Exploring Porosity of Mind, Healing Trauma, and IFS Therapy with Bob Falconer
Exploring Porosity of Mind, Healing Trauma, and IFS Therapy with Bob Falconer
In this episode of "Going Inside," I engage in a deep conversation with renowned therapist, Bob Falconer, exploring IFS therapy, trauma, spirituality, porosity of mind, and human experience.
Key Topics Discussed:
1. Respecting and Honoring Client Experiences:
- Bob and I emphasize the importance of respecting and honoring clients' experiences, even if they involve what seem to be the “unconventional” therapy practices in IFS.
2. Porosity of Mind:
- The concept of the porous mind is explored, suggesting that the human mind is permeable and its potential to radically change is infinite.
3. Humility and Curiosity in Therapy:
- We discuss the significance of humility and curiosity in therapy, acknowledging that therapists do not possess all the answers and that clients have innate wisdom guiding their healing journey.
4. Facilitating Self Healing:
- The role of therapists in helping clients access their inner wisdom and facilitating self-healing is highlighted, emphasizing empowerment over imposition of external solutions.
5. Upcoming Book:
- Bob shares insights into his upcoming book, "When You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going," which explores healing, spirituality, and resilience, offering a deeper understanding of the human experience.
For more information on Bob Falconer visit: https://robertfalconer.us/
Interview Transcript:
John: [00:00:00] This is Going Inside, healing trauma from the inside out. Hosted by me, licensed trauma therapist, John Clarke. Going Inside is a weekly podcast on a mission to help you heal from trauma and connect with your authentic self. Tune in for enlightening guests, interviews, immersive solo deep dives, real life therapy sessions, and soothing guided meditations.
John: Follow me on socials, @JohnClarkeTherapy on Instagram, JohnClarketherapy.com. TikTok, and YouTube and apply to work with me one on one at JohnClarketherapy.com. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Bob Falconer has been working with trauma and healing for over 50 years now. IFS is his major modality, but he has studied and uses many others.
John: Bob recently released his newest book, the others within us, internal family systems, the poorest mind and spirit possession. For the past decade [00:01:00] or more, Bob has devoted his himself full time to IFS work. And in that time he's attended all levels of IFS trainings and has been a program assistant more than 18 times.
John: Bob, I, I I'm wondering if you want to keep expanding on that bio a little bit as to who you are and how you got here, because I know there's a lot more to it, but that's just a snapshot of maybe what's, what you've been up to lately.
Bob: Okay, okay. And somehow, let's start with the real stuff, not the academic stuff.
John: Love it.
Bob: I come from a family from hell. Looked good on the outside, church going, but both parents were addicts. My father was a sadistic child molester. Mom was occasionally institutionalized for her mental illness, but that was hushed up. Both of them were addicts. Dad was a stone alcoholic. Mom was a binge drinker and prescription pill [00:02:00] addict.
Bob: Dad often had others of his cronies who were also child molesters living in the family with us. So there were multiple men abusing me and my brother. My brother was a couple years older and he started abusing me too. My brother committed suicide when we were teenagers. My father was murdered when I was 21.
Bob: So by all odds, I should be living in a dumpster, dead, or in prison. I sort of joke sometimes. It's, it's not really a joke. Women go to therapy. Men go to prison. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's not really a joke. Yeah, so I survived, I think, because spirit knocked on my door in various strange ways that I didn't recognize as spirit.
Bob: But also I'm, I'm more stubborn than a mule. And I got this idea, I'm going to try everything available to heal from this kind of major trauma. And I [00:03:00] sort of went through all these different therapy techniques, many of which were damaging. were not helped. Yeah. History of modern western therapy is pretty grim.
Bob: But anyway, a lot of them were helpful. Ego state therapy, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, Gestalt therapy at Esalen, voice dialogue, psychosynthesis. And I think of all of these parts works. traditions that realize our mind is much more like a team. So much more like a football team than a boxer or a tennis player.
Bob: That's the way we're structured. And it's a good thing. Well, all these parts works traditions. I think the best now is IFS because it's the most potent and it's the most respectful of all these different parts. And I used to have this perhaps arrogant attitude that people who were respectful were not potent.
Bob: They were sort of weak. that that [00:04:00] was absolutely backwards. I think IFS is so potent because it's so profoundly respectful of each person. And then as I worked more and more with all the parts of all these people, you, you get into people deeply enough. There are things in there that are not part of the person.
Bob: That's the others within us. And discovering that and having that put in my face in a way I couldn't ignore it has changed my focus in this last 10 15 years. Yeah.
John: You're already getting to one of my questions which is around how you came to be so interested in unattached burdens and developed your process for working with them, which is in your new book.
