Healing Your Inner Family: The Key to Breaking Trauma Cycles | with Terry Baranski

Michael: Terry, I'm so excited to have you on today's episode. One of the things that we're going to get into in depth is really talking about the impact of internal family systems, about trauma, about this bottom up approach to our healing journeys. And for those who are listening today, I'd love to know, why should they listen to this whole episode?

Terry: Yeah, thanks so much, Michael. So we're going to talk about a very different way of looking at the mind than we're used to here in Western culture. And what that means in terms of treating trauma from the bottom up, rather than the top down. So focused on what are the, what's causing it? And how do we address that? Rather than trying to manage the symptoms, which is really what we notice day to day. So I'm so excited to discuss that with you.

Michael: Do you feel like we have maybe addressed trauma incorrectly that we look at it from a symptomatic approach first and foremost instead of an approach that is at the root?

Terry: Yeah, I think if you look at Western medicine in general for both mental health conditions and chronic physical health conditions, it's all based on symptoms. It's all very top down, even with, with autoimmune diseases, things like that. We try to, we don't know what causes it. So the treatment is all geared towards how do we manage symptoms to the best ability that we can. And, yeah. Mental health conditions we treat in the same way. So what we see what we observe either behaviorally or, addiction, things like that. Those are all symptoms that are rooted from my perspective in trauma. There's nothing genetic about them. There's no evidence of any, really any genes being involved in any significant way with that stuff. So it is a trauma, trauma lays the groundwork for these really, what are coping strategies? They're designed to help us. So when we treat the coping strategy itself, we're not getting to the root of anything. So what I find is that when, and when we use an approach that really fundamentally asks why are these behaviors coming about? Why is this addiction here? Why do I feel a certain way? That's really when we can make progress. Because the why invariably in my experience comes down to trauma. And when we heal that the behaviors, the addictions, the bad feelings they go away as a natural consequence of dealing with whatever is underneath them.

Michael: As someone who has coached thousands of people in trauma, done a tremendous amount of work, especially with men. And as we continue to go deeper into that with coaching in general and the podcast, one of the things that I get asked all the time as a guest, which I'm actually going to ask you is what are the symptoms of trauma? What are the, if I'm somebody who is in their day to day life right now, I'm listening to this podcast. I know something feels off. Maybe I'm disconnected from relationships. Maybe I keep wasting my money on things I don't need, like amazon.com and only fans and video games or purses and shoes, or I find a way to mess up things once they're good. Is that not just a symptom of the human experience or are those? And what are the symptoms of trauma?

Terry: Yeah, it's such a great question because so much of this is normalized now in this culture, because trauma is so pervasive that it's very easy to just say, oh, that's just how life is. That's just how we are. That's how this culture is. But when you look at hunter gatherer cultures that were studied mainly in the early 1900s before they were colonized. A lot of this stuff didn't exist. There were no addictions, in terms of mental health, that their children were not tantruming all the time and impossible to raise. Think of, when you see animals in the wild, they don't have the nightmares of parenting that we do, everything is very harmonious now. Zoos are another story, but when they're in the wild things just flow here in this culture. Now, parenting is a nightmare for a lot of people. And that's because we're so out of sync with how we evolved. And that in and of itself is traumatic. And then the things that we try to do to fix that are often add to that trauma unintentionally. So the way I like to describe it is trauma causes along anything that causes a long term constriction fragmentation or disconnection within us that is the most generalized way to me of describing trauma and that can then manifest in behavioral patterns. That, like you said, we sense something is off. I'm shopping all the time. I'm smoking. I'm drinking. I'm on my phone, checking it hundreds of times per day. It can manifest as addictions, and that's not just a drugs. Again that's the phone, it can be eating. It can be gambling, all of these things, emotional dysregulation. So the ups and downs, extreme ups and downs that last for longer than it feels like they should. Based on what objectively happened to trigger them. So any manner of these types of things, and I love the way you said it where we. I can sit here and describe it, but it's oh, if we feel something's off, that then it is if you have to ask is something off. Then something is off and so exploring that. Again, whether it's emotionally or behaviorally almost invariably comes down to trauma.

