IIC 112: Assuaging Raging Hearts and Parts: Managing Anger with IFS Way of Understanding Myself and Others

In this episode, Dr. Peter takes a closer look at an alternative way to manage, work through, and let go of anger, informed by Internal Family Systems (IFS), and especially by the work of Jay Earley. After a brief review of the major tenets of IFS, we discuss how to work through the different ways that manager parts, firefighter parts, and exiled parts hold and manage anger. We look at the functions of anger in the internal system and especially at the process, the steps of working through and resolving anger held by parts in different roles. Then Dr. Peter discusses how parts of him hold and respond to anger in a particular subsystem of parts within his broader internal system.

[00:00:01] “If one is angry in accordance with right reason, one’s anger is deserving of praise.” Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica. “There is a holy anger, excited by zeal, which moves us to reprove with warmth those whom our mildness failed to correct.” Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle. “Anger is a natural protector reaction to injustice, boundary violations, mistreatment or frustration of one’s aims. When we are in self, anger is rarely necessary because we can call on our healthy sense of power, forcefulness, and limit setting to handle these situations. We can be strong and assertive without frightening or harming other people. This is what I mean by healthy aggression or strength.” Jay Earley. Let us discover together today in this podcast episode how to draw the good out of our anger. In this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, in the last several episodes, we’ve been grappling with the major topic of anger. That’s what we’ve been doing in this IIC podcast. I am your host and guide, Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter, clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, podcaster, blogger, and the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you taste and see the goodness of the Lord, for you to experience the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God the Father and Mary our mother, our spiritual parents, our primary parents.

[00:02:10] I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God and Mary, even when you are angry. That is what this podcast is all about. Our outreach, Souls and Hearts, brings you the best of human formation resources grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes reads, “In pastoral care, sufficient use must be made not only of theological principles but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially of psychology and sociology, so that the faithful may be brought to a more adequate and mature life of faith.” And that is what we do. We bring you the best of the science and art of psychology and other disciplines to inform your human formation, grounded in the perennial truths of our beautiful Catholic faith. And we tackle the tough issues here. We provide solutions. This is episode 112. It’s released on May 1st, 2023 on the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, and it’s titled Assuaging Raging Hearts and Parts: Managing Anger With IFS. And this is the penultimate episode in our series of anger. This is where I show you how I manage my anger with my own parts in my own internal system. Now, if we go back, if we rewind all the way back to episode 71, which was titled A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others, we learned a lot about IFS.

[00:03:51] That was sort of the introduction to IFS. Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a synthesis of two paradigms: the multiplicity of mind and systems thinking. These are the two central concepts that were most prominent in Richard Schwartz’s discovery of Internal Family Systems. Multiplicity of mind, that means we are both a unity and a multiplicity inside. We are both one and many. And we’ll talk about that in a minute. Second thing is systems theory, taken inside. And according to Dan Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology, “A system is a group of interacting, interdependent parts that form a complex whole. Every system has causal boundaries. It’s influenced by its context. Every system is defined by its structure, functions, and role, and every system is expressed through its relationship with other systems.” Now that gets a little heady, a little complex. We talked about that in a previous podcast in an episode on interpersonal neurobiology. But the main thing to remember is that there are interacting elements of a system within us. Let’s talk about what those elements are. First of all, we have the self. The self. And in Internal Family Systems thinking, the self is the core of the person, the center of the person in the natural realm. This is who we sense ourselves to be in our best moments, when our self is free, when we’re not blended with any of our parts, when our innermost self governs our whole being as an active, compassionate, just, and merciful leader. Like the leader of a jazz band leading the musicians in a jazz band. Every jazz band has a designated leader.

[00:05:36] The self is also like the captain of a ship leading and governing all the sailors. And when we are recollected in self, when we have what IFS calls self energy, we possess these eight C’s intrinsically. That’s calm, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, clarity, connectedness, and creativity. Being in self often involves this feeling expansive, feeling free, feeling light. Some people describe it as feeling warm inside or feeling like there’s this glow inside. Being in self, being unblended from parts is so important when we’re working with anger. And that could be the anger in your own parts, in your own system. Or it could be working with another person’s anger or dealing with another person who has anger coming up. Richard Schwartz, in an article titled An Internal Family Systems Approach to Anger, said, “I can be in what I call myself, which has no judgment, just a lot of compassion and all the other C words, calm, clarity, curiosity, there’s eight of them. If I approach angry people and these angry parts from that place, then it doesn’t take long for the anger to dissipate and we can get to the pain. If I come with my protective parts because I’m afraid they’re going to be nasty to me, then I’ll get into it with their angry parts and the anger will escalate. A lot of the ability to work with people has to do with how you view them, how you can be in your body, and what kind of presence you bring.”

