137. No Bad Parts

Everyone in our lives is just another insecure, fallible person, and not always the enemy. Today we celebrate our interconnectedness as humans.

Read No Bad Parts, Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model, mentioned in this episode. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

nora: I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay. I am generally averse to self-help books because so many of them. Are based on the idea that there is something deeply wrong with you that needs fixing, and it is all in your control. And if you can’t do it, You are a loser. And I’m a person who’s very susceptible to that kind of thinking and a person who spent a lot of her life living in the black and white, I was either good or bad things were either good or bad. That binary is simple. Makes it easy to judge. And boy, did I judge? Especially myself. No, I do not have anything. Against positivity in general. When I am not horribly depressed or being just straight up grumpy, I am. A pretty upbeat person and this podcast. Is not a form of toxic positivity. We don’t say it’s all going to be. Okay. So just shut up. Everything’s fine. What are you talking about? We know that some things are not fine, but still we are going to find in okay. Thing every day, even if we need to get on our hands and knees with a magnifying glass, like Rick Maraniss and honey, I shrunk the kids and man, oh, man. Were those kids small. They were. So I rewatched it recently. They could fit inside. I have the little interior UL interior. Interior circles within the leg. That’s small. Several of them could fit. On the inside holes of a Lego, that’s a small kid. I can’t believe they didn’t get stepped on. That movie was extremely stressful for me as a kid. And as an adult. So, where are we today on? It’s going to be okay today. I am reading you a little book, a little bit of a book that I’m reading a book that I cracked open because it corresponds with the kind of therapy I’m in right now. And yeah. I want to get an a in therapy. It’s the book, no bad parts by Richard C. Schwartz, the man behind the internal family systems therapeutic model. 

I am not an expert. In, I’m not an expert. Well, I’m really anything. Certainly not on internal family systems. I’m just going to therapy and reading this book. People call it. Ifs, which I think sun’s really sleek. And fancy, but. This is over simplified, but instead of thinking of yourself as good or bad or angry or anxious, You learn to identify and have compassion for the parts. Have you that feel these things or act in these ways, which is really different from how many of us were raised to think about ourselves or about people in general. So this is a part of the book that I highlighted and returned to you and thought. You know what someone might need to hear this this morning, 

 Someone might be thinking of themselves as bad. Okay, so here we go. Now I’m quoting. 

Most of a society’s rules and goals. Trickle down from its assumptions about whether people are basically good or evil, competitive, or collaborative. Trustworthy or selfish. Isolated or interconnected, hopeless or redeemable. Inferior or superior. All of these views affect a given societies members. You’re probably familiar with the placebo effect. But the opposite called the no CBO effect side note. That’s so funny that can’t be real. Can’t be placebo and Nope, no CBO is it, did I? That sounds like something I would have made up. Like, ah, what are we going to call this one? Bill? We’re going to call it the no CBO effect. Okay. Back to the book. The no CBO effect is equally real and powerful. For example, if you believe a sugar pill will make you sick, you’ll probably get sick. Applied to human relations. There’s ample evidence that our negative expectations of others. Heavy strong impact on their behavior or performance. 

This can easily initiate vicious, reinforcing feedback loops in which negative expectations become self fulfilling prophecies that further reinforce the negative views. And so on. 

How we think about and relate to the inhabitants of our inner worlds translates directly to how we think about and relate to people. If we live in fear of and strive to control certain parts of us. We will do the same to people who resemble those parts. 

 Going to war against any social problem Sets in motion, reinforcing feedback loops that have the potential to destroy the system. ’cause they escalate over time and drain the systems resources. This is true in the inner world as well. 

 If you believe that within you are dangerous beast, Joel or sinful impulses, that need to be constantly monitored controlled, and if necessary, battled against. Then it makes sense that you would see other people that way. And your approach to social problems will invariably involve controlling tactics. And war. 

This view that people have a sinful aggressive, selfish, impulsive nature. That must be controlled. Also leads to a profound sense of disconnection from other people and disdain for oneself. If everyone is out for themselves, then you should be too. You have to protect yourself. You shouldn’t be too open and naive. You need to watch your back. The problem here is that this approach doesn’t work. It only leaves you feeling lonely. Ashamed and afraid. Feelings you think you have to hide for fear of being rejected. When you believe you are a separate, selfish and sinful soul among other wretches like yourself. It’s hard not to feel lonely. Even when with people. When you are alone with your pathetic self, you feel even more rejected and worthless and consequently are likely to withdraw even more. 

So I picked, I picked that. Because I love the connection to you. The way we feel about ourselves. Reflecting the way we feel about other people. The idea of interconnectedness. Is something that has come up on this podcast before. And I think it’s that interconnectedness that has made this podcast so wonderful to make. And so wonderful to you create along with all of you. Because all of us are a reflection of our culture and are also creating this culture. I don’t know, this is the kind of thing that just reminds me, that everybody you meet, everybody you see is just a fragile little soul in a skin suit, walking around. Feeling like they might be doing it wrong and afraid that everybody is going to find out. And that we are all more connected and interconnected. Than we could possibly know. Or understand. Um, 

It’s going. 

 that’s all for today on it’s going to be okay. We have another podcast. That’s all about books. It’s called the terrible reading club. It is good books for terrible times. We do two episodes a month, so it’s very manageable. They come out on Sundays, but. Wishing you all the best today for everybody use. Going to therapy today or this week, maybe this is something to talk about with your therapist. I’ve already talked about it with mine. The book that I talked about is called no bad parts. We will link to it in. Our show notes. Uh, what else? What else? What else? Is going to be okay, is a group project every day on this podcast is different. We bring you a new thing. Every day. All the time. All the, all the time. No. Every weekday, we bring you a new thing. These things come often. From our community. And that means you. So you can email us a thing. I GTB [email protected]. You can attach a voice memo. You can call us the old fashioned way. 6 1 2 5 6 8 4 4 4 1. We are production of feelings and co where we make feelings. All day, every day. Not all day. Some days, part of the day. Okay. Probably eight. Five. I don’t know how many weekdays there are in the world. We’re making enough feelings. For the time being, and I’m pretty happy with our workload. I have to say. If you don’t have plans between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Terrible. Thanks for asking. Is bringing our happish holidays show on the road. It’ll be me. And Marcel Malekebu. Doing our holiday tradition, happish holidays is a live podcast experience. It’s a holiday party. It is a holiday party for people who don’t like holiday parties and a celebration of the complicated nature. Of our holiday season, we will have. Uh, the link to those tickets in our show description, but they will also be at TTFA. Dot org. Thank you so much for listening to this show. Our team is me. Marcel, Meghan, Claire. Michelle Jordan. This episode was probably mixed by Amanda Romani and our theme music as always is by secret audio.