change guide, that’s why what I say is to imagine what you want for yourself, whatever it might be.And then you follow the thread from there. You look at the detours that come up. You look at the learnings underneath of that.And sometimes it’s surprising because sometimes the learning is something unexpected. Like this person could have very easily assumed, well, maybe I’m angry and rageful because I never saw my parents be angry. So I never learned how to manage it.And hey, maybe there could be a thread of that there, right? But this learning very clearly in this case came from this person’s adult life and working with those learnings and reconsolidating them is what allowed him to have space. So all this to say, attachment is incredibly important and it shapes a huge amount of our internal atlas, but it’s not the only thing that shapes us. And not all of our symptoms are attachment derived with our caretakers.They can also be from the world around us. And what I mean by that is we are always navigating attachment relationships with partners, with friends, children, even colleagues, right? We’re in connection with people all the time. So we can think about it as connection related and not necessarily parent caregiver attachment related.So while we’re not explicitly exploring attachment here, I think it’s important to talk about some of the attachment types they talk about in this chapter to see what kind of learnings and schemas might develop from that. So the insecure avoidant type of attachment develops with a primary caregiver who is rejecting, pushing away. And so the child learns to expect that pushing away in response to any expression that the child has of emotion, of distress, of a need, or even of playfulness, of silliness, of joy, or an approach for contact, for care.And we saw this in the Emotionally Immature Parent book, that the child comes in and they are rebuffed, they are pushed away. And so that means that the infant feels that there is a problem, obviously, right? And so the infant learns that their distress can be kept to a minimum if they don’t try to seek that connection, if they don’t feel, if they don’t express their feelings, if they don’t communicate or have any attention on them. And this can be accomplished by dissociation, shutting yourself down.This can be accomplished by quote-unquote intellectualizing. Obviously, an infant can’t intellectualize, but there’s that same functional freeze experience of learning how to grip and shut down the emotions. And that is a solution to the problem.So we know always that symptoms are coherent. They’re a closed system. Symptoms are in direct response to a suffering, and they create a solution.(10:07 - 11:26)They create a lesser of two sufferings. In this case, the infant has learned to respond to the implicit knowledge. And the implicit knowledge is that the need for contact or seeking contact will lead to rejection, aloneness, terror, and helplessness.So the solution of avoiding both feelings and contact is incredibly adaptive. We know all symptoms make sense, and this symptom makes perfect sense. So this schema might present as adults who are quote-unquote dismissive because they will greatly downplay experiences, likely because they are in that shut down, dissociated, withdrawn state.And so they very much might appear as supercilious, holier than thou, intellectualized, prideful about not being overly emotional. And that’s not because they are bad people. It’s because that is the schema in which they developed.Then we have insecure ambivalent or insecure resistance, which uses the opposite strategy, right? So this strategy is the biggest emotional display because we’re adapting to a different problem. In this case, we have a caregiver who is inept, disconnected. Maybe they’re unwell themselves.(11:27 - 11:35)Maybe they’re preoccupied with their own experience, mental illness. Maybe there’s financial stress. Maybe they don’t know how to be with their child’s emotions.(11:35 - 13:41)But sometimes they’re responsive, especially if the child’s behavior is intense enough to attract their attention. And so you get that slot machine effect, right? That intermittent reinforcement, which we know from research produces a very strong learning. And the child learns, of course, this is all unconscious, that that intense neediness, the big emotions, throwing a tantrum or not feeling well and making kind of a big show about it, is required for getting attention.But remember, it’s not reliable. Because of that slot machine effect, we can’t always rely on the parent to respond. But the infant is always trying to make it happen.And so this can kind of come out as this controlling, manipulative, sort of relentless style of interacting, where you’re always hypervigilant to the state of the caregiver, the presence of the caregiver. And this as an adult, that becomes hypervigilantly preoccupied with your partner’s emotional involvement, their presence, how they’re relating to you, and that quote unquote, neediness, right, that can include big emotions, big hurt of trying to pull the partner back in. And remember, that symptom is coherent.

Hello, tiny sparks readers! Have a new podcast episode for you today about my thoughts on the endless optimization of healing. Before we dive in, I want to share something tender and exciting. I have just started writing a book and was recently accepted into a 12-month writing program to help bring it to life, with the hope of it landing in the world in 2026. If you want to be part of that process and help me actually make it happen, you can join me over on Patreon, where I will share in-progress pieces, reflections, and the middle of shaping this work. There are a few tiers, including one that offers a live meeting every month where I answer your questions personally. If this episode landed for you and you want to support this book growing from an idea into something you can hold in your hands, your presence there really does make a difference. In addition, becoming a paid subscriber here supports my writing, too, and you get to join our wonderful book club! Whether you’re a free or paid subscriber, thank you for being here. If you have questions, curiosities, or things you’d love to see addressed in my book, don’t hesitate to drop me a line or leave a comment below! (0:00 - 2:44)Okay, today I want to talk about something that might sound a little bit strange coming from someone who literally teaches about healing for a living, but I am so, so tired of the self-help industry and especially the social mediafication of the self-help industry. Of course, I am not tired of people wanting to feel better. Of course, we want to feel better.And of course, we are trying to find any amount of information we can to help us feel better. And I’m not tired of those of us who are curious or want to grow or want to explore nervous system work or trauma healing. But I am so tired of the way that healing has been turned into a product for us to consume and complete and be perfect at and overachieve at and try harder at, like a course you have to pass or some kind of project that you have to finish.And if you are someone who tends to live in your head, who’s always been the high achiever, the eldest daughter, the responsible one, the intellectualizer, you probably know exactly what I mean. You go into this idea of healing or being more present in your life or getting unstuck, moving toward what you want for yourself, using the same tools that have always worked for you. You research, you read, you analyze, you organize the information in your mind.And once you set your mind to it, you decide that you’re going to do this right. And the internet is set up for the parts of us that think that we can do this perfectly by making a plan and trying harder and researching it to the bitter end. That is what the self-help world, especially the self-help world on social media, is built upon.And it gives us this steady stream of little bite-sized promises. Do this journal prompt, reflect on your year, say an affirmation, set a boundary, cut contact, breathe in this way, no, breathe in that way, cold punch, don’t cold punch, stretch your hips, drink your water, take your supplements. And there’s this message that if you can get the formula just right, if you do enough, if you try hard enough, if you’re good enough, you will finally be okay, feel good, have the life you want, and specifically have the life that you might see represented on social media.People who seem so happy, so successful, perfect family, perfect house, perfect friends, plenty of money. And so it’s normal that we’re drawn toward these things. We want there to be something that we can do that will make us feel okay.Of course, some other part of us also deeply resists that because it feels impossible. We feel stuck in this bind of needing to be perfect to be okay, but feeling like it’s impossible to actually follow through with all of those things. And that’s not because there’s anything wrong with you.(2:44 - 4:58)It’s because our brain works based off old learnings getting landed into the present. It’s so, so understandable that we want something to be a checklist that we can move through and complete. We want to fill out a worksheet.We want to make a few meals, take a few supplements, do some deep breathing, and wake up in a completely different place with a different relationship to ourselves and to the world. A different job maybe, a different personality, a different partner, a different relationship to money, whatever it might be. But that’s not how these patterns that were built for survival reorganize themselves.And for those of us who grew up reading the room constantly, reading people around us constantly, knowing the sound of everyone’s footsteps and whether it meant they were happy or angry, then people-pleasing, intellectualizing, perfectionism, overachieving are not random bad habits and they’re not personality traits. They are learned responses to our environments. If we learned that having big feelings got us shamed or ignored, then shutting down those feelings makes a lot of sense.If you rewarded and celebrated every time you achieved or functioned so well, took on more and solved the problem, then of course that learning would get set up in your brain to say, this is what makes me good and worthy. And many times it’s subtle, right? Like sometimes we had very clear trauma or sometimes it was very clear that our parents criticized us when we had emotions or sent us away. But oftentimes it’s so much more subtle than that.It’s an ongoing experience of being misattuned to. If you are a joyful, playful little child born to parents who are under immense stress and they themselves are intellectualizers or incredibly rational people who don’t know how to deal with their own feelings, it’s not that they might hurt you or punish you when you have feelings, but they themselves might become overwhelmed. And so then we learn, uh-oh, when I am playful, silly, joyful myself, people around me get overwhelmed and that makes me feel stressed and unsafe because I need my caregivers to be okay.(4:59 - 5:42)Or maybe it’s our peers, maybe it’s our teachers. And yes, we can have experiences in our adult life that impact us as well. But all of these things get coded in our brains as roots of safety, worth, value, and connection.So then you come into healing spaces because sometime in your life, and it’s usually later on in our life, it starts to take more of a toll. And maybe we notice physical symptoms, maybe we feel slightly depressed, disconnected, anxious, but we’re not sure why, kind of stuck or dissatisfied in our lives, and we want to fix those patterns. But things start to get slippery because we might feel this pull into healing and we turn it into another pattern.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.(5:42 - 7:05)We want to be good at it, we want to solve it, we want to get an A in therapy, we want to do trauma recovery work, check it off the list, let them be codependent no more, get our body to stop keeping the score, and then we will be good enough to deserve to rest and relax. And this is where self-help becomes so incredibly toxic because so much of it mirrors the very same culture that we have already been mired in and are already burned out from. There is a focus on progress, optimization, and improvement of our behavior.Even somatic work has become an idea that you need to optimize your nervous system, you need to optimize your body. If you’re an intellectualizer, you just need to learn how to track your body. Somatic work, somatic work, fix your nervous system, stretch your hips, and then you can let all your emotions go and then you will be well.So it’s pressure, pressure, pressure, morning routines, five-step systems, and very, very tidy before and after stories, which just feeds right into those beliefs. And the brain says, see, if you just try hard enough and plan enough and analyze enough, and then you can finally be worthy and be good. And these other people did it.Why can’t you? Why can’t you be more productive, more regulated, more aligned? Why can’t you follow through with these activities? And so maybe you try it. You know, you see the posts on Instagram and you give it a try. You do the journaling, the affirmations, try to track your body.(7:06 - 14:35)And for a little while, that can feel exciting. And we get a little dopamine, we get a little oxytocin, we feel a spark that this will be the thing, the thing that finally makes it okay for us to say no, to be present, to want something different, to have needs, to not have to worry about being disapproved of, to not have to explain ourselves and criticize ourselves constantly. But then eventually something happens.Either we turn on ourselves or we stop doing the things because we’re tired or exhausted, or some part of our brain says, nope, that’s not safe. You’re going off the survival pathways. Maybe someone gets disappointed in us.A relationship shifts and boom, we’re right back in those old patterns, overthinking, overexplaining, over-apologizing, over-criticizing. And now that we have all these self-help messages, when we see that happen, because of course we can observe it, right? We can observe these things happening. Well, the only answer is that it must be something wrong with us.And then we get fed this message that we’re too self-aware. And then maybe we go to therapy and we even get told we’re too self-aware for therapy. We already know so much, so why are we here? Which again just feeds into this idea that something must be wrong with us.The mindset, the discipline, we’re not doing enough. We’re self-aware, we can’t make the change. We can’t even fit in in therapy.Something really must be wrong with us. We must be our eyes at everything. Healing is fake.Nothing works. This is stupid. I want to offer us a different picture.And the picture is that you and your brain are not bad or wrong. You’re neither too self-aware nor not self-aware enough. You are a human with a brain that is made up of all of your past experiences, that is predicting what is going to happen in the present.What is the probability that something safe is going to happen versus something dangerous? And it has been paying attention for your whole life about what happens when you speak up, when you rest, when you cry, when you ask for help, when you don’t mask, when you put on a show, when you get angry, when you succeed, when you fail. And it’s built up a whole atlas in your brain on what to expect. And this is all filed away unconsciously.We’re not even actively aware that we’re doing it. We may become actively aware of the patterns through our endless analysis and intellectualization, but that doesn’t change the automatic pattern that is embedded in the implicit side of your brain. So when you set a boundary or you try or you think about setting a boundary or saying no or whatever it is, and you feel a rush of panic afterward, that is the predictive pattern getting set off where your brain said that was something dangerous.That’s not something that leads to more connection. And so maybe you criticize yourself, you feel panic, you feel like you need to make up for setting the boundary by like getting the person a gift or something like that. That is that brain saying you went down a route that is unsafe and now I need to get you back to the safe route and the safe route is not having boundaries, not having needs.Or maybe you do go to therapy and you have this wonderful insight, then you go home and you repeat the very same behavior that you just unpacked. It’s not because you didn’t listen. It’s not because you self-sabotaged.It’s because your brain does not have a route that says that new behavior is safe or that that stopping that old behavior is safe. And so self-help is not designed to talk to these implicit learnings, to remap our brain, our predictive survival pathways. It’s only talking to the part of us that consumes information and makes lists.It’s very behavioral oriented. And yes, even self-help that is targeted toward trauma learning is very much about have new experiences, try harder, set a boundary, feel your body, share your emotions. All of those things are behaviors that feel unsafe.And so doing those things will push us out of our window of tolerance, no matter how smart we are, no matter how hard we try. And it can become quicksand really quickly because the more we turn healing into a job or something to analyze or intellectualize, the louder the survival patterns get. Perfectionism sneaks in everywhere, people-pleasing shows up, over-functioning shows up, we over-functioning even on trying to help ourselves feel better.So we might try to install these new behavioral habits, but those old survival pathways are still the way our brain will take us when we are living outside of that window of tolerance. So then what do we do if the answer is to not just try harder? Because we don’t want to just give up. And I think the first step is really being truthful and honest about the time scale that your brain built these maps over years and years of repetition, usually under stress.And so they’re not going to reorganize overnight, even if you do the affirmations, even if you do the journaling, even if you eat the food that you think you need to eat. They will not reorganize overnight because none of us are going to be the exception to the rules of neuroscience. Now there are mechanisms of change that can help speed up the process.Nonetheless, it will be a process, just like building new roads in real life. It is a process. And we also have to stop pretending that insight is equal to integration.We love insight. We love seeing patterns. We love that.But that is not changing the route. And for us intellectualizers and overachievers and perfectionists, the temptation is to stay in the insight because that’s where we feel comfortable. We get a rush every time we have a new insight and say, okay, got it now.I’m going to be different. But your body still tightens up. Your throat still closes.You still get in your own way. You still criticize yourself. You still overwork.It’s not a moral failing. Remember, it is those safety pathways and the built-in detours that your brain has to get you back onto the safety pathways. So this is why I often think about the work that I do as kind of the anti-self-help self-help.I know it sounds silly, but I do care deeply about giving people tools and language to understand themselves and to understand their brains, to remap and rewire their brain toward new ways of being in their life. But I’m also not interested in trying to hand you another system that you can try and not succeed at, not because you failed, but because it’s going against your survival brain, because that doesn’t quite sit right with me either. I want you to have an understanding of your patterns.It’s not just insight, but that truly allows you to see the mechanisms that are happening in your brain and allows you to understand the mechanisms that have to happen to change and rewire those pathways. I want you to see how deeply logical your overthinking, self-sabotage, people-pleasing, perfectionism, hyper-independence is. I want you to understand that all of those things are representative of survival pathways, adaptive strategies in your brain that are happening because your brain is predicting if you don’t do them, something dangerous will happen.No matter how much you say you know nothing dangerous will happen, this is not a conscious experience. It’s implicit. Implicit like handwriting, right? It’s below the surface.We’re not thinking about it actively. We have to make these things explicit to be able to work with them, but understanding them as protective allows us to use a little bit of a different lens. So when we use this lens of rewiring our brain and understanding our predictive brain rather than endless self-optimization, we get to see things a little bit more clearly.(14:36 - 16:57)So if we overcommit, we might say, I need to optimize this. I need to say no, have better boundaries. I’m just going to start saying no and stop people-pleasing.I’m going to read a book about boundaries, go to the library, get the book, read all that, and then of course you don’t follow through because your body floods with fear or guilt or dread or you criticize yourself, you tell yourself other people’s needs are more important, or you don’t even realize it and somehow you’ve over-scheduled yourself again. And then you might end up back in an anxiety spiral or telling yourself that you failed. But in this lens, we might get curious about noticing how saying yes is a way to stay safe, what the learning is underneath of that, what we’re protecting ourselves from.Maybe times you felt like a burden. Maybe times it felt like meeting something upset other people in your lives. Maybe times adults around you were stressed or unpredictable and you learned to make yourself low maintenance.We would see that as an adaptation and we would see all the detours that keep you on that safe adaptation road, the self-criticism, the busyness, the functional freeze of disconnecting and just going into autopilot. And instead of demanding that you stop, we would play around with observing and noticing because we know observing and noticing alone actually helps the rewiring. And then we would get to a place where we can start doing little mini congruence experiments in the present.We could imagine doing something different and noticing what happens even just by imagining it. It allows us to see the learning differently and relate to the learning differently because we can pluck out that old learning that might say having needs makes other people not like me or having needs is selfish. And we can show the brain something different that’s happening in the present where we can experience in real time that having needs is not selfish.Now, it’s not that simple, right? We can’t just prove to ourselves that having needs isn’t selfish, but through these experiments, either imagining them or acting them out in real time, we can actually rewire our brain. That process is called memory reconsolidation and it invokes neuroplasticity in our brain, which allows our brain to form new neural pathways and allows us to repattern our own attachment to ourselves and provide co-regulation to ourselves. Now, that process is kind of boring from a self-optimization process.(16:57 - 17:37)It’s kind of boring to the algorithm. It’s not quite as fun as doing affirmations and journaling and drinking water and then magically being fixed, but it is realistic. It is founded in the science of how our brain works and it is actually the quickest and most effective way to actually do this change.Now, you might be listening to this and thinking, I don’t know how to design those kinds of experiments. I don’t know how to work with these patterns without making it a checklist or something to hold myself up a yardstick to measure myself against. And yeah, you’re right.(17:37 - 19:49)You don’t. You don’t have neural pathways for this yet. Or if you do, because you’ve heard this before, the roadways are kind of back roads, they’re potholes, they’re dirt.Your brain’s not yet comfortable driving down them, but it is possible to build those roadways over time. Not on the timeline of social media, but on your own timeline of observing, noticing, building safety, and rewiring our brain. And this is exactly the work that I am building.This is the work of change. This is the anti-self-help, self-help. When you understand that all forms of therapy and all forms of self-help are trying to mimic these mechanisms of change, but not quite hitting the mark, because these mechanisms of change are not behavioral, then it becomes clear.We have to work with the neural pathways, the predictive patterns, the survival adaptations first, and behavior change comes second. Down the line. Behavior change becomes so much easier when our brain is not telling us, for example, that taking care of ourselves is dangerous.Then you don’t need to obsess and plan and buy a new checklist and sign up for a new course and harangue yourself because you didn’t get it quite right. So for right now, maybe you can notice the ways that you’re trying to make healing into self-optimization tasks. Maybe you can notice the posts you save on social media that promise you a fast fix through journaling, through affirmations, through breathwork.And you can notice what feels good about those ideas, and you can notice what might create pressure out of those ideas, because it’s not that those ideas can ever be helpful. But to notice what are we trying to get at. If I do this breathwork, and I journal, and I do affirmations, how is it I will feel? What will my life, how will my life be different? That is going to reveal what we want, and that is where we can start to gain clarity about what is getting blocked.If you want to learn more about this, this is the work that I do every day on social media, in the courses I teach, I have free guides. Ironically, yes, it is called five steps to change, but it’s not like that. It’s not a simple five-step snap your fingers and you’re out the door.It’s an iterative process to allow you to remap or rewire your brain. And I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, and curiosities. And thanks for being here.Thanks for reading tiny sparks - trisha wolfe! This post is public so feel free to share it.Opportunities to work with me:* On January 11th, I’ll be teaching a live class called 5 Steps to Long-Lasting Change. This class is all about making sense of why change feels so hard, and how we can work with the brain and body to make it easier. I’ll walk you through the framework I’ve developed that weaves together neuroscience, memory reconsolidation, and nervous system regulation. It’s practical, compassionate, and designed to help you not only see what needs to shift, but also learn how to create changes that truly last! If you can’t attend live, the full recording will be available for you.* Also in January, I’ll be opening The Shift 8 Week Immersion, a small group experience for women who already know themselves well, but feel stuck living out the same patterns again and again. This is where we take the lens from my teaching and actually practice it together through live sessions, guided nervous system work, and gentle experiments between meetings. Over eight weeks, we will map your loops, reconnect with your values, and try on small, doable shifts that help you feel safer and make change more possible in real life. If you are craving a space that is structured, supportive, and focused on embodied change rather than more information, this is where we will do that work side by side.* Book club! We just finished up Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and what a deep experience it was. Next up: Unlocking the Emotional Brain - this book is clinical, but truly informational as the seminal resource on all things coherence therapy, memory reconsolidation, and the science behind why things like EMDR and NARM actually work.By becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack for just $5 a month, you get full access to my biweekly podcast, where I do a deep dive into each chapter, and two live fireside chats, where we connect and explore our learnings together. You also get full access to the archive of the book club, where you can listen to episodes about Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, No Bad Parts, and The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma - all my favorite books for those who truly want to heal from their past, get unstuck, and start moving forward. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our book club read-a-long of Unlocking the Emotional Brain! If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks, where we explore a chapter from the book together (you can also listen on Spotify!). I help translate the theory into everyday language and show you how to apply it in your own life. We also gather twice per book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time.This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most powerful mechanisms for true and lasting change. It helps us understand how healing actually happens after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up with emotionally immature parents.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this kind of work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience, including live sessions, current discussions, and the complete archive of past reads like No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this community possible, and I’m so grateful you’re here.This week, we dive into chapter 4, which goes further into the process of the Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process and emotional learnings. This chapter further refines our understanding of how these emotional learnings can get embedded deep in our subconscious and affect nearly everything we do. Many of us experience this when we feel like we KNOW all of our patterns, we know HOW to change them, but we can’t seem to get unstuck. You’re not alone - let’s dive in and learn more! (0:00 - 3:03)Welcome back, book club friends. So excited to dive into unlocking the emotional brain again together this week. If you’re new here for my book club slash read along, there’s no need to even have the book.You are welcome to join in and listen as I walk us through popular self-help and therapy books and break them down into become easier to understand and talk about how to apply this your everyday life. So as I was looking through my notes for this week’s episode, I noticed how on every single page of the chapters, there was something I wanted to talk about with you. And so I really enjoy that we can take our time together.And sometimes that means flexing and flowing from our schedule. So I’m going to be talking a little bit about chapter four this week and a little bit about chapter five, but I’m going to push our live meeting out because I want to make sure we have time to get through some of these major concepts before we meet for the first time, so that you can ask any questions or curiosities you might have. So let’s actually plan for our live meeting to be Sunday, December 14th at 12 o’clock Eastern time.And you will receive a Google meet invite for that, where we can join in together, have a little fireside chat. And of course, if you’re not able to join live, you will receive the recording. And now let’s dive in together.So I didn’t even really get to go into chapter four last time because we were talking about chapter three. And the case there was so fascinating. I’ve thought about it so much because I think that understanding of the person who really struggled with being able to speak up in meetings, and that case really helped us understand the symptom coherence, but also to not make assumptions in our own lives as we’re exploring what these underlying routes, these old neural pathways, these old learnings might be.So when the person in that case was talking about struggling speaking up in meetings, it might be easy to think that he lacks self-confidence, maybe he didn’t see confidence in his family, or maybe he was criticized by his peers, and so he worries about being judged when he speaks up. But in that case, what we saw as they went through the process together to map out this old learning, what they found was he was actually afraid that if he spoke up, he would become this extremely assertive aggressor in a way that his father was. And so I think that’s an incredibly interesting observation to make because it really shows us how every symptom is coherent.Every symptom is emotional logic. It makes perfect sense in the system, even if it doesn’t make sense in the present. And so we’re going to talk a little bit more about that today.But this idea that every symptom is coherent is something we’ve seen in all the books that we’ve read together so far. In the NARM book with the exploration of survival strategies, in No Bad Parts, internal family systems, talking about how there literally are no bad parts. All parts serve a protective purpose.(3:03 - 4:40)And then in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, where the author very clearly laid out the adaptive strategies that we may develop if we grew up in an environment like that. And so I love getting to continue to explore this thread together because it’s at the root of all the work that I do, and it’s also just founded in neuroscience. These implicit learnings that get created, these neural pathways, these routes in our brain that get created, are all in response to something that is happening, something that happened to us.And it doesn’t matter if you find it logical in the present. It made sense in the moment, and it was a strong enough experience that your brain held onto it as a pattern to try to keep you safe. And so it’s very common that these patterns form through both frequency and intensity.And so that’s just something to think about that these experiences might not stand out to you. You might not have a clear memory from your childhood or from your adult life where you can see a pattern form, but they may have been small, frequent experiences. Or you might say, well, this was just a one-time thing.How could it impact me in that way? Well, the intensity may have been very, very large to you, to your experience, through your perception. And so as we continue to follow these threads together, and as you might be curious about your own life, I hope that this can offer a different lens that you can use to observe your own experience. And that’s why part of the process that I created, my five steps to change model, is about observing and mapping these things out with curiosity and neutrality.(4:41 - 5:33)And so chapter four, again, really emphasizes this idea that is so critically important when we’re understanding people’s experiences of environmental rupture. And it’s this idea that there is the thing that the person is afraid will happen. And then there is a survival strategy that tries to solve it.And so there are two different sufferings that can be experienced. But the survival strategy, the pattern, the implicit learning, the adaptation, the part, however you want to think about it, is the lesser of two sufferings. Whatever we perceive will happen in that moment of an environmental rupture and attachment failure feels so big, so life or death, that we would rather shut down our own experience, shut down our own needs, than feel that feeling.(5:33 - 10:37)That is the situation that gets these patterns encoded in the brain, where it says, if the choice is being eaten by a tiger, or shutting down my own needs, then I can handle shutting down my own needs. I can go into a functional freeze and just intellectualize and take care of everyone else’s needs. I can definitely handle that suffering.But of course, over time, that suffering wears on us more and more and more. And it can build up resentment and disconnection and a stuck feeling. But when these learnings get formed, the two sufferings are the choice between what can feel like obliteration or annihilation, or shutting away some part of us.And over time, that just becomes part of our behavioral pattern. It becomes part of our procedural manual. So we have a whole atlas in our brain of maps, and those roads are made up of survival roads.But the roads that lead to having needs, moving toward what we want for ourselves, feeling good, feeling joyful, feeling playful, being in the present moment, those roads are underdeveloped. No funding has gone to them over the years. So they might be non-existent, or they might be just little dinky back country dirt roads with a lot of potholes that our brain said, maybe, possibly, potentially, we can go down that road.Very infrequently, if the circumstances are exactly right. But no, most of the time, I’m not going to allow you to go down that road. Because again, the idea is that going down that road will lead to some suffering that is so terrifying.So in this chapter, they are talking about the coherence therapy model, which uses memory reconsolidation to dissolve these schemas, these schemas that are made up of these implicit emotional learnings. And you can think of schemas just like the parts, just like the survival strategies. But to dissolve these schemas, it must be brought into awareness, we must map the route out and connect to the emotional learning that is underneath of that, not just intellectually, but in the moment to feel and touch a piece of that.Because accessing the emotion around that is what allows us to reconsolidate that memory, aka update and organize the pathway in the brain and start to form new neural pathways. So there are a few more interesting cases in this chapter. And one thing I really value about this book is how much they use these cases, because it really helps understand the theory and put it into practice.And so one of the cases in this chapter is about Ted, a man in his 30s, who sort of self-described as a drifter, he had a difficult time holding a job, had a hard time committing to anything, and really kind of lived in those patterns of chronic underachievement. And so again, it would be easy in a traditional model to think, lack of discipline, lack of motivation, lack of willpower, we need some behavioral therapy, we need atomic habits, you know, to think that, oh, he’s just not accessing his potential, he’s just not accessing his forward momentum, because he’s lazy. And so we just need to move him toward trying harder.However, no behavioral therapy would have worked in this case, because when we get curious to find the emotional learning, that old neural pathway that is coded in survival underneath, what we found was that when Ted imagined succeeding, and he imagined achieving, and doing all of those things that he struggled with, then he immediately imagined telling his father about it. And the experience was that if he told his father about his success, his father would feel proud and validated, as if he were a good parent. And Ted described a childhood that was full of criticism, shame, emotional abuse, and that none of those things were actually acknowledged.So this idea that if his father thinks he was doing well, then his father would think he was a good parent, made Ted feel like his pain wasn’t valid, that the emotional experience he had as a child was not valid. And so him being successful would validate his father’s experience that he was a good parent, and make him feel like none of his experiences ever happened, would totally erase that. Now that might sound illogical to you, but it is in fact entirely coherent, entirely coherent in this person’s experience, where he was constantly derided and pressured to do more.Then doesn’t it make sense in some way, his brain would develop this pathway to keep him safe from having to feel the idea that what happened to him wasn’t real. Because if he were to access his agency, if he were to move forward, then his entire experience of his childhood would be invalidated. Now that gets encoded deep in there, and then we act out these behaviors in the present, not even knowing why we’re doing it.(10:38 - 13:38)But when we can access these emotional learnings in the present, we can really see these predictive patterns that come, right? Where his brain links achievement with self-betrayal. Now I actually really like this case because it’s another example where it might not be exactly what you think, and it’s another case that really helps us understand why behavioral therapy cannot override an implicit learning. No amount of behavioral therapy, willpower, habit stacking, whatever, is going to override the experience that his unconscious brain has that says achieving is dangerous.Achieving is self-abandonment. Achieving is validating this person who harmed me. So if behavioral work were tried with this person, he might make a few steps towards something and then collapse again.And he might be labeled as resistant or self-sabotaging. But what we can see here is that this is an entirely coherent experience where his brain is holding this idea that if I succeed, it will prove he was a good father. And so in some way, part of his brain was also holding out this idea that struggling was the way to get his father to understand how much he hurt him.And that if he were to disconnect from that belief and move forward, he would feel so alone and disconnected, which of course were the feelings he was already feeling, but he was covering up with this freeze state, with this underachievement. And so we can really see that child consciousness experience in NARM terminology of this idea that if I go on without my dad, without him seeing how hurt I was and staying by my side, and I access my agency and I’m responsible for my own life, that would feel terrifying. And so we see the child consciousness experience that accessing agency is scary and dangerous and could lead to the loss of connection.And as he did some processing in this case with the therapist, where they examined the emotional learning in the present and held up some of these ideas, Ted could eventually connect to this idea of knowing his father would never be able to admit that he hurt him or apologize for it. And feeling the grief of that statement, which was also the grief of his childhood experience and the anger that he felt allowed it to resolve, allowed that old emotional learning to resolve and allowed him to differentiate and feel separate from his father, which was another experience he didn’t get in his childhood of criticism and pressure. So as he feels separate, he can feel that it’s okay to be responsible for his own life and have agency and validate his own feelings and grieve the relationship that he wished that he would have.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our book club read-a-long of Unlocking the Emotional Brain! If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks, where we explore a chapter from the book together. I help translate the theory into everyday language and show you how to apply it in your own life. We also gather twice per book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time.This book takes us deep into the science of memory reconsolidation, one of the most powerful mechanisms for true and lasting change. It helps us understand how healing actually happens after trauma, attachment wounds, or growing up with emotionally immature parents.If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this kind of work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience, including live sessions, current discussions, and the complete archive of past reads like No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this community possible, and I’m so grateful you’re here.This week, we dive into chapter 3, which goes into the process of the Therapeutic Reconsolidation Process. This chapter is complex but lays out a case for us that gives us further insight into the steps that create change of deeply held symptoms - in this case, Richard suffers from a lack of confidence and a loud inner critic that keeps him small. Many of us may relate to this experience! Understanding how to get at the deeper emotional learnings underneath the pattern are what allows us to create long term change. Let’s dive in!(0:00 - 2:38)Hi and welcome back to our read-along of Unlocking the Emotional Brain, a deep dive into how we create therapeutic change. I know we have some new members here so thank you so much for joining and just a reminder some people read the book along with me and some people never pick up the book and they listen to my interpretation and explanation of the book so welcome. Last week’s post will go into the schedule a little bit more of how this works but we have a fresh podcast episode every two weeks and then we have two live meetings where we get to meet and ask questions.Of course you’re always able to comment or send a question back to me now if you’d like to explore and thank you for being patient with me through my bi-week where I was defending my dissertation so I am now officially Dr. Wolfe and I am thrilled to be complete. I had a wonderful time getting to conduct my own independent research and I’ll look forward to talking about that more on here in the future but for now let’s dive into Unlocking the Emotional Brain and in this chapter, chapter three, we’re going to dive further into therapeutic reconsolidation process. Something I really love about this book though I know it can be quite dense is that it doesn’t just describe emotional change in abstract terms it really lays out for us scientifically what this process looks like and gives us these really helpful case studies to understand what this looks like in real people and so as we dive into these chapters today there are going to be quite a number of cases we’re going to use to explore this transformational therapeutic reconsolidation process that leads to change.So what this process does is works through that memory reconsolidation process. We’ve talked about that a little bit so far and you may have heard me talk about that in some of my other work but what we know is that memory reconsolidation is one of the key mechanisms of change in therapy and we know that we can access old memories, activate them and for a certain period of time those memories, the learnings from those memories can be updated. So we’re not trying to change the memory but we’re pulling out the emotional learning from that memory and so as you’ll see in these cases as we walk through these steps we can pull out these old memories that you’ve heard us talk about as survival strategies when we talked about NARM and the Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma.(2:38 - 5:54)Oftentimes these are the burdens that the parts carry from No Bad Parts internal family systems perspective and these are the adaptive symptoms that we develop when we have emotionally immature caretakers or we go through developmental trauma and this process is one of the major mechanisms of change to shift some of those old emotional learnings that are impacting so many of us in the present unconsciously. Things like intellectualization and people pleasing and self-criticism and perfectionism, they all come from these deeply held emotional learnings and this therapeutic reconsolidation process along with a few other things are those mechanisms that allow us to repattern these things in therapy and in our own personal work. So specifically in these chapters they are talking about how this applies to a type of therapy called coherence therapy and coherence therapy follows these steps for transformational change where they start with identifying the symptom, what it is that’s happening that we want to change, and then retrieving the learning or the schema, whatever it is that’s underneath that learning that makes the symptom necessary.Then we identify a contradictory knowing, a time where something happened that was the opposite of that learning. Once we have identified those then we can reactivate that old learning through that memory, also activate the present day contradictory knowledge, and then we kind of hold those both up to the brain and create a juxtaposition experience and that is what allows that learning to reconsolidate and shift into the present and from there we can verify that that symptom, that schema, is no longer activating. And they talk about here that that change can feel effortless and permanent.Now I want to clarify that very true that these changes can feel effortless and permanent and I get to see that work in my own sessions with my clients all of the time but it’s also important to know of course that this is different for everyone. We can have many many many target learnings and so I never want anyone to feel like well I’ve been doing therapy for x months or x years and I’m not seeing these permanent and effortless changes. When you have a long series of experiences over the course of years that build up these learnings it’s normal and expected that sometimes things might really feel like they shifted and other times it can really feel like it takes time.So just know that we are all on our own timeline here. But let’s just go through some of these cases together and explore this model. So in the first case here we have Richard and Richard comes in with this chronic self-doubt and low confidence and criticism and so let’s walk through this transformational process here, this therapeutic reconsolidation process that we first start with identifying the symptom and sometimes like in this case it is easier for us or for the client to identify the symptom that there can be this recurring pattern where maybe we hesitate to share our ideas, our heart races, we feel anxious, we feel small, we feel regretful that there is a pattern there that we are identifying that is the symptom.(5:55 - 8:08)Now a key component of coherence therapy is recognizing that all symptoms are coherent meaning they all exist as a foil to something occurring. So to some experience occurring that is where the symptom comes from and so they ping off of each other and so coherence therapy really focuses on getting to the root of what is the symptom responding to. What is the schema or the system that existed in our early lives that created the need for this symptom because symptoms always make sense.Symptoms are always part of a coherent system, meaning they are balancing another experience - they HAVE to happen based on our current neural pathways. So the idea is that when we can target these emotional learnings and re-pattern them the symptoms will no longer be necessary so thus the symptom will cease. So very similar to what we’ve seen for example in NARM we don’t worry about working on the symptom behaviorally.We don’t try to stop you from criticizing yourself or people pleasing or second guessing or in this case feeling anxious and trying to keep yourself small. We don’t try to get you to stop doing the symptom because the symptom is fully coherent based on the neural pathway in your brain. The neural pathway in your brain says when A happens I must do B. When we can re-pattern the idea that when A happens I must do B then we never we don’t have to do B. And then they use a technique here with Richard called symptom deprivation and this is a technique we also see in therapies like NARM where we’re essentially imagining what if you had the thing you wanted? What if you could show up confidently? What if you could have your own needs? What if you could be present, connect to yourself, be silly? And we work through this not as a positive happy override but because even just imagining something makes our brain feel like it’s happening and so the very same dilemma or distress or schema that exists in our brain in the world will come up in the moment and we see that here with Richard when he begins imagining being in a meeting at work making some comments and feeling confident we see that old schema coming up.(8:09 - 23:33)And so what we see in this case is that Richard some part of him feels like if he is confident then he would show up as arrogant and overbearing just like his father was. And so just like we’ve seen in the past this is where we’re exploring these old parts of us these old survival strategies these old schemas where in this case if I show up as confident then I will be this controlling invalidating person like my father. Thus the symptom of keeping myself small makes perfect sense.It is coherent. Whether you’re a therapist or a person interested in applying this to your own life it’s so important to understand that when we’re getting to these underlying patterns these neural pathways these schemas we’re not looking for something to make sense in the present. And this is a real sticking point for people who intellectualize because they’ll say well I know I’m not going to turn into my father if I’m if I’m you know confident that’s not what it is.But we’re not looking in the present we’re not talking about does it make sense in the present. In the past it made sense and so the system set up a symptom to keep us protected the same way that for example being perfect made us feel protected from a parent who would criticize us if we weren’t perfect which made us feel terrified alone and sent away that is a strategy that makes perfect sense. Even if you know in the present that you can be loved if you aren’t perfect or that being perfect isn’t even realistic anymore that doesn’t change the internal schema of the symptom and the protective pattern that comes out that is deeply embedded in our unconscious and in these neural pathways about what is safe and remember safety above all else.So our brain is always trying to maintain that system of safety and that’s what we see playing out here. And a really important point that I think they make in this chapter is the symptom often means we are suffering. Right so the perfectionism can make us suffer the self-doubting can make us suffer but that suffering feels more tolerable and in a sense gives us a sense of control.Of course it’s a faux sense of control but it gives us a sense of control. Well if I can just keep myself small yes I have to suffer but I don’t have to come up against this idea that if I let myself be confident I will turn into this heavy-handed controlling know-it-all like my dad and inflict harm on people around me the way my dad did to me. So the suffering of keeping myself small is more tolerable than the other suffering and so in coherence therapy they kind of refer that as the two sufferings.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello Book Club Friends! Wow, I am so loving reading Unlocking the Emotional Brain together! We’re just getting started but I’m having so much fun learning more about the science of transformational change. I know this book can be a bit dense/clinical, so don’t worry too much if it feels like a lot to get through - that’s why I’m here! I love getting to read through the chapters and translate it into real life understanding. Please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know what you’re learning! And scroll wayyyyy down to the bottom for a book club schedule for this book :). It’s a long one but SO worth it!(0:00 - 2:54)Hello and welcome back to our read-along of The Emotional-Based Brain. I have been enjoying reading this book so much because it is so exciting when you get to see science backing up everything that you’ve already known. You know, a lot of times psychology and counseling are considered quote-unquote soft sciences, but this book does a great job of delivering the actual hard science results that show why things like therapy work.So we’ve done a lot of learning together, but this book is actually about unlearning. Oftentimes when we think about healing or changing or moving toward what we want for ourselves in our life, we think about addition. We think about adding awareness, we think about adding tools, we think about adding new habits, though if you’ve listened to me or worked with me, you know I’m not a big fan of trying to control our habits.But we often tell ourselves we just need to think differently, act differently, choose differently, and of course that’s often part of our underlying strategies, our underlying patterns that we have learned that to show up differently in the world we have to try harder, be better, be perfect, don’t have needs, etc. But Unlocking the Emotional-Based Brain actually talks about unlearning, and that is what chapter two is about. This describes what is probably the most important discovery in the neuroscience of change and healing from trauma, which is the process of memory reconsolidation.Over the course of the last couple years I’ve been learning more and more about this term, and it wasn’t a term I had heard before then, but it describes something that I already knew and already talked about, which is the idea that we can update these maps in our brain thanks to neuroplasticity and this process called memory reconsolidation. So later on in this book we will be diving into all the different types of therapy like EMDR and IFS and somatic experiencing and looking at how they affect change using this process. But for now we want to learn more about how this process works.So memory reconsolidation is the process by which the brain can change the impact of old emotional learnings, these old learnings that keep us stuck in shame, in fear, in self-protection, long after the actual danger or the felt sense of danger has passed. As you know if you’ve been in the book club for our past books, we know that especially when we’re children, but when we’re adults too, and we’re existing in environments that are overwhelming, that are too much, that are not enough, we get a sense that we constantly have to be on edge to be trying to protect ourselves, even in situations where a physical danger is not at risk. That is because we are wired to stay in connection to our primary attachment figures, our parents, our caregivers, but as humans we are wired to stay in connection to others as well.(2:54 - 13:49)So when we’re young we don’t have the cognitive complexity to understand that our parents aren’t really in danger or that we aren’t really in danger. Instead what we’re feeling is, oh my gosh every time I come home from school and I didn’t get a really good grade or something went a little bit wrong or I made a mistake, I feel a tension in my house. I feel like maybe my parents pulled back from me a little bit.I feel like I get a little bit less attention or maybe I even get punished or sent to my room. Maybe it’s nothing overt, but it’s just this generalized sense of disappointment. And when that happens repeatedly, what our child brain will learn is that love will be withdrawn if we are not perfect all of the time.And that could be from our parents, we could experience from our peers, our teachers, and again in our adult life. But when that happens, remember how neural pathways form. They form with frequency and intensity.So when we have these frequent and intense experiences that create a lot of fear in us as a child, and even anger and sadness too, it creates these neural pathways, these emotional learnings in our brain that create ideas like, if I’m not perfect, I won’t be loved. Remember, emotional learnings are a little bit different from thinking those things, right? They’re a little bit different from this idea of core beliefs, which is things we’re actively thinking. They’re in our unconscious mind.So maybe you’ve heard this quotation before, that’s not exactly accurate, we could go more into that later, but from Jung that says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you’ll call it fate. And I think that’s really apt to describe what these emotional learnings are like. They are implicit, they are unconscious, they are below our conscious mind, but unwittingly we are constantly acting out these learnings because we are trying to prevent the loss of connection.So what memory reconsolidation allows us to do is to isolate these old emotional learnings, isolate these pathways in our brain, and start to change the impact that those learnings have on us in the present by targeting memories or experiences where we first learned those things. So let’s talk a little bit about this process. For most of the 20th century, scientists believed that emotional memories were permanent.You might be able to suppress them, or change their intensity through exposure or coping, but you couldn’t really erase them because the emotional brain and the amygdala were sort of hardwired. In 2000, they started doing some interesting experimentation that changed this belief. Now I do want to give you a little heads up in this chapter, and thus in this podcast, I’m preparing to discuss some lab experimentation they did with animals, specifically rats, and you know that might not be the best feeling for you, or it might be something that you don’t feel comfortable with, and so you’re more than welcome to skip over this part, and it’s not going to change your fundamental understanding of the book.So in this lab, they conducted an experiment with rats, and they trained these rats to associate a tone, a sound that they played, with an electric shock. And after several times of doing that, the rats would freeze whenever they heard the tone. So it’s sort of that classical Pavlovian conditioning.Now what they did then is they reactivated the fear memory by playing the tone just once. So they played the tone, and the rat’s brain activated the memory that said, a shock is going to be coming. And during that short window, they injected a protein synthesis blocker into the rat’s amygdala.And when the rats were tested again the next day, the fear response was totally gone. And this was the first time the researchers realized that they may be able to deconsolidate a memory that already existed. And they did achieve this chemically, but as they continued to study this, they found that a similar thing could happen through experience, where we could rewrite the emotion of the memory.And so they learned that they could do this without using chemicals or medication through introducing what is called a prediction error. If you’ve been listening to the other books or you know my work, you know this is something I talk about very frequently, where as we build up that felt sense of safety and that capacity to observe ourselves and the maps or roadways in our brain, eventually we have to introduce what I call congruence experiments, which is where we think about and then eventually try something very small to see what happens that is different from our past experience. So the example that I use a lot is if you have a core learning, an emotional learning that says every time I have a need I am punished or sent away, then we might think about what would happen if you get the wrong drink at the coffee shop and you let the barista know you got the wrong drink and you beg them to remake it.That is an opportunity for your brain to say, stop, no, that’s dangerous. But we get to introduce a prediction error and say, hmm, is anything dangerous actually going to happen in that moment? Or does anything dangerous actually happen in that moment when you try it on? That’s how we introduce a prediction error to our brain to say, this actually doesn’t hold up with this old emotional learning. And so the studies continue to bear this out that that prediction error or that mismatch experience could change these emotional learnings.They could erase the fear or whatever other emotions might be coming along. So if we think of our brain of that map with all of those roads and many of those roads are coded in safety, they say this is what I have to do to stay in connection and not get voted off the island. And it might hold learnings like if I cry or show emotions, people will withdraw from me.If I’m quiet and I take care of other people’s needs, I am loved. If I do well, I am loved. Those are all those roadways, those beliefs stored inside your map.But these maps don’t automatically update. Unlike our GPS in present day, they don’t automatically update just because we become adults or we leave the difficult situation. Those old, very charged learnings are still in there.Memory reconsolidation is part of the process that allows us to redraw those routes and to find new routes that are actually safe. So let’s talk about the unlearning sequence. Step one is reactivation.And so we have to actually bring that learning online and as an experiential way. That’s why we often focus on experiential therapies when we’re working with things like complex PTSD or childhood trauma or people who are just really stuck. We need an experiential modality where we’re not just talking about it, but we’re experiencing it.We’re activating that old learning. And so when we bring up that emotional learning in the present, we know that it opens a window. This is what they’ve shown in many studies.It opens a window where that memory becomes changeable. It becomes editable, essentially. Imagine we reach into the filing cabinet of your brain.We pull out one of the folders that is bright red and says, safety, safety, safety. So we pull out one of these folders that hold one of your learnings around safety. And we want in the moment for you to truly be able to connect to the emotions of that experience because it is the emotion that creates the learning in the present.Then we introduce that mismatch, that prediction error, like we talked about. We introduced the time when you said your drink needed to be remade and nothing dangerous happened. We know that when the emotional learning is activated and being experienced in the moment and we introduce this contradiction, that is when it is changeable.

