IIC 160: Your Parts Have These Six Attachment Needs

[00:00:00] Dr. Peter: All right, we are getting real, we are getting down to the basics, to the core, down to needs. We’re getting down to needs for safety in relationship, needs for recognition, needs for reassurance, needs to be delighted in by others, needs for love, real love, authentic love, and also needs to belong, attachment needs. That’s what we’re talking about, that’s what we are getting into today. But what makes this special is that we are doing this considering our parts, our exiled parts, our manager parts, our firefighters. We are exploring today how different parts of us experience secure attachment or insecure attachment in relationships. We’re looking at how different parts of us carry attachment needs in different ways. And as we noted in episode 116, a single personality is not enough. So, we are getting nuanced. We are capturing the complexity of attachment. 

[00:01:01] Dr. Peter: And I am 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, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you 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, also your mother, Mary your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God and Mary. 

[00:01:41] Dr. Peter: And this is episode 160 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. It’s titled Your Parts and Your Attachment Needs. It’s the fourth in our series on internal family systems and parts work, Catholic style. And it releases on February 17th, 2025. And we’re doing this podcast in a way that embraces Catholicism. I am so excited about that. It’s so critical. And what’s also just excellent is that I’m not doing this alone. Oh no. This is so much bigger than me. I have two of my favorite people with me today. So without any further ado, let’s get into it.

[00:02:29] Dr. Peter: And I am thrilled to have Marion Moreland with us today as my cohost. Many of you will remember her from the first episode in this series, number 157, when she was the co-host. And I’m not going to do as extensive of an introduction today, but here are a few highlights. Marion is a level three certified internal family systems therapist. She’s the lead navigator for our Resilient Catholics Community here at Souls and Hearts. And she is deeply committed to grounding human formation in an authentic Catholic anthropology, informed by internal family systems, informed by parts work and systems thinking. And why? Because Marion wants to help you flourish in your life, in all the dimensions of your life, the spiritual dimension, yes. But also the emotional dimension, the psychological dimension, the bodily dimension, and in your human relationships. And I’ve known Marion for four years now, a little longer, and I am so excited to have her on the RCC staff, not just as the lead navigator of the RCC, but also as our retreat master for the RCC and the Formation for Formators retreats.

[00:03:31] Dr. Peter: We will be hosting three retreats later this year in August of 2025 in Bloomington, Indiana. And Marion makes those retreats come alive. She’s also slated to lead a foundations experiential group in our Formation for Formators community on Wednesday mornings from 9 o’clock a. m. to 1030 a. m. starting on March 19th, 2025. More about that at the end of this episode in the announcements. Marion, as you may know, was also with us in episode 117, Discover the Parts Who Make Up Your Personality. And she co-founded her Integrated Hearts practice a while back. Check that out at IntegratedHearts.com. The details of all these things will be in the YouTube description as well, so you can find them. And Marion is a delightful person, a dear friend and colleague. And I am so happy that you are joining us today, Marion. 

[00:04:18] Marion Moreland: Yeah, it’s great to be here, Dr. Peter. Yeah, I’m looking forward to this. 

[00:04:23] Dr. Peter: It’s so important. And I can’t think of anyone else that I would love to have as much as a co-host for this particular episode. So thank you for being here. 

[00:04:32] Marion Moreland: Thanks for having me. 

[00:04:34] Dr. Peter: And now, Dr. Peter Martin, back by popular demand, back by popular demand, we have psychologist Dr. Peter Martin of the great state of Nebraska. Now, many of you know, he was with us in recent episodes, 155, 156, and 158. So I’ve introduced him before. So he’s no stranger to many of you. And he is, in my estimation, the foremost expert on attachment theory and parts work from a Catholic perspective in the world today. Dr. Martin has been doing innovative work in the area of attachment and parts for several years now, the kind of work that changes lives. He’s a dear friend and colleague, and we started our IFS journey together by being on IFS Level 1 training. That was way back in 2018. I’ve known him for more than 15 years. 

[00:05:18] Dr. Peter: His work focuses on faith-integrated and trauma-informed approaches to recovery, and he works with attachment-focused, implicit God images. That’s such an issue for so many people, for almost everybody, I would say, for practically everybody. These implicit distorted God images, and how to work through that from an attachment perspective. He supervises therapists at his Immaculate Heart of Mary Counseling Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. The details all in the YouTube description. He works with us in the Formation for Formators communities. He leads foundations experiential groups. He’s going to have one on Wednesday evenings from 6:15 PM to 7:45 PM. Eastern time, starting on March 12th, 2025. You can check at soulsandhearts.com/fff to see the spots he has remaining. He also does an advanced group for us, a Preparation for Transcendence group. That is all about clearing all the human formation issues that keep us from a deep and abiding relationship with God. Then Wednesday evenings from 8:15 PM to 9:45 PM Eastern time, starting on March 12th. Check those out. It is so good to have you with us, Peter Martin. 

[00:06:25] Dr. Peter Martin: It’s great to be back, my friend. Thanks for having me. 

[00:06:28] Dr. Peter: Such a delight. And I got to say, one of the things that I really, really like about both of you is that both of you are willing and able to disagree with me. We can have different opinions about things. We still get along. And I cherish that in both of you, that you can push back, especially when you think, you know, maybe Dr. Peter, you’re getting a little far out there or whatever. And that’s really important when we’re doing cutting edge, innovative work. Dr. Richard Swartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, has said that he sees IFS as, “Attachment theory taken inside.” What he means by that is it’s attachment theory taken inside the person, intrapsychically. And that’s a really innovative thought, and it gets more innovative, even more exciting, when we understand attachment from a Catholic anthropology.

[00:07:23] Dr. Peter: So there’s a lot that we’re speculating about here. We’re covering new ground. So we need to have the discussion. We need to have a serious, thoughtful exchange. And I’m so glad that you are both here for such a conversation. Okay. So I’ve talked a lot. Let’s get to it. All right. So what would you guys want us to know? Just kind of starting off with this broad topic of parts and attachment.

[00:07:51] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, if I can jump in there, I think I would like to start with the theological grounding a bit, and then just briefly get into that.

[00:07:59] Dr. Peter: This is for like, especially our spiritual manager parts, right, that really want to make sure that we’re staying on the straight and narrow, you know, and I know I’m jumping in here, but it is really, really important in this podcast that we be entirely consistent with what the church definitively teaches about faith and morals. So I’m glad you’re starting there, Peter. And I just, okay. I will try to restrain myself. I want to hear what you say, 

[00:08:23] Marion Moreland: Let your parts know it’s okay.

[00:08:26] Dr. Peter: It’s okay, I’ll take a little breath here. Again, it’s partly I’m just really excited, I gotta like calm it down a little bit.

