IIC 156: Attachment, Love, God, and Parts: Q&A with Dr. Peter Martin

Dr. Peter: [00:00:00] In this podcast, we have to talk about attachment. We have to talk about safe havens, secure bases. We have to talk about love. Love is so central to our Catholic faith. The two great commandments, loving God, loving your neighbor, loving yourself, especially in your parts. And we’ve got to talk about parts. We have to discuss the problematic, distorted God images that parts hold onto, and we have to talk about how to connect those parts of us with God, who is Love. You know, these parts of us who are the lost sheep within us, our inner lepers, our inner tax collectors, the blind parts of us, the lame parts of us, the parts that are outcast, our exiles. How do we bring these parts into relationship with the three persons of the Trinity? How do we bring these parts into relationship with our mother Mary? And how do we use spiritual intercessors or spiritual confidants? We have to talk about personal formation, especially human formation, and we have to talk about everything from the last two episodes, episode 154 and 155, where Dr. Peter Martin was sharing his wisdom and his clinical experience. Just want to let you know, for those that are tuning in by audio, we are on YouTube now. Our channel is Interior Integration 4 Catholics. Engage with us there, subscribe to our channel, like this episode and ask questions and let us know what you think in the comment section of this episode on YouTube.

Dr. Peter: [00:01:32] Now, as I said, we have to get your questions answered and I am so glad that we have a live audience as we record this episode. This is episode 156 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, and it’s titled Attachment, Love, God and Parts: Q&A with Dr. Peter Martin. It releases on December 16th, 2024. I’m Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, and I am so glad to be with you. I’m a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, a writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, most of all, I am a beloved little son of God. That’s my primary identity, as a beloved little son of God. And I’m a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to taste and see the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God your father, and also Mary your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little son or daughter of God and Mary.

Dr. Peter: [00:02:41] And that is what this podcast is all about. That is what this episode is all about. And to bring that about, to live out this mission, I bring you new ways of understanding yourself, fresh conceptualizations informed by the best of human formation resources, by the best of psychology, always grounded in the authoritative teachings of our Catholic Church. This is our last episode of the year, the last episode of 2024, and it’s the last podcast episode in our 24-episode series on integrated personal formation. We started way back in episode 133 with Dr. Matthew Walz, and we’re finishing it today with Dr. Peter Martin. So let’s get to it. Dr. Peter Martin, it is so good, so good to have you back in this episode. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on intros in this episode. We did a lot of that in the last two episodes, but I do want to know if there’s anything from the previous two episodes, 154, 155. Anything that you wanted to mention, that you wanted to highlight, or maybe something that you wanted to restate or to emphasize or to add. So anything like that, as you are back with us today.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:04:04] I want to thank you, Peter, for having me in this three-part series, just to start off. You’ve been so gracious with your time and energy and questions and everything, and I’m excited to be with everybody here too. So it’s wonderful to be present to all of you. To answer your question, yeah, there are a number of points. I think it’s going to be less about new points and more about kind of restating the old, like going back to the original ones and really re-emphasizing things. I want to begin just by saying all human formation, which is the point of this series, all human formation has to be not just theocentric, not just God-centric, but Christo-centric. And by saying that, I’m saying Trinitarian-centric. You can imagine maybe how, let’s say a Jewish formator, might form someone in their formation program, or an Islamic formator or a Buddhist formator. How different to this whole picture of formation, how different is it because of Christ? I think it changes many things. Number one, it emphasizes the essential nature of the Trinity. So ultimate reality is communal. Ultimate reality is relational. And if we image that ultimate reality, if we’re image bearers of it, then what does that say about the way we relate to not only God and others, but also to ourselves? How does that look? I’m reminded of that quote from C.S. Lewis where he says, “I believe that the sun has risen not just because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:05:36] And so that’s what is the lens, I think, the paradigm of looking at human formation or any type of formation as a human person. So I think that would be the first thing to say, just to really emphasize the Christo-centric nature. We don’t know God without Christ. We don’t fully understand him without Christ’s revelation. We don’t know ourselves and our humanity without knowing the divine person who is Christ. And we definitely don’t know others. And I say that not only because of the great commandments, the two great commandments, and the three loves. But I say that because psychology is saying over and over that mental health and maturation is very much an emphasis on knowing what’s going on inside of you, knowing what’s going on inside of another person, that mentalization or reflective capacity. So I just wanted to start with that. The kind of confluence, let’s say, or the sinking of these different schools of thought, theology and psychology. The other thing I would say is when we look at spiritual intercessors, that’s kind of the language I’ve landed on so far, Peter. I think in the past I called it resource figures. I think intercessors describes it better. We have varied reactions to them. So when we say I love God, that can be a very complicated thing because God is triune and my attachment reactions to each of the persons of the Trinity can vary widely based on my history with parents in particular.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:07:05] So if it’s not safe to go to the Father directly, let’s say, I can go to the Son and I can go to the Holy Spirit. I can go to the persons of the Trinity, other persons of the Trinity. I can go to saints. I can go to angels. Of course, the Blessed Mother, primarily, of all the saints. And one other thing about that first podcast, human formation strongly impacts so much of the rest of our phenomenological experience. It affects our spiritual lives at a great level. I’m reminded of, we had mentioned on the first podcast with you. I can’t remember the number exactly, but with Paul Vitz and how his research on famous atheists in his book Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. And when he studied Sartre and Nietzsche and Freud and Skinner and all these famous atheists, he found this dysfunctional father hypothesis he developed. And in that the fathers were basically either emotionally or physically distant and sometimes abusive. And then this gets projected onto God. That’s a human formation issue that very much resulted in a defiance of God, if not an outright denial of him. And then also the God pyramid, that we would love to have all of our experiences and our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors as close to who God is and as godlike as possible.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:08:26] But that’s not what we get in the clinic. That’s not how my life is. And what we find is that who God is and who we are called to be, we have this discrepancy between what we would like to be and who we are, that the way we experience God oftentimes is much further away from the reality of God than the way we doctrinally understand him. And that’s what I’m really fascinated in. I know you are, too, Peter, with the God image and the distortions and the heresies, I think you call them. So those are really essential. I think it’s an effect of the fall, but I also think it’s an effect of being finite. So I think it’s important to kind of be patient with yourself in your journey, in your spiritual life. Now when it comes to working with parts, as we shift into the internal world of parts, each part has a unique history and each part has a unique history when it comes to figures that represent Christ to them, or represent the Father or Mary. And so we have to go into our spiritual life with a great reverence and respect for those reactions that the parts have. Knowing that, if we can find a spiritual intercessor that the parts feel safe with, that the person in general feels safe with, I have found that IFS parts work generally goes smoother.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:09:44] I’m thinking of two ways. One is how the intercessor can actually enhance every step of the IFS process. If the part is open to it, and if the protector parts are open to it, it adds some level of self-energy to you in IFS language. We might say it adds life and love or grace to the picture a little bit more deeply, but it makes the process of parts work better. And then one final thing. I think the spiritual bypass is a major concern for a lot of people, for a number of people that I work with. Anyway, we’ve talked about the ARRR prayer and how the spiritual bypass is literally bypassing the acknowledge step of the prayer and shifting too quickly, let’s say, to the relating things to God and so forth. So we don’t have as much of a gift to give God, unfortunately. But there’s a way to bypass the spiritual bypass. And paradoxically, it’s through finding a spiritual intercessor that can assist our introspective work. Another way to say it is our secure base introspection work. And by giving that extra level of safety and security, now I can do parts work better. Now I can do the ARRR prayer better because of that accompaniment from that spiritual intercessor or spiritual intercessors. I think those are the main themes, the main points I want to emphasize.