Welcome back book club readers and welcome to our new members! SO beyond excited to dive into transformational change and memory reconsolidation together in Unlocking the Emotional Brain. If you start reading and find this one a bit dense, don’t worry, it is! That’s why I’m here: to translate and share this truly life-changing material into something practical and applicable to our lives. Memory reconsolidation is a critical process in creating long-lasting change, getting unstuck, and moving toward the lives we want, and this book gives us allllll the details. If you’re a free subscriber and want to join in, becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack for just $5 a month gives you full access to my biweekly podcast, where I do a deep dive into each chapter, and two live fireside chats, where we connect and explore our learnings together! Now, let’s dive in!(0:00 - 1:09)Welcome back book club members. I’m so excited to dive into a new book together today, Unlocking the Emotional Brain. And this book, be prepared, it is a bit dense.And so if you’re reading along, you might find it a bit dry and boring at times. But that’s part of why I’m here to help translate this into information that we can use in our daily lives. And I chose this book, despite it being a bit dense and a bit clinical, because this book covers one of the most important things in making change in our life, which is memory reconsolidation.And so this book will lay the groundwork for a modality of therapy called coherence therapy. So so far, we’ve talked about NARM, neuro affective relational model, and internal family systems through no bad parts. And we explored both of those, those lenses as we dove into adult children of emotionally immature parents.Just a reminder, if you’re new, you have access to all the archives, so you can go back and listen to all those episodes. It also syncs through to Spotify podcasts and Apple Music podcasts. So you can listen while you walk or while you drive.(1:09 - 1:28)But not only does this book cover coherence therapy, it also talks about the mechanism for many other therapies like IFS, like EMDR, like somatic experiencing. And that is memory reconsolidation. So this chapter is introducing us to the concept of transformational change.(1:29 - 4:46)And transformational change isn’t just a symptom reduction. It’s not just about working on behaviors or coping skills, which you might see in sort of everyday CBT therapy. But it’s about these moments that actually transformationally change these deeply held patterns that we may have held for years or decades.These are the moments that many of us are wanting out of therapy, but we leave feeling missed and confused because we might try the worksheets, or we might try to update our behaviors, or we might try to have self compassion for ourselves. And maybe it sticks for a while. But no matter what we do, we seem to go back into people pleasing or perfectionism or intellectualization or those panic attacks that just don’t end.In fact, as they talk about here in most research around therapy, what counts as success is about a 20 to 25% reduction in symptoms. And of course, you might be thinking if I’m suffering a lot, a 20% reduction sounds great. Of course it does.But as you know, through the work that we explore here together, we’re curious about deep change, building new neural pathways, changing old neural pathways, and coming into our adult consciousness in a way that lets us get unstuck and move forward. And that is where memory reconsolidation comes in, that it is the brain’s process of profound unlearning. This was discovered in neuroscience in the late 1990s, and really hasn’t gotten its due, I think, up until now.And even now, it’s not really getting its due because it’s finding its way, right? It takes time for research to come into the present day life. But this process of memory reconsolidation, I’ve done a lot of research around, and I’m so excited to dive into it together, because it is truly life changing. So think of it like this, if you have a ton of weeds in your yard or in your garden, of course, you can cut the weeds, or you can even pull them.But if you’re not pulling them up by the roots, then the problem will return. And you’re also not making space for new things to grow because the weeds can choke out everything else. We are curious about this deep transformational change at that root level.So let’s talk a little bit about what creates some of these symptoms, as you’ve heard me call them strategies, or in IFS, parts of us that hold these deeply protective strategies. It’s so important, as you know, if you’ve been with me for a while, and if you’re new, to know that these symptoms, these strategies, these protective parts of us are not random, and they are not signs of brokenness. In this book, they refer to them as emotional learnings, and what you’ve heard me call predictive pathways, old BAPs, or old neural pathways.They essentially represent a neural pathway in our brain that is deeply laden with thoughts, emotions, and body sensations and behaviors. But they’re deeply laden, especially with emotions. It might be rage, it might be grief, it might be fear, there might be shame.But these are implicit learnings, meaning they’re behind our conscious awareness. They’re not things that we are perfectly able to access. They sort of play out as programs in our brain, just like other neural pathways do.(4:47 - 5:22)For example, handwriting is a form of an implicit learning. It’s not something you have to think about to consciously access. It’s just something that happens.And so these emotional learnings form in moments of strong reaction, where our brain says, okay, here’s what makes it stick in my brain. It’s frequency and intensity. So if you think about handwriting, there’s usually not an intensity associated with handwriting, but there’s a frequency.When we’re children, we practice it over and over and over again. So the brain builds a very strong pathway and says, okay, this is something I need to do all the time. I’ll build a very strong pathway around this.(5:23 - 6:40)But when there’s frequency and intensity of emotions, that creates these really strong patterns of learnings. And when they form, they become automatic reactions. So if you were shamed for crying, or you were sent away, sent to your room until you could behave, or you were punished, or you were ignored, what do you learn? You learn that showing emotions means feelings are dangerous.So of course you would go up into your head. If you learn that you only get attention when you’re performing, when you’re getting straight A’s, when you’re winning the prize, then of course you would learn that achievement equals worth, and you can never rest. You always have to keep going.These are emotional learnings that are not conscious, but are very well formed. They’re big highways in our brain, which means when our brain is deciding where to go, it will always go towards those big highways because they’re easy, quote unquote, to drive on, and because those highways are marked as safe. And remember, the priority of our brain is always safety.Safety first. Once safety is met, if you want to worry about your happiness or whatever, maybe your brain will let you do that. But if safety is not met, then your brain will not care about anything else.(6:40 - 7:51)So these patterns are always getting set off in moments where we might feel unsafe. It’s important to understand that when I say safe, I don’t necessarily mean physical safety, though sometimes physical safety has been a concern for people. But what I’m talking about is whether your brain senses things are safe or not.And in these emotional learnings, safety gets over-coupled, over-linked with things that aren’t actually dangerous in our adult lives, but felt dangerous when we were young. For example, resting and not driving harder to achieve, to be what people want you to be, that’s not actually dangerous in our adult life. But because as children, we are wired to please our caregivers and stay in connection with those around us, it will feel like dangerous.It will feel unsafe if we’re resting, if we’re not achieving, if we’re not being what everyone else wants us to be. So that emotion is of strong fear and terror, and that emotional learning is what carries through to the present. And that’s why no amount of meditation or mindfulness or trying to relax or going to a spa or whatever you might think you need to do is going to change that pattern, because that pattern is about safety.(7:52 - 8:17)The way we can change the pattern? Memory reconsolidation. So what scientists found with memory reconsolidation is that when one of these emotional memories or survival strategies or protective parts come up, when they’re reactivated, the memory becomes somewhat flexible again. And so for a short window, the brain can revise that old learning.(8:18 - 10:04)So if we think about our brain as a data model that is using all the past data to predict what’s going to happen in the present and the future, when all of that data says resting or feeling my feelings or being myself is dangerous, of course you will not do those things. You will shut yourself down, shame yourself, overwork yourself, criticize yourself. But when we can access some of those memories of that learning, and we can re-pattern them, we can change the data.We add new data. So even if there’s still the old memories there, it’s revised, and so it feels less dangerous in the present, and it creates more space for us to be in our present, in our self, as they call it in IFS, or in the adult consciousness. So if we think about our brain and our body as a GPS, and it has all these built-in maps that it’s built throughout your life about where danger is and how to stay safe.Those are those old emotional learnings and neural pathways. So if you were criticized harshly, then your GPS marks mistakes as dangerous. So it will not let you go down those roads.And if you go down those roads, it’s going to set off a series of things to try to make you stop, which might be panic attacks, or anxiety, or shutting down, or dissociating. So these maps keep happening even when the environment has changed, even when there are new places to explore, new roads to be built in our adult lives. The GPS still says, no, those roads are dangerous.I can’t be myself. I can’t make mistakes. I can’t be present.But memory reconsolidation is like updating the GPS. If you remember back in the day before we used our phones for GPSs, you had to download updates for your GPS. You had to buy them and download them as new routes were built.(10:04 - 16:01)It didn’t automatically update. And so that’s kind of what we’re dealing with here with our brain. We’ve got to download the updates through memory reconsolidation and update the routes little bits at a time so that our system can recalculate, our brain can recalculate, and allow us to go down new roads.That is why this is transformational change, because as you do this process over time, you don’t need to go down those roads anymore, and it doesn’t require constant effort. You don’t have to worry that if you miss a day of meditation, you’ll go back because you quite literally repatterned the memories. Something I really love about this book and about coherence therapy and other types of therapy like NARM and IFS is we don’t have to look at symptoms anymore as maladaptive or as signs of some kind of greater pathology.These aren’t dysfunctions. Actually, they’re quite functional. They formed in a way that makes sense based on the environment you grew up in or the environment you lived in.And so the authors of this book talk about if you look at that underneath schema, that underneath pattern of why this developed, what was happening in the environment, then actually the symptoms or the strategies are coherent, meaning they make sense. They are in balance. They are your brain and your body and your nervous system responding to something.So when we know they are coherent, then we know that we can’t change them through control because they make sense based on the learning. What we do is we update the learning. And as that changes the schema or the overall pattern, then we don’t have to live by that schema anymore.So we don’t have to battle the symptom any more than we would want to battle the younger part of ourselves or any more than we want to battle a protective part of ourselves. Now, many times people will come into therapy and say, no, no, I hate that part of me. Cut it out.I want to get rid of it. That makes sense to me. That’s actually part of a schema where you learned that you are the problem and anything that is wrong or bad about you must be a problem.And so what should you do? Well, you should cut it out, criticize it, get rid of it. That’s a learned emotional learning neural pathway. But what we know is no amount of trying to get rid of parts of us will actually make them go away.That’s the same as going into the doctor and saying, I want to breathe in, but I don’t want to breathe out. Breathing out is necessary and it’s part of you. So this really gets to shift the lens away from symptoms being problematic, which is so much of what we might hear in traditional therapy or in the past.It’s shifting, thankfully, but we can start to understand that these symptoms are coherent. These symptoms make sense. They are an ally and a messenger that is showing us what the old learning is.So how does this process actually work? Well, they touch into it briefly, but of course, we’re going to get to do a deep dive. They call this the therapeutic reconsolidation process. And so step one is reactivating the old learning.And so that means we’re actually going to touch into that neural pathway together, the thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and behaviors. And we know that as we touch into these learnings, these memories, these neural pathways, a part of us feels like it’s happening in the moment. And that is often referred to as experiential therapy.And we talked about this a lot through internal family systems, what those parts want to tell us, what they’re holding, and through NARM, where we look at the survival strategies, how they developed, where they served us, and where they might not serve us anymore. But we want to be able to access the experience in the present, even though it might be accompanied with painful emotions, because we know from memory reconsolidation, the memory needs to be active in the moment. Now, it’s very important that you’re working with someone, or if you’re doing this on your own, that you scale this, you do it little pieces at a time, because if you flood yourself, that’s not going to allow you to do the memory reconsolidation process.Now, know that there is no shame, if you’re curious about this in your own life or in therapy. If you are touching into a memory, and you find yourself flooded or overwhelmed or shut down, that’s very normal, and that’s likely another coherent system. So then we might want to work, we might want to shift our work from whatever we were thinking about that led to the shutdown, to the learning about the shutdown.What happens when I feel big emotions and I need to shut them down? What is the learning there? Then step two is we bring in the new knowledge or experience that directly contradicts that symptom. So if the idea is making mistakes means I’m worthless, and here is this moment where I got third place in the debate, and I came home, and my mom or my dad or my grandma or whoever, they just looked at me and walked away. I could just tell they were so disappointed.They just, they didn’t engage with me then for several days, and I could tell they were furious and thinking that I’m such a loser. And so what’s the learning from that? Making mistakes means I’m worthless. It’s not enough to just say that’s not true, because it’s a deeply held emotional learning, awash, remember, in fear, rage, grief, and shame.What we want to do is bring in a contradiction that is experienced as a mismatch. You’ve heard me call it a prediction error, right? If our brain is predicting when I make a mistake, something dangerous will happen. We want to introduce an error that says, here’s a time I made a mistake, and yeah, it was uncomfortable and I hated it, but nothing dangerous has happened.That is what they call a juxtaposition experience. When we can hold both of those side by side, that’s when the memory reconsolidation process is activated. That is where the old memory can be updated with what is true in the present.(16:01 - 17:44)And as we do that, little by little, that learning loses its charge. The GPS gets updated. That old road is no longer maintained in the same way, and so suddenly we just find ourselves doing something differently.Now, I say suddenly. This is still a process. Yes, it is a really cool, really effective process, but it is still a process.Now, there are lots of different modalities of therapy that use this, like we talked about. Coherence therapy, ADP, EFT, EMDR, IFS, somatic experiencing. Of course, there’s so many acronyms, right? But they all facilitate it in different ways, and they believe different things about it.What I want to say and reinforce within you is that no matter what kind of therapy that you’re trying, the most important thing is that you’re able to take things slowly and stay on your own side. Some therapies promise quicker results than others, and what I will say is it’s different for every person. We might think, oh, well, okay, so I did that memory.I no longer think that making mistakes is worthless. I’m all good. Well, there are memories and memories and memories.There are learnings and learnings and learnings that are stacked. So yes, this process is very effective for transformational change, but I want to reiterate again that healing needs to be a slow process. It needs to happen little bits at a time, because if we try to move too quickly, some part of our brain and body are going to respond in a way that that feels dangerous, that feels like too much, and so many of us have learnings around when things are too much, I need to shut down, or things can feel like not enough, and so if things are not enough, then I need to shut down, and we never want to be pushing you towards shutdown.(17:44 - 20:54)So as we’re reading through this book or you’re doing your own therapy, just know if you find yourself going into shutdown, there’s a deeper learning, one that you might not even have verbal access to or memories that you can access, but we know that there’s a deeper learning to be worked with that says being seen as unsafe or being supported is unsafe, or your system in general just feels everything is unsafe, and so it’s always on the precipice of shutting down, and sometimes that can look like actual collapse, but other times that can look like, for example, my favorite intellectualizers, I talk about them a lot because I am one, and so I can really understand what it’s like to be that way. That’s another form of shutting down, and so if I’m doing this work in therapy with someone, and I can see them go up into the analysis, well, I might very gently reflect to them and be curious about what just happened, what happened right before, what roadblock got thrown up that made you go into the analysis, what emotion happened right before that. So if you have seen my five steps to change guide, which by the way is free, and I’m doing a live class on it coming up toward the end of October, it is based on this process of memory reconsolidation with my own experience as a therapist thrown in, and so I will link that here so that you can grab it if you want to and have a look as we read this together.So that is the remapping process that we have been curious about together all along, and I’m really excited to get to dive in together the science of why this works, of why we are able to remap our brain, and that is memory reconsolidation combined with observation and slowing things down. So maybe you’re thinking about your own inner map as you listen to this, and you’re thinking about one road that you find yourself traveling again and again, maybe that self-criticism or that overthinking. What’s it like right now to think that maybe, maybe, possibly, potentially, you could form a new road? Maybe, possibly, potentially, that symptom has made sense in the past, but maybe you’re wanting to shift it now.And we just notice what happens when you think that, because a learning might come up right then. Maybe you feel a little bit of hopefulness, and then you shut yourself down, or maybe you automatically say, oh, that might be true for other people, but it’s not true for me. Those are the roadblocks, those are clues that we’ve stumbled upon a place that doesn’t feel safe, and our brain is trying to get us back where we quote-unquote belong, where it’s safe.It’s always about safety and maintaining connection. And the last part of this intro chapter talks a little bit about some struggles that clinicians and therapists face, and some, I know some of you here are clinicians and some of you aren’t, but this is really wonderful work for therapists as well, because it gives them the space and the knowledge of how to support people to make long-lasting change, and that can feel really good for therapists, and it can feel really good for clients, but it can also take some of the perfect intervention, or in some way that they need to fix their clients. So clients, you’re not a problem to be fixed, and therapists, it’s not your responsibility to fix anyone else.(20:56 - 21:57)So wonderful. I’m so excited to get to dive into transformational change together, and I know I’ve said that several times, but it is so true. This is my favorite thing to do, is to get to explore these things with you together.If you have questions or curiosities, please feel free to reply or comment here. We’ll get to explore this book together over the course of several months. There are a lot of chapters, so it’s going to take us a bit of time to get through this book, but I think it’s so worthy to do these deep dives and to really learn more about ourselves and the way our brains work.There will be two live meetings, possibly three, depending on how long this book stretches, because it is a little bit dense. It might be nice to have to have another live meeting thrown in there. I will get a schedule to you soon.I am working out the schedule myself because I will be doing some big, big things in the later October, which I will share with you later, but I will certainly get a schedule for the live meetings to you soon. And yes, I’m looking forward to continuing on the road together.Opportunities to work with me:* On October 26th, I’ll be teaching a live class called 5 Steps to Long-Lasting Change. This class is all about making sense of why change feels so hard, and how we can work with the brain and body to make it easier. I’ll walk you through the framework I’ve developed that weaves together neuroscience, memory reconsolidation, and nervous system regulation. It’s practical, compassionate, and designed to help you not only see what needs to shift, but also learn how to create changes that truly last! If you can’t attend live, the full recording will be available for you.* On November 8th, I’ll be leading a mini virtual retreat for women called The Shift. This retreat is about creating space to step out of old survival patterns and into new ways of being that feel steadier, more connected, and more possible. We’ll weave together teaching, guided practices, and reflection so you can not only understand how trauma and resilience show up in your life, but also begin to gently re-map the pathways that keep you stuck. It’s a space for depth, curiosity, and practical tools you can carry with you long after we’re done. This will also be recorded if you can’t attend live (small group sharing will not be recorded for participant privacy, but all teachings will be!). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, and welcome back to Tiny Sparks. This week, we have a little mini podcast episode. I like to change up the way I present the information to you, because some of us like to listen, some of us like to read, and the good thing is, with the podcast episode, if you don't want to listen, you can read the full transcript below. I’m re-sharing this old episode because it relates perfectly to the conversations I’ve been having over on TikTok about how to truly heal from old patterns and start to do the things we WANT to do, not the things we unconsciously feel we HAVE to do. And - big news from my corner of the world: after years of research, writing, and late nights, I’m finally nearing the end of my doctoral dissertation. As I look toward this milestone, I’ve been reflecting on all the things I wish I had learned earlier in my learning - practical tools for navigating trauma, building resilience, and creating change that truly lasts. That reflection has sparked something new: I’m developing a curriculum that brings these pieces together in a way that feels clear, grounded, and accessible. Teaching this work is one of the places I feel most alive, and I can’t wait to share it with you. If you’d like to be part of the very beginning, I have two opportunities coming up: a live 5 Steps to Long-Lasting Change class on October 26th, and a mini virtual retreat for women on November 6th.Now, onto our deep dive into “self-sabotage”! So this week, I wanted to talk about something that comes up so frequently in therapy and healing work, which is the idea of self-sabotage. I see people all the time on social media talking about this, and very, very often the people I work with will come in and say, oh, I was making so much progress. And then I did this, this and this this weekend. And I'm just too self-sabotaging. And oftentimes the way that term self-sabotaging is used is it's very critical, it's very collapsing. It's this idea that I was doing good and now I'm bad. I'm sabotaging myself. And very often, what I want to support people in knowing is that it's not that you are “bad” or purposefully getting in your own way, but rather that a part of your brain is trying to protect you and keep you safe. That automatically shifts the lens from this collapsing blaming lens to this understanding of there's something deeper happening when we talk about self-sabotage.People mean all kinds of things when they talk about self-sabotage. A lot of times people will talk about things like procrastination, oh, I landed this project that I'm really, really excited about, but instead of working on it this weekend, I scrolled on my phone and watched TV all weekend. I am self-sabotaging and always delaying things- I'm never following through. Self-sabotage can show up in other ways, too. Perfectionism can be a form of self-sabotage, where we set impossibly high standards for ourselves that we can never reach. But oftentimes, self-sabotage people mean that they're not on the path that they want to be on. So they'll say, well, I was really wanting to go to the gym every day to take care of my health, and I did it for three weeks. But then this weekend, I didn't go to the gym at all. I laid on the couch all day and I just ate snacks, and I didn't move, and I didn't even go on a walk. I'm just really self-sabotaging.So first, there's this really problematic idea, which is that when we're wanting to make a change in our lives or to do something differently, or to move toward something different, that we have to be doing it exactly right every single day, or else we're not successful in that change. That, in its core, is a misunderstanding of how our brain works. When we're trying to make changes or move towards something we want that is new, that is different, that is something we haven't done before, we have to think about our brain and to understand that the things we have done repeatedly in our lives are like beautiful, paved highways in our brain. Our brain creates these patterns on based on what has happened to us in the past, so that it can predict what is going to happen in the future.So you can kind of think of the roadways in a city. They're not going to make beautiful big paved highways out in the rural country where not a lot of people go. They might have one, two lane rural state highway. They're not going to have a big, beautiful, gorgeous 12 lane interstate. They make the interstates around the major cities where there are a lot of people going, and our brain works the same way. It builds these pathways to say, this is something that's happened in the past. It's likely something that will happen in the future. It's something that I need to be able to access regularly. So I will build a roadway around it. It doesn't matter whether it's something that we like, something we don't like. It's all about what is going to keep us safe, keep us going and what we do repeatedly. When you want to make a change in your brain, you are saying, I want to go off of this interstate highway that I drive on every single day, and I want to go out into the Amazon jungle. That's what it's like in the rest of our brain outside of these neural pathways and predictive patterns.So when you're wanting to make a change in your life, you are basically getting off the interstate and you get off the exit, and not only is there not a road there, but there's a really, really dense, dense, dense jungle. So it's not realistic to expect that you're going to be able to make a sudden change, because when you get off the interstate and you're in the jungle, it's like, huh, I can't even I can't even drive my car. I'm gonna have to get out of my car and start walking and start hacking down vines. That's what it's like when we want to make a change in our brain. So you can see why. First off, it's simply unrealistic to expect that when we want to make a change, we're going to do the change every single time. Like maybe ten times you'd get in your car and you drive on the interstate, which is not going to the gym. And the 11th time you go out into the jungle, you start hacking down vines, and you do go to the gym. Very often when we start to make a change, we have some initial excitement about making the change, so we're able to override and just kind of go out into the jungle. But after a while, our brain gets fatigued and wants to go back to that old pathway of not going to the gym. In this example, it starts to get a lot deeper than that when we recognize that not only is our brain not wanting to go from the roadway into the jungle, but it's also trying to protect us and keep us safe.The brain wants to maintain something called homeostasis. And homeostasis means keeping everything the same. It wants to do that because it doesn't want to expend extra energy trying to make changes all of the time. So it wants to stay on those familiar, comfortable highways. When we tried to disrupt the homeostasis by going against the same things that we have always done, the brain is going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa, pump the brakes. In a way, our brain will actively resist change. Then add the next level onto this: when we start to understand that these predictive pathways, these neural pathways in our brain formed to keep us safe based on what has happened to us in our earlier life. Then it gets even more complex.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.So if you start to think about what in this example, what does going to the gym represent? Let's just say that going to the gym represents taking care of yourself, that you really want to be able to show up and take care of yourself. It doesn't matter if you walk ten minutes on the treadmill or you stretch or whatever it is, you just really want to start taking care of yourself more. Sounds great right? We're always talking about self-care and taking care of ourselves. What happens if in your early life what you learned is having needs made everyone upset? Maybe in your house what you learned was, when I have a need, when I want something, when I act out a little bit or I reach towards something that I want, everything in my house feels really tense. Maybe it's that your family didn't have a lot of money, so when you wanted something like to go on a field trip, it wasn't that your family didn't want to support you in that, but they just genuinely didn't have the funds. So there was a lot of tension, a lot of stress as your parents tried to figure out how to juggle that and make that work. Or maybe you had caregivers who just couldn't take care of their own needs. They didn't learn how to do that. And so then when you had a need or want or an emotion or an experience that made them feel really overwhelmed, so they pulled back from you, or they sent you to their room or whatever it is, or maybe you lived in an environment that was very emotionally volatile.So you learn from a young age, having needs and wants was just an unsafe experience. Things already felt so much, so volatile, so unsure, that you just learned to keep your needs and wants shut down- to not take care of yourself, but to focus on taking care of and attuning to everyone else's needs around you. In each of these situations, what is happening is your brain is forming predictive patterns in your brain to say having a need, having a want, having an emotion, having needs, and not focusing on the needs of people around me is dangerous. And this is from the mind of usually a child, a younger part of us. Yes, we can experience this as adults too, but it oftentimes starts in our early environment where children don't have the cognitive complexity- or maybe as adults we don't have the safety- to choose and say, I want to do something differently. This isn't about me. The fact that my parents can't support my needs or my partner or whoever it is isn't about me. We might not have had that opportunity or the ability to do that, because we are so wired to stay in connection to our caregivers in our early life, but instead what we do is we just say, well, if I have to choose between my caregivers and me, I'm going to choose my caregivers. Because it just feels so unsafe to consider anything else. So boom, now you have this really well formed interstate highway in your brain that says choosing myself, having needs, attuning to myself, taking care of myself puts my connection with others at stake, which means it puts my life at stake.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Now, when you start to understand that and you say, well, it's really simple, I just want to go to the gym. I just want to take care of myself in that way. Then you start to understand it's not that simple, because not only do you not have that roadway available in the brain out in the jungle, but you have a strong predictive pattern saying, choosing yourself, having needs, attuning to yourself, and taking care of yourself is dangerous. So it's going to start setting off that signal to say a tiger is trying to eat me. And whether we feel that consciously through anxiety or whether we feel that through this pull to not do it, to stay sitting on the couch, we might say, I don't have the “motivation,” because maybe that freeze response starts coming in. All of those things stack up to mean we are not going to do the thing that feels like it threatens our connection to others, or that makes us feel like a tiger is trying to eat us. So while your adult consciousness self might be saying, I want to go to the gym and take care of myself, these old child consciousness predictive patterns in our brain are sending out signals to our survival system to say we're unsafe. So then, of course, you're not going to be consistent about going to the gym.Something that adds on to this is the experience of guilt and shame. And that's why I take such umbrage at the term self-sabotage, is it puts us back into this guilt and shame pattern. To say, I messed up. I can't do anything, I can't follow through with anything. And if you were criticizing yourself in that way, if you're feeling that heavy, toxic shame, do you think you're more or less likely to start getting back into taking care of yourself in whatever way you want to? Well, less likely, of course, right? If you've been following along with our shame series, you know that shame is actually a process to shut us down and disconnect us from our experience and from what we want for ourselves.Let's use another example and say that you had a big project that you needed to complete for work, and every time you sat down to work on it, you would feel so anxious because you were like, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can get it right. I just feel like I'm going to mess it up. So you “procrastinate” or you keep yourself busy, you watch Netflix all weekend, you scroll on your phone and you're like, oh, I'm just such a self-sabotager. But if we really slow that down and we look at what was happening when you sat down to work on this work project is maybe you have this predictive pattern in your brain that says, I have to do things perfectly so that I can stay safe and stay in connection to other people. Maybe somewhere along the line in your life you learned that things just felt safer in your home and your school, wherever you were, if you just tried really, really, really hard and achieved things and were perfect, then there was no opportunity to feel all of the overwhelming emotions underneath of what might happen if you weren't perfect. Maybe it wasn't anyone telling you that you needed to be perfect, but maybe things were just a little bit easier in your home when you came home with an A, when you won the soccer game, whatever it is; maybe your parents were just under a lot of stress and not that just made things feel a little bit easier. And so over time, what you learned is: if I do things perfectly, then my connections are safe. Then I am safe, then I am okay. Maybe you also just had the experience of not feeling seen; maybe your emotions couldn't be seen in your family, but you felt seen when you came home from school with a really good grade, or when you achieved something. None of this is saying, oh my gosh, you were so bad as a kid, or your family was so bad or whatever it is. All of it is just noticing that our brain takes in our experiences to create these predictive patterns in our brain- to predict what's going to happen. So if the prediction is: things are safe when I'm perfect, things are not safe when I'm not perfect. Remember, this is coming from our survival brain, from our childhood experiences, not from our adult brain prefrontal cortex. Then it makes so much sense why as an adult we have this underlying pathway, this roadway in our brain that says we have to do things perfectly or we are not okay. Well, that's impossible. It becomes an impossible standard to be perfect. And so instead, we just feel this high level of pressure, of terror, of fear that we have to get it just right or we're going to lose our job, we're going to lose everything, we're going to lose all our friends, we're going to lose our house and be homeless. Even though a part of you knows that it's not true, that old predictive pattern, that child consciousness part of you is getting your survival mode activated so that it feels very true. So then, of course, you would go and procrastinate and watch Netflix and watch TikTok.Thanks for reading tiny sparks - trisha wolfe! This post is public so feel free to share it.So all of this to say, when we start to take the word self-sabotage and turn it into self-protection, suddenly it's a totally different lens that we can use to be curious and to observe ourselves and to say, what is happening? What is this subconscious part of me that is coming up and getting in the way of what I want for myself? If you’ve been here for a while, you know how much I emphasize this observation, this noticing, this curiosity of self. And the same thing comes out here, which is we want to start to observe: what is it that I'm wanting for myself and what is getting in the way? And to do that, we need to be able to have enough of the felt sense of safety that our mind and body are online enough to be able to be curious and observe what is happening.As we are able to do that little by little, then we can start to put our pinky into safety, put our pinky into our present day curious experiencer, our observer, our self, however you want to call it that can notice what is happening, that can notice when that old predictive patterning is getting set off- that can slow down, that can be curious, that can pause and see what are these emotions that are coming up that I'm not even noticing…that when I think about going to the gym, maybe there's a little spike of anxiety, there's a little hint of that old pathway that I'm not allowed to have needs or I'm not allowed to attune to myself. And can I notice that anxiety? Can I be with the part of me that feels anxiety? And instead of pressuring myself to go to the gym, can I see what happened in that moment? If I'm just curious and observing and being with that part of me that is holding all that anxiety, then it becomes not about pressuring to go to the gym, but about noticing what's getting in the way of you taking care of yourself in the way you want to. And when we detach from the outcome because we know it's not really about going to the gym, it's about what going to the gym or finishing the work project represents, then we can come back to how is it we want to feel about being able to show up for ourselves and take care of ourselves? Maybe we just want to feel a little more neutral about taking care of ourselves, and maybe that opens up a lot more possibility to maybe go to the gym one day, go for a walk one day, or rest one day. So again, self-sabotage is actually a self-protection. The more we can notice those parts of us that needed us to be protected, those old survival mode patterns, the more we can build the adult part of us that knows in the moment our life is not at stake anymore, that it's okay for us to try on little ways of taking care of ourselves. It's okay to be with those old emotions that might be coming up from the past, and notice how it's different here in the present.I can't emphasize enough this idea of detaching from the outcomes and instead just building up curiosity. And we can be curious and observe at any moment, even if it's hours, days, weeks later, that we've been criticizing ourselves and we haven't been going to the gym, and we've just been sitting on the couch and we're stuck in this endless not doing it/criticizing ourselves/not doing it/criticizing ourselves, that's okay. Just the moment you notice it, you have the opportunity to observe. Even if you go back into criticizing yourself, you have fired your neurons in a new direction. And over time, the pathway of observation gets stronger and stronger. And from an observational place, that's where we can say, oh, this is an old roadway. And I want to start to dip my toe into going into the Amazon jungle of showing up for myself, of feeling peace about having needs, of feeling calm about not taking care of everyone else's needs. And that is how we build new pathways in our brain, and that is how we take action. And again, then it makes it so that we don't have to take action every time. We don't have to go to the gym every single day, because the pathway we're building is about showing up for ourselves, taking care of ourselves and attuning to our own needs and not about the outcome of going to the gym. And that is such a life changing lens shift. So if the only thing that you take from today is that self-sabotage is actually self-protection, then what a wonderful new lens you have to try on about being curious in your life of when these protective parts of you might pop up like in Inside Out, where the different emotions run forward and start gnashing on the control board; that's something you can practice noticing and being curious about as much or as little as you'd like to where you are right now.So thanks again for being here with me. I'd love to hear any thoughts or curiosities you have around self-sabotage, and you can leave your comment here. Or you can reply, and it comes straight to me. Thanks so much!Opportunities to work with me:* On October 26th, I’ll be teaching a live class called 5 Steps to Long-Lasting Change. This class is all about making sense of why change feels so hard, and how we can work with the brain and body to make it easier. I’ll walk you through the framework I’ve developed that weaves together neuroscience, memory reconsolidation, and nervous system regulation. It’s practical, compassionate, and designed to help you not only see what needs to shift, but also learn how to create changes that truly last! If you can’t attend live, the full recording will be available for you.* On November 6th, I’ll be leading a mini virtual retreat for women called The Shift. This retreat is about creating space to step out of old survival patterns and into new ways of being that feel steadier, more connected, and more possible. We’ll weave together teaching, guided practices, and reflection so you can not only understand how trauma and resilience show up in your life, but also begin to gently re-map the pathways that keep you stuck. It’s a space for depth, curiosity, and practical tools you can carry with you long after we’re done. This will also be recorded if you can’t attend live (small group sharing will not be recorded for participant privacy, but all teachings will be!).* Book club! We just finished up Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and what a deep experience it was. Next up: Unlocking the Emotional Brain - this book is clinical, but truly informational as the seminal resource on all things coherence therapy, memory reconsolidation, and the science behind why things like EMDR and NARM actually work. By becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack for just $5 a month, you get full access to my biweekly podcast, where I do a deep dive into each chapter, and two live fireside chats, where we connect and explore our learnings together. You also get full access to the archive of the book club, where you can listen to episodes about Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, No Bad Parts, and The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma - all my favorite books for those who truly want to heal from their past, get unstuck, and start moving forward.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

