Jay Earley: Making Peace With Your Inner Conflicts
In this episode...
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Jay Earley, author of Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Wholeness Using IFS.
A frequent subject on this show, Internal Family Systems is a model of spiritual and therapeutic growth that I’ve practiced for the last 12 years or so that to me is the most effective tool box that I’ve ever found to address a wide range of psychological and health-related issues.
“The crucial part is not just recognizing that we’re made up of parts—subpersonalities—but that they’re really like little people living inside of us. And we can talk to them and they can talk to us and we can develop a relationship to them.”
Befriending Your Inner Protectors
Jay and I hone in on the IFS concept of befriending our protectors. Not just thinking abstractly about your psychological defenses, but experiencing them in real time with a sort of appreciative inquiry and leadership, the results of which you experience in your body and mind.
Mike Elkin, one of my recent guests on the show described IFS like hypnosis, except it’s far more sophisticated and you can learn to do it on yourself. And that’s been Jay Early’s passion: teaching lay people the steps to learning IFS in everyday life. In self-practice.
All of us can relate to having a voice inside of you that tells you when you’ve made a mistake. For many people this mental habit can interfere with life and restrict their natural instinct and ability.
But have you ever considered that you can actually interact with that part of you? Not just get that critic voice to go away, but get it to work with you and fit into your life in a more helpful way.
We talk about:
– How to deal with inner conflicts, called polarizations
– The Procrastinator-Taskmaster polarization
– Why polarizations are the root cause of all emotional and behavioral symptoms
– How to get to know and deal with your Inner Critic
– Applying Self-Leadership to polarizations in the outside world
"Who we fundamentally are is good. It’s compassionate, it’s caring. And when we’re not taken over by these problematic parts like protectors or exiles, then we are in Self."
– Jay Early, PhD
Jay Earley, Ph.D., is a transformational psychologist, IFS teacher, psychotherapist, group leader, author, teacher, and theorist. He is the author of Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Wholeness Using IFS, Self-Therapy, Vol. 2, Self-Therapy, Vol. 3, Freedom from Your Inner Critic, and Resolving Inner Conflict.