John: I want to come back to that. I also want to hear a little bit about the therapies that didn't work, given your childhood, given your background, given the, the, the the capital T dramas and [00:05:00] the, the, the list of them that you mentioned What did those first attempts at healing look like with therapy and and what didn't work?
Bob: Well, there's so much Yeah, you know the recognition of childhood trauma and childhood sexual abuse is very very recent There was a major textbook of psychiatry 1960s That said, incest is vanishingly rare, less than one in a million families, and when it happens, it's often good for the child. That was a major psychiatric textbook in the late 1960s.
Bob: You can't be more wrong. Yeah. So, if any abuse survivor went to them, they would be trashed. By that whole attitude, and, you know, why are you making this up, and stuff like that. Same with the idea of PTSD in general. Yeah. That was, until [00:06:00] about 1980, denied by all the major institutions. The only reason it got recognized is because of the Vietnam Veterans Rap Groups, who, they knew PTSD happened, they were living with it, you know?
Bob: And this one psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Lifton, organized them, and they went to Washington, put pressure on the government, which put pressure on the academics, and that's finally how the diagnosis of PTSD got in the DSM, got recognized as an official thing that's real. Yeah, and so the entire therapy establishment was as wrong as you could possibly be And i'm so glad they're now the big trauma experts and you know all these same Institutions which did everything they could to destroy this are now.
Bob: Oh, we know all about this I would really like it if they'd say gee we were [00:07:00] sorry. We were so wrong. We damaged so many people That's not going to happen. And it's rather petty of me to want that. I should just be celebrating that they're fine.
John: You can, you're allowed to have your feelings about it. It's important to, to give a damn.
Bob: And yeah, the whole early survivors movement was, was led by mainly women. And it was, there was a storefront service providers, you know, it was bottom up against the, the experts were all against it. So that's, that's given me I think a healthy distrust of the experts. So that's the big picture. The smaller picture is very much of the therapy.
Bob: The Gestalt therapy at Esalen and these encounter groups was very, very confronted. You know, you'd go into these all night marathons, and people would tell each other, Well, your character defect is your arrogance, and blah, blah, blah, and they would tear at each other, thinking they were doing something [00:08:00] in service of healing.
Bob: And I actually think that was very destructive. Very, very destructive of a lot of people. That sort of confrontive, you know, ripping and tearing. And it's totally disrespectful to them.
John: Yeah, I, I, you're already getting to one of my questions, which was around bridging the gap between spirituality and working in this medical model in the Western world.
John: And something that I noticed in my own learning of IFS, and when I started using it with clients for the first time and walked a client through the unburdening sequence, I thought, Oh my, Oh my God, this is. Spiritual work. This is a spiritual model, right? Oh, yeah. I was right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Or yeah.
John: And all sorts of just like, Oh my gosh, what does this mean? [00:09:00] And I guess I notice from the, from, for what it's worth, this balance between IFS being accepted into the mainstream and into the medical model and practitioners and, you know, is it evidence based or not? And, and, you know, our insurance company is going to say it's okay.
John: And then the deeply spiritual components of it, or even calling it a psycho spiritual model. Yeah, I'm just going to let you react to that.
Bob: Yeah. I obviously have some energy around this. Yeah. As I explored the farther reaches of IFS, many of the IFS people, including Dick Schwartz himself, didn't want me to do it.
Bob: Yeah. They wanted me to keep my big mouth shut. They said, we don't, this stuff happens. It's real, but we don't want to teach it until we get to the advanced levels because it will be used to discredit. Yeah. And I wouldn't keep my big mouth shut. And it, it cost, it cost me some. I think IFS in many ways cleverly [00:10:00] dumbs down spirituality and disguises it enough so that it can sneak into our universities and sneak into our churches where it's not so welcome.
Bob: And the whole concept of self does that. It is, you know, and I think Dick has actually dumbed down self. Dick has this idea that all of us have this core, the self. Other people would call it the real self or something like that. And he characterizes it by eight C's. Compassionate, curious, calm, creative, connected, courageous.
Bob: There's a couple more, but you get the idea. They're all sort of, you know, Standard qualities. And that makes it kind of acceptable. I think self is really also luminous, vast, transcendent, eternal. Words you're [00:11:00] not supposed to say in American universities these days. But once people start getting a taste of these realities inside their own mind, they it's like sort of a, almost a Trojan horse.
Bob: It's gotten spiritual realities in, into academia. I think the 12 steps was sort of like this too, with the idea of higher power. Yeah. They got something fundamentally profound.
John: Whatever you perceive that to be.