[00:07:20] So that’s a brief overall introduction to how important it is to be recollected, to be in self, to be grounded when we’re working with anger within ourselves and also with anger within others. So let’s just understand what these parts are. I’ve defined them before, but it’s good to review. These parts, in IFS thinking, are separate, independently operating subpersonalities within us, each part experiencing its own unique prominent needs, its own unique role in our lives, each part with its own experience of emotions and body sensations, with its own guiding beliefs and assumptions, with its own typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style and worldview. IFS therapist and author Robert Falconer, he calls our parts “insiders.” And I really like that characterization. If it doesn’t land well with you to think of these parts as parts, you could also consider them modes of operating, different ways that we operate. Now, Dr. Monty de la Torre, he wrote a weekly reflection that came out just last week, on April 26th, 2023, titled On the Metaphysics of the Human Person. You can check this out in our archive at soulsandhearts.com/blog. And he wrote, “From a Catholic perspective, when we understand the internal multiplicity of a person, as Internal Family Systems and other models of the human person posit, our parts or subpersonalities can only have accidental form and not substantial form.

[00:09:07] Why? Because if parts had substantial form, then we must explain how a multitude of actual separate persons, each with a body, soul, mind, etc. live within us.” In recent years, Richard Swartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, has gone to a position that the parts really are like separate little persons within us, each with its own body and soul and each with its own parts. There’s a number of ways in which his anthropology, his understanding of the human person, departs from what we believe as Catholics. And I detail some of those in episode 73 of this podcast called Is Internal Family Systems Really Catholic? As with any other system, any other secular based approach to understanding the human person, that’s part of the science and art of human formation, we need to make some adjustments, and that’s what we do in this podcast. We take that really seriously. You’ll see that we’re doing a multi-part series of weekly reflections on human formation, really getting at these anthropological principles. How do we understand this in the mind of the Church, but still draw in the best of what we’re discovering in the secular sciences? Like in that Gaudium et Spes quote that I led off with.

[00:10:28] Parts endure over time. This is a really important concept, they are not just temporary moods. They are not just ephemeral ego states that just dissipate and go away. Parts endure over time and they have different attachment styles. They have different ways of connecting or not connecting inside of us. So many parts are hidden. Parts consider themselves or are considered by other parts to be unacceptable, unlovable, unworthy, dangerous, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever. And anger is a primary reason for parts to be hidden or suppressed by other parts who are afraid of their rage and intensity. Now, when we talk about these parts, there are three major roles that IFS usually brings up: exiles, managers, and firefighters. When parts are not in right relationship with the innermost self, they fall into one of these three roles. So let’s just talk about the exiles first. These are the most sensitive parts. Exiles are the parts of us that have experienced exploitation, rejection, abandonment in external relationships. They have suffered relational traumas or attachment injuries. These exiled parts of us hold the painful experiences that have been isolated from conscious awareness in order to protect us from being overwhelmed with the intensity of those experiences. Your exiles desperately want to be seen and known. They desperately want to be safe and secure. They desperately want you to comfort and soothe them, for you as your innermost self to care for them and love them because they want rescue. They want redemption. They want healing.

