Healing Burdens From the Past—How to Overcome Childhood Wounds and Heal Your Younger Self with Tammy Sollenberger
Episode Notes
Do you ever struggle with negative beliefs about yourself, even though you know they aren't true?
We all carry burdens that we pick up in childhood, and these burdens can be surprisingly persistent. Today's guest, therapist, author of The One Inside, & host of The One Inside IFS podcast, Tammy Sollenberger shares her journey of healing her younger self from these painful burdens.
Here's what we cover:
- The surprising way we can connect with God's healing
- Why we pick up burdens in childhood
- How Tammy healed her burden of "I'm not wanted"
- The impact of childhood burdens on marriage and parenting
- The spiritual practices that have helped Tammy heal
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Additional Resources:
- I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
- Matthew 11:28
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- The One Inside: 30 Days To Your Authentic Self by Tammy Sollenberger
- Psalm 46:10
- TammySollenberger.com
Related Episodes:
- Episode 108: Inside Out—Internal Family Systems, Therapy, and High-Performing Protectors with Jenna Riemersma
- Episode 40: 5 Steps to Healing Painful Emotions & Why Parts of Us Get Stuck in the Past
- Episode 9: Hidden Pain and the Power of Facing Your Fear with Bianca Cotton
Music by Andy Luiten
Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author.
While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here. I know we're well into summer, and for those of you who subscribe to my weekly email, I mentioned in last week's email that this month has been packed for me and for my family with some major milestone events, including our daughter's graduation from college, our son getting married and the weddings of some of our closest family friends.
It has been a season. Talk about kicking up emotions inside my own system. I am so aware right now of the deep joy that I'm experiencing. Right there, side by side with moments of grief, even with moments of sadness. I'm so aware of all that it is taking for me to hang on to myself and not let any one emotion dominate my internal landscape, including the anxiety about all of these events, planning them, hosting people, hoping things go well.
All of those emotions are so present inside of my soul. And I have to say, in all honesty, with the last two months, really, including the book launch of I Shouldn’t Feel This Way, going into all of these major family events, it has taken a lot for me to hang on to myself so that I'm leading these parts of me, letting the different emotions have their place in my soul, and having appropriate outlets so that any one of those emotions doesn't completely take over.
As a result of that, I've needed to scale back a little bit. I've needed to, as I sometimes say, let some of the plates that I'm spinning, or the balls that I'm juggling, fall to the ground. And that's uncomfortable to parts of me that like control. It was no surprise to me when I finally saw the new Pixar movie, Inside Out 2–we talked about it on last week's episode with Jenna Riemersma–that I started to cry as I watched Anxiety finally relinquish its grip on the control board of Riley's life.
Tears started streaming down my face as I could sense in my own system, that invitation to surrender. And what moved me so much about that moment in the movie is the compassion with which the rest of the parts of Riley's soul met Anxiety. They didn't shame Anxiety for taking control in a way that was embarrassing and even led to Riley doing some things that she wished she hadn't done. Instead, they embraced anxiety with compassion.
It was a beautiful picture of what can happen with anxiety in our souls, when we release the grip of any one of those emotions that wants to dominate our lives, whether it's anxiety, anger, self-doubt, or an overly exuberant joy that takes over and is aggressively happy in a way that can be off putting to other people.
Whatever that part of you is that has been vying for control of your life, I wonder what part of you is longing to hear the quiet voice of God's whisper saying, come to me, you who are heavy burdened and working overtime to keep things together, come away from that control board, that grip of control you are holding. Come to me and I will give you rest.
Before we get started today, I want to read to you a section from Boundaries For Your Soul, where we describe our understanding of the self or what we call the Spirit-led self–this mysterious place inside of you, from which you can lead the parts of yourself wisely in partnership with God's spirit. Here's from Boundaries for Your Soul:
Your Spirit-led self is you when you are being led by God who abides within your soul. Many psychologists and spiritual leaders have explored this idea of what we are calling the Spirit-led self. For example, beloved author Henry Nouwen described that place in your soul where you have clear perspective, where you can gather together your thoughts and desires and emotions and hold them together in truth.