Michael: One of the things I think about a lot just on my own journey ‘cause and I share this publicly, I went through massive different levels of addiction and rock bottom. At 20, and I share this repeatedly for a reason, because I know there's people who have never heard this story before, but at 25, pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep 50,000 in debt, like All of that was the byproduct of this traumatic experience. All of this was the byproduct of values of not being enough of not mattering of that, no matter what you do, you won't be loved. And dude, it just felt so normal for me to destructive, to be not only self destructive, but also to destroy. And I felt as I was growing up and I was looking at life it was more or less, this is what it's going to be. So you might as well just enjoy it. And what's really fascinating, I chased the chaos and in some sense, consciously, I'd have a good relationship and I would cheat, I would have a bunch of money in the bank and then I'd go spend it at the mall, I'd, be on a clean diet for two weeks. And then I'd go binge on cheeseburgers and pizzas. And it was just like this. Cataclysmic arrival over and over again into this destructive behavior. What I think I have the benefit of that maybe most people don't is I felt like I knew what I was doing. Do you think people are cognizant or do you think that it's so subconscious and wired into us somatically mentally, emotionally, that we don't really see the. Kind of the byproduct of our own actions.

Terry: Yeah, I think it's both. I think what you're talking about, the, when this, when trauma manifests in behaviors, you know, where we tend to be conscious of the behaviors. What we're not conscious of is what's causing those in the 1st place. Keep smoking, overeating, drinking, cheating. We're aware of all that is we're doing it, but it's usually not so clear. And what we do in this culture is we pathologize. Those things, we blame the person who's doing them and we say, we blame will a lack of willpower, lack of self control. Which just makes it worse because now there's shame involved. So there's these behaviors that because they're all coming from the unconscious, we're really pretty powerless to stop at least from a top down type of approach because if people would stop them, if they could, they would, people know that these things are destructive. And so we, then we have this term self sabotage, which is basically Again, pathologizing it. You're sabotaging yourself. Stop it. Stop doing that. But that's not it at all. These are coping strategies. Any addiction is an attempt to avoid pain. That's why they come about. It's parts of us, and we'll get into parts in a little bit, but parts of us actually trying to help us in the only way they know how. And when we try to fight them, they tend to just come on stronger because they really think that if they stop doing what they're doing, things are going to get worse for us. That, usually emotionally is what they're worried about. Like the emotions will be overwhelming. So yeah, consciously aware of it but not consciously aware of what's driving it. And that's what makes it very difficult for most people. And along with most therapy modalities to treat these things effectively.

Michael: Yeah. And I think one of the really intense misnomers that kind of lead down this path are these notions that it's family before everything that family is the most important thing, but generally speaking, most of the traumatic experiences you're going to go through are going to be at the hands of those closest to you. Obviously that's not the rule, because things where children maybe are molested or hurt, in a sexual way, that's a family friend or a close associate, right? But in direct family, things like neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, religious abuse, right? You see these things take place and impact the story and narrative of who we ultimately become. First, because I think that's going to be really important to define this and the associated role of the experience of family. Can you first define and explain to us what internal family systems are? And then we'll go from there.

Terry: Yeah. Yeah. So internal family systems is both a tool for therapy. It's a type of therapy. And also really a tool for self improvement that becomes a lifelong practice, and it looks at the mind in a very different way. So we particularly in this culture, we tend to think of the mind as one thing. So we say "I" and we say "me" as if we're referring to a single entity. We also know on various levels that we often have conflicting and simultaneous thoughts, feelings, and opinions on things. So when we're weighing a big decision, for example, we'll tend to waver back and forth and we'll have completely opposing thoughts on the matter moment to moment. An example I like to give is when we're in a romantic relationship and we find ourselves conflicted over whether or not the relationship is still a good fit for us. Our position on the matter will tend to flip back and forth day by day, hour by hour, even depending on our mood at the time and the quality of the last interaction with our partner.