[00:12:16] And in the intensity of your exile’s needs and emotions, they threaten to take you over and destabilize your whole being, your whole system. And that also threatens your external relationships. These exiles that you have, they carry your shame, dependency, worthlessness, fear, terror, grief, loss, loneliness, neediness, pain. They carry a lack of meaning or purpose in life. They carry a sense of being unloved and even unlovable, of being inadequate, abandoned. And they carry rage. Some of them carry rage or anger. So those are the exiles. They are, by definition, banished from our conscious awareness most of the time, in order that things can still keep going on, that we can function from day to day. Now there are two kinds of protectors, two kinds of protectors: managers and firefighters. Both of them are protectors. Your managers and your firefighters are your protector parts, and they are trying to protect you. They’re trying to keep you safe from the pain and the distress and the intensity of your exiles. They do it in different ways, though. Managers, these are your proactive protector parts. Your managers work strategically. They work with forethought. They plan. They try to take control of situations from the beginning. They want to make sure that your relationships are being managed in such a way as to minimize the likelihood of you getting hurt. Your managers work really hard to keep you safe. They strive. They plan. They take care of you.

[00:13:58] They judge others. They can be pessimistic, self-critical. They can be very demanding. And Richard Schwartz in that article said that “Angry managers are trying to manage relationships by giving this hostile, edgy message all the time and keeping people at arm’s length.” Why? To protect you against vulnerability. To protect you against being hurt again. Those are the managers now. The firefighters, they are our reactive protector parts. Remember, our managers are proactive. They’re trying to get ahead of the curve. They’re trying to make sure that things don’t go wrong in the first place. Our firefighters, on the other hand, are reactive. When exiles break through, when they break out, when they jailbreak, and when those exiles are threatening to take over our system, like in Inside Out. Remember the parts in the control panel, when that angry part would take over, right. When an exile breaks out, the firefighters leap into action because it’s an emergency situation at that point, like a fire raging in a house. And so they take these bold, drastic actions to make sure that we do not experience the intensity of what those exiles are bringing up from our unconscious, what they and their burdens are bringing to us in the moment. So there is no concern for consequences. There’s no concern for niceties, there’s no etiquette, there’s no Emily Post sort of, you know, protocol about this. It’s very, very messy when the firefighters take over. It can lead to all kinds of addictions, alcohol use, binge eating, shopping, sleeping, dieting, all kinds of self-harm and violence and dissociation, distractions of all kinds, obsessions, compulsions, escapes into fantasy.

[00:15:49] All kinds of things, including raging, including raging. And an angry firefighter can blend and take over the person, drive the person’s bus. Again, like when that little red character in the Pixar movie Inside Out, when he takes over the control panel, sees everything through the lens of anger. And what Jay Earley tells us is that the most common form of anger that we see in IFS sessions is the anger of a protector, a manager or a firefighter, who is using that anger to defend against the pain of an exile. The protector uses anger as a way to avoid feeling the pain that the exile is holding. Because of this, the anger often arises in situations where it’s inappropriate and it’s frequently more extreme than is warranted. Why? Because the pain of that exile is going way back to the past. It’s all that unresolved stuff from decades ago. It’s not just what’s happening in the present moment. It’s what happened 10, 20, 40 years ago, depending on how old you are, going back to when you were really little. There’s a kind of power and energy in anger. It can fuel behavior. It defends against passivity and helplessness and vulnerability and grief and fear and shame. Catholic psychiatrist Conrad Baars talked about this energy based repression where a person uses energy, such as courage, daring, hope, fearlessness, or anger, it could also be anger, to get rid of unacceptable emotions or feelings. The person may seem to be well balanced, self-controlled, and efficient, but he or she is forcefully keeping control over the unacceptable emotions by preventing them from being felt.

[00:17:41] And anger is a great emotion for drowning out other emotions, including shame, including guilt, including fear, including sadness. Now another thing, as we review this model of the human psyche that IFS provides us, is that our internal system is made up of subsystems. There are smaller subsystems within our larger system of our parts and our self. It’s often said that the human psyche is like an onion, and you peel back the layers of the onion. But Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, likens our internal system more like a bulb of garlic. A bulb of garlic is made up of different cloves of garlic. So the bulb is like our entire internal system, our innermost self and all our parts. But the cloves are like the little subsystems within us. And in the middle of each little clove is the exiled part. Subsystems within us form around those exiles and the protectors, the managers and firefighters, who protect that exile or protect against that exile. They form around that exile in that clove of garlic. So that clove is the subsystem around that exile.

