IFS, the 12 Steps, and A Way to Heal When You’re Tempted to Numb Your Pain with Ian Morgan Cron
Episode Notes
What if the behaviors you turn to for comfort—whether it’s overworking, people-pleasing, or numbing out—aren’t the real problem, but rather a signal from a part of you that’s desperately trying to help?
In this powerful episode, I sit down with Ian Morgan Cron—author, speaker, and renowned Enneagram expert—to explore the fascinating intersections between Internal Family Systems (IFS) and the 12 Steps. Together, we uncover why we’re all, in some way, prone to numbing behaviors and how understanding the role of our “firefighter” parts can lead to true emotional healing. If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of your coping mechanisms or felt stuck in cycles of avoidance, this conversation will leave you with tools and hope for real transformation.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
* Why we’re all addicts in some way—and how the 12 Steps apply to everyone
* What “firefighters” are in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and how they work to protect us
* The true source of numbing behaviors
* The surprising and liberating goal of the 12 Steps and what it means for all of us
* Practical ways to find a safe person to share your struggles honestly and vulnerably
* How we can all achieve emotional sobriety
Resources:
- The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
- The Typology podcast
- Pre-order The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone In Between by Ian Morgan Cron
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- ianmorgancron.com/getyourdownload
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 108: Inside Out—Internal Family Systems, Therapy, and High-Performing Protectors with Jenna Riemersma
Thanks to our sponsors:
- As a listener of The Best of You Podcast, you can qualify to see a registered dietitian for as little as $0 by visiting faynutrition.com/bestofyou.
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
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'm so thrilled you're here for today's episode. Oh my gosh, this one was a blast to record. You will hear how much we ping off of each other's work throughout the episode.
I first want to give a warm welcome to so many new listeners who've tuned in this month to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. And I want to thank those of you who've been listening now for a while. You are so faithful showing up every week, and I want to thank you for sharing these episodes with your friends, with your family members.
I love seeing new people find this place where every single week, we are seeking to grow and to heal and to become what I like to call soul menders, people who are invested in this ongoing work of healing.
My guest today is Ian Morgan Cron. He is the bestselling author of The Road Back to You, a renowned speaker, psychotherapist, and host of the Typology podcast. Ian is widely celebrated for his work with the Enneagram, but today we're diving into his powerful new book. It's called
Now here's a little backstory before we jump into today's episode. Just two days before I recorded this interview with Ian, Ian had me on his Typology podcast. This was coincidental. We didn't realize it until our second interview, that we were on each other's calendars for the very same week.
We'd never met before, but we very quickly discovered through both interviews, a shared passion for internal family systems or IFS, which if you're new to the podcast or to my work, is a therapeutic approach that views the self as made up of different parts. It's the topic of my first book with Kimberly Miller called Boundaries For Your Soul.
So in this conversation today, Ian and I couldn't help ourselves from focusing on the 12 steps through the lens of IFS and in particular, we talked a lot about firefighters. If you're new to IFS, firefighters are the parts of us that react impulsively to put out the flames of emotional pain.
These are the parts of us that try to escape or avoid pain primarily through numbing. While in Ian's case, this led to drug and alcohol addiction, for many of us, these parts of us act out through binge-watching television, through scrolling social media, through a daily wine habit, through shopping, or even through fantasy. They do anything to escape or avoid pain.
Working with these parts of us, no matter what your go-to numbing behavior is, is often a recovery process. In fact, Ian really reframes addiction as a universal human struggle, as something every single one of us has to come to terms with.
Today we explore how the 12 steps can become a trellis or a structure to support growth and healing, no matter what we're facing. I loved this conversation. Ian is so real. He's so honest about his own story and his own setbacks and his insights are so wise, compassionate, and practical.
You can pick up a copy of The Fix, as well as the accompanying workbook, anywhere books are sold. We'll link to it in the show notes. I am thrilled to bring you my conversation with Ian Morgan Cron.