Dr. Peter: [00:11:03] Excellent. And we are going to have an opportunity to get into these in a lot greater depth. But one of the things that I wanted to do, and we’ve already got some questions coming in on the chat, which is great. I think what might really help us is just to take a few minutes. We’re talking about 4 or 5 minutes here to do like a brief drop-in exercise. And this is an experiential exercise. It’s just to help you really be present in this moment, to really connect with your parts, see where they are. As what Dr. Peter Martin, just kind of offered us, how that’s landing with your parts. And for those of us that are here live, you know, to see if there might be another aspect to a question or a comment or maybe a part hasn’t been fully heard, maybe there’s some ways to try to make this a more whole-hearted type of experience for your parts. So with that in mind, I’m going to invite you to just settle in. Now, this is not going to be going, you know, super deep like we have in some other experiential exercises. But still, if you have the opportunity to really kind of take this in, it might be really helpful to you. Sometimes the questions we have as we become more integrated, as we connect with our parts, there’s answers that come up.

Dr. Peter: [00:12:20] So I love the experiential aspects of this stuff. We’ll bring this in, you know, kind of relatively briefly here. Again, all the normal caveats apply. This is not, for example, any kind of therapy. For example, there’s no clinical services rendered through this podcast or through Souls and Hearts. If something’s not helpful to you, just feel free to let it go. Feel free to let it go. And if you find that you’re going a different direction and it’s really good and life-giving for your parts, go with that. So without any further ado, I’m just going to invite you to just notice in this moment which parts are up, which parts might be very focused on what we’re discussing in this episode. Parts might be blended. Really normal. If it would be okay, really curious if it would be okay for parts to soften. Maybe give you a little more space. If they might relax just a bit, still very present, but so that a little more of your innermost self could be present to lead and guide your system. And just a lot of curiosity here about what your parts might want to know, what questions they may have for Dr. Peter Martin. Maybe there’s something they want you to share. But because safety, a felt sense of safety and protection is that first primary condition of secure attachment, just want to check with parts to make sure that it’s okay, that it doesn’t overexpose any parts of you, it doesn’t make things too vulnerable to be able to ask that question, or to be able to share that insight or that experience.

Dr. Peter: [00:14:42] We just want to make sure that it doesn’t violate any of your parts. Not every part has to be super enthusiastic about sharing a particular thing, but we want to make sure that we at least have grudging acceptance from the parts that you’re in touch with. You know, there might be a part that really wants to share something, but it wouldn’t be good, it wouldn’t be life-giving to another part of you. And so I’m just going to invite you to navigate that, negotiate that. We’ve got options to ask questions anonymously through the chat, for those of you that are live in the studio with us. Maybe it’s okay to ask a question, but not to be seen on the screen. And maybe it’s all good. You know, it’s like, yeah, let’s do this. Which is great too. But just to see if there’s any other aspect that another part that might not have been heard might really want to know. Just being really open to the parts that might not always have a voice. And this really unique opportunity to join this discussion with such an expert as Dr. Peter Martin.

Dr. Peter: [00:16:12] A lot of appreciation for your parts, a lot of appreciation for those protectors, those managers who have worked hard to keep you safe, keep you protected, to keep harm from happening. Appreciate their good intentions, the ways they’ve tried to help. And such an appreciation from my heart and my innermost self and my parts to you, for being here, for listening, for viewing, for being present in person, if you are, in this virtual studio. And the good work that you do with your parts. We’re all in this mystical body of Christ together. We’re all one body. And so when any one of you does beautiful work with your parts, when any one of you is loving your parts, connecting in this compassionate way, it builds up the entire body, the entire mystical Body of Christ. And that helps me out personally. It helps Dr. Martin out personally. It helps all of us out personally. There’s an impact in the broader system of our church. And so with that, we’ll bring this to a close. Again, a lot of gratitude for your parts and for being here today. Gratitude for your innermost selves. And we’ll just open it up. If there is an opportunity to kind of raise the question, would love to kind of get started. Yeah, Ryan, it would be great to hear from you. Come join us.

Ryan: [00:17:54] Sure. Thanks, Dr. Peter. So I guess my first question is about attachment and attachment to other people. I know that if I’m understanding the parts work properly, you know, our parts are designed to have attachment to our true self and that we’re almost serving as an intermediary to God the Father, as like a primary attachment figure for our entire system. And there’s certainly a legitimate role for us to play in attachment to other people as well. And I’m thinking of significant people in our lives like spouses and children. But I’m kind of curious, especially with Dr. Peter Martin and his experience with, like, marriage and family therapy, because if I’m understanding it correctly, much of our modern secular understanding of marriage is that the spouse is essentially fulfilling or meeting needs of the other. And there’s a lot in sort of common understanding of the spouse might complete the other person or really fully try to meet the needs of the other person. And I feel like that understanding might be going a little too far. And I was just wondering, like a couple that might be dealing with that and might be sort of expecting the other person to fully meet their needs and not really be looking to God the Father as much, or just to have these parts that really seeking a strong attachment from somebody else physically present and are having trouble getting past that.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:19:28] Ryan, good to meet you. I appreciate that question. I think two thoughts would come, one from the literature on boundaries, and then the second one would come from the literature on attachment. And so I’ll start with the boundaries first. What I’ll usually tell couples, I remember hearing a discussion, I think it was by Cloud and Townsend. So those are the two big names in boundaries, like Christian-based kind of boundaries books. And the question was posed about intimacy needs. Right, so you can think of intimacy needs. There’s different models. But think of intimacy needs as having like five different areas. So it’d be physical intimacy — that could be holding hands, touch, you know, kiss, that kind of thing. The second one would be emotional intimacy. The third one would be spiritual intimacy. Fourth one, intellectual intimacy. So they’re sharing ideas and concepts and things from the news and other things. And then there’s such a thing called interpersonal intimacy. And so, you know, I draw closer to my wife through the friends that she has, for instance. There’s a way to connect with my wife like that. What Cloud and Townsend said is that if you look at all the intimacy needs, so not just once, but actual needs, even the best of spouses cannot provide half of those. They’ll say something like 40%. So the best of spouses can only provide 40. So what that means is even in a really healthy marriage, or probably a healthy marriage, would require this, the other 60% or more has to be found elsewhere. And so obviously the spiritual needs can greatly be found through supernatural intercession, through supernatural attachment figures, let’s say Mary, the Trinity, saints, angels.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:21:10] But they also have to be found through brothers and sisters of, let’s say, the spouse, friends of the spouse, through the church, other places. So just wanted to start off with that to give the context. The second thing I would say is that there’s a particular attachment profile that does tend to want sole possession of the other person in an attachment relationship. Now, they don’t necessarily have that all the time, but when their attachment system gets activated, then that preoccupied state of mind gets activated. There’s a tendency to think this spouse and only this spouse could ever satisfy. And you’ll even hear people that have more of a profile like that will say, you know, their spouse is more of a savior for them than Jesus is, for instance. And so I would interpret that as kind of an attachment insecurity, because secure individuals almost intuitively, implicitly recognize that your spouse cannot be the end all, be all. It’s not the alpha and the omega. They don’t try to make their spouse out to be something divine when they’re only human, for instance. Sometimes they’ll expect things from a spouse that only God can provide, for instance. And so I would say the really healthy marriages are those in which those intimacy needs are met and they’re met through other people, other relationships, so that we don’t over rely on our spouse to get our particular needs met. And then what happens is, if the spouse doesn’t provide 100% of our needs, then they’ll get upset at the spouse, right? They’ll get frustrated because they’re not being the alpha and the omega. But the key is they were never designed to be that. Great question, Ryan.

Dr. Peter: [00:23:01] So we have one that’s written in here and I’ll just read it as it is. “After listening to episode 155, I discovered for the first time after nine months of parts work that one of my exiles, who feels trapped, and my main slave-driving manager suddenly told me what saints they trust, after thinking they trusted nobody. That exile loves and trusts Saint Michael to keep him safe and secure. My slave driver actually trusts Our Lady of Guadalupe, today’s feasts when we’re recording, because of her line: “Am I not your mother? Am I not here with you?” Lots of immediate recollection comes when I ask those saints to connect with those parts. So here’s the question. How do I advance these relationships so that my parts heal instead of just having a jam session or how do I call on these intercessors when one of these parts is triggered, as happened at work today?”

