Internal Family Systems therapy with Argnesh Rose

31/10/2025

What we are fighting about, or what are we fighting for.

06/04/2024

Yes

05/03/2024

I noticed this pattern in myself and others as well, when I am at my lowest and I am dealing with big emotions it is the hardest to connect to anything good.
Nature, friends, my Guides, my Ancestors.
A Part of me believes I don't deserve connection., so there is a sense of shame and feeling alone...
Then the penny dropped. This is the internal version of "time out" we give kids with "inappropriate big feelings ". "Go to your room until you can be nice!!"
So I learned my big feelings are unacceptable, I am bad when I feel them, and internalised the voices telling me some feelings make me bad, and when I have them, I don't deserve connection.
I wasn't taught to process my big feelings, I learned to shame myself when I have them and squash them down.
This of course is the pathway to depression, shutting down, or acting out, when the "lid flips" eventually.
Dr Becky Kennedy explains all this so well I her book "Good Inside"

15/01/2024

A bit more from Becky Kennedy's book: her take to understand sibling jealousy.

"Imagine you husband comes home and say: hi Honey, guess what? We are getting a second wife, it will be great, you'll have someone to share with, and you going to be the first wife looking after her. Are you excited? " And then she comes, everyone showers her with attention, all the energy goes to her, and you are expected to be happy and supportive and told off when you want to send them back"

And from the attachment point of view, it is exactly like that. We are wired to attach, especially when under school age when peers become important.

So again, if we can normalise and validate our kids feelings, and reassure them instead of punishment and shaming, we can help them transition easier. They will feel seen and attuned to.

Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

15/01/2024

I am listening to Dr Becky Kennedy, "Good Inside" book on parenting, and being a parent. It is perfect combination of practical advice and information. It holds both children and parents in a positive regard.

Here are some snippets: Tantrums are unavoidable and important part of nervous system development.

A tantrum isn't bad behaviour, it is the child's nervous system short circuiting and going into a meltdown, usually after many frustrating moments.

The more we hold: they are good kids having an overwhelming moment, the calmer we can stay. Our job is to hold firm boundaries, AND affirm their feelings " it is not an option to have ice cream for breakfast, AND it is okay for you to be angry" In other words, we are in charge and it doesn't make them bad kids to feel their feelings.

If we give in and don't hold firm boundaries, we put our children in charge, which actually makes them feel unsafe. If we shame and punish them for tantrums, they will believe they are bad when they have big scary feelings. And because at this developmental stage they simply don't have a neurobiology to self regulate we are giving them an impossible task.

This is important because the ability to self regulate grows from knowing feelings are okay, not bad scary things.

With Tantrums when they bite, cause damage, needs firm calm approach, " I won't let you do this" and restraining while keep holding the knowing they are good kids having a nervous system meltdown. (There is a lot more evidence based information in the book)

Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

04/01/2024

I just got recommended a brilliant book for parents. My friend is a therapist, and her son is having difficulty with their 2 and a half year old twins. (Twin toddlers! 😱.)

I purchased it because I was curious if it is all that is cracked up to be.

She is talking about firm loving boundaries, without shaming, put downs, not even "time out" as a method. Listening to her, I am loving the principles,: as parents we are good, sometimes struggling, and children are also fundamentally good, sometimes struggling with big feelings.

Our job is to guide them, their job is to explore and feel.
We can set strong boundaries, AND validate their feelings.

I highly recommend the book, and her podcast. Community Book Club: "Good Inside" by Dr. Becky Kennedy

Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Becky Kennedy - Audiobooks on Google Play

Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be audiobook written by Becky Kennedy. Narrated by Becky Kennedy. Get instant access to all your favorite books. No monthly commitment. Listen online or offline with Android, iOS, web, Chromecast, and Google Assistant. Try Google Play Audiobook...

15/12/2023

The most difficult aspect of recovering from complex PTSD (childhood, and intergenerational trauma) is a an incredibly sensitive nervous system. As a therapist, i got to learn how these reactions are involuntary.

Every creature has a primitive part of their brain scanning their environment at all times.
Neutral things are not even noticed cognitively. The only things we really take in is what we want to go towards and what we want to avoid.
This is important because if we had to be conscious of every detail around us it would be too much data to process. (You can observe this as you go about your day)

What we want to go towards and avoid is "decided" by our brain stem, underneath our conscious awareness based on feelings and associations we have with things over time.

If you're had a noisy family where you had a lot of fun, brain stem will hold noise + family (people)= pleasure, and you will get to be flooded with happy hormones just thinking of it.

On the other hand if your family was noisy and unhappy, to the degree this was dangerous, your brain stem will decide family (people) + noise = danger and flood you with stress hormones. No amount of logic will think anyone out of this, because it is neurobiology.

When we over react, it is always a trauma response, based on the past.

What comes after the flooding of stress hormones, the stories we make up about ourselves, and others is however something we can address. Because we feel so out of control our inner protectors either blame others, or blame us. Both is unhelpful.

I don't fully have the answers, nor am I fully healed. Knowing this helps me not to blame myself or others or if Parts of me do, sit with them and listen. Try not to attack.

This time of the year, when there is so much expectations in the collective consciousness, we are all tender...

16/06/2022

Most of us on a healing path come to therapy, and Self help workshops to heal, which implies brokenness. What is progress came from being able to embrace all of our parts as they are, not from trying to be different?

06/06/2022

I am sharing the below post, though I would add a paragraph:

Our society is a reflection of our inner world. For most people the cause of not being able to connect is social anxiety. The root of social anxiety is in early childhood attachment trauma, often intergenerational. A lot of us either isolate or self medicate with alcohol or other substances to be able to connect. So I believe if you put a rat who was neglected, separated or abused in a Rat Park, it would be either aggressive or shiver in a corner without some form of healing.

“Put a rat in a cage and give it 2 water bottles. One is just water and one is water laced with he**in or co***ne. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks. That is our theory of addiction.

Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.” So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of s*x. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water. But here’s what's fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it. None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.

Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can't bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, s*x, shopping... We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.

The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that."
Credit: Johann Hari

26/12/2021

Have you ever wondered why that is we find it hardest to let love in when we are in a dark place?

If we suffer repeated feelings of rejection and abandonment as childen, and we don't have help to process those feelings we have to try to make sense of them on our own.

Unfortunately the conclusion we draw if we feel rejected, we must be bad. We don't have the capacity to understand it is about our caregivers capacity to show love not us.

This gets anchored in our nervous system as a bone deep belief: I FEEL BAD, = I AM BAD.
Followed by a shutting down from love.

IFS helps us to gently rewrite this deep belief as we meet all of our hidden history and fall in love with parts of us stuck in the past. 💞