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Ian: Alison, I am so stoked. We did a podcast earlier this week when you were on my show, Typology, and I've read your books and I'm a fan. I so enjoyed our conversation a couple of days ago that I got up this morning like, I'm so stoked I'm going to see Alison today.
Alison Cook: I feel like there's this really cool thing where “coincidentally”, we have these back to back interviews. I read your book and I feel like you're an old friend that I've never met, because there's so much overlap. This book is really powerful. It's really hitting me in places..
There's so much I want to dive into, especially with this idea that we all in some way, shape, or form, are dealing with an addiction. So I want to go there, but would you start by sharing with us a little bit more of your story that you reveal a little bit in The Fix, for my listeners who maybe only know you through your work with the Enneagram or through your podcast? Tell us a little bit more about your story and what led to you writing this book.
Ian: Yeah. I've been a part of 12 step communities. I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and I have been a part of 12 step communities for about 35 years. Four years ago, following a relapse, I went to treatment. This was obviously a private thing, and I haven't spoken about it publicly over the last almost five years now.
But I have been so beautifully and profoundly transformed by working the 12 steps. I felt like I got to let people know, who maybe don't self-identify with alcoholics or substance use disorders or overeaters or gamblers or whatever. I wanted everyone to derive the same benefit from the 12 steps that I have, as a program for living that is completely consistent with the gospel.
And that could really change people who don't show up in church basements a couple of times a week, but could really get something from it.
Alison Cook: It's really powerful how you recast it as something for everyone. You're so real. That's what I love about the opening few chapters of this book. There's such a raw realness, when you describe yourself as that young boy, looking for anything to numb the pain. There isn't a quick fix. There isn't a workaround, but the 12 steps do offer a scaffolding to us.
Ian: Yes, in a way, the 12 steps are a rule of life. The Benedictines and other monastic traditions had a rule of life. And the word “rule" there actually means trellis, in the original language. The 12 steps are like a trellis on which we can grow. They offer some new ways of being in the world that can help us live more comfortably with ourselves and our own skins.
I also love talking about internal family systems, which I know is a big thing for you. One of the things that internal family systems has helped me to do is to really understand my journey with addiction and that, as you read in the book, traumatized, exiled part of me. It got activated again and it resorted to addiction. My firefighter, if you will, woke up and went, oh, I know, I have a solution.
Alison Cook: Read the book, listener, because it’s such great writing, but there's this moment where you describe visiting a doctor and I saw that part of you. It was like, wait a minute, Adderall, oh, ding, here's a new solution. After I don't know how many years of dormancy where you were in sobriety, that part of you, you could almost visualize that part of you coming to life.
So Ian, I’d love to try to walk through these steps and think about this lens of the different parts of us as we're walking through the steps. Before we dive into that, for all my listeners who maybe don't identify as a typical “addict”, where we think about drugs or alcohol, tell me a little bit about how addiction applies to all of us.
Ian: Yeah. So let me give you my definition of addiction. It's an amended version that I've taken from lots of sources, but an addiction is an unhealthy compulsive relationship with a person, a behavior, or a substance that has mood altering effects and negative consequences. So who doesn't have that?
It could be alcohol or drugs, but it could be people-pleasing. It could be shopping. It could be food. It could be gambling. It could be sex. It could be porn. We're not people who have one addiction. I like to laugh and say that I can't get up in the morning without getting out of bed and tripping over one of my many addictions,
Alison Cook: You can list all the different ways that we are resorting to something, to soothe pain instead of sitting with what's hard.
Ian: And the thing is, our firefighters have good intentions. I would say that my firefighter believes that there is an external solution to my internal problem. Of course that's like going to the hardware store to buy bread. You're going to the wrong place, man. Thank you. But no, thank you.
Alison Cook: Yes. All right. So this is great. We talk a lot about numbing, about those firefighters, and to me, these are the parts of us that reach for something to put out the flames of pain. They might not always show up in stereotypical ways. When I was reading your story about being in college and being two people, it was like, I'm going to Christian groups and then I'm partying with my frat brothers, you were really living this double life.
