The Validation Lounge, All Parts Are Welcome with Sasha Jenkin
Sasha Jenkin, Internal Family Systems Therapist, discusses various themes in the self help, psychology and therapy arena through an Internal Family Systems lens. She is joined by fellow IFS practitioners and advocates.
If you would like to be in touch with Sasha please email her at contact@sashajenkin.com
The Validation Lounge, All Parts Are Welcome with Sasha Jenkin
Episode 18 Parts and Psychosis with Stephanie Mitchell
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In this episode Stephanie Mitchell returns to talk to me about parts and psychosis. Stephanie is a Level 3 Certified IFS Therapist, psychotherapist, teacher and supervisor. She specialises in working with complex trauma and experiences which often get labelled as ‘mental illness'.
Stephanie is interested in how healing and change occur in the human-to-human relationship, in spaces of acceptance and outside the constructs of diagnostic labels.
Stephanie is currently undertaking research on IFS and psychosis and teaches around the world on working with early developmental trauma. She offers an advanced training on IFS and Interpersonal Neurobiology, which focuses on highly attuned and nuanced ways of being with clients in the IFS model.
As we discuss, Stephanie is offering several fantastic trainings across different time zones to find out more please look on her website:
https://stephaniemitchell.com.au/ifs-workshop-overview/
https://ifs-institute.com/resources/research/ifs-glossary-terms
The above link is a glossary of common terms used in Internal Family Systems Therapy from the IFS Institute.
More info on my fabulous guests can be found on the podcast website:
https://thevalidationloungeallpartsarewelcome.buzzsprout.com
Sasha Jenkin website for any feedback please:
https://sashajenkin.com/
I'm Sasha Jenkin. I've always been really fascinated by people and what makes them tick and I've been lucky enough to pursue this interest in my work as a therapist for over 20 years. In 2019 I discovered internal family systems therapy which has been life-changing for me both personally and professionally. In this podcast I'll be chatting to other internal family systems therapy colleagues and practitioners about how this model has impacted them and then in each episode we will also focus on a particular piece of psychology So welcome to the Validation Lounge. All parts are welcome. I'm really grateful that today I have with me again Stephanie Mitchell, who was here with us, or was here with me, who joined me on episode 13, talking about IFS and interpersonal biology. And today we're going to talk about IFS and parts and psychosis, which is a subject that Stephanie has done a lot of work and research on and is very experienced in. And so, and has also had some training available, which I'll put a link to in the notes. So, but before we sort of dive into psychosis, perhaps if Stephanie, you'd just like to introduce yourself again. Hi. Hi.
SPEAKER_01And
SPEAKER_00just if you could say where you are and maybe what you've been up to.
SPEAKER_02Sure. So I'm in what's called the Sunshine Coast of Australia, which is on the east coast about eight or so hours above Sydney, probably more like 12 actually. So I'm in a really beautiful place of the world. And what have I been up to? I've been teaching a class that's UK and US friendly, which means that I have to be up at 3am in the morning to teach. So that's just finished, thankfully. So that was my... and interpersonal neurobiology and clients who use transference and how do we see their parts and how do we, you know, really be very nuanced in the ways that we hold them. Yeah. So that was that class. I've just finished that and I'm running it again in September. So other than that, I've just moved house, which was a mammoth effort, selling one house and then being kind of in between with nowhere sort of while I was looking. So I'm finally settled in my new place.