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:24:11] Oh boy, that’s a far-reaching question, but I like it because it takes the stuff that we have been talking about, theoretical stuff, and it really gives the applied kind of application. And Peter, definitely chime in on this. I know you’ve had some interesting work with this as well. I think the first thing I would say is there’s a model called ideal parent figure protocol. And what they found in the ideal parent figure protocol and some of the research. There’s a couple of beta studies out. And what they found in this research is that by a person continually going to an ideal parent figure or parent figures through a recording, they’d kind of meditate on specific attachment-based primary condition needs. They found that there were individuals, after just a few weeks, that their attachment style or their attachment pattern literally started to become more secure. And one of the studies I saw, as they administered the adult attachment projective, one of them was in disorganized, and by the end of the study they were in secure attachment range. And all that they did, they didn’t even get into the trauma memories at all. All that they did is they went to these attachment figures, these ideal parent figures, and over and over, whenever a stressor came up or whenever a good time came up, they would meditate. They would focus on how they’re providing for their particular attachment needs. And then they started to notice that the attachment insecurity started to become more secure.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:25:38] I find that fascinating. Second study, lectio divina study actually. In this particular study, they had two conditions. One of them was given a meditation on a particular psalm. I don’t recall the passage right now, but it’s a particular psalm, you know, focusing on God’s presence and provisions and whatnot. And they compared it to another group who focused on mindfulness-based loving kindness meditations. And so a couple of things about the subjects in this study. All of them had trauma symptoms. And secondly, all of them were Christian. And what they found is after two weeks of meditations, they found that the group that did the lectio divina prayer on this particular passage that was recorded, and so that was like the lengthier version of the meditation. And then there was they could, throughout the day, also do a little bit of like brief lectio, for instance. They had significantly dropped their trauma symptoms after two weeks of doing that. The other group didn’t change at all. And theoretically, why that might be. They were using an Eastern meditation practice that had been secularized and used for, you might call it therapeutic mindfulness, and it may not have resonated as much for the Christian followers. And secondly, it didn’t focus on an attachment figure at all. It didn’t focus on a supernatural intercessor, for instance. And so they’re noticing that that focus on the supernatural intercessor, plus the lectio meditation from a specific passage in Scripture, not all passages in Scripture are going to bring about trauma reduction, necessarily.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:27:19] You know, those long lists of names from the Old Testament? That’s probably not going to change a lot. It might get you to sleep a little better, but it won’t necessarily take away your trauma. And so the theory would be, it’s like Barbara Fredrickson has a theory called the broaden and build theory. You focus on some kind of positive security-inducing thing, and it starts to fill you up with the good stuff, and it squeezes out the negative, so to speak. So that’s one thing, I would say. Just doing that in a meditative way, really spending time with the spiritual intercessor, maybe focusing on a particular passage in Scripture. Oh wow, that’s good. Someone wrote up Psalm 34. Okay, thank you so much. Yes, Psalm 34: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” That’s the one, I appreciate that. So the idea would be to go to this passage and go to this intercessor often. Don’t do it, you know, for half a minute on Sunday. Make this a part of your daily meditative practices. And these studies are now just starting to develop, and I’m excited to see where this might go. The other, I’m trying to think, Peter, the other part of the question.

Dr. Peter: [00:28:23] Sure. It’s, “And how do I call on these intercessors when one of these parts is triggered as happened at work today.”

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:28:32] Excellent. Yeah. So the best thing you can do is to prepare the part for the trigger. So ideally, you would have already spoken with the part. You’d already gotten permission from the protectors. If the protectors have granted permission, you’ve mentioned to the part, you said, you know, the next time that you get blended, how would you like me to approach it? You know, I can do the three N’s of notice, know, and needs. Maybe you would like me to invoke a particular spiritual intercessor. So that the part is prepared and the system has granted permission, so that when the secondary intervention, which means that I’m already triggered, I’m already in that challenging place. Now I can basically just follow through what the agreed upon approach was with that part. Now you might say, yeah, but how do we know when the person’s triggered that the system won’t be so protective, that they won’t allow, even though they said it was okay in the past, they might not allow it. You know, when the trigger takes place in reality, in the actual reality. And you could say, well, we’d have to troubleshoot them. You know, at that point we can try the original approach and say, hey, just wanted to check with you.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:29:41] Just wanted to check with the parts. Is it okay if I invoke the intercessory figure? And if they’re okay with that, then you go ahead and follow through with it and you address any parts that come up, any protector concerns or anything like that. When they do this kind of work with people like, for instance, ideal parent figure, they don’t really, to my knowledge, go through the whole parts preparation, unblending process or anything. They basically just say, you notice some stress, you notice a trigger. Now turn to that intercessor, that ideal parent figure, or ideal parent figures, and then notice what it’s like as you communicate this concern. Notice how they respond, what’s safest about them as they respond. And you just kind of focus on these qualities of the ideal parent figure, really get to know them. So I think there’s many ways to address it. Now when I do ideal parent figure, I pretty much always make sure that my clients are unblended, that the parts are on board with it. I just think it makes the process of intercessory figure transformation go a lot better. And I love the questions, by the way.

Dr. Peter: [00:30:43] Absolutely. Thank you for that, Dr. Peter Martin. Is there another person that might want to ask one out loud? We have a couple more that have come in. So great, we have Cathy with us.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:30:53] Hi, Cathy.

Cathy: [00:30:55] Hi. I’m going to try to make sense of this or try to say it. I don’t know. Number one is it involves being tired.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:31:03] You’re in good company.

Cathy: [00:31:06] Yeah. I have a pretty strong prayer life. I get up, in fact, at 3:30 to pray before my day starts. And so, I also have a tendency, I have an emotional distancer, a detacher, I separate myself from the world. I have done this for almost 70 years. Well, I am 70. So I think it’s been my entire life. I have a lot of demands on my life. I am a caretaker of my husband who has some serious health issues, but I also have a lot of church obligations. So my question is, because of these other things, how do I know the difference if it’s just true physical stamina that is causing me to kind of shut down? Or is it my parts? Because especially this month, I just seem to be really struggling with just wanting to, I don’t know, shut down, you know? But I don’t know if it’s true physical reasons or is it just, it’s such an emotional time of year that it’s my parts creating the situation.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:32:15] That’s really good. Yeah, that’s a multi-layered question, I appreciate that. I’ll do my best to respond in my limited way. So thank you. I wanted to mention I actually spent some time, I lived with some Trappist monks in southwest Missouri for about two weeks, lived like a monk for two weeks. They would get up at 3:15 in the morning from a bell.

Cathy: [00:32:33] Was it like, Ava, Missouri?

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:32:35] You got it. That’s the one.

Cathy: [00:32:37] Yeah. They make fruitcakes.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:32:38] They do. I helped them, I helped them wrap fruitcakes. I don’t like any other kind of fruitcakes, except for those. But no, I helped to wrap it. I’ll have to tell you the story at some point, it was kind of a journey as I was wrapping fruitcakes, but that’s a separate issue. But they would wake up at 3:15 and then at 3:30 they would start praying. So you’re the first lay person that I know that does that. So the question you asked. Parts do not operate in a void, to your point, right? There’s a context to their reactions. When a person is around a person who is a secure attachment figure that they trust, and so forth, parts generally are not going to react as strongly. However, you put them around, maybe that person’s uncle or that person’s spouse or something, they might react strongly. So the context of the relationship matters. You mentioned the season. One of my trainees has told me that he thinks people’s distress level amplifies over Thanksgiving more than it does over Christmas, so that’s interesting. I’ll have to notice if it’s kind of my anecdotal experience. So that’s an important contextual factor. Tree leaves are falling off the trees and the grass is dying. And there’s lots of things that say, okay, this is not a chipper, joyful time. And so it can wear on a person and especially as a caretaker. You know, I don’t know your husband. I don’t know how he reacts to these seasonal changes.