[00:08:33] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s good. I’m excited for your parts too. Yeah, so the Theological Foundation’s Joseph Pieper in his text, he talks about love from a phenomenological standpoint. And he says, love, sure, it means to will the good of the other at the highest level, but also it says, it’s wonderful that you exist. And there’s a phrase he says, he says, to achieve_ gloria_, he said, it’s the acknowledgement by the first lover, who’s God, who now in the presence of all creation at once declares and sees to it that it is glorious to be the person that we are. Beautiful, beautiful phrase. So the idea is that daddy is publicly proud of me. And so let’s take that, if that’s true and we experience God at that level, and he’s the ground of our joy, the ground of our happiness. Now we can rest in being. We can rest in being with. Which is, in some ways, not what you’ll see with the most severe attachment forms. You’ll see that they feel helpless to self-regulate, to be with themselves. They struggle and feel helpless to co-regulate. They don’t believe that others can help them in their plights. So at that foundational level, to rest in being and to rest in being with is so essential to our human flourishing. I think I would start there. And then, at a natural level, you’ll see this in the literature, that the secure base script is basically, in a nutshell, something like this. If I encounter an obstacle and/or become distressed, that activates the attachment system. Then I can approach a significant other for help, hopefully who believes it’s wonderful that I exist, and that he or she is likely to be available and supportive. I will experience relief and comfort as a result of proximity to this person. And then the attachment system kicks off and now I can explore and move on with life. I can then return to other activities. That, my friends, is basically the nutshell of what secure attachment looks like on a practical level. 

[00:10:43] Marion Moreland: I’m glad you put that out there because it feels like, in the day-to-day working with clients, that is anything but the experience that many of us have, right? Like, really? There’s a standard for that, right?

[00:10:58] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. Yeah. And especially, we’ll get into this more later. I know we’re going to go through the five primary conditions and then that sixth one, I think on community. But especially the being delighted and valued, at every step of our development, at every step of our experience, and most particularly when we’re with the individual themselves, we’re with that attachment figure is so pivotal. Now, if you take that in, and we won’t get there right now, but if you take that inside, wouldn’t that be wonderful, if that’s how the parts experience the self. And according to Dick Schwartz, that is what the self is, that is what the self does. But the parts, for whatever reason, don’t trust, and so they’re not able to take that in, for whatever reason.

[00:11:44] Dr. Peter: Yeah, the innermost self has that compassion, and it has that desire for connectedness. But so often, the innermost self is eclipsed, hidden, or, you know, we’d say blended with parts that don’t trust that the innermost self can actually love them or can actually carry out those different sort of attachment role function, you know, like to be able to calm them.

[00:12:11] Dr. Peter Martin: Exactly. Yeah. So like you said, they blend or they eclipse the self. And I do like that image of the self is kind of like the sun at some level internally, because then what happens is that particular part that blends at some level feels like, either out of despair or survival, and in some cases, they feel like they have to be the light in the internal system. And that’s where it gets really problematic is when they start to block out the sun entirely. They start to block out the self. And then they feel like they’re doing the right thing, but unfortunately, they do it because a fall has happened. So for instance, you can think of the fall in four different areas. So you have the prehistorical fall, which is the original trauma or the primordial trauma. And after that, sin and insecurity and the lack of trust in God and his goodness became commonplace. And I think that that turned inward too, to some extent, right? Turned inward in terms of the way that we’re actually born in a fallen state, or created in a fallen state. So you have the prehistorical item, and you have the historical attachment relationship history. So you have the developmental attachment issues, or developmental trauma potentially. And then we learn to not trust, we learn to mistrust, and then that gets taken inward into our future relationships and the way we relate to other significant attachment figures. And then there’s something that’s more present in the moment when we do the You-turn, and you can sense when the parts are blending. There is that basic distrust in the self and the self’s goodness. They don’t trust that the self has possibly the best intentions and/or that the self doesn’t have the capacity to address their concerns. Even if it’s well-intentioned, it does not have the capacity to address in the moment. 

[00:14:04] Dr. Peter: So you need beneficence as well as benevolence. Goodwill is not enough. You also have the capacity to be able to love, to be able to help, to be able to nurture, etc. 

[00:14:15] Dr. Peter Martin: Well stated. Now that’s a great distinction, philosophically. Yeah, so do they have the capacity? Does the self have the capacity? Because in heaven, in the glorified state, there’s absolute trust that both beneficence and benevolence are there, eternally there. And there’s no potential for another fall. There’s not even a despair that at some moment, five years later in heaven, whatever time is in heaven, that something somehow is going to fall. And the question would be, how do we make heaven on earth? How do we get to that point where we can start really stepping into the experience of heaven on earth? And I think Pieper gets into that a bit there, right? The glorified state is God publicly announcing and proclaiming the wonder of our creation and our relationship with him. So it’s a beautiful image. And in attachment, we can do that in a small sense, practically, each day, throughout the day. 

[00:15:11] Dr. Peter: Marion, I’m wondering, as we just open up this topic, I wonder what might be on your heart or what, you know, parts of you might really want us to know, if there’s something there. 

[00:15:22] Marion Moreland: Yeah, there’s actually a lot of things going through my mind, kind of processing and hearing and taking in, even just reflecting back on, like, my last, say, week of working with people and interacting. And just that, those parts that have been so neglected for so long, that the idea that self might be there is kind of possible for, you know, the thinking parts, the parts that read the book or the parts that, you know, listen to somebody. But the idea that it really can do anything is so hard to buy into, you know, like, why would I trust you? You haven’t been there for me for my entire life, or I’ve always been alone. And that hope or that idea that we can have that perfect vision of security and safety here feels really big. But in that same regard, there’s also that hope that comes that, I mean, I can look back at my life and say, yeah, and there’s a nice chaotic attachment style, you know, pretty much across my system, depending on which part you’re playing with, and then to realize that, oh, wait, you know what? There is a sense of security that can develop, and how healing that can be, not that I have it perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but that there’s been greater space to say, oh, you know what? I can be safe, which for some people that’s a big deal, right?

[00:17:08] Dr. Peter: Oh, man. Yeah, the first thing right there.

[00:17:11] Marion Moreland: Yeah, and then, you know, I can be seen, like, even on these crazy podcasts where you’re sitting back going, why am I here, you know. It’s a really big shift and, I remember back in grad school, which wasn’t so long ago for me, going through some of this and the attachment style was completely new territory for me. Like I’d heard the whole moms are supposed to attach to their kids, but not like a whole lot of specifics around that. And I remember feeling like this was earth shattering information, you know, so much so that I made my rocket scientist husband read a book about it because it would make a difference. This is a shift in thinking, and also a real opportunity for love and to grow in safety and security and our capacity to feel loved and receive it.

[00:18:08] Dr. Peter Martin: I like that especially at the end what you said, Marion, that there has to be a certain level of felt safety, generally speaking, for a person to be able to receive love in the fullest sense. Because if we feel too afraid, then there’s protector parts are going to jump in, they’re going to block access to receiving or even to relating to another person, let alone receiving the love from another person. And so, you know, once there’s a sufficient amount of safety, that opens up all kinds of pathways to relating to others and becoming more open to love. 

[00:18:43] Dr. Peter: I think that takes us all the way back to Genesis three, immediately after the fall, immediately after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the one law, the one rule broken, Adam and Eve headed for the bushes, hiding from God, feeling very unsafe. And if you look at what God did is he came to look for them in a very gentle way. He’s, you know, calling out to them. Well, he knows exactly where they are. It’s not like he’s having difficulty geolocating them, you know, but he’s letting them know he’s coming and he’s working to re-establish the relationship. He’s looking to re-establish a sense of safety, starting out really with very significant attachment themes. He’s allowing space for them to feel safe and then also to be seen, heard, known, and understood. You know, there’s some reassurance that’s going on there. He’s actually very sensitive to those very human attachment needs when Adam and Eve were really distraught and distressed. 