Nouwen wrote the following: “You have to trust that there is another place where you can be safe. Maybe it's wrong to think about this new place as beyond emotions, passions, and feelings. Beyond could suggest that these human sentiments are absent there. Instead, try thinking about this place as the core of your being, your heart, where all human sentiments are held together in truth. From this place, you can feel, think, and be, and act truthfully”.
Likewise, psychologists Henry Cloud and John Townsend refer to a space inside where you can experience your feelings without fear of judgment, a place where these parts of your soul can receive the attention they need so you don't act out in hurtful ways. Cloud and Townsend say it this way: “We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse or a desire, without acting it out. We need self-control without repression”.
In this place, your Spirit-led self holds you together in truth. From here, you can draw a troubling emotion closer or ask it to step back so that you can develop perspective. You can invite Jesus to be with the parts of you most in need of his presence. Your Spirit-led self can minister to your troubling thoughts and feelings so that they are witnessed and heard and transformed. As a result of connecting to the parts of yourself from this place inside, you will begin to enjoy healthy boundary lines inside your soul.
My guest today, Tammy Sollenberger, is no stranger to this work of befriending the parts of the soul. In addition to being a beloved friend, Tammy is a licensed clinical mental health counselor and an internal family systems (IFS) certified supervisor. She's the host of The One Inside, an Internal Family Systems IFS podcast, which is one of the very first podcasts to explore the world of IFS, and she's the author of The One Inside: 30 Days to Your Authentic Self.
She's here today to share with us very candidly some of her own early childhood experiences that led her to develop some heavy burdens that affected her all the way into adulthood. Please enjoy my conversation with Tammy Sollenberger.
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Alison: I love talking to you. Always. We always have such great conversations. I'm such a big fan of your podcast, The One Inside–it's such a great resource for anyone who wants to go deeper. And then your book, The One Inside, which I love. It's 30 meditations.
Tammy: It's 30 Days to Your Authentic Self. Basically, day by day, it teaches you the IFS model, but it teaches you by going inside and helping you get to know your own system. So it does two things. It makes it super user-friendly and they're little chapters that help you understand, what does it mean for me to have parts and how do I pay attention to my parts and how do I know who is here and how do I know how to track them and how do I start listening to them?
It is a very bite size way for you to begin to understand and learn and befriend your own personality.
Alison Cook: This is a fantastic resource for beginners to learn about the model. But not just beginners, because I got a lot out of it too. Thank you.
Tammy: Yeah. Thank you. And, I sent it to one of the IFS trainers, a friend, and I emailed him and I was like, what did you think of it? And he was like, it's basic and simple. And I was like, great, that's exactly what I want it to be because there isn't another book like that.
Alison Cook: I love it. And you're a seasoned IFS therapist. You do this work all the time, for those of you listening who maybe are therapists or studying IFS. You actually consult with IFS therapists who are getting their certification. You lead some groups in IFS. You are seasoned in the model.
So the fact that you can take something really complicated and distill it to basic principles is actually really hard to do. And I commend you for it, which is why we love this movie Inside Out and the new Inside Out 2. Because that's exactly what it's doing. It's taking it out of therapy and into normal mainstream life. We all have these parts, from little kids to ourselves to our friends.
It's such a helpful way to think about the people that we love and ourselves. At basic level, at the foundational level of the soul, we have different parts
Tammy: Yeah, I love it. So Inside Out has really done this marvelous job of making this idea mainstream. Anybody at any age can really begin to have this language of, “A part of me feels sad. A part of me feels mad. A part of me is jealous. A part of me is bored”.
I'm allowed to speak for them, and I'm allowed to say them. It makes sense that I would have a variety of parts and a variety of different emotions running my system. And yeah, I think the movie does such a great job of explaining these concepts that are really higher level concepts, but they do such a good job of making it not that complicated.
Alison Cook: Toward that end, Tammy, I would love to ask you some of these questions because I don't know these aspects of your story. I know a lot about your current life as we've gotten to know each other, but I don't know as much about your personal history. We're in this series looking at these personal stories about when these parts form.
We see Riley in Inside Out–she's moved across the country. She's got to deal with new friends, new school, all these things. And we see how that external experience and the way she relates to her family, her parents, begins to shape the development of the different parts of her.