[00:19:06] It’s part of the larger system. And that clove, that subsystem, contains the exile that is at the center of it, and then all of the managers and firefighters that protect that exile or protect against that exile. Now I want to discuss a 2012 book by Jay Earley. It’s called Working with Anger in Internal Family Systems Therapy. This is really the primary book. It’s actually more like a booklet. It’s not very long. You could probably read it in an hour, but it’s the primary work that’s out there about IFS and anger, and it’s very accessible. It’s very readable, I recommend it. I don’t agree with everything that’s in it. There’s some things in there that I would disagree with, but it’s actually a good summary of how to understand Internal Family Systems and the way that IFS approaches anger. Now, when we’re talking about the anger that our protectors have, our managers and our firefighters, Jay Earley says there are four situations that involve protectors’ anger, and they each require a different strategy to kind of work with. So the first situation is the anger is being acted out and the client’s life. Second situation, the anger is felt, but the self refrains from acting it out. The third is the anger is felt, but the protectors keep it from being acted out, the protectors guard against that anger being acted out. And the fourth is that the anger is disowned, which means it’s not available. It’s not available in conscious awareness. It is exiled. It is out of awareness.

[00:20:53] So those four situations, let’s go through each of them. And this again, I’m really drawing from Jay Earley’s 2012 book, Working with Anger in Internal Family Systems Therapy. So Jay Earley says that, “Protector anger serves a defensive purpose. It needs to be understood, but usually expressing it will only strengthen the defense. This is especially true with anger that is being acted out in the world. Expressing it might encourage more acting out.” So he doesn’t really believe in the sort of cathartic model of just acting out all your anger, anything goes. He says, “A client with protector anger can benefit from practicing how to communicate it in a constructive way.” Protector anger that is being acted out, this is again being taken out on other people. The yelling, the throwing things. That’s what we’re talking about with protector anger being acted out. It’s anger that’s being enacted. If protector anger is being acted out, that needs to be understood so that you can heal the exile that is being protected by those protectors. You start by seeing if your innermost self can come out, if your parts are willing to unblend, so that you, as your innermost self, can be present. If that is possible, then you can get to know your anger protector. You can develop a trusting relationship with the angry protector, and you can help that angry protector learn how to contain anger in life situations.

[00:22:28] It really helps if that protector can have a secure internal attachment to you, you as the innermost self. Then you as the innermost self can speak for that angry part instead of that angry part blending, taking over, driving your bus, and speaking as if it had a megaphone to the rest of the world. There may be a need for some psychoeducation here, may need some communication skills. But when you, as the innermost self, can speak for your angry parts rather than from those angry parts, other people, those important people in your life, are less likely to be activated, to have their parts activated and to enter into conflict with you, and start polarizing with you. Their parts are much less likely to polarize with your parts if you, as your innermost self, are leading and guiding your system. So think about it. Let’s think about it. Here’s an example. So I’m going to have you imagine saying to your spouse, I felt really angry when you criticized my outfit. Versus, a part of me felt really angry when you criticized my outfit. Can you see the difference in the first one where there’s this sort of unelaborated I. It sort of feels like it’s all of me was angry with you when you criticized my outfit, as opposed to a part of me felt really angry when you criticized my outfit.

[00:24:01] Not all of me, just a part of me. So what we want to do, according to Jay Earley. And this is also how I work with my own parts and with parts of my clients. Get permission from the protectors to work with the exile that the angry part is protecting. That exile may be carrying shame or guilt or fear or some kind of trauma, some kind of body sensation, some kind of memory that’s unresolved and unprocessed. But you get permission from the angry protectors to address what’s sparking their anger, what’s generating the protective response. You can go through the steps to help unburden that exile. And I’m not going to get into all of unburdening right now. It’s a little more advanced than I want to get to right now. But basically it means to help relieve the exile from the burden he or she is carrying. And in that process, you can also unburden some of the anger from the protesters, if that makes it easier. So that’s protector anger acted out. That’s the first one. The second case, the anger is felt, but the self refrains from acting it out. In this case, the self is able to still lead and guide the system, and the protectors are feeling the anger, but they’re not acting out on it. That’s a better case. In the third case, the protector rage is felt, but it’s suppressed by other protectors.