Bob: Yeah. In a way that an atheist could accept it. Yeah.
John: In 12 steps, yeah. Giving people permission to choose their higher power and whatever you See that as right and that made it more accessible to some people
Bob: to a lot of people, you know, that there, you know, you mentioned anything that sounds vaguely religious and they go, you know, what kind of idiot are you?
Bob: And then you go down by a beat, go go on the beach by the ocean with them and say, [00:12:00] Hey which one's bigger, you or the ocean here? So it sort of gets it gets it in, you know, yeah, I don't want to say sneaky.
John: Yeah, but it has to be packaged in a way that is digestible to a lot of people or even people that come to therapy and say, I'm just here for my anxiety or I'm an indecisive person.
John: And so I'm here to, for help with that. That might be the thing, bringing them to therapy, right. Or what, what, what gets them through the door. And you could say, well, yeah, you know, a part of you wants to go to the gym and a part of you doesn't. And most people can get on board with that as a very, you know, as a starting point for parts work.
Bob: And some people are, they don't want to go beyond that. They just want to get, especially young people, they want to get cleaned up enough to go back out and live, which, you know, totally appropriate in some stages of life.
John: Yeah, help me tamp down my symptoms enough to where [00:13:00] I can get back out there and keep doing what I'm doing.
John: I'm curious, you know, this show focuses primarily on trauma and about 90 percent of it so far is on IFS and trauma. When I was a trainee, I saw my supervisor, who's still a great mentor to me, doing trauma work. And he would tell clients, and he didn't know about IFS at the time, that they have this untouchable core.
John: So despite everything that's happened to them and all the ways in which they feel like they're really effed up and broken and how could anyone ever love me? And I'm disgusting and all this, that there's this untouchable core. And I remember seeing that and despite all of the brokenness and everything that they were coming in with, people benefited from hearing that.
Bob: Oh yeah. That's an incredible point. Most of my career, until I got interested in these, the others within us, was men with extreme trauma histories like me. [00:14:00] And most of them, I was told, and most of them were told, you didn't get the early attachment. You're basically screwed. Expect a miserable little life.
Bob: Here's all these pills that can help you limp along. Don't take risks. Don't, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's all bullshit. Yeah, it's all about the limits of the therapist, not about the limits of the client. And this idea from Dick that self, this radiant energy that's got the eight C's can't be damaged.
Bob: It can't even be dirty. Yeah, that's who you really are. Like after a big storm, you know, floods, your house is ruined, all that, but the clouds go back, the sun is there, undamaged, undirty. That was so important to me and many of the men I worked with.
John: I'm wondering if you can if we talk about your book for a little bit here and your, your work for folks [00:15:00] listening or who are new to this idea, what is an unattached burden?
Bob: Okay. When you go into a person's system with a parts work model, You meet all these different parts, protectors and exiles and the self, which is always the witness, seeing all these things. And then, if you go in deep enough, you start meeting things that are not from that person's personal lifetime.
Bob: Now, the ones people are most comfortable with are called legacy burdens. They're things from your family or racial history. And the reason why people are more comfortable with these, I think, There's hardcore scientific evidence that these exist. They're real. There's experiments we could go into. You can create these in rats, and that's the standard of truth these days.
Bob: If you can do it to rats, it's real. So, legacy burdens [00:16:00] pass the rat test, and there's incredible research, especially around the Holocaust survivors. These events that happened to their lineage generations ago have big effects on the people now. Yeah. So that's solid science, epigenetics, you know, there's a whole scientific field around it.
Bob: So then people, then that sort of typically cracks the door open and, oh, there's stuff inside of me that's not part of my life that comes from somewhere. Well, there are these other things and Dick divides it into unattached burdens and guides. Yeah. Which are basically the other things that are harmful to you and the other things that are good for you.
Bob: I don't like doing that so much because. Just by naming them, you have to decide if they're good or bad right at the get go. It's like you judge them as they walk in the door. I'm not so comfortable with that. So I've started using other, other names [00:17:00] like an external energy or something that's not part of your own personal lifetime experience.
Bob: Yeah. Another thing I could say about this let me back up a little bit, you know, I've spent 20 years studying this, so it's kind of hard to put it in 30 40 minutes. My undergraduate and a little bit of graduate work were in anthropology. The very concept of mental illness itself is a cultural creation of the modern West.
Bob: Yes. It did not exist in most other cultures. And the way they saw these things was vastly different. And how they saw them had real important effects. on how these things affected people. And they very often, the phrase anthropologists would use to try not to put, stick our values and concepts on them was, idiom of distress.