We also know that we'll often say we're going to do one thing and then do another, and I'm not referring to when we're being dishonest. We've all had the experience where we say one thing, we mean it when we say it, and then we do the exact opposite. And typically, this happens over and over again in certain specific areas of our lives. The IFS contention and my contention is that these things reflect something very fundamental about how the mind actually works, and that is that the mind consists of parts rather than being a single thing. And that this notion we have of a single "I" is more of an abstraction of what's really going on underneath. And it's a helpful one in day-to-day life, no doubt, but it doesn't fully describe the underlying reality. So that's the setup in terms of how we view the mind. And then in terms of trauma, what we find is that it's our parts who carry our traumas. So our parts are the ones who get hurt and who take on defensive roles in the system. And trauma causes our parts to get stuck in the past at young ages, which is really important because this is where the notion of an inner child comes from. Now in this perspective, we speak of inner children because there's always more than one, but this notion of inner children who are hurt and who are driving a lot of these behaviors that are, again, attempts to cope that often have the opposite of the intended effect. When we turn inwards and we get to know these parts rather than pathologizing them, making them wrong, trying to resist them, that's the shift. That's the 180 relative to how we normally do therapy in this culture. And that's the bottom up. We're again asking why, finding out from these parts, "Tell me what you went through. Thank you. And why you're bringing on these behaviors," and there's always a reason. It's always a positive intention. And so addressing it from that level, rather than a "stop this" level, is again so different. And in my experience, really powerful.

Michael: How do you begin the process of this conversation? Maybe probably internally first when it comes to navigating the shame of who you are or who you feel you may be. While that shame may or may not hold true, I have come to find over the years of working with thousands of people that there's a lot of shame that people feel about their parts, about the decisions that they've made, about who they are, about their proclivities and whatever capacity it might be.

And just having the conversation, I have come to find, is the very thing that like sets up the foundation for creating the change. But I think people are buried in shame and guilt and self-judgment and criticism. Probably hyper - it's probably hyper now in comparison to what it was even 30 or 40 years ago. Now you have social media showing up and people are in the space of comparison. And I think we're trying to keep up with the Joneses more than ever. And if you're not the perfect human, it almost feels like there's no reason to exist. And so where does the conversation about navigating shame about who you are come into play in this?

Terry: Yes. Shame is really underlying. There's always, when it comes to trauma, shame is a guarantee that it's in there, and shame is held by parts of us. So we take on beliefs. So when we're - when trauma occurs, particularly when we're young, and Gabor talks about this, and it's a very great point. Nature builds into us this mechanism where we blame ourselves. Okay. And that's really important because that allows us to try and adapt to what our situation is at home.

So if our parents are angry with us, if we're not sensing the love that we're that's wired into us to need, we have two options. We can blame our parents, which is going to cause us to get angry at them and probably make things worse, or we can blame ourselves and try to adjust and sacrifice our authenticity but trying to make that attachment relationship better. That's where the shame comes from because a part oftentimes will take on the role of shaming us, shaming ourselves to keep us in line so that our parents don't have to.

And then when we become adults, these patterns persist. So we continue to have self-blame and there, we continue to feel guilty on a regular basis. Every - we consider ourselves responsible for how other people are feeling, which really causes a lot of destabilization in our system because we're not responsible for that. But when we believe we are, it's very stressful and it causes a lot of anxiety.

So that's one of a couple of ways that shame comes in. But really, it's at the root of a lot of what parts are carrying and also what they're doing again as a coping strategy to try to help. So when we're meeting these parts, that's one of the things we're almost guaranteed to find is, again, one of those two things. They're either carrying it or doing it. And that's once we get to that, we're - you're pretty close to the root of it at that point, and then there's a healing, the healing that we do with the parts to unload. That is, is really one of the biggest shifts that we see, because then we're no longer turning inward. We're no longer turning the blame inwards on a regular basis. We're realizing that things are going to happen in the outside world, and it's not our fault. It's not our responsibility to fix it.