In the final episode of our book club, we explore the last few chapters of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. The focus shifts from recognizing emotionally immature people to seeking and building relationships that nourish us. Skepticism may arise, as many of us have experienced emotional immaturity from our parents or caretakers in the past. Our survival system may make it feel like their behavior is still dangerous in the present, but we have the opportunity to work to build a sense of safety within ourselves.Emotionally mature people are responsive, empathetic, offer safety, and make you feel seen and understood. They embody Self-energy of curiosity, compassion, calm, and connectedness, and can reflect on their actions. Emotionally mature people make relationships feel safer over time and allow us to feel safer in ourselves. Through therapy, we can explore the patterns in our lives and our relationship with our own emotionally immature parent, and learn to embody emotionally mature qualities within ourselves. Please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you’re observing. In September, we will dive into Unlocking the Emotional Brain - I’m so excited! I’m brainstorming ways for us to connect even further - more live meetings? Discord chat? Let me know your thoughts!(0:00 - 3:27)Welcome back book club friends to our final podcast episode about adult children of emotionally immature parents. We will have our final live meeting together on August 30th where we get a chance to come together, explore, ask questions, and just have that time of connection to integrate all that we've learned together from this depthful book. So as we come to these last chapters we're just kind of bringing everything together.It's been a journey of exploration of what immature parents represent, how they show up, and what happens within us when we grow up in that kind of environment. And so chapter 10 introduces us to how we identify emotionally immature people. It can sound really simple and it can sound like well duh I just look for the opposite but I think it's actually a really profound exploration when you've grown up with emotional immaturity as your baseline.You know we have to remember that what we experience repeatedly becomes very strong neural pathways within our brain and they can become the lenses through which we see the world. But it's all subconscious. Most of it's subconscious.So we might find ourselves as we've talked about through this book over and over again getting into relationships or friendships or staying in connection with emotionally immature people. And again that's because with these lenses that we have learned to see the world we might say well it's me. I'm the problem.This other person can't be the problem. I'm just not trying hard enough. I'm not working hard enough to figure out a solution for this person so that they can behave more kindly or be more connected to me or I just keep making mistakes and that's why this person isn't showing up for me.Or we endlessly analyze it and intellectualize it but never being able to quite come to that moment where we recognize that it may not be about us. It may be about this other person's dynamic and we can choose not to engage in that dynamic little bits at a time. A lot of times in popular culture right now we talk a lot about cutting people off.You know boundaries and then boundaries are this idea that it means we never talk to the person again or you know we have to set these really hard lines and I'm fully in support of whatever people need to do to take care of themselves but it's important to understand that to go from completely trying to make things okay for other people, family members or whoever it might be, to fully cutting them off can feel incredibly jarring and terrifying to our nervous system. And so I want to emphasize that if you have been told or have this idea that you have to jump to cutting your parents off or whoever the emotionally immature person might be, you can take things slower. You can take things one tiny step at a time and in fact we just know that that's how our brain works.That's why I named this substack Tiny Sparks because neurons that fire together wire together. So just remembering that one little step at a time is just fine even if you're feeling an intensity of an experience. So as we come back into chapter 10 we are learning how the focus shifts from recognizing emotionally immature people and the way they've impacted us to starting to shift to our agency of seeking and building relationships that nourish us and that feel deeply connecting.(3:28 - 4:06)So this chapter talks about something that children of emotionally immature parents often experience, which is this skepticism that a truly connected relationship where you can be yourself, be safe, be seen, have needs and have your own emotions isn't possible. That it really just can't exist out there because your brain is shoving in your face all this data. Times where you have attempted to have needs or be yourself or be seen and it has gone awry either from your parents or other people and it's all stuck up in there and it's not just from the past.(4:06 - 6:28)Some of this might still be happening in the present and often it is. If you are still connected with your parents or if you are in other relationships that are emotionally immature that data is still coming into your data model. And when I'm working with people in therapy what I am always exploring with them is we're teasing apart the difference between it happening when we're children and happening when we're adults.Because when it happens when we're children, as you've learned by now through our time together in exploring this book in a really depthful way, it feels like a threat to our lives. It's not just about a parent who withdraws or a parent who criticizes. It's about the fact that as children we rely on our caregivers to keep us safe and keep us alive.We are biologically wired to do so. So every moment where we feel having a need, being seen, having an emotion, making a mistake, whatever the experience might be causes some discord for our parents that lands onto us, that actually creates a survival energy in the mind and body. Even if you don't remember that, even if you're not consciously aware of it, that fight, flight, fawn, freeze, those are survival things.Those are things that should only come out when there's a tiger chasing you or when you come across a bear on the hiking trail or when you really need to protect your survival. Those things shouldn't be happening with our parents, but they do because it feels like, uh-oh, if my parent's not okay, I'm not okay. If I have to choose between my parent and myself, I must choose my parent or caregiver in order to keep me alive.So the difference that we're teasing apart is we want to take that old emotional learning that having a need and someone getting upset about that is no longer dangerous. So we want to take the learning where it felt dangerous and we want to bring it into the present that even if your parent is still reacting aggressively or immature toward you when you have a need in the present, even if it's just saying, oh no, I'm not going to make it to that dinner, but thanks for the invitation. And then you get laid in with all manner of sarcasm or manipulation or immaturity or criticism that your life is not at stake here in the present.(6:29 - 10:33)The emotional immaturity coming from your parent or whomever it is in the present is not dangerous, even though your survival system is going to make it feel like it's the same thing happening because of that predictive patterning, because of that old data model. And so that's why our work in the present is to notice it, observe it, build the part of us who is here in the present who has some sense of safety. And you might think, I don't know if I have a sense of safety.Well, that's why this is a process. That's why I don't recommend jumping to cutting people off unless you decide to where there's a safety concern, because first you need to build safety within yourself in the present to be able to state and hold those boundaries. And so the work really is so deeply within us of unwinding those old neural pathways, those old learnings.And that's why the next book we're going to read together is Unlocking the Emotional-Based Brain, which is all about these emotional learnings. And that's why in my guide to change that I created for Substack, I focus on observation within ourself and building safety. Because we have to believe that something different is possible.And we have to believe that our safety is not at stake in the present if we have a need or if we express ourselves or if we do what feels good for ourselves. So it all comes back to the re-patterning of the neural pathways. So if you feel that skepticism, don't worry, that's normal.Thanks for reading tiny sparks - trisha wolfe! This post is public so feel free to share it.That's your brain trying to protect you. You feel like everything is emotionally lonely and you can never be connected because those predictive maps are built on the future. And so we're changing our neural pathways and we know that we can, and that's the hope and the power of neuroplasticity.But know that it takes time. And so if you feel that skepticism coming up that things could be different with your parent, or that you could build an emotionally mature relationship with someone else, just let yourself notice that part of you that feels really scared right now. And that those old neural pathways might be coming up right now.And see if you can find one thing that lets you feel safe here in the present, even if it's just that your front door is locked. Or maybe as you slow down and you notice it in this moment right now, you can feel this feels impossible. This feels scary.This feels like it'll never happen. But wait a second, I'm thinking about my friend, my partner, a colleague, a person I do have a relationship with where there's not attacking and withdrawing and game playing. And what's it like to notice that right now? So what do emotionally mature people look like? This chapter really offers this exploration into the characteristics of an emotionally mature person.And we can slow down and take these in. That emotionally mature people are realistic and reliable. They work with reality rather than fighting against it.They don't get stuck in how things should be based on their opinions. But they adapt, they problem solve, they connect, and they stay in the present. They can think and feel at the same time.And they can be upset without losing perspective and lashing out or pulling away. They can be consistent. They're trustworthy.And they don't take everything personally as an attack. They're respectful and reciprocal. They respect your boundaries, your individuality.And they give back, not just out of obligation, but because they want the connection to be fair and mutual. They're flexible, they compromise. They don't engage in power struggles.They're even-tempered. So again, they don't use that anger or withdrawal as an attempt to control you emotionally. And they're curious about you.They let your perspective matter. They could be influenced by you and not take that as an attack. They can tell the truth and when they've hurt you, they apologize and they make changes.(10:34 - 16:29)So not only is there repair, but there's repair backed by action. Oftentimes, emotionally immature parents can know how to try on repair or sort of parody repair. But it's all about manipulation to make themselves feel better, to make themselves feel like the martyr, or to make you feel like a bad person.That's not the case in emotionally mature relationships. Emotionally mature people are also responsive. They offer empathy.They offer safety. They make you feel seen and understood. But they give and receive those things with ease.And they can reflect on their actions and try to change when something isn't working. And laugh and be playful and can be enjoyable to be around. So in IFS terms, if you were with us for the No Bad Parts book, these people relate from the self.Not 100% of the time, because none of us do. But they really embody that self-energy of curiosity, compassion, calm, and connectedness. And in NARM terms, they're coming from that adult consciousness.And if they shift into child consciousness, or they shift into these protective parts, which would be normal, because we all do that as humans, they're able to notice it, observe it, take care of themselves, come back into the present, communicate, ask for what they need, and repair. And in return, we can feel the safety to start to offer those things as well, that create new neural pathways that help make relationships feel safer over time. And where we can allow ourselves to feel safer over time.And again, if you're thinking, I don't know how I can try those things on. I'm too scared to trust that someone could offer me those things. That's okay, because we're taking it one little bit at a time.But because also, we can try this on in other safe relationships, like in therapy, for example. You know, very often in therapy, I am working with people, not only on what they're sharing about their lives, about what they want to explore, but about what comes up between us. So if we're doing something and a person is like, I just don't know the right answer.I don't know what you want me to say. Then we have an opportunity to explore between us. What makes it feel like I need a right answer from you? What do you think will happen if you don't give me the answer that I'm looking for? Because we get to explore that this is something different.I don't actually need a right answer from you. I'm not actually expecting anything from you. I don't need a right answer.I don't need you to be calm. I don't need you to get better. I don't need you to figure it out.I am here to offer a curious and connected space with you. And so it's really such a wonderful, depthful exploration, if you have the time and inclination and resources to do this kind of depth work in therapy, because the patterns of your life will come out in therapy as well. And so you get the opportunity, not just to observe what it's like to be an emotionally mature relationship with someone who can hold space for you just as you are, who doesn't need anything from you and isn't trying to manipulate you.But you also get to observe within yourself, how you have become your own, your own emotionally immature parent. In a sense, we internalize that voice. And then we use it against ourselves.We call ourselves names, we pressure ourselves, we abandon ourselves, we withdraw from ourselves, we shut down our own needs. We don't need our emotionally immature parent to do that anymore, even though they might still continue to do that. Because now we do it to ourselves.That's normal and typical. That's a survival behavior. That's what the protective parts are.That's what the child consciousness is. They're all trying to protect us by doing it to ourselves first, to give us some sense of safety and control. But we want to be able to cultivate within ourselves, this emotionally mature person who can embody those qualities that I listed before, within ourselves, so that we can co-create emotionally mature relationships by being able to ask for help when we need it, to speak honestly without overgiving our energy, to hold our boundaries, to keep in touch with people we care about, to not criticize and pressure ourselves all the time, to not overwork, to rest when we're tired, to not have to intellectualize and analyze everything, and to communicate our needs clearly instead of expecting others to guess.This is what happens when we can shift into ourself, into the present, when we remap and build these new neural pathways. And so this is such a rich opportunity not to say, oh, you're saying I do it to myself, so I am the messed up one. I always knew it was me.I always knew it was the problem. If you find yourself reacting in that way, that's normal, of course. That's part of the criticism you learn to place on yourself.But rather, this is an opportunity to explore what did you learn you had to do to yourself to maintain connection, to keep yourself in line, to be good? What persona did you create? What suit of armor or suits of armor did you put on to try to keep connection with yourself, with your parent, with those around you? And do you still need those things now? Is your life still feeling like it's at stake in the same way that it was? Well, let's come back into building safety together. This process is so rich and so valuable, but it can also stir grief and anger. This awareness and exploration shines a light on what happened, what didn't happen, and how that shaped your choices and where you are today.(16:30 - 19:13)And sometimes that can feel overwhelming. And so we take it one little bit at a time so that we can come into the present to see ourselves more clearly and to live as ourself instead of as these protective roles. Self-discovery, the coolest thing in the world, can feel like living twice in one lifetime.Because for lack of a better term, and I hope you'll forgive the cliche, it's a whole new world. And I could sing a little Aladdin to you there. But just to know that everything opens up in front of us when we create these new neural pathways, when we build new learnings for ourselves, because we get to step out of becoming our own enforcer, our own emotionally immature parent, and we get to step into ourselves where we can start updating our map, moving toward what we want for ourselves, having needs, having wants, being present, living a life that feels truly embodied and connected to what we want.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If that sounds exciting to you right now, welcome. If that sounds terrifying, welcome as well. That's normal.It's typical. We're all at different parts of our process. And maybe we touch the excitement for a minute, and then we come into criticizing ourselves.Maybe we touch the excitement for a minute, and then we go into getting busy, busy, busy with something else. It's an iterative process. It's learning.It's curiosity. It's an experiment. And, you know, my favorite thing is to talk about experiments because you can't mess an experiment up.All you can do is try it on, look at the results, and then try it again with a slightly different question. So remember, when we're doing our steps to change, the first thing we're looking at is what's the new destination we're wanting? What do we want to put into our internal GPS? And you might notice that if you think about that right now, you think about something you want to change in someone else. Well, I want my mother to be less critical.Or I want my dad to be more present in my life. Or I want my sibling to connect with me and want to spend time with me and not always run away when we try to connect. Or maybe it's about your partner.I want my partner to be more responsive to my needs. Or whatever thing you might be imagining for yourself. If you find that the thing that you're wanting has to do with other people changing or other people's behaviors, well, now we're in a bit of a pickle.And that makes sense. Because as a child, of course, you would have done anything to try to make sure your caregivers were okay. So that finally, finally, finally, you could be loved and seen and had your needs responded to and feel supported.(19:13 - 20:40)But as adults, we want to turn that around and figure out what is it I'm trying to get at by managing this other person's behavior. If my mother were less critical of me, how would I feel differently? How would I behave differently? What would I do if I woke up tomorrow and my mother never criticized me again? What would I do within my life? And that reveals what we actually want for ourselves and what we have agency over. So this is a curiosity that you can always come back to.We notice where we want to go. We notice the roadblocks that come up, the self-criticism, the shaming, the intellectualizing, the busyness, the perfectionism, which gives us clues to the old destination, the old road. We build safety.And then little bits at a time, we can move toward what we want. That's my model that I created of the five steps to change that can be used as you're undergoing this process of integrating this book, of thinking of all you've learned and where you want to go from here. You can't go wrong, because if you realize the destination you chose isn't what you want, change the destination.If you realize the destination you chose is involving someone else's behaviors, change the destination. You can always come back into the present. You can always come back into safety, because all we have is this moment.(20:40 - 22:57)We know that our work lies not in theory, right? Not in learning everything there is to learn, though of course I deeply love us learning together. But in taking the theory and integrating it, living, honoring a boundary, choosing reciprocity over self-sacrifice, noticing and savoring the feeling and safety of being understood, of building those new neural pathways together. And so as we get a chance to connect sometime, I would love to answer any questions you have about that process.You know, this book was less about an intellectual understanding, but more about offering this new lens to observe some of the ways that we may have been treated as children and even as adults, so that we can figure out what we want for ourselves now. A few questions for you to reflect on as we finally close. When you think about the emotionally matured traits that we've described in this chapter, which ones feel familiar in your current relationships? When is a time when you have experienced connection, balance, reciprocity, care? And which ones would feel like new roadways for your system to explore that might have felt unsafe in the past, but you're curious about now? Looking back, what patterns or qualities in other people may have felt magnetic because they were familiar, even if they didn't feel safe or nourishing? And how might you like that to be now? What do you notice within your thoughts, emotions, or body sensations, when you have a moment of connection with another person that feels safe? Or even just in this moment, as you notice a connection to yourself as you're here being curious? And if you could imagine something you're wanting for yourself right now, that you could put into that GPS on your internal roadmap, what would it be? How would you feel? What are you imagining? And what happens as you imagine it right now? Whatever roadblocks come up, can you take a moment and notice them? Try observing them for just a split second of, oh, that's how I learned to keep myself safe.(22:57 - 24:10)And that makes sense. So thank you for being a part of this book club. Your connection and engagement is so rich, and I really enjoy this so much.I'm so excited to dive into unlocking the emotional brain together. I think that work is truly life-changing, and I'm so excited to begin integrating it into my life and my practice. Please feel free to share any feedback with me about what you're curious about, what you're noticing.I'd love to find a space for us to be able to engage more together, if maybe it's on a Substack chat or a Discord chat, or I've also considered shifting from these podcast episodes to maybe meeting live more frequently. So let me know what you're thinking. This book club is a co-creation between us, and it's constantly unfolding.And I would love to hear any thoughts you have. You can leave a comment here, you can reply, and it comes straight to me, or I'll look forward to seeing you live on August 30th. And it will be recorded if you're not able to attend live, and then in mid-September, we'll dive into what comes next.Thank you for being here, and I'm wishing you a gentle day ahead. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comWelcome back, book club read-a-long friends! This week, we are diving into chapters 8 and 9 of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents! It’s hard to believe we’re almost finished with this book - it’s truly been such a wonderful exploration. Our live meeting will be Saturday, August 30th, at 10 am Eastern Time (New York). What book should we choose next?! The front runner right now is Unlocking the Emotional Brain, but feel free to cast your vote for what you’re curious about!(0:00 - 0:35)Welcome back, book club, to our read-along of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. It's hard to believe we're getting near the end of this very rich book, but this week we will be going through chapter 8, and hopefully chapter 9, and then our last meeting live together will be Saturday, August 30th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. If you can't make that time, not to worry, it will be recorded, but I'm really excited to get together and talk about what we learned, what we explored, and what we've noticed with this book, and to answer any final questions.(0:36 - 3:25)So you will get that link the week before. Just once more, that live meeting will be August 30th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Google Meet. So as we've spent the book learning a little bit about what emotionally immature parents are like and how they affect us and play out in our adult relationships, these two chapters talk a little bit about, now that you know, what do you do? How do you not get hooked back into the pattern? How do you live from a place that is truly yours? And we know because of those predictive patterns in our brain that are always trying to predict what's coming next, based on what's happened in the past, those well-worn neural pathways and emotional learnings that are deeply embedded in there, especially from our childhood experience, that are, we will, we will get hooked back in.And maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you go home for the holidays and you notice you feel like you're back to being your 10-year-old self, or a five-minute conversation with a parent, and your body feels like you just jumped off of a 500-foot water tower. It's a full thought, emotion, and body sensation experience when we get hooked into these patterns, that we might feel that collapse, that activation, that confusion, that looping.All of those are signs and signals that we have gotten hooked back into one of these old patterns. Remember, that is our brain working as designed, so it's so important as we explore some of these tools to know these tools are not foolproof. Your brain will, not if, but will get hooked back into these patterns, and that is okay.That doesn't mean it feels good, but it means it's very, very important to name and notice that we may find ourselves feeling that pull, but over time the pull will be less, and it will shift, and it will feel less like panic, and more like a little present-day stress. And so that is the work of being curious, and noticing, and observing. And if you listen to me all this time, you know that I'm always talking about observing, observing, observing, becoming aware.What road are we on in our neural pathway atlas map? Are we in an old pathway covered in tigers, or are we in the present day of what's happening right now? When we are hooked into these patterns, and we feel the panic, and the collapse, our brain isn't reacting to what's happening here in the present. It's reacting to past patterns that are landing onto the present, because we're expecting what's going to happen. So we're just waiting for the moment we're going to be criticized, or punished, or love is going to be withdrawn from us.And so we're very slowly teasing apart old patterns versus what's happening in the present. That's not easy to do. It does take time, and it does take this practice of observation, just like Gibson talks about in this chapter.(3:26 - 6:50)So as Gibson talks about stepping out of that old fantasy that we've talked about, that one day if we could just say the right thing, and do the right thing, our parent will become the person we need them to be. As we come out of that more and more, a process that's often called separation and individuation, what that means is over the course of our life really, starting from around age two, we are learning that we are separate and individual from our parents. And we are building our separate and individual identities from them.And that is what allows us to have a healthy relationship. You can think of two-year-olds saying, no, I want to dress myself. And you can think of teenagers who are like, I never want to be anything like my parents.That's normal. They're building their identity. They come back around as their own individual, as they have finished that sort of completion of separation and individuation.When you have emotionally immature parents, you don't get a chance to complete those phases, especially because emotionally immature families are often very enmeshed, meaning no one gets to be separate. And if you try to be separate, and you try to be your own person, have your own feelings, emotions, experiences, you will be punished in some way, through actual punishment, through criticism, or through withdrawal of care and love. And sometimes it's very overt, but sometimes it's much more subtle.But that separation and individuation is what we're curious about building as we build these new neural pathways in the present. The first thing Gibson talks about to forge a new relationship with our families is that detached observation. You've heard me talk about this many times as the neutral observer or the wildlife documentarian.It's a practice where instead of being hooked in to the past patterns playing out in the present, we are the ones noticing the hook. We see the hook dangled in front of us. Because we know that emotionally immature people subconsciously will want to hook us back into their patterns, because that's their homeostasis.That's what feels comfortable and familiar for them. It's very often not intentional, but it's for us to be curious and observe. My wildlife documentarian Gibson calls an anthropological field study, where you're just noticing what's happening both for yourself and for the other person.And when you start to feel those little flags that you're getting hooked back in, that is the time to pause. So Gibson talks about kind of like repeating to yourself, detach, detach, detach. I would say that's different for everyone.If that works for you, that's fantastic. For many of us, we may not yet be in a place where that feels good. Because saying detach, detach, detach can really activate that protective child consciousness part of us that is saying it's not safe to detach.And your adult part saying, but I want to detach. I don't want to be hooked into this. And the child consciousness protective parts of us saying, no, if I detach, I'll lose my relationship.So I don't necessarily jump to those behavioral sort of cognitive shifts of saying detach, detach, detach to yourself. But you can try on what works for you through a series of mini experiments. Is it walking away? Is it taking a break? Is it looking around the room and find what lets you feel safe in that moment? Is it putting boundaries on how much time you'll be there or whether you'll talk on the phone or actually visit? So it's not a passive process.(6:50 - 8:17)It's very, very active. She also talks about relatedness versus relationship. And so staying related to them, where we're not trying to have a satisfying emotional exchange, but we're staying in contact with whatever limits work for us.Why? Because we know that that person right now, in this moment, doesn't have the capacity for emotional reciprocity and a true, depthful relationship. And trying to get them to that place is part of that fantasy role. Maybe one day they could get there, but that's through their own work.We can't try to make them get there. In this chapter, Gibson also talks about this maturity awareness approach of different ways to relate to a parent or caregiver who is exhibiting emotional immaturity in the moment, expressing what you want to say and not trying to control the outcome. So not needing the other person to hear you and meet you in an adult way, even if a part of you wants that, focusing on the outcome rather than the relationship.And so we're looking very specifically at, I want to express myself to my parent, even though I'm nervous, rather than trying to be depthful in the relationship and have that person meet you and explore with you and have a really adult interaction. We know, again, that's not possible. So we're focusing on what we want for ourselves.(8:17 - 10:56)And then Gibson also talks about managing not engaging. Maybe you've heard the term jade before. It's often talked about when relating to people who are emotionally immature and not in their adult consciousness.And it stands for justify, argue, defend, and explain. So when we're engaging with someone who is in an emotionally immature state and they are not in their adult consciousness place, they are not in a relational place, there isn't any use in trying to justify, argue, defend, or explain in trying to engage with them in that way. Because they are in their patterns, and they are in this protective old young state, they aren't going to be able to engage with you in that way.So being related and managing versus trying to engage in a depthful relationship. Now, what I want to say about this chapter is it's very behavioral. And there are some strategies in here that you might find incredibly helpful.But it's really important to know that it's very, very common for these approaches to bring up all kinds of things within us. And that is where the work is right now. So what I will often say to people is, yes, this book is great.It's a self-help book. It's everything crammed into just a few pages. What is very difficult to get through in a book like this is to say, getting from knowing this to doing these steps can be quite a process.And if we try to rush it, and we try to do it too quickly, we're going to shut ourselves down and put ourselves back into that deep survival response, and go right back into the patterns, both with our parents and with ourselves. So if you read My Five Steps to Change, what I would suggest and offer to you is to do experiments with this book, to do experiments with these things. What is it you're wanting for yourself? And you might say, I want to be less triggered by my parent, or I want to be able to be around my family and not be in fight or flight for days afterward.Okay, that's where you're wanting to go. What roadblocks come up? What parts of you from an IFS perspective or child consciousness from a NARM perspective get activated when you think about being related but not in relationship? Because that's going to give you a clue to all the old pathways, all the old protective parts of you. If you think about being related but not in relationship and managing versus engaging, it's very likely to be very activating to some parts of you.Because those are the parts of you that still feel that it's unsafe. Because you have decades of patterning, of feeling that. Because as a child, you rely on your caregivers to keep you feeling safe and alive.(10:56 - 11:02)You might feel guilty. You might shame yourself. You might tell yourself, this is impossible.(11:03 - 11:40)Or you might try it on and then feel even worse afterward and completely overwhelmed. You might also come up with all these thoughts about how you're actually the bad, horrible person and not them. Those are roadblocks to be explored.Those are old roadways in the atlas of your brain to notice and explore and then to come into what's happening in the present. And so going back to those five steps to change, you get that practice to notice what's happening now versus what's happening in the present. As a child, it felt like my safety was at risk.(11:40 - 14:15)It felt like I had to, for survival, stay in these patterns. Right now, in this exact moment, when I'm feeling so guilty and anxious about changing these patterns, am I actually safe in this moment if I look around the space I'm in right now? And that is how we build the new pathways, the new roadways. So jumping into these behavioral, cognitive tactics before the road is finished is like saying, well, I'm going to go ahead and drive on this new road.And a construction person comes up to you and says, the bridge isn't finished yet. You can't drive on this road. And you said, oh, I don't care.I think I'm ready. Well, how are you going to get across the gorge? Right? It's just the same in our brain. And so even though I know a part of us wants it to be better now, we want to be to the other side of things now.This is an iterative process. And the more we can stay in the process and take it in those five steps at a time, bringing it back to safety, the more quickly we can actually see change and step into that adult consciousness. So we're always looking for those little pause points, those little moments where we can notice the old story and what's happening in the present.And that mismatch is one of the strongest ways that we can update the routes in our brain and reconsolidate these old emotional learnings, these survival learnings, those little tiny experiments are what let us make those changes. So moving into chapter nine, this chapter is talking about living free of those old rules and fantasies. And so we think about those survival strategies, those adaptive strategies, those parts of us, managers and firefighters and the exiles that hold all of our deepest pain, just like we read about in No Bad Parts.They're all a part of us. We're not trying to get rid of them. But we're seeing if maybe, possibly, potentially, they would consider letting us drive this bus, since we are the adult, and we have the capacity to live in the present.So it's so important that we know we're not trying to push those strategies or adaptive, protective parts of us away. We are just asking if they might want to rest, if those pathways might want to, you know, sort of be closed for maintenance now, and that we can start to come into our adult selves, where we can connect into all of the wonderful things and the hard things, but the wonderful things about being able to be an adult and choose ourselves. So remember some of these strategies that comes up that Gibson has talked about in this book.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comWelcome, new book club friends! So glad you’re here. We’re diving into Chapter 7 today, but remember, you have full access to the archive, too! So feel free to go back and begin at Chapter 1. Also - it’s already time to start thinking about our next book - please drop any titles you may be curious about in the comments or reply and send them straight to me! 00:00Welcome back to our book club and read-along together. We have quite a few new people here this week so I'm just going to briefly recap what we're doing. Together we are reading books and some of you are reading along with me and some of you are just listening to my recaps which is perfect.00:16You're welcome whichever way you would like to engage with this material. Right now we're reading adult children of emotionally immature parents. In the past we've read No Bad Parts, a book on internal family systems, and The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma, a book on the model called the Neuroeffective Relational Model.00:36Right now we're beginning chapter 7 of adult children of emotionally immature parents. Every two weeks I provide you with a recap with interpretation from a therapist who works with complex and developmental trauma point of view and occasionally I drop in little meditations or journaling exercises for you too.00:54Twice we meet live, once halfway through and once at the end which for this book will be at the end of August. And if you're here you also have full access to the archive so you can go back and listen to all the other chapters and all the other books whenever you'd like.01:08It also gets pushed through to all the podcast software so if you would like to listen on your phone, on your walk, you can listen on Spotify and Apple Music. So thanks for being here. I love getting to do this work and let's dive into chapter 7.01:27So this is a huge chapter and as always I will add in my little reminder to take things little bits at a time. All this time we've been kind of taking things in from an intellectual perspective but as we've been doing that we've been noticing ways that this might have impacted us in our childhood and ways that it might be impacting us now in our adult lives.01:46But what we're coming upon now is what really happens when we integrate all of this information. When we start to connect into the emotions, patterns, behaviors, thoughts, and body sensations that have been tied into to these roles that were foisted upon us, not because of our choice, but in these emotionally immature homes where we had no choice but to adapt, to stay in connection to our caregivers,02:12who themselves were not able to show up as parents, caregivers, and adults. In this chapter, Gibson is diving into what happens when we start to become aware of and observe these roles, these patterns that we've been in for a long time.02:29And this can create in many of us a sense of being out of control, a sense of failure, a sense of anxiety. There can be major grief and anger and fear that comes up with this because we are starting to recognize that we are not our patterns.02:47We are not this role that we have been thrust into. And if that is true, which part of us might feel like is a very good and exciting thing, another part of us can feel terrified. And so Gibson is exploring this idea of what is the true self.03:03And if you've been along with me for the other two books, you know that in NARM, this is referred to as the adult consciousness. In IFS, it is referred to as the self with a capital S. And we can think of it as the observer of everything that's happening, our true selves.03:21And this is an idea that has its core in many cultures, many therapeutic models, many ways of relating to the world of who we really are at our core. This is a huge shift and a huge question because what we're really asking is, who am I?03:38Who am I? If all of these thoughts and patterns and behaviors that I have done my whole life are not me, then who am I? And that can be incredibly earth shattering. And again, it's a push and a pull and a bind because of course, many of us are doing this work because we know we don't feel good.03:55We know we want something differently. But at the same time, a part of us desperately does not want something different. And that is why so many people will come into therapy talking about quote unquote self sabotaging when what they really mean is, I started to move toward what I want for myself or my true self or my true feelings.04:15And that was terrifying because a part of my brain encoded doing that as being a tiger. And so my brain protected me by using an old pattern of behavior to get me back into alignment. And that is not you self sabotaging because you think it's fun or because you just can't let yourself want anything.04:34That is a deeply protective road in your brain that all of these neural pathways have been created to keep you safe and keep you in connection with your emotionally immature parents and caregivers. So this question of who am I really is the ultimate question because we are ready to shed off these roles.04:53A part of us is, but the other part of us is still terrified. So what I want to tell you before we go. any further into this chapter is we can think of this not as creating a new us or not having to figure out from scratch who we are but more like we're taking off layers of armor.05:13So many of us since we were young children have been walking around wearing 10 or 15 suits of armor and it's heavy it's so heavy and we can't fully move and we can't be ourselves we can't play we can't be silly we can't do a cartwheel or whatever we might want to do but over time we could become so accustomed to wearing the armor that we don't even realize we're wearing it and so starting to take it off is like oh huh it's lighter maybe I kind of like that maybe I can walk a little more easily but another part of us is like oh absolutely not this is terrifying I feel so unprotected and unsafe because what we've learned is all along we must wear those protective suits of armor,05:53the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the internalizing, the intellectualizing, we must wear those to keep connection and make sure that our parents and those around us are okay. So many people when they come to this point and you may be here in real time feel an incredible bind and I want to reassure you that is normal, that is the old patterns in your brain mashing up with the new patterns you're creating,06:17the new questions that you are asking yourself. So please know this is not something you jump into in one chapter or one week or one month, this is a back and forth curiosity of who am I in this one tiny moment and then going back to the protective pattern.06:36And honestly this can be as small as, I use this example a lot because a lot of people can relate, you go to a coffee shop, you order a drink with milk because you have a dairy allergy, you watch them make it with dairy and then it is so terrifying to consider letting them know that you cannot drink that drink that you paid seven dollars and fifty cents for.06:57And that is a moment and if you haven't yet you could go back and read last week's written sub-stack, that is a moment where we get to practice something called a congruence experiment and when we are coming into our true self it's going to be a series of these experiments where we try on what do I want for myself versus what was safe in the past.07:18So in the past it wasn't safe to state your needs, it was terrifying, it was dangerous, it could upset the whole apple cart, your parent might withdraw from you for days or they might go off on you or a whole variety of things could happen in that slot machine effect of emotionally immature parents.07:33And so having needs now in the present, even something as quote unquote simple as letting them know they didn't make your drink correctly, sets off that survival pattern in the brain that makes it feel like our life is at stake.07:46When we're being curious about who am I really, what we call could do in that moment is try on a little experiment to say, well, I want to be a person who could say, you made my drink wrong, would you mind remaking it?07:59But right now it feels deeply unsafe. Could I pause in this moment in real time for 15 seconds or 30 seconds and notice that even though this feels deeply unsafe right now, as I look around the coffee shop and I feel my feet on the ground and I see what's happening, I can feel, maybe, that I actually am safer than I thought.08:19You don't have to jump to letting them know they made your drink wrong, though you can. What we're doing is we're building up the pathway that says, oh, it used to be true that I wasn't safe to have needs, but it's not true right now.08:31And that's just one little piece of armor off, one little piece of light coming in and shining onto the real you who gets to choose in real time whether you want to say it or not say it. It doesn't matter whether you actually say it to the barista, what matters is that you have the choice in the moment because you are connecting to that true self, that self with a capital S, and not the self who is trying to keep your emotionally immature parent okay.08:58So Gibson has a little exercise in this chapter that I'm going to talk you through about awakening to your true self. And what she offers is getting a pen and a piece of paper, folding the piece of paper in half down the middle.09:10So, on one half you write my true self, and on the other half you write my real self. And under your true self, you think back to yourself as a child, and what you might have been like before you started trying to make things okay for those around you, before you learned to criticize yourself instead of criticizing your parents, before you learned that having fun and playing and feeling good wasn't the right thing to do.09:35If you could be that person right now, what would your life be like? What would be different? How would you show up in your life if you had free time? Who would the people you engage with be and what would they like to do?09:50What would be your perfect day? On the other side, you can write my real self, and you can think about those things you had to develop as armor, maybe things that you notice in yourself now as you've been listening to this and doing your own work, the ways that you please others instead of yourself, the ways you say yes to everything even when you're exhausted, the way you take on more and more and more work to keep yourself busy,10:17the way you shove your own needs to the side, the way you intellectualize everything and analyze everything but never get to actually live in your life. Once you're done, you can place that paper somewhere safe and come to it a few days later and compare the two sides, and you can look at where are the ways you are connecting to your true self and where are the ways you notice the real self showing up.10:43map. I like to do a similar activity, but instead of different roles, I like to create a map of my brain, my own personal atlas. What are some of the major highways that I drive down in my brain? What are some of the things I do consistently and repeatedly?10:58And what are the little side roads that come off of that? Do I say yes all of the time when I mean no? What's happening down that road? What do I believe to be true? From that's that role self or that child consciousness self.11:13If I say no, what will happen? What is the body sensations that I feel like when I think about saying no? What are the emotions? When I start to flesh that out, I can see how deeply formed these roadways are and they all lead to safety.11:29And then I start to create a couple of new roadways, things I'm being curious about. Maybe something I'm being curious about is having a need. I draw that roadway and I consider what would it be like?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHi, tiny sparks readers and listeners! Two quick notes for you: first, a gift! I created this free ritual guide for another area of my work, Field Day, where I create tools and practices to help you engage more deeply with the world around you. As a supporter of my work, you can find it free here. Second, I started a Patreon! For years, people have asked me to create longer-form video, and I really have such a passion for teaching and helping people get unstuck from old patterns. If you’d like to join me (it’s free!), you can do so here. Thanks for being here!