[00:19:46] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, is striking too with that account, Peter, so Adam walked with the Lord, Adam and Eve knew God at a very personal level, very intimate level. And what it took for them to hide and cower and run in shame was one sin. It was striking how much — now, this is a big issue, it’s the first sin in human history, clearly. But it was striking how much that ruptured the relationship and continues to rupture the relationship through the effects of the fall and all persons, even those who are baptized. And yet, like you were saying, but God, he pursues. He’s not imposing, not attacking. He’s pursuing them through their mode in order to re-establish that relationship, which, at the highest level, he does, when he forgives sins and reconciles and so forth. 

[00:20:36] Marion Moreland: Yeah, there’s a shift from being in the garden to suddenly we’ve got to do something to hide because we’ve done something wrong. And you think about it, like, how many times is it really hard to just be with our Lord? Or be with another person without having to do a single thing. 

[00:21:02] Dr. Peter: So attachment needs and parts. Let’s bring it back to the level of parts, Peter. One of the things that I wonder about is just how do parts experience attachment needs? You know, we tend to think about attachment, most of the writing about attachment is kind of dealing with us as unities, right? It’s focused on the unity of the person, like one person. You know, we talked about the person’s attachment needs. We sort of see that as a cohesive, kind of consistent, single personality, one entity. But we’re talking about this in terms of parts now. So I’m just curious, like, what dimensionality does that bring in to the conceptualizations? 

[00:21:47] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, you know, that goes back to a question you had posed earlier. Does each part have its own attachment style, right? Or are attachment styles located outside of the parts? It’s a fascinating question. I think my response would be, do parts have attachment styles? Yes, but… and so each of them do, and in my sense is they would have very similar attachment needs as the person would in terms of like the dyadic relationship between, let’s say an infant and a mother. So very similar kinds of necessary kind of things that they need. And the key is it’s needs. It’s not just wants. These are basic needs like oxygen. This is something that’s essential to the person’s development in developing that image of God. 

[00:22:33] Dr. Peter Martin: I think I would say, attachment is more than just one part, from an attachment standpoint, because like you said, it’s very much based on this kind of monolithic structure of the person. It’s very much focused on traits. It is shifting more to state experiences, you know, when you look at the literature, but I definitely agree with your point that earlier you made, I think in a previous podcast, that each part has a particular attachment pattern in terms of the self. And we’ll get into how manager parts as a category of parts, they, when they get wounded, they tend to become more dismissing from an attachment style. They tend to be more avoidant. They tend to work very independently of the self a lot of times. And they can take on the flavor of an authoritarian parent of sorts, right? They feel like they’re doing the right thing, but they micromanage. You know, should I jump? Yes, how high? They basically try to take over most of it in extreme cases, so much so that Schwartz will say people that are chronically depressed, he says they have probably like a manager part that’s dominant, just constantly taking over. And so it just feels like they’re in this constant threat mode that an exile is going to break free, or something bad’s going to happen from an impression management standpoint.

[00:23:59] Dr. Peter Martin: And so what do they need from the self? They need reassurance that the self, this manager part, needs reassurance that the self is going to provide, to make sure that things are going to stay in a structured way. They’re going to stay organized. The self is going to be able to take care of the needs of the exile. So the manager part needs that kind of reassurance. I do think it still needs safety. I mean, because the threat factor for a manager part can feel different, from a safety standpoint, than maybe an exile. Managers are probably less concerned about being abandoned by the self than an exile is, for instance.

[00:24:37] Dr. Peter: Well, because they have an illusion that they could fill the shoes of the self. You know, and they tend to have some of the capabilities of managing things in day-to-day life. So it’s not as outlandish to think that they might be able to do that, whereas exiles may be in a different place. Yeah, Marion. 

[00:24:59] Marion Moreland: I was just going to say for many people, their managers have been running their lives. You know, that’s how they’ve survived. 

[00:25:08] Dr. Peter Martin: Right, it is. Schwartz will say like, some parts are basically like parentified children, kind of like you’ll see in parentified families where you have a 12 year old daughter or a 13 year old daughter who’s taking on the role of a parent to take care of the younger kids and their value is based on, am I a good girl? You know, am I doing the right thing? I’m lovable if I do the right thing. And take that and put that onto the manager kind of role. The manager now has this kind of parentified role, not because the self is trying to get the manager to do it, right? It’s not that. It’s just that there was a fall somewhere, you know, to use that language. There was some kind of wound that entered the system and now its job is to become the perfectionistic manager or the taskmaster manager or something of that nature. So that’s kind of the challenge of the manager. They kind of push away the self as the attachment figure and take over.

[00:26:09] Dr. Peter Martin: Now, exiles, just to go to the other side, exiles from an attachment standpoint, exiles tend to be, if you think about, in attachment theory, the level of anxiety, because they have this kind of bilateral continuum when they study attachment. One is the level of anxiety that a particular, let’s say in this case, part has, on can I trust that the self will be present and consistently and reliably there in a time of need or high distress? Exiles tend to go on the more highly anxious side. They don’t trust, they feel like the self is either going to abandon them or not be present. Because the exile’s experience is being exiled, literally, as the name implies, right? They’ve been exiled a large part of their life by a protector part. And so they kind of think the self has allowed it, right? So the self, they think, has allowed this and maybe has been neglectful. And so it’s hard for them to trust that the self will be there.

[00:27:10] Dr. Peter Martin: Managers, on the other hand, would be more on that bilateral continuum on the level of avoidance. Now there is some anxiety. They don’t feel like the self’s there. But I find them to be just more distant and dismissing. And that’s kind of the approach they take. Now, firefighters, you know, from an attachment standpoint, firefighters are a little more complex. Peter and I talked about this before. It’s complex in the sense of when you get into more severe levels of like disorganized attachment, some of the theorists like Kathy Steel and Onno van der Hart and so forth, will comment that with disorganized attachment, you have this kind of biological paradox where we are wired to connect with an attachment figure, but then we’re also simultaneously afraid of them. So what that means is we have a need for attachment, but then we also have a need for protection, in that same relationship. And as a consequence, they say, the little child parts are the ones that want to attach intensely. And then they say the ones that want to defend are kind of these adult-like parts or something like that. 

[00:28:14] Dr. Peter Martin: But it maps onto the manager parts, the ones that protect, but then you get these firefighters. And I’d love to hear your guys’ experience of working with clients and, you know, your own anecdotal experience, but firefighters, when they become dominant and, you know, Schwartz will say like someone that’s diagnosed with some kind of an alcohol addiction or substance addiction, probably has a dominant firefighter part that’s kind of running the show. But I have found people with more severely presenting issues, a lot of times are firefighter-dominant. So that would be someone that has dissociation because dissociation is a type of escape firefighter. It’s kind of a detached protector of sorts. Again we talked about alcohol and drugs or other kinds of addictions, or even something like suicidal parts or something like a self-harm part. Those I would classify as a firefighter. So when firefighters become the dominant part, I don’t know what the proportion is, but as a general rule, generally that means there’s more severe functioning for all internally. Yeah, so safety is really, really prominent, you know, just getting the firefighters safe enough to be able to relax.