Michael: Why do we default to shaming ourselves about things that are not our responsibility? One of the things that I think about and I see constantly are these people who are living life for their parents, for their peers in childhood, for the teachers who said that they're not enough. They don't matter. They're not important. You see this play out in relationship dynamics. You see this play out in money. You see this play out in health. You see so many people who are tied into these notions that really are not who they are. And I think part of the work that I help people do is help them shed the identity that's not them and step into the truth of who they are. And one of the big hurdles we constantly navigate is this conversation about responsibility. But I'd love to know if it's inherently natural and within our DNA and our human psychology to take blame, shame, guilt as a survival mechanism. I guess in part, I'd like to know why. And then on the other side of it, it's what do you do with that knowledge?

Terry: Yeah. Yeah. Great questions. And I would say it's normal when more traumatized - that's the caveat. In a non-traumatized culture, you don't see this. With hunter-gatherers, you didn't - no one observed this. The comment that the anthropologists made invariably when they would go down and get down and go and visit these cultures is how happy they were, how present they were, how at peace they were. So this is not normal. It's normal now. And so one - again, it's the better of the two options. If I blame the people, the parents, my caregivers, it's going to tend to result in more trauma for me. I learned these patterns during childhood and the challenges - because our parts get stuck in the past when they're traumatized. When we become adults, these - this - these behaviors continue because the parts are still stuck back there in time. That's why they're still children. So they don't know it's 2024. They don't know how old we are now. And part of what we do with IFS is we give them that update and they're usually shocked when they hear it. They literally have no idea. The sense - the way time works internally with our parts is totally different and space for that matter. But time and space are totally different in there. So the way we work with that - one of the beauties of IFS is that it - any symptom you give me, the way we work with it is fundamentally the same. And that is, we get to know the part or parts who are carrying that. And it's really inner attachment work up front. So that what we call the capital S self in IFS, which is our essence, our seat of consciousness, it's the aspect of us that's not a part, it's who we are. So to speak, the self is forming relationships with these parts inside. So now the self is - self that comes in as the adult. It is that balanced, calm, clear, curious adult that comes in and starts listening to the parts. These are parts who have been trying to be heard for decades, and they've been carrying all this pain for decades, and there's been no one listening because we just don't know that this is how things work. When we start hearing them, when we connect with them, and as we start healing them, we see these things - again, these behaviors just go away as a natural consequence. So we don't tell them stop being ashamed. You're being ridiculous. We help them. Okay, let's unload that shame. You don't need this anymore. We don't live at home anymore. We're safer now, hopefully. And then there's a very - actually shamanic process in IFS to unload whatever the part is carrying and the shift is really hard to describe in words. Whenever I see it, I'm still amazed, but the part is almost completely different at that point. The part is then who it would have been if it hadn't been traumatized. And that's when we see these things in IFS shift.

Michael: Yeah. One of the big shifts that I've come to realize is just a very simple sentence that's foundationally practical in a lot of your decision making when you're aware. And for me, that sentence has always been, "You are no longer a child." And that can be such an intense - man, I remember I was coaching one of my clients probably five or six years ago, and I could just see in a moment the breakthrough of him hearing that because that is what we tie ourselves to is this childlike experience of being unhealed, of being without power of agency, of sovereignty. And so trapped in the childlike ideations and often behavior patterns that were coping mechanisms. And it's - there's this really unbelievable freedom that comes when you're like, "Oh shit, I'm an adult." And that is such a big part of the journey because you have to free yourself from these notions of that childlike state. And I'm not saying don't be - don't have fun and playful and step into that inner child that - because we all are, we're all just big kids, really, it's the same reason why I love Disney movies. I'm still just a big kid, but at the same time, like you have to be responsible. And I always look at it from this space of a responsible adult is not going to do things that children do. I would never let an eight-year-old drive my truck. And so it's like, why are you letting the eight-year-old in you drive your life? And that's such a profound moment when people really understand what that means. I think people have misconstrued this notion of adulthood to this thing about being happy all the time and I think the stress of that kind of compounds into this space in which you almost make life impossible to live because you're just not going to be happy all the time, but you're also not going to be sad. One of the things that you pointed to is these really high highs and these really low lows. I'm often looking for the place where we can get to equilibrium and I think you could substitute equilibrium for a word like peace. I'm curious in this work. How do you get there through these systems? How do you get there through these parts of you that you're trying to understand and heal and be an adult? Like, how do you get to that place where I don't even want to necessarily say healed, 'cause I think there's a lot of work to still be done, but how do you get to the normal, to the place where you feel like you're in control?