[00:25:43] Okay. Sometimes a protector has anger or even rage, and it’s felt by the client. But that rage is suppressed. That part is suppressed by other protectors, and therefore that’s not being acted out. Rage is usually suppressed because of the danger of its being expressed destructively. Often, the protector that’s carrying the rage is vilified, often demonized by other parts because they are so afraid of the consequences of that anger. And often this anger has had severe consequences, can harm relationships, it can damage relationships, can lead to divorce. It can lead to separations, estrangements from important people in our lives, the loss of other goods, including, you know, valuable possessions, jobs and so forth. There’s many ways that the inappropriate expression of anger, the intense expression of anger, can harm us and others. And so it’s understandable that other protector parts are really afraid of the intensity of anger carried by other protectors. And another factor for us Catholics is that if these parts, if these protectors are angry at God, that opens up a whole potential existential crisis, right? Fearing God’s wrath, fearing sinning, fearing hell, eternal damnation, you know, especially if angry parts get into condemning God or criticizing God, blaspheming against God. This can be incredibly terrifying to parts. So the stakes are really high, and there can be a real danger of these harmful expressions of anger. So this often can go back to when we were little. Many children, when they were growing up, had parents and caregivers that didn’t tolerate any expression of anger.

[00:27:37] No expression of anger was tolerable by the parents. All expressions of anger were condemned as disrespectful or disobedient or not honoring your father and mother. And when parents do that, children learn that there is no good way to express anger. If anger is always being punished, there’s no acceptable way to share anger or to express it. Then they learn that the anger is bad. The anger is dangerous. It needs to be condemned. It needs to be buried so that we can have harmonious relationships with mom and dad. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I love the game, Uno, for little kids. It’s because it’s a great way for children to express anger towards their parents. With those Draw 2 cards and the Reverses and the Skips and the Draw 4, Wilds, all that, there’s all kinds of ways that kids can get aggression out toward their parents when they’re really small, in a way that’s contained. It’s within the rules of the game. And that actually is very liberating for kids. So I’m a big fan of Uno and other games like that. When children’s manager parts learn that anger isn’t handled well in the family system, right, then they are going to find ways to make sure that it stays suppressed so that they continue to get their needs met to the degree that they can from their parents.

[00:29:04] Now, one point that Jay Earley makes is that suppressing anger is fundamentally different from refraining from expressing anger. What is suppression? Suppression is a defense mechanism aimed specifically at an emotion, desire, attitude, or impulse that is perceived as too threatening or dangerous to keep in conscious awareness. Suppression is the intentional effort to force that threatening emotion, desire, attitude, or impulse from consciousness, driving it into the unconscious where it is not experienced in the same way. But just because anger is suppressed, just because it’s outside of conscious awareness, just because it’s not felt in the moment doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s sort of like stuffing a polar bear into the closet. You can’t see the polar bear anymore. It’s no longer roaming around the living room. Maybe you feel better, but the polar bear didn’t actually disappear. Those kinds of approaches, suppressing anger, can be adaptive in the short run in certain circumstances. You know, but only if we come back to that threatening experience and we work through it. If it becomes a chronic way of coping, then it’s not going to work in the long run, because there’s this phrase that psychoanalytic clinicians repeat, and that is the revenge of the repressed. If something is suppressed or repressed, it’s going to come back, and it’s going to come back with a vengeance. If we suppress something, if we intentionally force it out of conscious awareness, then the only way that that experience can be expressed is through enactment, through behavioral enactment, through acting out.

[00:30:53] And sooner or later that’s going to happen. Refraining, on the other hand, comes from the self. When the self chooses not to express the anger because it wouldn’t be helpful, it wouldn’t be good or right. But the self doesn’t condemn the emotion of anger. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, emotion as a passion, it isn’t necessarily evil. It’s not necessarily bad. It’s not necessarily good. It could be good or bad depending on the context. So that’s the protector rage that’s felt but suppressed. Let’s talk about Jay Earley’s fourth way that protectors handle anger, and that is to disown it. And what he says is that in Internal Family Systems, we sometimes encounter parts that have been disowned or exiled because their feelings or behavior are seen as unacceptable. Originally, the part that wasn’t acceptable to the family of origin or culture, then it becomes unacceptable to other parts of the person as well. There’s a great quote by Lyman Abbott that I remember here. It says, “Do not teach your children not to be angry. Teach them how to be angry. Do not teach your children not to be angry. Teach them how to be angry.” When parts are exiled, when they’re forced out of conscious awareness, those parts that carry anger. That’s what Jay Earley calls disowned parts. Anger is probably the most common kind of disowned parts, according to Jay Earley.