I was thinking I've described my own college years in that way. It's the double life. The things that I was doing to soothe pain were more “socially acceptable”, things I could keep hidden or maybe “Christian acceptable”--the incessant people-pleasing or workaholism.
But that's what we're talking about, these parts of us that want to put out those flames of pain that can become more overt addictions. We're all doing it in some way. So let's talk about that first step. What's that moment of recognizing something has to change?
Ian: The first step is really honesty. It's reaching this moment where we say, you know what, I've tried everything to overcome this behavior or this dysfunctional relationship like codependency or a substance. It helps me disassociate or get out of the pain that I'm feeling, but it's beginning to have significant negative consequences in my life.
And I can't seem to stop, no matter what I do. The admission that on my own unaided willpower, I can't stop this. I've tried, and my life's getting unmanageable. If that word feels weird to you, try intolerable, like it's not working and I need help. I always say that in some ways, the three most brave words a person can say is “I need help”.
Alison Cook: Yeah. So it's that real admission, that naming, of this is out of control. And it's not immediately rushing to fix it. Which is my go-to. Is that what we mean by surrender? That first, it's here and I actually can't fix it?
Ian: Yeah, in fact, you could bundle those first three steps as: Step one, I can't. Step two, God can. Step three, I'll let Him.
Alison Cook: Wow. Wow. Okay. I can't. God can. And then step three, I will cooperate. I will work with God.
Ian: Yeah. And the word I love, Alison, is consent. I feel like so much of the spiritual life is built on that idea of giving God consent to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And that's not easy. Because the will and the ego are pretty big forces, but basically to say, God, I give you consent to flood me with the grace necessary and the relationship with you that will render my addictive patterns unnecessary.
I love this prayer: God, help me to find in you what I look for in _____. So something like, God, help me to find in you what I look for in workaholism, or in achievement, or in perfection, or in Netflix, or in alcohol, or in porn, or in people-pleasing. Recognize that there are forces in our lives governing from the shadows that need our healing. And give God consent to rewire us.
Alison Cook: If we think about these first three steps, and you're going to get the deep dive in the book, but taking them in this way, is it something you then have to practice daily? Hourly?
Ian: Yeah. This is so good, Alison. You're a great interviewer. My sponsor, and for people who don't know, in 12 step communities, a sponsor is somebody who's been in the program longer than you and has worked the steps and helps you to do the same, walks you through them. They’re a great sounding board and counselor-advisor to you.
This guy's awesome. He's from East Tennessee, he's got a thick country accent. And he says stuff to me that's weirdly mystical sometimes, and I'm like, where did you get that? And he said to me, after you work these steps long enough, the numbers fall away.
And I thought, wow, he's right. In other words, yes, in the beginning you are very conscious of the order of the steps. I'm working step one. I'm working step two. I'm working step three. After you've been at it for a while, you discover that you're now reflexively living the principles of the program, all day, every day.
Sometimes it's very conscious. I could get up in the morning and say, boy, I admit that not only am I powerless over alcohol, but I am powerless over my fear of disappointing people. And it makes my life unmanageable today. And then I go to step two and I acknowledge that there's a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity.
Step three, I say, listen, God, I've made a decision to turn my will and my life over to your care. I trust that with my cooperation and consent, that you can remove this defective character from me so that I can be free. And I hope we circle around to my understanding of my inner architecture and how it has been influenced by internal family systems.
It has given me language and a construct for doing internal work, for giving God consent. Like, hey God, I got this firefighter inside. It's called people-pleasing. I don't want to disappoint people. And no matter how hard I've tried, I can't seem to get this part to accept the leadership of my essential self. Can you help restore me to sanity here?
I've created kind of a hybrid of internal family systems with my recovery work. And I'm telling you, it has been incredibly helpful and I need so much to thank you for the work you've done, because it has really helped me have clarity and language for talking about my healing.