Terry: Yeah. Yeah. So much of that just comes about naturally as a part of this work where when we're doing that inner attachment work, one of the things we're doing up front is establishing trust between ourself and our parts. Really, what that means is getting the parts to trust ourself because they've been leaderless in there. They're children who have been trying to run our lives exactly like you said. And they're not equipped to do that. It's not a responsibility they should have had, and it's not one they would've had and if - had they grown up in a culture without all this trauma. So when self comes in and they start having confidence that, hey, that this person is now a regular person in here - this isn't a one-time thing. We're not just doing this once. And self is in there regularly checking with them, getting to know them, healing them. They - they are then perfectly willing to cede a lot of that day-to-day stuff to self, because the parts don't like having to do all this either. Usually they're exhausted. They just think they have to do it. And that's when we feel like you're describing - yeah, I feel - I feel like a kid, it's weird, I'm letting the 8-year-old kind of run the show and that's because that 8-year-old thinks it has to do it. And so it's a big shift. Just inside, it's one thing to understand this rationally, but when, like you said, when people feel it - more, we call it self-energy. There's more self-energy. Now, self is the one taking input from parts but self is making the decisions, for the most part on the big issues, especially. And that's when we find that - so the capital S self doesn't have an agenda. It's not striving to be happy. It's not striving to be rich. It's not striving to be popular. It's just, again, it's our essence. It just is. It's a lot of what Buddhism talks about, what Taoism talks about, just this inner calm, this peace, not that things aren't upsetting anymore. It's not always just going to be, "Oh, I feel great today," but what we find when we heal these parts is that is - particularly with the lows, the reason the lows are so low and tend to last so long is because something happens in the outside world that is triggering all this pain that we're carrying from the past. Whereas, if we're not carrying all this pain, what happens in the - is the spark and the pain is all this gasoline from the past. And that's what's getting triggered. That's why our reactions are so intense a lot of times. And that's why they last. And so once that gasoline is not there anymore, something can happen in the outside world. It's still upsetting, but it's not nearly the intensity that we've come to expect, and it doesn't last nearly as long. So that's the difference, right? Just like you said, that more equilibrium, not always feeling great but reacting to the present without all this baggage from the past is a totally different feeling compared to what most of us have been used to.

Michael: I think one of the interesting spaces of time in regard to this conversation, and on this one hand, we still very much have people who are like don’t talk about it, don’t be a baby, get over it, go over your life, just get moving, right? And on the other hand, I think we have overcompensated and we're too much in the space of "take care of yourself, self-care over everything." Talk about every single emotion you ever have all the time. Find all of your pain points, do all the healing possible, blah, blah, blah finds it right. I think a lot of this is about balance, but I think balance requires you to do the hard work, especially on the days you don't want to and also understand the differentiation between the days you don't want to and the days in which you shouldn't and you need rest or you need a break. And I push my clients often to be like, "You don't have to heal today, dude. It's go to fucking park, eat pizza, have a beer, do whatever the thing is that you do. You don't have to heal every day." But I think in this, on either side of this conversation, whether you have the people who are like "pushed through no matter what," or the people who are like, "It's fine. You don't have to push through at all," I think it's really about finding the root of the pain. And I think people are scared to admit the root of the pain, or maybe they don't even know where to begin to have the conversation about it. How do you figure out what, and you use the word pain a few times, how do you know what kind of pain you're in? How do you know if the pain is the thing that's keeping you stuck? How do you know if the pain is actually the thing that has made you strive and be a high performer? How do you dance with that conversation.