Cathy: [00:33:58] Not positively. He basically, yeah, he is very isolated. Does not get out of the house. Yeah.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:34:06] Okay. So that also adds an additional challenge to the good work that you’re trying to do to serve as a spouse in your vocation. Now you asked, is it just parts? So I would be interested in knowing, for instance, what particular parts of you react more to the seasonal changes. Like I’d want to get very specific. I’d want to know what particular parts blend more when it comes to seeing your husband struggle in a particular way. What particular parts react to, I mean, fill in the blanks, you know? So we’d have to get very specific. So I would still say your parts, for whatever reason, their burdens are now getting triggered a little bit more, possibly because of external environmental things, possibly because your spouse, your attachment figure, is struggling. Understandable. I think I’m the same way. My parts do kind of react if my spouse is struggling. I still think the process of getting to know the parts is very big, and one piece about why that’s important. God is pure act. There’s no potentiality in God. He’s pure act. Freedom at the highest level. Similarly, I think because we are image-bearers of God, the more trapped and less agency we have, or the more trapped and less agency the parts feel like they have, the more they’re going to react to that. And so the idea is to find ways to augment internal freedom, internal integrity, self-leadership. Like people who have a self-led system are more free. They’re more free to transcend certain things. The other thing I was thinking, too, it could be something biological. There’s so many things that happen medically and, you know, it could be sickness. It could be some kind of, something you’re tired from.

Dr. Peter: [00:35:56] I have a little anecdote.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:35:57] Oh, please. Jump in. I’m interested. 

Dr. Peter: [00:36:01] This is really current. Really current. So, you know, I’ve been writing my personal values statement. That’s been going on in the series I’ve been doing over at our semi-monthly reflections. You can see those at soulsandhearts.com/blog. I’ve had some skin issues on my legs for years, and I learned a lot of behavioral medicine, rehab psych. And then I got into psychodynamic stuff where you’re really looking at psychodynamic psychosomatic types of things. And so just really curious about like, all right, parts, any of you expressing distress through these skin issues? You know, and I kept getting kind of nothing. My idea is always ask the parts if you want to know if they’re involved with a particular symptom, ask them, you know. And so I’d ask. And for weeks and months I didn’t get any parts saying they really knew anything about it. But I got a full blood work panel done. And I’ve got some liver enzymes that are way off that are directly related to skin issues. Vitamin D was real low, and my parts came back to me and said, see, none of us had anything to do with this. This is a bodily thing, even though the skin actually is really the organ, the number one organ that tends to express psychological distress. So, you know, sometimes it’s just something going on that’s physical, that’s not super mediated by the parts, but oftentimes parts will know something about it. So there are times where under stress that condition can get a little exacerbated. So I’m super excited that we’re beginning to address that now. And my parts are like, yeah, see, sometimes this is kind of physical. So it’s good to have it checked out both ways.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:37:39] Yeah. Well stated Peter, and I can imagine, Peter, even in a situation like that, I could see an omniscience critic. You know, some people have these omniscience critics that really feel like they should know all the sources and origins of their problems, and they should have circumvented them and they should never have gotten, you know. So I could still see even in that situation, critics could show up. And so, you know, that would be a parts issue as well.

Cathy: [00:38:05] Thank you.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:38:06] Thank you. Thanks, Cathy.

Dr. Peter: [00:38:08] So others that would like to kind of just ask, you know, that would be able to raise a hand, to be on camera. We’ve got a couple of ones here from the chat too. So we had a question here, Dr. Peter, this was: “Perhaps you would elaborate on the idea of stuck, trapped, and how this relates to attachment. And stuck-trapped is sort of like shorthand for when we find ourselves in the same situations, in the same hurt. Is there something happening more than just familiarity? How does attachment relate with this?”

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:38:49] I like that.

Dr. Peter: [00:38:50] So they’re talking about sort of cyclical patterns. You know, typical, cyclical, here we go again dynamics that we feel stuck in or trapped in. And how does that connect to attachment specifically.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:39:03] Absolutely. Yeah. It reminds me of a child’s book I was reading my kids the other day, and it starts off with a duck that got stuck in the muck, and it was a problem over and over. But no, to your point.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:39:15] I really like that language. One, there’s a well-known attachment theorist and developer named Carol George, and her dissertation led to the adult attachment inventory or interview, I should say. And then she also developed, called the adult attachment projective. She’s written some really fascinating things on disorganized attachment in children. Here more recently, she’s got some interesting stuff on what she calls failed grieving. I think that’s Bowlby’s language, failed grieving. And how that looks for each of the different, the three major attachment insecure patterns. The reason I bring that up, one of the things she found is that in some cases, not all, but there seems to be a higher percentage in individuals who fall into stuck, trapped experiences. And so their experience would not be so much “I can.” You think about two words that describe, it’s not “I can.” Well, that would be freedom that flows out of who I am. And it’s not so much “I must,” which is more like how firefighters and managers react. It’s more like “I can’t.” And that would be that kind of trapped, stuck experience. She said what she found is that for individuals that have more of a disorganized attachment, which is the most severe of the three insecure attachment patterns, she said there were two things that they found with individuals who look back into their history, and they thought about how their mother in particular. Mothers play a huge role in the attachment dynamics.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:40:46] Not entirely all of it, of course. You know, the father plays an important role, but moms are very important for attachment dynamics. But what she found is that these individuals, as they looked back, they noted experiences where they, as a child, felt trapped and helpless in two major ways. The first way had to do with they themselves felt trapped and like they had no personal agency to help them get out of this, out of the muck. And the second way that they felt trapped and helpless was that they felt like they couldn’t turn to anyone. They didn’t have agency to turn to someone that could help them with their predicaments so that they could deactivate that attachment system and that insecurity. Those were the two major ways. And you’ll see this a fair amount, a lot of times, like in close relationships, it might be like with a spouse, for instance, sometimes people will feel this way when it comes to their spiritual life. They just feel trapped and stuck. Things are hopeless. God’s not there. No one’s there.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:41:55] You know, you’ll see it in these kind of close relationships where this vulnerability kicks in and this trapped and helplessness kicks in. And then there’s this other piece, fear. So sometimes they call this particular attachment pattern fearful avoidance. You’ll see higher levels of fear in their system, higher levels of neuro-receptive threat. So the attachment dynamics seem to go into the stuck, “I can’t” of the disorganized attachment and disorganized attachment. They either have qualities that are similar to preoccupied attachment, that want lots of closeness and lots of help, or they can alternate into more of a dismissing avoidant attachment, which is their very independent kind of ruggedly individualistic. Or what will happen, it’ll alternate back and forth between those two, or sometimes it’s simultaneous. And so there’s chaos. So when I think of the word stuck, individuals that are in that profile have that struggle more than the average Joe and Jane. Secure people get stuck. I want to be clear on this. You know, we all get stuck. We all can feel helpless at times. But when we’re talking about frequency, intensity and duration of it, you’ll see that a lot more with that most insecure attachment pattern. So I hope I touched upon at least some of what you’re asking. Thank you.

Dr. Peter: [00:43:14] Beautiful. Yeah. Others? We have another question or two that have come in, but definitely want to make space for somebody who might want to ask something live. Okay, great. Molly, come join us.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:43:29] Hi, Molly.