Alison Cook: I love that. When you're saying that, what it reminds me of is one of the things we say in IFS work sometimes–we're trying to get a paper's width's distance from that part of us. Especially those firefighters, because if we can even name it to God, that this part of me is so active right now, that's putting that tiniest sliver of space between us and that part.
And there's power in that. We don't have to make it go away altogether. We've placed a tiny hair of distance there that gives us a little bit more agency.
Ian: I love that. And I love this idea because when I have blended with these parts of me, I'm so over-identified and consumed. And secondly, when that happens, when I say I've come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity, that to me is like that paper thin separation between my true self or my spirit led self and this other part.
It's, oh, there's a part of me that's not traumatized, that wasn't sexually abused as a kid, that wasn't affected by my dad's alcoholism and drug addiction, that is separate from the part of me that would seek to find a chemical solution to my problems. God placed that in me. I've come to believe that, and it's so helpful.
Alison Cook: It's like creating a little more inner awareness of other parts of you. So let's think about these first three steps. It sounds like what you're saying is that the first step is the acknowledgement of, I'm blended. This firefighter part of me is all that I am.
Ian: Yeah. And there are so many ways that we're powerless. You know what's so funny? There's an irony here. The moment you admit powerlessness, you're given a superpower. That's the strangest thing. Have you ever had a moment where you realized, I'm out of ammo?
Alison Cook: Yeah, totally. Totally.
Ian: You're like, I'm out of ammo. I've done everything. For those listening, if you're codependent, maybe over a kid that you can't get to stop drinking or drugging, or who has a behavior that you want to change and you realize, I've done everything, I've tried everything. And I am powerless.
What happens is this dilation in the chest sometimes, where everything finally relaxes. It's like all the parts go, finally, you've admitted what we've known all along.
Alison Cook: Yes. It's oddly a relief. It's not giving up. It's a very different energy–it's surrender, but it's very hard to describe. You said that so well. There's nothing more I can do.
Ian: What you described beautifully is the difference between surrender and resignation. Surrender is not resignation. People who are resigned to their life tend to be glum and resentful. I give up. We might even argue that's another part.
Alison Cook: Those are protector parts.
Ian: Yeah. When you surrender, especially when you surrender to a higher power, God as I understand Him, all the parts go, phew.
Alison Cook: Yes. You know what? It reminds me, as you're describing this, that giving up or resigning is a manager part that's actually trying to cope. Surrender is that true self. It's clarity. I actually don't have control. Our essential self from a Christian perspective understands and actually leads naturally to that step, because I'm not God, I'm not the ultimate power here.
Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Steve, my sponsor, one day said to me, Ian, we are well past any conversation about you fixing you.
Alison Cook: It's such a relief. It's such a paradox and I don't know why we fight so hard to fix ourselves, but it is such a relief. I love that. Okay. So those are the first three steps: I can't, God can, and then I consent, God. It's bending the knee in a way.
Ian: Yes, absolutely. So in a way we could say the 12 steps like this. One through three is about clarifying and mending our relationship with God. Four through six is about mending and clarifying our relationship with ourselves. Eight and nine are about mending and clarifying our relationship with others. And then ten through twelve is developing a lifestyle and a way of being in the world that supports ongoing health in each of those domains of our life.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's good.
Ian: When you get to four and five, four is a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Five is admitting to God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Now, some people read this and they're like, man, I don't want to go there. Yeah, those words are tough, man. I don't want to go there.
But I don't know anyone who's done a 4th and 5th step who has said anything other than, man, that was one of the most healing experiences of my life. So much of our work as therapists is making the unconscious conscious. What we do in this situation is, with a non-blaming gaze and with a non-judgmental compassionate spirit, we look inside and we take an inventory of ourselves. It should never be shaming, blaming, or unkind, but it needs to be rigorously honest.
When we make that inventory, we then go out and we admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Now, it sounds like hard language, I could reframe it in some different ways but it is really important. Johann Hari or Gabor Maté says that when you keep secrets about yourself, you are essentially at war with yourself. There's some truth in that, so we need to find a trusted other or a community where we can speak our truth.
