Increasingly I have been asked, from the IFS perspective, what makes people close their hearts enough to commit the vile acts we witness repeatedly on TV and what makes them so lustful for power and money.
They also wonder what gives ordinary people the courage to resist, to protect their communities, to stand up to injustice, in the face of severe consequences. Below I share my thoughts, some of which come from a book I have been writing on Self leadership.
I will start by focusing on the pernicious impact on human systems, of the exiling of their vulnerable parts, and how that inner exiling plays out in the outer world. This exiling practice is ubiquitous in the Western World because the common approach to trauma is to get over it and move on—to leave the memories and emotions in the dust.
The protectors who step up to do the dirty work of locking away your suffering inner child parts become burdened and distorted by the task. To do inhumane work of locking away vulnerable, hurting inner beings, these protectors must become callous, like Trump’s ICE agents who capture and deport terrified and confused mothers as they separate them from their children.
To justify this exiling, protectors also often become contemptuous of the exiles’ weakness and vulnerability, vowing to keep your system tough and strong. They adopt a belief that they are the superior parts and exiles are inferior and that to keep you safe they need to dominate. (I want to say here that many such beliefs didn’t originate only from your personal traumas and the exiling that ensued, but are often inherited from your ancestors, ethnic group, or culture. These legacy burdens are also powerful exiling agents).
I have found that people dominated by hard-hearted protectors like these not only feel superior to the parts they exile but are often drawn to belief systems that imply that certain kinds of people are superior to others and, consequently, to practices that exile the “inferior” people. History is replete with egregious examples of the impact of such superior/inferior beliefs on groups, including colonization, slavery and racism, the caste system in India, patriarchy, the Chosen people, Christians who believe Jesus is the only way, etc.
As Naomi Klein documents in her book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, “These are ideas with blood-soaked histories in the Americas, reaching back to the stories European conquerors and colonists told about how the infectious diseases that ravaged Indigenous populations—already weakened after settlers stole their lands and decimated their food sources—were actually God’s handiwork, a divine sign that these continents were meant for white Christians. “A wonderful Plague” is how King James of England described pandemics in the 1620 Charter of New England. “Almighty God, in his great goodness and bounty towards us,” had sent it “among the savages.” That “wonderful Plague” wiped out up to 90% of the native population.
Klein cites several similarly disturbing statements from colonial governors and concludes that “the idea that pandemics are carrying out the work of a greater power is integral to the origin myth of the modern world.” This framing reflects the kinds of stories protective parts of colonists may have relied on to justify such inhumanity.
There are also less obviously vile protector-produced stories, that shaped and continue to shape the modern world. Take the fundamentalist Christian beliefs about the unsaved, described above, and combine them with Horatio Alger’s meritocracy and you have the belief systems that led to what’s been called the prosperity gospel which interprets the attainment of wealth as proof that one is righteous and blessed by God. From this perspective, the poor are seen not just as lazy and lacking discipline, but also sinful and unchosen. This belief system underlies much of the unprecedented disparity in wealth that is tolerated in the United States.
Naomi Klein concludes this way: “Whenever one group has chosen to allow terrible violence to be inflicted on another group, there have been stories and logics that provided the permission for the beneficiaries of the violence either to actively (even gleefully) participate or to actively look away. Stories that said things like this: ‘The people being
sacrificed/enslaved/imprisoned/colonized/left to die so that others can live comfortably are not the same level of human. They are other/substandard/lesser/darker/more animal/diseased/criminal/lazy/uncivilized. These logics have been resurgent on the right for years now, evident in the presence of protofascist and authoritarian leaders in Brazil, India, Hungary, the Philippines, Russia, and Turkey among others” (p. 167). And now in the US.
Thus, for me it’s all parallel. The process of locking away, ignoring the pain of, and having contempt for our vulnerability and sensitivity, promotes the same exiling, apathy and contempt for the vulnerable or less privileged people in the outer world. And, exiling at both levels is caused by how we traditionally have handled trauma, both individually, culturally, and as a species.
Scratch the surface of a fascist and you’ll find a scared and hurt little boy surrounded by protectors that are themselves young and scared but are forced into the role of acting tough and powerful.