[00:32:28] And I would agree with that. Well, maybe shame is even more disowned. In fact, I’m going to change my mind on that. I’m going to say shame is even more disowned than anger. But anger is very commonly disowned. When people have disowned their anger, they tend to lack assertiveness or strength. And Jay Earley says, “When that anger has been disowned, when it’s been severed, when it’s been forced into the unconscious, he says that people become passive, pleasing, self-effacing, lacking in self-confidence and drive. And that is because their strength has become disowned along with their anger.” When anger has been disowned, it needs to be allowed to come back. But not in a rip roaring, anything goes type of way, sort of untitrated, sort of unregulated. No, no, no. We want to do it in a way that is sustainable, in a way that’s not harmful. But we want that expression of anger to be embodied. We want it to be able to be worked through. And working with this disowned anger, Jay Earley tells us, “The goal is to gain access to the disowned, angry part and welcome it back into the internal family of parts and into the client’s conscious life, where it can live and express itself, but to live and express itself appropriately.” So it’s important to re-own that disowned anger and the part that carries that disowned anger, welcoming it back, encouraging the expression of that anger, but in integrated ways so that the person can have all the benefits of that anger, can have that fuel that anger provides us for doing good things, for agency.

[00:34:23] It also, as that part that carries the anger, is recognized, as it’s seen, heard, known and understood, as it’s accepted, as it’s soothed, as it’s reassured, as it’s embraced as part of your system, it begins to calm down. As Edward Bulwer-Lytton said, “Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness, but anger concealed often hardens into revenge.” So how do you do that with disowned anger? Well, you start by again being in self, unblending, right? Having the space so that your innermost self can lead and guide your system, so that none of your parts are driving your bus. And that’s really, that can be really difficult because parts, again, when we’re considering how volatile some of this anger can be and how dangerous it can be, and the potential consequences, the stakes being high in our relationships, well, we need to have some confidence that builds up in the system. We want to work with those disowning protector parts and develop a trusting relationship so that we can have permission to work with the exiled part. We want to welcome that exiled part into our inner family, when we want to encourage the appropriate expression of anger in order to be able to regain that strength, that assertiveness, the fuel for agency.

[00:35:47] And we want to work with protectors that judge the expression of anger in the client’s life. You know, often, again, those protectors are afraid that you’re going to do something dangerous if you let that protector have a seat at the table. If you let that angry protector have a seat at the table, dangerous things are going to happen. And in fact, they often have happened. These fears are grounded in previous experience. It’s not just something that parts are, you know, being sort of unreasonably, you know, fearing. So we want to make sure that we’re working in a way that’s very collaborative and cooperative with all of our parts. We want to encourage the protectors to appreciate that the angry part has something to offer. It can take time to develop that trust. We want to help the parts that have anger integrate back into our relationships, but in ways where their contributions are much more positive. What can happen when we first get back in touch with our anger, though, is that we can feel intensely and unusually angry at people, snap at people, be hostile towards people, be what seems like unreasonably angry at people. What Jay Earley says is that, “The anger that has been repressed and disowned all their lives is finally coming out. And the angry part is not only angry about a certain incident that triggers it, it’s also annoyed at having been suppressed for so long and angry at all the ways that you have pleased and kowtowed to people.” Right? All those other parts have been, you know, being very nice, seeking social approval, you know, experiencing harm to integrity in order to foster attachments.

[00:37:34] And that’s really been unjust. And so parts can really be reacting to the whole history of that. And you know, what’s happened is that the system hasn’t figured out yet how to integrate anger in healthy ways. So there can be this going overboard with aggression, going overboard with too much anger, for a while, until the pendulum swings back and they can get back into a more healthy balance. I don’t expect that clients of mine, for example, that have experienced no anger for a long, long time, it’s been totally buried and repressed, I’ve had some like this. You know, that they’re going to be able to manage it really smoothly when it first comes up, but it’s really important to get through that bumpy part, you know, so that we can learn. And some of that learning’s got to be by trial and error. We’re not going to figure it all out perfectly just by thinking about it or working through it somehow theoretically. We’ve actually got to have the lived experience of beginning to express anger in our relationships, and that’s going to be rough and bumpy. There’s going to be a learning curve there.