Bob: You know, they talk about the idioms of distress of different [00:18:00] cultures and civilizations. One of the most com maybe the most common idiom of distress is this, what seems to be a basic biopsychological dynamic that happens in pretty much every culture we've ever discovered and in every area of history we have records of.
Bob: This basic biopsychological dynamic can have huge effects on a person's life. For good, Or for bad. The metaphor most often used to describe this is spirit possession. The metaphor doesn't matter so much to me, but the phenomena is incredibly important and deserves our study.
John: People have reactions to what we call it, similar to You know, I, I help teach at Derek Scott's program. That's where I just was today. And when we're learning IFS, a lot of times we want to know, like, what kind of part is [00:19:00] this? Right. And some degree, it doesn't matter, right. That becomes more about people needing to have a label that they're comfortable with so I can then move forward.
John: in working with this client and their part, whether or not it's a firefighter, right? So for this label, or even I know there's there, I heard you talk about some debate around you including spirit possessions in the, the subtitle of your book.
Bob: Yeah. Dick did not like that. Yeah. He did not like that at all. Yeah. The word that really irritates Dick is entity. They're gonna think I'm a California kook. And I just tell them, blame me. Yeah. If there's anything in this book you don't like, it's probably Weird
John: Bob. Yeah, the guy in the Santa Cruz mountains, right? I'm only an hour from you in San Francisco, so it's not, this type of stuff is not that far out of my realm of living here or being a therapist here on the West Coast.
Bob: You know, I think [00:20:00] this is part of the arrogance. of academia. You know, Robert Ornstein, the great neuroscientist, he called academia, the Western intellectual tradition, TWIT, twit. It's like twit things. If you look at the data, like the Pew research and the Gallup polls, More than 50 percent of the people in America believe in spirit possession.
Bob: So it's not that, it's not just us kooks in California. It's very widespread. But in academia, among professors, it's close to zero.
John: I do wonder about that, because I also kind of failed out of academia in a way, and then I was on my way after getting my master's degrees to go be a professor and do research.
John: And long story short, politics and department, you know drama kind of kicked me out, not kicked me out of the program, but I kind of fell out of it because the culture was too much. But there are a lot of [00:21:00] people who are there and in that culture who first of all, have strict expectations around publishing and how much you're going to publish and what you're going to publish about.
John: And some of my research was. not supported when my faculty mentor left for another program. And so all of a sudden you're not doing the right kind of research that our university wants or that we want to be known for, right. Or even going back to this piece around evidence based now, hard IFS has fought for it to be considered evidence based by the, the powers that be.
Bob: And it is officially certified as an evidence based therapy. That's right. Yeah. And I think it's sad. A lot of times I can sort of laugh about it, but that's just to cover the tears. It is so sad that our major institutions are like this. Yeah.
John: My sense is that your work is helping with that and the work you do to bring this [00:22:00] to the IFS community. I know you work with therapists and practitioners who want learn how to work with unattached burdens. And I also hear the big sigh about the greater systemic limitations and stuckness. It's still rampant inside the IFS community.
Bob: One of the trainers wrote me an email saying, Oh, your book's wonderful. You know, I really liked the way you handled this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I emailed her back. Can I Can I use your name? Can I use your quotes without your name even? She said, let me think about it. She thought, she got back to me a month later and said, No, Bob, I don't want you using my quotes, even anonymously.
Bob: Don't use my name. I need to be on good terms with the institute. Yeah.
Bob: Yeah, you've got your work cut out for you. One of my advantages is I'm really an old fart. I don't need a career. I don't need to [00:23:00] impress anybody. Well, yeah. I mean, what can they do to me? Locked me up for having unpopular ideas.
John: Yeah, there's a freedom to that, of kind of doing your own thing. Yeah, and being able to write about these ideas or even write about your book. I'm curious to bring it.
Bob: Yeah, go ahead. I did try and research it fairly exhaustively. I think anybody with an open mind who read that book would come away going, well, might not be right, but it's not totally crazy. There's something happening here. Yeah.
John: Well, I, I've seen it with my own eyes and seen it even in there's a demo that people can find on your, website where you're working with an unattached burden, it's through one of Derek's videos.
John: And so I've, I've seen this process. I've seen you do it. For people that haven't seen it or just getting familiar with this idea of unattached burdens how do you know when it is one and, and what to do next?
Bob: [00:24:00] Okay. That's one of the most, that's one of the two or three most important questions about these things.
Bob: Yeah. I think the most important thing Is we tend to be terrified of this idea that there could possibly be anything inside of us That's not part of our brain. That is like, you know, really bad and there's a great Anthropologist named tanya lurman who writes about this. She calls it the citadel model of mind That our mind is this fortified thing.