SPEAKER_00Yay. That's a lot, isn't it? It has been a lot, yes. Well done to your parts for getting through that and doing all that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, before my healing it would have been much more stressful than it has been. I've really navigated it with quite a lot of ease. As much as, you know, my parts don't love being out of routine and having things in boxes, they've been pretty chilled.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Yeah. And we actually touched on the topic of transference in the last episode. So if people are interested in that, maybe as a little taster towards that training, there's some information there. And you did introduce yourself in terms of your kind of professional experience in the last episode. Is that something that you'd like to do here? I'm happy if you feel that's what you'd... Yeah,
SPEAKER_02well, maybe the only thing that would, because we're going to be talking about the topic of what we call psychosis.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02I will say that, you know, I've worked a lot with this population of people who end up diagnosed with some sort of psychotic disorder, whatever that is. And that really came because I was a peer worker and I started out, you know, really identified as someone who had PTSD and, you felt broken and thought the only job I could get was in a role where people kind of recognise I don't have much to offer because I'm broken is how it felt to me, not that all peer workers, that that's true for peer workers, but I'm saying that's why I went into it. And so it was in that space I spent a lot of time with people interfacing with mental health service and got to see the way that their story is not really heard a lot of the time. They're seen as a bunch of symptoms and I became really interested in seeing that my clients made a lot of sense to why they heard voices or felt afraid of things that we, you know, we call it paranoia. I could make sense of it from the things they told me were happening in their life. Right. Why is this being missed? So I kind of... did a dive as a peer worker and then as a support worker and then as a therapist, did a bit of a dive into a lot of the what's called psychiatric survivor movement.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02There's a whole movement internationally of people who've come out of psychiatric services and are like, that didn't help me. In fact, it was incredibly traumatic and if someone had really sat alongside me and helped me navigate my experience, I would have, I wouldn't be so traumatized I have to heal from the way that I was you know scared I was people scared me about my fear essentially
SPEAKER_00yeah yeah yeah gosh
SPEAKER_02so that was kind of where I started from and it feels important for me to mention
SPEAKER_00yeah the psychiatric survivor movement wow yeah and that makes so much sense particularly not wanting to but to dive in too deep, but how I imagine that part of someone's experience might have been really not being seen or heard. And then to have that replicated in the systems that are supposed to be supporting you, I imagine, oh, I feel it in my system, like how kind of terrifying that could be. Like, yeah. Yeah, very frightening. So I wonder if you would... mind just explaining what you consider if you could talk about I mean as you said it's even just the word maybe the word doesn't feel right to you but right just so psychosis what what yeah what comes up for you around that in terms of Yeah, maybe just generally and then we could talk about that in parts language maybe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So, you know, what gets called psychosis is really any experience that's, you know, a non-ordinary experience. It might be that I hear voices and you can't hear the voices I hear and so it gets called psychotic. Or maybe I have some, you know, auditory, well, auditory voices, sorry, tactile hallucination or I have some sense of, you know, people are out to get me or that I'm Jesus or what I call kind of like, you know, You know, these experiences that are non-ordinary and people, other people, a lot of the people, psychiatry certainly doesn't know what they are. They think it's a brain disorder. Oh, okay. But essentially when you actually sit and listen to people, there's reasons they're past. do the things they do, and then what gets communicated not only to what we think is the person, kind of like the self is hidden under a pile of other parts. The person in that experience is usually very afraid and has a lot of shame, but it's hidden under a lot of other things. And so for me there's the thing about fear, which I'll come to in a minute, but I just – I suppose – when we think about what is psychosis, it's any experience where a person is deemed to not kind of be in touch with reality is what psychiatry would say. I would say it's something different though.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I use the psychosis because it's a kind of shorthand to explain everything from bipolar, whether that's mania or, you know, sort of what gets called kind of like, you know, incurable or whatever they say treatment resistant depression or catatonic
SPEAKER_01you know
SPEAKER_02psychotic catatonia um you know like all these different kinds of um catatonic psychosis there's all these different you know
SPEAKER_00effective schizophrenia thank you that's what i was going to ask you that's really helpful so there's quite a lot of kind of labels that have Psychosis, I'm putting little inverted signs up for lots of different disorders that's presented in.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's right. They call it a cluster of psychotic disorders, plural, and you could be in any flavour of that. Ultimately for me it doesn't really matter what person ends up being diagnosed as because there's always an important reason the parts are doing it. And for me, when I talk to parts, they usually, there's been a crisis in the person's life that has precipitated the experience that they're having, whether that's a drug-induced experience, Right. Flooding, you know, when someone already has some kind of like I cannot know something in my own mind. Yes. That's my view of kind of the origins of the trauma stuff. And there's good research on the traumagenic origins of psychosis. And so... Go on.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to interrupt your flow, but when you say I cannot... know something in my own mind? Do you mean that there might be something that's happened that is too terrifying to actually acknowledge? It's
SPEAKER_02not only something that's happened, it's like they learn to not trust their own knowings. Okay. Because if they had an experience of trusting their own feelings, thoughts or whatever that is when they were younger, usually somebody else got dysregulated about it. Right. So I follow a theory called the double bind theory for schizophrenia by Bateson, but there's other new research around disorganised attachment and psychosis and Moskowitz and others. And if you read the... There's a new psychosis book out that I can give you the name of, the show notes. Well, it's not that new anymore. I don't know how old. It's probably about 10 years old, eight years old now, but it was new back when I first was reading it. Still feels new. I think it's kind of one of the most recent collection of research that really has put it into a book, that is. Of course, there's more recent research, but that book, which is dissociation and psychosis kind of is the topic.