Terry: Yeah, a lot of it is through talking to the parts like the parts will tell you what they're doing and why, and they're usually very willing. You don't have to pull it out of them too much. Because again they won't help. They're exhausted in there. They don't want to have to be doing this. Cognitively, we can have some idea. And that's usually initially what will bring someone to therapy or to a coach, like you said, something feels off. Not sure why I'm doing this. Not sure why I'm doing that. Really? Both those things that you described are trauma responses that they're not doing anything. And the trying too hard and the oversharing on social media that's a trauma response. That's the other extreme of keeping it all inside. Not wanting to look at it, not and really having no emotions being numb. Those are 2 sides of the same coin and so anything like that anything where it feels compulsive I'm compulsively oversharing as an example, or I'm compulsively numb and I just don't want to go in there and it. Maybe I know it's scary on some level, but I probably can't even feel the fear either. I just don't want to do it. I want to watch TV, do whatever all those things like, and what we find is it like for most of us, and this was the case for me, certainly, like it has to get bad enough before we're willing to, okay, something's got to change. Like we got it. Something's got to go differently. This is untenable right now. Most of us, if it doesn't get bad enough, we're happy to just kind of coast. Things are okay. I'm not happy. I'm not depressed. Things are just okay. And it's not till it crosses below a threshold that most people are willing to look at themselves or do some kind of therapy or psychedelics, like any kind of healing work, it has to get bad enough. So a lot of times that getting bad enough is actually what will save a person because it, again it puts them on a self healing journey and then they can look into, okay what am I doing is being driven by pain? How do I get that pain out? So that I don't feel this way anymore. I don't engage in these compulsive behaviors. And that's the shift right there.

Michael: Yeah. And as much as I hate to say this, every time I say it, it's you probably have to hit rock bottom if you want to change your life. And that's just something that I've seen hold true. Obviously I've been able to interview great minds like you, Dr. Gabor Maté, Caroline Leaf, Judd Brewer. The list goes on and on. We all just agree. It's you might have to hit the wall. But when you hit the wall and you keep hitting it, eventually you break through the breakthrough time. Now that's going to be different person to person. And I will, I don't know if you'll agree with this, but I'm the persuasion. Once you start this journey, like this is the rest of your life. 15 years into my own healing, being a coach for almost a decade, dude, I still am working on shit. Like it is mind blowing to me sometimes where I'm like, I can't believe I'm dealing with this right now. I've been doing this work forever and it's just such a potent reminder. Like it's just part of the human experience when you decide to walk this path. But one of the things that you said, I think about a lot. Trauma has become so normalized in our society. It's everywhere. It's on social media. It's on television. It's this podcast, right? It's everything everywhere. And some of it's just not for the benefit of people. And there's these inner dynamics of trauma that when we're looking at it, it becomes typical, right? What are the ways that and how has trauma become normalized in our culture? And is that a good thing or is that a bad thing?

Terry: Yeah. And you're referring to trauma awareness or actually trauma responses being normalized.

Michael: Yeah. Both. Just across the spectrum, like this whole thing about trauma, not only trauma and childhood, but then in adulthood and the impact and the role that it plays in our day to day, and then it becoming a cultural norm. And then, it seems like we're in this washing machine where trauma is just like everywhere around us right now.