I would love to learn a little bit more from you, if you would be so gracious as to allow us to go back in time for a moment. As you think about your preteen self, the younger you, the little young Tammy, what are some of the characters or the parts of yourself that you now understand were parts at the time?
I'm sure you had no sense of that vocabulary, but how do you see that younger you and how she was existing in the world at maybe sixth grade, seventh grade, middle school? I see your face immediately grow compassionate and empathetic.
Tammy: Yeah. Yeah. So Riley is 13 and yeah, this is a huge time of our lives. This huge transition developmentally and physically. Because we have this relationship, it does feel really safe. And I always say on my podcast too, that I'm not thinking about the people listening. I'm thinking about you. So I'm thinking about my friend, Alison, and me and you having this conversation. So it feels really safe for me to share this.
Growing up,my mom and dad were 16 when they had me. And there's a huge sort of story there. They got married, my mom was Catholic, they got married and then they got divorced a year or two later. So my mom was a single mom. My dad was in and out, but I would see him every other weekend. And I still have a relationship with him and and then both of them got married. My dad, I think I was maybe 6 or 7 when my dad married my stepmom, who he's still married to, so they both have had these really long marriages since then.
So my dad married my stepmom and they had three boys. And then it was my mom and I until I was 10. And then my mom married my stepdad. He had a daughter that was my age, and then they had a daughter. So I have a sister who's 10 years younger. So basically I have a dad and a stepmom and three brothers. And then I have my mom and my stepdad. And then I have a sister who's 10 years younger than me.
Alison Cook: Slow down for a second, because talk about a complicated family system. The friend and the therapist in me is like, if you're okay with me slowing it down, because what I heard in that, Tammy, is you have a few half-brothers and a half-sister who's 10 years younger, and then also a stepsister who's roughly your age.
Tammy: Yeah, that's right.
Alison Cook: That's a lot of change for a 10 year old.
Tammy: It's a lot of change. And, what I remember is that I was a really happy kid. Because in general, I'm a really happy sort of sunshiny person as an adult. And I was a really happy kid. I have lots of joy. Anger has been completely exiled. But joy is here in abundance and we like joy.
And sadness is pretty good too. We like sadness and joy. But when I brought the IFS piece in a little bit, my first big training with IFS was I did a week with Dick, who's the founder of IFS, Dick Schwartz at the Cape Cod Institute about 11 years ago. So I did this week-long workshop with Dick and there were times with pieces of teaching and then there's times where you could work with somebody one on one.
The first big piece of work that I did was this part of me, this ten year old part of me who lost her mom and I was sobbing, like hysterically crying, and I did not know that was there. I had so much pain about losing my mom, and I did not know that was there. But looking back and thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because for me, it was me and my mom.
I remember we lived in this little tiny beach cottage, and we bought, if I remember this correctly, like we each had different types of toothpaste that we bought and to me, I had a happy life. My poor mom was a single mom and 26 years old with a 10 year old, working full-time, but I'm happy as can be. And then all of a sudden, we move.
We move across the street, so I go to a different school. All of a sudden, there's a stepdad, who's the nicest guy, he's a nice guy, his daughter was very tough and ended up getting asked to leave our house when we were 16. So there's a lot of stuff there.
And then my mom got pregnant basically immediately. By the time I'm 11, I have a baby sister, a stepsister, a stepdad, and a new house. There was all this loss, and I think that my system basically exiled all this pain. We're going to be cheery, we're going to be a nice girl, we're going to be a good girl, we're not going to cause any problems.
Those are the parts of me probably from 10 probably until about 14 that were like, I'm going to be a good girl and I'm not going to have any feelings and there's not going to be any pain or sadness and there's no me here. My feelings about losing my mom and what this was like for me, that didn't even dawn on me that I could even speak for what this was like for me until probably 14.
When puberty hit, I think I got very sad and was super emotional. And I really could not find my sense of identity. Like you see Riley, and she's got hockey. I didn't have a thing. I was never really good at anything. I didn't have a thing. I really struggled. I was okay at school, but I didn't really care about school. I cared about my friends, like Riley.
