Trigger warning: My Punk appears in this blog, so expect A LOT of swearing!

This August, I bounced straight from months and months of back-to-back projects, into a 5-day Internal Family Systems (IFS) Level 2 training, called Deepening and Expanding, led by Osnat Arbel.

This year, most of my time has been organised around holding space for other people, so I thought it would be a lovely treat for the first week of my summer break to put myself in a held space, in a beautiful place, surrounded by the kind-hearted IFS community.

Gentle Arrivals

As I arrived at Penny Brohn, the stately grade ll-listed building, on the outskirts of Bristol, my nature-loving parts were thrilled to see the great family of trees that had become my dear friends when I studied for my IFS Level 1 here in 2023.

Moving through the murmuration of miscellaneous therapists, my sociable parts were excited to see some familiar faces and intrigued to take in new people that I hadn’t met yet. 

Stepping into the big, airy training space, seeing textbooks piled high and flip charts ready to be written on, my studious parts clapped their hands with glee! “Ooooooh goodie, a whole week of learning!” 

50+ chairs were set out in concentric semi-circles, facing the lead trainer’s chair (IFS trainings are designed for groups of 36 participants with a huge team of staff to support them). I found my place at the back of the hall, near an open door, as Osnat, the glamorous Israeli lead trainer, began softly speaking into the mic. 

She welcomed us to the course, laying out the intentions and warning us: “You will be triggered. We’re not doing it on purpose, it is simply the nature of the thing.”

“Ha!” thought I, “I remember when I used to get triggered in these kind of environments…!”

In the meditation that followed, we were invited to gather all of our parts together, and let them feel our presence. My parts were so knackered, after months and months of So Much Work, I found them all sleeping in a heap. None of them had it in them to protest against being at this training. “How different,” thought I, remembering other times when my parts had struggled in these trainings, “Must be all the work I’ve done in therapy!”

At the end of the meditation, Osnat asked us to find some kind words to offer to our parts. Then she invited us to write them down on small pieces of paper, to add to the hub of Self-energy* in the centre of our circle. 

*Self-energy or ‘Self’ is an IFS term that refers to the kindly awareness that bares witness to our inner parts with curiosity, compassion, centeredness, confidence, clarity, courage, creativity and calm (known as the 8 C’s of Self).

I added my words to the altar of Self: “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got you.” 

Appreciating the gentle beginning and the care taken to help us all invite our own safety, I began to settle into the first days training.

Then came a small fidget. 

As Osnat recapped the basics of IFS, I couldn’t seem to get comfy in my chair. 

I tried sitting on the floor. 

I tried standing up and stretching. 

I tried pacing about at the back of the hall. 

“Oh, hello restless part!”

Embodying a Protector

The next day, during the morning meditation, we were invited to embody a protector part. Intrigued about the restless part that had shown up the day before, I decided to lend it my body to let it show me more about itself. Most of the participants were sitting still in their chairs. My restless part had me up on my feet, exploding out the back doors and noisily jumping around and shaking my body in the garden. 

As I connected with the physical energy of the restless part, I found The Punk. 

“Oh, hello Punk”

I’ve known The Punk for a long, long time and was tickled to find her here at the quietude of the IFS training. I checked in with her, offering her my whole body so she could respond to my questions:

Me: Hey Punk! How are you doing?

Punk: Why the fuck are we here, cooped up in this room with all these earnest wankers? Why is everyone so fucking still and quiet? Where’s the fucking party?

Me: Oooooh, I can see you’re really struggling with being here right now.

Punk: Fuck Yeah! They want you to sit down in a fucking chair and be all serious and quiet for 5 whole days. BOOOOOOOOORRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG!!! 

Me: I hear that. What’s going on for you?

Punk: I am energy, I am life, I am FREEDOM! I am keeping you moving so they can’t get you!

Me: Who can’t get me?

Punk: The fuckers! The dead-eyed fuckers who follow the rules! The power-crazy fuckers who make up the rules! All the fucking fuckers who tell us what to do!

Me: Ah, I get it! You’re feeling restricted, unwelcome and disempowered?

Punk: YEAH! Fuck the fucking fuckers! 

