Self-Retrieval
If you listen to podcasts, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard Dr. Gabor Maté through your headphones this week: It’s been thrilling to see him truly everywhere as he brings his latest, incredible book, The Myth of Normal to the world. I read this book in April, on Spring Break with my kids. While it might not seem like the sort of book you’d inhale on a beach, that I did: I read it in a day, covered in towels to protect myself from the sun, amassing 15-pages of single-spaced, typed notes in the process. I’ve been holding my breath, waiting for this book to come out so we can all discuss, ever since. Gabor and I touched on a few of the book’s salient points in this week’s episode of Pulling the Thread, though I could spend many hours working through the material with him.
There’s one short sentence in the book in particular that captured my attention, and I haven’t been able to let it go. Gabor writes: “Nor is ‘healing’ synonymous with ‘self-improvement.’ Closer to the mark would be to say it is self-retrieval.” On the podcast Gabor explained that soul-retrieval is a core Indigenous practice; self-retrieval feels adjacent but slightly different, moored in the physical and emotional rather than spiritual plane. (Although yes, one could argue it’s both/all.) It feels like a concrete action—however difficult—rather than something nebulous like achieving an idea of “wellness,” our current culture’s woefully inadequate word. Self-retrieval feels closer to returning to wholeness, a path that Martha Beck delineates in The Way of Integrity. (See below for more information on that podcast episode.)
Recovering the self feels top-of-mind, too, because I had the pleasure of interviewing Richard Schwartz, PhD this week, the creator of Internal Family Systems. While I’ve interviewed him before, this episode (coming this fall) was different: Halfway through, he asked me if I wanted to do some work together, and we went into an impromptu session where I fetched a “part” of myself, an exile, from a cold, dark basement, where I had abandoned her when I was eight.
In No Bad Parts, Schwartz explains that we are not mono-minds—this is a myth. Instead, we are made up of many different parts: These are the conversations that we hear in our heads, the voices that debate our decisions, our value, or react when scared and young parts of us are triggered. (In his model, these burdened exiles are protected by managers and firefighters—and none of them are “bad.”) As he writes, “We often find that the harder we try to get rid of emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become. This is because parts, like people, fight back against being shamed or exiled. And if we do succeed in dominating them with punitive self-discipline, we then become tyrannized by the rigid, controlling inner drill sergeant. We might be disciplined, but we’re not much fun. And because the exiled (bingeing, raging, hypersexual, etc.) parts will seize any momentary weakness to break out again and take over, we have to constantly be on guard against any people or situations that might trigger those parts.”
It’s a very powerful system that coordinates beautifully with the work of people like Dr. Gabor Maté. (You can find an IFS-trained therapist—I highly recommend.) Because one of the most powerful parts of The Myth of Normal is when he discusses the pull, throughout our lives, but most harmfully when we’re children, between authenticity and attachment. This is that conundrum of being yourself, and living in fear of the possible reality that you as yourself will cause you to lose the affection and attention of those you love and need. When we’re children, we exile those parts of ourselves that threaten our attachments—and then we spend our lives in desperate need of self-retrieval.
Before I go, I wanted to leave you with the six questions that Gabor asks in workshops. This is a powerful process of self-inquiry that might just make you cry.
In my life’s important areas, what am I not saying no to?
How does my inability to say no impact my life?
What bodily signals have I been overlooking? What symptoms have I been ignoring that could be warning signs, were I to pay conscious attention?
What is the hidden story behind my inability to say no?
Where did I learn these stories?
Where have I ignored or denied the “yes” that wanted to be said?
Thanks for reading.
P.S. A few of you reached out that you felt judged by Gabor when he talked about sleep training—I haven’t talked to him about this, so I’m projecting what I think he would say, but the larger thesis of the book is that our culture is toxic, and it trickles down to inform the way we must behave to survive. This push to “hack parenting” or use data as our guiding principle for getting through days with our kids makes sense in our society where we there is zero support for parents, particularly mothers. Of course we’re exhausted, sleep-deprived and in search of short-cuts. The onus is not just on parents to change society, it’s on all of us.