As James Baldwin said, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once the hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
When your dominant protectors are contemptuous of your own weakness, they will not only be contemptuous of the vulnerability in others, they will also crave power in your relationships or in the world. They believe that your safety lies in your ability to dominate and control others. They often have a “never again” philosophy. Never again will I allow you to be so powerless, open, dependent, trusting, etc. Instead, I will drive you to dominate. This might manifest only in your local relationships – your intimate partners, your children, or your colleagues. For some, however, these parts push them into seats of power in larger systems like politics or business.
I have worked with many leaders who relied on this kind of ruthless, power-hungry protector to achieve and maintain their leadership positions. Unfortunately, our culture often rewards this kind of protector. They come to me as clients because those parts have infected, and negatively affected, the cultures of the companies or groups they lead, and, consequently, those entities are struggling.
When you exile so much of your juice, you feel much emptier and hollower. You no longer have access to the joy, playfulness, creativity, assertiveness, and pleasure that those parts used to provide. To fill that void, your remaining protectors will give you compensatory cravings for money and status. You never feel satisfied though because, like the proverbial bucket with a hole in it, you never get filled up.
No doubt Donald Trump’s contempt for his own vulnerability gets played out in how he has our government relate to the most vulnerable among us. His contempt for weakness is what we call a legacy burden—to survive a father who was by all accounts brutal and cold-blooded, parts of him had to absorb and lead his system with his father’s hard-hearted energy.
His current domestic and foreign policies were previewed in his 1990 comments about how the Chinese government handled Tiananmen Square protests: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.” One can imagine his father saying some version of that. Or saying some version of his famous question during his first term about why can’t protesters be shot in the legs.
His protectors exiled the parts that carried burdens of worthlessness, hurt, and fear. Those exiles became his leaky bucket—fueling his constant and unquenchable need for accolades and money to keep them at bay, and his amazingly thin skin which requires that his protector plot revenge against anyone who criticizes or opposes him.
What if leaders of all kinds knew not to exile their vulnerabilities and traumatized parts? Instead, they went to those hurt parts with curiosity and compassion and witnessed what happened when they got hurt. If they could be present for their own pain, then they could be present, instead of defensive, distracting or contemptuous, when others spoke of their pain.
When you stay connected to rather than distanced from your sensitivity, it becomes much harder to do the inhumane acts we’re witnessing daily. Your parts no longer block the natural Compassion of your Self so you can’t “other” people the way those protectors can. Your Self’s sense of Connectedness makes you realize that when anyone is harmed, you are harmed also. Your Clarity makes it less possible to ignore or deny the injustice in front of you and your Courage and Confidence lead you to act, nonviolently, to block the injustice and to heal the suffering.
I have been working with a number of influential social activists, some of whom have been in Minneapolis, to help them protest, organize, and protect from Self, and to actively work with, rather than exile, their parts that become scared or horrified. I so admire their courage and compassion and am honored to support them.
I have had the privilege to occasionally do a session with one of them, Valarie Kaur, who leads the Revolutionary Love Project, a national movement to reclaim love as a force for justice. You can view her TED talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ErKrSyUpEo.
Valarie asked for a session recently after working with communities on the ground in Minneapolis who were protecting immigrant families. She was a few miles away when Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE agents. She said she still felt shaken. I asked where in her body she sensed the shakiness and she found it under her rib cage in her chest.
Dick: How do you feel toward it?
Valarie: I feel some compassion for it, but I also can't help thinking that others are suffering far more, that I’ve dealt with worse than this in the past, and that, as a woman of color, I won’t be taken seriously if my voice is shaky. (Earlier she told me she had been interviewed on a radio show and regretted how much her voice quivered)
Dick: Okay, let’s go to the part that has all these attitudes about your shaky one and see what that’s about.
That one was in her head and held several beliefs about how she couldn’t afford to even appear to be weak. Valarie and I both helped this part understand that its attempted solutions of keeping her away from the shaky one were backfiring—making it feel shakier, alone, and rejected—and that if it let her comfort the shaky one, it would calm down. She then was able to hold the little one and to feel its terror. Valarie cried and shook as she recalled the brutality she witnessed in Minneapolis. Once the part felt seen by her, I had her ask where it carried the trauma and she saw a big stone on its back.