SPEAKER_00I was going to ask about dissociation. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Psychosis is incredibly dissociative, but
SPEAKER_01to get back to just talking quickly
SPEAKER_02about the thing around... The person can't know there are knowings. And when we think about disorganised attachment, right, it's not the child who is born disorganised. It's the parent who has disorganised feelings. And so that doesn't necessarily mean the parent's abusive. It means that the parent might be carrying their own trauma. And so the way that they interact with the infant is sort of draw close, push away, things happen. It's overwhelming or maybe mum or dad is really full of anxiety or, you know, these kinds of things. And so that kind of early start, the child ends up feeling kind of what my clients tell me is there's a fear of annihilation, emotional intra-psychic annihilation. And what do we know about these parts who have these fears? They're tied to early experiences. They don't have a fear because they made it up in the head. Yes,
SPEAKER_00absolutely. Very visceral, very physiological, like maybe before the ability to kind of speak and make sense of what's going on. Is that what you mean? Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so what we do know is that there's something inside that cannot be known. Maybe it's I'm mad at my mother. Maybe it's that, you know, I don't feel – I had one client who was like I don't feel like – you know, manly enough. I'm not very, you know, he got messages from his family, you know, he was a boy but he was kind of too petite or something, right? And so whatever the thing is, he's trying to not feel. And then when they, you know, say, for instance, if it's drugs, the main triggers in adolescence are things like being bullied. Right, yeah. Kids going to university when they move out of home and then they're faced with an incredible amount of stress. Taking drugs. But, you know, it can also be sleeplessness. You can start to hear voices just from being in solitary confinement long enough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so if you've not had any sleep and not seen anyone for just a few nights, it can actually really – well, that's how they torture people, isn't it? That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So – My point in saying the thing about the triggers is something gets triggered, however that happens, and what used to be managers who could kind of keep hold and keep away from all of that, those parts kind of get breached through with a whole bunch of exiles who are feeling all kinds of feelings and needs and all this is coming through. But that cannot be known in the system because that is completely dangerous.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, yeah, if there's a fear of annihilation, that's...
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's huge, isn't it? So then there's another strategy created. Okay. Which is just genius really. If we can understand the strategy, we don't have to be afraid of it. And the strategy is another group of parts come in and say, and I mean obviously this is my formulation and I will admit that my ex-business partner, Matthew Ball from the Humane Clinic in Adelaide, he talked about a thing called dissociocotic. So my formulation takes some of his and adds to it a little, right? So he has this dissociocotic formulation which basically says that when a person can't fight or flee or freeze, they have to try and do something else, right, when nothing else is really working. And so he would say the dissociocotic moment is is a person dissociating and kind of like becoming psychotic to keep someone scary away because their fear is a relational annihilation.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and that reminds me that I remember a trainer saying to me that dissociation is the last port of call, like when everything else hasn't worked then dissociation is the one that we go to. Is that right? Yeah,
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think there's so many layers of dissociation, daydreaming is dissociation. Yeah, true. Yeah, I think it depends on the type of dissociation, whether it's the first to last protocol. Yeah. But I do agree that in the really extreme trauma, of course, we float up above our body, we completely leave our body, right, we kind of like forget, we become very fragmented. Yeah. You know, so that is true. It's just... depends what the term of dissociation
SPEAKER_00means. Thank you for correcting me because I realise that I just used that and it's like a label that's hugely... There's lots of different types and lots of difference within dissociation. So that's a bit of a blanket term that I used. But you were talking about how it's a relational, something like it's...
SPEAKER_02It's very relational annihilation, right? Yeah. And so... You know, if you take Matt Ball's concept of, you know, the person dissociates and the psychosis becomes necessary because I don't feel safe, right? Yes. Then for me there's this thing what I call metaphoric language, right? This is the genius strategy. Not only does the person kind of look psychotic and kind of start talking to you in a weird way, but they're also conveying a message what, you know, Sorry, Eleanor Longdon quoted Judith Herman talking about how trauma survivors and then Judith Herman was talking about trauma survivors communicating while concealing. Then Eleanor London applied that to voice hearers and psychosis and said that's what's been happening, right? There's a sense of I'm trying to communicate something to you, Sasha, but I'm actually very afraid of how you might respond because I've learnt that if I really let you know inside of me, I might get hurt in some way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so what I do instead is I communicate through metaphor. So my metaphor might be, at the moment that I start to feel afraid of you, I say, well, you know, I do think that, you know, my phones are being tapped, you know, Sasha. I really, you know, and we were just talking about your new dog, right, and something can feel unsafe and you're like, why are you telling me all of this all of a sudden? And so my job as a therapist is to slow down and kind of go, what just happened, right? What just happened that made it necessary for, for this person to dissociate into something metaphoric.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so could it be, for example, the phone's being tapped, could there be, when you say metaphoric, could it be actually some sort of representation of what's going on inside them? Like they want to be listened to and they're not being listened to or not, am I over...