Bob: It's contained in this nice bony structure here Everything inside of it is proper is private everything inside of it is our property You And it constitutes our identity. That looks really big and powerful, right? It's actually incredibly fragile because it's totally brittle. You have one thought come into your mind or hear one voice and you go.
Bob: Oh my god. My [00:25:00] brain's broken Yeah, either you have a shame attack and hide it or You go on meds for the rest of your life and many most other cultures have considered the mind porous which I believe it is that's a big the big mega point or the You know the overarching structure of my book is mind is porous.
Bob: Yeah, and when you have that When you have that view, and you know that that's true, you're much stronger and more resilient. Yeah. Okay, so that said, how do you know, there's something, there's a voice in your head going, you're an idiot, you're an idiot, you're an idiot. Very often, that's just a part. And you find the first thing you do is you check its intention.
Bob: Oh, what's so important about me believing you're an idiot? Well, then you won't do something stupid. Oh, what's so good about me not doing something stupid? I don't want you going out in the world and taking risks. Why don't, what's good [00:26:00] about me not taking risks? You won't be hurt. Mm hmm. That's a part.
Bob: It's got a good intention. Somewhere in there under all that huffin and puffin is a good intention. Save the person from pain. If that you're an idiot, you're an idiot, you're an idiot was some kind of unattached burden, you'd ask the same kind of questions. Well, what's good about making me think I'm an idiot?
Bob: Well, then you won't do anything at all. Well, what's good, what's good, you know, like, what's good about, what's good, over and over. Until you get down to something and it the answer might be something like well Then you'll be home alone and miserable and I can feed off of or I'll be able to squash you then Once I've destroyed all your connections.
Bob: Yeah, that's not a part Yeah, so that's the first thing check its intention Looking for you know a good [00:27:00] intention and the second thing is just asking it directly. Are you a part of me? Right. And you have the person do that over and over again, very often it won't answer the question or it will make excuses, it'll say stuff like, well I've been here a long time, or you wish I was a part of you, or all sorts of gas like that, it will avoid the question.
Bob: For some reason they don't seem to be able to lie about this one question, everything else they lie about. So those are the two most basic steps. The third thing that's super important, these things get their power by scaring us. When we're no longer scared of them, they lose all power. Yeah.
John: You, you mentioned that a number of times in, when you're walking through your sequence for working with unattached burdens and for the therapist going back to do I have parts that are afraid right now?
John: And checking for fear in my system and [00:28:00] in the client's system. It seems like an essential part to the process you've developed.
Bob: If a therapist is afraid of this, they can't do this work. They have to go work with their parts that are afraid first. Yeah.
John: On that note, I'm really curious. Number one, have you ever been afraid of them?
John: Number two, has this ever backfired or when you've been working with an unattached burden and it's gone poorly? In other words, I imagine there must have been some flops along the way as you kind of discovered your, your process and yeah, created your protocol because it seems so nice and organized and doable, but I'm like nothing like that comes easily.
Bob: Yeah. This, this is going to cheer everybody right up. They can sometimes seem to jump from the client into the therapist. And that used to really bother me. That, that. the very idea that that could happen, or, you know, yuck. But when I, when I really, at [00:29:00] a deeper level, lost all fear of him, it didn't matter so much.
Bob: I worked for, for quite a while with this Buddhist Lama, and he would say, oh, oh, those dark spirits, they're around me all the time. They're around me all the time. He said, it's like bugs on a summer night when you turn the lights on. And he smiled and he giggled and he said, but they don't bother me. They don't bother me, they don't bother me.
Bob: He's just like, it's part of, you know, so I think if you really, really work with all your parts that are afraid of the unknown and afraid of this weird stuff, they don't bother you, they don't bother you, but you know, I've had, I had one in me that was destroying my eyesight and I worked with that with Dick and we were able to get it out.
Bob: And I'm doing way better than the doctors thought was possible. I was told I was going blind about 10 years ago, and I'm doing way better. And matter of fact, I don't even [00:30:00] need the treatments hardly ever anymore. And allegedly people don't, you know, go into remission from wet macular degeneration, but knock on wood, we had very clear images of what that unattached burden was.
Bob: how it was attacking my retina. It looked like a spider with a scorpion's tail that was stinging the back of my retina. And the physical symptom of wet macular degeneration is blisters on the retina. And the, the spider, scorpion, whatever you want to call it, had a lot of my mother's energy in it. And she was really, you know, I think the name for my parents is evil rather than just dysfunctional.