Molly: [00:43:31] Hey. So it’s kind of a follow up that got triggered by another question. I was just wondering how IFS kind of addresses like the interactions with the internal, with our like more physical experience, and our external and how we can externalize, like the stuff that we have and the skills we gain from being more introspective.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:43:58] Okay. Good question. Yeah, because IFS would be more of a depth approach, let’s say, if we were to kind of use that kind of general term, more introspective, turning inward, getting into non-conscious kind of experiences, things like that. And one of the critiques of that approach is, yeah, but let’s do something. It’s not enough to have insight and introspection. Now let’s have commitment, right? So you think of acceptance and commitment therapy. Let’s go out and behaviorally do something. That’s kind of a common critique you’ll hear from more behavioral approaches. And by the way, I think that’s not a bad critique. I think that’s an important critique that should be considered. One thing that IFS does is it will have the person, I mean, introspection is clearly important. It’ll have the person outside of session, for instance, say what I’d like you to do — we’ve just worked with this particular manager part, this protector part — and what I’d like you to do, if your parts are okay with it, is let’s just kind of learn to befriend that part each day, spend some time with it, get to know it, really kind of accompany and walk with it. Just like the Good Samaritan, let’s say. You’re going to accompany and walk with it. And so that’s one way that it’ll work in the life outside of session.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:45:10] The other thing that I like about IFS is that let’s say you’re doing an exposure treatment. So ERPs, exposure and response prevention, are basically considered the gold standard for treating things like OCD. And a lot of times treating phobias, let’s say. So one of the things that I like about IFS is it prepares the soil for this to be successful. It prepares the ground for treatments like that to be successful. Take person number one, and they have severely polarized parts that are conflicted about doing the ERP outside of session. Take person number two who has worked through the polarizations. Both of those protector parts are on board with the self, and the self’s going to lead the way. And indeed, maybe, you know, some parts don’t want to be a part of the ERP exposure, right? Maybe they don’t want to do that outside in the real world. And so they don’t have to be there, right? This can just be the self and whichever parts that want to be there. And so what that does is it makes the pathway more likely to be successful in the real world. The second thing, let’s take something like medication. So much of medication, if you get into things like antidepressants, right.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:46:25] If you look at how the expectancy effect is so big when it comes to antidepressants and sugar pill, you’ve seen the sugar pill studies possibly, about how sometimes they’re equal in effectiveness as an actual antidepressant. One of the things that I think IFS does wonderfully is you basically make sure, because the expectancy effect is so big, the placebo effect, you make sure that the parts are on board with the medication. You have the person work with their parts, get their parts in a self-led way. They’ve discerned, it seems like their inclination is to be okay with it. I actually have clients do like an internal kind of conference room where each of the parts have like an informed consent document sometimes and they’ll sign off, right. Just kind of imaginary, signing off on this. And then they hand it to the self. Okay, we’re good. Now we can go do this. And so what they have now is more motivation to follow through and to comply with the medication management. But basically IFS prepares the way for any kind of work, whether it’s my spiritual life, I don’t really want to pray today. I’m not so interested. Well, that could be a part. Let’s get to know that part. Let’s figure out what’s going on there. And so what it does is it’s propaedeutic or it prepares the way for more successful efforts in life. Peter, I don’t know if you had something else you wanted to add.

Dr. Peter: [00:47:51] Well, I’m just curious. I just wanted to check in with you, Molly, and see how that’s landing. And you know, what might be coming up in response, other questions you might have.

Molly: [00:48:01] I mean, I do have just like, I’m interested in how it kind of approaches since it is internal. It does lay that groundwork. But how does it approach from like specifically like Catholic IFS with that? More like with the physical, since we have theology of the body. And there is that kind of like expectation or like that our body is kind of a representation of our soul and a reflection of our soul.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:48:35] That’s really interesting. Yeah. I mean, like you’re saying with the theology of the body, the body reflects the person. Right, it shows what’s going on with the person inside. And we’re designed for a certain purpose based on our body and based on who we are as persons. Male and female he created us. And how does IFS seem to maybe provide some connecting the dots in that regard, is kind of what you’re after. I think my initial response to that would be, because it’s a great question, tying it into TOB. I think my initial response would be, if we’re looking for integration, self-leadership, harmony, it’s not simply an internal thing. If I had the pyramid, you remember the God image pyramid, Peter, from a couple meetings ago?

Dr. Peter: [00:49:19] Yeah. We’re going to put that slide up too.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:49:21] Oh great. The God image pyramid says there are these basic domains of functioning. You have God here, who God is in himself. And then you have, like the doctrinal or more cognitive left brain understanding of who God is that you could get from the catechism or something. And then you have these experiential reactions which would be like parts and other things. And oftentimes those could be a lot further from the reality of who God is, right? I might have a part that is terrified of God, though God is a loving, merciful person, let’s say. And then you have the behavioral piece, and we want all of those to kind of sync. We want all of those to harmonize in an integrated way, full person, full bodied discipleship. It’s like if you think of virtue as kind of the harmony between the passions and right reason, and we do things in love and we do it easily. We’re basically godlike easily. We’re not super tempted to go off the path. It just flows out of our being. It flows out of who we are into what we do in the body. And so it’s an integrated, holistic, I would say, happy, you know, eudaimonia. I think that’s how Aristotle describes it. A happy experience, because now everything is harmonized and it’s going toward that end, which is God, you know, himself.

Dr. Peter: [00:50:47] I would add a couple of things to that. One is that I believe that IFS has this sense that the body is good. A lot of times, parts can experience the body as dangerous in one way or another, or that the body is a source of difficulties or you know, the body, the flesh, leads to sin or other types of concerns. And so one of the things that you can do in IFS is to just check out with the parts, how they experience the body. You know, like, there have been a number of folks I’ve worked with where parts have condemned the body because the body was seen to have attracted unwanted sexual attention, for example, which led to boundary violations or even crimes. And so there was a condemnation of the body by these parts. And so one of the things that IFS allows for, I think, is this way to connect with the attitudes and impulses, the beliefs, the assumptions about the body that may be drowned out by other parts of us, that may be silenced by other parts of us that say, oh, that’s heretical. The body is good, right? We’re not listening to that Manichean nonsense or, you know, that Donatist, you know, sort of position, but allows to sort of see what those parts are holding, what they’re burdened with about the body, so that there can be a resolution instead of merely a suppression of the distress or the concerns or the traumas that are body-related. Does that help, Molly?

Molly: [00:52:28] It gives me more questions, but there’s someone else, so.

Dr. Peter: [00:52:33] Well, feel free to post those questions in the YouTube description for this episode. Episode 156 of Interior Integration for Catholics. We’re happy to kind of continue the conversation. Or others that are out there, yeah. Deb, you’ve been really patient. Love to have you join us.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:52:50] Hi, Deb.

Deb: [00:52:51] Hi, Dr. Peter and Dr. Peter. I put a question in the chat, but I actually just wrote it because I knew I’d be able to say it better if I had it written. And I need to add to it as well. And my question is, how does attachment style with one or both parents affect parts’ relationships with self. And for example, let’s say hypothetically, you have a person who has anxious attachment with their mother. How is that likely to affect their parts work and how their parts relate to self?

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:53:30] Excellent. So a couple reflections. By the way, love the question, Deb. So you know, there’s debate about attachment and how it influences parts. So for instance, from an IFS perspective, Frank Anderson might say when a person is, let’s say assessed as insecure preoccupied, anxious preoccupied, like you mentioned, toward their mother. Frank Anderson would say what happened is, rather than attaching to the mother’s self, the person attached to a burdened protector part, most likely of the mother. So that’s an interesting model. I think there’s some interesting exploration that could be done on that, I like that. Another way to think of it is some IFS theorists say autism is something that’s got a neurobiological basis to it to some extent, and that it flavors the internal family system as such. So it’s not just that they have an autistic part. It just seems to influence a fair amount of the parts themselves, just whatever that autistic stuff is. So a correlate with attachment theory, then, Deb, would be, is there something like that with preoccupied attachment? You know, is there something that it just flavors the internal family system? It’s like a substrate or the atmosphere, so to speak, in which the parts operate and it shapes and influences the parts’ reactions. So that’s the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is when I have worked with, like if I do a parts mapping or parts sequential mapping, what I find with people that are more on the dismissing end of the spectrum. So that’s the psychological opposite of the anxious attachment or preoccupied attachment. When I do, let’s say parts mapping with them, they tend to have more protectors early on show up. Not always, but more on average than I would see with the preoccupied attachment. With preoccupied attachment, sometimes I’ll see people that have two exiles show up right away and it’s in a sequential fashion. You know, that’s the wearing the emotions on their sleeve and, you know, that kind of thing.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:55:38] So you’ll see, like their primary or dominant parts in some ways, at least the way they experience them, seem to have a sequential or order to them in the way that they manifest in this person’s life on certain challenges. And so you can see how in a married context. Now, just to kind of go one step further, how in a married context, if someone who has more of a dismissing attachment, you know, as, let’s say, rated by the adult attachment projective or something. If their first 2 go-to’s, let’s say, are protector parts, two manager parts or manager and a firefighter and they’re married to someone who’s go-to’s are exiles. You can imagine how those protector parts want to exile those exiles of the spouse. And so that starts to kind of influence the interpersonal dynamics in that close relationship. One other quick thing about that, Peter, and I think it was the last episode, maybe the one before. I have these kind of conjectures. I don’t know if they have any basis in reality, but one of the things that I’ve thought about. Manager parts, the way that I understand them, sound very much like dismissing attached parts. So they have a dismissing attachment to the self, right? They’re very independent. They do their own thing. Don’t confuse me with the facts. My mind’s made up, you know, that kind of thing. And so manager parts will take on this kind of guise of, I’m good. I’m just secure-basing right now. I’m good. But really they’re not. They’re feeling very distressed inside. They tend to be very authoritarian, so to speak, towards other parts. They, think of the different parenting styles, manage your parts, tend to be more authoritarian in the way they work. My way or the highway. The other parts, it’s not as clear cut to me how it maps on to attachment dynamics per se. I will say, except for exiles, I will say they do tend to have more of what you might call like a preoccupied attachment with the self. And that might be why managers like to exile them so much. They don’t like the clingy, they don’t like the emotionality, they don’t like all that stuff that the vulnerable exiles kind of feel.