Me: Oh love. Thank you for all the work you do to try to keep me safe in a baffling world of hidden rules, inequality and injustice. Thanks for helping me to live a dynamic life where I get to live my values and constantly move, evolve and express. You’ve brought so much spice and colour to my life and I’m forever grateful!

Punk: [looks a bit bashful] Um, er, thanks, I s’pose.

Me: Tell me, my love, who is it that you’re protecting right now?

The Punk softened back to show me a young, highly sensitive kid who is feeling it all and can’t really work out what’s expected of her. She’s frightened and alone and the only thing she knows for sure is that she doesn’t belong here.

The Story Of My Punk

I was a loud, confident, funny, neuro-divergent kid, back in the days before neurodivergence was a commonly understood thing. For half of each year, I travelled around with my family’s circus. In the summers, I was applauded for my bold, brash confidence, but in the winters, at mainstream school, it wasn’t always spelled out how I was supposed to behave. I discovered the boundaries through getting things “wrong” a lot of the time. My Punk grew in direct relation to my teachers’ disapproval and to my classmates riotous laughter. I heard, “Holly, stop it!” so many times, I eventually took it on as my stage name, becoming Holly Stoppit. 

At age 13, I had my hair braided with beads sewn into it, for a theatre show I was performing in the evenings. My headmistress, Mrs Mills, called me into her office for my weekly uniform inspection. She took one look at my hair and said, “You could have somebody’s eye out with that,” and suspended me until the braids and beads had gone. At the end of the run of shows, I stepped into a traditional barbers with porn on the walls and said, “Shave it off! Shave it all off!” The barber looked utterly terrified as he hesitantly switched on his buzzing clippers - he’d never shaved the head of a tiny 13 year old girl before. 

Returning back to school with a buzzcut, Mrs Mills called me in for the inevitable uniform inspection. Shocked to see my actual skull, she suspended me again until my hair grew back. The following week I showed up in a wavy blonde wig, not dissimilar to her own hairstyle….

Throughout my 20’s, my punk got to channel all this energy into being an actual punk. I was the lead singer of Fuckknuckle and the Bastards, a clown-punk-klezma-dub show band that played festivals, weddings and parties. Stripped down to my underwear, hair backcombed with mascara smudged around my eyes and lipstick smeared across my face, I would dominate the stage, holding intense eye contact with the audience, whilst shouting the lyrics of Britney Spears songs through a megaphone. Mrs Mills would have had an aneurysm! 

My Punk Has An Impact!

As much as I love my Punk, I wouldn’t want her to be in charge of my life all the time. She’s impulsive, loud and defiant. She speaks truth to power and has zero tolerance for any kind of bullshit. She ruffles feathers, rocks boats and burns bridges and she doesn’t give a shit about the consequences. I have many other parts who are deeply invested in compassionate communication, leaning into difficult dynamics and working through conflicts, but when my Punk is in the driving seat, she’ll drive the bus off the edge of the cliff shouting “FUCK YOU ALL!” just to prove a point.

Back To The IFS Training - Unblending

Letting my Punk take over my body, allowed me to understand just how activated she was. She was prowling around like a caged beast, ready to attack anyone who tried to hurt the young exile she protects. Through expressing my gratitude for my Punk’s hard work, she felt seen and heard and then she was then able to relax enough to notice me - Holly the grown up, the one who has capacity to meet all my parts with Self-energy.

This separating of parts from Self is what IFS calls ‘unblending.’  Osnat reminded us: the paradigm shift of IFS is moving from saying: “I am angry,” to, “I have an angry part.” This simple shift of language invites perspective. “I have an angry part,” acknowledges the angry part as one of our vast constellation of parts, all held in Self-energy, rather than identifying completely with the angry part. Osnat explained that when we unblend from our parts, there is more room for connection, both inwardly and outwardly.

This is what I found with my Punk during the training - the more she felt seen and heard by me, the more she began to discover that she wasn’t alone and having to fight the 50+ people in the training to keep me/my exile safe. Knowing she had me there and that I was looking out for my little exile too, my Punk could start to relax and soften a bit. Which allowed me to settle a little and begin to take in a bit more of the learning on offer. 