And Riley cares about her friends and that's most important to her. And I think I tried to find different friend groups. I think what happened, looking back, and the church comes in later, is I really wanted to be wanted. When I've done my IFS work, I have this exile around not being wanted. Of course you weren't wanted. You had teenage parents. You weren't wanted.
My parents were really good about saying you're wanted and you're loved and they would say that. They were very good about that. But part of me says, the truth is, you weren't wanted. Let's be honest, Tammy. You are not wanted. That's who you are. I have this part that is in my blood. Not being wanted is in my blood. I have these other parts that do anything that they can do to be wanted.
And we see this in the movie with Riley, where she leaves her really good friends to go with the popular girls and she makes some really bad decisions. And I would have done anything to be wanted, like want me, include me, let me be a part of it. Give me identity. I flounder with friends. I flounder with boys. Once high school comes, I'm wanting to be wanted by boys.
And it's a three. Three is we want to be successful. If I want to be with this boy, that would be the way I could be successful. Or, that's “being fun” or whatever. That's how I could be successful. When we think about parts, there's a lot of protection around being wanted, and what happens when I feel unwanted is I have all these parts that kind of swirl around the idea of being wanted and unwanted.
Alison Cook: Gosh, there's a lot in that. And I can tell there's also a lot of years of getting to know those different parts. This is the power of IFS. It makes sense that a part of you picked up burdens along the way. I would imagine, as you started doing the work with Dick 11 years ago, there were memories that surprised you of things that happened that reinforced that burden that wasn't necessarily true.
Moments where maybe even your parents were trying not to reinforce that burden, but maybe something happened that did reinforce that burden. Were there some key memories or moments as you've done some of this work as an adult that you would go back to?
Tammy: Yeah, that's part of why this work is so powerful–you can go back. But when I go back, it's not traumatic to go back because then I am there with me now, the adult leader, the authentic self. I can be then with my sixth grade part that felt like she had no friends and was sitting in the middle school cafeteria and felt this incredible aloneness.
I can go back and be with her in that moment in the way that she needed someone, whether she needed my mom or she needed a friend. I can go back and be what she needs and really get her out of that place that she's in, that she's still in, because that's what happens in our bodies. I still have these parts that feel that unwantedness or lack a sense of belonging, or have these two families but I don't really exist in either one of them.
I'm not really wanted. Part of me believes the burden, that I'm not really wanted in either one of these families. And which again, other parts of me say that's not true at all. But there's this burden of I don't fit, I don't fit and I'm not wanted. Yeah.
Alison Cook: My parents loved me, but to the listener who hasn't experienced this, I want you to understand that these messages are stored in our memories. I remember when I was writing Boundaries for Your Soul and we were supposed to come up with stories. And the story that I tell in Boundaries for Your Soul of not making the basketball team in, I think it was seventh grade, which is such a formative year. I worked and worked my tail off like a good little Enneagram three. I worked hard to make that team. And when the day came and I walked into the locker room and the list of names was up and my name wasn't on that list, the shame overwhelmed me.
I had bought brand new sneakers that were the sneakers that the real basketball player girls were wearing. And this was in a time when that was a big expenditure. People didn't throw away money on brand name sneakers. It was a big deal. I got them, I think for a Christmas present, and then I didn't make the team and I was mortified and swallowed up by shame.
I had to then wear those sneakers and I didn't make the team. My parents actually loved me through that as best they could. It wasn't even like any horrible big T trauma thing that we might think of that happened, but the way that my parts were lined up and the way that story landed in that moment with other things that had happened to me as a child was this feeling of invisibility. My name is never on the list. I'm always invisible.
I could find moments and I still, to this day, I have to update that part of me because I can find all those moments when that happened, and I don't notice the moments where my friends will say, Alison, are you kidding me? You were always on the honor roll. You're always on all these lists. I'm like, it didn't matter. I only remember the ones I didn't make and the shame that I felt.
I bring that in because I hear you saying so well, Tammy, that those burdens get picked up. And sometimes the memories that we have where there's pain are surprising to the logical, rational parts of us. They're like, but you'd sometimes make the team. It doesn't matter. I had to go back to the place of that memory and be with the young girl who in that moment buried that feeling of shame deep inside.