Alison Cook: This is the one that's the hardest for me. You say it really clearly–it's being honest with ourselves, God, and another human. And I'm pretty vigorously honest with myself. I'm pretty vigorously honest with God. That other human is hard.
I imagine this could be different for different people. I'm curious for you, which one of those do you struggle with the most? One of the things I love about the 12 steps model is the sponsor, that safe person. A therapist can be that, but especially when you've been hurt by someone, it can be hard to trust others.
There are listeners who have been hurt in church settings with public confessions, where that's been used shamingly. So I feel a lot of tenderness toward folks where it's like, how do you find that trust? It’s really vulnerable when we're being really vigorously honest with ourselves and naming it to someone else.
Ian: Yeah. In the book and particularly in the workbook, I really help people through this. So for example, in the workbook, I have a sample letter that you can actually give someone that instructs them. You really do have to pick a trustworthy person. It shouldn't be your spouse, your partner, or one of your kids. It shouldn't be a friend.
Find a pastor or a therapist or somebody in your life that you know is safe. And if you don't have that person, that needs to be a separate conversation. Wow, I don't actually have a real friend like that.
It's really helpful if that person has been through this themselves in some way, had done a fifth step themselves, but there are instructions about how to do it. I get fairly granular in those two chapters to help people really think through who that person is. But I don't think you can skip this.
You can't decide, I'm going to stick to God and myself. It's really important. If you can't be vulnerable with your therapist, something's wrong.
Alison Cook: I love that. And I do want to let the listener know that the workbook is so practical. I'd never heard somebody say that so clearly as you say it, that it's probably not your spouse. And that makes sense, if you think about it, because some of the things we're really admitting, honestly, could be hurtful to the people we love.
There are different conversations one needs to have with a spouse or a best friend. But it really is the role of a pastor or a spiritual director sometimes. My mom is a really devout Catholic. I was raised in a mixed Catholic/evangelical home. And I envy the practice of confession.
Whatever we think about it theologically, it's a built in place to tell another human, this is what's actually happening in my heart. And that person has the capacity to hold that.
Ian: Yes. And James, of course, doesn't let us off the hook. Bill Wilson, who wrote the Twelve Steps, derives them from a Christian organization called the Oxford Movement. People need to know that. There's nothing in the Twelve Steps that is inconsistent or discontinuous with the teachings of Jesus, and they actually derive from a tradition that was very faithful and orthodox in its understanding of the human person and God.
James does say, confess your sins to one another that you might be healed. So it's not like the scriptures let us off the hook in this regard. Here's what people typically say. They'll say, I don't have to go to another human being to ask forgiveness–I can only receive that from God. And that's an anti-Catholic stance left over from centuries of Protestant problems.
But really, that person isn't going to forgive you. In the best setting, they're going to give you an assurance of pardon that you have already been given.
Alison Cook: That's right. And it’s embodied. It is so scriptural and the body of Christ matters.
Ian: Admit it to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. And by the way, you could decide that there are pieces of your fourth step inventory that you’re going to share with a friend, but you have five things on there to share with a therapist.
You have to exercise discernment, and be smart with it. As my sponsor likes to say, Ian, not everybody needs to know everything about you, but somebody needs to know everything.
Alison Cook: That's so good. It's really revolutionary. I've been interested and intrigued by the 12 steps for years, but this book really makes it accessible for all of us. It really makes it make sense for how it applies to all of us. It's so helpful. So let's keep going then. What's next?
We're doing this fearless moral inventory. We're really getting honest with God, ourselves, and at least one other human. Then what?
Ian: So after that we go to six and seven. What has come up in doing that fearless moral inventory of ourselves and sharing it with God and ourselves and other human beings are some character defects, like we realize, okay I struggle with resentment with so and so. It's because I'm envious of them. That's the real reason.