Connecting With Exiles

The next day, we were invited to bring in a childhood photo and this was the one that sprang to mind, a hilariously grumpy little baby Holly, wearing a very silly frilly hat. I am told I wasn’t always this grumpy! 

During the meditation, I looked into the dark eyes of grumpy baby Holly and felt a surge of affection towards the powerless funny-looking podgy baby looking back into my eyes. Thinking back to the exile I’d briefly met the day before, the one who the Punk was protecting, I sensed the raw vulnerability and innocent confusion that fuelled the birth of my Punk.

Osnat explained that our exiles are stuck in the time of the original trauma, they keep living inside us, but they do not develop. Met with loneliness and isolation in the outer world, our inner world takes over and our protector parts take on their protective roles to keep the exiles safe. 

Nobody knew about neuro-divergence or how to deal with traveller kids back in the 80s and 90s! I went to the biggest school in Wales and my behaviour was somewhat inconvenient to the staff, who had to answer my ten thousand clarifying questions and deal with my disruptive coping mechanisms every day. Never fully met or supported (except by the drama and music teachers, of course!), my Punk was one of a team of fabulous protectors who got me through school (Others included The Over-Achiever, The People Pleaser, Clown, Party Girl and The Stoner).

If left to their own devices, our protectors will build a life for us that keeps our exile’s pain locked away, but the exiles don’t actually experience any healing, so they remain volatile. The protectors have to keep working hard in relation to their volatility. Often there's a number of protectors all using clashing strategies, pulling against each other, trying to protect the same exile (eg in my case, my Punk and my Studious parts have very different ideas about how to resource my little exile). 

IFS offers a way of interrupting this cycle by first meeting with the protectors to honour their work and gain their trust and then, only when the protectors trust us enough, we can come into direct contact with the exiles to help them release their burdens and heal.

Burdens

In IFS a ‘burden’ is whatever our parts are still carrying from the trauma. Osnat described burdens as; feelings, emotions, ways of thinking, particular beliefs or attitudes, ways of speaking, ways of responding, ways of reacting, ways of behaving, felt senses or energies. 

We had been invited to bring in a collection of rocks or stones to represent our exile’s burdens. I picked out five stones one by one, holding them in my hands and feeling into what they represented for my sweet little exile:

“I don’t get it, I must be stupid”

“It is shameful to ask for help” 

“I have to do it all by myself”

“I am bad for needing support” 

“I don’t belong here”

Feeling the weight of the stones in my hands, I felt so much compassion for my little exile and for the Punk and all my other protectors who had been trying to manage, soothe, distract or fight to make sure my exile didn’t have to accumulate any more burdens.

The Power of Being With

Later that day, during a session with my small practice group, I tried to make some direct contact with my exile, but she was encased in an opaque pink bubble. Tracing the edges of the bubble with my hands, I sensed my exile’s fear and understood the bubble to be her protection. Parts of me wanted to pop the bubble and to come into direct contact with my exile, so I could help her release her burdens and heal. But my supportive peers slowed me down and helped me notice that my desire was being fuelled by impatient parts and not Self. 

Acknowledging my well-intentioned impatient parts, I was able to unblend from them and widen my perspective. From there it was easy to see that my exile needed her protective bubble right now and I didn’t need to hurry her through a process of unburdening. It was enough to just be with her and her protective bubble and have them both feel my loving presence.

My Punk stood on the sidelines, watching all this with great interest. Seeing me take tender care of the exile deepened her trust in me. 

I arrived at the beginning of the week thinking I’d grown beyond my old patterns of getting triggered by formal trainings. Instead I discovered my Punk still needs to pace around the edges of the room, questioning power, inciting riots and protecting the frightened child who still doesn't know the rules. 

The difference is that now they're not alone.

They've got me.

I'm here and I'm not going anywhere.

FYI - I passed my IFS Level 2: Deepening and Expanding!

Other Holly-blogs you might be interested in:

• Playing With Parts - a day in the IFS / Fool / Clown research lab
• IFS + Fooling - a 2-day therapeutic process for an individual artist
• Fool + IFS - a 5 day lab
• Fool + Somatic IFS lab - part 1 + part 2
• Video: Clowning, Fooling and IFS
• How to chat with your parts on the page

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