Tammy: In the movie, Riley, she has these sort of balls of memory. And in the second movie, Joy exiles any balls that are Shame. She puts up this little sucker thing and sucks it away and puts it in the basement. And that's what we do with memories or things that don't align. Joy does that with sad things. Or shaming things. “Nope. We're only going to keep the happy balls, the happy memories, the happy moments, the little balls that reinforce that we are loved and we are good and we are happy and we're a good friend and we're smart and all these beautiful things that we want to believe”.
We're going to keep those balls. But what happens is, our system, because it's so protective in nature, we hold on to the balls that reinforce that burden. So if I have a burden of being unwanted, my system, my parts, are hypervigilant in looking for anything or anyone that says, I don't like you.
It doesn't matter that there's a million people out there that think I'm the best thing in the world. My system is going to focus on that one person and highlight that little ball. That memory then is going to become stored as evidence of my burden.
Alison Cook: That is so well stated. I can then imagine as you're going through high school and the social jungle of high school and young adulthood, the exhaustion of trying to make sure every guy, every girl, everyone likes you and everyone is wanting you. I'm wondering here, what do you do with the ones who don't want you?
That would be devastating as opposed to learning, oh, wait a minute. There's another way to go through life in terms of relating to other people. Tell me, Tammy, as you got older and you brought some of these burdens with you into adulthood, when did you begin to realize this might not be working?
Tammy: Yeah. That's a good question. We talk about the C's of self-energy. So authentic self is that leader, that essence of who we are, the divine us inside is this authentic self. And we use these C qualities and a C that is not listed in the C qualities is choice. And we often think, if I had a choice, if I had more perspective, what choices would I make that would be different?
If I'm only making choices that are protective in nature because my parts are like, I have to make choices to be wanted or not wanted, I'm going to pick jobs or hobbies or activities or friends or people that really try to reinforce and create a space of being wanted. And if I get any feeling that this person isn't really going to want me, then I don't even give them a chance and they're not in the club.
So to answer your question, when I was 21, I got really involved in church. My boyfriend at the time, who became my husband, we got married when I was 22, we got really involved in his church. That really shifted my whole life for probably 20 years, that I got really involved in church and that was a community. I had a good church experience.
I have not had a traumatic church experience at all, even though I don't really go to an evangelical church now, but I had a good experience for the most part. I think that's where the Enneagram 3 busyness and tasks and being good at something, that's when that started coming into play when I was in my 20s.
All of a sudden, I wasn't chasing boys anymore. I was like, oh, I'm actually not dumb. I'm actually smart. If I take a class, I want an A. If I teach this Bible study, it needs to be really good. I need to spend hours on it. And I want everyone to come to my Bible study. It really shifted from this idea of being wanted to this idea of being really good at this thing.
Alison Cook: So Tammy, is it fair to say on some level, you shifted your strategy to more church sanctioned or socially acceptable ways, but really you hadn't healed those deeper inner parts of you. You shifted from getting the affection of boys and popularity to, I'm going to be the best Bible study leader. I'm going to be the best therapist. I'm going to be the best wife, friend, church member.
Tammy: Yes, except I don't know that I ever wanted to be the best wife, which I'm so sorry to my ex-husband, but to be completely honest that wasn't there. I can feel that now because now I have a partner and I feel differently. I feel that I want to be a good partner to him and I look back and I think, wow, I never felt that way with my husband. It was yep, got him, check off the list, turn around, what else are we doing?
And that's been something that has been interesting to notice. So I'm not judging it, but I'm really noticing that wow, that was not on my list. An Enneagram 1 is going to want to be perfect and be the best at something. And a 3's drivenness isn't about that. It really isn't about being the best. It's more about the accomplishment of it. For me it was that idea, maybe for you too, it's like the idea of being wanted.
So my success is being wanted. It's not even really being the best at it. When I think about my book or the podcast, I have a lot of “It's good enough. Let's accomplish it and get stuff done”. It has a different kind of flavor.
Alison Cook: It makes sense and I really appreciate your honesty, Tammy and I'm thinking of the listener, there's such an honesty. And I think this is something IFS affords us–we can really look at ourselves honestly, because we remove the shame and we really get curious.