[00:29:30] Marion Moreland: Yeah, I find it helpful to think about firefighters in a slightly different role. Maybe this helps me kind of frame them as I’m working with clients who have active or strong firefighters. That Dick’s reason for naming them firefighters was not because they’re dousing the flames of emotions and the exiles, like parts of me thought for a time, but it’s that they want to swoop in and save the day. They want to rescue whatever’s happening, right? You know, which makes a lot of sense, why drugs and alcohol and food and shopping and all those things that, you know, can be in the addictive category, start showing up with them. 

[00:30:18] Marion Moreland: But it’s also like this sense that I have figured out now that no one else is going to be there for me, and so these firefighters have to come in and do something to take care of me. They want to be the heroes in this situation, whereas the managers are trying to kind of tell us everything you need to do. If you do it perfectly, then nothing bad will happen. You know, the firefighters realize that bad stuff’s gonna happen because it’s been happening. And so they’re all about like, how do I stop it? How do I make it not hurt, you know, alcohol or dissociate, you know, zone out, do something. But ultimately it’s again, that cry to say, we need something to help us regulate what’s going on inside of us. And in the absence of security or, you know, a secure attachment figure, we’re going to look for anything we can to fill the gap. 

[00:31:23] Dr. Peter: As you’re sharing that, Marion, I’m having a thought of a firefighter that might actually desperately seek attachment with somebody else. So, for example, I’m thinking about, it’s late, I’m at the bar, I’m lonely, maybe that person at the end of the bar that looked over here a couple minutes ago can save me, right? So, I’m having some new thoughts. I’m like, I’m wondering how much the firefighters are impacted by the attachment needs of the exiles that they’re trying to distract from or that they’re trying to silence or that they’re trying to escape from or move away from in some way. I mean, if it’s an attempt to, you know, in some ways get the exile what the exile needs, but in a way that’s not self-led, that’s not ordered.

[00:32:16] Dr. Peter: I’m just thinking there’s a lot of variability here. I know we’re trying to wrap our minds around like common patterns and so forth. But I also think there’s a lot of variability about, you know, how firefighters might behave or even how managers might behave. So just to kind of preserve that, you know, to say the main difference between firefighters and managers are that firefighters are reactive. They’re acting reactively when an exile is already broken out, signaling that there’s a threat to the system because we don’t know what that exile is going to do. Managers are trying to proactively keep a lid on things. I think managers may be more prone to just ignoring the needs of the exiles. Firefighters might be kind of like what you were saying, wanting to save the day, might be wanting to try to find a solution that actually does at least temporarily seem to soothe the system. 

[00:33:06] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s an interesting point. So at some level they’re kind of indulging that exile, but doing it in an extreme way or without consideration of all the variables and after effects and things like that. 

[00:33:17] Dr. Peter: If we consider the fire to be the exile’s attachment need, you know, like how do we meet that need? And that may be more that’s something firefighters do because they’re actually at least engaged in some way with the exile, whereas the managers may not be.

[00:33:31] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, it’s interesting because then you could see how that might turn into permissive parenting style. So if the manager is the authoritarian, which is the extreme, rigid, whatnot, then the permissive would be the firefighter, just kind of giving in. I like that metaphor, the idea that firefighter comes from, he wants to rescue or she wants to rescue the exile or something, or the system for that matter. Sometimes you’ll hear the metaphor of a teenager. So it’s the frantic, nervous teenage babysitter that can’t get the kids to stop coloring on the walls, or dumping their food on the floor. And so they’ll do anything to indulge that, or even like the rebellious teenager that doesn’t think things through.

[00:34:14] Dr. Peter Martin: And in that sense, it’s the systemic reactivity to the authoritarian parenting of the manager. You see this kind of other side. One thing I might float, I actually have talked a client or more about some of these kind of experiential distinctions and they said what they have found is that both managers and firefighters protect in rigid ways. So even though they can be wildly creative and all over the place, there is a particular safety-driven or survival-driven, rigid thing that they do. So for instance, for someone that struggles with alcohol, if a firefighter jumps in, they might say, oh, I had a really good day. I think I should have a drink, kind of thing. Or, man, this is a horrible day. I think I need a drink. Or, boy, this is kind of dull. You know what would really spice things up, is if I had a drink. But the idea is they have the one trick pony solution to the challenges. But to your point, it could still be kind of rescuing the situation.

[00:35:15] Marion Moreland: Yeah, I was thinking about how, I think this was from one of my trainings. I’m trying to put back together where it was. But they were saying that if parents tend to be more firefighter-driven, then it is likely that children are more manager-driven. I mean, I can definitely see some correlations there in various places. But it was interesting to me that they didn’t make the opposite conclusion. They’re not saying that manager-driven parents lead to more firefighter-driven children, which I don’t know whether it’s true or not. 

[00:35:54] Dr. Peter Martin: So you’re saying, in one sense, like begets like. So if you have a manager-driven parent, it begets kind of a manager-driven, potentially, or the opposite? For example, firefighter, rebelliousness.

[00:36:05] Marion Moreland: Right, so if I’ve got really firefighter-driven parents, irresponsible, overspending, and it doesn’t have to be addiction type behaviors, but just impulsive, making choices that feel good in the moment, that the child is going to learn to be more manager-driven because they have to be able to respond to whatever might come out of those firefighters with the parents. 

[00:36:37] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s interesting. I’m glad we’re tossing these ideas around. This is great. I love this exchange. Yeah, I think it could be both-and to your point. I feel like it could be authoritarian parenting begets authoritarian parenting. If someone comes from a rigid manager-driven system, that’s what they know. That’s the environment. That’s the air they breathe. And so that could soak in and parts would continue like in a dominant way of managerial. And the same thing with firefighters, I come from a chaotic kind of firefighter system, and you see this, because I could see both-and. One thing I will say is Dan Siegel, when he talks about the river of integration, secure integration, flows between the banks of chaos and rigidity, basically.

[00:37:20] Dr. Peter Martin: Rigidity could be more managerial, I don’t know, but he says he thinks permissive parenting is more damaging than authoritarian parenting. Because kids need structure. They need some kind of parameters or everything breaks out. It’s just all hell breaks loose. And so he said, that is some of the more challenging cases to work with is if there’s excessively permissive parenting. So whatever that means, I’ll throw it in the ingredients, the recipe here of what in the world happens with parenting and results on kids.

[00:37:56] Dr. Peter: If you look at the struggle of the protectors, whether they’re firefighters or whether they’re managers of a child, it’s, how do I survive my family? So I think you’re going to see patterns that may be more managerial or maybe more firefighter based, depending on what the responsiveness is in the family system, because kids are going to go to what seems to work. And, so if escalating is more likely to get needs met, then I think you would likely to see some sort of firefighter based escalation. It could even be manager based escalation though, if it’s calculated and it’s proactive and it’s designed to get needs met before the exiles break out. But I think it’s very responsive to where the parent’s parts are. And I think a lot of times, even in well intentioned families, perhaps especially in well intentioned families, there are manager parts of parents that really want to engage manager parts of children and see if we can get those manager parts of children to manage the children so that they’re less demanding and they don’t activate the unresolved shame, anxiety, anger, whatever it is, within the parent.