For me, I had to realize that after an episode of sexual abuse when I was about nine years old, that even though there was nothing I did wrong, I built my identity in some ways around that experience and I used it as playing the victim card. That was my part in it. You know what I mean?
After the fact, not the actual event, but after the fact. One of my character defects is playing the victim card sometimes. “Character defects” always put me off when I first heard it because it's like, I'm already ashamed enough. I don't really need to be told it's my defect. I am defective. I don't like the word.
So sometimes I call it a character defense. These are things that I came up with. These were strategies a part of me came up with to explain my experience to myself and to others. And all of my worst behaviors in life are usually driven by a part of me that came up with a strategy that is maladaptive or doesn't work.
And that gives me a little bit more compassion and understanding for those character issues that keep dogging me. So in step six, we're entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. That's six. And then we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings in step seven.
Now, super important. This is all about humility. It's recognizing, I can't get rid of these on my own. In fact, God doesn't even want me to take on that responsibility. Most people hear those steps and they go, I'm entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. What we end up doing is trying to do it on our own with our own unaided willpower. And it doesn't work. It's an exercise in futility.
Alison Cook: So Ian, for a second, let's think about this from an IFS lens, because I'm thinking about removing character defects. You've said something so important–when there's trauma in the background, and a part of you has coped with a very real trauma that wasn't your fault, if we think about parts language and defects, I hear you saying in these steps, we're revealing the strategy that a part picked up that was not helpful, but we don't want to get rid of the part.
We want that part to unburden that poor coping strategy, that unhealthy coping strategy, so that it can be restored to its healthy, whole, and proper state.
Ian: Okay. You're so killer. I love this. Number one, what I love about the 12 steps is that they're so beautifully written and framed. Bill Wilson, who authored them, used to say, these are suggestions. And there's no single right way to do the steps. It’s very open ended and kind.
One of the things that we can do is blend it with IFS and look at it through that lens. You could say that this part of me came up with the idea that if I play the victim card, I can leverage this painful experience and use it to manipulate others to feel sorry for me and not ask too much of me.
And then say, God, can you humbly remove our shortcomings? Step seven. Can you help this part of me unburden itself so that it no longer has to rely on that strategy to help me get through life?
Alison Cook: Yeah, I love that. And that sounds like a very young part that's trying to cope. What might that part become if it can get rid of that strategy? It doesn't need that strategy any longer.
Ian: Yes, exactly. And I always remind people this might take a minute. Bill Wilson says, we are not saints. The point is, we are trying to live along spiritual lines. We live by the principle of progress, not perfection.
Alison Cook: That’s good. Yeah, that's beautiful. It's the slow work.
Ian: Isn't that beautiful? There's a prayer by Teilhard de Chardin, the great Catholic theologian and thinker. He opens one of his most beautiful prayers with the line: Above all, trust in the slow work of God. Isn't that beautiful?
Alison Cook: Yes. I love that. It's so beautiful when you think about that overlay of getting to that step, and then God being so excited to meet that part that picked up that strategy and shine the mirror, but so gently and lovingly inviting that part to release that. It's just, wow. Why wouldn't we want to do this every day?
Ian: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when you get to eight and nine, right now we've dealt with self. Now, we move into others. Eight is, make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all. It's a really simple step.
It's just, I'm going to make a list of people I've harmed in my life as either a direct result of my addiction or addictive pattern, and then make direct amends to those people wherever possible. It's not always possible. Sometimes the person is dead. Sometimes we don't know where that person is now and can't find them. And we don't do it when it would hurt them, if our sharing with them something that we did would actually cause more pain than be of service to them.
But again, could this be any more scriptural? It's when you go to the temple and you realize that you've harmed somebody. Before you do another thing, run out, fix that, and then come back. This is a difficult pair of steps, but so many people carry the burden of unprocessed or unconscious resentment and hurt.
And if they can be agents of reconciliation in the world again, what we're doing here isn't just healing our relationship with them. It's also unburdening ourselves of shame and guilt and unresolved brokenness in relationships. Again, these steps can take time. We don't have to rush this. You're not in a race against yourself. But it's helpful to have a plan, because most people don't have a plan for transformation.