Terry: Yeah. And that's unfortunately the reality. I think it's essentially ubiquitous in Western culture. You are any technologically advanced culture at this point, because we are so far out of our element compared to how we evolved and it just, it happened way too quickly on an evolutionary time scale. So the, yeah. War. All these large scale events, wars, displacement. That is so you can't even describe in words how painful that is to people. And that pain spreads like a virus. It spreads horizontally between us. It spreads vertically from parents to their children. It's not intentionally usually, but that's just how it is. It's just how that's how viruses spread. That's what they do. That's how trauma is. That's just the reality. So it's everywhere now. To the point where it's hard to notice, it's like the fish swimming in water to a degree, again, until it gets really bad like we were talking about a few minutes ago, then, it's oh, okay. Yeah. Something's wrong. But so I think part of it is accepting that reality. This is not an individual problem. This is so when someone goes on a healing journey, this is not a mess, I've failed. I need help. Like I'm a failure. I can't do this myself. That logic may be what brings someone initially in, which is okay if that's the result, but we very quickly see that now this actually, these are coping strategies. These are parts of me trying to help in the best way that they can. When I was a kid, a lot of times these coping strategies literally save our lives and then they outlive their usefulness. When we become adults so I think what we've really, it's been great the last 10 years or so, because trauma has become a buzzword, so to speak. So there's a lot more awareness of it. And I think that's critical. That's exactly what we need, particularly in Gen Z's all over this. Because they're the most traumatized generation yet. This stuff gets worse every generation and it's not linear. It's way worse than that. So this is with them is where I see it turning around. It's a part of their culture. Now, even at young ages, there's so much more awareness of it. And you can argue as people have that, depending on was swung too far the other way. And people are now saying things are trauma traumatizing when it's not really trauma. I actually don't see that. I don't buy into that. Someone may say, oh, I saw this movie. It was traumatizing. They're usually joking. They don't literally mean it, so I think there's a lot of humor that escapes people on sarcasm. This awareness we have on it now, that's step 1 we have to be aware before we can really do anything about it. And the doing anything is both individual healing, and it's also the collective healing that Thomas Hubel and other people talk about the collective trauma piece of it. Like, all of those things together now are kicking into gear and it's going to take a while. It's like trying to turn around a big ship. You're still going to keep going the other direction for a while, pretty, a relatively long time before you actually make that turn, but that's what's happening again over the last decade. And I think that's a beautiful thing. And it couldn't come a moment too soon.

Michael: For the people who are in this journey. They've worked with someone like you, someone like me, they listen to this podcast, they read the books, they're deep in the work they're standing on the precipice of maybe a relationship and building a family, and they're scared. This is one of the things I work with people a lot on. They're just, terrified of the idea of continuing the pattern of not fully breaking the cycle and they find themselves stuck in this place where they're terrified to commit to someone, to build a family, to have a child, to bring them in this world and they will find a myriad of reasons why they shouldn't. And ultimately that's an individual decision. But I'm curious when you're talking about this healing journey and this collective healing, how do you and what purpose does it serve for you to actually heal the generations that are ahead of you? Is there a social responsibility for you to go and have a family? I know this is a super loaded question, but it's been on my mind recently. Is there something about fear that holds people back from having a family because they feel like they're stuck? Trauma? Is there a way to because if we're talking systems and you're part of and you want to have a family the next likely step forward?

Terry: Such a good question, because if you look at the population growth of the world. I don't see too many people holding back from having families that they may hesitate a bit, but it's some tends to be something that invariably is going to happen whether accidentally or not. And so I think there if there's a responsibility, which is a loaded word, but it's, the more we do our own healing you can never start too soon, so the more we go on our journey, the less of our stuff we're going to pass on to our children. And the difference that's going to make for them throughout both their childhood and their adult lives is impossible to put in the words like we are talking about. This is life changing stuff. Like all this stuff, that you grew up with that I grew up with you imagine what we would be how our lives would have been different had that not been the case and not in an idealist wise, perfect kind of way, but just like all the suffering we wouldn't have had to go through all the suffering. This world wouldn't have to go through. So I think that is future parents is something that is so important because we don't mean to pass it down. We always say, I'm not going to be like my parents and we mean it when we say it, but that's 1 part saying it. And it's the other parts who are going to actually do it when they feel like they have to, they're going to pass down those same patterns that were really ingrained into us is his children. So so to it having fear about starting a family, not wanting to pass trauma down. That already means there's awareness there, which is which is a wonderful thing because most people can't say that. And when you have that's the responsibility as I would see it as, okay, how do I avoid to the extent possible, it's never going to be perfect. There's no perfect parent. That's not how this works, but just the more that's in me that I can get rid of the better off my children are going to be.

