Dear Souls & Hearts Member,
Things don’t always go according to plan. I was planning for this reflection to offer you my mission statement – but what I found was that over the last four weeks, I have focused in again on my personal vision statement. We introduced vision statements in the first reflection of this series, from July 22, 2024 titled Your vision, mission, and values and went into them more deeply in the August 12, 2024 reflection titled Writing your personal vision statement as a Catholic, and then we did an online Zoom workshop on it titled Writing your Personal Vision Statement (the audio only here).
In the second reflection, I shared with you my vision statement – “I will be Love” – modeled after St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower in her autobiography, Story of a Soul on page 194.
But in the last month, there was a sort of itchiness about my vision statement for me – my different parts started offering critiques, additions, sharing how, while they liked the vision statement, they were less than fully satisfied with it. Could there not be improvements made? So, in prayer and in reflection with my parts, the following themes emerged.
New ideas to amplify the vision statement
First, a former exiled part, who now is my Lover part wanted there to be a temporal dimension to the vision statement. My Evaluator part (formerly my inner critic manager) agreed that it would be good to specify when I will be love, as that part has noticed times of the day when I am much less loving and farther from my vision of becoming love – late afternoon, for example. My inconsistencies in loving across time were also troubling to my Collaborator part – my former do-it-myself, driving manager. Other parts chimed in.
Below is a rough approximation of a hyper-condensed inner conversation among my parts – each one initially named and identified by his color in my parts journal. [As an aside, if you want to know more about my parts, check out episode 71 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast titled A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others where I discuss 10 of my parts in some depth.]
- Lover: I want to become love all the time. Not just some of the time. All the time. We can get very far from looking anything like love all the time.
- Evaluator: Lover has a point. We are more likely to fail at loving in the late afternoons. We really should work on that. Or when we are tired. Or when we are away from home on trips, outside our routine. Or when we are sick.
- Adventurer: Or when we are afraid.
- Little One: Or when something touches the unresolved inadequacy I carry – it’s very difficult to even think about loving anyone else if I am struggling all alone with the burden of shame.
- Good Boy: I want to love all the time. We are called to love all the time. In every moment. I don’t just want to make repeated acts of love. I want to hold a constant position or attitude of love. I’m with Lover on this. I want to possess the virtue of Charity so that it comes naturally.
- Collaborator: I am all on board. Let’s do it! I’ll draft our revised vision statement now…
- Guardian: Hold up. Hang on a minute. Let’s slow this down. It sounds exhausting. Draining. You all don’t know what you are asking for.
- Challenger: You know when we’ve tried this before – these high, lofty goals of loving all the time, all that business, we’ve wound up burned out and actually loving less. Because when we burn out, we act out. Just sayin’…And you know it’s true, boys. Don’t try to tell me you don’t. [At this point, Challenger lists several clear examples of my failures to love].
- Good Boy: That’s because we were trying to love using our own strength. It’s different if God is loving with us, through us.
- Playful One: It feels heavy. Love is an act of the will. Grinding out the loving every moment. Life-sucking. Can’t we just have fun sometimes?
- Feisty part: Listen, boys. I hold the burden of anger when we burn out. All those examples – or most of them anyway – are fueled by anger. And why do I get angry? Because in all this hyperactive “loving,” building castles in the air, you high-flying, levitating spiritual managers crap all over us here down below, who have to deal with the fallout. You don’t include us. If you included us in the all the loving, and we felt it, that would be a different story. You spiritual managers make the promises and bask in the good feelings, and we parts below carry the crosses. It’s hypocritical. Charity should begin at home. We need to love ourselves, too.
- Guardian: Hear him! What Feisty says!
- Challenger: Ignoring our own parts in loving is a recipe for internal rebellion.
- Evaluator: And St. Thomas Aquinas emphasizes how ordered self-love is indispensable in loving our neighbor – he says you can’t love your neighbor more than you love yourself…
- Good Boy: But if we include all our parts, then it might be possible for us envision loving all the time? You all might be open to it?
- Creative one: We can find a way to make that happen…
My innermost self was involved, working with each part about concerns, and in the end, all parts agreed, with the caveat that in becoming love in every moment, that we would not neglect to love ourselves in an ordered and appropriate way. There still would be sacrifices, a need for self-denial, crosses, and the like, but Guardian, Challenger, and Feisty needed to be reassured that they would not go unloved in the effort to become love all the time. It was also important to state clearly that no part had to bear any crosses or handle any sacrifices alone.
So after several rounds of consultation, after much conversation with God and Mother Mary in prayer, the modified vision statement became:
I will become love in every moment.