Bob: I mean, I don't like that word. So, you know, I've had personal experience. And if you don't, if you are afraid of these things and you don't work with [00:31:00] them, they can cause damage. Yeah
John: I, I know that another way in which you help is not only teaching therapists about how to do this work but also sometimes you, you have a really unique offering of where a therapist, like an IFS therapist, can bring their client and the two, the three of you can meet and you can help what with the therapist also there.
John: How did you kind of come up with that set up and why is that set up effective?
Bob: I don't know where I got that idea, but it works really, really well. Yeah. And, you know, basically I just do the session with the client while the therapist watches. Yeah. After the fact, I have lots of good reasons, but I think I just sort of stumbled into it, or intuition, or guidance, who knows.
Bob: I can piggyback on all the rapport the therapist has built up with the client for however long they've been meeting. Right. That makes such a huge difference, right away. [00:32:00] Number two, the therapist sees exactly what I'm doing, and knows it first hand, first person. Number You know, real time, which makes it, which makes it demystifies it.
Bob: It can help that therapist lose their, or work with their parts who are afraid of these things. And one thing I do when, when the therapist can't show up with the client, I encourage the client to record the session. And then show it, show it to the therapist, you know, and it also, hopefully, you know, the therapist might learn something.
Bob: Yeah. And I do have, I do have clients that I fail with, I mean, of course, you know, and they're usually great as teachers
John: Yeah, there's no doubt about that. We really learned from those. I, I I, I had a, you know, a bunch of clients yesterday and you know, most of the [00:33:00] five of the sessions were really good and I felt quite effective.
John: And then one session didn't go very well and I learned a lot. So if it was the painful teacher,
Bob: incredibly high tuition. So you might as well do the learning.
John: That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, I want to go back for a second to what you mentioned this idea and going back to the poorest mind which obviously we could do a whole hour on or hours on and with most people, especially in our culture, favoring this, the citadel model.
John: And so some people have that idea of. consciousness. And yet also for me, you know, I grew up in a Christian church where people would say like, the Lord gave me this answer, right? The Lord gave me this information and we felt called to do blah, blah, blah. Or we asked the Lord and he told me to go work on a farm or to go work at Starbucks or whatever it is.
John: Right. And so. Yeah. We're, on one hand, we're really familiar with that, or even when I first used to work in a psych hospital, and I was a young, [00:34:00] you know, grad student and people were hearing voices, right, or people were getting information and they were being locked up for it and, and I remember one time sitting with a, a client who'd been diagnosed as psychotic, schizophrenic and he would have moments where he was very incoherent and it just sounded like randomness, and then moments That actually made a lot of sense, and it seemed like maybe someone should sit and actually listen to this guy.
John: Right, but that was no, none of that was happening in this hospital.
Bob: No, no, you could lose your license. For helping a quote, psychotic talk to the voices in his head. Yeah. It was colluding with the illusion, and you could lose your license. Yeah. And that's not so long ago. You still could get in trouble for doing that.
Bob: Yeah. Yeah. I want to tell one of my favorite little stories. Please. It's about Milton Erickson. He was a psychiatrist, worked inpatient much of his career. Also a great hypnotherapist later. Yeah. Right. And there's one ward [00:35:00] he was brought on the ward And there was a guy who just, they, you know, bring him out of his room, get some food in him.
Bob: And all he would do all day long is stand in the hallway and talk word salad, you know, just make. So Dr. Erickson saw him and then Dr. Ernst went and stood beside him and studied his word salad and transcribed a bunch of it and figured out the words and the grammar and what was going on. And then Dr.
Bob: Erickson would go stand next to him in the hallway and talk word salad back to for a few minutes. In only two or three days, in the middle of the word salad, the guy turned to Dr. Erickson and said, Cut it out, doc! And then snapped back into his word salad. So, just by learning the client's language, Dr.
Bob: Erickson broke through to a man who'd been totally isolated for years and years and years. And we're taught not to learn our [00:36:00] client's language, but to force our language down their throats. I mean, it's so crazy. Yeah. It's so disrespectful too.
John: Well, I even have clients that come to me and I think I, I think they trust me, or we've been working together for a while or a few months, and then they're hesitant to share something about their spirituality, right?
John: Or there's this fear that a client will bring of, I'm afraid this will make me sound crazy. Right? That either I'm hearing this, this voice, I'm not afraid of it, it's just kind of there. And it tells me either you suck, or maybe it tells you you're awesome and you're, you're God. I don't know. It's like, wow, that's, can we get to know that voice?
John: Right? But, yeah.
Bob: Well, there's, you know, Socrates heard a voice his whole life. That's, that's the origin of Western philosophy, was a voice in a man's head. I mean, it's so ironic. And now we try to claim that's a sign of insanity. So hopefully that's changing, but I don't too [00:37:00] slowly. Yeah.