Michael: Yeah, I love that. A more. And I think that aw I think if you want to really create the cycle breaking experience, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to have children, right? And that's what I'm saying but it does mean that you do have to become a different version of you and leverage the knowledge and the experience of the past and further understand, like even in relation with other people, right? ‘Cause family is also, and I think about this every day, family is the people you put around you. Family isn't just this inherently biological experience. It's also like, where are your best friends? Who are your coworkers? If you've been working with Bob for 15 years, the dude's like your brother, probably. That's just a part of the journey. And I think that you're spot on and bringing awareness to it. Speaking of awareness, if somebody is like starting this journey of trying to explore and understand these internal family systems, what's a question that they should be asking themselves before starting to do the work on this?

Terry: Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's a tricky 1 again, because we're so good at deceiving ourselves. Cognitively, and it's really, our parts are like, these coping strategies, these defense mechanisms that they're, they often elude. Again, we're aware of the behaviors, but not the why. I think what we look at is what is either destructive in my life right now, or what is not conducive to where I want to go, what patterns am I engaged in that? I may know on some level cognitively or not ideal, or I should stop, but I can't I've told myself. However, many times we're going to put a plan in place. We're going to stop this. We're going to, we're going to phase off a cigarettes, whatever it is, and it doesn't work. So just noticing and it's not to make it wrong. It's not to make. We're not feeling bad about ourselves. It's not to criticize ourselves. It's really just that awareness, which is so key up front that we touched on earlier. So looking at what again, those 2 things, if it's either destructive or it's taking me in another direction and just exploring that. And, the challenge is that rationally, it's hard to get to the why behind those our left frame wants to speculate and connect dots that seem to make sense. But when we're working with parts, it's really the unconscious that we're working with, and a lot of times we'll get answers from them that make no sense. At least at 1st, rationally until we get. We investigated a little more and then, okay, now I see what you meant. Now it makes sense. So with us, we don't, again, cognitively trying to figure things out. It's not so much the way. But once we recognize some patterns or some emotional dysregulation that we have that it's that's the sign there's something a mess. And as you said, we have to get, as we talked about below some threshold normally and yeah, the A of awareness is always where it starts for people.

Michael: Yeah, that is such a great question and such a great thing for people to ponder and really take in and ask themselves, where am I stuck? Where can I not seem to overcome this hurdle? Where do I keep doing the same behavior? Because it's if you're in the same relationship 16 times in a row, you're Yo, the problem might be you and that's a hard thing for people to rationalize. And then hopefully they're hearing some information here today that makes them even more curious about exploring this. For those who do want to find out more and learn more about you, where can they do that?

Terry: Yeah, so my website is healingtheself.net all one word there's a contact me form there. There, there's, you can book an initial consult there, a free 30 minute session to chat with me about what you're going through. I'm on Instagram too, but you can find that it's the website's kind of that center place and you can find my social media and things like that through there.

Michael: Amazing. And guys, remember, if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, there'll be this and more in the show notes for you. My last question for you, my friend. What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Terry: Unbroken is, again, we talked about the capital S self. Yeah. Okay. Talked about self energy is we heal our parts. The parts don't go away. But again, now they're not operating. They're not doing it's not trauma responses all the time. It's just a more integrated way that they function. And that is the, what you might call unbrokenness when we're who we would have been. Have we not been traumatized or at least not traumatized as much. So that unbrokenness, it's a natural outcome of healing. It's not something we try to do. If you take a watch that's been broken into, a million pieces, you're not going to fix that. It's not about putting things together in this approach. It's about finding the stuff that's in there that shouldn't be in there. That wasn't in there when we were born. The pain, the trauma, the self beliefs, which are so important, the shame. And once we get that out. Then we're who we were naturally supposed to be. That's the unbroken state. So again, clearing out, it's a constraint release type of situation. We're not adding unbrokenness on top or getting rid of what's broken, so to speak. And then unbrokenness comes about as a natural consequence.

Michael: That's a absolutely brilliant way to put that. My friend, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken nation. Please share this with one person. Take the link from the episode, send it to someone in your life that you know will benefit from listening to today's episode. Check Unbroken.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.