SPEAKER_02Well, it depends when it happens. There's two important things. It happens because I just said something. There's sometimes a reason that the person's telling me the thing. I give this example a lot and I'm sorry for anyone who's heard me talk before, but I will use it again because it's a very clear example. I was talking to a client at one stage and he had told me a few weeks before, I really enjoy your relentless questions, relentless questions. He goes, oh, I love your relentless curiosity. And I thought the way he said it didn't really sound like he liked it. Yes. But I also thought he probably wants to be polite.
SPEAKER_01And so
SPEAKER_02I didn't say anything at the time because one of the things when I'm working with psychosis is I want to be really mindful of the relational field. I want to be safe. And I know some things are trying to be communicated whilst other parts don't really want me to see them. So I'm holding. I'm holding. That was said. I wonder what that means. Now's not the time. I'm following. And then a few weeks later, we'd been talking about a particular thing. And I said, just ask that voice, what is it afraid would happen if it didn't do or say that thing? And he said, the voice says Sherlock. And I went, Sherlock? And I thought to myself, what does that mean? And I thought to myself, oh, ping back to three weeks ago when he said my relentless curiosity. And I went, oh, it are you Sherlock or am I Sherlock? Because it felt to me something about, it could be one of two things. This is important historical information or something about what just happened between the two of us. So I offer him an open-ended question. Am I Sherlock or are you? And he says, you are. And I went, oh. And then I went, let me just check. Are my questions too intrusive? And he said, yes. And I went, great. Well, let's leave that question for now. And we moved on to something else. And that was the beginning of our work about three years ago. Now he's finally up to doing just the beginnings of some exile work. And he's completely – he's coming off his meds. He's not got any psychosis. He is – made all these incredible leaps and bounds with making his relationship with his mother much more boundaried and, you know, like things that he wasn't able to do. When he first came to see me it was like I can't say anything bad about my mother, which is the not known piece. I cannot know something. He took some psychedelics, got flooded with some feelings that he had to disown and that's when the psychosis came. Yeah, yeah. Our work has been me moving backward and forward as he gets to, he tells me little snippets of things and then when he's going, no, no, that's too much, I just let it go. And now after me creating enough safety for him to know and not know, he's able to know. Actually, part of what was difficult back then was I was angry at my mum and I didn't know how to say that to myself or her.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was too, yeah. That's how clever. Yes. As you say. And also that's just reminding me of how, you know, that it sounds like it's been really essential that you've had that built up relationship over the years. So he can really, his parts can really know that he's safe and that he can start, you know, risking to say things slowly, like you say, you know, maybe a little snippets and the world doesn't end, you know, it's still. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so... So
SPEAKER_02can I talk about metaphoric language because you had asked me a question and I said it
SPEAKER_01depends.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I said the psychosis becomes necessary at two points in time and you said is it referring to anything in particular? It is. And I said sometimes it's just referring to something that happened between the two of us that I have to keep to. And other times it's talking about the past. So I had another client who... You know, he was telling me all about, you know, how, you know, people are bugging him, you know, the government departments are out to get him and people are bugging his phones and various other things.
SPEAKER_01And
SPEAKER_02I said, wow, what's that like? And he said, I just feel like, you know, like it doesn't make any sense. He went on and then eventually he said this sentence of, I just feel like I never can get anything right. And I just went, that, all of this stuff about being bugged and not being safe is part of a really important message about not feeling safe because I can never get anything right. That there is exile space.
SPEAKER_01For me, I'm not going to get hooked into, oh, tell me more about how they're bugging you.
UNKNOWNIf we try and get into denying a person's reality, there's a thing called the negation reflex.
SPEAKER_02You can read some research. I can send everyone the paper for that too. But if you get into negating someone's concerns, they will double down on their concern and what they call, this paper calls it paranoia and it's kind of like someone, the difficulty with paranoia is just how intractable it is. The person really believes it. So we don't want to go towards trying to disprove. What we want to do is be openly curious. So this person was like... These people are out to get me, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, God, can't do anything right. How long have you felt like that before? Straight away he was able to go, oh, yeah, since my mother was, suddenly I was like four and I went to kindy and whatever or since my mother this or since my father that. I can't remember exactly. But my point is that they'll give you little hints of that when they're ready, sorry. Some clients you ask that question and they can't. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00I guess it's also not to make any assumptions at all, like to really hear it from their parts, really hear from.
SPEAKER_02A lot of people with psychosis will also make everything about the last little while. Okay. So you'll ask them how long and it'll be like, oh, since I took the LSD. And I just know it's before then.