[00:39:14] Dr. Peter: I’m really looking at the patterns of defensiveness, how parents are trying to protect themselves, especially with their manager parts, maybe with their firefighter parts, if that’s what’s up. But it wouldn’t surprise me if, the response to chaotic parenting or firefighter based parenting is an attempt to lock everything down, to get very managerial, and to really try to hold it together, at least in my little slice of existence. So that makes sense what you were saying, Marion, about that kind of response. Again, though, I think there’s so much potential for variation on this, though, depending on what the needs are, how well they’re met versus not met, which needs we’re looking at because not only do we have the attachment needs, but we also have the integrity needs, and sometimes those integrity needs will trump the attachment needs.

[00:39:58] Dr. Peter: We’ll talk about those integrity needs next time in episode 161. But yeah, and sometimes parts that are attempting to get the same attachment need met, will go about it in diametrically opposed ways. Like they have very different ways based off their experiences and how they’ve made sense of their experience. And it can really work at cross purposes and wind up with, what can look like disorganized attachment, I would say. Now, I know Peter, you and I might disagree about that a little bit. I’m not sure, but I tend to see that disorganized attachment, where it’s really chaotic, as not being so much a part with wild variations in its approach, but that we’re seeing a sequence of parts, blending and unblending, blending and then being taken over and being kicked out by other parts that have different agendas and different approaches to attachment, very different attachment styles, so that it doesn’t look like it’s a coherent attachment style. 

[00:40:49] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah. And I like the idea, to your point about disorganized attachment, I do like the idea that there are multiple parts present and each of those parts can have an attachment pattern. But what happens is when they’re present at the same time in a conflicted way or alternating fashion, you run into some problems. And that’s what Kathy Still and others would say with disorganization is you have that childlike part, which might be equivalent to an exile, can operate at the same time for attachment needs that the protector parts show up, and try to protect at the same time. And so you could have a cluster of parts that are really amplified.

[00:41:28] Dr. Peter Martin: I do like, I was reading Frank Anderson’s Transcending Trauma. He’s got a nice little chart on, I think it’s on page 80. And he basically says, insecurity is when the part of the child attaches to like a burdened part of the parents. And he says, but security, more or less, is when the self or the parts of the child attach to the self of the caregiver. That makes a lot of sense to me, in terms of the particular part’s attachment pattern. Makes a lot of sense. But when they study attachment, my sense is that they’re looking at sometimes multiple parts, like you said, it could be in sequence, it could be activated at the same time, where it’s I’m terrified of you, but I need you, for an attachment figure. And so, I’m just assuming what they’re looking at is multiple parts, but one might be more dominant than the other. 

[00:42:21] Marion Moreland: That fits with the whole premise that it’s not an individual part or the symptom. It’s not the alcohol or the drugs. It’s the system and how the system is handling it. And it doesn’t necessarily mean like all of our parts. Cece Sykes uses her addiction triangle, which can be really helpful because we learn that where that firefighter’s pushing, there’s almost always a manager that’s pushing back in a different way. It says, get clean, do this, go to this treatment program. And there’s this push back and forth between them or physics between them when the protectors are battling and neither one of them is really acknowledging the exile, that’s feeling whatever it’s feeling. They’re just so busy doing their job as a protector that they miss everything else. 

[00:43:18] Dr. Peter: That’s that loss of vision. Parts do not have a breadth of vision. And so they can’t see the whole picture. They’ve got a strong sense of their own lived experience and their own understanding of that experience. But it often does not take into consideration other parts and their experiences, because there’s not the unifying breadth of vision that the innermost self has. So how do parts get attachment needs met? How do we think about this, first of all, do we think about it as a part having an attachment need? You raised that question. Or does an attachment need, say a need for safety, does that exist outside of the part, really, and it’s floating around, but somehow a part’s caught up in it? Or would you actually locate it within the part?

[00:44:04] Dr. Peter Martin: So I feel like it’s both-and. So I’m not trying to make it a cop out answer, but I do think it’s a both-and, and I think if IFS would say both-and, right? So even though they focus a lot on parts, it also looks at parts in relationship with other parts. So it’s looking at it at a systemic level. So I do think that a particular cluster of parts needs to feel sufficiently safe in order to feel more secure, and then if someone that comes out there with their attachment measures to look at it, now it feels like a secure attachment. But ultimately, it also resides at some level within the part and that part, thus it has not only a particular image of the self, or a secure or insecure pattern with the self, it also can now project that onto supernatural persons, and relationships like that as well.

[00:44:52] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, I think it’s a both-and. One thing that I would say, and maybe this will go up on the YouTube, but like that circle of security, I want to mention that briefly. My current take on this, and it’s an emerging theory here, but my current take on it is, the way to think of parts and blending from an attachment standpoint is in that circle of security, where you have the hands on the left side, which represents the safe haven and secure base. In that circle of security, when a part blends, it’s distressed. So it’s, literally, its attachment system has activated, and we are wired so that generally we’ll look for an attachment figure to help. 

[00:45:35] Dr. Peter Martin: Now, that may sound paradoxical when it comes to dismissing attachment, but even dismissing attachment, what they’ll find with dismissing attachment, like a manager in this case, what they’ll find is that when it’s activated, the infants in the strained situation procedure, they would act like the mother had not returned after she left, rather than getting to the whole eight step procedure. But what they would do is they wouldn’t go to the opposite side of the room from the mother. They would go close enough to the mother, possibly with their back turned to the mother, acting like, I don’t need her help or support. But really they wanted some proximity, they still needed the mother, but they didn’t show their cards in that regard. So my sense is even with someone, like a part, like a manager part, that seems very dismissing, independent, wants to take over and eclipse the self, my sense is that if we can think about those parts as needing the attachment figure, as needing the self to intervene, and to intervene in a particular mode. 

[00:46:40] Dr. Peter Martin: So one of the things they find with someone with a dismissing attachment, is they generally felt like their parents weren’t present or curious. They just weren’t interested, especially when it comes to emotional life, especially. Now they’re interested when they do well in school, or they’re interested in practical things like sports and achievements. But they’re not super interested in the emotional life. If the person can learn to operate from self, that this manager part taking over is doing so because of some type of attachment need that’s not being met, now it turns into more of a curiosity and a presence-focused kind of relationship. And then once that part is seen and known through the six F’s, let’s say, now what happens is you see it start to relax, trust increases, and things just flow. The mojo’s better. So yeah, I tend to see parts blending as an attachment activation that needs the self to support it. 

[00:47:40] Dr. Peter: Yeah. And I was thinking about this as, sometimes when we talk parts, we can get heavily focused on multiplicity at the expense of unity. And so who of us would say, I’m not injured, but man, my left arm is really bleeding. It’s only that part of me that’s injured, you know, and it’s just localized in that one part, right? We would say at a bodily sense, we’re injured, right? 

[00:48:02] Marion Moreland: Wait a minute, I’ve done that.

[00:48:05] Dr. Peter: Have you done that? 

[00:48:06] Dr. Peter Martin: It’s just a flesh wound, right? 

[00:48:09] Marion Moreland: Wait, yes. 

[00:48:10] Dr. Peter: I’m curious Marion, if you’re willing to share, tell us about that. 

[00:48:13] Marion Moreland: Yeah, I was thinking, my left ankle has been rebuilt like three times, right, like major surgeries. There’s no original software in there anymore. You know, so at some point for me in order to go on with life, and this is probably a combination of managers and firefighters. Yeah, I’m good as long as you don’t look at my ankle, or don’t look at this, which I don’t think is that uncommon actually. But to your point, I see what you’re saying, though, which is what we hear from people that we sit with often– I’d be fine if this anxiety part would just go away. Yeah. 