Alison Cook: It's so good. And I love what you're saying about not rushing it. That's the willpower part of us that wants to power through right there. You might get to that point where you need to be like, I can't do it. God. Back to step one: I can't. I can't do it. I'm not there yet. The radical honesty.
Ian: Yeah. I write about this idea that I call the “Hell no, I'm never going to make up to that schmuck” list. And those are the four or five people in my life who I would rather eat glass than make amends with. You know what I mean?
Alison Cook: I love the book. There's a lot of honesty in it.
Ian: Seriously, like I've got people in my life that I feel have hurt me much worse than I ever hurt them. You think I'm going to go and make amends? And yet the steps are like, listen, pal, all you have to do is clean your side of the street. That's it. Clean your side of the street.
They may not cop to what they did wrong in the relationship, but you need to cop to what you did. And you will come out, by the way, unburdened by shame and guilt and the feeling of something being left outstanding. When that happens, the likelihood of you returning to old addictive patterns is going to be infinitely less.
Alison Cook: That’s so good. And it doesn't mean you have to become best friends with them.
Ian: Heck no.
Alison Cook: It means you're taking care of your side of the street. Yeah. One of the things in IFS work, when you have a part that's holding on to something, maybe the person's no longer with us, or maybe it's somebody toxic that it wouldn't be wise to go to, we do some visualizations.
It might be the case where you've told a therapist, you've told someone, but then in the quiet of your own spirit, you're still releasing that resentment in some way, shape, or form. And in such a healthy way.
Ian: I talk about some practices people can do to soften their hearts towards those people who we need to make amends with, because sometimes it's important before we make amends to actually have forgiven the person for what they did to us. We don't go into that conversation with some passive aggressive energy that wants to say, I did this, but you did that.
How do I really understand that this person has broken parts too? Bill Wilson says they are sick too, and they need the same love and tolerance that we would offer a friend who was sick. I find that to be so beautiful.
Alison Cook: I feel like after this interview, I'm going to go do a bunch of journaling because I can feel it. There are those places in my own heart. Everything you're saying–this is a lifetime's work. This is ongoing work, layer upon layer. I really hear that. It takes time.
Ian: Yeah. And everybody goes at their own pace. For some people they go through the steps for the first time really quickly, and they're students of it. Now remember, some people come in on fire. They get to work. They have to remove the obstacles to achieve what I would call physical and emotional sobriety.
You and I could have a long conversation about emotional sobriety, like what that means, because through the lens of IFS, we are talking about achieving emotional and spiritual sobriety. Maybe we could talk about emotional sobriety as inhabiting and living out of our Spirit-led self and having a conscious awareness of its presence in our lives.
I was actually thinking about this in a meeting this morning. So much of steps work is about activating and bringing into our awareness the Spirit-led self and operating from there more and more. These steps help to support that journey in a way that's really great.
Step 10 is continuing to take personal inventory and promptly admitting when we're wrong. It's owning your stuff every day. It's pausing to go back after a snappy moment with your partner and say, you know what? I wasn't my best self then. This part of me was upset, and I'm sorry, or I ask your forgiveness for not coming from a healthier place then.
Alison Cook: Yeah. So the daily work.
Ian: The daily work. And then step 11 is about seeking through prayer and meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God. Then the final step is, and this is big, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to our fellow sufferers.
To practice these principles in all our affairs. That is the point of the 12 steps. The point of the 12 steps is not to get you to stop drinking or taking drugs or watch porn or any of the crazy strategies we come up with to deal with our pain. It's actually to have a spiritual awakening.
That's the whole purpose. That is the stated purpose of the 12 steps. Bill Wilson would have said, to have a spiritual awakening that now renders your need for these strategies unnecessary.
Alison Cook: That's amazing.
Ian: Yeah. And then to carry that message of hope to other people.