John: What else do you want to make sure people hear from this conversation?
John: Whether it's about the, the, the porous mind, unattached burdens, more about your book or just your life in general? I mean, there's just so many directions we could go.
Bob: Okay a couple of things I want to say. As I look at the anthropological evidence of this porous mind and experience of stuff inside our subjective realm, that's not part of us, The vast majority is beneficial.
Bob: It's guides, mentors, gods demiurges, and people spend immense amounts of energy and discipline eliciting this kind of contact. And I think the only reason why in IFS it's the unattached burdens and the nasty stuff first is because we're coming at it from a attitude of relieving pathology. Yeah. So I want to put it in that framework that [00:38:00] overwhelmingly this idea of a porous mind is a positive experience.
Bob: You know, all the poets who talk about the muses and hearing the creative voice and, you know, all of that comes from this realm too. Yeah. So that's one thing. And I just want to say, if you stop and think about it for a minute or two, mind obviously is porous. Every living system is surrounded by a semi permeable membrane.
Bob: Every cell is surrounded by a semi permeable membrane. If there's a rigid thing around it, it's dead. Dang. And there's all sorts of very hard science ways we can know this is true. Gregory Bateson wrote a great book called Mind and Nature. And it's a book length exposition of this basic idea that mind and nature evolved together.
Bob: It's actually a dynamic relationship. You cannot [00:39:00] understand mind outside of that relationship and the attempts to to do so are doomed to failure, and they're doomed to be destructed. And that would describe Western psychology.
John: Yeah, and medicine, right? We can kind of play God in our own lives, and there's great power in being able to fix people.
Bob: And the indigenous people that, you know, they talk about all my relations. It's not an I it, it's an I thou. Yeah.
John: I do want to ask you about something. This is almost like a, a more basic IFS question, but in my experience, especially with clients that have significant trauma in their background and a lot of childhood trauma, we have come across some very pissed off protector parts. They're very pissed off right away.
John: And especially on the first meeting, the first the client is meeting that protector part. They're extremely pissed off. Sometimes they have violent urges or they want the Payback or if I had a [00:40:00] client where mom was the abuser and this part wanted to kill mom. Yeah, your reaction to that
Bob: perfectly natural makes sense to me
John: Yeah. I, my, I can tell you in that moment, I remember my client was kind of horrified by it, right?
John: And almost scared to tell me, well, this part wants to kill mom. That makes sense. Right. And I've also been told to help, perhaps help the part do that as part of a corrective experience and a redo. Yeah, in the inner world.
Bob: And I will make it very clear to my client. In the inner world, yeah. This totally makes sense, and I'm with you 100%.
Bob: And I'll do everything I can to stop you from doing this in the external world, because it'll damage you and, you know, hurt other people. Doesn't mean I don't respect you and don't honor your anger and rage. And then there are other ways. Down the [00:41:00] road, we could, we could work with that. One other thing I want to mention, because it's super important, and many therapists get confused around this and unattached burdens, is perpetrator interjects.
Bob: Yeah. If you think of a little kid in a room and they're being molested and beaten and raped by some adult, who has all the power in that room? The perp, obviously. So some courageous and self sacrificing part of that kid Goes out there and takes on some of the perpetrator energy to try and protect the kid.
Bob: Yeah And then what happens is all the other parts of the kid hate it It went out there and did this very difficult thing to save the kid And now it's getting hated by all the other parts of the kid and it's sacrificed everything and it's being hated So then us therapists come along [00:42:00] since that part has some perpetrator energy in it And we are, people often mistake it for a UB, or do other things to, you know, amputate it and destroy it, and it's, and it's actually a hero.
Bob: Yeah. So, and those are parts that frequently get mistaken for UBs, and that's a tragedy. Those parts are real heroes, self sacrificing heroes. You know,
John: these quote rehabilitation programs for The perpetrators are largely focused on kind of managing the The behaviors, right? Like how do we get you to not do this thing again, right? This unspeakable thing.
Bob: Yeah, and Sometimes that's necessary. I taught ifs several times in clinics for eating disorders We had to get those people eating or they would die
Bob: And you know all we could we don't want to pick a fight with the eating disorder [00:43:00] You know, we say we respect you, you're doing this for a good reason, and we need to keep the body alive. Yeah. You know. So, yeah, I also worked with sex offenders a fair amount, and I think that's the first step. Yeah. But then you can deal with the traumas that are underneath, underneath the offending behavior. That's right.