And I really hear you say that as you look back, there's an Enneagram 3 part of you that was like, I can check marriage off the list. I've accomplished marriage, which is a very different way of looking at it than, what does it mean to consistently show up for this other human being that I've chosen to bring into my life or God has put into my life?
There's such honesty. I have no doubt there's a whole other side to that story. We won't go into that, but I do appreciate the honesty of your own ability to go, no, in reality, when I look back, there was a lot of me wanting accomplishments and that's a good pushback on that. It's not about being the best. There's a desire for success and it makes sense to me that at that young age, you’re like, I did that, done, next.
That probably did impact, from your side of things, how you could show up as a friend and a partner and an intimate person in a long term relationship. That's really honest. I want to pause there. I think that's unusual and worthy of pausing on. Saying, oh, yeah, this is what was going on with me, without shame, with real honesty. There's freedom in that.
Tammy: I like what you're saying, because I think IFS really does that. If we look at Riley in this movie, we can really look at these parts of her with yeah, of course there's an anxious part of her, a sad part, like these parts are here. We don't have to judge them or apologize for them; we can be curious about them.
We can see how much they love Riley and how hard they work for her. And that's the same thing with our parts. My parts, the parts of me that were like, let's pick a boy and let's be boy crazy and let's do what we need to do to be wanted. And the parts of me that feel really unwanted, I really understand them.
It makes sense to me that they're there. It makes sense to me why they're there. Not in a logical way. But in a heart way, like my heart can really understand in a loving way how these parts are trying to help me and if we make it a bit simplistic, my system gets built around this idea of being wanted and successful.
These two things are highlighted for me being an Enneagram 3 and coming from the family that I did. I then think about the parts of me that work really hard to make sure those things happen, and then think about the parts of me that come in when that doesn't happen.
When my name isn't on the basketball list, and then all these parts have to come in to help me with these feelings of failure, with these feelings of being unwanted. That happens with my son. If my son, my 13 year old, he's an only child, I would have a hard time when there's any little hint that he doesn't want me. My system goes haywire. There's rage and there's shutdown.
Because my system is built around this idea of being wanted and unwanted. When there are feelings around that, everyone goes crazy. So then I have to be there to say, hey guys, I'm here. I am with you. Turn and look at me. I am with you. We have a Self that can step into the room, which we don't really see in Inside Out 2, but we have it. I come into the room and I say, I am here. I want you. I love you.
What do you need from me? Let's have a connection with me and see what happens to these sweet parts when I enter the room.
Alison Cook: Can we move into that a little bit, Tammy? Because I love what you're saying. What does that actually look like? Because it's so real when you talk about your son triggering you, that those old childhood 10 year old parts of you that felt unwanted.
Let's for a moment imagine, even put yourself in the setting of something he might do that would trigger that inside of you. Can you give us a little glimpse of how you've gotten to know those parts that show up? How do you even notice it in your body?
Tammy: I've noticed it happens usually when I pick him up from school in the car. So I'll pick him up and he'll say something. He's tired, he's anxious, and sometimes there's a hard transition. He'll say something, and what I notice in my body is it feels like I disappear.
I could be singing and having a little dance party by myself waiting to pick him up. He gets in the car and I'm like, hey baby, how are you? How was your day? Because Joy is usually here and I'm all joy. And he says something else. All of a sudden I feel like an invisible cloak has come over me and I don't even feel like I'm there. I'm putting my hands on ten and two. My hands are on ten and two. I'm driving the car and all of a sudden it's like, there's no more personality here.
I go from singing to I'm not here at all. And I'm aware. I'm here. I'm aware. But I really feel this cloak of nothingness–I've completely shut down. I'm shut down. I'm numb. And it feels like it takes over my whole body.
Alison Cook: Sounds like a nervous system response. It's not freeze, necessarily, but you really do go into a form of a fight/flight response. Inside of you, a part takes you out, essentially. Yeah. So now that you know what you know now, as you work with the part, how do you in that moment hang on to yourself?
Tammy: One of the things I think is really true is, it's happened so much and this has become a part of me. I consider some of those moments that were really hard, I'm like, oh yeah, this part's been around for a long time. It predates my son. It goes back to when I was little. This really protective cloaking, numbing, shutting down part of me. One of the things I really recommend for listeners is to become really familiar with what we call your “major players”. Who are the major players that are driving your bus?