Other parts were reluctant at first to let her unburden the stone. They said that if she didn’t take in and carry people’s pain, she wouldn’t be motivated to do all the activism she does. She explained to them that holding all that pain and fear actually interferes, and that she, as her Self, is committed to continuing, which will be easier once the stone is sent out.
After the stone was buried at the foot of a tree in her mind’s eye, the little one felt much lighter and we brought in the protector that had tried to keep her from it. This one felt tremendous relief and became a butterfly.
I’m so grateful to Valarie for letting me describe her session because it not only illustrates how important it is for all of us to tend to the parts that are reacting to the bombardment of heinous events, but also because it’s not just the perpetrators of those events that exile vulnerability. Everyone, even the founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, tends to do it to some degree.
There is a big difference, however, between, as with Valarie, having compassion for your fear but also having a protector that won’t let you get close to it, versus people who are so dominated by a hard-hearted part that they have nothing but contempt for their own and everyone else’s vulnerability.
Nonetheless, we all need to do what Valarie did—unburden our exiles and find new roles for our protectors. When we can do that, we will bring more Self to our efforts, which, in and of itself, brings healing. Along these lines, I love this message from Chief Phil Lane, Jr., an award-winning member of the Yankton Dakota and Chickasaw tribes.
“Peace is not born in halls of marble nor handed down by those hungry for power. Peace arises in the quiet place within every human being, where the breath of the Great Mystery first touches our spirit. It begins as a small spark, so gentle it can be missed, yet it holds the strength to transform the world.
When we allow our inner peace to awaken, when we feel it settle into our bones and steady our heart, it becomes more than a feeling. It becomes a way of walking. A way of seeing. A way of relating.
This inner peace softens our words, clears our vision, and opens the path for compassion to flow freely. It brings harmony to our families, calms the storms within our communities, and becomes a steady drumbeat that reminds the Human Family of our shared humanity.
Like a stone thrown into still water, the peace we cultivate within ourselves sends waves outward, first to those closest to us, then to those we may never meet, and to Mother Earth herself. These waves move across nations and generations, across boundaries and barriers, until even the hardest places in the human heart begin to soften. Then we melt the ice in the heart of humanity.
True peace is not passive. It is alive, courageous, and deeply rooted. It asks us to listen with humility, to forgive with sincerity, and to stand for justice with a heart free of anger. It calls us to walk gently but firmly, guided by the teachings of our ancestors and the whisper of our Creator.
When each of us becomes a carrier of peace, we weave a sacred lodge over the world, a lodge strong enough to shelter our children and large enough to embrace all peoples. In this way, peace becomes a living promise. A promise that when the heart is healed, the world is healed, and when the spirit is steady, our nations can walk together once again.”
I strongly believe in the power of Self energy to create positive change in systems at any level, from individuals to governments. When I’ve joined marches, I can sense the field of Self energy that is formed when tens of thousands unite to disrupt illegal and inhumane acts. Research has shown that it takes only three percent of a population to stand together in opposition to a fascist regime to bring it down. In the US that’s about nine million people and it’s feeling like we’re getting there.
The key is to remain Self-led and to not let rageful or violent parts lead our protests, as tempting as that is, because that would give the administration a pretext for a complete takeover. Instead, we need to trust that bringing a critical mass of Self energy to challenge entrenched and burdened protective parts at any level, breaks their hold.
I will end with the words of Qasim Rashid, a Pakistani-born American activist and writer.
“For me, this is a moment to double down. To expand our spheres of compassion. To deepen our service to humanity. To increase our engagement with those willing to engage. To refuse to give up hope on this country and this world. . . So why have empathy for those who show none? Because empathy is our inoculation to that hatred and fear. It is not weakness. It is strength. It is not acceptance of violence and bigotry. It is rejection of cruelty and hate. We have empathy, not dependent upon whether others behave like decent human beings—but because we are decent humans being. That is how we build a future committed to justice, not violence. We have empathy, because it is what keeps us human. And that is something we cannot afford to lose.”