[00:48:53] Dr. Peter Martin: So interesting. 

[00:48:55] Dr. Peter: So when we’re looking at like these attachment needs and we’re thinking about it in terms of parts and we’re thinking about how do we meet those needs? Where do we start? I mean, do we start with the innermost self? Do we start with other trusted people, like potentially secure attachment figures in our lives? Do we start with God? Do we start with our guardian angel, so spiritual confidants? Do we go immediately to therapy or coaching or do we hope to get this met through spiritual direction? I’m just really curious about like, how do we begin to think about helping these parts of us that struggle with insecure attachment. 

[00:49:34] Dr. Peter Martin: Wow. Yeah. That’s a very overarching question, Peter. That’s a good question though. Yeah, I don’t know if there’s one quick answer to that question, but I think what I would say is take someone who has never trusted anyone, take someone who has never trusted themself. They don’t trust God, they don’t trust the body of Christ. They don’t trust any person. They don’t trust anyone. So the question would be, with that particular individual, where do you start? And I think where you start is where it’s safest. Now in my mind, and you’ll see this in different systems, right? You’ll have some systems of treatment that will say you start with some kind of a figure outside of the self. So that would be, let’s say in the Christian tradition, let’s say it’s God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit or Mary. And you go with who feels safest for that person right now. So it’s not that they trust him wholeheartedly, but at least there’s some semblance of trust there. And then you develop that relationship and so forth. 

[00:50:35] Dr. Peter Martin: Okay. Now with that, the question is, because IFS would say you do the inward turn, or at least you do direct access with someone else. But let’s say you do the inward turn, the insight oriented approaches. Sometimes that can be challenging for people sometimes that are terrified to do that. However, I still want them to know these emotional states, like I want them to know that, yeah, that this chaos that they’re experiencing, which could be rapidly changing or rapidly blending parts in sequence, that we can help make sense of that through a parts perspective and to get to know them. Or another way to say it is, maybe there’s a part of you that feels safest with Mary, whereas some of the others don’t and let’s get to know that exchange. So I guess my point is, these don’t have to be adversarial approaches. In fact, they’re not if they’re done well. I feel like health includes, not just counteracting the falls. We talked about the different falls, right? We talked about the relationship with God fall. We talked about the relationship with the parts and the self fall. We talked about the fall that happens with some kind of insecure attachment to a parent. All of those are important things to counteract in the way that we work to build security.

[00:52:00] Dr. Peter Martin: I remember there was a lovely woman who showed on the Q and A. It was back in December, I think, of 2024. And she commented on how didn’t really trust hardly anybody her whole life, the idea of trusting the self, that didn’t make any sense to her whatsoever. However, eventually she got around to trusting the Holy Spirit. I found that fascinating. That was one of the first kind of semblances of trust in her life. And so my sense is you go with the path of least resistance. You go with the mode or the level of the safety pathway. And then, and go with that. Now, it’s hard to say, only that pathway. I think you could be doing other things than IFS and an attachment kind of related work. But I think they’re complementary. And I think they build on each other. 

[00:52:47] Marion Moreland: Yeah, the thing that stands out for me where do you start? You start with relationship. And it depends on where relationship can be possible. And I think that’s going to be as different as each internal system, right? For some people, there might be a secure relationship that you can have with a partner, but it comes back to this idea. We were taught that, in what we’re doing, and this was out of, I think, our Hill textbook that said 93% of what happens in the therapeutic room that makes it work is the relationship. There’s parts of me that’s like, I’ve spent all this money on all this IFS training for just 7 percent. But that’s such an important thing. And that’s really where we’re cultivating. Yeah, I get that it’s messy. That’s why you can’t, drop in, get to know a part, unburden it, and have it instantly have a secure attachment in a 50 minute session. Because all the rest of our parts are going to be calling BS on that too. Right? That’s not how it works. 

[00:54:06] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s right. 

[00:54:07] Marion Moreland: If you want to be secure with someone, you have to have a relationship that demonstrates security. So it’s not going to be perfect to start with, but we need to help foster it being consistent with whoever it is. I do tend to stay away from spiritual confidants until there’s like evidence that’s going to bring safety because so often I see managers that are like, well, I’m just going to bring them all to Jesus. And then I get to see what happens when they’re all in pain because they all see Jesus differently, right? So for me, I feel like I start with, my hope is that they’re going to be able to develop it within themselves. And in that absence, I’m hoping that the dynamic between myself and whoever I’m working with will begin to give them glimmers of possibility, of hope, that this can be safe. There is such a thing as safety.

[00:55:13] Dr. Peter: Even if they experience just for a couple of seconds, there’s something real about that that can be remembered or recalled. 

[00:55:23] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah. Yeah. Peter, I thought maybe one area to look into was this kind of pink elephant in the room. So we’re talking about IFS theory itself, and then we’re also bringing in attachment theory and so forth. For those that have read some of the attachment theorists, and then also Dick Schwartz, you’ll see this kind of strong difference of opinion, let’s just say, to put it nicely, where attachment theorists will make the claims that babies have no self. That’s literally a quote I took from Alan Sroufe’s book when he’s the key researcher. He’s done a 40 plus year study, longitudinal study on attachment. I think even after 40 years they have 170 subjects still in it. It’s pretty remarkable. But he says babies have no self and the self develops through the relationship and he calls it the emergence of self through an attachment relationship. So it’s almost like through the self of the mother, and let’s just, for the sake of example, the child’s self emerges. Okay so they base it very much on nurture. 

[00:56:34] Dr. Peter Martin: So Schwartz on the other hand does not base self on nurture. In fact, he says it’s inherent. We’re born with a self, it does not develop, and it cannot be damaged. So it’s this unfallen supremely secure internal attachment figure that has been there from the beginning. So what do you do with that? How in the world do you try to find a way to reconcile those two theories? I’ll do my best. I do think there’s some overlap, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, Marion and Peter. The first thing I would say is I think both of them are right, but both of them are wrong, to put it short. I think Sroufe is right from an empirical standpoint. You don’t see certain elements of what we would call a strong pattern of self with infants, let’s say early on before the attachment patterns kick in and before their rational capacities develop. So from an empirical standpoint, the way he classifies self, you can’t really measure per se, right? Okay. So he’s right there. 

[00:57:38] Dr. Peter Martin: However, he’s missing out on the Imago Dei here. This is the, obviously the core aspect of our humanity. It’s an organizing principle of who we are. So there’s a self there. And so I think Sroufe is talking about actualized manifest self is not there, per se, with an infant. Schwartz, on the other hand, says, no, it’s there, but it’s latent. You can’t see it because, the neurological capacities aren’t there and other things prevent the self from exercising its capacities. So he’s looking at latent potentiality of self. But of course he goes too far with that too. Because again, it’s the unfallen, supremely secure, internal attachment figure. And it turns into kind of like a god like self. That’s why he capitalizes it, capital S. And it has a feel of his notion of self to the parts and the internal family system is almost equivalent to the Holy Spirit to the body of Christ, parts of the body of Christ, almost synonymous. It has these kind of God like qualities, which, we would say is problematic. So I just wanted to float that out there. But I think one of them emphasizes one thing to the exclusion of the other. And so, I do think like Catholic thought on the Imago Dei and other things can be corrective to both of those.