But there was still unfinished business. We had to get the whole system included; that was a promise made in the previous round of deliberations that no part would be left out, left behind, neglected, or abandoned. Parts were fascinated by the idea of sharing in the loving – God, my neighbor, and myself, in all my parts. Around this time, I did an episode with Tammy Sollenberger on The One Inside podcast titled Loving With Your Parts.
So we considered adding “with all my parts.” But that felt a little clunky, and it didn’t include the innermost self. Nor did it include the rest of me.
Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS, has a simple formula to define a human person. He states that:
A human being = Self + Parts + Body
But many of us Catholic IFS professionals see it differently; it’s more complex. For example, here’s the diagram of the self from Dr. Gerry’s book From Gerry Crete’s 2024 Book published by Sophia Press, Litanies of the Heart: Relieving Post-Traumatic Stress and Calming Anxiety through Healing Our Parts.
As you can see, there are all kinds of elements that make up a person beyond the body, the innermost self, and the parts – the intellect, will, memory, and other faculties; the passions, virtues, appetites, the conscience, and so on that are not exclusively possessed by any single part or the innermost self.
So adding “with all my parts” wasn’t going to cut it. We needed to capture the totality of me, so after deliberation, we came up with another “in” statement. We had added “in every moment” – now we added “in all my being.” That means that the love includes my will, my intellect, my body, every fiber, every element of my being.
And “in all my being” was more important that “in every moment” to my parts, so it came before, yielding this revised vision statement:
I will become love in all my being, in every moment.
And parts were content. Satisfied. Pleased with it.
For a little while.
Then the itchiness came back. And it was Lover, again, who started off the next round of debates.
- Lover: This vision statement seems very much just about our system. Our system is the only one mentioned. As if I, by myself, can become love.
- Guardian: Which is ridiculous. And dangerous to attempt.
- Good Boy: Yeah, where is God with all of this?
- Collaborator: Well, God is Love.
- Evaluator: Not clear enough. Are we all at the point where we can bring God in? Any objections? [General assent among the parts that we can bring God in]
- Adventurer: Oooh, this is getting better.
- Little One: We don’t have to love all by ourselves. Because we suck at that.
- Guardian: Hear him! What Little One says!
- Challenger: This is exactly what we need to bring clarity to the vision. We are not trying to love alone. We are loving with God. He makes up for our defects.
- Creative one: We are loving in union with God. There’s the third “in.”
- Evaluator: That’s it. That captures it. In union with God.
- Good Boy: And that is primary. Let’s put it first.
And so the next draft read:
I will become love in union with God, in all my being, in every moment.
But the discussion continued:
- Good Boy: We are we talking about God, and not to God? Can we make this a prayer as well as a mission statement? Any concerns or objections from any of us parts? [A general consent to explore this].
- Creative one: How about it reading “in union with You,” instead. Capital Y for you in God, just to keep it all legit…
- Collaborator: Nailed it.
- Lover: That’s much more personal. I’m in for this.
- Guardian: This makes a lot more sense. We are loving in union with God. The love flows from God through us, to others or back to God. We don’t have to generate love by our own might and main.
- Challenger: I am much more comfortable with this.
- Adventurer: Oooh, this is getting better and better…
- Little One: We can share in God’s love. Your love, God. That makes all the difference.
- Playful One: That takes a lot of pressure off us. We can play in God’s love, not in the grim, teeth-clenched willed love that Good Boy has put us through in the past.
So, after more deliberation under the leadership of my innermost self and through prayer and conversation with God and Mary, the final version read:
I will become love in union with You, in all my being, in every moment.
But wait, there’s more…
It turned out that because the final version, with the three “ins” added over time was very easy to remember, even though it was much longer than the original four-word vision statement.
And I decided, in consultation with all my parts to add this rider – it’s not part of my personal vision statement proper, but it augments and fills it out a bit – and it’s addressed to the three Persons of the Trinity in prayer:
Abide in me, let’s love each other together, let’s love my neighbor together, and let’s love ourselves together.
This little accompanying rider prayer hammers home Lover’s insistence on union and togetherness, which is important in my system, because my parts have a long history of trying to love my neighbor without God, and trying to love God without God.
And for the past few weeks, I’ve started my morning prayer with reviewing this personal vision statement and the rider prayer for good length of time. It’s starting to sink in, I think new neuronal networks are developing in my brain to hold on to this vision, even under stress.
Checking in with my parts
Just as an aside, I reviewed this reflection with my parts to see if they all thought it represented them fairly and accurately; I made a few changes to tighten it up and all my parts are good with this version. Remember though, the conversation I presented among parts is condensed down to the bare bones, the most essential aspects of the conversation, which took hours over months.
