Hi Rainbow. I’m much more of a lurker than a poster, but I’m a dedicated lurker. So I’ve read lots of your threads. A couple of thoughts spring to mind.

I know people have questioned you on IFS, and you’re happy with the way you and your T do things. I guess the thing that strikes me about IFS is that it doesn’t sound like the end goal is an integration of parts per se— as opposed to other ideas of integrating parts into one self. If I understand correctly, the goal of IFS is for that adult/rational Self to control/soothe the child/emotional parts. But that sounds to me like a kind of perpetual power struggle; the question of whether your adult Self can control those parts will always be there.

I wonder if it would be helpful to think about integrating those parts instead. It may sound like a semantics game, but from an experiential perspective, they seem very different to me. A lot of my life has been about my Self controlling those parts (young/fearful, adolescent/rageful) that seemed very split off. One of the things that has been most helpful in my therapy has been the idea that those parts are not separate from the rest of me. Fear, rage, maliciousness, are all as normal and human as love, compassion, and happiness. Over time, as those parts have seemed less “separate” from my overall self, the fear, rage, and sadness has also become less intense.

I also wondered how much time you’ve spent in your therapy dealing directly with your anger—maybe you’ve spent a lot, I’m not sure. I see you mention sometimes that you felt angry at your therapist, but I don’t think I’ve seen much where you talk about really diving into that with your therapist. It took me a while to get there. (When I first came into therapy, I told my therapist that I don’t get angry. Everyone gets angry, she tells me. Well, I don’t, I shrug. It took me quite a while to be able to identify when I was feeling anger, and that I had a whole lot of rage stuffed deep down!) But I have been talking about it / letting it out more in therapy over the past year, and it’s some of the most effective work I’ve done when it comes to abandonment / attachment issues. More so than dealing with the pain, emptiness, sadness, etc of abandonment.

Wishing you happiness and healing.