Dr. Peter: [00:57:45] Can I nuance that a little bit? Because one of the things we’ve been doing in the PartsFinder Pro, it’s a series of 18 measures. That’s part of the application process for the Resilient Catholics Community is we’ve begun to categorize different kinds of managers into different sort of categories, but there is a category of manager that will include managers like compliant surrenderers or self-sacrificers or people pleasers who are very focused on attaching and they do it as a management strategy. And so I think there are a lot of managers that would be more dismissive. But I also see this particular class of managers that are insecurely attached and are looking to meet the needs of the exiles they protect or protect against by reaching out, by attempting to connect. So I think there is some variation in the ways that managers will use attachment efforts or avoidance, you know, to connect. But I also think that, and I’m really curious about your ideas about this, I believe that each part has its own attachment style. Like, in other words, that you can have as many attachment styles as you have parts. I know there’s like four major classifications, you know, so there’s a finite number. But I do think that we tend to speak in this language of my attachment style, presuming a sort of single kind of unified personality, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think different parts, when they get activated, will have a variety of different ways of approaching attachment figures.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:59:24] So I’ll address both of those. Thank you. Yeah, I’d love to hear more about the research you’re doing there. And I take it you’re getting that language from, is it the YSQ? The Young Schema Questionnaire for some of those?

Dr. Peter: [00:59:33] Yeah, the SMI and the YSQ and what our PFP writers are sensing as they experience something of the system of the person, the RCC applicant, and sensing kind of what’s going on, on a part-by-part basis. So one of the things we do is we teach our PFP writers to try to resonate with the parts of the person that they’re working with, so that their own parts can kind of inform them about what might be going on for that part in that person’s system. And so that’s where we’re seeing a variety of different attachment styles. And depending on the relational context, you know, this part might come up, this manager might come up or another manager might come up, or a firefighter might come up, or an exile might break out. And so it kind of gives a different sort of way of attaching or attempting to attach in different social situations or interpersonal situations.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:00:23] So I want to address that just briefly. And this is where I think there’s a lot of wisdom to what you’re saying. I want to kind of nuance that as well. And I’ll mention what I mean. So when Jeffrey Young developed the YSQ and the SMI, so those are from schema therapy, the ones you refer to, the self-sacrifice, the subjugation, the approval seeking. I can’t remember what you said. The subjugation actually, in my understanding, actually loads on to what he calls a coping mode. And so it actually loads onto a firefighter, to put it that way.

Dr. Peter: [01:00:54] Well, I didn’t bring up a subjugation, but I did talk about compliant surrenderers.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:00:58] Yeah, compliant surrender is a freeze coping mode in the schema literature. So they actually consider that a firefighter. Now they have two specific manager parts. Those are the parent modes. So the punitive parent and then the, what’s the other one? You’d know it if I said it. It’s basically saying you didn’t perform enough, right. And those are the two what they call the parent modes which map on to the manager parts. We should have a conversation about that, about how that kind of loads on with managers and firefighters. But to your other point about how each of the parts have their own attachment style. So if you look at some of the the more recent literature on what they might call self states or attachment, you know, states of mind, each of us has tendencies towards particular attachment patterns. So at some point I could have a disorganized state of mind, even if maybe my primary attachment is not disorganized attachment. Same thing with dismissing attachment or same thing with whatever. We all have some potential to be in there. That’s even how they measure them. Like on a Likert scale, how much does this identify your way of relating to people? And so it can vary. So to your point, I agree with you, because what that’s saying is these are not traits as much as states at some level. And so states maps on to parts. And it says that this transient state of mind, when it gets activated, it looks kind of like disorganized attachment. I actually think they’re moving, in attachment model, some of the people I’ve read, toward this kind of state of mind kind of approach, which I actually like better, and that’s actually what Dan Siegel does, right? He talks about states of mind. Even the adult attachment interview, it talks about the state of mind with respect to attachment. So I think you’re accurate on that.

Dr. Peter: [01:02:45] But to go back to Deb’s question, and I would expect that any given part would approach the relationship with the self, the innermost self, with the same kind of attachment style that it typically uses for other relationships. So if a part has a dismissive attachment style, I would expect that it would be sort of dismissive toward the self. Or insecure attachment when it’s beginning to develop that relationship with the innermost self, I would expect that there would be anxiety and insecurity in that relationship. If a part has a disorganized kind of attachment, I would expect that you would see some of that disorganization. Although as we talked about, I think it was in episode 154, the first one we did, I’m not so certain that that disorganized attachment isn’t just switching of parts with different attachment styles that make the attachment style look inconsistent if you were assuming a single unified personality. But I also believe that parts can be conflicted within themselves about attachment. So it’s not like, you know, every part has just necessarily one very consistent attachment style. And my hope would be that the attachment styles of parts would change and become more secure over time, right?

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:04:01] To that last point, I think that’s what we’re hoping with the unburdening process. Right, specifically with exiles, is to turn them from insecure to secure attachment. Yeah, I agree, it does change over time. I’ve heard some theorists would say all roads to security go through the preoccupied attachment. Now, some theorists will say that, even if you’re dismissing, it’ll kind of shift through the preoccupied, go to the secure. I asked Dan Siegel that one time, actually. We were on a training with him, and he said, I don’t know if I agree with that. So Dan Siegel does not agree with that. That’s a pretty good argument against it. But yeah, to your point, I actually do like, the disorganized attachment makes sense. It’s kind of like the chaos and rigidity at like a heightened battlefield inside, just powerfully going back and forth and wrestling. And so I could see how, you know, it could be multiple parts there. But to your point, even inside a part that can change over the course of time as well.

Dr. Peter: [01:04:54] But I want to bring this back to you, Deb, and make sure that, in all of this that we’ve been talking about, did we happen to come close to even addressing or answering your question?

Deb: [01:05:05] Yes, yes, it makes sense. Thank you very much.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:05:09] I can tell Deb’s very kind. Thank you, Deb.

Dr. Peter: [01:05:15] We did have another question here. If a person has a history of not going to attachment figures due to dismissive attachment or neglect, etc., or a chaotic experience of going to attachment figures, disorganized attachment, and so does not have a natural good template of going to attachment figures, how does a person start to learn to go to spiritual parent figures. Like how do you get started, in other words? Now, Schwartz would say, I think that the innermost self has an innate capacity to attach.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:05:51] That’s right.

Dr. Peter: [01:05:52] You know. And so he would say, if you unblend, all the parts, the innermost self can attach to others, that would be because it’s a constraint release model and so forth. But I think this, she didn’t say this, but yeah, if the unblending just doesn’t happen, then what do we do?