SPEAKER_01Yeah,
SPEAKER_02yeah, yeah. They're not ready to know it.
SPEAKER_00So could you say perhaps one of the things that I've been sort of noticing and being more and more aware of in my own work is how you can have like a sort of Russian doll with burdens, which can start, can have the same flavor that can start from, you know, really even from conception. And then that, as we go through the different developmental ages, they can have the same essential burden, but like, you know, hearts around them manifesting in a way according to the developmental age so perhaps the most recent one might in this example like the most recent experience might be the one that they can really relate to but when you actually is that yeah and when
SPEAKER_02you but when
SPEAKER_00you
SPEAKER_02uh well i was going to say you know it's it's the whole thing about not being allowed to know what was back there Yeah, yeah. So my way of doing it is some clients very quickly I can help them to continue to go back and I'll say, I think it was earlier than that, right, but other clients I can't. Yeah. And so you just sort of like follow your lead and.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So thank you. That's really interesting, really helpful, and a lot's coming up for me, and I also wanted to say that I realise this is a huge subject and we're only going to touch the surface of it. And also the other thing that was coming up for me was how, you know, I feel it less in my system. Before we were going to have this conversation, I had this real... I suppose a part of me, if I'm really honest, I had this part that was like, what are people going to think? I'm talking about something that's really a kind of topic that's just something that should be, I'm doing my inverted commas again, this kind of mental illness, inverted commas again, needs an experienced practitioner, psychotherapist.
SPEAKER_01with
SPEAKER_00a solid experience to be able to work with someone. And I have a fear around like, oh, you know, Sasha's going to think that anyone who does IFS can work with people that are psychotic. And I realize that actually this comes from me. It comes from fear. And I realize I have fear in my system around a mental, I think serious mental health. Again, I'm inverted commas and psychosis. You know, a lot of psychosis is often in that I'm realizing as we're talking. I have fear in my system around that. I have less actually now, even just having that conversation that we've had so far. But I had an experience when I was first training. So this is like 30 years at least ago, and it was my first placement. And I don't want to give up. too much personal information about the client. But what ended up happening is that they had a psychotic episode with me in the room. And it was completely, there was no history, he had no history of it. And I was terrified because he was actually potentially quite, he was sort of going to, he could have hurt me. And it was all, I mean, basically what happened was, is that the organization kind of scooped me up and and then end up sort of taking supporting him with some people with more experience but I think what really came out for me was helpful in a way because I was on my own in the building then there was no one else around and um so for in terms of safety for me and my client it made me realize like you know it's really important so the thing around there being fear I think and also remembering that Dick saying I think that if we fear parts they have more influence over us they'll have more power but also yeah just labeling I'm just naming that I guess around how I think because I was terrified with that client I would have been absolutely no help for him at all I could have even made him worse now I think about it I could have made him even more and I think he was probably terrified and it was almost like you know it sort of became both of our fear
SPEAKER_02and Yeah, so as far as the question of, you know, for me I just want to stick to the question of like do we need really highly trained psychotherapists to work with psychosis? People who have psychosis don't tell us that. In fact, there's some good back in the, God, 60s, I can't remember exactly, there was a bunch of these peer-run therapists houses for people who were going through psychotic experiences um and they were only run by peers so they were run by people in fact the people who they were most of them were run by psychiatrists as like there would be a single psychiatrist at the top but so there was one um soteria house and then there was one called kingsley hall and um Diabesis and various different places throughout the world. There's one in England, in London, and there was one in, more than one in the US, I think. So there was various places around the world and, like, one of the, What would happen is they would have a clinician kind of at the top, but the clinician would employ people with no mental health experience because they basically said, you guys are way better at helping people through these experiences than clinicians. Because you've
SPEAKER_00already had the experience yourself, you mean?