(0:00 - 1:06)Welcome back to our book club and read-along of adult children of emotionally immature parents. This week we're going to be diving into chapter six that goes further into that concept of internalizer and I'm really excited to dive into this chapter a little more because I bet a lot of you listening can relate to this chapter. I know that I certainly can and especially if you found me through my work talking about intellectualizers and how often they can get missed in therapy, you probably will really relate to this chapter.So this chapter really explores what it's like to grow up in an emotionally immature home and to turn inward. So we know that our protective survival strategies are our brain, nervous system, and body working together subconsciously, biologically, to determine what is going to keep us safe when there is a threat. And remember in this situation we're not talking just about physical safety but about a felt sense of safety which means maintaining connection with our parents and caregivers and those around us.(1:07 - 1:35)It's so important to remember that these are all protective strategies to keep us safe. It's hard to conceptualize as an adult because of course we want to say well I was safe but I always want to is our biological imperative to stay safe, to stay alive because we rely on them to keep us alive. So staying connected and feeling like we belong with them is our biological imperative.(1:36 - 6:46)So that is what our brain and nervous system are doing when they create these protective strategies and so it's not something that we get to consciously choose. We don't get to decide if we're going to be an externalizer or an internalizer. It's very similar to fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.When we're in an emergency situation, like we're in a dark alley and someone walks in behind us, we don't pause and think cognitively and intellectually. Should I fight this person? Should I run away? Should I try to make everything okay by being nice and sweet? Should I freeze? We're not deciding any of that consciously. It's decided in milliseconds subconsciously by our brain.So just remember that these strategies are similar in that regard and so if you are listening and you're thinking I don't really relate to the internalizer. I partially do but sometimes I'm an externalizer. Just know that all of this is your brain and nervous system wiring.It doesn't mean anything about you and what we're curious about is how they show up here in the present because that is where we have an opportunity to make a change because what happens for many of us who grew up in homes with adult emotionally immature caregivers is we become that person for ourselves. We become, we internalize that emotionally immature parent and then we treat ourselves the same way. We abandon our needs.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.We abandon our boundaries because we are criticizing ourselves all of the time because we don't feel like we can handle the emotions so we need to shut them down because we feel like we're not good enough and so we take care of everyone else's needs to make us feel like we are good enough. We do that as adults because those are the neural pathways that are laid down as children but that's what we're wanting to change and so that's what we're being curious about when we observe this. Not to criticize ourselves for noticing these behaviors but to say well I can really understand how these developed and I feel sad and I feel angry and I can be with the part of me that was afraid but I don't have to do those things anymore.Little bits at a time I can start to change my neural pathways. So Gibson defines internalizers as those of us who learn to turn our distress inward. So instead of acting out, you may remember from the last chapter, we withdraw, we overthink, we intellectualize, we manage, we go internal and try to manage everything all at the time.So we will appear very mature, very capable, very thoughtful. We're often told that we're literal little adults as children but what we don't see is that maturity is actually a part of the survival strategy. If we have emotionally immature parents and that feels dangerous to us then we will develop this sort of faux sense of maturity beyond our needs to try to manage, beyond our age is what I meant to say, to try to manage an environment that feels unmanageable and that feels unsafe.So when we grow up in these families where our emotional needs are not met, we don't just give up on that connection, we double down on trying to earn it, right? So we will become whatever our parent needs, we will become the most helpful person with no needs, we're very low maintenance, we're responsible, we're self-regulating because this is what is safe. This is how we're trying to get our needs met and stay in connection and then we don't just do this with our parents, we do this with our teachers, we do this with our peers and our friends. This is how we learn to navigate the world.We learn subconsciously and then eventually consciously that connection is very, very fragile, very, very fraught, that we're always at risk of kind of being voted off the island and thus we must earn it. We must do something to keep it. We must perform lovability.So again in NARM and in parts work, we recognize this the same way that these are protective parts of us, these are adaptive survival strategies. When we develop these, it's because we're actually very, very perceptive. Some part of us senses what other people need and so we learn to become hyper-vigilantly over-attuned.You've heard me say that word before, of sensing every single little shift in a room. And so as an adult, you might say to your partner, what's wrong? And they might say, nothing's wrong. And you might say, well, your tone of voice changed a little bit and now it seems like you're upset.And they're like, no, everything's totally fine. I don't think my tone of voice changed. But you were responding to some tiny little shift because you're so over-attuned and now your nervous system is saying something must be unsafe.You need to make it okay. Something must be unsafe. You need to make it okay.So our atlas in our brain is made up of all of these roads that say, here's how you minimize your needs. Here's how you minimize your emotions. Here's how you be as lovable as possible.And those are the pathways that are available to our brain, that our brain goes down most frequently. The other pathways of having needs, having boundaries, communicating, feeling emotions, being authentic, going after what we want, feeling that anything is possible. Those roadways either are very, very underdeveloped.(6:47 - 11:57)They're like little back rocky roads, or they're not developed at all. So it feels terrifying to us. Remember, if we try to go somewhere where the neural pathway doesn't exist, or the road is encoded as unsafe, our brain says, that's way too dangerous.I can't let you do that. And it will want to get us back to these other pathways. And it'll often do that by making us feel overwhelmed.We'll criticize ourselves to shut ourselves down. We'll turn our back on our needs. We'll tell ourselves we're not good enough, whatever we have to do to get us back to those safe pathways.That is how our brain is wired when we grow up in homes with a... So you could imagine that if you're an internalizer, the name of your atlas, all the maps and neural pathways in your brain would be entitled something like, if I want love, I need to be good. If I want love, I need to not have emotions. Connection is dangerous, and this is how I stay safe.And it's just an atlas full of these survival pathways. And it's incredibly heartbreaking to do this work, because oftentimes when we are children, we don't have the capacity to feel these emotions, to understand what's really happening. And we're often not supported in our homes to feel the emotions.And so we don't know that what's happening could make us feel angry, or sad, or afraid. Instead, it's just sort of this like, it's normal. This is what's normal.This is what my family does. So this must be what love is like. So when you are coming to terms with this as an adult, and this is why I always say to take this work so slowly, is that oftentimes all of those emotions that you didn't get to feel as a child, the anger, the fear, the sadness, and grief, will come up now.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comWelcome back to week 5 - so glad you’re here! Here’s my little reminder, as always, that it’s okay (and recommended!) to take this material slowly. Your brain might say, no, go faster, learn it all, do more! But in reality, making change requires us to titrate, i.e., take things one small step at a time. You have all the time you need. Wishing you tiny sparks of goodness this week!(0:00 - 6:40)Hello and welcome back to Book Club, where this week we're going to be diving into Chapter 5 in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. So I'm curious how you're finding things so far. If you want to leave a comment or reply to me here, I'd love to hear any of the things that you're learning and thank you for all the comments you've left and shared with me so far. I really love when this gets to feel like a community of us learning together. Because so much of healing from things like having emotionally immature parents requires us to have co-regulation. And for many of us, we may not have that. We may not have a person in our lives who can truly understand what it's like to grow up in an environment like this. So while we might not see each other, I hope we can feel the energy that we're all holding as we do this depthful exploration together. So you may remember from last time that we talked about the different ways that emotionally immature parents can show up. In Chapter 5, we're going to talk about two concepts that I find so important as we are learning to heal and rewire our brain after growing up in environments with these environmental failures. And that is the healing fantasy and the role self. So let's dive in. If you have been with me for a while through some of the other book clubs or some of my classes, you've heard me use the term survival strategy, protective mechanism, or parts. Specifically, protective parts. Those are all words for what happens when our environment can't meet our needs in a way that feels good to us. So whether our parent needs us to be perfect so that they can feel safe, they need us to not feel emotions because they don't know how to be with emotions, they need us to take care of their needs because they can't meet their own needs. All of those things create an environment where, as you've heard me say many times, it feels unsafe for a child. And I can't emphasize that enough that to our child brain, these environments create a bind where we have to choose between our caregivers or ourselves. And we rely on our caregivers to keep us safe and alive as children. So we will always choose our caregivers and we will split away from ourselves. In this book, she talks about it as coping. And I have nothing wrong with the word coping, of course, but I think a lot of times we hear the word coping mechanism and it can get used really negatively. Like, well, this is just a coping mechanism. You know, you're just coping and you need to stop doing that. And it's a little bit different from coping, so that's why I like to use the word survival strategy or protective mechanism. Maybe you've heard before of like pro-symptom therapy models. And what that means is we understand that all symptoms, all behaviors, all ways of talking to ourselves and treating ourselves that are negative are as a result of keeping ourselves safe and protecting us. It means they served us at some time in our life. So as we delve into this chapter, I invite you to hold that concept not of coping, but of safety and protection, that these neural pathways got laid down in your environment, in your life, to keep you safe, to help your brain and your nervous system make you feel safe, either by shutting things off, by pushing you into perfectionism, by pushing you into externalizing behaviors, which we'll dive into more. But all of this was in pursuit of trying to create safety in a situation where there were none. We know we can rewire these pathways, but it's really important that the language we use reflects the truth, which is that it was protective. So it's not just coping. It's actually a very, very smart setup by our brain and our survival system to keep us safe. Coping can make people think that it's a behavior that they should just be able to change. Rather than understanding, these are encoded as survival pathways in your brain. And your brain always values survival pathways over happiness or presence or whatever the other thing is. So just keep that in mind as we go further. So the author talks here about this concept of healing fantasy. And we can think about a healing fantasy of this subconscious belief or daydream or story that one day, somehow, we will finally get what we didn't get in childhood. Maybe that means we'll find the perfect partner. Maybe it means if we just work hard enough, we'll get the perfect job and we'll prove ourselves through success. We'll achieve enough that finally we'll be loved, cared for, and seen as good enough. And we can really see how protective this is, right? We are trying to make a story about what is happening and to protect ourselves from the terror, rage, and grief of what we don't have right now. And part of that healing fantasy involves us changing ourselves into something that people will finally love. So these healing fantasies, these stories that are all part of these protective survival strategies always start with this idea of, if only. If only I was beautiful enough. If only I was successful enough. If only I was funny enough. If only I was wealthy enough. And so it's very typical and common that children who grow up in environments like this will spend a lot of time in this healing fantasy space. And as part of the healing fantasy is where this role self develops. And this role self develops as a way to try to get attention or to try to find your place in your family. And remember, this is not manipulative. Children are not able to be manipulative. They are trying to get their needs met. So you can almost think of the role self as us trying to figure out our space in the game of our family. So we're constantly trying to figure out what are the roles? What are the roles? What do I need to do to get my needs met and stay safe in the situation? But remember, when you're in an environment with developmental ruptures and environmental failures, the roles are constantly changing and the rules are constantly changing.(6:41 - 7:43)So this role self is an identity that we're constantly trying to build to secure our place in the family. And that's where those protective survival strategies come from. If we figure out that our game piece is the caretaker, then we're going to develop a series of strategies, including shutting down our own needs, shutting down our own emotions, becoming hyper vigilantly over attuned and over aware of other needs, and really just creating a whole role where we convince ourselves that if we never have needs and we take care of everyone else's needs all of the time, then we will finally be loved. So we have the role self and we have the healing fantasy that if I fulfill this role, I will be loved. From an IFS perspective, and for those of you who are here for No Bat Parts, you may already be putting this together. These fantasies and these roles are often held by exile parts and the protector parts, the manager and the firefighters.(7:44 - 9:55)So that exile part that holds all of that emotion of what wasn't and what was too much that carry the memory of their unmet needs and that pin their survival on the someday solution. While the protective parts kind of build out around that of earning and fixing and performing of anything to kind of avoid that core wound. So we can see that same story here with the healing fantasy and the role self. And in NARM, again, we will frame this as survival strategies that develop into a survival style based on disconnection from ourself to build this sort of compensatory identity, right? So it's the 15 layers of armor that you don't even know that you're wearing. Like you're just so convinced that no, you just love taking care of everyone else's needs all of the time, because it's not safe to look underneath and see that that's just something that you've had to do. But underneath of that, truly, you would also like to have needs, but it's too terrifying to look at that. tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.So we stay in the role self, we stay in the survival strategy, we stay in the protective parts, not because there's anything wrong with us, but because our brain is following well-worn neural pathways that are encoded for safety. It's important to understand that these fantasies are not just mental, they are very much neural pathways in the brain. But there are other things associated with those neural pathways that live in the body and in our behaviors. They influence how we orient towards relationships. So we might lean in too quickly, we might find ourselves oversharing or getting into a relationship too quickly before we really know the person. Or we might feel really anxious in relationships, and we might freeze or fawn when someone tries to pull away. We might believe we have to constantly fix or soothe or save someone. Or we might avoid emotions and relationships entirely, because we feel that we're just going to be taken from again and again and again. And all of this can manifest as anxiety, tension, clenching your jaw, your chest being tight.(9:56 - 12:36)It can also manifest as not feeling anything, feeling numb, feeling like, well, I just don't really need emotions. So it's not just in the brain, these predictive patterns play out in different bodily and behavioral experiences. And so it can really convince us that what's happening is real. Because when our brain predicts something dangerous is going to happen, the body will respond as such. So then when we go to check in with our body, and we say, well, my heart's beating really fast, and I'm bracing and I'm really tense, this must actually be dangerous. It can reinforce that feedback loop. So what happens is that it's oftentimes in our adult lives, when we start to realize that we feel stuck, or unseen or disconnected, but we don't quite know why. Or we might think we know why, right? My intellectualizer will say, well, I know why I know all the facts behind all of this. But without really understanding that the knowing is different from the embodying and connecting to those old feelings, knowing that you had emotionally immature parents is a step on the path. But connecting with the part of you that experienced all of everything that that meant, the sadness, the fear, the anger, the disconnection, and coming into your adult self, who can be with that part of you, and who can start to take off those layers of armor. That's how we start to make change. And so it's oftentimes very scary in therapy, because people will say, well, if I'm not the person who takes care of everyone else's needs all the time, then who am I? Am I going to change my whole personality? If I'm not the person that knows everything and handles everything for everyone all of the time, then who am I? That is the role self. Oftentimes, our true self is hidden away behind all of these protective strategies. And we can't just go in and pluck it out. We have to go through a bit of an archaeological dig, an excavation process, where we're going through each of these layers, and touching little bits of your experience, and feeling what's different in the present. So feeling in the present little tiny moments where maybe you don't have to be hyper vigilantly over attuned to everyone all the time, and things can be safe. And by doing that little by little, we rewire new safety pathways in the brain that says, hey, maybe possibly, potentially, I'm okay, if I'm not over attuning to everyone's needs all of the time. Remember, the brain does not like to form new neural pathways.(12:36 - 16:12)It costs too much energetically, and it feels unsafe. But little bits at a time, we can do that, not because we dislike the role self. We understand how protective these roles have been, how much they kept us safe. But we also know that that's not what we want for ourselves here in the present. Remember that because the brain resists this, the work will feel very difficult. It will bring us back into our patterns, because anything that contradicts that role that we took on to protect ourselves, the brain will view as dangerous. So again, if we identify as a caretaker, but we then need support, or someone's helping us, or someone's giving us something, the brain's going to say, danger, danger, danger, this is a tiger. And it's going to make us feel actively dangerous. And so we might push the person away, or we might feel really embarrassed or shameful and not let ourselves accept the help. That's not because there's anything wrong with us. That's because that role self is part of that deeply protective brigade in the brain that says, hey, we can't let her, we can't let our body do that. We can't let our body accept help, because then we could be hurt. So how do we get her back on track? We can criticize her, we can make her feel shame, we can make her body feel really tight and tense. And that'll get her back into that protective braced state. And so those are those protective patterns that many of us are experiencing all the time on a day to day basis.

Hi, tiny sparks reader! This week’s book club read-a-long is free to listen to (or read the transcript). I had some feedback that timestamps are useful, so I’m trying that out this week, let me know if that’s helpful or not! Thanks for being here and making this work sustainable for me. It truly means so much to me to get to do this work. Have others things you’d like to see me explore? Leave a comment below or reply to this email and let’s get into it!Trisha 00:00:01 Hello and welcome back to our Read Along. So excited to get to dive into chapter four and five. This week together. I think these are really rich chapters and thank you all so much. You could come to our live meeting. And for those of you who watched the recording and sent me your messages, I love getting to hear your experience as we move along. I've had so much depth in this book that is incredibly helpful, because I think they name things that many of us sensed as children, but never were able to have language to, and this book really provides some structure around that, and I think it's so important for those of us, too, that have always sensed something inside of us that didn't feel right, but didn't feel like we actually had trauma. And so understanding these environmental ruptures, environmental failures, these attachment ruptures really helps us understand ourselves more in the present and observe where some of these predictive patterns and survival strategies in our brains may have developed, and it helps us be more curious about our experience versus criticizing ourselves.Trisha 00:01:07 You know, oftentimes we do want things to make sense. And that's not just an intellectualizing pursuit. Understanding ourselves is a very important part of being able to connect to our agency. And so when we can start to understand how our patterns that we criticize ourselves for here in the present, we're actually survival strategies and adaptive patterns that served us in environments with emotionally immature parents. Then we can start to feel more neutral and eventually, maybe even more compassionate toward ourselves. So we know that not all emotionally immature parents look the same, but what they share is that deep emotional unreliability or inconsistency. And that's actually one of the most challenging things for our nervous system is to have inconsistency and unreliability. It's a slot machine effect, right? You never know when you pull the lever. Which parent you're going to get. And that creates a constant sense of hypervigilance or need to be alert in our system. So whether our parents were volatile or passive and not engaged with us, or whether they were intrusive, trying to be involved in every single aspect and control our lives, or if they were distant and completely uninterested in our lives.Trisha 00:02:24 What we know is that parents who operate from these places themselves have these deeply unresolved emotional needs and are acting out their survival strategies. And so these things can really often pass generationally as parents who have these unresolved ruptures and attachment failures try to use their children to meet their own needs. So let's talk about the four types of emotionally immature parents we have emotional, driven, passive, and rejecting. And so while they may look different on the surface. Again, we know that these. These parents are operating from their survival strategies that are often engaged in egocentricity. So they have difficulty feeling into the experiences of people around them, especially their children. Low empathy or a really difficult time connecting with other feelings. Blurred boundaries. So either very hard boundaries which keeps them very distant or very enmeshed. Boundaries where you don't get to feel any separation or individuation from your parent at all, which is a key part of healthy development and often an inability to tolerate frustration, you know? So in nervous system terms, they are very often not in their window of tolerance at all, or their window of tolerance is so narrow you can think of it as a thimble.Trisha 00:03:49 And being a parent requires some level of window of tolerance and a larger capacity. No, not all the time. We're not here to create unrealistic expectations for parents, but children will have big emotions and children's will make mistakes, and children will try on their autonomy in ways that don't make sense. And that's appropriate. That is how children are meant to behave. And so when a parent, for whatever reason, cannot show up for those things, that's where these attachment ruptures get created. And so having a parent who doesn't have the capacity for healthy emotional self-regulation means that they are trying to manage this dysregulation, this distress in these really reactive or shut down ways. So emotional parents, you could guess by the name are often ruled by their feelings. And so they might really swing between being overly involved in their child's life, that enmeshed style where you don't get to feel separate at all, and then a really abrupt withdrawal. Right. So again, there's that instability where you never know which parent you're going to get.Trisha 00:04:59 And that creates that hypervigilance in our system. And if we're feeling that hypervigilance in our system of never knowing, is our parent going to overreact to this or withdraw entirely? Well, can you see how very quickly you would learn to shut down your emotional experience, because you know that having any need or having any emotion or even making any mistakes is a prime time for your parent to overreact or to pull back from you. And that is the origin for many of us of these protective adaptive strategies of intellectual ization, people pleasing and perfectionism that served us very well with a parent who wasn't able to manage their own emotional experience. They weren't able to stay with their own distress. And so this often also sets children up for the role reversal. So maybe you've heard the term parental ification where the child becomes the one managing the parents experience. They're the therapists, they're a fixer, or they learn to be that ghost. To just disappear and not need or want anything ever. Because they learn. Child learns subconsciously, and then maybe consciously as they grow up, that their safety as a child depends on being hyper attuned or over attuned to their parents emotions.Trisha 00:06:17 And so when you have to be attuned to your parents emotions all of the time for your safety, of course you would develop this anxiety, this hypervigilance, or even the quote unquote fawn response, right? The people pleasing the peacemaker. But what this does is it cuts us off from our own experience of anger and sadness and grief and needs and fun and all the things we should be experiencing as children. Then we have the driven parent and, you know, driven parents often appear externally as very successful, very competent, very admirable, but they are profoundly disconnected from their own emotional experience and thus their children's as well. and so driven parents are. Often they give their love based on performance. So it's very, very conditional. And so of course we can see from the driven parent how that would develop a child who feels like they constantly need to be performing to get their parents love. And there's a lot of control in this style of parenting, because they are trying to act out their own experiences onto their children.Trisha 00:07:26 And so they learned as children. Our parents learned as children to get around their own emotional neglect by just trying really hard. And so then they want their children to do the same thing. So they couldn't possibly offer their children unconditional acceptance or love. Instead, they try to control and they hold love as a reward only for only for doing well. And so in another way, this creates a deep hypervigilance and anxiety and frustration in a child's experience of never feeling like they're good enough. And I can't emphasize enough that not feeling like you are good enough as a child for your parents. Love creates a lack of safety. You've heard me talk about the felt sense of safety a million times. This is where it develops. We don't have a felt sense of safety that the person we rely on to keep us safe in the world is going to do so unless we perform. That's terror. And that terror carries through with us to adulthood. Whether we're consciously aware of it or not. You know, maybe you're the person who, when you get a message from your boss that says, hey, can we talk at 2 p.m.? You're panicking for five hours because you're trying to figure out a list of all the mistakes you could have made, and all the way down to thinking you're going to get fired and you're going to lose your home and lose everything, that's that over attuned hypervigilance to making a mistake.Trisha 00:08:49 And then we have the passive parent. And this sometimes can confuse people because a passive parent can be very Affectionate, very kind, very fun. They can even be engaged with their children and emotionally available. But with the passive parent, it's only available up to a point. So if things get intense emotions or experiences or whatever it is, they will withdraw. They will hide their head in the sand and so they don't offer boundaries or guidance or containment. As you've heard me talk about being very important to child development. They can't offer any of those things. They can offer fun and playfulness, but they can't offer true, connected, authoritative, boundary loving parenting. So they rely on their children to be fun and playful and meet their needs for a companion. It's really another form of parental fixation, but they don't want to deal with any of the other experiences that that children need. Right. The children need to have help, to have boundaries, to make mistakes, all of those things. But it's not possible to get that from passive parents.Trisha 00:09:59 So passive parents themselves are likely in a freeze response or a fawn response. And you may have heard the term before. I've learned helplessness. And learned helplessness is a survival strategy where it's like, I will just keep myself safe by never trying for anything, never putting myself in the line of fire. And I'll stay completely disconnected from my own agency, which is sort of developmental trauma at its core. Right. But in the child, this creates a real developmental confusion and a real sense of disconnect. So the child will never feel protected or that they were worth protecting, or that they are worth showing up for. And so they will become an adult who rationalizes other people's bad behavior, minimizes their own needs, and adapts to whatever it is without recognizing that they have agency to change. And so they might end up staying in jobs that are horrible. They might end up staying in abusive relationships or making excuses for a partner who cheats on them, not because they are bad or wrong, but because they never learned that they were a person who was worth standing up for, or that they can stand up for, or that they can stand up for themselves or their own feelings.Trisha 00:11:18 And then finally, we have the rejecting parent. And rejecting parents are those parents who are very shut down and pulled back and very, very disconnected from their child. And so oftentimes children who have a rejecting parent experience, that very overt detachment. And this is this really creates a strong shutdown in the child where they feel like their very existence is a problem. And so it's not just having needs, but it's also having emotions or even existing That seems to create some sense of irritation, or even disgust or revulsion, or pushing away from the rejecting parent, and a child who grows up in that environment learns to disappear. And this is where a deep, deep sense of shame comes in. Because if you remember some of my past work, I don't necessarily view this kind of shame as an emotion, but rather as a process to shut down other emotions. So when you live in an environment with a rejecting parent, you will be experiencing, consciously or subconsciously fear, unsure ness, grief, anger, frustration, confusion all at the time.Trisha 00:12:33 And that is way too much for a child to feel that their very existence is a burden. And so deep shame comes in to shut all that down and freeze us and say, well, there's just something wrong with me. And so I need to create a different identity. And so we do. We shut everything down and we create a sort of faux identity, and that faux identity can be just dissociating all of the time. And so living inside of our brain, disconnecting. But in a functional freeze way where we're still functioning in our life, we may feel nothing at all. This can create a deeply intellectualized part who has shut everything down in their experience and only exists in thoughts, analyzing, and performance. A person who grows up in this environment may have a very difficult time with intimacy or connection with others and may be very, very, very hyper independent because what did they learn? If I need anyone, I will be hurt. I don't have a right to have needs or have a right to exist.Trisha 00:13:34 So instead I will just hyper function all of the time and then I will never be hurt and I can handle everything. Of course, in real life, oftentimes it's not just one thing. And so emotionally immature parents are often blends of these parts. Right. And so based on the situations that are happening in the world, in the home, at work. Parents can show up in different ways. Maybe they're passive and under stress. They become rejecting. And so it just intensifies the confusion and the disconnection that happens. And all of these things exist on a spectrum, right? Like some parents may be very far down the spectrum into even being abusive, and some may be very unaware and undeveloped and just not able to connect with that. And so again, we're not pathologizing, but instead we're here to recognize how these patterns in our parents impact the development of ourselves, because we want to support you little tiny bits at a time in recognizing that you are not defective. There is nothing wrong with you.Trisha 00:14:41 The strategies or experiences that you have in your adult life adapted to your parents. They exist because you adapted to your environment and to your teachers, and to your school environment, to your extended family. But who do we spend the most of our time with? And it's often our parents. And so these strategies are not because there is something wrong with you, but they were adaptive within the system you grew up in. And why it's so important to recognize some of these things is, again, not because we want to sit in therapy or in our journal or whatever it is, and just blame our parents over and over and over again, but rather so that we can connect here in the present to what's happening now, what we want for ourselves and what's getting in the way of that. So if you want to be more emotionally present in your life, if you want to connect more deeply and be able to have more intimacy with people, if you want to feel your emotions and not have to analyze everything all of the time, not have to be perfect, and not have to take care of everyone else's needs, you can't strongarm your way into that.Trisha 00:15:48 You can't become your own rejecting or driven or passive or emotional parent. Many of us try that and we reject ourselves over and over again where we say, okay, now I'm going to take care of myself. I'm going to set this new routine. I'm going to make this spreadsheet. I'm going to take care of myself so well, I'm going to do it every single day. Or now I'm going to have boundaries. Finally, finally, I'm going to have boundaries with this person who has been hurting me. And so we set out to do it, and maybe we do it a little bit, but then we don't do it and we become our own rejecting parent where we push ourselves away and say, you never do what you say you're going to do. You never actually show up. You never can actually set boundaries. And it's because you are a loser. You don't try hard enough or there's something wrong with you at your core. And of course, we also have these subconscious ideas that if I have needs, I'll lose everyone around me.Trisha 00:16:44 If I show my true emotions, I won't be loved. People only like me when I'm calm. People only like me when I'm perfect. People only like me when I'm taking care of everything. If people knew the real me, they wouldn't like me. They wouldn't love me. Those states, those thoughts, emotions and body sensations that go along with those states are implicit. So what that means is they are below our conscious awareness to recognize that we are saying those things to ourselves. So it's not conscious that we're saying those things to ourselves. It's automatic. It's unconscious. And it happened through repeated exposure. Right. So that happens through exposure to these emotionally immature parents. So when you grow up in an environment like this and you're exposed over and over and over again to this idea that there is something wrong with you, that you are defective and that you are the problem, all of that gets encoded in our brains Atlas or GG, if you will, As true facts as roadways, big, well-maintained roadways that say we are the problem.Trisha 00:17:58 And if we are not controlling ourselves all of the time, or managing ourselves all of the time, or criticizing ourselves all of the time, or trying harder all of the time, then we will risk losing our connection and thus being voted off the proverbial island, if you will. If you've ever watched survivor. All of that goes into our implicit learning below. Our conscious awareness. Just like riding a bike, when you get onto a bike, you don't have to think about it. You just do it. You do it subconsciously. You don't tell yourself, now push down on the right pedal. Now push down on the left pedal. Now grab the brakes. All of that is encoded in your implicit memory. And so because the implicit memory is unconscious below our awareness, that's why it's very difficult to change because our brain is taking us down those pathways without us even being aware. Where can we change that? Yes. Hope is not lost. We can take what is unconscious and make it conscious.Trisha 00:18:57 And then we can start to build new roadways in our internal GPS or in our app list. But right now, when we flip through our atlas, so many of those roadways in there are formed around these environments we grew up in with emotionally immature parents. And so they're all roads that say, here's how to not be a problem. Here's how to shut yourself down, here's how to intellectualize your emotions, here's how to criticize yourself to make sure that you don't, you know, have emotions or put yourself out there or think you're a worthwhile person. And when we try to flip to the pages that say, here's how to care for yourself, here's how to have needs, here's how to go after what you want, here's how to let yourself be imperfect. The pages are blank, and this is all part of our adaptive survival strategies. As children, we made the best choices possible with the information and resources available. You found the role that was expected of you, and you built a pattern, and you developed adaptations that helped you stay tethered to the people you depended on and to help keep the people you depended on.Trisha 00:19:59 Be as calm as possible, as regulated as possible. That was your role. But now you may find that these patterns are getting in your way or limiting you, and you might find now you are your own rejecting or dismissive parent. And again, that's because of these implicit patterns that you're bumping into in your brain, because those are the roadways that are available for you. And this is why, as we go through this book, we're observing, we're being curious. We're not trying to force change, even if a part of us wants to, because we know that we can build new neural pathways. This is the idea of self remapping that I'm always talking about. But it's not through blame or shame or pressure. It's through noticing and observing. And by doing that, we take the implicit and we make it explicit, and then we can start to make changes and update our data model and change our predictive patterns. We can update the map, but we can't do that through strong arming ourselves. We do it through observation and little tiny bits at a time, recognizing when a part of us that developed at an earlier time in our life is still driving the car, if you will, in our brain, and working to understand that part of us build trust with that part of us, build a felt sense of safety here in the present with our adult self so that we can be the one driving the car.Trisha 00:21:29 I want to emphasize again that this process has to take little bits at a time, because trying to form new neural pathways is hard, and it's exhausting, and it takes a lot of energy. And so I'm going to end with just giving you a little example. So when I was in elementary school, I couldn't see well, I had very, very poor eyesight, but no one really knew that. I had very poor eyesight until I was around 8 or 9 years old. And so a lot of my early years in elementary school were formed around not being able to see very well, not being able to see what was happening in the board, not being able to see more than about a foot in front of my face. And so when I learned to write handwriting, you know, cursive and print was still happening when I was in school. It was written on that basis that I couldn't fully make out what was happening on the board, or I couldn't fully make out the shapes that were in front of me.Trisha 00:22:19 And so now, as an adult, of course, now I wear contacts, I wear glasses, I can see. But now, as an adult, my handwriting that was learned as a young child has become implicit. So it's below my conscious awareness. And because implicitly, I learned it when I couldn't see well and make out the shapes well, I have really, really bad handwriting. It's not because here in the present, I'm not trying. It's because my implicit learning around handwriting happened when I couldn't see very well. And so thus what I learned was not good handwriting. If I want to, here in the present, write legibly for other people to read, I can do so. But it takes a lot of effort. And we don't use handwriting much anymore, so I don't have to try very hard. But if I want to sit down and write even a one page note to someone and I want to make it readable, it's really hard. It's not just that my hand gets sore.Trisha 00:23:11 It's that it's hard for my brain because I have to try to change an implicit learning and make it conscious and form every letter with intention. And that's just handwriting. That's nothing around my survival. So imagine you here in the present, trying to change your implicit survival learnings by noticing them and making them conscious and making them explicit. You can understand why it's not so simple to just snap our fingers and start having needs, or start having boundaries. So I hope you can give yourself a little bit of neutral understanding or curiosity right in this moment about how the things you dislike about yourself or want to change here in the present where things that served you in the past, and maybe just for a moment, you have 1% more understanding of yourself. And maybe that starts to form a new roadway on your map that you are okay and worthy just as you are. Now, I know we plan to also do chapter five today, and I think that was just too much. I thought we could get through two chapters because they were both quite short, but chapter four was a really important chapter, and understanding these types and how they impact us, I think is really, really important.Trisha 00:24:21 So next time we'll talk about chapter five that talks about how how we react to emotionally immature parents. And we did talk about that a little bit today. But we'll dive into that more next time, because I think the internalizing versus externalizing paradigm is really important to understand. So thanks for being here with me. And thanks for supporting me in being able to take things slowly. And I'm wishing you some little tiny moments of observation this week. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and happy Friday! This week, I’ve recorded a little bonus for the book club - a guided visualization to explore what might be coming up as we navigate reading this book together. Please know that visualizations are powerful practices - when we practice them, a part of our brain responds as if they’re actually happening. So, it’s crucial to honor your instincts as you listen. Honor your experience by taking the time to pause, step away, and take it one little moment at a time. It will be here for you when you’re ready, and there isn’t any rush. Part of how we deal from chronic relational mistattunment and environmental ruptures is by learning to observe, listen, and respond to our experiences here in the present. I know there may be a part of you that wants to rush to the end, and that part is welcome here, too. Maybe, just for this moment, you can invite that part of you to rest, to pause, holding the knowing that while that part has kept you safe in the past, maybe, possibly, potentially, in this moment, it’s okay and safe to slow down. Be gentle to yourself, be neutral when gentleness isn’t available. Know that if you can’t be gentle or neutral in this moment, it’s okay. Just as soon as you can, return to finding that felt sense of safety, even if it’s small. Gentleness and neutrality will come again.If you’d like, I included some journaling questions for you to explore after the visualization. Take good care of yourself on the journey 🩵