[00:59:01] Marion Moreland: Yeah, I’m not necessarily like the argue philosophy sort of person, unless it’s with Dr. Peter and then I, then maybe I’ll push back some. No, but I think that a lot of it, like what you were saying about how Dick Schwartz tends to almost make it like the god like part in us is where it goes a little far on that side of the pendulum. And yet to say that a child, a baby that’s born doesn’t have self — as a mom, I can make an argument that it’s almost like that neutral state of self where it’s got the courage to ask for all its needs without the parts in the way, until as parents, we help those parts develop. My take on self as a part is more in the sense that it’s the part of us that’s not damaged by all the stuff that’s happened or not happened. It’s not God. It’s not soul. It’s not affected by the worldly stuff in the same way that other parts have, and that’s why it’s got an easier way of connecting with God for healing, but it’s not God, it’s just like that portal or passage or bridge or, whatever image works, that isn’t as obscured as some of our parts tend to be .

[01:00:38] Dr. Peter Martin: Right. Exactly. Yeah, no, I agree. Because even Christ himself developed, he grew in wisdom, understanding. Schwartz kind of seems to be opposed to that language when it comes to self. And yeah, so you run into some challenges. One other piece about that too, Marion. So as far as I can tell in Catholic teaching, there’s the fathers and some of the other theologians would say, anything that is, like an animal, that is not a person, so let’s say Fido. Fido is like a, what do they call it? Not an image of God, but they call it a, I can’t remember the term. But then the next level up is a person, like us, human persons, and we’re images of God. And then there’s those that have been baptized, which is the next level of ontological existence, let’s say. So now we’re saved and redeemed. We’re in Christ. And then the next level up is the glorified in heaven. And then there’s this infinite chasm between that highest level of human existence where we’re most fully human. And who God is, right? So there’s this infinite chasm. But with Schwartz, there’s not that kind of nuance, you know, we run into some real philosophical or theological issues with that understanding of self.

[01:01:54] Marion Moreland: Yeah, I’m always appreciative that I don’t have to have philosophical debates with him. And that I can be present with the people I’m with and take what works for us and let the rest go, right? 

[01:02:09] Dr. Peter: And IFS was developed originally very phenomenologically. I mean, you’re seeing sort of what Richard Schwartz experienced and how he understood what he experienced when he’s laying this out. But there’s a way that these major concepts can be harmonized with a Catholic understanding of the human person. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re not taking the same kind of approach that Richard Schwartz did, with a phenomenological kind of going into this totally open blank slate. We have what we know to be true by divine revelation and we’re understanding through that lens. So yeah, in some ways we have, a lot of ways we have huge advantages in terms of being able to draw from other ways of understanding philosophy, theology, especially metaphysics, being able to understand who the human person is.

[01:02:55] Dr. Peter: So are you open to an experiential exercise? I’m just curious if we’d like to take that route, if you guys would be, if both of you would be open to that and our audience as well. All right. I thought what I might do, we haven’t talked about them a lot, but there’s, as so many of my viewers, my listeners, you know, we talk about the six attachment needs, six primary conditions of secure attachment. The first five from Brown and Elliott’s 2016 book Attachment Disturbances in Adults. But I thought we might just stay with some of these words and with parts that you are familiar with, that you have connections with already, or that might readily come up if this is new to you, parts that might be more available just to kind of see if we can open a conversation with those parts around attachment issues, attachment needs.

[01:03:49] Dr. Peter: That’s kind of what we’re looking for here. And, as always, this is not therapy. This is an experiential exercise. It’s more like a guided meditation. You can take what’s helpful to you. Know that you have complete control. If this doesn’t work for you, let it go. If you are driving or if you’re working out or if you’re preparing dinner or folding laundry or whatever, you might find a spot to actually take this 10 minutes or so, 12 minutes and just see if you can give that a pride of place, to enter into. Or you can just skip over it, if you want to. So whatever’s helpful along those lines, and a lot of gentleness with this as we begin. Know that again, you can stop the recording if you’d like to spend more time with your parts on a particular theme. If it’s helpful to have different colored pens or pencils to be able to give a voice in writing to parts. A lot of times they really appreciate that. And we’re not going to be looking for any kind of particular part. We’re not going to be going for some particular part here, but whichever parts might want to engage around the question of attachment needs, attachment security.

[01:05:02] Dr. Peter: So to just begin, I’m just going to invite you to notice like what’s going on in your body right now. What’s happening inside in your body or around your body as we begin. Just noticing, kind of getting a baseline, maybe of just what your body sensations are like. Sometimes parts will communicate about attachment needs, attachment issues through the body. And, you know, that first attachment need is safety. We’re gonna start there. Just curious what happens as we broach this topic of safety. Say the word safety. What do you notice in or around your body? If it’s helpful to, you know, note something down, hear what that response is, sense it, see it in your parts.

[01:06:32] Dr. Peter: I think safety can be so underappreciated in terms of its importance. I think so often parts of us may run, try to run through, run over, run around questions of safety. We can slow it down and just listen. A felt sense of safety and protection in a relationship. Where might that be missing for a part? And we accept that there might be something missing there. Be open to that. What might your part want you to know about safety? And if you’re finding that you’re really engaged in this topic of safety, that’s great. You can stay there. You don’t have to follow anything else if you’re really dialed in with that. Stop the recording, stay with that.

[01:08:43] Dr. Peter: But sometimes there’s a need for recognition. A need to be seen, heard, known, understood, to be recognized. Just curious if that need for recognition, there’s parts that are available enough, willing enough, that feel safe enough to be able to acknowledge and share a need for recognition. Maybe parts that carried the experience of not being seen or heard, not having a voice. Being disregarded, ignored, maybe even abandoned. And again, we don’t want to get too intense with this. If you’re noticing that it’s too much, too fast, you can slow it down, you can stop the recording. But so often, parts do struggle with this lack of recognition. The second primary condition of secure attachment, recognition.

[01:10:44] Dr. Peter: And then, the third is reassurance. When I say reassurance, what happens inside? What do you notice? What might be coming up as a trailhead? Reassurance, the need to feel comforted, soothed, calmed. It’s going to be alright, that sense. I wonder if there’s a part that just felt like it had to make it in the world without that reassurance. Or maybe there was reassurance, but it was hard to take in, it didn’t feel safe enough. Maybe there was reassurance in the history, but it didn’t feel attuned, it came without recognition, so it felt hollow, even if it was well intentioned. Reassurance. What parts, what might parts want you to know about reassurance.

[01:13:18] Dr. Peter: And to just keep this more contained, we’re just going to do one more. And that’s delight. The need to feel desired, cherished, treasured, delighted in by the other, see the eyes light up of the one who loves you. So common for so many parts to never have had an experience of being delighted in. It’s not contingent on performance or achievements, but it goes back to, it’s wonderful that you exist. I’m just curious if parts believe that’s possible, believe that’s at least a potential reality. Or if there’s doubt, questions, what do they want you to know about their experience of being delighted in, or not delighted in, or the counterfeits of delight that they’ve experienced. Whatever it is. 