Because then you can get really familiar with when they come. So this shutdown part, I'm like, oh, here you are, buddy. If sadness takes over that console for Riley, we all know what sadness feels like. She's got her little cute face and her little voice and we're all familiar with that part. It's really getting familiar with oh, that's what's here right now. What I'll do now is I will begin to breathe. And I will say, I am here, let me be here.
And what I'm saying to the part is I'm here. I, adult self, I'm here. I know that you're here. I know that you're trying to protect me, but I'm letting you know that I'm here. Let me be here. And it might take the 20 minute drive home for me, and I don't go jump back into sort of singing. It might take me an hour or two to breathe and let my senses ground me.
I'm saying to this part, hey bud. I know that you're here. I know you're here for a good reason. Thank you for being here. I get it and I'm here. Let me be here. Let me be here with him. I've got this. You don't need to be here and let's breathe and let's look around and I'll stop talking to him. I'm not going to engage with him right now because engaging with him doesn't work at that moment.
I might turn the radio on a little bit. We're going to look around, we're going to look at the trees. We get home, we're going to take our dogs for a walk, and slowly it feels like I come back online.
Alison Cook: And at that point, you're much more equipped to re-engage with your son than trying to fake it in the moment. I think sometimes in those moments, we try to fake it or we get mad, or other parts of us take over, but what I hear you saying is breathing through it, taking your time, being present to yourself, which as a parent, we're jumping into parenting, but the reality is our kids see through our phoniness anyway.
Sometimes they're in their own world anyway. They're fine. Sometimes it’s just taking a minute to breathe through it. The more we can do that work to hang on to ourselves, the more we come back online. As you've done this work, as you've reconnected, and I so appreciate you sharing openly your story from the past and then bringing it into the present day, because it's so vivid.
Like those moments with our own kids replay the tape of our own pain points. That's what happens. And I am curious, how do you connect spiritually? How is your spirituality of resource to you in those moments?
Tammy: Yeah. No, it's a great question. I'll answer it broader and then more specifically. I was going to an evangelical church here in New England, which was fine and all my friends went there and it was okay. And then COVID happened and during COVID, I discovered a community called Closer Than Breath. Closer Than Breath is a quote from Thomas Keating, who is a Catholic priest and mystical contemplative man who did lots of writing.
He writes that God is closer than our breath. I started doing some groups with this community and they had an Enneagram and Centering Prayer group. I was always curious about Christian meditation and what that looked like and what did that mean? And I started doing these Centering Prayer groups. Centering Prayer is the idea that we take 20 minutes, we take a word and the word isn't necessarily a prayer word, the word is more like a windshield wiper because you know our thoughts are going all the time.
Our thoughts are chatty and we use the word to clean the windshield and settle back into our heart to settle into a prayer to have more connection to the divine. That's what I started doing–a contemplative type of Christianity and the practice is called Centering Prayer. I started doing those groups and then I ended up going to a Quaker meeting and having this sort of hour of silence.
I'm a busy person, and something happened for me during the silence. The 20 minutes of silence or in the Quaker meeting, it's an hour of silence, these people have this contemplative experience of God that feels so beautiful and very aligned with what I know. My little Baptist girl inside feels attuned and aligned. And I did go to a seminary when they do say stuff that's not aligned, I'm like, that's not right, but that's okay.
Because my parts say it's okay because I have this foundation. I have this foundation. I can go and I can take what works for me and leave the rest. So anyways, that's where I am spiritually now, enjoying this community of people that are really connecting to God in this different way that feels a little bit more experiential.
It feels more IFS-y really. It's really about going inside and connecting, I think the Quakers say, to that inner light. We're connecting to I would say the Holy Spirit, or to that divine inside. If you're IFS-y, you would say to that authentic self. It's this way to reconnect and to be more grounded and open up in a way that's like opening up to our true nature. We've forgotten our true nature and we've forgotten this light that we are.
It's a time and a space for my parts to quiet down and for me to reconnect to the divine and reconnect to God. And that feels really beautiful to me. My partner is from North Carolina and when I go visit him, he goes to an evangelical church and I enjoy that. It feels like home in so many ways, but often I sit with my eyes closed and take in what God wants to show me or tell me through the music and through the sermon.