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHappy Friday, book club! My first 2 minutes of intro got eaten by my editing software, but suffice to say, I’m so happy to be doing this exploration with you, and I encourage, as always, to take it slowly (slower than that - soooo slow you start to get annoyed). Please feel free to comment below or reply with any questions, curiosities, or observations! Dive in to the episode or check out the transcript below. Wishing you a gentle weekend ahead!So in chapter one, we started by talking about how emotionally immature parents affect their adult children's lives. And I always really like to emphasize, as you heard me talk about two weeks ago, that sometimes people have difficulty recognizing that this was their experience. And of course, that's just fine. It can take time to come to terms with what happened from an adult place.But it's important to remember that it's not always as stark as some of these examples. Sometimes it can be those environmental ruptures that you've heard me talk about many times where you just didn't fully feel seen in your experience. Your parents themselves never got the chance to develop their emotion and And so while you may not have said, I had a traumatic childhood, there was a way in which your child self experienced those ruptures. In this chapter, we're going to talk about recognizing the emotionally immature parent.And as always, we want to take this topic gently because it can be both illuminating, where we might have moments where it's like, wow, I'm This makes so much sense why I feel the way I do now or why I felt the way I did then or why I developed some of these patterns and habits and relationships that I see in my adult life now. And so it can be really validating and illuminating, but it can also be painful and bring up grief and anger and all that old fear that we might have felt as children if we recognize some of this in our parents. So we remember that we're not here to create blame or place blame because that in itself can be activating to feel that we're here to attack your parents or you may recognize some of this in yourself as a parent, not because you are bad or wrong, but because you are still learning and developing. And so our curiosity here is self-understanding, self-connection, and building a felt sense of safety here in the present with our self, as IFS calls it, or with our adult consciousness, as Narm calls it.And in that way, we can feel and metabolize some of the experiences we had as children. that may still be impacting us now through that predictive patterning and that data modeling in our brain. And as we metabolize that and let it move through, then we can be more and more present in our lives in an adult way and move more toward what we want for ourselves and feel more connection and have needs and have emotions. And don't worry, we'll take it one step at a time, but that's really what we're curious about.So as we're diving in, Maybe you can take a moment and just feel your breath or feel where your body is right now in the world and just knowing that this material can be challenging to learn or to take in and that's okay. For many of us, it's hard to see our parents clearly because to a part of our brain, it can feel disloyal to think about our parents this way or to admit that they weren't fully emotionally capable of giving us what we need. And in our brain, when we start to feel that disloyalty, even though we know somewhere in our adult consciousness self that our parents are complex people and it's okay to notice the way that they couldn't meet us where we are, in our predictive patterns, in our child consciousness, in our protective parts... A survival part is going to come up and say, it's not okay to think badly about my parents.And so we might start to feel some fear or anxiety come in or some distraction come in where we're like, no, don't look away. Or we might feel some of that intellectualization coming in, right? The part might come in that wants to disconnect you from feeling the emotions of recognizing that your parents weren't capable of giving you what you needed fully or feeling the fear of recognizing that. It would make sense that a part of you would want to intellectualize and figure it out logically and distance yourself from the pain.Or maybe there's even a perfectionist part that wants to come in as you're reading this book or taking this in and say, well, yeah, but you were a difficult child. What could you have done better to make them understand? these are our adaptive protective survival strategies they are patterns and neural pathways in our brain that developed based on the early environments we grew up in not just our caregivers but our teachers and our peers and the world around us so if these strategies come up as we're exploring this it's okay to notice them and notice the way that they might try to protect you from something here in the moment, from the vulnerability and the confusion, as is laid out so well in this book here, that comes from being unseen. So if you notice right in this moment, some internal resistance, maybe it's okay to just name that for yourself right now, a neutral curiosity.We're just documenting what's happening. We're not trying to do anything with it right now. We are just noticing that. So as this chapter moves forward and encourages us to hold this capacity of being curious, but being with ourselves through the difficult emotions that might come up here, she talks a little bit about the goal of of gaining self-confidence by knowing the truth of your own story and even that word self-confidence or knowing your own story can be activating so again i just want to encourage you to take what works for you from this book and leave the rest for now more of it might come in later there is an exercise here to assess your parents emotional immaturity This is another one of those things that can be deeply insightful, but deeply activating.So you can take your time and you can have a look if you'd like to. But knowing that you don't have to take this all in right now, but some signs that your parents may not have been able to be with their own emotions or yours. is maybe they overreacted to minor things like you spilling something. Or maybe as you were growing up, when you started having your own ideas or asking questions, they would get irritated by that.Or maybe your parents were very inconsistent, your caregivers. Sometimes they were there, sometimes they weren't. Sometimes they were connecting, sometimes they weren't. Or they were there for you until you became upset.And then they tried to shut that down. So these are just some of the things that can demonstrate some emotional immaturity. Why? Because your parents were likely in their own protective strategies too.And that landed onto you. You know that emotional immaturity or really what we can think of it as is an inability to be with emotions. We don't have the capacity for it. It is a protective survival strategy where when a big emotion comes in, our body and brain just shut it down.And whether it moves to the intellectual, you know, where they send you away, or they just try to meet your emotions with logic, or the irrational, where they yell and get upset at you, or they go away. What we know is that this experience, this survival strategy, often echoes unmet generational needs. That it's likely that your parents and caregivers maybe had parents or caregivers who also lacked that vulnerability, that emotional connection, that presence, and that self-awareness. So it's likely that these survival strategies pass through in generations until people are able to do the work to recognize them.which is what you're doing right now. And it's a really brave and courageous thing to do. It's very typical that emotionally immature parents will experience traits like rigidity or impulsiveness or low stress tolerance, and that the way they respond to you or the world is much more subjective rather than it is objective. And again, that is because they are trying to manage their own survival responses at any given time.But as children, we can recognize as adults, right? We can say, okay, I get that. Maybe I even recognize some of those things in myself. Like maybe I have a lot of rigidity and a low stress tolerance.We can understand that for us, those are survival strategies. Intellectualizing, like disconnecting from our emotions, it's a survival strategy. And so it's likely the same for your parents or caregivers. But the difference is, as a child, you don't have the cognitive capacity to recognize that.you rely entirely on your caregivers to be okay to show up for you and to model for you so that you can develop and learn how to do things and when you get this inconsistency this hot and cold or this idea that in some way you are causing a problem for those around you just by being a kid or having emotions or making a mistake That creates this real disconnect in your brain where your brain says, I don't think my parents are taking care of me in a way that feels good. This is all subconscious, of course. Kids don't think at this level. But it's really scary to feel that way.And so then we have to choose between being on our parents' side or being on our side. And we will choose being on our parents' side nine times out of ten because that is what feels safest to our survival system. And then, of course, those patterns carry through to adulthood as those major survival strategies. Not being able to attune to ourselves and over-attuning to others.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Not being able to have autonomy or agency, but getting mad when we don't have autonomy or agency. Intellectualism, people-pleasing, we know those things. And there's some stories in here about children who had really unpredictable and volatile parents and whose parents demanded emotional caretaking from her. And so it creates this role reversal.And maybe you've heard the term parentification, where the child is put into the parental role, where they have to take care of their parents' emotions or they have to be their parents' confidants. And that creates, within a child... A survival response. There's a pattern here, right?The brain and the nervous system will respond as if something dangerous is happening. And so the nervous system will have this persistent hypervigilance, this watching out for what's going to come next, and I need to make sure to make things okay before my parent gets upset. And that manifests in our adult life, maybe, for example, through anxiety, through needing to make sure everyone else's needs are met and not being allowed to have your own needs, being on edge, even if someone's a little bit upset, even if they're upset in a way that makes sense. But again, it can be really difficult to recognize it because in this story, for example, she's talking about how when she was an adult, her father decided she needed a porch swing, didn't ask, didn't check in with her if she wanted a porch swing.But of course, there is that sort of self-centeredness that comes from an emotionally immature parent where their feelings are the only ones they can tolerate. And so he shows up at her townhouse with this huge porch swing he made himself and had it delivered to her deck where it took up all the space that she used to have to kind of have her little outdoor space. So you can see how that can be like, oh, well, your dad was doing something nice for you. He made this porch swing.And I mean, he just really wanted you to have something nice for your house. Why are you being so ungrateful? Maybe you've heard something like that before from your parents or caregivers or your grandparents, or maybe you've even had like an aunt or uncle or a friend say something like that to you. And it's not about the gift itself, but it's about miss attuning to and misunderstanding.and disconnecting from his daughter's experience rather than his own experience of needing to make this thing for her because she's in her house and she's going to enjoy it. And that's what he wants to do. And so while it may sound simple, that's a big demonstrative act that shows us some of that emotional immaturity where he is not able to connect to his adult self of this is my daughter. What does she want and need? Not just do what I want and need.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back for our Tiny Sparks read-along.I'm so excited that you're here.If you've been here with me for No Bad Parts, the Internal Family Systems book, and Healing Developmental Trauma, the NARM book, then welcome back.If you're here for the first time, then welcome.I'm so excited to dive into the book adult children of emotionally immature parents, how to heal from distant, rejecting, or self-involved parents.If this is your first time here, I'll just give you a little bit of background of how our read-along works.Many people read the book along with me, and we usually take one chapter every two weeks so that we have time to really dig into it and sit with and be curious and track our responses to it.While it might seem slow, we know that the nervous system and brain prefer things to go much slower than our quick, quick, fix-everything selves might feel.So it's normal if a part of you feels like you want to speed up, and I invite you to just be curious and notice those parts of you.If you read faster than the book club goes, that's wonderful. It gives you an opportunity to come back and review.Many people also are a part of our read along and don't read the book at all. They listen to these podcast episodes that I create to allow them to have the space to just process what's happening.So if you feel like you don't have the bandwidth to read right now, or maybe you don't have the space to kind of read as quickly as you might like to, then know that it's perfectly fine to be here and not be reading the book at all.We have one episode together every two weeks where I dive into the chapter, share a little bit about it, and share my perspective from a therapist.And often it is a little bit different than the books that we are reading together because I practice from a model that centers around the idea of developmental trauma, relational trauma, and attachment trauma, and agency.And developmental trauma is going to feature very heavily in this book, where the idea is, this is for people who grew up with parents who were emotionally immature, which oftentimes may not be considered a trauma in our society, but creates significant ongoing environmental ruptures.AKA the feeling or experience that our environment can't meet us or care for us or provide for us or meet our needs when we are children. And that, no matter what you might think as an adult, is often experienced as a trauma for children.So while we dive into this book together, we'll be reviewing the book, but we'll also be going a little bit deeper into some of my thoughts and experiences around that. As always, you're more than welcome to send any questions via email.You can comment on the Substack posts, or you can reply to the posts and that will come to my email as well. I love when you send questions because it gives me an opportunity to know what you'd like to know more about We'll have two live meetings together where we hop on a Google Meet video session and I answer your questions and we talk and we explore and we connect.It's okay if you can't join those live because they are recorded, so no worries, we're all in different time zones.Our first meeting will be on Saturday, May 24th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. So that allows our European folks to join and hopefully our U.S. folks to join. I know it's a little early for Pacific and may not work for some of our Australian friends, but not to worry, it will be recorded. And we'll try to make sure to do the other one at a different time. So 10 a.m. Eastern Time, Saturday, May 24th, will be our first live meeting.One thing I appreciate about this book is that it's really written at a level for anyone to understand. So it's not as clinically complex as the first book we read, Healing Developmental Trauma.That being said, it's normal when exploring things like this that it can bring up unexpected feelings. especially if it's describing something that you experienced, or maybe something that you didn't even know you experienced.So as always, I encourage you to take it slow, to slow down. And if you notice something feels activating or triggering or upsetting, even if you don't know why, it's an opportunity to pause.Our cognitive brain, and especially those of us who are intellectualizers, may feel like we want to override that experience and push on to finish the chapter or whatever it is.But know that this is an opportunity to practice tracking and connecting to yourself in a way that maybe your parents or caregivers never tracked or connected to your experience, your emotions, and what you were feeling in your body.So as we dive into this chapter, the author, Dr.Lindsay Gibson, gives us this way of understanding what emotional loneliness is and what it's like to experience that in childhood and with parents who aren't able to be aware of us or be with our emotions and it's really important to know that this might be an experience that you had and didn't even know that you had because oftentimes parents who struggle with emotional connection and are emotionally immature may present as very quote-unquote normal They may have taken care of your needs in many ways, like your physical health and meals, and maybe they took you to sports or activities that you wanted to do, but they weren't able to be fully present to you emotionally.This can be a really confusing experience because oftentimes adults who experience this feel guilty or bad for thinking that they experienced something traumatic.And a lot of times they'll tell me, well, other people had it way worse than I did.And I understand that there is a way in which we can be compassionate toward other people that had different trauma.But it's important to understand that having parents and caregivers who aren't able to be present to our emotions and to be present to our experience and to see us. does feel like life threat to us.And so as she's describing it here, that there's this gut feeling of emptiness and the sense of shame for having needs or having emotions, that that carries through for us.And so if you've joined me here because you've heard me talk a lot about intellectualization, people who use intellectualization as a survival strategy or a protective mechanism often had emotionally immature parents or parents who were not able to be present to their emotions.And maybe that's because your parents' parents weren't able to be present to their emotions.But imagine you're a person who learned it wasn't safe to have emotions and you stay very intellectualizing and very rationalizing.And then you have a child and children by their nature have all range of emotions and they look to their parents for regulation and to learn how to be with those emotions.Well, when you have a parent who's emotionally immature, They're not able to do that.And so they may pull away when you have an emotion, they may send you away to your room or pull back or punish you, or they may just kind of ignore it.And what happens is over time, we learn that having an emotion, having an emotional need, Wanting to be connected feels dangerous because we feel our parents pull back from us.And we perceive that as a child as a dangerous thing because we rely on our parents to take care of us.This is a theme we've noticed through all the books we've explored, how much our perception as children impacts the way the pathways in our brain works.None of this is to say you have the worst parent in the world or the best parent in the world, but it's to notice how our parents' patterns impact us. and how those form predictive patterns because our brain works much like a data model.So it takes in that data from our childhood and then it uses it in the present to predict what's going to happen.So if we grew up with parents who were emotionally immature, and we form these patterns of intellectualization or not having needs or having deep shame around being seen or having needs, then our capacity to have emotional intimacy and deeply connect with other people will be ruptured.And that's because our experience of that as a child was a lack of safety or an environmental rupture that didn't feel safe to be attuned to.So then it doesn't feel safe to attune to ourselves.So when we meet someone who maybe can attune to us or can see us, a friend or a teacher or a potential romantic partner or even a therapist, instead of it feeling good, it can feel really threatening and scary.And that's because our brain is using that old data from our childhood to say, this is not a safe experience.Remember, oftentimes children do not know what is wrong.They can't put words to it.So you might not even have the words to have described this, but you would have gone around feeling this emotional loneliness.And oftentimes then we carry that into our adult lives and it makes us feel like we're on the outside.

join me this week for another guided meditation practice. wishing you a neutral to good week ahead as you take these ten minutes with me to connect to your matrix of support 🩵 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

Hello dear readers/listeners,As we prepare to wrap up our read-a-long of No Bad Parts and transition to our next book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, I wanted to end with some free practices for you to keep in your back pocket as you continue to explore connecting to the Self, the Observer, and the Adult Conciousness. I hope you find this practice helpful.We will begin our next read-a-long in April as I use this month to transition - as a thank you for being here, everyone will receive a free one-month subscription. Paid subscribers - all of your subscriptions are extended for a month. Free subscribers - feel free to use this month to listen to some of our book club posts and see if you’d like to join us in April!If you enjoy what you learn here, feel free to share with a friend - it helps keep my work going :) Wishing you tiny moments of neutrality and curiosity,trisha This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This episode is free this week to welcome our new readers/listeners :) Welcome back to our No Bad Parts Read-A-Long. I’m so glad to have you here, and I know we’ve got quite a few new people this week. For those who are new, this is our little club where we come together to explore different books and healing modalities. We’ve previously gone through The Practical Guide to Healing Developmental Trauma, which explores NARM, the NeuroAffective Relational Model. Right now, we’re diving into No Bad Parts by Dr. Richard Schwartz, which focuses on Internal Family Systems (IFS).Each week, we meet here to discuss a chapter, and I provide some interpretation to help you along. Whether you’ve read the book or not, it’s all good - you’re welcome to join, ask questions, or simply listen in and learn. As we wrap up No Bad Parts, I’m excited to share that our final live meeting will be on Saturday, February 22nd, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. I’m hoping this time will allow some of our friends from Europe and other parts of the world to join us. If you can’t attend live, don’t worry, the meeting will be recorded, and you’re welcome to submit questions in advance.Looking ahead, I’d love your input on what we explore next. One option is Unlocking the Emotional Brain by Bruce Ecker, which delves into Coherence Therapy. It’s a bit dense, but if there’s enough interest, we could study it together. If there isn’t another book we want to dive into, I’ve been considering doing some longer-form research or deeper video work. We could explore how to really get underneath some of these patterns in more practical ways - like a little trauma school, if you will. I’d love to hear what would feel supportive or connecting for you. This space is meant to be a connected community, and I thank every one of you for being here and exploring this work together.As we start Chapter Eight, we’re diving into vision and purpose. From the Internal Family Systems model - or really any healing model -we know that as we gain more access to Self, we also gain more access to curiosity, compassion, and clarity. This leads us to connect more deeply to our values, vision, and purpose.For those who saw my recent post on values through a survival strategy lens, you know how valuable it can be to start teasing apart what we truly value versus what protective parts or child-consciousness parts make us think we want. Protective parts, burdened by survival patterns, often hold the weight of trying to keep us and our exiles safe from terror, shame, or grief. This means that while we might feel we value certain things, we’re often stuck in patterns driven by survival rather than authentic desire.For example, someone might say they value caring for others. As a therapist, of course, I see the importance of caring for others. But if that value stems from a protector part, it’s not about genuine care - it’s about avoiding one’s own needs, boundaries, or wants because they feel too unsafe. When protective parts are driving us, we may shut down, freeze, fawn, or dissociate to maintain a sense of safety.This can lead to over-performing - taking care of everyone else’s needs at the expense of our own - to avoid the feeling of being “voted off the island.” It can be confusing, though, because those values may feel deeply important. And they might be! But if they’re driven by protective parts rather than Self, they’re rooted in fear, not authenticity.As we begin to unburden our protective parts and exiles, these patterns relax. We then gain access to our authentic, altruistic selves, the parts of us that genuinely enjoy giving, creating, or helping without overriding our own needs. This creates a spaciousness within us, allowing for softer, more connected, and more loving parts of ourselves to emerge.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This week, we’re exploring Chapter Eight, which focuses on vision and purpose. In the IFS model, as we gain more access to Self, we naturally begin to uncover what we truly value and want for ourselves. This process often involves distinguishing between our authentic desires and those shaped by protective parts or survival strategies. For example, you might believe you value taking care of others, but upon reflection, you may find this stems from a protector part that fears setting boundaries or expressing your own needs.Protective parts carry burdens, often rooted in past trauma, and work tirelessly to keep us safe. These parts may push us toward hyper-performing, dissociating, or intellectualizing as a means of survival. But as we unburden these parts and invite them into connection with Self, they can begin to relax. This creates spaciousness, allowing us to access the softer, more loving, and more creative parts of ourselves.When we live a Self-led life, we get to shed layers of armor that we’ve been carrying. This doesn’t mean our personality changes - it means we become lighter and more authentic. With this newfound clarity, we start to notice values and desires that were previously hidden beneath survival strategies. Instead of forcing outcomes, we can approach our lives with curiosity, allowing our vision to emerge naturally.However, this journey is not without challenges. As we connect with a Self-led vision, it’s common to experience backlash from our internal protector parts. These parts might voice doubts like, “Who do you think you are to pursue this?” or “You’ll never succeed.” This backlash is a natural response from parts that are trying to keep us safe. Instead of silencing these voices, we can acknowledge them, offer reassurance, and invite them to trust us.Over time, with gentle curiosity and observation, we can rewire these old patterns. This process takes time and patience, but it leads to profound shifts. As we integrate our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations, we move closer to a state of alignment and flow. In this state, we’re not striving or controlling but rather moving with the rhythm of life, like a river.Dr. Schwartz highlights the importance of integrating all parts of ourselves, likening it to a fruit salad rather than a smoothie. Each part retains its individuality while contributing to the whole. This perspective aligns beautifully with other modalities like NARM, which emphasizes making decisions from an adult consciousness while holding the complexities of life with compassion and curiosity.As you continue your journey toward a Self-led life, notice what arises for you. Are there parts or patterns that feel particularly sticky? Are there values or desires that are beginning to emerge? This is an opportunity to explore these questions with curiosity and without judgment.If you’ve listened to me for any period of time, you know we can’t start with an outcome. We can’t force our way toward what we want because if we do, we’re just overriding all those protector parts and exiles that have already been overridden in the past. Many of us have lived this way - over-functioning, overperforming, pushing our needs aside, and striving to be perfect. We’ve intellectualized, avoided emotions, and hidden our humanity.As we become more Self-led, we realize we don’t need to pressure ourselves to get what we want. In fact, it’s when we slow down, get curious, and stop pushing that things start to become clear. When we’re in Self, there’s a sense of clarity, connection, and alignment. You may have heard of a flow state - that feeling when time seems to pass effortlessly, like when you’re reading a good book and look up to find an hour has gone by. That’s the type of experience we can access more and more when we live from Self.We don’t need to strive toward what we want. Instead, we can move with the flow of life, like a river, and things come with more ease. This integration allows us to experience our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations without one dominating the others. It’s exciting to feel individuality alongside wholeness. For example, you might still have a rational, intellectual part of you, but instead of that part trying to control everything, it can simply enjoy pursuits like reading or learning, which feel good and fulfilling.Dr. Richard Schwartz references Dan Siegel, a neurobiologist and neuropsychiatrist, who talks about parts coming together in the Self like a fruit salad, not a smoothie. We’re not trying to blend away our uniqueness or cut off any part of ourselves. Instead, I think of it like a board meeting - each part has a seat at the table, but Self is the CEO who listens and makes decisions.It’s also important to acknowledge that not everyone experiences their internal world in the same way. Yes, we’re reading about parts and talking about the idea of a fruit salad versus a smoothie, but how you interpret and experience this work will be unique to you. Personally, I don’t always think of my internal world in terms of specific parts. After doing a lot of work, I tend to approach it from the perspective of adult consciousness, as described in NARM. This allows me to hold the complexities of life - what’s hard, scary, or angering - alongside what’s good, true, and loving.If I notice a contraction or discomfort, I observe it and recognize it as a child-consciousness pattern or an old predictive pathway getting activated. That’s what works for me after years of practice. For you, it might look different. You might always find value in naming and communicating with specific parts, and that’s okay. The beauty of this work is that you get to choose what resonates with you and leave the rest.The process of moving toward a Self-led life can look different for everyone. You might always want to name and communicate with the different parts of yourself, and that’s perfectly fine. The beauty of this work is that you get to choose what works for you and leave behind what doesn’t. It’s also worth noting that this journey often progresses much more slowly than described in books. If you’re exploring this path and finding yourself in a place where you feel more Self-led, take a moment to notice what that feels like.Are there parts of you - child consciousnesses or neural pathways - that feel sticky or seem to hang around? This is an opportunity for curiosity. For instance, if you’re reflecting on your values and something like creativity feels important to you for the first time, it can feel liberating. You might feel spaciousness and excitement as you connect with this value. But sometimes, backlash occurs. You might feel tense, anxious, or critical of yourself later, wondering where those feelings came from. These reactions could stem from parts of you that still feel unsafe with this newfound clarity.Dr. Schwartz talks about this experience in the chapter, and it’s an important one: the backlash or blowback that arises as we connect with a Self-led vision. This is a common and normal experience but can feel disconcerting. Imagine you’ve unburdened, connected to yourself, and started to feel your emotions and body sensations more deeply. Now, you’re connecting to something exciting, like creativity or a new vision for yourself. Maybe you’ve decided to start making art, writing, or pursuing something bigger. It feels exhilarating and aligned with who you are.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.But just as you begin to step into this clarity, your protective parts may react with fear. Having agency and moving toward what we want for ourselves can be one of the scariest things for those with relational or developmental trauma. For many of us, being ourselves felt unacceptable at some point in our lives. Perhaps we grew up in a family of rational intellectualizers, and as a child, our big emotions weren’t welcomed or understood. Even if no one explicitly told us to stop feeling, we might have internalized the message that some parts of us were unacceptable.This creates a global lens where anything tied to agency - wanting something, being ourselves, or stepping into authenticity - feels unsafe. Protective parts react strongly because they’re trying to shield us from past experiences of rejection or disconnection. This pattern becomes ingrained, like a predictive neural pathway that’s been laid down and continues to fire under perceived threats.When old protective patterns are triggered, it can feel overwhelming, like a tiger is about to pounce. Pain, shame, fear of failure, terror, and grief flood our systems, and familiar internal voices start to play their old tapes: “Who do you think you are? No one’s going to care. The world’s so broken, what’s the point? You can’t make a living doing that. It’ll be embarrassing when people laugh at you.”These voices can feel mean, but they aren’t mean because of who we are. They’re expressions of deeply protective parts that fear the risks associated with agency and authenticity. These parts say, “If you get too close to something big or meaningful, I need to stop you.” The backlash can feel disheartening like you’ve swung from clarity back into self-doubt.It’s essential to normalize this experience and understand that it’s expected and anticipated. When it happens, it may suck, but it makes sense. This is where we practice not overriding or silencing these voices but bringing them along for the journey. Building a Self-led life means letting these parts know, “I understand why this feels scary. I see why you might not fully trust me yet. But I’m here now, and it’s okay.”Over time, those old predictive patterns soften. It becomes less like a tiger is trying to eat you and more like, “This is big, but I can handle it.” The brain supports this shift, neurons that fire together wire together. With repetition, we can form new patterns, and our protective responses become less dominant.Neutral, curious observation plays a critical role here. Instead of trying to control or suppress your internal world, you simply notice, name, and observe what’s happening. Dr. Schwartz includes exercises in this chapter to support this practice. I’ll record at least one as a guided meditation for those interested. Remember, you can take things one small drop at a time - titration is key. This work moves quickly in books, but in real life, progress is gradual, and that’s perfectly okay.Another vital aspect of living a Self-led life is connecting to something greater than ourselves. Dr. Schwartz explains that as we become more Self-led, we feel more. This happens because we’re less frozen, more present, and more in tune with ourselves. While this increased sensitivity can bring awe, joy, empathy, and presence, it also means feeling more pain, sadness, fear, and anger. These emotions are part of being human.Feeling emotions proportionately and in the present is part of the healing process. It’s not about living in constant fear or terror but about engaging with emotions as they arise, allowing them to move through us rather than overwhelming us. When we come out of freeze, fight, flight, or fawn, we regain access to the full spectrum of human emotion.Being Self-led doesn’t mean you’re consumed or flooded by emotions, but rather that you can engage with them, feel them, and allow them to move through you. Dr. Schwartz describes this connection to Self as having a transcendent perspective, a sense that, in the grand scheme of things, everything is okay.And so there's a paradox that he discusses. The more that we feel our vulnerability, the more we remain grounded in a sense of calm and clarity. We can engage in the intensity of human life while staying connected to the Self who can observe it happening.He talks about the balance between these states of observing the world around us and observing ourselves. There's some discussion here about how spiritual practices might connect in this in different ways that are certainly interesting to explore if that feels interesting or connected to you. There’s also more discussion about that wonderful flow state - how it can feel enjoyable, fulfilling, and how we perform an activity for its own sake rather than for an award or a reward. That’s what we’re curious about, even if it’s something as simple as standing outside listening to the birds. It doesn’t have to be a huge career change; it can be the little moments in our life. Again, that’s why I’m such a fan of glimmers, the small moments that allow us to connect with the goodness around us.Just like anything else in this book, you can take or leave the discussion around spirituality and transcendence. You can take what works for you and leave the rest, or you can titrate the experience. Also, knowing that when there’s so much going on in the world, this idea that we can hold the world and ourselves at once can feel pretty impossible and pretty complicated.We might be feeling overwhelming presence and overwhelming feelings here in the present. That’s what I call “top-level stressors,” where these are stressors that are real and actually happening in the present. They feel really scary and overwhelming. And then there are the “underneath stressors” that come up as a result of those. For example, when things feel really stressful and overwhelming in the world, we might start criticizing ourselves, stop taking care of ourselves, or feel shut down. All of those reactions are, again, normal and expected because of the neural pathways.So, just knowing that whatever you’re feeling right now with everything that’s happening in the world, it’s normal and it’s expected. Survival strategies, or protective parts as they’re called in IFS, are there for us when we need them, not when we want them. That means we don’t get a choice when those parts are active. We don’t get to decide when terror, grief, or rage comes out to play.Knowing this, now is the time to take things extra gently for yourself. Slow way down. Be curious about finding little glimmers, finding moments of neutrality, finding little moments of connection, whatever that means for you in whatever way is available right now. And know that it’s okay to take care of yourself even when stressful things are happening.Even if parts of you say, “No, it’s not,” we can be curious about noticing those parts. Notice the parts that say, “You can’t stop and take care of yourself because this horrible thing is happening.” That part must be feeling a lot of terror. Can you notice that for a moment? Can you put a pinky in the present and connect with the Self, even if it’s a teeny tiny 1% of you, or 0.01%, or 0.001%? If you can’t right now, that’s okay.Maybe try a little grounding. Look around the room and pick out six colors to see if you can come back and observe it again. All of life is expansion and contraction, in-breath and out-breath. If you feel a deep contraction right now, know that another expansion will come again. And if you can’t feel access to your Self right now, know that it will come again.I’m wishing you a good week ahead.Thanks for reading tiny sparks - trisha wolfe! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comWelcome back to our No Bad Parts Read Along. Can you believe we have made it here to chapter seven The Self in Action. I'm really excited to talk about this chapter today, and to dive further in into what it means to connect to the self and be self-led. So it's really popular on social media right now to talk about attachment theory. And if you're not familiar with attachment theory, it's a basic idea that how we attach to our primary caregivers affects later how we attach to others in our life, romantic, platonic, and otherwise. And you can have a secure attachment, which means you are okay and comfortably attached. And if the person goes away and they come back, you can reconnect with them. There is anxious attachment, which is when the person goes away or starts to pull back. There's a holding onto and this might be a person that gets called quote unquote needy, which of course is a sort of derogatory way of looking at what's actually a survival technique. But that's a person who's grasping, always trying to bring people in closer and closer, and is fearful of losing them. You also have an avoidant attachment, which is that person who kind of pulls back and pulls away, and they might stay detached and they might never fully show themselves to others. And if someone goes away, they might say, well, I don't care, I didn't need you anyway. And there's also the idea that we can have a disorganized attachment, which is sort of a combination of those two. It's important to understand that it's normal for attachment, to flex and flow in different relationships and in different situations, and based on what's happening in our lives. So it's not like a Myers-Briggs test where you can just say, I'm an anxious attacher and that's that. But it's important to understand going into this, that IFS and that connection with the self takes this idea of attachment and brings it inside where the self or the adult consciousness, as we call it in NARM, gets to figure out how to build that good, secure attachment to those internal parts who might be anxious, or who might be avoidant, or who might be disorganized. And this is really, really exciting because it means that we can start to repair and rebuild from those environmental ruptures we may have had with our caregivers, our teachers, our peers, or even in romantic or platonic relationships later in our life that have left us feeling uncertain and disconnected. We get the opportunity here to reconnect with the self who holds our secure attachment to these other parts. And as these parts start to trust the self and become, we become more self-led and more internal. tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.We might actually find that our attachment patterns externally to people around us may start to shift little by little, as those neurons fire in a securely attached way that those pathways may become available to us in other relationships. So it may go from internal to external. And that's the coolest thing in the world to know that we have the capacity and the agency and the choice and the flexibility to start to pattern this by becoming the “good parent” or “good caretaker” or whatever it is that we never had in the first place. We get to bring in those young exiles who never got to be seen or held. We get to connect with the inner critic, the intellectuals or the perfectionists, the firefighter part of us that dissociates us. Over time, we get to become the primary caretaker of these parts, and that means that we no longer have to rely on other people to try to take care of these parts. Now, it's important to understand we're meant to heal in relationship. We're meant to heal and connection. And so it's normal and expected that when you're in therapy or a relationship or whatever it is, that that person is part of your well-being and part of your regulation. But what can happen is subconsciously, at times, we look to other people to try to heal these parts of us. And while they can play a role in it, we also need to be connected to these parts of us as well. And so we can start to connect to other people relationally more from our adult consciousness, more from our self. And it can be really hugely shifting to relationships. When the person, the therapist, or whoever can be sort of that secondary caretaker as Doctor Schwartz calls it, to those parts instead of the primary caretaker. Right now, for many of us, that might be reversed, where we're looking to others to try to fill that hole. Now, again, I want to say I'm not one of those people who's like, you have to love yourself to have others love you. I firmly believe we are meant to heal in connection and in support with other people. But if we are not consciously aware of these patterns, of these survival strategies of these parts of us, then our relationships may continue to feel unbalanced where we are all in or where we're very pulled back and it feels anxiety producing and it feels scary and we feel disconnected. And so we might never get to feel an authentic, balanced, connected relationship. And again, that can feel so dissatisfying. It can build up resentment. It can build up anger and sadness and fear. So this is such a cool opportunity not only to change how we relate internally, but externally as well. This is also why in therapy, sometimes it can feel unbalanced. If you're working with a therapist who doesn't understand the parts or the child consciousness of developmental and relational trauma, because the therapist can get hooked in with their parts and think they need to fix you. And by doing so, they may unintentionally take your agency away from you where they come in as the fixer of time and time again. That might feel good to some parts of you, but it doesn't lead to you over time. Connecting to your agency, your choice, and yourself. You might also be labeled as disruptive or self-sabotaging, or like you're not really trying because you might feel really resistant to this person who's trying to fix you. And so understanding that when you go into therapy, that person can hold space and be curious and be a stand in participant in your nervous system, meaning they can lend their nervous system and their self to you while you're exploring. They cannot, nor should they be the one who fixes you, because that doesn't lead you to becoming a self led person who can, who can walk through their life with agency and connection and authenticity and curiosity and neutrality and all of those things. So if you've had that experience in therapy, just know that you're not alone. And it's something that can happen as therapists, systems and parts and bodies and minds can get hooked in unintentionally as well. A big part of this chapter is dedicating to Doctor Schwartz going through a session with Ethan and Sarah. And in this he is exploring connecting to these different parts in each of them. Where Ethan is exploring a part of himself that he calls the destroyer of injustice. And this part is very fiery, very justice driven, all about being deeply committed to protecting the planet and trying to fight systemic oppression. But it was manifesting in a way that created some tension in their relationship. For example, his partner was wanting to build an addition to their small house, and that was so activating to this part in Ethan because he wants to live smaller for the earth and talks about there being homeless people out there who don't have anything. But it was creating a lot of disharmony in the system between Ethan and Sarah, and making her feel like she was unable to have her needs met as well. And I think this is a valuable read or listen if you want to go back through and listen to the full session, but it's such a cool opportunity to notice what it's like connecting to these parts and how some parts can have really important things, like, of course, fighting for injustice can also get burdened with other experiences. And as this session unfolds, Ethan is able to connect to this part of himself, burdened by the grief and guilt of losing his father to a drunk driver, and that that loss really left him rejecting everything around him that could be considered superficial and pushed him towards this intense drive for justice. And as Ethan was supported in exploring this from an IFS perspective, he found that this part actually held this belief that he was somehow responsible to his father's death. This old belief about a childhood decision to skip a basketball game his father invited him to. And what a burden. What a burden that this part had taken on, and that driving through this injustice, this singular focus, with the real difficulty connecting emotionally that left him disconnected from those around him. And as he was able to release this burden, he could connect to some compassion and understanding and find the dual role of this destroyer of injustice. Protecting, of course, Ethan's all for the earth and driving him to act, but also isolating him due to its intensity, and by unburdening that grief and guilt carried by that part, bringing that self in to be self-led and listened to that justice driven part, that he could find a way to honor his purpose and his drive without letting it take over and isolate him. It's a really interesting and fascinating, fascinating session. If you'd like to go back in and read the full session, you can really feel this reconnection between Ethan and Sarah and space for each of them to feel their feelings and connect from their self, and not letting the parts drive a wedge between them. Understanding. When we connect to those parts, we can also connect to others. And what I thought was so lovely about Doctor Schwartz sharing the session.