John: Yeah. We've got a few minutes left here, Bob, and the time has flown by, at least for me. And yeah, anything else people should, should know, at least for today, and I'd love to have you back for another conversation was just such a richness to your work and your life. So I have a million other questions, but for today, what else should people hear?
Bob: And then of course, Yeah, I've got something that's really been up for me a lot. The finest minds on our planet know almost nothing. We're astoundingly ignorant as [00:44:00] a species at the very, very best, the most brilliant of us might be in kindergarten. And that's probably an overly generous assessment of human intellectual progress. Yeah.
John: I'm offended, but
Bob: go on. We need to learn to welcome not knowing and being in ignorance and just curiosity, wonder and awe. And not, not take our, not take ourselves too seriously. I think, you know, most of what I've spent my lifetime developing is probably wrong. In very significant ways, if not entirely.
Bob: But perhaps I can be usefully wrong. I can be wrong in a way that other people can climb up on top of that. And get a little bit closer to something real and a little bit more meaningful. So I think that kind of basic humility. Yeah, it's really important. We don't have any answers. We're just [00:45:00] cracking doors open and getting little peeks.
John: And, and that takes tremendous pressure off of the therapist listening to know it all or to know more than their clients, right? You know, I, I saw a client for years and we spent three or four years undoing the damage. That a therapist did to her of power and control and I'm the expert and you're living your life wrong and all these things and she just Basically unraveled this client's psyche by the end of it and her sense of self was just completely in pieces.
John: So the power that we have is never lost on me. I mean, we learn, you know about this in graduate school. And yet a lot of therapists still end up in this position of, I need to know. My clients are coming to me because I know a lot and I can take some of that knowledge and put it in their head.
John: Right. Or they come in and say, show me how to regulate. And I, I look around for, you know, regulation exercises and teach them that. And then the client comes back and goes, well, those didn't work anymore. [00:46:00] Can you teach me more? Right. And teach me about how to do my life better. Right. It fundamentally undermines, you know Their autonomy and humanity.
Bob: And I've come to really, really, really profoundly believe and trust that people in their tissues, in their bones, in their blood, have an ancient, ancient wisdom. That they can connect to, and it's really my job to help get the garbage out of the way, a little bit, so that they can get a glimpse of that ancient wisdom that's deep in them.
Bob: And when they get that, and get a little taste of that, and go, Oh, this is in here, I don't need Bob, I don't need Then there's self healing, then their healing is going to become generative, and just grow. That's the kind of change we need to start creating. Or foster it, because we don't really create it.
John: To me, that's what IFS is all about. And going from this idea from Carl Rogers of, okay, [00:47:00] regard the client positively, right? Okay. That's it. The relationship we have with our clients is going to be a positive one. I'm going to regard them positively, no matter what, even if they do horrible things, right.
John: The IFS just is just so much more profound, I think, and regarding humanity and then this idea that you have inside of you what it takes and this self that can that can heal your parts and your wounded parts and all this and the therapist's job is to help them access. Itself.
Bob: So I, it's, you know, I think the word respect is. If I had to summarize IFS in one word, it would be respect. And the IFS community doesn't use that word. Hardly ever. It's very rare. And I'm not, maybe because it doesn't start with C, so it can't. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know.
John: Might need to start a new list of our words for, for self. Bob, thank you again so much for, the conversation for being here for the work you're doing.
John: I've really enjoyed your [00:48:00] book, got a lot out of it. For folks that are interested in you and your work, or even how you help people, can you let us know how people can find you and what you do offer?
Bob: I have a website, robertfalconer.us . And thank God I have a wonderful IT person, because I'm really bad at that stuff.
Bob: So, and there's lots there. There's a YouTube channel. I have a meditation channel called Mindlessness Meditation. Because any time I'm in my mind, I know I'm in a bad neighborhood.
Bob: There you go. I think some of those meditations can be very helpful. There, you know, there are YouTubes and demos and all sorts of stuff. And the books. And I'll have a new book out in about a month. I hope. Great.
John: Wow. You're, you're moving fast on that. Yeah, well,
Bob: I'm old. I got to. This one's a book of quotations I've collected over 50 years.
Bob: Oh, right. Connect Healing and Spirituality, [00:49:00] and the title is When You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going.
John: Love that. Can't wait to read it. Bob, thank you again. We'll put links to all of that in the description for folks that are listening. And you can click through that way and learn more about Bob and his books and his offerings.
John: So Bob, thanks again for, for being here. Thanks for listening to another episode of Going Inside. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching and share your favorite episode with a friend. You can follow me on TikTok @JohnClarkeTherapy and apply to work with me one on one at JohnClarketherapy.com. See you next time.
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