Alison Cook: Which is what you're doing. When you said that step, to carry it to fellow sufferers, that's what I felt as I dug into your book this week. I thought, oh, you're doing that. You're giving it out of your own suffering, which has not been insignificant.
You're bringing it to others. And isn't that the beauty of the upside down gospel? I love that idea of carrying it to others and bringing that freedom to others. I want to sidetrack into what you said about emotional sobriety, because it reminds me of what you asked me when you interviewed me, about the goal of this work of IFS, and I said, “harmony”.
It's balancing all of the different states inside of us in a way that allows for the existence of different parts, but creates a melody. It's where that Spirit-led self is leading. When you say sobriety, it reminds me of that.
We'll have to have another conversation because I feel like you and I could do a whole other deep dive around this, but that's a really beautiful thought. I'm going to keep thinking about that emotional sobriety.
Ian: There's a term I love, and I can't believe I've never heard a sermon on it. It's a word that the Buddhists use. I am a Christian, but I have learned a lot from Buddhists about different things, and I'm a critical thinker, so I'm able to go, oh. That illuminates the gospel in a way I haven't heard before.
Equanimity. I would define it as the ability to maintain emotional balance and wholeness in the face of whatever life throws at you.
Alison Cook: That's it. That's the word. Equanimity. Yeah. It's not doing away with the complexity–it's leading yourself through it without losing yourself, without losing connection to God, to the Holy Spirit. That's really beautiful work.
I want to ask you as we close, I ask all my guests two questions. What would you say to that younger you who picked up some of the unhelpful strategies? What would you want him to know if you could be with him now?
Ian: You know what? I was at a conference a couple of years ago and someone was doing a Q&A with me. I was on stage and this person said, what would you tell your 10 year old self? And when something comes out of your mouth before you can edit it, you're having an out of body experience. You're like, did I say that?
I said, “you are not what happened to you”. I'm actually getting a little puddly right now when I say it, because we tend to over-identify with what happened to us in our histories. We assign it a level of truth and meaning that it doesn't deserve. And then we become strangely loyal to that interpretation of our history.
It took me a long time, and the steps really helped, to realize that I am not what happened to me, so that is something I would definitely tell my younger self.
Alison Cook: That's beautiful. What's bringing out the best of you right now?
Ian: Hmm. I guess a convenient answer would be to say the 12 steps, and get my book! But they do continue to bring out the best of me, by working them every day. I can also say my wife is bringing out the best of me. I've been married for 38 years.
We've been through a lot together and we've reached a point in our relationship where there's a beautiful, comfortable companionship and friendship. We dance well together, and also we're very different. I'm a complex artist-type and all that stuff. And she's a beautiful peacemaker type.
She loves to plant sunflowers and make meals and go to yoga and live her life very peaceably. I used to look at her like, okay, this is boring. And I realized one day that it’s an aspect of God that's being revealed to me. She's my teacher.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Tell everyone where they can find your book, the workbook and your work.
Ian: Yeah. Thanks so much. The book is called The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone In Between. We have an interesting offer right now. If you pre-order, it doesn't drop until January 28th, but if you pre-order now, we'll send a free copy of chapter one.
The way to do that is to go to ianmorgancron.com/getyourdownload. And we'll tell you how to show proof that you preordered it, and then we'll send you a link to read the first chapter so you can get a head start on it.
Alison Cook: It's well worth it. You won't be able to put it down. Please take advantage of that. This is such a good book. I would say right now, reading it is bringing out the best in me. It's been a real answer to prayer that is helping me work through some of the things in my own life.
That structure, like you said, that scaffolding, is so helpful. I'm so grateful for you and for the fact that you're sharing this with fellow sufferers.
Ian: Alison, dare I say, I hope one day we get an opportunity to make good trouble together. It would be so fun to do a gathering of people around internal family systems and addictions together and to help people find the next step in their journey toward disentangling themselves from the things that they feel powerless to do anything about.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I sense a real invitation there. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Ian.
Ian: Thanks, Alison.