Hello and happy new year and welcome back to our No Bad Parts read-along.We are starting part two together on self-leadership and within this chapter there is an exercise called the path meditation and I just wanted to remind you if you missed my earlier episode I have a recording on that for you.And it's a wonderful practice to be curious about as we move into this next phase of connecting to the self and building the self up as a leader.As we dive into this chapter on healing and transformation, I think we hit upon something that is a core part of the IFS model as well as the NARM model and something that I think can be such a paradigm shift for many of us because oftentimes in the world and in therapy there's this idea that these behaviors that we do are bad and all we need to do is just change our bad behaviors and then we'll be better and our life will be better and we'll be the person we want to be.But when we understand that those behaviors, emotions, impulses, thoughts, emotions are not bad or defective or sick, but instead are a part that are playing a role to protect you and keep you safe, that we're trying to keep you connected to the world and to people around you, well, that's a major paradigm shift.Of course, the name of the book is No Bad Parts, and IFS teaches us that these parts and everything they hold are not inherently bad, but are carrying burdens and playing roles to protect us and doing the best they can to navigate life based on the lenses that they hold.And when we start to understand that these parts aren't a sign that there's something wrong with us or that we're broken, but that we're protecting ourselves from something, that allows us to shift into that curious observer, that self.Remembering, noticing and observing is responding. Noticing and observing these parts and experiences is what we're here to do.NARM, too, reminds us that these survival patterns are adaptations. And they're actually really clever adaptations. They're not pathology algorithms. They're the body and the mind and the nervous system working together to try to keep us safe, try to keep us in connection when things feel overwhelming and when systems don't make sense.As we've discussed, systems are systems, whether it's our internal system or family system or a work system. Systems want to maintain that homeostasis, meaning keeping things the same.And so oftentimes in literature about families that are impacted by addiction and substance use, they'll talk about these roles, the scapegoat, the hero, the lost child, the golden child.Those roles are simply names we give to the parts that people are playing in the system to try to maintain the homeostasis, to try to maintain safety and connection.If those families are supported towards more well-being, more safety, and a new homeostasis, then those roles drop because those are not innate to the person, but rather things that develop in a system to try to keep them safe and in connection.And of course, it's likely that we have parts of us too, or ourselves, who are connected, who are online.But those parts sometimes get hidden behind these other parts that are trying to protect us. So oftentimes in our own self-exploration, we're working to connect with these burdened parts to help them to feel safe and to transform into the other side for more access to the self nature of those parts.So an important part here is to revisit those four goals of IFS. To liberate the parts from their roles and return them to their natural states, where we can access the gift of these parts.Like a part that is an intellectualizer might become a part that helps us plan and dream and be connected to the future and to carry out tasks.The second goal, restore trust in the self. And that is where that path meditation that I recorded can come in very handy, where we're being curious about supporting the parts and trusting the self.We're rebuilding that internal relationship. Reharmonizing the inner system, so we're building a new homeostasis, a new sense of safety, where we can feel safe with those parts unburdened and at rest.Whereas right now, when we try to rest and those parts try to sit down, we likely don't feel safe. And that's because of the homeostasis and the predictive patterns in our brain that says, resting, relaxing, being authentic, being ourselves, having autonomy, connecting, those things are not safe.So if you try to do so from yourself, those parts will try to protect you at all costs by stopping you.And that's what oftentimes people will call the quote-unquote self-sabotaging behavior.We know it's actually not self-sabotaging. It's very protective. It's coming from those managers, those firefighters who are all working together to try to protect that burdened exile who feels so terrified, so rageful, and so grief-filled.And so when we think of healing or transformation, we're not trying to change you.Oftentimes people ask me, well, who am I if I'm not a perfectionist? Or who am I if I'm not an intellectualizer? Who am I if I'm not focusing on everyone else's needs?And it can be really scary to think, I don't know who I am. What is my identity? If these things that I thought were my identity are actually part of our protective parts.And the good thing is you are you and you will still be you.And when we look at the word heal from this perspective, we're looking at this idea to make whole, to bring these parts of you back in, make the system whole again, build up a felt sense of safety for you so that you can be yourself without the burdens and the protective nature trying to shut you down.So if you imagine right now that yourself is locked up in a castle, in a turret, looking out, and there's the moat, and there's the alligators, and there's the sentries, and there's the guards, and those are all the protective parts trying to prevent yourself from getting out.Why? Because if yourself gets out, you might do something that would cause pain to the exile. So the exile is also deeply hidden away in there.But those protective parts don't want to let you out because you might do something to cause a problem. So you will still be you—it's just the guards will step away, the bridge will go across the moat, and you will be you without all of the burdens.And that is when we get to have choice and flexibility and agency. And it's not a magic trick. It doesn't mean suddenly our life is perfect—though I wish it did—but what it means is we have that choice.We can be in the present, we can make choices that are in alignment with what we want for ourselves. We can be curious. We can try things on.Dr. Schwartz says an exile is healed when the self retrieves it from where it's stuck in the past.Remember, we can't approach the exile without permission from the protective parts.So as we step into this next part of the book, referring to the book this time versus a part internally, as we step forward to this part two, what we're being curious about is building up that trust with the internal systems so that the protectors can feel free, they can be unburdened, they can take on new valuable roles, and eventually the exile can be freed.And all that energy that your nervous system and brain are spending gripping so hard to protect you and to try to keep you from being triggered and to try to protect your exile gets freed up.And that's where the flexibility and choice and agency and feelings and presence and all of that goodness comes in.And it's the very same in the NARM model where we're not trying to change you as a person. We're not trying to get rid of parts of you. We're being curious about what happens as you're able to step more into the adult consciousness and bring that child consciousness part of you in.Then you get to see the world through adult lenses.And so instead of something like setting a boundary with your boss feeling like a life threat because your exile part is so completely triggered and terrified, it might feel like a small challenge, something to be curious about, something you can try on, because you know you can handle whatever comes.That if your boss doesn't like the boundary, that you can handle that.But that's something that's very, very difficult to access when those parts are activated to try to protect the exile.So there's an example in here that Dr. Schwartz gives—a therapeutic process he was in with a woman who came in after her boyfriend proposed.And instead of feeling joyful and excited and connected, she felt completely terrified.And she couldn't make sense of it cognitively. Because she loved him, and she wanted to marry him, but she felt this deep-seated terror and fear.And slowing things down and approaching this from an IFS model, Dr. Schwartz was able to support her in connecting to her fear and exploring, "Ah, this isn't just a random fear, this is a protector part."This is a part that had been with her for a long time, since childhood, where she had a father who struggled with substance use, and she never, ever wanted to feel trapped like that again.And so this part developed to try to protect her from pain.So it wasn't here to try to sabotage a relationship and get in the way of her love, but it was so terrified that moving forward in this relationship would get her feeling trapped with someone who might hurt her or make her feel that deep pain again.And so through IFS, they were able to work with a protector part and that young exiled part that held all of that terror, that felt trapped and powerless, and who never wanted to be in that again.tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And to be with that pain and to build up a relationship between the self and that exile part and to help that part become unburdened.And eventually that protector was able to set down its burdens as well. She recognized now that this woman was an adult, the job wasn't needed in the same way.She wasn't a child who needed to be protected by shutting everything down, pushing all the feelings of a relationship away, and using terror to shut things down to protect the exile part.But instead that it could relax, and she could make decisions about her relationship from a present mind, an adult consciousness mind, a self mind.And this is what healing looks like in IFS—a part reconnecting, burdens being released, and that energy being freed for other things.Now, of course, I always want to remind you that when we come upon these examples to know this is a deep process.This is the process of weeks, months, years.And so even though IFS is a wonderful model, it's still important to titrate things and to take things slowly and to know this isn't something that's going to be completed in one or two sessions or one week of curiosity, right?These are deep, deep patterns.And we know from a neuroscience perspective that they're held as those predictive patterns in the brain to maintain homeostasis.So if your brain has a predictive pattern that says being tied in a relationship is dangerous and scary because you could be trapped and be unsafe, you're not suddenly going to be able to make your brain believe that you're safe.We know we have to work with the brain instead of against the brain.And that means making tiny little changes at a time through observing the experience.Observing, observing, observing.You might get tired of hearing that. But observing and noticing is responding.Just by observing the process and noticing, "Oh, I started feeling really terrified because I started feeling really trapped."Even if you go right back into feeling terrified, you fired your neurons in a different direction by observing it.And that's the coolest thing—just knowing you don't have to focus on the outcome of changing the behavior or changing the emotion. (And you wouldn't be successful in that even if you tried).So understanding and knowing that the observing is the bridge to move you across towards self-connection and reharmonization and building up the relationship with self—that is the best gift that I can offer to you, and that I will reiterate over and over and over again.Observing is the work. Noticing is responding. That is how we build up new neural pathways in our brain, that is how we build up relationships with the parts so that they can trust us, and that is how eventually, over time, we build new neural pathways that allow the parts to become unburdened—including the exile part—and allow us to release that energy and reconnect to self.So reminding you here, as you go back to that path meditation, it's okay if you don't get very far down the path. It's okay if your parts don't allow it. This is a practice of observation.The path meditation and other exercises in this book are not intended to get you to an outcome, at least from my perspective. Instead, it's an opportunity to learn what happens.What parts come up? Which parts are willing to wait? Which parts are willing to not wait? What energy is there? What do you notice in your body? What are your thoughts? What are your emotions?And so we don't have to worry about trying to get down the path, but rather about observing.Now, this is where we come into what the self is and what the self isn't.And we come into the eight C's of self-energy and self-leadership.And I love Dr. Schwartz for this reason. He has all these like eight this and six that. And I love things like that.So the eight C's of self-energy and self-leadership: curiosity, calm, confidence, compassion, creativity, clarity, courage, and connectedness.And curiosity is often the first quality to reveal itself. And so neutral curiosity is what I'm always emphasizing. Neutral observation—there it is again—the observation is curiosity.It is the path. It is the bridge towards those other C's, especially compassion.For many of us, compassion feels nearly impossible. Because compassion means, "Wow, I must be okay."And if I'm okay, I might do something like be myself. And if I'm myself, that's terrifying to the exile.So don't worry about trying to get to all these eight C's. If we can start with that neutral observation with a little drop of curiosity, we are well on the way. That is self-energy.Now, Dr. Schwartz mentions that compassion is a spontaneous aspect of the self, and that compassion isn't something you have to develop.Now, there is an idea that compassion is something you have to build up and to practice. And you just heard me say that curiosity is the bridge to compassion, not because you have to build it up, but because it will come when you are safe enough.It will come when there is enough space to be in yourself and feel for those parts of you. And that also takes courage and calmness. Time.We will not be the exception to neuroscience, so it will take time.And so just allowing yourself to know those eight C's will come and they will flex and they will flow.And sometimes there's more curiosity and sometimes there's less. Sometimes you hit a moment of self-compassion, and other times it feels like, "I may never get to compassion again."That's all part of the process, and you're right on track.Now let's talk for a little moment about what the self isn't.The self is not the ego—the part that's trying to control things and make it okay.In IFS, the ego is more like a cluster of manager parts, right? It's those protectors who are trying to run our lives and keep us safe.And the self isn't your consciousness either. And the reason Dr. Schwartz says that is because consciousness is often thought of as this passive watching.It's not just observing. So observing is a huge part of this, but it's not only observing; it's coming in and building a relationship with those parts too.That comes after we're able to observe with that mutual curiosity. Again, at least from my perspective.So the self is really more than just the sum of your parts.But we know that over our experiences through our childhood and our earlier lives, these parts may have lost the trust in us, in our adult consciousness, in our self's ability to lead.And that's normal, and that's typical, that the parts stepped in to take over, to carry those burdens that they were never meant to hold.And so reconnecting with that self, it's a felt sense. It's a felt sense, and that's why I always talk about that felt sense of safety.That is what comes the more and more we access the self—the knowing that we can handle what comes.Does that mean we feel happy all the time, wonderful all the time? No, no, not at all.But it does mean that we have this ongoing thread underneath everything of the knowingness that we can handle what comes.We are safe, we are resilient, we are flexible, and we are curious.We still have to exist, all of us, in a world that is very, very challenging.So we know that means nothing is going to be perfect, right? Nothing will be perfect all the time. There will be stressful things happening, even if things in our life are okay.But that we can come back to connecting to the self that knows we can handle what comes, that we can connect with our self, with others, with the world, with our body, and with our emotions, and through authentic relationships.Now, here he talks a little bit about the spirituality of the self. And you can take this or leave this. Everybody has different views on these kinds of things.There's some interesting exploration here that you might enjoy reading, even if you're not to this chapter yet, to just explore the different ways he connects spirituality to the self.He even talks a little bit about quantum physics and experiencing the self as a particle.And how meditation or other things, like they're doing some interesting research with MDMA and psychedelics—and of course, do your own research and connect to things that feel right to you—that might connect us to the self in a different way, that might help us build neural pathways in a different way, that might help us feel connectedness in a different way.And that there's a balance of experiencing and bringing wisdom back into your day-to-day life.So everyone experiences the self and spirituality and the world in a different way.But just this curiosity of our greater connection to the people and the world around us and the role that we and ourselves play in that offers a really interesting thing to just observe and to connect with one of those eight C's of curiosity of what works for you, what makes sense to you, what supports you on the path in your journey, in your capacity to connecting that self to the other parts of you and building that self-leadership.That we know through doing this work, we can trust and know that over time, the self is there, the self will return.Even if we feel these old parts or these survival strategies pop up, because they're there for us when we need them—not when we want them.And so sometimes we might think, "Why is this pattern of behavior coming back up again?" And it's like, well, there was something there that triggered something.But the self will come back again. It's always there. Even right now, if you're feeling a huge challenge, it's still in there somewhere.And we rebuild that connection. We build up that trust. We can know that.So thank you for joining me on this path, on this journey with me. And I look forward to continuing to explore with you in the new year.Next up is the self in action, and I'm really looking forward to diving into that together. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

Hey there Substack pals! In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I’m taking this week to rest and regroup. While there won’t be an episode on a chapter this week, I wanted to offer you another IFS guided meditation from the upcoming chapter in No Bad Parts called The Path. I invite you to join me in a curiosity of connecting to your parts and your Self as you traverse the path in your mind’s eyes. Drop me a line and let me know what you discover. Wishing you a gentle end to 2024 and a soft welcome to 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comI'm back to our No Bad Parts read-along together. This week, we are diving into Chapter Five on mapping our inner systems.So thus far, we've started to learn a little bit about these internal parts that make up the system of us—that perhaps we're not just one individual mind, but an amalgamation of all the developmental experiences we've had in our lives that have created these different neural pathways, survival strategies, or parts, as they are called in Internal Family Systems.Remembering as we go into exploring deeper these parts that this is a big paradigm shift from how many of us have been taught to see the world. And you can take in as much or as little as you'd like to or as feels available to you right now, knowing that whatever you uncover through this experience, all of these parts inside of us developed in pursuit of keeping us safe and keeping us in connection with the world around us.We are biologically wired to stay in connection with our caregivers when we are young. And when we are able to, because of environmental ruptures, these protective parts emerge to try to keep us going—to try to keep us through the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn that comes up when it feels like our caregivers can't meet our needs. And so they might not make sense to you now as an adult, but they made sense at the time.And first up are these parts Dr. Schwartz refers to as the exiles. These are often those much younger parts of us. And maybe you've heard of this idea of an inner child—that that could be those exile parts. And those young parts of us that hold all of the playfulness, the creativity, the fun, the trusting, the innocent, and the openness that we have when we're young children and we're exploring the world.And they're also very, very sensitive parts because if you think about us as young children, we don't have the cognitive complexity to be able to think through and make sense out of things. And we haven't fully developed a sense of how to take care of ourselves and soothe ourselves in the world because we are children. And we rely on our caregivers and the people around us to co-regulate with us. So we are very sensitive when we are young. Things that are scary or hurtful, we feel that really, really strongly when we're young children.And we'll often say that young children have tantrums or they have meltdowns. And what we know that's actually happening is they are very sensitive and they need co-regulation. And so it makes a lot of sense that they might have a quote-unquote meltdown or a big emotional experience when something happens.And these are also the parts of us who hold those biggest burdens from the environmental ruptures, attachment ruptures, or traumas that we might experience when we're young. And when that happens, it shifts our young self from that fun, playful self to that wounded, terrified, maybe shut-down self.And this is when some of those core beliefs start to change. And we might move into that, I am worthless, no one loves me, there's something wrong with me at my core, I don't deserve to be loved. Then as adults now, when those parts blend with us, and for many of us, our exiles are blended with our self because of our lived experiences, then those beliefs, I don't deserve anyone to love me, that becomes the lens through which we see the world. That becomes our paradigm. And we are carrying around all of the time those deep, deep burdened emotions that those younger parts of us feel.And that can really impact our ability to function in the world as a quote-unquote adult, as we are living in our adult bodies when we are holding the lens that there is something wrong with us and we don't deserve to be loved. And that can also create behaviors that might not make sense as an adult, but make a lot of sense for this burdened, terrified exile.I want to remind you again that these beliefs or emotions that these younger parts of us hold don't always make sense to our adult selves, and that's because they happened in the mind of a child. And it doesn't always have to be a huge life-altering trauma that can create these burdened experiences.An example that I use often is, again, think of if you had two parents who themselves were very rational people. They grew up in homes where emotions were not talked about. And so to them, emotions are somewhat forbidden. They don't go there. They don't really even have access to go tthere. They closed that part of them off a long time ago. Now they have this wonderful, fun, playful child who they love very much. But because children have big emotions, when you have a big emotion, even an exciting emotion like surprise or joy or playfulness or fear or whatever might happen when we're young children, their systems feel overwhelmed by that. They don't know what to do with that. And so they calm you down. They shut down your emotions. They distract you. They send you to your room until you can come back out and behave or be part of the family.And no one is telling you in this scenario that they hate you or that they hate your emotions or that you're too much. But the felt sense experience is you can sense as a child, even if you're not consciously aware of it, that your parents' systems are shutting down when you feel emotions.And when we're trying to stay in connection to those around us at all costs, then we will learn very quickly the pattern of, my parents, it seems that my parents love me more and that I can stay more in connection with them when I shut my emotions down. And that might be how we develop a quote-unquote intellectualization part.And again, as part of our coping or being in the world is to try to push these parts of us away, that is again how we might move into an intellectualization, rationalization, people-pleasing, perfectionism—anything we can do to try to control our internal state and push away these hard emotions that these exile parts of us hold, we will do that.That is part of the paradigm that we've learned, right? Where it's like, Just pick yourself up, move on, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, kind of get over it. Stop being so sensitive. We learn to do the same things to ourselves and then we collude with what was done to us, where then we as adults push these exile parts of us away. We push our emotions away. We push what makes us human away because it feels like too much. It feels too overwhelming.And for many of us, the more we try to push those parts of us away, the more they try to come out. That's why strategies like perfectionism, for example, never work in the long run because you try really, really, really hard to be perfect and then this part of you that is holding all these really deep terrors that you can never be perfect and that you'll always mess things up, sees you pushing them away more and more. And so then they'll come out and then you'll make a mistake or you won't be perfect or you'll say something you didn't mean to say and you'll beat yourself up more. And that is how this cycle can unconsciously continue.Dr. Schwartz talks about these sort of mysterious overreactions and really being unsure, like why do small things hit us so hard? Why does making a teeny little mistake feel like the end of the world? What I'll often say to people I'm working with is that if it feels disproportionate, it's likely there's something else going on there. Maybe you've seen a post that's often shared on social media that says, If it feels hysterical, it's probably historical. That's because it's that old pathway, that neural pathway, that predictive pattern, that vulnerable part of us coming up.The more of these challenging experiences and environmental ruptures we had as a child, the more delicate things will feel in the present and the more dangerous because there's constantly an opportunity where it feels like we are making a mistake or messing something up or risking a connection, and that that is very triggering to these exile parts of us. And their behaviors can become quite extreme to try to protect us from these intense emotions, behaviors, impulses, and experiences that we hold.When we have exiles, we will also have what is called in IFS, managers. And managers are protectors that are pressed into service, essentially. So you can think of them as our inner children who have been parentified or made to become faux adults, F-A-U-X, faux adults. Oftentimes when I talk about this idea of a faux sense of protection that comes from managers, people might get upset and think that I'm being offensive or saying that it's not a worthwhile tool. And that's not what I'm saying at all.It gives us a faux sense of safety. And the reason why I say that is because perfectionism, for example, might keep us feeling safe and in control, but we can't be ourselves. We can't be authentic. We can't fully connect with those around us. And thus, it's not a real felt sense of safety that lets us be ourselves. It is a manager. It is a faux sense of safety that is taking on the role of trying to control absolutely everything inside you and in the world around you so that nothing triggering or activating happens that might scare the exile.And so they might control our relationships, our appearance, our work performance. Every single aspect of our life, these parts will try to control. This is where the inner critic lives. This is where the inner critic lives.This is where the intellectualizer lives. These parts are very, very convincing and often sound like the self or like in NARM, we call it the adult consciousness. And those of you who found me because of my work with intellectualizers know exactly what I mean.

I hope this message finds you awash in curiosity, bathed in neutrality, full of spaciousness.As we head into what is, for many, a difficult season, I wanted to offer you a simple daily meditation to support taking a few moments of connecting with yourself, however, you are feeling in the moment. While the practice is based on Internal Family Systems and the No Bad Parts book, you are more than welcome to join in even if you haven’t read the book or don’t even know what Internal Family Systems is. Know that when I reference parts, I am talking to our deep experiences that are often hidden away inside of us, the ways we developed to keep ourselves safe in situations that felt anything but. Maybe you’ve called yourself a people pleaser, an intellectualizer, a perfectionist. Maybe you’ve said you’re “bad at boundaries” or “never follow through.” Together in the moment we hold the idea that everything we do is in pursuit of maintaining connection with those around us and trying to survive, while also knowing it is possible to shift, change, and make room for change for those older patterns that served us in the past but may not be anymore. Each and every part of you is welcome here, even if you’re not ready to welcome them in yet. Join me for this short practice of anchoring in neutrality and curiosity, of working with our brains and nervous systems instead of against them. See you what you notice. Pause. Restart. Stop. It’s all one big experiment.See you out there :)Trisha This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comWelcome back book club pals! I had such a lovely time being live with you a couple of weeks ago for our little fireside chat, and we will definitely do one more while we are in this process together. There's something just so fun about getting to see each other's faces, hear each other's voices, and connect lives. So thank you for being there. If you couldn't be there, no worries at all. Thanks for watching the recording and sending me your thoughts. I always really value that. Chapter four is a really important chapter because it's going to talk a little bit about systems theory, which is such an important thing to understand when we're understanding ourselves, our internal experiences, and how we react with the world around us. As always, just a reminder with any of this exploration or any of these exercises, it's normal that parts of you might feel challenged or activated. Some of your parts might not be ready to trust you, engage with you, or engage with this process. And that's okay. And that's why I always encourage us to take this one little drop at a time. So anything that we're learning here or any of the exercises, you don't have to feel any pressure to do them or to dive in. You can just be curious. And if you feel resistant to doing them or activated by them, it gives you an opportunity to be curious about which part of you or which parts of you are coming up. It also doesn't mean that we have to avoid activation. If you try on some of the exercises in the book and you notice activation, that can be really scary to those of us who maybe didn't have anyone with us when we were scared or nervous or activated when we were younger. It's also cultivating to know that it's okay to feel a little bit of activation, and if you can access enough of the Self to be with the activation, even if it's just for a moment, you're also cultivating the understanding to the rest of your parts that you, the Self, the adult consciousness in NARM terms, can handle that activation. That's different than when we're children, when we're young and in events happened where things feel really scary and no one is with us; that feels like a threat to our lives, because we're totally relying on people around us to take care of ourselves and to make sure things are okay. If they're not doing that, our nervous system and brain are going to signal that we're unsafe. So we actually will feel terror when there's activation. But when we are adults, we know that we can handle a little bit of activation, and that can be part of the process too. So I encourage you to be curious, track and notice what's happening. And if it's not the time for the activity, it's not the time. But maybe there's just a little experiment. Could I stay with this activation for five seconds more than I normally do? And what happens? What parts emerge? What do they have to say? How do I feel? There’s always an opportunity for more curiosity. So I say that specifically as the exercise around working with the challenging protector was there from the last chapter, to just be gentle, be neutral, be curious; and if you can't access any of those, that's okay. You can come back into the space, come back into connecting with the space around you, and come back into neutrality when you can. In chapter four, Dr. Schwartz is exploring this idea of systems thinking, which is part of what helped him develop this model. And in systems thinking, it's really a framework to allow us to see the different patterns and relationships, the ways that our inner world engage both internally and with the world around us. So a lot of times I'll think of systems theory as gears, and gears are all together with each other. So when one gear turns, the other gear turns, and we don't know which way the gear is going to turn necessarily. So we don't know if we try working with a challenging protector, for example, if another part might get more scared or it might calm down, or it might trust us more, or it might trust us less; we don't know that if we engage with our parts and we start to shift, if people around us might shift, they will. Because when we change, we change the systems that we are in and we don't know if they will change for the better or for the worse. That's kind of part of being in a system that we don't know. We can't necessarily predict how things are going to change and same internally, but we can be curious and observe. It's really a bigger picture way of noticing we don't exist in isolation. Our parts don't exist in isolation. We are all part of a bigger system. And that this perspective really came about when biologists were studying cells and they couldn't really figure out how they formed these living organisms, and they started to come into understanding that it was a system where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And such a big part of Dr. Schwartz's work that influenced the creation of internal family systems was this idea that we do not exist outside of the context of the systems that we are in, so slapping a diagnosis on someone often ignores the context of their systems, of their symptoms, and how these different ways that they behave-like maybe harming themselves- actually serves them within the systems that they exist in internally and externally. So we don't want to just reduce our experiences to a “symptom” or a behavior problem, but rather to start to understand how they fit into our internal systems and the systems around us, our relational patterns with our Self and our relational patterns with the world and our family and everyone around us. This really allowed him to start to understand that we have this internal system. And that always brings us back to the context that everything we do is in the context of our brain and our body and our nervous system. If you've listened to me in other ways, you've heard me talk about predictive patterns in the brain and that those form based on past experiences to help us predict what's going to happen in the present and what's going to happen in the future. And that's really, really important to understand, because those predictive patterns are formed based on the systems in which we live. If we learn that every time we have an emotion, we're going to be punished or sent to our room or yelled at in the system that we are in, then we start to develop an internal system where when we'll shut down emotions; we'll just hold them down, we'll shut them down, we'll go up into the intellectualization/rationalization. Or if we feel an emotion, we'll start to criticize ourselves before anyone else can't. Those aren't just behavior problems or internal thought patterns; those are systemic ways of being within the context of the system that you're in. Those are developmental patterns to respond to the environment or system that you grew up in. So when we start to understand our experience as part of the greater system, both internally and externally, then we understand that our symptoms are behaviors- the things we don't like about ourselves- actually make a lot of sense in the context of our system to keep us safe and keep us in connection with those around us. There are some examples that Schwartz shares in this chapter- if you haven't yet had a chance to read them- about a client who is suffering from bulimia, and this internal cycle where one of the critic parts would trigger some feelings of worthlessness, and then the bingeing would come in as a coping mechanism, which would then activate the critic further and perpetuate the loop. So that's part of the system, right? Where the inner critic part is triggering feelings of worthlessness, then the behavior comes out that we might say, like, oh, you need to stop the binging, right? You need to stop the purging. You need to stop doing these things. But in this example, we can understand that it's part of the bigger system. If we work with the critic, we work with that part that is activating some of these events. And we can understand the critic is there to keep us safe in some way based on our past experiences. Then when that slows down and it stops triggering feelings of worthlessness, the behavior of the bingeing and purging may be less available. We might want to do it less, or we might not feel the urge to do it. I always want to be really clear when talking about something like this, that everyone's experience is different and we have to treat people where they are. So we have to understand that not everybody who is struggling with an eating disorder or self-harm or anything like that can jump right into doing this work. There might need to be some stabilization work first, so please know that you can honor your own process. Work with your own therapist. These are just examples to help understand how these systems work. Speaking of the systems that we're in, Dr. Schwartz was very curious about this idea that we as humans are bad. We are, at our core, bad. Civilization is bad, and that there's just this really thin layer, really thin veneer that protects us from our core primitive, selfish instincts. And we see a lot of that in society where we are so punitive toward other people, and we treat people as if they are bad, if they do things that we consider bad. For example, the war on drugs: that there's an idea that if you use drugs, you're bad and you must be punished by being put in prison or treated really horribly. And that really influences the way we see ourselves and the way we see people around us when we think that they are bad. Instead of understanding human behavior as a way that we try to protect ourselves, the way that we try to keep ourselves in connection with other people, and a way that we try to cope or survive an internal feeling that is really unsafe, or an external feeling that is really unsafe. And this is where we get the name of the book, No Bad Parts. What if we didn't have to see parts of ourselves as bad? Even as we take in information from the world that says, if you do this, you're bad. If you do this, you're not trying hard enough. You know, we have books like Atomic Habits that are like, well, you just need to learn how to access your discipline. And if you can't do this, there's something wrong with you. It's like everything in our society boils down to, well, if you can't do this good thing or the thing that everybody else is doing, there must be something wrong with you and you must be bad.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome back to our No Bad Parts Book Club/Read along. It’s really exciting to continue to deepen our understanding of this model together. I'm excited to let you know that we will be having our little fireside pop up live chat about the book: Monday, November 18th at 6 p.m. until 7 p.m. Eastern time. Not to worry if you can't attend live. I k…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHi book club, and welcome back to our next little episode together exploring No Bad Parts. I loved getting to read through all of your comments and hear your curiosities. Of course, you're more than welcome to post in the chat too, and if you don't feel like leaving a comment but you still want to ask the question, you can actually reply directly to this email and it'll come right to my inbox. I know there was a question about schedule, and I know typically a book club would have a pretty stringent schedule to stick to, but I'm sort of tentative about that. I know that might not fit with how some of you like to do things, but it’s because I really like to feel into as I'm recording the episode how much information starts to feel like enough or too much. And yes, that can differ from person to person. So I'm sort of relying on my own tracking of myself and my experience. But I do have a lot of experience as a teacher and a therapist of trying to feel out what is a good amount of information for people without sending us into overwhelm. Those of us who like to intellectualize and really be up in our head - and I'm one of them- who might want a quicker pace - they want to take in the information, they want to really have it in. And that's okay. Everyone is welcome here. And I honor all of our different protector parts, but I'm a huge fan of slowing things down and slowing them down further and slowing them down further. And you'll hear me say that a lot! Now my nervous system is the opposite and my nervous system wants to go fast, fast, fast, and learn everything. But I know that the language of our nervous system, when we are in our Self or our adult consciousness is actually slow. So we may do a chapter every time. We may do two chapters…We will find out together. One more thing I want to mention briefly before we dive in is a lot of you really resonated with what I shared about environmental failures, and I'm so glad that maybe that's helping you see your experience in a little bit of a different light. Of course, we are never here to blame parents or caregivers, and this isn't really a catharsis process where we go back and rage against the people in your early life- teachers, caregivers, etc.