SPEAKER_02No, well, sorry, they didn't necessarily have to be peers. Sorry, when I say peers, I mean just ordinary people who had compassion. Okay, oh, wow. They didn't have to have... It didn't have to be peers who actually had been through that experience, but just, you know, if you're really frightened and you see ghosts in the night and they come and stand on your bed so you have a tactile hallucination as well, then maybe what you most need is someone to sit next to you while you're sleeping so you're less afraid, right? Yeah. And so... And those little houses had just as much, basically they did some research. They did 50% of clients coming into the emergency could go to a respite house or one of these soteria house kind of places, non-pathologising, non-medication based, and the other 50% could go to the ward if they wanted. And then the results pretty much came back. There was improvement. lower recidivism lower coming back to hospital over and over for people who'd gone into the one of these satiria type of houses
SPEAKER_00that's interesting isn't it
SPEAKER_02yeah and then when you actually interview people there's a whole movement um people can get trained in something called emotional cpr which was designed by and there's another um there's Emotional CPR, and there's another one that is exactly the same as far as I understand, but it's called something else. Is
SPEAKER_00it like mental first aid? Oh, gosh.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no. Mental health first aid is very pathologising. At least in Australia it's incredibly like how do we diagnose people and send them off to be medicated and supported? So that's interesting. Whereas ECPR, emotional CPR, and the other modality that uses exactly the same kind of thing is designed by people who went through the experience and they were like, this is what we actually needed. And so it's a way of listening. And it's a way of, you know, so if I'd had your client and I was really frightened, I would have just told them I was frightened.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's so much more transparent, isn't it? Because the thing is when someone's like for whatever happened in that moment between the two of you that he became what you said is psychotic, for me it's You know, when someone's doing something that is dissociated, one way to bring them back is to kind of like let them know how I feel.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, there's that connection as well, isn't there? I think like, you know, the relational piece maybe.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And it's kind of like you're helping them to have a different part of their brain working. What's dissociation? Their parts took them to a certain place.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02whatever parts took them to a certain place, we can bring them back with various ways of doing that, right? Yeah. And so, you know... there's people who, you know, like they're throwing things around the room and they don't realise they're being scary to someone. They're just so caught up in their anger and you say, like, I'm really scared right now. And they're like, oh, I'd never hurt you. And you're like, what? That is so terrifying. How can you think that, like, I wouldn't feel
SPEAKER_00afraid that you might hurt
SPEAKER_02me?
SPEAKER_00Right, so you're maybe almost calling on them perhaps almost people-pleasing managers to like, not people-pleasing, but the managers that might be there that are concerned about the effect they have on other people in saying that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. I don't really understand the brain function of that, but they do go to a place and they can literally come back by a different orientation. And it's not only talking about, you know, I tell this funny story. It's not really that funny. It's actually quite. I grew up in a house where there was a lot of violence and so for me being I don't want to be around violence but at the same time I don't tolerate violence in my community and I was driving past a couple of like probably about 18-year-old boys sort of last year of school probably, 17, 18, and one of them was punching the other and the victim was on the ground and just having crap bit out of him. And the other boy, the bigger boy, was, you know, kicking him in the stomach and punching him and and I was just like no way is that happening on my watch and I suppose what I've learned through my own therapy training and other things which has nothing to do with psychosis but I'm just talking about how we change states right yes um when someone's dissociated I just pulled up my car first I tooted my horn that didn't break it up but I jumped out of my car and just started yelling, I don't know what happened here, but you both have to go home. And I just screamed that over and over and over at these two boys until the one who was beating up the one who's on the floor ended up kind of getting ready to leave. And somehow cut through. Well, you know, that's what I make up. I don't know if it's true. or whether there was just an adult intervening. But there's a part of me that kind of thinks if I'd gotten into the middle of like you're a mean such and such or whatever, I feed his rage, right? But I came through all of the story making and whatever's gone on and just said, look, there's only one thing to do here and that is that whatever happened between the two of you, it has to stop and you both have to just go home. Yeah, yeah. Talk to whoever it is you need to talk to about making sure that doesn't happen again, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm just a bystander. I don't know these people. Yeah, yeah. And so I think for me when I spoke to the police later came and asked me to give a statement and they were just like, wow, you know, like you did the right thing, right. And I learned in my therapy training about that, like when a person's flipped their lid, you kind of come in with a statement. So anyway, I just,
SPEAKER_01you know,
SPEAKER_02when we're working, if we think of an example, because that brings us back to psychosis, if someone hears a voice and the voice tells them, you know, they want to have sex with me or they want to rape me, I just want to be curious about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because it's a voice who's trying to communicate something metaphoric. And they think that they're helping somehow. And so for me, it's like, well, Let's find out why. And then you ask the person, do you want to? And they're like, oh, my God, no, I'm devastated this part even said that. That voice even said that. So there's something really important about knowing parts communicate things in certain ways because they're having their own experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's making me think about Pure O as well, you know, like... So what it's called OCD when people have those thoughts that like make them think they want to do, they want to rape people or I think a lot of young people are getting these days and the fear in that and how it's the extreme opposite, you know, the fear of actually saying it out loud, you know, but to be able to say it out loud even and with someone who was just like, oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
UNKNOWNYeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's an actual term called POCD, isn't it? Like it's OCD where I'm afraid I'm a pedophile.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's just awful. Yeah, maybe it's not. Yeah. It is awful. I think what was coming up for me when you were talking was how alone people must feel with that because there's something also about like – maybe having parts that are knowing that there's something about these parts that are saying things and doing things that are really not okay and how I can't share this with anyone because what are they going to do? So they're having to sort of be alone, which almost kind of is not – that's kind of almost like the worst thing, isn't it? It's like the opposite perhaps of what they might need. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02And so when we think about, you know, do people need good – good training to be working with this client group? Yes and no. Some of the best people. I supervise a guy. He's just in Australia we call it being pretty ochre, right? He's a real kind of like country boy. We call it ochre. Pretty ochre. Ochre, yeah. I'm like, I don't know. Aussie ochre bloke, you know. He's kind of like the – he's from the country and he runs a horse farm and he does like some – what do you call it, equine therapy with people plus a whole heap of other, you know, he's a big, strong farmer, you know. Right, okay. Equine therapy and he was doing equine. some really incredible work with some people who hear voices and to come in. He said, you know, he came to me and sort of said, oh, you know, I'm working with this person no one can work with. And I'm like, well, tell me what you're doing. And he's wanting my advice and I'm going, you don't really need any advice. What you're doing is fantastic. So it's about energy. It's about not being afraid and it's about curiosity. Yeah. Get some good supervision, by the way. I'm not saying that you shouldn't
SPEAKER_00have come to me, but
SPEAKER_02I'm
SPEAKER_00just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. That's what I thought I wanted to say before I was thinking about this conversation. I felt like how important it is to speak to your supervisor. Don't
SPEAKER_02speak to a supervisor who scares you. If you go to a supervisor who scares you about it, then go find someone else. You want to feel empowered. To understand your client, right? Don't put yourself in an unsafe situation. Of course you don't. So, you know, there's a difference between going, that person warned me and I'm going to disregard that because I'm actually in danger. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there's a lot of fear mongering out there by psychiatry.
UNKNOWNYeah.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And the amount of people, oh, my goodness, the amount of parents who bring their young, like I'm 20, you know, 20 in that sort of early, late teens, early to mid-20s to me saying, you know, like, oh, I'm really worried there, whatever. And I'm like, well, where did you hear that, right? And it's like the psychiatrist said they'll be on drugs the rest of their lives, they'll never have a job, they'll never have a family. And I'm just like it's just not true. People recover all the time. And if your supervisor is scaring you with those kinds of, find someone who knows more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder, I know we just, I know we haven't got much longer, but I was wondering if you think that the pandemic might have contributed to people's mental health being suffering or not necessarily. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I personally don't know. I haven't read any research around increased rates of psychosis during or after the pandemic.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And I also wanted to ask about how whether you, in your experience, there can be an element of legacy burdens that have been sort of like kind of generational burdens that can be in the mix of... some psychotic experiences presenting, if I'm using the right language. Does that feel – have you noticed that?
SPEAKER_02It's a really interesting topic to me. Bob Falconer does a lot of specialisation on UBs with psychosis. I am totally just always following my client's lead. So far my clients haven't – do I think their parents have – Some stuff going on for them, yeah. If you read the double bind theory stuff, it's essentially some stuff around familial communication patterns and I don't believe in hereditary from something being heritable. I don't believe psychosis is heritable through the idea that we somehow have some genetic cause. They've been looking for the schizophrenia gene for 50 years and they've never found it. One of the most well-known... researchers in the schizophrenia gene space has recently in about the last decade come out and said, duh, like I think I got it wrong. So I'm not saying there isn't epigenetics and I'm not saying that there isn't some sort of biological, there can be biological factors, like literally you can have some brain disorder that will give you psychosis, you know, if you have, I can't remember, there's an actual... What's the infectious disease that they used to... Encephalitis? Yes, encephalitis, yes. And so there are biological factors and then there are epigenetic factors, people who have something called the MTHFR genetic mutation, which is a whole other thing you can go and Google, and people who have things like pyroluria and other kinds of... epigenetic things and have a higher susceptibility. But what I'm trying to say is that I don't think there's a clear cut. If your uncle and your grandmother and your whoever and your whoever up your line had psychosis, that you'll have a higher risk because of genetics. I don't believe that. I personally believe that... The twin studies have been debunked. The psychosis twin studies have been, schizophrenia twin studies have been well and truly debunked. But also you can gauge that stuff through familial, you know, communication patterns, trauma being transmitted from one generation to another.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
SPEAKER_02so for me the only important thing is that I follow my client's lead and listen to what's said under what's said. And if it feels to them like it's a legacy burden, I'm going to be really curious about what that is and whether there's some things that their parts want to let us know about that. If they think it's a UB, I'm going to be really curious about that. I do have some people come to me saying I have a UB and then when we ask, it's not. I had one woman who believed she was possessed by the devil and it really was some sense of... a part of her who believed she had really taken on some stuff from her dad because her dad abused her. So it was a belief of a part. It wasn't that she was possessed by the devil. She had a part who believed that because of some stuff she, you know, our little parts make.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it was having that belief to try and help her somehow. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So thank you. Before we finish, I mean, you've kind of done quite a good job resume there thank you but um is there anything you feel that anything else that you feel just bearing in mind that this is just a kind of an introduction is there anything else that you feel is really i mean you've talked about really following a client system but anything else you feel is important to say before we finish
SPEAKER_02yeah i probably have a few things actually okay you know when i'm doing this kind of ifs it doesn't look like ifs okay I'm being the self to the system for a fairly long time before I'm really, I might introduce the idea of parts quite quickly, but I'm not doing the fine focus flesh out. Like the person's dissociated enough as they are. They can't do that. But I am listening to the parts and I'm doing implicit direct access all the
SPEAKER_01time.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yeah. But it's myself to their system a lot of the time. until things start to feel safer. The other thing is, what else did I want to say? Oh, just that I have done a, I did a three-hour webinar, if you want more information. I did a three-hour webinar with IFS Canada. Yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty affordable webinar you can purchase.
