The bullied thirteen-year-old inside a grown man who finally got to speak

On a winter afternoon at Esalen, a retreat center near Big Sur, California, Richard Schwartz sat down for a podcast interview with Sam Stern, who was running the show's podcast at the time. Schwartz asked if he could demonstrate Internal Family Systems on him, live, and Sam agreed, his first experience of the method.

Sam brought up being bullied in eighth grade. He said it felt like the experience had shut down parts of him. Schwartz asked him to find the part that had done the shutting down, and Sam pictured a boy, thirteen years old, soft, weak, and realized he didn't want to be near him. I want him to toughen up, Sam said. He should just lash out and defend himself.

That reaction, Schwartz explained, was itself a part, a tougher one, angry at the bullied boy for not fighting back. Rather than pushing past it, Schwartz asked Sam to talk to that angry part directly and ask it to step back, just for a while, so Sam could get closer to the boy underneath. Sam agreed to try. Yes, he said, that angry lashing out part would be willing to step back. As it did, Sam's feelings shifted immediately, he described feeling closer to the boy, like my brother.

This is what Schwartz calls unblending, separating from a part enough that you can be with it rather than become it. Through the rest of the session, more parts stepped forward and asked to be heard, a part that pulled Sam's attention away out of fear he'd be too embarrassed to cry, a thinking part that kept interrupting with analysis, a tough guy part that had spent years running the show and initially refused to budge. Each time, Schwartz asked Sam to notice the part, thank it for trying to help, and ask if it would give a little space. Each time, something shifted, until Sam could finally be present with the thirteen-year-old boy as he revealed how frightening and lonely the bullying had actually been, small and betrayed rather than simply shut down.

Six months later, Sam wrote to Schwartz that the work had been an extraordinary breakthrough, that he'd become far more conscious of how much he'd relied on the tough-guy part to run his life, and curious, for the first time, about what that part might do once it wasn't required to be the man anymore.

Next time you notice you don't want to feel something, or you're irritated at yourself for feeling it, look past that reaction for the part underneath that's actually hurting. Ask the reacting part, whether it's contempt, impatience, or the urge to toughen up, if it would be willing to step back for just a little while so you can get closer to what it's guarding. Notice any shift in warmth or closeness toward that more vulnerable part once the space opens, even slightly. If what you find turns out to be young or scared, let it know how old you actually are now, and that you can be with it differently than before.