- who may have had environmental failures with you, but rather it's an opportunity for us to be curious about what our own experience may have been and how that may impact us here in the present. And again, it can be so subtle. Like, for example, maybe you were a gifted child and that didn't get seen. And so in school you often felt on the outside of things or bored and you might have gotten in trouble for being bored. Or maybe you didn't participate because you were so far ahead in the material, and it just created this sense of being on the outside, from your classmates and from your teacher. And you can understand that humans are made to be in connection to others, but particularly as children, we're developing that capacity of who we are and who we are in relationship to others, and what connection feels like with others. That can actually feel so, so scary. And so something as “simple” as that can create this need to protect ourselves, to keep our true self hidden away, because we realize that if we're ourselves, we might be considered unacceptable to others. Now, as we left off last time, we did not explore the exercises together. And you heard me say, and you heard me say again, that I'm a huge fan of taking it slow. This first exercise here is an introduction to getting to know our parts and specifically our protector parts. So sort of similarly to a mindfulness practice where you're noticing what's happening and what is wanting your attention. And then just getting curious. When we are learning to track and observe ourselves, we have different pathways or doorways into our experience. That is often thoughts, emotions and body sensations, and sometimes those images, impulses and behaviors as well. You're going to hear us emphasize a lot this idea of observing and observing thoughts, emotions and body sensations. And when we say thought, we don't mean thinking or intellectualizing, but rather connecting with the story, the story that these different parts of us hold. So it's not something you can try to rationally or intellectually think your way into. And that can be frustrating to some of us, which is okay, because then we get the opportunity to notice the part of us that feels frustrated. Remember, when you're trying out this exercise of getting to know a protector, what you're really doing is just noticing and observing. And that is what is really similar to the NARM model, where we're just being curious, we're noticing and observing. We're not trying to make anything happen. And literally just by sitting and trying to notice, you might have a part of you come out that doesn't want you to try and notice. And that's perfect because there is an opportunity to observe a different part of you. As you'll see from this exercise, IFS offers an opportunity to communicate with these parts and ask these parts what it might want you to know, or what it might need from you. And if you're just diving into this book for the first time, this might feel like a lot. It might feel silly, it might feel hard. It might feel activating. All of those things are okay. I want to give you permission to know that you don't have to do these exercises exactly as they're described here right now. In fact, it's okay to wait until we get more into the book before you even try this exercise in the first chapter at all. It's okay if it feels clunky or weird or stressful or anxiety producing. If you start to notice some activation, you can see if you have enough of yourself or observer online to notice the part that is activated. And when you do that, you're invoking the IFS principle of unblending, where you're a little bit separate from that part for a moment because you're noticing it, you're observing it from yourself, and maybe you observe it for a split second, and then you feel like you go into anxiety or shutdown or freeze or disconnection or intellectualization. That's okay. That's actually really good information for you to notice and pause and see if you can, as I call it, dip a pinky back into the present to find yourself. Because this is a book, and not an individual therapy session, it goes more quickly than I typically would with clients, which is why- again, I know I'm a broken record-there's an invitation to slow things down and notice that maybe now's not the time for this exercise. Similarly, with the second exercise, maybe it's the time that you can be curious about mapping some of these parts and following a trailhead, as Richard Schwartz calls it- where you're just noticing and following the different sensations and experiences that come up. Again, though, if you're here and you're curious about this book, it's very possible that you've had some trauma sometime in your life, even if your trauma was just, “an environmental failure” or several environmental failures as children. And that means that we need to go slow, as much as we might want to resist that. I would really encourage you to allow yourself to just be in the information and trust your instinct to know that the time to do these exercises will become clear to you. Now as we dive into chapter two. We're coming back into that term of blending and exploring why parts might blend. When blending happens, essentially that part of us, or that neural pathway in our brain that is predicting what is happening in the present, and the emotions, thoughts, stories, impulses and body sensations that go along with that part or that pathway in our brain take over. That becomes the primary pathway in our brain; that becomes the primary part, which sort of obscures our capital s Self. We don't feel separateness from that part in that moment. Instead, we become that part. In those moments, we are not in our self, but rather in that old experience. So we could have that overwhelming fear, that anger, the freeze, the disconnection, the apathy, all of that will come on and feel as if it's happening right in the present moment. This happens again because our brain is trying to predict what's going to happen in the present, based on the past. So if something happens in the present that makes our brain think the same thing is going to happen, then our brain is going to execute that pattern to say, okay, this is what we needed to do in the past. And so that part steps forward. Let's say that when you were a child, your home was very tense and there was a lot of arguing and a lot of fighting, and it was really terrifying for you as a child. So you start to feel anxious and scared, and your heart would be pounding, and you would either have to freeze and shut down and run and hide, or maybe you became extra sweet and extra kind and extra good and tried to make everything okay between your parents. Then let's say you're in the present and you're out to dinner with some friends. They have a good relationship, but you can tell that things are tense between them. Maybe they had a little bit of a disagreement. Everything's safe. You're not responsible for these people. You're an adult. But the pathway in your brain is saying, oh my gosh, that same unsafe thing is happening. I need to freeze and shut down, or I need to be super on and make everything okay so that they'll be happy with each other and I'll be okay. And that part is the part of us that becomes active instead of the Self. So that threat feels like it's happening right in the moment so that hypervigilance is there, the freeze or dissociation is there, the “people pleasing” or inner critic or shame is there. That is blending. It's important. You know that blending can happen in crisis moments, but it can also just happen subtly in a daily experience. Maybe part of your day to day experience is the perfectionist part of you is always there feeling like you have to work constantly to avoid failure. So you always have this little undercurrent of hypervigilance and perfectionism. But then when something occurs that can trigger you, like for example, some feedback, then you might feel a surge of the emotions related to that part of rage or panic or shame and not really feel sure, where that's coming from. But it's important to know that in those moments the Self is not gone. It can be obscured like the sun during an eclipse, but it's still there. It's still present. We know that when we're able to observe and be curious and un-blend, our Self or our adult part will be there again. Blended parts play a huge role in how we view the world. And again, if you want to envision this with me as a part that takes over or as a neural pathway, it makes a lot of sense that when we're in those parts, it's as if we're experiencing the world as if we are those parts. And oftentimes those parts have developed in our younger childhood experiences, which is why in NARM we call that the child consciousness experience. And so when we are blended with those parts, we're experiencing the world as if we are a younger part of us, which is why things will feel like a threat to our lives that are not actually a threat to our lives as adults. So, for example, if as a child, we felt we had to be perfect to keep the peace in our home, then any potential for messing something up or not getting a A+ was an opportunity for a threat to our connection to our family, and thus a threat to connection to our life. Being voted off the island was what was at stake. So then in our adult experience, when we get feedback that might sting a little bit, instead of feeling as an adult. Well, I can work on this or I can discuss this or it's okay to make a mistake. I can learn and grow from this. Instead, when we blend with that younger part of us, it feels again as if there was an actual threat to our life, which is why we might feel the deep terror or rage. It's important to remember that these protective parts of us are only focused on keeping us safe. They don't care if we're happy. They don't care if we're in connection. They cannot recognize the thing, the nuance of things that are happening around us.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello and welcome to our No Bad Parts Book Club and read along together. I'm so excited that you all are here to join me. We have a lot of new people joining me this time, and so I just briefly wanted to discuss the format our book club has taken in the past. The first thing that's really important to know is it's okay if you don't have the time to read along with us right now. Those of us who are not reading along will still find a lot of rich value in the discussion, and in each post I'll be breaking down the chapter and discussing it. So even if you haven't read it, you'll be able to listen and take in the material. Of course, you are more than welcome to read along, but I know that everyone reads at a different pace and we all have different levels of capacity in our lives, so you are welcome here, even if you will not be reading along, but just listening along. Each week I will discuss a chapter of the book and break it down a little bit of my viewpoint as a therapist, and how we might apply this in our personal lives. That will be the bulk of our book club. You are welcome to leave questions or comments on each post, and I will respond to your questions, either in the comments or on our next session. I will record a response to your question. We'll also have a private chat on Substack that's for paid subscribers only, which is where we can discuss as we're reading or ask questions or share curiosities that pop up…or share interesting TikToks we saw- we can share anything we want to there. Once or twice during this period, we will have what I call like a pop up fireside chat, where I'll give you about a week's notice that we're going to have a live meeting, and then we'll all pop on zoom together, discuss. I'll answer questions, share curiosities, whatever we might be drawn to in that hour. We will have live meetings that usually take place at 6 p.m. eastern time, which I know will not work for everyone in all time zones, so they will be recorded and then shared on Substack. This book has 11 chapters and we'll see how we go with the chapters. Usually I do one chapter a week just because there's a lot of rich material to talk about. But sometimes we might do two chapters just depending on how I'm feeling with the content. And this book club is for my paid subscribers, so if you're a free subscriber and you'd like to join, you can upgrade to the paid membership. It is $5 a month, and that helps support the time that I use to put together these book club posts and other parts of my work. For those of you who are new here, we just completed our book club on the book about NARM- Neuro Affective Relational Model called The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. Because I am a therapist who practices NARM and uses an IFS lens, you will hear me make references to NARM and how NARM works in relationship to IFS. If you would like to learn more about NARM and how that might work with IFS as a paid subscriber, you have access to the entire archive so you can go back and listen to all the chapters that I've recorded about the NARM book called The Practical Guide for healing Developmental Trauma. So right off the bat, that mono mind paradigm is that idea that we have just one mind or just one consciousness inside of our mind. And Richard Schwarz suggests that we actually all have these different parts inside of us or these sub minds. And this can be really confusing, especially if we have heard of things like multiple personality disorder, which is now called dissociative identity disorder. A lot of times people will think, well, does this mean that I have dissociative identity disorder? Of course, I'm not here to diagnose anyone, but for most of us, the answer to that question is no. Thinking of these different sub minds or parts of us is a way to understand the different experiences we all have inside of us. So as he uses the example of kind of like that classic angel and devil on the shoulder, one part of us saying go for it and another part of us saying, don't you dare, you can kind of think of that as two separate parts or two separate voices inside of your mind. And so IFS relies mainly on this idea of parts that develop at different times in our lives. If you've seen the Inside Out movies, then you're familiar. They use IFS, Internal Family Systems, as a model for those movies to really help differentiate those parts. In Inside Out, the parts have emotion names in IFS. We don't necessarily assign emotions the names, because we know each part of us can experience a wide range of emotions, but I think Inside Out gives you a great idea of what it's like to have those different parts in our mind that are trying to run the show. He does a really important and big thing here in the first chapter of laying out this idea of willpower and shame that is so pervasive in the American culture. And if you joined us for the NARM Book Club, you know how much we talked about this idea of shame, and it has this idea that we should be able to manage everything through willpower: pull yourself up by your bootstraps all the time, and anything else is part of your kind of like your…evil impulse. And so you need to keep that evil impulse under control with your drill sergeant or inner critic selves. But most of us find that the harder we try to get rid of these parts of us that are not “willpower,” the more they fight back. And this is why the self-help industry is $1 billion industry. If you've watched any of my content and you know that, I kind of have ongoing criticism of the Atomic Habits book, and if the Atomic Habits book works for you, that is wonderful… But books like that take this idea that you can change your habits and make it really, really simple, as if we all should be able to do it. What happens is I get a lot of people coming into therapy saying, well, I did all of these things in the book and I still couldn't stick to my habits. And that comes back to this idea of willpower and shame. We should be able to stick to what the Atomic Habits book says or whatever other self-help book says. And if we can't, it's because there's something wrong with us. And so we criticize ourselves more. And I don't know about you, but if someone's criticizing me, do you think I’m more or less likely to do the habit change? Less likely. Right. So we get stuck in these endless internal battles of trying to willpower and pressure our way into change, and IFS offers a different viewpoint of things. It's really important to know that it doesn't mean there's not room for wanting to set habits or make change in our lives, but that we all have parts that want different things. And some of those things might be things that are not in pursuit of what is good for us or what we really want. We might have parts who want things that are really bad for us, and that's not because they are bad parts, but because there's something they're trying to accomplish with that desire. Many traditions, whether religious or philosophical or cultural, teach us that we have this single mind, and to control this single mind, we have to overcome our thoughts and overcome our emotions. And what that does is it sets us up to constantly attack ourselves when we can't control our thoughts and can control our emotions. And it really strengthens that inner critic part. Certain types of therapies and spiritual practices can reinforce this with this idea that to be successful in life or to achieve enlightenment or whatever it may be, that we have to control more tightly; grip more tightly onto our thoughts. But in IFS, we're challenging this, and we're suggesting that the thoughts and emotions and body sensations (I'm going to throw that in there) that we experience come from different parts of us. So rather than having one mind that is just throwing these thoughts at us that we need to try to control, we have these different parts that have developed in different parts of our lives to try to keep us safe. Rather than viewing them as obstacles that need to be controlled through habit change and planners and spreadsheets, instead we view them as parts of us that need to be heard and loved and taken care of. Now, mindfulness or observing is a really big part of IFS- not to try to shut down our emotions and thoughts or to stop our thoughts, which oftentimes mindfulness has gotten to be this idea that we need to stop our thoughts- but rather to observe and be curious and notice. So if you go back and listen to any of my posts about the NARM model, for those of you who weren't there with us, you'll hear me talk nonstop about observing and noticing. Because if we can observe and notice with curiosity and neutrality, then we have the opportunity to intervene, do something different, or show up for these parts in a way that they have never been shown up for before. So our goal in observing isn't to push these parts away, but to connect with and support the healing of these different parts of us. So we're not trying to quiet the mind, but rather to bring them in, listen to them, and nurture them. And that as we do that, they can express what they've been holding all along. Then, they will lessen or shift into strengths. Doctor Schwartz really shares his curiosity and learning here as a therapist, where he used to subscribe to the sort of mono mind idea of just trying to control and change our behaviors by changing our thoughts. But then he started to notice that a lot of his patients were sharing these different parts of them. Some of them were helpful, some of them may have been enacting harm to the patient, but all of them were protective and shaped by that person's past experiences. And when he was able to be with the clients and allow these parts to share their stories and how they might have been frozen in time from a younger part that experienced trauma or difficult experiences, then things started to shift a little bit. Then the part started to be less destructive and less harmful and start to take on different roles. And so even a behavior as they share in this book, like self-harm, could be part of one of those internal parts of us that is trying to protect us. tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHi Book Club pals! I’ve had THE BEST time reading The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. Here’s the recording of our final fireside chat for this book (there’s a transcript here on Substack or you can listen on Spotify/Apply Podcasts!) - such a rich evening together. We’ll be starting No Bad Parts with our first post on Chapter 1 on Oc…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHello Substack Pals! We’re getting close to wrapping up our first read-a-long and it’s been so wonderful getting to engage and share in this work with you. I’d love to hear from you about what you liked, what you wish were different, and ideas for future book clubs (or other ideas!). On TikTok, many of you have expressed a desire for deeper support and connection in your personal growth journeys. This inspired the idea of the “Self Help Drop Out Club”—a space for those who want to move beyond quick-fix advice and dive into meaningful, lasting transformation - a mixture of a community chat space and live meetings. If this resonates with you, let me know in the comments or reply directly. Together, we can create something truly supportive and connected.Be sure to scroll to the bottom for our live book club meeting date and link!Also - new this week, I added a summary! I know for some of us, 25 minutes is way too long to be able to listen to/take in all at once. So if you, like me, enjoy a shorter summary to process and then come back later to the longer post, scroll down to the bottom! Now, onto our transcript this week:Welcome back for our read-along of the Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. This week we're going to be exploring Chapter 7, the NARM Emotional Completion Model.   And as a reminder, I'm here recapping these chapters for you, whether you're reading along with me or you're just listening along. I want to make this information more accessible so that you can take it and apply it to your life. Thank you so much for being here and supporting my work in this way. Let's dive in.   So as you may remember from our earlier discussions together, when we are children, we are biologically wired to stay in connection to our caregivers above all else. We rely on our caregivers to love us, support us, and provide a safe and caring environment where we can learn and grow and develop. And when our environment is not able to provide that to us and our caregivers are not able to provide that to us for whatever reason, it is the most heartbreaking experience because we won't expect that from our caregivers. We expect our caregivers to love us and show up for us.  And when they aren't able to do so, when we aren't able to safely attach to them, when we aren't able to safely develop and grow and be curious and have emotions, it is so devastating. It is hopeless. It is helpless.   And we will have this experience of really, really deep despair.  And so, of course, as children, living with that deep despair just feels completely intolerable.   As adults, at the very least, when we experience heartbreak, we have this ability to understand it, to have some cognition about it and to feel our way through it. But as children, we can't conceptualize that maybe our parents are having a hard time or our caregivers are having a hard time.  Instead, it feels like something must be wrong with us.  And so, of course, we would disconnect from our emotional experience to prevent a deeper feeling of loss. And when we do that, we disconnect ourselves from the full vitality and connection of life. But that's what we had to do to survive.   When we get into our adult life, those survival strategies don't magically disappear.   And so we're trying to navigate a life where we want to feel fullness, connection,   love, aliveness, but we had to disconnect from that. And that is what can lead to us feeling so stuck and so dissatisfied in our lives. Emotions are such a central part of how we understand ourselves, how we create meaning in our lives,  and how we connect with others and navigate the world.   And so if we learned that it wasn't safe and we had to disconnect from our emotions,   then we are missing a key part of our experience. That is why people who identify as intellectualizers, though they might understand everything very clearly, still feel stuck because they have that disconnection from their emotional experience.   And often, if we had to disconnect from our emotions, it means we disconnected from our body and the sensations there as well.  And that's often where we see that freeze or that functional freeze of the nervous system where we're going through life, but we feel numb or disconnected from ourselves.   So, for example, in our early lives as children, we are crying because we don't have the ability to regulate ourselves as babies because we're stating that we need something from the environment.  And in a healthy, securely attached environment,   the child will be responded to and the need will be met. And that emotion of distress or need or whatever it is, feels resolved and completed. And we can go back to feeling regulated and exploring and playing and connecting.   But if we live in an environment that can't meet our needs, then we experience an environmental failure or a rupture.  In that case, what we will learn is that it's not okay to have needs.  Maybe my caregiver comes and they're upset, or my caregiver comes and they're withdrawn, or they don't come at all.  So over time, what we learn is to shut down our experience.  Because it's futile, it's useless.  And not only is it useless, but it disconnects us further from our caregivers. And that, again, brings up that hopeless, helpless feeling.   None of this, again, is about blaming your caregivers and parents, but rather understanding how early environmental failures and ruptures led to us disconnecting from our own emotions, from our own needs.  And these roots can start so early.   And they start in families,  even if you weren't harmed, even if your parents loved you,  but they couldn't attune to you and they couldn't show up to you, or you had ruptures in school through bullying or from your teachers.  Then we learn from this deeply young age to shut down our emotions and shut down our ability to know what we want and move toward it, which is that experience of agency.   Part of moving forward and connecting to ourselves or our adult consciousness is allowing some of these emotions that have been held down for so long to be felt and move through. Oftentimes people think why would I need to feel them now why can't I just be rid of them if I'm not feeling them right now and the answer to that is you're feeling them you're just working really really hard to hold them down to repress them to push them down you may not be aware of that because you may have been doing it for so long.   But that's where that same analogy comes in of driving the car with the emergency brake on.  It takes such a toll on us over time.  And so the answer isn't to hit the gas harder, but the answer is to start to let off the emergency brake.  As we explore this model of emotional completion,   we want to differentiate between fear and anxiety,   which is such an important part of the NARM model.   Fear or terror is a response to something that is directly threatening us,   that is directly threatening our survival.  So you're out walking in a bear,   you come upon a bear or,  you know, my example of a tiger trying to eat you.   Your survival system is going to activate.  Your nervous system and brain are going to immediately choose a fight,  flight,  fawn,  or freeze response to ensure that you survive.  None of this is conscious.  It's all happening very, very quickly below the surface with your brain and nervous system deciding what is the best choice of survival.   It is so important to understand that as children, these environmental failures don't just make us feel anxious, but they trigger terror.  Because we know, again, that biological wiring makes it so that the threat of the loss of connection with our parents and our caregivers, our attachment relationship, it does impact our survival.   We are completely reliant on the adults in our lives as children to survive.  So that loss of relationship is literally a threat to our lives.   That is different from the adult experience where we know that losing a relationship or having something scary or challenging happening to us can be hard, but that our life is not at stake.  And that is very, very different   NARM talks about this as futuristic memory, meaning where we're holding these past experiences and projecting them into our present and future.  Here and on TikTok,   you've likely heard me talk about predictive patterning, and this is that same idea where our brain is using what has happened to us in the past to try to predict what is going to happen in the future.  And again, that's to keep us safe.   It's actually super adaptive so that we don't have to be making conscious choices all of the time, which would be exhausting. The predictive patterning lets us drive to work safely, even if we're not % focused.  But where it becomes challenging is if we've had these environmental failures in our early life, and that sets up a pattern that says,   for example, everyone is going to reject and leave me because I'm not good enough.   Then we are predicting that all of the time to people around us.  And that creates this internal experience of anxiety.   So when NARM is talking about this distorted reality, this futuristic memory that happens for us in adult relationships, that is because in our brain, those old predictive neural pathways are there telling us that is what is going to happen.  So it's not just that you're anxious,  it's that your brain has an old predictive pattern saying,   having needs is unsafe because I may lose the connection.  Being my own person is unsafe because I may lose the connection.  And so it's entirely possible that in your adult life, the anxiety that comes up has nothing to do with the present situation, but is rather that old predictive pattern.   We know that we can change predictive patterning, thank goodness, right?  We know that we can change our brains and form new pathways.  But to do so, we have to be aware that a predictive pattern is coming on. And that is why I talk so much, and NARM talks about this too, about learning to observe these different patterns or these different parts of us, and to start to be curious about, similar to rock strata, like the Grand Canyon, where you see all the layers, to see what lies beneath.  tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comHi, and welcome back to Tiny Sparks. This week we have a little mini podcast episode. I like to change up the way I present the information to you, because some of us like to listen, some of us like to read, and the good thing is, with the podcast episode, if you don't want to listen, you can read the full transcript below. So this week, I wanted to talk about something that comes up so frequently in therapy and healing work, which is the idea of self-sabotage. I see people all the time on social media talking about this, and very, very often the people I work with will come in and say, oh, I was making so much progress. And then I did this, this and this this weekend. And I'm just too self-sabotaging. And oftentimes the way that term self-sabotaging is used is it's very critical, it's very collapsing. It's this idea that I was doing good and now I'm bad. I'm sabotaging myself. And very often, what I want to support people in knowing is that it's not that you are “bad” or purposefully getting in your own way, but rather that a part of your brain is trying to protect you and keep you safe. That automatically shifts the lens from this collapsing blaming lens to this understanding of there's something deeper happening when we talk about self-sabotage. People mean all kinds of things when they talk about self-sabotage. A lot of times people will talk about things like procrastination, oh, I landed this project that I'm really, really excited about, but instead of working on it this weekend, I scrolled on my phone and watched TV all weekend. I am self-sabotaging and always delaying things- I'm never following through. Self-sabotage can show up in other ways, too. Perfectionism can be a form of self-sabotage, where we set impossibly high standards for ourselves that we can never reach. But oftentimes, self-sabotage people mean that they're not on the path that they want to be on. So they'll say, well, I was really wanting to go to the gym every day to take care of my health, and I did it for three weeks. But then this weekend, I didn't go to the gym at all. I laid on the couch all day and I just ate snacks, and I didn't move, and I didn't even go on a walk. I'm just really self-sabotaging. So first, there's this really problematic idea, which is that when we're wanting to make a change in our lives or to do something differently, or to move toward something different, that we have to be doing it exactly right every single day, or else we're not successful in that change. That, in its core, is a misunderstanding of how our brain works. When we're trying to make changes or move towards something we want that is new, that is different, that is something we haven't done before, we have to think about our brain and to understand that the things we have done repeatedly in our lives are like beautiful, paved highways in our brain. Our brain creates these patterns on based on what has happened to us in the past, so that it can predict what is going to happen in the future. So you can kind of think of the roadways in a city. They're not going to make beautiful big paved highways out in the rural country where not a lot of people go. They might have one, two lane rural state highway. They're not going to have a big, beautiful, gorgeous 12 lane interstate. They make the interstates around the major cities where there are a lot of people going, and our brain works the same way. It builds these pathways to say, this is something that's happened in the past. It's likely something that will happen in the future. It's something that I need to be able to access regularly. So I will build a roadway around it. It doesn't matter whether it's something that we like, something we don't like. It's all about what is going to keep us safe, keep us going and what we do repeatedly. When you want to make a change in your brain, you are saying, I want to go off of this interstate highway that I drive on every single day, and I want to go out into the Amazon jungle. That's what it's like in the rest of our brain outside of these neural pathways and predictive patterns. So when you're wanting to make a change in your life, you are basically getting off the interstate and you get off the exit, and not only is there not a road there, but there's a really, really dense, dense, dense jungle. So it's not realistic to expect that you're going to be able to make a sudden change, because when you get off the interstate and you're in the jungle, it's like, huh, I can't even I can't even drive my car. I'm gonna have to get out of my car and start walking and start hacking down vines. That's what it's like when we want to make a change in our brain. So you can see why. First off, it's simply unrealistic to expect that when we want to make a change, we're going to do the change every single time. Like maybe ten times you'd get in your car and you drive on the interstate, which is not going to the gym. And the 11th time you go out into the jungle, you start hacking down vines, and you do go to the gym. Very often when we start to make a change, we have some initial excitement about making the change, so we're able to override and just kind of go out into the jungle. But after a while, our brain gets fatigued and wants to go back to that old pathway of not going to the gym. In this example, it starts to get a lot deeper than that when we recognize that not only is our brain not wanting to go from the roadway into the jungle, but it's also trying to protect us and keep us safe. The brain wants to maintain something called homeostasis. And homeostasis means keeping everything the same. It wants to do that because it doesn't want to expend extra energy trying to make changes all of the time. So it wants to stay on those familiar, comfortable highways. When we tried to disrupt the homeostasis by going against the same things that we have always done, the brain is going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa, pump the brakes. In a way, our brain will actively resist change. Then add the next level onto this: when we start to understand that these predictive pathways, these neural pathways in our brain formed to keep us safe based on what has happened to us in our earlier life. Then it gets even more complex. So if you start to think about what in this example, what does going to the gym represent? Let's just say that going to the gym represents taking care of yourself, that you really want to be able to show up and take care of yourself. It doesn't matter if you walk ten minutes on the treadmill or you stretch or whatever it is, you just really want to start taking care of yourself more. Sounds great right? We're always talking about self-care and taking care of ourselves. What happens if in your early life what you learned is having needs made everyone upset? Maybe in your house what you learned was, when I have a need, when I want something, when I act out a little bit or I reach towards something that I want, everything in my house feels really tense. Maybe it's that your family didn't have a lot of money, so when you wanted something like to go on a field trip, it wasn't that your family didn't want to support you in that, but they just genuinely didn't have the funds. So there was a lot of tension, a lot of stress as your parents tried to figure out how to juggle that and make that work. Or maybe you had caregivers who just couldn't take care of their own needs. They didn't learn how to do that. And so then when you had a need or want or an emotion or an experience that made them feel really overwhelmed, so they pulled back from you, or they sent you to their room or whatever it is, or maybe you lived in an environment that was very emotionally volatile. So you learn from a young age, having needs and wants was just an unsafe experience. Things already felt so much, so volatile, so unsure, that you just learned to keep your needs and wants shut down- to not take care of yourself, but to focus on taking care of and attuning to everyone else's needs around you. In each of these situations, what is happening is your brain is forming predictive patterns in your brain to say having a need, having a want, having an emotion, having needs, and not focusing on the needs of people around me is dangerous. And this is from the mind of usually a child, a younger part of us. Yes, we can experience this as adults too, but it oftentimes starts in our early environment where children don't have the cognitive complexity- or maybe as adults we don't have the safety- to choose and say, I want to do something differently. This isn't about me. The fact that my parents can't support my needs or my partner or whoever it is isn't about me. We might not have had that opportunity or the ability to do that, because we are so wired to stay in connection to our caregivers in our early life, but instead what we do is we just say, well, if I have to choose between my caregivers and me, I'm going to choose my caregivers. Because it just feels so unsafe to consider anything else. So boom, now you have this really well formed interstate highway in your brain that says choosing myself, having needs, attuning to myself, taking care of myself puts my connection with others at stake, which means it puts my life at stake. tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comWelcome back to the read-a-long of The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. This week we’re exploring the end of chapter 5 (finding agency - the thing we all want!) and chapter 6 (reflecting psychobiological shifts aka noticing what happens in ourselves as we shift)! You can join at any time, even if you aren’t currently reading the book - I’m here to recap and break things down for you so you can take this and apply it to your life. Thanks for being apart of this community, I’m so glad you’re here. (By the way, if you didn’t know already, you can listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Music - if you’re like me and love to listen to podcasts on your walk, add it to your listen list over on those platforms, too!).By the way, I wanted to let you know I am hosting Part Two to my “Let's Talk About Getting Unstuck” on August 30th at 7:00 pm EST. It will be recorded if you can't attend live and I'm so excited about it.Part One was wonderful and so uplifting to get to do. And that recording is available on my website. You don't need to have been to part one to join us for Part Two, but you might find it interesting in Part One I'm talking a lot about nervous system flexibility, how our nervous system and brain work together. Part Two will be about putting it into practice. So I would love to see you there. I have a little coupon code for all my Substack readers. If you'd like to join, you can get 20% off (coupon code is: bookclub). Have a great week and I'll see you back in two weeks!Welcome back for our reading of the Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. Wherever you are in your reading process is just fine. Or maybe you decided not to read the book at all, but just to join in the discussion. Either way, I'm happy you're here. We left off talking about the very, very powerful pillar in NARM of reinforcing agency and really getting curious to start to notice how some of the experiences we’re having may be internal processes that we learn to land on ourselves. For example, instead of saying I feel guilty or I felt ashamed, we could notice that maybe there's a way we are guilting or shaming ourselves. And there's a little reflective exercise at the end of chapter five to notice the shift from I feel pressure to I put pressure on myself. I feel burn out. I burn myself out. This is such a critical, critical piece of understanding what it's like to live with developmental trauma, where for many of us, we didn't have a say over what happened as a child and so we developed these protective survival strategies. As adults, we become the ones who pick up the torch and use those things against ourselves to stay disconnected from our agency, from our capacity, from our ability to move forward because of that internal dilemma where moving forward feels like it's a risk to our connection. So it gets that pathway going in our brain that says, oh my goodness, a tiger is trying to eat me. So becoming aware of the ways that we set our own agency down by doing things like shaming ourselves isn't to make you feel worse, but to help support you in understanding how some of the roadblocks (not all of them), are things that we can start to be curious about slowing down and getting underneath.There’s a great dialogue here between therapist and client that can be really helpful for us to start to understand how to add this NARM lens onto things, how to add a developmental trauma lens onto things, to notice how so many of these subconscious predictive patterns are happening all of the time. For example, maybe we start to feel anger and we use that shame to shut ourselves down, or we have a need and we guilt ourselves for having the need again to shut down our agency. And all of this is because of those learned patterns that we learned that we had to do as a child to maintain connection with our caregivers and in our early environments. But as adults, those same patterns are now getting in our way of feeling our feelings, expressing our needs, connecting safely to our body, and just having the agency and choice to do those things. It's one of the scariest and best thing that I've ever done, is to start to accept my role in my current life of where I get in my own way- to own my part of the dynamics in my life. And that doesn't mean that there aren't other dynamics happening around me, in relationships and in the systems in which I live. But to be able to own my part and consider that maybe, possibly, potentially, I can do something differently is the best gift. Some of this sample language here, while again it's suited towards therapists, can be wonderful for us in our own processes to be curious, to notice: Hmm, I wonder if I'm starting to feel shame when I feel angry, or when I feel sad, or I wonder what I'm telling myself about that experience. I wonder how I'm relating to this situation. So powerful for this process of internal curiosity, internal observation, which we know is what allows us to reconnect to that agency. I really love this practice exercise at the end, and if you don't have anyone you could do this with, perhaps you could do it with your therapist, or you could even do it written in a journal to notice an area where you're feeling stuck. And then let yourself be curious at this question what else is true? Not because we're trying to override the area where you're feeling stuck, but because we're curious.