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:06:08] Whoever wrote this is getting to the heart of the matter. So a couple of thoughts. One is I have found that a lot of times parts trust supernatural persons more than they do the self. So you’ll get individuals that will say, I’ve never trusted anyone. I don’t trust you, therapist. I don’t trust the model that you’re doing. You know, I don’t trust anything or anyone, and I definitely don’t trust myself. But that person, if you do a, they call it a vetting process. But finding out which spiritual intercessor seems to be the safest, most supportive, they might attach onto, the parts might attach onto this spiritual intercessor better than the self of the individual that they’re in. So that would be one thing is, I would do a pretty good vetting process. And I’d mentioned earlier on I have those two worksheets that I give people, the LASSR, which has 100 different representations of Jesus and saints and angels and whatnot. And I want to find out, because you’ll find even with people that have real severe attachment histories, that you can find someone that they can attach to.

Dr. Peter: [01:07:13] And remember that attachment is a two-way street, too. It’s not just all on the individual to attach. The attachment figure also reaches out, like there’s graces here and so forth. It’s not just incumbent or it’s not just the responsibility of the traumatized, wounded person who’s struggling to attach to make it all happen.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:07:35] That’s a great point. So if we think about the Christian God and compare that to Deism, for instance. So Deism is the opposite of what you just said. It basically starts creation and winds up the clock and just lets it sit and then doesn’t intervene. And in some ways kind of feels like it doesn’t care, right? It kind of feels like a deadbeat dad. This is what God feels like. Well, that’s not the Christian God. The Christian God is intimately involved. The Christian God is like the Good Samaritan at the highest level. The Christian God is, you know, the hound of heaven, you’ll hear that kind of language. That’s who the Christian God is. But he respects your freedom so much that he’s not going to impose himself on you. God is in pursuit in a loving, gentle way. So I do think, if that’s the case, now it’s a matter of — Chesterton has this great analogy. He talks about his conversion, his autobiography on conversion, and he says something like this. He says, people cannot be fair to the church in some ways. He’s like, once they stop fighting it, they notice a tug toward it. Once they stop shouting it down, they hear it fondly. You know, it’s basically like there’s this push and pull. The church is like a magnet. It has this tendency to push and pull because people, for some reason, can’t handle goodness or truth or unity or whatever, transcendentals. 

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:08:57] So if the idea is that if God is a loving, merciful person who pursues you in a loving, gentle way, who would not want that if they’ve had a good attachment history? They would love that, generally speaking. I don’t want to get, you know, too far into the weeds here. But what I have found is that even with insecure attachment histories, and this goes back to some of the stuff on ideal parent figure protocol research, goes back to developmental needs meeting strategy. What you do then is you find some kind of supernatural figure that you trust, that you love, and you turn to him and you practice those attachment things. So it’s not just the person, you know reaching out and pursuing you. It’s also you making those efforts to work on — I love that question about stuck that we talked about before — to counteract the lack of agency that people, especially with disorganized attachment, have. They feel like they’re hopeless and helpless when it comes to helping themselves firstly, and then secondly, hopeless and helpless when it comes to reaching out to an attachment figure for support that can help them. So what you do is you practice those efforts. So it takes a bit of testing it out, so to speak, and asking the Lord to provide those opportunities to work on this attachment kind of focus.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:10:23] Schwartz would say the self has those capacities. It is the supremely secure, unfallen internal attachment figure, and it has these capacities to provide that for the parts. But the question is, to go back to the person who asked this question. Who would you trust more, someone who seems to have a secure attachment in general, or someone who has a secure attachment in general and is deeply spirit-led. I know who I would trust more. I would trust someone that has the eyes of faith that lives out the Christo-centric vision that is Christianity, and is spirit-led and not just self-led. And so if I personally would trust that more, I would trust Saint Francis more than I would trust my family or Mother Teresa, she’s my go to. But I would think I would trust that person more. And I think there’s a reason why the parts like that. And so maybe you can do it in tandem, Peter, to your point. It doesn’t have to be an either/or, right? The self and the intercessor, it doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship at all. In fact, they should build on each other. The more I learn to love self, the more I can receive and experience grace and the supernatural intercessor. It’s a win-win in both accounts.

Dr. Peter: [01:11:36] Just love that. Thank you for that. We’ve had some folks that have been waiting patiently and I’d like to, I think we’ve got time, because we’ve got some fascinating questions. Madeleine, I know you’ve been waiting. Please join us. 

Madeleine: [01:11:52] Hi Dr. Peter. So this is apropos of what you were just discussing. So I’m somebody who came into the RCC with disorganized attachment, no secure attachment figure available and all of that, and no secure attachment to God. I mean, I have, you know, up here, but not in my heart, right. But I really, I think, you know, whatever, my heart knew, believed, that the truth is here. So I’ve been here for, what, three years? And I’ve had a therapist for three years. So I’ve noticed over time that my system is relaxing. I can see that. And I had to have like a little team of people. So I’ve got my therapist. She’s an IFS therapist, and she knows you. She knows you both, actually. And Dr. Peter Malinoski and Marion and Bridget and then Dr. Peter Martin came in. And so I think my parts like to know that what’s being said is true. That’s the big thing for me, I think. And if it feels true, then. So that’s my little team. And I think that you’ve all become kind of a safety, like a, you know, secure kind of thing. And I still didn’t, I’ve got lots of like, God images are really problematic, but I’ve just kept going along and I just found that sort of spontaneously one day. And I love listening to Hallow. I listen to Fr. Dave Pivonka. It’s something about his voice, just his heart, his presence or something really, you know, kind of, I just love listening to him and it’s very nourishing for me. And of course, he’s all about the Holy Spirit. And I just found one day that I could, all of a sudden it was like, oh, the Holy Spirit, I can trust the Holy Spirit. It just kind of, and, you know, I couldn’t do anything, like listening to you talking about Dr. Schwartz talking about the self as a secure attachment. That means nothing to my system, right? It doesn’t. I really needed this felt sense of safety and security that has, you know, come over time in this community. And then I, you know, of course, believe that God does all these things. It’s all orchestrated because he’s drawing us to him. So yes, RCC, and then Fr. Dave Pivonka and whatever, all these other little components. He lined it all up, and then all of a sudden I could feel safe with the Holy Spirit. So I just wanted to give you that because that was the question. That was my experience.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:14:42] I love it.

Madeleine: [01:14:42] Nothing theoretical.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:14:45] Yeah. Well, Madeleine, thank you so much. I love testimonies. I love hearing about people’s deepening of their spiritual life, the transformation that you have had in the spirit, your dedication to continuing to work on this and trusting at some level that the Lord would provide. So I really appreciate this. My dissertation is on conversion experiences, so I especially like hearing what you have to say there. Just beautiful. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Madeleine: [01:15:13] Thank you.

Dr. Peter: [01:15:14] Thank you. And it’s been delightful to get to know you over the years, Madeleine. You know, you have a special spot in my heart, especially when we’ve been able to get together on the RCC retreats and so forth. So just really want to mention that from my parts. Thank you. So, yeah, Ryan.

Ryan: [01:15:34] Sure thing. Thanks for taking me again. I did want to say, I did print your worksheet out too, of the Saints, of possible spiritual attachment figures. That meant a lot. I’ve keyed in on Joachim and Anne for the idea of delighting. I figured, grandparents delighting in their grandchildren. That seemed like something that I latched onto. So I liked that a lot.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:15:53] Wonderful.

Ryan: [01:15:54] I wanted to quick ask a question about the conscience, and I looked up on the Mighty Networks app, did a quick search for conscience just to see what’s been there before. And I think if I remember right, Dr. Peter Malinoski, you kind of tabled that and said you were bringing it to your therapist community to discuss further, and I wasn’t quite satisfied with that answer. So I figured I could ask it. It’s just, how would you help us understand the conscience, and especially for those of us that have parts that maybe are used to acting like the voice of conscience and that we’re used to, I feel like for myself that I have a part that’s like a “should” part that I’m used to listening to like it is my conscience and that maybe I would have a concerned part that says, well, maybe I shouldn’t stop listening to that part either, right? Because maybe it is my conscience. And so it’s a little bit confusing, especially with the traditional sort of understanding of the conscience and how that relates to our parts.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:16:59] Ryan, you have some great questions there, my good man. Peter, do you want to go with this one? It’s a great question.