A new starting place
And next time, we will address something that I should have started with, before even addressing vision statements, and that is identity. Why? Because your vision is dependent on your identity, and your sense of God’s identity. So, better late than never, we are sailing into the waters of identity next.
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The Resilient Catholics Community is open for four more days for the St. Ignatius cohort…
Do you want to connect in conversation with your own parts, and find interior integration, internal cooperation, and experience all your parts collaborating under the leadership and guidance of your innermost self?
Come and flourish with us, seeking the three great loves within the two Great Commandments – loving God, your neighbor and yourself – with all your being, including all your parts. So that you can love wholeheartedly.
Informed by Internal Family Systems and grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person, the RCC provides a step-by-step, structured year-long program to guide you through connecting with your parts in love.
You’ll begin by taking the PartsFinder Pro (PFP), which is designed to help you identify 10-15 of your parts, and their interrelationships inside of you – check out these downloadable PDF sample reports for a man and a woman. And when you graduate, you’ll take the PFP again and receiving a report laying out progress in different domains in detail.
Check out our recent Q&A about the RCC in audio here or in video. Experience our 19-minute experiential exercise to help you discern about applying to the RCC.
And need-based financial aid is available for the RCC – check with Pam Malinoski at office@soulsandhearts.com for a scholarship application.
Last call for the Formation for Formator Community
Catholic therapists, spiritual directors, coaches, and others who accompany others in their formation: You can’t lead someone where you are unwilling to go yourself.
So often, the greatest obstacle to deeply connecting with those we accompany is within our own hearts – unresolved conflicts among our parts. When formators lose a sense of peace, when they become agitated, when those they accompany get under their skin one way or another – what’s happening is that the unresolved issues of the formator are being activated. No one whom they accompany can rob a formator of his or her peace and sense of well-being.
Formators need to work through their own human formation issues, in order to more effectively be able to accompany others over similar ground. And you need to love yourself before you can deeply love anyone else, as Dr. Peter explains in this reflection.
We are now registering formators for our Spring 2025 Foundations Experiential Groups. No previous IFS training is necessary to participate in FEGs. Check out our informational meeting from last week on video or audio for the answers to so many questions.
Registration for formators for our Spring 2025 Foundations Experiential Groups is still open; some groups have filled, but others still have space. These groups start next month, are lead by Catholic, IFS-trained practitioners, and are limited to nine participants. No previous IFS training is necessary to participate in FEGs. Check out our informational meeting from last week on video or audio for the answers to so many questions. Find out more here and go here for registration. FEGs that still have space:
- FEG with Dr. Peter Martin: 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesdays, beginning on March 12, 2025. (one open seat left)
- FEG with Abby Roos: 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Eastern time on Fridays, beginning on March 14, 2025. (a few open seats left)
And need-based financial aid is available for the FFF – check with Pam Malinoski at office@soulsandhearts.com for an application.
New Interior Integration for Catholics podcast episode released:
Check out IIC episode 160 titled Your Parts Have These Six Attachment Needs (97 minutes) Video Audio PDF Transcript.
Here’s the description:
Feeling safe. Feeling seen and heard. Feeling reassured, soothed. Feeling cherished and delighted in. Feeling loved. Feeling that I belong. We all have these six attachment needs. But how do our parts experience these needs? Which kinds of parts have which kinds of attachment styles? How can I recognize which attachment needs different parts of me have? Where do I start in helping a part of me who is struggling with unmet attachment needs and an insecure attachment style? Catholic IFS therapists Marion Moreland and Peter Martin join me to discuss and answer these questions in depth. And, as a bonus, I offer you an experiential exercise to help you get in touch with your parts’ attachment needs and find the “next right step” in meeting them.
This is the fourth in our Deep Dive in 2025 to Catholic Parts Work, which has been very popular. And good news! We reached 1000+ subscribers to our InteriorIntegration4Catholics YouTube Channel, allowing us to reach even more souls and hearts! Thank you to all who have viewed, listened, liked, subscribed, and engaged with our episodes.
Conversation Hours
I’d like to connect with you! You are invited to call me on my cell (317.567.9594) any Tuesday or Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM to discuss anything in these semimonthly reflections or in the IIC podcast, or to discuss our communities, the RCC and the FFF.
Pray for us
We need your prayers. Please pray for us, that we be good stewards of what God has given us, and that we can provide you with more of what you need for your human formation, grounded in the perennial truths of our Catholic faith. Thank you.
Warm regards in Christ and His Mother,
Dr. Peter