 Hello and welcome back to our Read Along of the Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma, where I use my expertise as a therapist who specializes in complex and developmental trauma to break down popular self-help books and to create a community where we can explore and ask questions together. I have had so many new faces joining me on Substack in the last few weeks, but I decided to make this post a free post so that you could get a little feel for what we do over here in our book club read-alongs. You don't need to own the book, or even to be on the same chapter that we are on. If you are reading along, because I'm going to provide a little summary and then share some of my thoughts about it as well. Listen above or read the transcript below!This week we'll be exploring chapter five of The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. This chapter is on reinforcing agency, which is a huge concept in the NARM model. To understand agency, we need to understand what we're talking about when we talk about our sense of self or our observer, or our curious experiencer, as I call it. And to do that, we need to understand the concept of structuralization. To put it simply, structuralization is a process through our development, starting as children, where we take our life experiences and we internalize them to build maps or models of the world around us, including how we see ourselves. And this sort of internal map helps shape us: what we think about ourselves, how we feel about ourselves, what we allow ourselves to do. And we're always sort of filing that information away, determining if we can clear through developmental gates. And when I say gates, I kind of imagine it like a hurdle. Can I have my own needs? Can I be my own person? Can I do those things and still be loved? We're exploring each of those things starting from infancy throughout our life, and based on the feedback we get from our early environments, including our caregivers, schoolmates, teachers, anyone who's around us, that's how we build our internal sense of self and our internal map of the world. You could almost imagine a little kid building something with Legos, and every Lego brick that they pick up represents an experience or an interaction they have with the world around them. Positive experiences where they feel loved, seen, attuned to, or supported help them build a strong, stable structure, a strong, stable foundation. Negative experiences where they might feel unseen, neglected, unsafe, or even mis-attuned to, meaning you're supported and you're loved, but there's a miss. So maybe you were a highly sensitive child, but you grew up in a family of engineers who weren't extremely connected to their emotions. While they may have loved and supported you and made sure that you had a stable home, you may have felt missed because you felt things strongly and you were always feeling emotions. Being this attuned to in that way leads to a shaky, unstable structure. And so as we grow up into teenagers and adults, that internal structure that we've built influences our entire world- how safe we feel having agency, how safe we feel being ourselves, responding to challenges in our life, connecting with other people, building relationships. If we have a strong structure, then we likely have a strong sense of us as ourselves, and we can handle stressful things and know that we are still okay. So we're not in survival mode. We don't have those predictive patterns in our brain saying that a tiger is trying to eat us all of the time. But if we had a history of misfortune or a lack of safety or any other sort of environmental ruptures and failures, then we don't have that foundation. And so when things happen, or when we think about the potential for hard things to happen, we might get that feeling that things are unsafe because we don't have that stable structure. Another way to think about structuralization is through that lens of the different parts. So if you've seen the Inside Out movie, you might be familiar with what I'm talking about, where we might have a very strong sense of self who is able to keep us steady and moving forward even when things are challenging or hard, even if anxiety is trying to take over or anger is rushing up to the board. And if we don't have that experience, then we might have these parts that split off. We might get fragmented internally, where we have to take those parts of us and put them underground, because it doesn't feel safe to have those parts of us out in the world. And when we do that, when we have to take our true self and hide them underground, lock them up in a castle, put on all these suits of armor, then we are disconnected from that curious experience or observer of life. And so what can become impaired is that agency. And that's what this chapter is all about. tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Agency is about that ability to observe and be present to our own experience- how we show up in the world and how we are presenting ourselves to others out in the world. It is such a critical, critical piece of how we move toward what we want for ourselves. It really stood out to me in this chapter, the quotation that they said “I am the one living my life. I am living life versus life happening to me.” So as you have learned and I read along so far, the NARM model does not focus on reliving all of the trauma that happened to you, but rather being curious about how those survival strategies may have developed for you to adapt to the environment around you based on that early structure, based on that self that you were able to build. So if we lived in an environment where things did not feel safe, we did not have a false sense of safety. It doesn't matter if we actually were safe, if we didn't have a false sense of safety, for example, that misattunement that I used, then we split those parts of us off and we move forward identifying with those survival strategies. What that means is instead of being able to recognize: this is a pattern, I learned to keep myself safe, we feel like it is us. A great example of that is sometimes people will say, well, I really want to set this boundary, but then I feel so guilty and they'll talk about guilt as it is this external experience that comes out of nowhere and lands onto them. And I know it really feels that way because I have said the very same thing myself. But from an agency perspective, when we can get into that self, that curious experiencer, we can notice- instead of saying, I want to set that boundary, but then I feel guilty. I want to set that boundary. But it's scary. So I guilt and shame myself, and I shut myself down from having the boundary that I want to have because that feels like what I need to do to stay safe and in connection. So in the NARM model agency is the critical piece that allows us to connect the child consciousness who holds all of those protective survival mechanisms, and the adult consciousness, who is our true self, who knows that no matter what comes, we can handle it- that our life is not at stake in the way it felt like it was as a child. When we are disconnected from our agency because we had to take our true selves underground and offline, we spend so much of our time in shame and shutting ourselves down over and over and over again, often without realizing we're doing it, which can leave us feeling very helpless. That's also why I'm doing this series right now on Substack about shame, because it is such a big part of so many of our experiences, and so often, if not all the time, is founded in developmental trauma. It's very, very important, as we're taking in this chapter, to take in the idea that recognizing how we might have shut ourselves down or how we might play a role in our current life circumstances, is not the same as blaming ourselves. It can be very painful to start to become aware of how we have learned to shut ourselves down. So in that boundary example where we couldn't set a boundary because we started shaming ourselves, it might feel incredibly challenging to come to terms with the fact that so many of our relationships feel dissatisfying, not only because of the other people (though the other people may be challenging), but because we shut our needs down over and over again. We don't state our needs. We don't state what we want for ourselves. We don't communicate because we are disconnected from ourselves and we shut those things down. That is not to say you're a bad problem, and you're the reason why you have no good strong relational connections. Not at all, but rather to notice: Wow- if I want to have a deeply connected relationship, shutting myself down is actually getting in the way of that, and that's actually something I can explore. Now, does that mean if I start setting boundaries that every single relationship is suddenly going to be perfect and wonderful and deeply connected and attuning? It doesn't mean that at all, because we don't have any control over how other people respond. But when we're not shutting ourselves down and we can start to feel connection to agency and state our needs or set our boundaries, then we are going to feel entirely different in the world and not reliant on needing other people to read our minds and give us what we want and need. And that is a totally different ballgame. Please be very gentle with yourself as you're exploring this concept of agency, especially for those of us who have experienced abuse or continue to exist under systemic trauma. And this all can coexist in one universe, so none of this means that what happened to you or what is happening to you isn't deeply wrong or hurtful as they name here. Oftentimes, we are having normal reactions to abnormal and traumatic situations. In fact, there's often a lot of grieving in this process as we start to connect to our agency because we're grieving for that part of us who was so deeply hurt. And from there, we can start to connect to agency in the present. But remember, when we've had developmental trauma and we've had to live in protective mode and we are split off from our true selves, it is too easy to go into shame and blame and shutdown. So as you're taking this chapter in, as you're hearing what I'm saying, this is a moment to slow down and pause and not use the concept of agency as another opportunity to shut yourself down, but rather as a curiosity to start to connect toward what you want for yourself and how your adaptive protective strategies, which may have served you in the past, may not be serving you anymore. It's really important to understand that agency isn't always about taking action. It's actually about that internal state of of observing and being curious about our own needs and emotions and experiences. For example, noticing that you want to set the boundary or state a need and that what's happening isn't working for you and that you deserve better or want more, that is agency. And while agency can drive behavior, that's not what this is about. We're not trying to change your behavior or make something happen. We're being curious about what happens when you notice and are aware of what you want for yourself. Agency is also not the same thing as empowerment, though you may feel empowered as you connect more and more to yourself and to your agency. Empowerment again is about that behavior, about dealing with the external experiences, whereas agency is all about connecting internally to that observer, to that curious experiencer, and noticing the different parts of you that developed to help keep you safe. That is agency. That is your internal relationship to self: building a more secure attachment to yourself, not trying to force it to other people around you. The NARM model often reflects on a really powerful quotation from Viktor Frankl, that says “Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is the power to choose our response. In the response lies growth and our freedom.” And so in the NARM model, the agency is between the stimulus and the response, where we connect to our self and organize our internal experience and be aware of it before we respond. Again, we don't want to ignore the external experiences because none of us exist in a vacuum. So in my example, let's say that I'm in a relationship and I don't express my needs. I haven't expressed my needs because I haven't felt safe. And so I feel really lonely and unseen my relationship, because I want my partner to show that they care about me, whether it's doing the dishes or stopping and picking up my favorite treat, or just checking in and asking me how I am on a stressful day. And I don't say anything about it and I don't say anything about it. So I remain feeling really dissatisfied in my relationship. Meanwhile, I'm taking care of every single thing my partner could ever want and need. I always make sure I have their favorite treats on hand. I always text them to see how they're doing, especially on stressful days. I cook their favorite meals for them. I go out of my way to buy special gifts for them, and that leads to me feeling more and more frustrated. Maybe in therapy, I'm sort of venting about, Well, I just don't understand why my partner can't ever meet my needs. And I need to set a boundary here, but I can't because I don't think that he'll know what I'm saying, or he'll think I'm being greedy or it won't feel the same. You know, it won't feel the same. He should think of it on his own. It won't feel the same if I ask for it. So we could focus on your partner. We could also focus on the behavior of stating your needs. Or we could be curious about the internal experience. What happens when you think about having needs? What happens when you think about wanting things from your partner; wanting to be seen and attuned to by your partner; wanting to be able to state your needs and have them responded to in a way that feels good to you. There might be a lot of fear underneath of there- or anger or deep grief- and that that leads to feeling too much. It sets off your survival system, those old predicted patterns that maybe you learned in childhood, that having needs was too much. Having needs made things in your household really difficult. And so in comes the ever powerful shame lock box to shut you down and make you feel guilty. Or even more powerfully, the the pride piece. The pride piece of when we feel shame and it's too much, we shift into this pride of, well, I don't have any needs or you know, it won't be special if I have to ask for it. That's another way, actually, that we're disconnecting from our agency. And if we realize that; if we realize that these things that we say to ourselves over and over again are actually tools that we're using to disconnect from our agency because it feels like too much, then we can slow things down and say, we don't have to focus on your partner right now. Instead, we can focus on what's happening in your brain, in your nervous system, in your survival system when you think about having needs. Is this a pattern for you? What's it like to reflect on that? How do you feel toward that part of you that feels so scared about having needs? As you increase that sense of self-awareness and that connection to yourself, the road will open in front of you about whether you want to address it with your partner or not, because you will feel a connection of knowing that no matter what happens, you will be okay. If you address it with your partner and they can't meet your needs, you can handle whatever comes. If you address it with your partner and they can meet your needs (and that's really scary, it feels like a lot), you can handle that if it comes. So the only person we have any say over is ourselves, and that can feel really scary and overwhelming, but also really exciting to see. We don't have to try to manage people around us anymore or try to manage our relationships sort of subconsciously, right? Like not stating our needs but being really resentful when they aren't met. I know many of us have been there before, and it's not a bad thing or a deficit about you, but rather a way you learn to survive. And now you can be curious about agency or noticing what you're wanting for yourself. The wonderful thing about this is the connection to ourselves becomes so much stronger, and so does the connection to others. In my example, when I'm not relying on my partner to read my mind to meet my needs, suddenly so much space opened up between us. And even if my partner didn't know that I was feeling resentful, they could probably feel the energy between us versus when I can state my needs. If that's what I'll decide that I want to do, suddenly we can have such a more depthful connection where we can see each other as adults and navigate things together instead of our survival strategy parts kind of duking it out between each other. Now you know that if you follow me on social media that I'm a huge proponent of talking about and bringing systemic trauma into therapy, because I think it is wrong to try to tell people that they can heal in a vacuum because many, many, many of us exist under systemic trauma- whether it's our identities or just the system we live in that doesn't provide for our needs to be met- that doesn't give us health insurance or enough money to have food or whatever other things we might be experiencing within the systems we live in. Those things are very real, and they do impact our nervous system, and they do impact our survival system, and they do make it more challenging to have a felt sense of safety and to connect to our agency. That is irrefutable. What is so important to me to say is that I am never trying to support people in thinking that they can agency or regulate their way out of systemic trauma, but whether to be curious about if there are ways they can connect to themselves in little moments within the system that they're in, so that they are more able to feel their vitality and their capacity to connect and build community and find safety within the system and to build new systems. And that doesn't mean you have to take on the broken system. Oftentimes, we feel like we do have to take on the broken system alone. And that might be part of our survival strategies. Instead, connecting to the safety and agency we have, even if it's just in this moment in this room, and the world around us feel so deeply unsafe, allows us to connect to others in new ways, and that is a way forward toward more resilience, more community, more connection. So as you're curious about some of these reflective exercises, as always, I encourage you to take it easy, to take it slow, to take it gently, and that when you read words like accountability to slow things down before you even do the reflective exercise, maybe you just slow things down and notice what it's like to read the reflective exercise. This one says “If you're able to take accountability for your part in this relational challenge, we invite you to reflect on what impact your behaviors might have had on the other person.” Just reading that without thinking about a specific situation in a relationship, just thinking about the word accountability might be enough to bring up a lot of anxiety, stress, and shame for some of us. And it's okay to just start there. Remember, we're always taking things little pieces at a time. We know that we're going up against our brains old predictive pathways, and that we can build new predictive pathways that let us have a felt sense of safety here in the present. But that takes time. And that's why we take things little steps at a time. It's okay if this material feels challenging, and if thinking about or even just listening to me talk about agency feels really scary, or makes you angry or makes you sad, that's the case for many of us who had developmental trauma. And you're not alone in that. And so that's why, again, we're not trying to force an outcome here. We're not saying you need to connect to your agency. We're being curious about what you want for yourself, and how disconnecting from your true self and your agency might be a piece of what's getting in the way for you. Thank you for reading tiny sparks - trisha wolfe. This post is public so feel free to share it.So, again, little tiny bits at a time. Because we know that these survival strategies push upon our survival system and can make us feel as if it's happening in the present, it is so critically important that we take this sort of like the archaeological dig, where there are really cool things under the dirt and you really want to dig in. You want to bring in a big excavator and dig in and get it out. But, you know, if you do that, you're going to break all those precious little pieces. And so instead, you have to mark off a little four foot by four foot section, and you get your little paintbrush and you just brush away little millimeters of dust at a time. But over time you start to see all this beautiful vase underneath or this amazing plate that's thousands of years old. We're excavating through layers and layers of strata of our life up until now, which for many of us is decades and decades. So it makes sense that it would take time, and it's okay to take it little pieces at a time and just keep coming back to curiosity, a felt sense of safety and observation. So when we come back together next time, we will finish up the rest of this chapter five and move into chapter six. We're coming toward the end of the book- making our way there little bits at a time, and I'm really enjoying getting to take it at this pace with you: to really do a deep dive into these chapters and to be curious and to take it slowly together so that we can really practice it. We're doing it right now. We're being gentle. We're taking little pieces. We're being slow and curious; neutral. So not to worry if you haven't started reading yet or you don't plan to read it and you just want to listen or you feel like you're behind. You're not behind. You're right on time. These recordings will be there for you if and when you decide you're ready. And I'm so glad you're here. I will be publishing our live meeting to wrap up the book soon as I get a better idea for when we're going to be closing this out. It’s probably looking like September, I'm guessing. It will give us a few more sessions to just really wrap things up with intentionality, and we will have our live fireside chat, and then we will move into “No Bad Parts” together. So again, I'm so glad you're here. I welcome any questions, curiosities, things you're learning, and you're welcome to just reply to this email. You don't have to post it here if you don't feel comfortable, but I would love to hear what pieces you're taking away from this. By the way, I wanted to let you know I am hosting Part Two to my “Let's Talk About Getting Unstuck” on August 30th at 7:00 pm EST. It will be recorded if you can't attend live and I'm so excited about it. Part One was wonderful and so uplifting to get to do. And that recording is available on my website. You don't need to have been to part one to join us for Part Two, but you might find it interesting in Part One I'm talking a lot about nervous system flexibility, how our nervous system and brain work together. Part Two will be about putting it into practice. So I would love to see you there, and I do have a little coupon code for all my Substack readers. If you'd like to join, you can get 20% off (coupon code is: bookclub). Have a great week and I'll see you back in two weeks!wishing you moments of curiosity,trisha This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trishawolfe.substack.comThanks for joining me for the read-a-long of The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. This week we’re exploring the end of chapter 2 (all things disidentification) and Chapter 4 - the power of asking exploratory questions and drilling down into our own experiences! You can join at any time, even if you aren’t currently reading the book - I’m here to recap and break things down for you so you can take this and apply it to your life.Transcript below:Hello Book Club and welcome back! Super excited to be moving through The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma together. I'd love to hear from some of you what you have been curious about as you've been doing the reading, and you're more than welcome to leave a comment here or just reply to this email- it comes straight to me. I'd love to feel the connection with each of you as we're undertaking this process together because this book is so rich and so deep that it's so important to hold the container together of knowing that we're in this together- we're learning and being curious as we go along. Something for me, as I've been rereading this book that has really stood out, is that process of dis-identification. We talked a little bit about this in our last meeting together, but it really, really stood out to me about how impactful and how big that dis-identification process is and can be. We talked last week about that pillar one model of NARM called clarifying the therapeutic contract. What that pillar really represents is connecting you to your agency and what you want for yourself. An experience that I had in my own therapy when I started NARM long ago was how much I hated doing that. And what I didn't know at the time was that I have a really, really strong part of me that wants to push against autonomy and agency. Part of my predictive adaptive patterns were around protecting me from having wants, having needs, and wanting to be a separate and individual person from those around me. Clarifying what I wanted for myself really hit upon this part of me that was like, oh my gosh, that is a huge thing to let myself figure out what I really want. And that might sound kind of strange because if you knew me, you would know that I'm a very achieving, moving towards goals type of person. But what I didn't realize is that a lot of what I was achieving and moving towards was what I thought other people wanted from me. I didn’t have a deep, genuine sense of connection to that desire of what I really want, what I value, how I want to live in my life. And so whenever I would come up against that therapeutic contract, when I was in training for NARM and doing my own NARM therapy, I would feel a sense of anger of why is this therapist trying to put this back on me? Aren't they here to help? What I was able to realize is underneath of that anger was a strong sense of fear and deep sadness that I had spent a portion of my life trying to make others around me happy. There was also a part of me that was so deeply exhausted from having to juggle everything all of the time to make others around me happy and keep going and keep achieving. I wanted someone to do it for me. I wanted someone to tell me what I should be doing and what I wanted for myself. What I love about this model is that it's so deeply non-pathologizing- that I was never made to feel like there was something wrong with me for not being able to get clear about what I wanted for myself, or what I needed in my life or in relationship, but rather the support to come into my own capacity and to start to dis-identify or un-blend in internal family system terms from that old predictive pattern that said it wasn't safe to have wants and needs and to not take care of everyone around me. But that dis-identifying from that people pleasing, perfectionist, intellectual part of me was a pretty intense process, and it took time to start to recognize that wasn't actually me, but rather that predictive, protective part of me. Maybe several parts of me, as I thought, surely those are adult parts of me. They want to achieve; they want to set goals. They want to take care of others. I'm a really caring person, and a lot of times I'll joke with the clients I work with that it sounds like an adult, but if you really look underneath it, what you feel is that there's sort of three child consciousnesses stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat. And that was definitely the case for me, as I was able to slow things down and feel all the fear at dis-identifying from what I thought was my identity. Then I could start to come into true connection to myself in my own capacity. I wanted to share that story with you all, because I know sometimes these concepts can be sort of clinical, and I think you'll really enjoy towards the end of the book where they intersperse little therapeutic conversations, but that this is real and can be impactful in our lives in such a positive, empowering way. That we can dis-identify from these old patterns, that these predictive patterns are not part of our identity, but rather a suit of armor we put on to try to stay safe and stay in connection with those around us. Just to be clear, it doesn't mean that I might never have a little people-pleasing or perfectionist strategy pop up, because we know that these protective strategies are always there for us when we need them, not when we want them. And that's okay. Many of us may still be in situations in our lives where it's not fully safe to be 100% ourselves, and that's all right. As long as you have the awareness of your agency and flexibility to stay on your own side and continue to feel the sense of safety in whatever way it's available, that's what is really valuable. So let's dive into pillar two together. This is one of my favorite things about NARM is the emphasis on curiosity. And if you know me in real life or you've ever worked with me, you will never hear the end of the word curiosity. In fact, one of my friends gifted me with a little resin stand that says be curious because they've heard it from me so much, and the power of curiosity and getting underneath our experience- it's just one of the most valuable things we can do. And it reveals so much without having to try so hard. It’s really important to understand, here's a little overlay with how our nervous system works, is that our survival system - many people think about it as an alarm system, but really it's a novelty system. And so what that means is it's not just looking for things that are scary, it's also looking for things that are novel or different.

Welcome back to Book Club. So glad you're here. One of the first things that I want to dive into is this concept of emotional completion in the NARM model. So what we know from what we've read so far is that as children, when we experience these environmental failures, we have to shut down our true self and shut down our true emotional experiences- lock them up and take them on offline. What that means is oftentimes as adults, we may struggle to connect with our authentic emotions. We may not even be aware of what our authentic emotions were because we weren't able to be with them as children, or they weren't reflected to us as children. We aren't born knowing what emotions are. We have to be safe to feel them and have people in our lives who can reflect them to us and model to us how to handle those different complex emotions like anger and sadness and jealousy and fear and all of those things. So as an adult, that disconnection continues. And so we might be aware of distressing symptoms like we can't connect fully, we can't authentically be ourselves. We might feel anxious a lot of the time, or we might feel shame, but we might not be aware of what emotions are actually underlying these protective strategies that keep us from connecting to the emotions. So we consciously or subconsciously are spending a lot of energy avoiding those emotions, keeping them locked down. And oftentimes we use shame as a psycho biological tool to lock those emotions up in that lock box. And what that means is we might be protected from them, but our true authentic self who can experience the breadth of emotions is locked up in there as well. And so one of those things we can start to become aware of is our primary emotions versus our default emotions. So maybe your default emotion is sadness. That's always the first emotion you go to. And it feels like a safe emotion to feel. It may be that underneath that sadness, you actually hold a lot of anger that you weren't supported to feel in your early life or even in your life now. And so you keep that sort of stuff down underneath and it keeps you disconnected, but you stay with sadness because it feels safe or vice versa. Maybe you go to anger quickly, but you actually have some deep sadness and grief under there. And then both of those cases, there might be terror. That feeling, your true primary emotion, will risk the connections in your life; that you might lose the connections. And those are the experiences we have in childhood that are different as adults. As adults, we can learn how to get underneath and find some of these primary emotions and figure out what those emotions are trying to convey and what those child consciousness parts of us might want us to feel. And as we do that, little by little, we start to feel our adult self capacity in the present where we can feel emotions even when they're hard. We can feel emotions and be safe. Emotions are valid and they are worthy of our attention. And our life is not at stake for feeling our emotions. tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.Now, of course, I add the caveat that I'm saying in most cases. If you're actively existing in a traumatic environment, then the same will not be true that we're talking about when you can build a false sense of safety and have a false sense of safety around you, meaning your needs are met and you are safe. If that's not the case, it's still possible to be curious about this work, but your nervous system and brain are going to be more protected as they should be. So different from old models in the 80s and 90s that were really big and catharsis just having people feel all their feelings and use foam backs to beat up the pillows. NARM is all about allowing you to feel your capacity as an adult, to feel some emotion and allow it to complete, to be contained, to feel your own vitality in life, energy, in feeling and emotion without having to flood yourself and also without having to shut it all down. When you do this, that's when you can start to feel joy, creativity, aliveness, presence, connection and pleasure. But we also have to titrate those experiences, meaning take them one drop at a time. And that can be really hard to understand. For those of us where relaxing or feeling pleasure or joy or creativity doesn't feel good, it actually feels dangerous. That's because of those adaptive protective survival strategies that don't want us to have expansive energy, because that was such a risk to us in our childhood, because it would have led to us losing connection. It felt like it would have led to us losing connection with those around us. If you're really curious about what this might look like in real life, I highly recommend checking out Inside Out or the new Inside Out 2, to understand a little bit what it might look like to touch into some of our emotions from that self, from that adult place, little bits at a time and in the same vein as emotional completion, we have this concept that in NARM is called dis identification. Internal family systems, which is another model that works similarly, calls it unblending. And if you join after we finish this book and we start reading “No Bad Parts,” we'll learn more about that. But what this idea is that so many of us, because we grew up in these environments with ruptures and failures or systemically or within our families, we have these adaptive protective survival strategies that feel like they are us. We don't know- we can't tell- where the strategies end, and we begin because we feel like we genuinely just don't have needs or where people pleaser. We're an intellectualizer or we're a perfectionist just feels like who we are. I've often had people say to me, it's just my personality. And what we know within this model is that those strategies are almost like wearing a suit of armor. So you are you you are underneath it there, but you're wearing this really, really, really heavy suit of armor, maybe several suits of armor. So you're walking around every day with your true self way buried underneath of there with this really heavy armor of these protective strategies on top. So this concept of dis identification, or unblending is where we start to find ourselves, our true selves, our adult consciousness- who we are- underneath all of those protective adaptive strategies. So dis identification lets us, little bits at a time, start to uncouple ourselves from our strategies, to start to find our authentic selves underneath of there, where we can really feel what it's like to be authentically ourselves and present in whatever way makes sense for us. Does that mean we're authentic 100% of the time? No. Does that mean we're perfectly present and authentic in every situation? No, it does not have to mean that at all. But what it means is that you have agency and flexibility (meaning choice), to do those things. If you want to do those things, and when you want to do those things, this identifying or unblending can be absolutely terrifying because those survival strategies have kept us safe for so long. It's as if those parts of us, they don't want us to dis identify; they don't want us to be our true, authentic selves. Because that is so scary and so risky that it feels like a threat to our lives. It really gets our survival system going as if a bear is about to eat us, because our connection with our family and our culture and people around us are built upon these survival strategies. So if we suddenly start having needs or feeling emotions, what's going to happen to the relationships around us? To the child consciousness, that just feels so utterly terrifying. Like we will be voted off the island and we won't belong. Of course, the tricky part of this is if we only belong now because of our strategies, then we don't get to have an authentic sense of belonging because it's not truly us. But over time, little by little, we can start to build your capacity for being in that adult consciousness self, where you can feel more neutrality and more curiosity and more connection. We know that all of life is about the expansion and contraction, the in-breath and the out-breath. The waves come in and the waves go out. And oftentimes clients will say to me, well, I don't I don't want to feel the disconnection. And I *so* understand and resonate with that. But sort of the same thing as saying, I only want to breathe in. I don't want to breathe out. When we're in our adult consciousness ourselves, we know that we can experience the ups and downs and the connection and disconnection of life and still be connected to ourselves, and that provides that deep level of safety and aliveness and connection that so many of us didn't get to have in our earlier lives. So some of the reflection exercises in this chapter ask you to reflect on the time you felt connected to your heart, or alive or more authentic, and to notice what happens inside of you in your presence and your sense of aliveness as you do this. And what I want to say about these reflective exercises is that they are wonderful tools, but if they don't feel good to you or comfortable to you where you are right now, that's more than okay. You might have done already ten years of work, or you might just be starting to be curious about this work, or you might not know anything about this work at all until you came across this book. We're all at different parts in our journey and our experience, and for those of us who survival strategies are still very protective, reflecting on a time that we felt more authentic or more alive might feel really threatening or scary in this moment. So something that sounds like it should be a resource- that makes us feel good- might actually not make us feel good. And that's okay, because we know that it's those child consciousness parts of us that are getting afraid. So if you do this exercise and you notice that you feel a little tense, or you start to feel a little disconnected or sad or heavy, see if you can pause for a moment and notice, ah, that's my child consciousness. Those are my adaptive protective parts that are trying to keep me safe in this moment. Is there any part of me- maybe it's the tip of my pinky, or my little baby toe- that can have a little bit of presence in this moment to notice that just in this moment, even though my strategies are making me feel like I'm unsafe, I can feel the chair underneath of me, or I can feel that I am present in this moment. You might not be able to do that. And that's okay. But remember, this is all about titrating one little drop at a time. And finally, this week I want to talk about pillar one of the NARM model, clarifying what they refer to as the therapeutic contract and how you might be able to use this in your own life. So while this is directed toward therapists, the idea here is that when you have had complex or developmental trauma or environmental ruptures, things can sometimes feel disorganized, overwhelming, or confusing. In fact, if you sit down and you try to plan your goals or what you want for yourself or whatever it is, it might feel either confusing- you're not sure- or you have, you know, a perfect five year plan, but you're actually disconnected from the emotional experience of that. There are all things that are part of your strategies, like there are things you want to achieve to try to look good so that you can keep your connections. What we want to support ourselves to do or our clients when we're in therapy is to really gain clarity about what they want for themselves outside of their strategies. That oftentimes, even in our personal lives, is this idea that, like, we're just trying to fix something, right? It's like, well, I want to be more organized, or I want to work out more or whatever it is. And when it's like, well, why do you want to do that? It always comes back to like trying to cover up something that we think is wrong with ourselves or shame. In fact, there's a really cool activity that I'll often do with my client where we will talk about values and we will do a values sort where we look through values and pick our top values, but we take it an extra level where we look at each of the values and we figure out, is this a survival strategy or is this a value? And it can be pretty mind blowing to see that things we thought were our values in our life are actually part of those adaptive protective strategies that we've been using to keep ourselves safe. And when you've designed your life around a value that is actually a protective strategy, you're not going to be fully connected to the vitality and the emotional experience and the joy and connection of moving toward what you want for yourself. I love getting to do that, and maybe sometime I'll see if I can host a live version of that for some of you- if you would be interested in doing that- because it's such a valuable exercise. But the thing to understand about this is we want to slow things down again (whether we're in therapy or when we're in our own personal life), and get clarity around what we want for ourselves. So we don't want other people to tell us what we want for ourselves. We don't want our therapist to tell us what we want for ourselves. We don't want social media to tell us what we want for ourselves. We want to go internally and find it. And maybe a part of you is saying, no, no, I really do want someone else to tell me what I want for myself because I'm not sure. That's okay. That might also be part of your survival strategy, where it is scary to get in connection to your own agency, and so you want someone else to tell you what to do. I have been there myself, no judgment at all, but that's something for us to be curious about. And so in that reflective exercise, you know, where you can look at something that you're struggling with and just seeing how it is to state what you want, you might notice that you feel a little anxiety or a little fear, a little heaviness. And that's okay if that happens. Wanting things and letting ourselves want things can be really, really scary to those protective parts of us, and it can make us disconnect from our adult consciousness ourself and go back into a strategy that says it's not safe for you to want things, it's not safe for you to have needs. And so we always take this gently and with curiosity and without pressure. In fact, I probably work a little bit differently than they describe in this book here, where I give a lot more space in leeway around getting clear about what we want for ourselves, because I know it's so important to develop that felt sense of safety first, so that we can put that little pinky toe into our adult consciousness self to connect with what we want for ourselves. So it's really important to understand, because often times people will say, well, I know what I want for myself. And then again, it's that behavioral thing, right? It's like, I want to work out more. I want to eat healthier. I want to do better at my job or, you know, I want to make more money or whatever those things are, that those things are in pursuit of something else. And that's what we want to get curious about. Right? So if you come in and say to me, I want to get better at following a routine. I want to start a morning routine and I want to get better at following it. No matter how hard I try, I might do it for a few days and then I quit. I might say, huh, okay. Got it. So you're wanting to to get better at following your morning routine? Okay, well, let's imagine that you devise this perfect morning routine and you stuck to it every single day. How is it you're imagining you would feel, and the person might say, hmm, well, I think I would feel more self-confident. Oh, okay. So you would feel more self-confident, huh? What is it about following your morning routine that would make you feel more self-confident? Well, I would just feel like I accomplish something, and I would be working out and taking care of my body, so I would be looking better. And, you know, I would just check off all these goals so I could go into my workday having more things done. It's like, wow, there's a lot of doing underneath of that, right? So let's imagine you did all those things and then you were more self-confident. How is it you're imagining you would feel going into the day? I’d say if I was more self-confident, I would feel less anxious. Oh, okay. So there's some anxiety underneath of here, huh? Okay. So if you weren't feeling anxious, how is it you'd like to feel? Well, I'd like to go into my day feeling a little bit more calm. Ah, okay. That's something we can get behind, right? That's something we can go underneath and say. Let's look at what's getting in the way of you feeling calmer. Let's look at what's driving some of this anxiety that's actually landing onto I gotta get this morning routine perfect. So that's kind of how we gain some clarity around what we want for ourselves. And then this fictitious example, we might find out that all of this morning routine was driven by this survival strategy. That is trying to get us to be, “good enough” so that we don't lose our connections. And that's totally different than trying to address that in a behavioral way by saying, well, have you tried setting an alarm to do the tasks? That's not going to get you to what you're wanting for yourself when what you're really wanting is to feel more calm and to feel more connected to yourself and to feel more safe and like you have agency in your life to be authentic. That's a totally different ballgame. So the section I really want to highlight here is the section about how these different adaptive survival strategies might feel about being asked to state what they want. That the connection style might feel really unsafe because you're asking them to really show up and connect. You might even feel that with yourself. You might feel unsafe if you start to ask yourself what you want for yourself, you know, and attunement style they might feel really embarrassed or ashamed for having any needs at all, or letting themselves want things. The person who has more heavy orientation into the trust style might feel like it's too vulnerable to name those things, and that makes them feel weak and thus terrified. A person with the autonomy style might really feel backed into a corner. And so they might feel that there's some kind of right answer, some goal, and so they might feel a lot of internal pressure. And they might also, again, want to bat it back to the therapist to say, well, I want you to figure out what I should do. The love sexuality style has, again, a lot of pressure of wanting things to be perfect and feeling like they need to give polished answers. And so you can be curious about these things even with yourself, when you're thinking of what you want for yourself. If you notice resistance in yourself, try that neutral observation again of just saying, I wonder if that resistance might be part of my child consciousness, part of me who's trying to protect me from moving towards what I want for myself. That feels really, really terrifying because it used to be a threat for connection. That neutral observation is the best tool. So that's where I want to stop for this week. I'm trying to keep these to 20 minutes, which I think is a reasonable amount of time, at least for me. That's about where my energy stops when I'm listening to something is right about 20 minutes, especially really heavy material like this. So we will continue on with pillar two and probably pillar three next time we meet. But I hope that this information is helpful for you, and I'd really love to hear from you. If you don't feel comfortable commenting in a public forum, I'd even love to hear from you just as a reply to this email of what you're noticing, what you're curious about, what you'd like clarification on from me. I'm really here to read the book along with you and sit down, have a cup of tea and talk about it. But I also want to provide clarification and or knowledge that I might have if you're curious about things that come up when you're reading this. Also - we had the opportunity to meet last night live and discuss what we've been learning so far and what we've been curious about. We also talked about the survival strategies. So if you were not able to join us live, I will drop a link to the recording here in this post for you to watch and listen to me talking a little bit about those adaptive, protective survival strategies - I just ask that you don’t share this recording but just keep it as a resource for yourself. So thanks again for being here. I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to it. I'll send a date soon for our final live meeting as we start wrapping up the book. And if you'd like to join us for reading “No Bad Parts” after this book, please- I would love to have you. I'm really looking forward to getting to read that one together. I actually haven't finished reading it myself, so I'm super excited. And I do have a list of books that I recommend, including No Bad Parts on bookshop.org, which I will link here. It's a great place to buy books from because they ship from independent booksellers, which I love to support. So thanks so much and I'm wishing you a neutral to good week ahead. And thanks again for being here and connecting with me.Wishing you a glimmering week ahead,trishaP.S. - if you want to learn more about the nervous system and getting unstuck, join me for a conversation on July 11th (live on Zoom but also recorded!). You can register here - I’m so looking forward to the opportunity to talk more about my favorite things! If you’d like to join, you can use code bookclub for 20% off as a thank you for supporting my work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

Hello tiny sparks reader! Joining you this week with another audio exploration - this time of perseverance. I’m pasting the transcript below for those of you who are readers rather than listeners. Wishing you a great week ahead~Decided this week to do another little short recorded exploration versus a written exploration just to give my eyes a little break from the screen.I am still in the midst of writing my candidacy exams for my PhD which means I'm spending a lot more hours on my computer every day reading and writing so I wanted to still bring you some information to explore just in a different format and in pursuit of me continuing to do my exams I want to talk a little bit about perseverance and how we make little changes in our life towards what we want for ourselves.That is the name of this newsletter after all, Tiny Sparks.And so I want to talk about this concept of how we take little incremental steps towards a really big thing. And the first thing to understand is that making a change in your life, even if you think it's a small change, is actually a really big thing to your brain.So from a neuroscience perspective, the goal of our brain is to maintain allostasis and allostasis is essentially keeping everything the same because that is what feels safe to the brain. So it doesn't matter if you feel good, if you feel comfortable, if you feel happy, if you feel you've achieved what you want to do. All that matters to your brain is that you keep things the same so that you are safe and you're not using up energy that the brain wants to conserve.That's really important because when we want to make changes in our life or move towards completing a big project or task a lot of times we think well I really want to do this thing so why don't I feel motivated to do it or why is it so hard to take steps towards doing what I want to doNow there's a lot of other things that come into play based on our history, our environment, any trauma or stressors. But just from a really basic understanding of our brain, our brain will actually resist changes. And the bigger the change or the bigger the project that you're undertaking, the more likely it is that the brain is going to get in your way.So to understand this a little further, what you've got to understand is that when you take steps towards changing something, working on a big project, setting a goal for yourself, you're asking your neurons in your brain to fire a new neural pathway.And so to understand what that means, you can kind of think about when you're driving around your city every day, wherever you live, maybe you're driving on a big, huge interstate, or if like me, you live somewhere more rural, maybe you're driving on just a two lane highway, you know, 55 miles an hour. But wherever you are, it's most likely that you're driving on a paved road that's pretty well maintained (unless you live in Michigan where the roads are horrible) but you're driving on roads that are at least somewhat maintained they're paved they're familiar you know the speed limit you know where your turns are and so that's what it's like in our brain for things that are familiar to us notice I didn't say good things I said familiar so for example if you have the habit every morning of picking up your phone when you wake up and scrolling on social media for half an hour that's actually a neural pathway in your brainAnd so if you say, I want to stop doing that. I don't want to get on my phone when I wake up first thing in the morning. It makes me feel weird. It doesn't start the day off on the right foot.Well, that's great that a part of you has identified that you want it to be different. But your neural pathway, your interstate highway in your brain is to pick up your phone and start scrolling.So when you wake up and you say, I'm not going to scroll today, you're sending your neurons in a direction they've never gone before.So here you are driving on the interstate and now you're telling your brain, hey, get off the highway here and head on into the Amazon jungle.And if you know anything about the Amazon jungle, you know it's incredibly dense. There's not roads through it and trying to even clear a path to hike through it takes a lot of really intense equipment and the jungle sort of grows back around you as you go.So that's what it's like in our brain.When you wake up and you say, I'm not going to scroll today, you're stepping off the interstate. You're pulling your car off the interstate and getting out of your car and saying, I guess I'm going to hike through the jungle.So maybe you do it the first day and you're like, yeah, I did it.And the second day you're like, yeah, I'm on a good routine.Then by the third or fourth day, your brain starts feeling a little fatigued from you trying to send these neurons down this jungle pathway, instead of going down the nice, comfortable, familiar interstate.And so that's our brain resisting the change to our allostasis or to keeping things the same.So when you want to work towards a big project or a goal change, that's why we do it incrementally. We start with small little pieces.So maybe instead of saying, I'm not going to pick up my phone and scroll in the morning ever again, you could just start by saying, when I wake up and I first open my eyes, I'll take 30 seconds and I'll just look around the space or I'll sit up or I'll do a little mindfulness practice for 30 seconds orMaybe I'll just get up and stand up for a second and even if I want to sit back down in bed and scroll, that's fine.But then you can link together those incremental stages and incremental choices that you're making to start building a new pathway towards the jungle.And so for me, as I'm working on my exams, I am having to dedicate a lot of time and energy that normally would be used for resting, self-care, doing other work like cooking and cleaning to write. And it's a big change from not doing that. I haven't been in classes for a little while to doing that.And so if I said, I'm going to sit down every day and spend three hours reading and writing, I know for myself that I would never do that.But if I set a little goal for myself to say, I'll just sit down and look at this for 15 minutes, and when the 15 minutes are up, I can keep going if I want to, or I can stop.And I do that a couple times a day, I find that without the pressure, I can get going and oftentimes spend 30, 45, 60 minutes and not feel fatigued.Another thing I do for myself is I let myself take a day off.It's stressful. I'm under a time crunch. I only have 10 weeks to do this. But my brain is also adjusting to a big change in my routine.And I know that if I want to produce good quality work without burning myself out, I have to allow my brain to adjust by taking things slowly and not shocking my brain.And so that's why perseverance or tiny sparks or little incremental steps towards building a new pathway in your brain are much more effective than relying on big bursts of motivation where you might try to make a huge change and make it last for a few days or a few weeks and then not stick to it.So if you have something you're trying to change or a little thing you're curious about moving towards - let me know! Let me know how it's going for you.And maybe consider if there's a way you can break it into small steps, and not even small steps, but tiny steps, remembering that your brain is trying to keep you safe by resisting those big changes.And so you can either fight your brain and feel pretty miserable, or you can say, I'm going to be on the same team as my brain and just allow my brain to feel supported in making tiny sparks this week.So have a great week.Thanks for being here with me, and I'll see you again in two weeks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe

I decided to try something a little different this week with a short podcast on how our brains support us in moving toward more goodness. Wishing you lots of gentle moments as we wrap us this year and look toward 2024. Thanks for joining me here - and please see the transcript below for those of you who don’t prefer an audio medium.For all of my Michigan readers (or elsewhere who don’t mind traveling!), I hope you’ll join me at blossom, my retreat to gently greet the new year and connect to our vision. We’ll have the opportunity to go on a quest together to connect with our values and our vision - finding what we uniquely want for ourselves. Along the way, we’ll pause and find moments to strengthen our internal resilience. At the end of our journey, you’ll be in the flow of your authenticity, able to swim around any obstacles that may arise as you float down the current gently, welcoming 2024 with ease. I would love to see you there. I was baking cookies this week leading up to Christmas and just having a low key Christmas this year where it's just me and my husband and my dog, our first year in our new house.And I normally do cookie boxes every year where I bake a bunch of different varieties and mail them to everybody that I know and love.But I felt overwhelmed this year moving into a new house and all that goes along with that, that it just felt like too much.But I still wanted to mark the season with some cookies.So I decided to make a few small batches just for us to have.And immediately, as I started making the dough, putting them into the oven, smelling the different scents, I started thinking about all the different times that I've made cookies in my life with my grandma, all my family there, with my mom, with my dad, all the different houses that I've baked cookies and decorated cookies in.Cut Out Cookies and Smelled Cookies.And it made me think how I talk a lot on here about the difficult parts of nervous system regulation, but I also wanted to talk about some of the ways that our brain does help us to access nervous system regulation.And one of those ways is through this idea of memory templates.If you've evercreated a resume from Microsoft Word.Then I think, you know what I mean when I say a template where it's sort of like a prebuilt wireframe and something really cool about our brain is that it creates these templates as well in our memory.And it's part of our memory working together to help our brain be more efficient and hold on to things that are important.We can't possibly hold on to every single thing that ever happens to us.but when something is meaningful or impactful or hard or difficult, our brain wants to make it so we can respond faster next time.So this part of our brain called the hippocampus creates a little template to say, okay, I know what's happening here.When this happens, then this comes next.And then it can send messages to our amygdala, which is a part of our brain that feels emotions and also where our survival system lives.I got to thinking about this with the way my body immediately felt this really warm, regulating connection just through this simple act of making cookies.I started thinking about that memory template in my brain aroundthe scent of cookies and Christmas and family and connection and there wasn't anything I had to do in that moment to try to make myself feel regulated or to make myself feel good.I didn't even consciously try to think about all the times I'd made cookies in the past but my brainmy sweet little brain had that little template filed away.But even though this year I didn't get to bake cookies with my mom or my dad or my friends or my grandma or my great grandma, even though I didn't get to do that, my brain said, I remember this scent.I remember this experiment.I remember this time spent with others.And it was as if it was happening right in that moment.just a warmth, a sweetness, and just an overall softening in my body.And I just wanted to share that with you so that maybe if this time of year is hard or wonderful or lonely or amazing or exhausting or stressful or connecting or all of the above, that maybe you can notice if you have some of those littlepleasant, joyful, even neutral memory templates in your brain.And if not, if the templates around this time of year feel difficult for you, as they do for many people, maybe you can start to create a little template for yourself.Like maybe you can go outside and you start to build this little template in your brain that says, Oh, I know this.I know the trees andthe smell of them, the sound of the birds.And I can file that away.When I hear that, I know that I'm connected.I'm not alone.I'm at peace, or I have more safety or more neutrality.Or maybe it's starting your own tradition of making cookies or baking a little meal, even if it's just for you ortaking a walk with your pet or calling a friend or making a little craft, little Christmas craft or Hanukkah craft or Kwanzaa craft, whatever you celebrate.And just starting to build in your brain safety in this moment that your brain can file away and access later without you having to try so hard.So I'm wishing you a gentle end to this year and a soft, warm welcome to the next year.And thanks for taking a few minutes with me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit trishawolfe.substack.com/subscribe