Dr. Peter: [01:17:05] Sure, sure. I did address this in a book review on Boundaries for Your Soul. It was, I think, part three. These came out in February of this year, February 21st, 2024. Because in that book there was a suggestion, a sort of intimation that the conscience was a part. And I can understand how there could be the experience of, you know, a part sounding like the conscience and sometimes parts in their efforts to manage and their efforts to direct, you know, because they have concerns and they’re they’re blending because, you know, they have this agenda to try to keep things safe, you know, could sound like the conscience. But, you know, the conscience is not actually a single faculty. I think there’s still a lot of work that has to be done. Saint Thomas has a kind of nuanced explanation. Saint Thomas Aquinas has a nuanced explanation about the conscience that involves multiple faculties, and I would refer you to that one. It can feel like the conscience is a part, but I quote Gaudium et Spes about like what the conscience is. Dr. Gerry Crete talks about the conscience on page 57 of his book. There he locates the conscience within the innermost self. And he’s got some quotes that I cite in there. So if you go to that particular one, it’s the February 21st, 2024, Applied Review #3 Boundaries for Your Soul: Intense Emotions and Parts. That’s the most that I’ve seen written on the conscience with parts. And then Dr. Gerry’s book, The Litanies of the Heart, on page 57, there’s some reference to the conscience as well.

Ryan: [01:18:54] Thank you.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:18:54] Yeah, that’s a great response, Peter. I don’t claim to have studied this very much. There’s a couple of things I would say, what I’ve seen from my clinical work, Ryan. So the first one is, you’ll oftentimes see with Catholics that they conflate their self-like manager parts with their conscience. One way to differentiate is, if you can see your parts, does this conscience have like a physical form? Does it have a form to it? If it does have a form to it, can you see the whole person? Let’s say if it’s a person, it looks like a particular individual. If it does, then that’s probably not your conscience, right? Because that’s how Schwartz differentiates apart from the self. You can see the whole person, like when it’s the self, you can only see like your arms, right? Just kind of like you’re looking right now out of your own eyes. The second thing is the conscience doesn’t always necessarily bring about peace. That’s not necessarily what it does all the time. 

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:19:51] But there is a sense that there’s not a real severe harshness to it either. And I know Jesus threw, you know, tables around, and I get that. But the vast majority of the time, he’s not throwing tables around in the temple. The majority of the time, he’s reaching people through the number one aspect of our relationship with God after the fall, which is through his mercy and his steadfast compassion and things like that. So generally speaking, the conscience is going to go that direction. People that have scrupulosity, that is not their experience of what they think is their conscience, right? The other thing I would say, and when you get to know that part, this is sometimes what you’ll see. Your conscience is, what does Saint John Henry Newman, he calls it, is it the, not the parochial vicar. What does he call it? There’s a certain term that he uses for conscience, but the part that seems to be like the conscience might be about six years old. That’s the paradox. People who are walking around, these are devout people, lay people, religious order. They will conflate or mistake their conscience. And they think that it’s actually conscience. You might call it a mis-formed or misinformed conscience, but from a parts perspective, it could be a six-year-old manager part. So you really want to get to know that part. Find out how old it is. See if you can get an image of it. And sometimes that helps to differentiate, the differential diagnosis, so to speak, the conscience versus the part.

Dr. Peter: [01:21:18] There might be some things that are helpful in episode 87 of this podcast. This is When OCD Gets Religion. It’s all on scrupulosity, to kind of understand how these parts can try to take over the moral judgment and try to direct when there is so much intensity of fear. And so that also might be another source to begin to address some of these questions, because obviously questions of conscience are very, very prominent when there’s, you know, scrupulous types of symptoms. Is that helpful, Ryan?

Ryan: [01:21:51] Yeah, no. Thank you. That’s very good. Thanks, appreciate it.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:21:55] Thanks, Ryan.

Dr. Peter: [01:21:56] Great. Well, I’m going to go ahead and bring this to a close, but I’m encouraging those of you that are here tonight live and also our viewers, our listeners, to continue the conversation in the comment section of YouTube. You know, go ahead, I’m going to invite you to like and subscribe. We could really use another 250 or 280 subscribers to get to a thousand, because then we can get our message out a lot more to people that are looking for answers in YouTube, which is the second largest search engine out there after Google. And so that just helps us to connect with a lot more people. So just an invitation to continue this conversation and to help us get the word out some more. We’d love to have more and more folks kind of discussing these things with us. Also, I want to shout out a welcome to so many of you who are just getting in touch with this podcast on Spotify. It is great to have you with us. Spotify has chosen to feature this in the last week or so, so a lot more people are getting on board. So welcome to all of you that found us through recommendations from Spotify. I’m going to encourage everyone to check out Dr. Peter Martin, his work at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Counseling Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Dr. Peter: [01:23:11] It’s at ImmaculateHeartCounseling.org and there’s a way to get in touch with him via email there, there’s a phone number there. There’s a lot of resources on that website. Mental health videos, articles, all kinds of things on there. The number, (402) 489-1834. We are very close to reopening the Resilient Catholics Community to new members in the Saint Ignatius of Loyola cohort. That’s very exciting. We will reopen from February 1st to the 28th, 2025. Madeleine was sharing some of her experiences in the RCC. And our three overarching goals in the RCC, what we’re working on in that human formation work, is to first tolerate being loved. Tolerating being loved, being loved by God, being loved by others, being loved by your own innermost self, which also means being known and being open to the vulnerability that that entails. Second major overarching goal is to embrace your identity as a beloved little son or daughter of God your father, as a beloved little son or daughter of Mary, your mother. These are your primary parents. And then, third, to respond to God, to your neighbor and to yourself by reflecting that love back, by responding in love. So join the interest list. You can do that by going to our RCC landing page, soulsandhearts.com/rcc. Scroll down and fill out the little form that says join the February 2025 interest list and you’ll get our first email. There’ll be information that comes out over the next couple of months.

Dr. Peter: [01:24:45] The Formation for Formators community, that’s another community within Souls and Hearts. It’s going to be starting up with new foundations experiential groups in early March of 2025. It’s an excellent opportunity for you to really engage in your own human formation, informed by internal family systems and parts and systems thinking, all grounded in a Catholic anthropology. Why? Because we’re working to remove the beams from our own eyes before examining the specks in the eyes of those we accompany. Find out more about the FFF community and the FEGs, check out our landing page, soulsandhearts.com/fff. And within the FFF, within the Formation for Formators community, Dr. Peter Martin is offering an FEG on Wednesdays from 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time starting on March 12th, 2025. You can check to see what spots are remaining for that. He’s also offering an advanced group that’s a Preparation for Transcendence group. This is where we’re overcoming the human formation deficits, the difficulties we have in our natural formation to being open to connecting in a deeper intimate relationship, a personal relationship, with the three persons of the Trinity and with Our Lady and with other saints.

Dr. Peter: [01:25:59] That’s going to be on Wednesdays from 8:15 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. Eastern Time, starting on March 12th as well. And don’t forget conversation hours, every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. You can call me on my cell phone, (317) 567-9594. We’ll talk for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I’d love to connect with my listeners. I love to connect with my viewers. If you are a listener to this podcast, you know, by all means, you’ve got a question, reach out and contact me. I can’t give you clinical advice. We don’t do that. But we can certainly talk about the themes that come up in this podcast. And again, as always, feel free to like, subscribe and comment and we will respond to those comments. Now, if you’re an international listener and you want to get in touch with me, email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com, and we might be able to set up some kind of Zoom thing or something like that, if the phone number thing doesn’t really work. So with that, we are done with the announcements. I so want to thank you, Dr. Peter Martin, for being with us again. It has been such a lovely time together. I am so glad that we could be spending this time together.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:27:10] Yeah, I had a great time too, Peter. I remember when we first, I think we spoke about this early in the year. Was it like in March or maybe even earlier than that. And so it’s just great to have it culminate as it did. And I think it turned out great. So thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Peter: [01:27:23] And this brings to a close 2024 for us, it brings to a close this 24-episode series on the integration of personal formation. And to round this out, we’re going to go ahead and invoke our patrons and our patrons. Our Lady, our mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Special thanks to the Human Formation Coalition, who provided the support to make this transcript available.