[01:16:03] Dr. Peter: If it’s helpful to write some things down, that’s great, whatever feels right and good. And to think about these four words, and to choose one of them for a next right step. Safety, recognition, reassurance, delight. Just to see if there’s a next right step for you with one of your parts, to help them with those needs. And as we sort of bring this to a close, just to know that it’s a beautiful and wonderful thing to connect with your parts around attachment needs. I know that can be hard for some parts. I appreciate the space that you may have had, from your protectors, a sense of trying something new, something different. It might have felt a little risky or a little scary for some of your protectors, but thank you for the space. Whenever you do your work inside, it builds up the entire body. We’re all in one body in the Catholic Church. It builds us all up, so thank you for that. 

[01:18:25] Dr. Peter: And, if it feels right and good for those of you that are tuning in, listening, watching, you’re more than welcome to share your experiences in the comment section of this episode on YouTube. If it feels like something that your parts would like to share, we’d love to hear what this was like for you. So if it feels good to all your parts. But I’m curious as we come back here, Peter Martin, Marion Moreland, if there’s anything that came up for you, that you’d like to share. Again, we don’t want to intrude and we certainly don’t want to steamroll any parts, but if it feels right and good to all your parts, if there was something about those common attachment needs, those primary conditions for secure attachment, that parts might’ve been, addressing in one way or another.

[01:19:15] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, if it’s okay, if I go first here, Marion. Yeah I think for me on the safety issue, there were parts that were concerned about basically two different areas. The first one was, did I get it all in? Is it, we’re here talking about it. I’m supposed to be this guest expert and here I am talking about it. Did I make it something that was absorbable, something that was tangible and did I get it all in? So there’s a concerned part, an urgency part there. But then there’s also the process of how I spoke it, because we’re talking about the importance of love and did I communicate that through the way that I spoke about the theories or the theorists or the way I exchanged my disagreements or nuances with both of you?

[01:20:00] Dr. Peter Martin: And I wanted to make sure that that was helpful. But then when you spoke about delight, and I’m glad we concluded on that because delight by its nature, like you’re saying, is it’s not something that you’re valuable because of outcomes. That’s not, that doesn’t enter into the delight picture. And when you spoke delight, I have this real kind of special relationship with Mother Teresa. When I encounter her in the morning, when I pray or some other time throughout the day, it’s this giant smile. I don’t even know if it’s humanly possible to smile as big as she does, at least in my image of her, my encounter with her. And I noticed when she showed up and I felt delighted in, it’s like those fears just started to evaporate. I don’t think they were entirely gone, but I was thinking about, not everyone knows how to delight, but she sure does. So I trust her, especially in heaven as she is.

[01:20:56] Dr. Peter Martin: She feels to me like she’s delight incarnate, but yeah. And so then I wanted to share that delight with the other parts is what I was thinking, but only on their terms, like only do they want to see, would they be open to sharing in her delight and receiving it, or would they be open to observing her delighting in someone else or another part? And just letting them know, it’s all for the good and so forth. But yeah, no I really appreciated the experiential. 

[01:21:25] Dr. Peter: Beautiful. Thank you, Peter. 

[01:21:29] Marion Moreland: Yeah, for me, it was interesting because it felt like I have this part that kind of comes back with short, pithy responses. And it felt in some ways that part was speaking up, but in a positive way, instead of it’s, it can often be a little bit more on the sarcastic side. And so even just starting with safety, there was this sense of, it’s possible. And just a real awareness that parts might have had a very different feeling around that at other times and I think there was a surprised reaction, if you will, that there wasn’t really a part that was complaining about safety. Usually there’s someone to say something. Especially when you’re sitting here on a camera and whatever. 

[01:22:24] Marion Moreland: But that wasn’t the case and it was just a place of being able to appreciate change and healing and that you can have moments of safety and experiences of safety. Yeah, so I thought that was really good. And I think the other categories were more like touching on pieces, things I’ve been working on, but for me, they have been much more somatic responses. So there’s not like a lot of words. But good, just, an awareness, a couple of places of, okay, probably should explore this a little bit more. But not like anything that I could put a lot of words to for somebody else. 

[01:23:11] Dr. Peter: Yeah. And we honor that because not everything is expressible, even with a broad vocabulary. So thank you, Marion. As we land this plane, I just love being able to do this experiential work, but I also want to create a space just for one more point, one key takeaway, maybe a takeaway and a half, that you’d like to each share with our audience, something you’d like them to remember. If there’s one thing to remember from this episode, what is it that you would like them to hold on to as we continue on? 

[01:23:48] Dr. Peter Martin: So for me, yeah, I can’t get Pieper’s phraseology out of my mind when it comes to the idea of it’s wonderful that you exist and how much so that when it comes to our own attachment security, the less we’re delighted in, the less we feel our feelings and our parts matter, the less we treat our parts with respect and we treat them as if it’s not wonderful that they exist and we try to exile them permanently, the more challenging life is. But the more that we respect that basic principle of love, that it’s wonderful to exist both in the internal world, in our relationships with others, and in our experience of God, how much that transforms everything.

[01:24:42] Dr. Peter: Beautiful, yeah. Joseph Pieper, On Love, chapter two, I think, maybe chapter two. We’ll put it up there. We’ll put it up in the YouTube description. 

[01:24:51] Dr. Peter Martin: There you go. 

[01:24:53] Dr. Peter: Marion.

[01:24:56] Marion Moreland: As I was thinking about this, I’m like coming back to appreciation, but the wording that Peter brought from Pieper is so much fuller. That it’s not just appreciation, which is important, or gratitude, but really honoring that it is wonderful that these parts of me, that they exist, that they have helped me in ways that I’ll never, not in this life, fully understand. I think just sitting with that, your words were better than what I could come up with. 

[01:25:40] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s because I stole it from Pieper, I think. 

[01:25:43] Marion Moreland: Yeah, probably. But yeah, I think that sums it up for me as well. 

[01:25:48] Dr. Peter: Beautiful. Okay, so onto the announcements. First of all, if you liked this episode, like it on YouTube, give us a good review wherever you listen to podcasts, comment and subscribe on YouTube. We’d love to hear from you in the comments section of episode 160. That’s this one. And if you comment, I will respond to you. Don’t forget, I have conversation hours. I open my phone lines to talk to you every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. Eastern time, the number, 317-567-9594, for a conversation up to about 10 minutes, about anything that we’re talking about in this podcast or anything that I’m addressing in any of the materials here at Souls and Hearts. 

[01:26:36] Dr. Peter: Also calling all Catholic adults, the Resilient Catholics Community is now open for new members for the rest of the month of February, another 11 days. We do this kind of parts work. We work on attachment issues in the RCC. We work with those attachment needs. And the RCC, the Resilient Catholic Community, provides a structured program in a community of like minded Catholics to help you flourish and thrive. We meet in small groups weekly. We have so many resources, hundreds of experiential exercises for your human formation. And so many talks, so many workshops, just for our members. You can check out the testimonials on our landing page. Look at soulsandhearts.com/rcc and Marion Moreland guides the RCC as our lead navigator. We also have on our landing page at soulsandhearts.com/rcc, a 19 minute experiential exercise that’s all about just discerning whether you should apply to the RCC, whether you should go through the application process, which includes the PartsFinder Pro and so forth. There’s a long period of discernment with that. So want to let you know about that. 

[01:27:46] Dr. Peter: Look for the resources that we mentioned in this episode’s comments area in YouTube, Interior Integration for Catholics, go there, check it out. Again, like, comment and subscribe. So we’ll end by invoking our patrons and our patron. Our Lady, Our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.