SPEAKER_01I
SPEAKER_02would like to put out some longer ones eventually, but for now that's the only one that's kind of available. Well, at all. And then the other thing, what was I going to say? It was really something else. Oh, just that if people want to watch a video of a woman who was hearing voices and they were pretty benign, they were kind of friendly, you know, and the worst, she wasn't afraid of them. They were sort of helping her in a way.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02But they were kind of doing weird things like... She'd walk through the door and they'd say, Eleanor's walking through the door and things, right? She was like, this is very odd. I wonder why this is happening. And then she told a friend who told her she's got to go and see a health professional and then it all went downhill and she was medicated and frightened out of her brain about the fact that she was a crazy person and got to a point where she was like drilling a hole in her head to try and get the voices out after like many, many, many years of mental health treatment. And eventually she got... connected with some other peers and the in the psychiatric survivor movement has started to realize that her voices actually have
SPEAKER_01meaning
SPEAKER_02she's not crazy yeah and so now she's medication free and uh finished her university that was while she was at uni finish her uni um is now one of the leading researchers on voice hearing in the world she's actually in the uk And her name is Eleanor Longdon. And you can look up her TED Talk. It's called The Voices in My Head. Thank you. I'll look at that. And, you know, the beauty of her story is that, you know, well-meaning professionals made things worse for her. And the people who were kind of who helped her recover were people who just believed in her. Yes. You know, I think she quotes in the TED Talk that her, I think it was her psychiatrist or one of her doctors told her mother, you know, it's always darkest just before the dawn. I totally believe Eleanor's going to come through this. And, you know, this was like a decade-long journey. So with the right support we can come through much quicker than a decade. It's just a long time for her to find someone who could help her in a way that...
SPEAKER_01She
SPEAKER_02needed. So I don't know. I haven't done enough work. The other thing I will say is I'm doing research at the moment. So you said earlier I've done a lot of research. I've done a lot of reading of other people. But I have just I am halfway through some research on IFS and psychosis with the University of California, San Francisco at the moment. All right, great. Myself and Ian Whitmarsh, my co-investigator, he's the lead investigator, and we're doing this research together. That's good. That will be really interesting to see. You know, I have parts of me who would like to hypothesise that someone can really come out the other side in just a few years. I mean, some people just come straight out, right? Someone has a drug-induced psychosis, it's an anomalous experience, they never have it again.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Right? So there's different kinds of psychosis. But for someone who's having kind of what is essentially an existential crisis or what we call a spiritual emergence or something, that can go on for decades. And what I'm saying is with the right support, which is what I said, curiosity, and I'm following you and I'm safe, right? Yeah, yeah. And I know how to listen for what's under what's said. and not be ricocheted off somewhere, then that right kind of support, I think someone can come through and experience in just a few years is my hypothesis. I haven't got research to say that, but I'm just letting you know that I would love to one day have some research.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it feels like sort of almost like being a hope merchant for those, which feels really kind of comforting to my system actually. Yeah. but thank you thanks so much i really appreciate your time again stephanie thanks for being here today
SPEAKER_01yeah thanks
SPEAKER_00bye thank you for listening to the validation lounge all parts are welcome i'll attach to the podcast notes information for how to get in touch with my podcast guests and also their social media to see what they're up to There's also a glossary of IFS terms from the IFS Institute and please do rate and review the podcast if you can. And finally, if you'd like to get in touch with me to give me some feedback, I'd be really grateful. I'll also attach my personal website.