I think that all that is a practice, whether it's a Sunday morning practice, or a couple of times a week or a daily practice of really going inside. But as I go inside, it's to connect to my parts, but it's also to ask my parts to give me space, to be here in the stillness. And in this stillness, nothing needs to be done. I'm plugging into my power source, that source that wants me and loves me and is light and is love.
I can feel that ultimate wanting, the ultimate healing, that is beyond me and beyond what I can get on this earth, beyond what my son can give me or my puppy or my partner. It's beyond anything like that. And then I have this experience that feels really healing.
Alison Cook: What's running through my mind as I'm listening is, be still and know that I am God. And I love the way you brought that around to ultimately being wanted, and the more you sit in that and train yourself through the slowing down, through the intentional quiet, through the intentional practice of contemplative prayer, and you plug in literally to that place where I’m truly wanted deep inside my core.
Where who I am meets who God is. This is where who I am meets who God is. Your parts start to trust you. In those moments, then when you're in the car with your son, when those parts still rear up, you've begun to retrain yourself. There's more here. It's beautiful.
I love that you took us there and I also love your joy, your busyness, you're such a life force. You light up a room. Those parts of you are beautiful. And also even with your son, you lighting up the room and then he's eeyore-ing, raining on your parade. And those parts of you hijack you. All of that is welcome around that centering place of, here is God. I love that you're tapping into that. That's beautiful.
Tammy: Yeah, thank you. I love the way you say that. This connection, it's like bringing all of me and all of my parts that are welcome and have good intentions and are wounded in some way and have all these burdens. We all come to the divine for healing and for connection and for light and for silence. We all come and enjoy and take in this connection.
Alison Cook: Yeah. That's beautiful. Tammy. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I would love for you to let the listeners know how they can connect with you and your work. Where can they find your podcast and your book?
Tammy: Yeah, so if you go to my website, everything's there. TammySollenberger.com and that's where my book and podcast is. I'm on Instagram @IFSTammy and we have a YouTube channel where we're starting to put some of our favorite episodes. So if you're new to IFS or you're curious about IFS, you can go to the “start here” page. It's on YouTube and it's on my website and it has five of our favorite episodes.
We're going to keep adding and make these playlists so it's super fun. But yeah, that's where you go.
Alison Cook: Before we close, I'd love to ask you two questions. What would you say to that younger 10 year old with the wisdom that you have now?
Tammy: I'm currently working with a 17 year old part that I'm really hanging out with lately. It’s this desire to play more. And I wish I would have played more and not in a shaming way or even a regretting way, but I think about being really narrowly focused. I wish I would have opened up and tried more things, so I would say play and experiment and try and draw and paint and music and try things and really experiment more.
It's not having to succeed at anything. It's playing. Go be successful at playing. That's what I would say. Go be successful at playing.
Alison Cook: I love that. What would you say is bringing out the best of you right now?
Tammy: What’s bringing out the best of me is this relationship that I'm in, this long distance relationship I'm in. It's bringing out the best of me because it's making me think about who I want to be. I want to be more loving. What's keeping me from being loving? It's challenging me.
It's challenging me to be like, okay, you're 50. Do you want to be in a loving relationship? Do you want that? So then what do you need to do? What parts do you need to work on? What needs to happen inside of you internally for you to have the external relationship you always wished you had?
Because here's the really cool thing, and I don't recommend people get divorced or have two relationships, but when you do and you end up doing the same thing, you're like, oh shoot, that must be me. So you can have the same relationship you had the first time. Or you can try something different. What seems to be bringing out the best of me is being a little bit brave and a little bit vulnerable to love and to be loved in a really different way.
Alison Cook: Wow. That's a whole word. I love that honesty. Again, Tammy, that's the freedom that comes with this work of really being able to look at your own self, your own parts, and get really honest with yourself. What's mine to do differently? I love that you're getting this opportunity. You're the best. You're such a light and I'm so grateful for the time you gave to us.
Tammy: Thanks, Alison. And I could say the same thing about you. I appreciate your friendship and all that you do for the world. And for me, as a friend.