Once maybe 20 years ago, a scared woman came to me wondering how to handle her husband Sammy whom she called “evil.”Well, that’s pretty harsh.
It turned out he was a member of the mafia.
Who knows if he had something to do with any bodies at the bottom of the ocean?So maybe he actually was evil?
But if you listen to Dr. Schwartz, that’s impossible: We all, according to Dr. Richard C. Schwartz and the therapy modality that he founded, Internal Family Systems (loving called IFS for short), are good.Even bad actors are good underneath the parts of them that came into their lives to protect them.
In therapy, we slowly unpeel the layers of protectors to uncover the shining soul underneath.At that point, that soul can take leadership to redirect the parts that have acted out to use better approaches to problems.
That’s the theory.
And Dr. Schwartz and his organization, IFS-Institute, have trained thousands of therapists to do exactly that for tens of thousands of people.Successfully.
So what about Sammy, the crime boss?
Sammy does not see anything wrong with lying, cheating, or violence.
He smiles when discussing his “business.”
From an IFS perspective, he too has a pure soul somewhere underneath the blowtorch protectors that have taken over him. And because they have done just that – taken over his whole being – he is completely unaware that he does have a pure soul, a Self that wants to be loving, kind, and compassionate.As a child, he learned that wrong was right. The teachers who told him otherwise were just a bunch of jokers not to be taken seriously. That’s what he thought, at least. And no adult in his family contradicted him.
Worse yet, he doesn’t have too much experience with love.
Being loving requires having been loved.
By someone at some point in development.
Sammy’s mom, as you can imagine, was depressed, scared, and preoccupied.
So many of her internal resources were devoted to surviving emotionally and perhaps even physically that there wasn’t much left for Sammy.She wasn’t there for him.
Interestingly, his father was.
His father, just like many Nazi fathers, was a nice and pleasant father whose daytime “job” was murder. His father taught him the “game” of life as he saw it. And Sammy grabbed hold of it because any kid wants to feel connected to his dad.On the other hand, his father was not a loving husband.
And Sammy saw that, too.
What this means is that, from a neurological point of view, Sammy’s brain was not using most of his potential resources.Why do I say that?
Brain researchers now know that the capacity to experience a variety of emotions is networked throughout the brain.
In fact, emotions will dictate even our most “rational” decisions. That is, we think we’re being rational, logical, and analytical when what really happens is that first we have a feeling and then we rationalize it.
We may not be aware of the feeling but researchers like Antonio Damasio have demonstrated that we have the feelings first, before the reasons that we come up with later.Because people like Sammy don’t know what they feel, they just react to things. Kind of going on automatic.
If you ask them, they have no vocabulary to describe their feelings.
They have not – in their awareness – felt connected to others, or experienced empathy or attunement. They don’t know what real sex is like, either, because they’ve never been vulnerable.In a way, you could say that Sammy has lived an impoverished life.
But he doesn’t know it.
All this is what is clear based on the lack of love of his father for his mother. Love is a primary emotion. It “wakes up” all the other emotions.That’s why Sammy doesn’t know he has any emotions.
So now along comes his wife looking for help and guidance in her marriage.She’s feeling disconnected because Sammy doesn’t know what connection means.
She can’t talk to him about his criminal activities because he just laughs.
They certainly don’t have love between them because he doesn’t know much about that either.Can we peel away the layers to expose a compassionate Self?
We could do it if he came in to work with us. Dr. Schwartz has worked with sex offenders and came to understand- and like – their protective parts.But Sammy has no reason that he is aware of to start that process. Like the color blind man, he doesn’t know what red really looks like and isn’t aware of missing anything.
That is why he doesn’t think anything is wrong and will not join you in therapy.I understand those of you who love your Sammy don’t want to give up. Perhaps I wouldn’t either.
But Sammy won’t change without the kind of Immersion Experience that we do.
I’ve seen amazing changes in all the Sammys that did come through our doors.
You’ve just got to get them there – because they will not come on their own volition.