[00:38:39] So there’s also other ways. This isn’t something that Jay Earley gets into in the book, but writing about it, practicing putting that anger into words, especially when that anger has been disowned, can be so helpful, right? Bringing anger to prayer, if parts are willing to allow that to happen, can be so helpful, can be so helpful. So when parts have used anger as a way to distract, or they’ve seen some functional value in anger in terms of being able to ward off the awareness of shame or fear or some other experience, maybe depression, sadness, grief, then what can happen is that you deal with the underlying thing that’s being protected against, the exile that’s carrying whatever the burden is, that when it comes up, activates the anger. We want to get to the heart of it. We don’t just want to do “anger management,” right? Just treat the anger as though it’s a problem. The anger is a symptom. The anger is a consequence of something deeper that’s coming up. So we need to deal with that deeper thing. We need to go through the steps. We need to unburden the exiles. We need to witness the origins of whatever it was that provokes the anger in our protectors. And then as that deeper work gets done, then we can help our angry protectors unburden the role that they have of some kind of angry expression.

[00:40:16] Okay, now I want to talk a little bit about exile anger. Right. This is also from Jay Earley in his book, Working with Anger in Internal Family Systems Therapy. Remember, exiles carry burdens. And that can be shame, dependency, worthlessness, fear, grief, loneliness, neediness, pain, a lack of meaning or purpose in life, a sense of being unloved, unlovable, inadequate, inadequate, abandoned. And exiles can also hold anger, even if the anger itself isn’t disowned. Exiles can still hold our anger, even if the anger is still felt in some way. Exiles frequently feel angry at the way that they were treated in childhood. And again, when we’re working with this within ourselves or when we’re working with this as therapists, with someone else, we want to witness the anger that the exile holds with compassion. We want to accept that anger. We accept that it exists. And with exile anger, Jay Earley writes that, “The anger that the exile should be encouraged to feel and possibly express this anger with the innermost self as a witness.” In other words, the angry exile tells her story, his story to the innermost self. This is part of you loving you. When you, as your innermost self, witness and really listen to and attune to your parts that are hurting, this is you loving you. This is part of you loving you.

[00:41:53] Just being witnessed. Just being able to tell the story. Just being seen, heard, known and understood, parts of us being heard, being held by our innermost selves. It can have such a calming effect. Now, often our protectors can be dead set against that at the beginning, right? Because again, remember, this anger was really threatening. It could have ruined our lives. Maybe it did ruin our lives or parts of our lives, right? So we want to really develop that trust and take the time. We want to play for the long run with our protectors, develop long term relationships and not move too fast. All right, so in episode 71, which was called A New and Better Way of Understanding Myself and Others, I introduced you to ten of my parts. After I did that episode several months ago, I came across another part, my playful part. So I’m going to give you a brief recap of my parts. And the reason for that is, not just because this is Dr. Peter sharing time, but because I want to explain how anger works in my system and how I work with anger within myself. I want to give you a real life example of what this looks like within me when I’m working with anger. So I’m just going to list my parts for you, and then we’ll talk about the 5 or 6 parts that are most involved with a particular anger that stems from a particular exile, a particular burden that an exile has.

[00:43:34] All right. So my exiles or my former exiles, my part time exiles, depending on whether they’re integrated within my system right now or not, whether they’re exiled in the given moment, are my little one, who was formally my melancholio part, that’s the part of me that bears shame in my system. My adventurer part, who is my fear holding part. My lover part. My playful part. That’s the one that I discovered just a few months ago. And then my feisty one. Right? That’s formerly my angry part, who is both a firefighter and an exile. My managers are my collaborator part who is very competent, handles a lot of my day to day interactions. My good boy part, who is my Catholic standard bearer. This is the one that wants to keep me on the straight and narrow. And my evaluator part formerly known as my internal critic. And then my former firefighters or part time firefighters because they still play a firefighter role if I’m not integrated, if I’m not recollected, if I’m not in self. These are my challenger, formerly my rebel part. This is a part of me that has impulses to act out, especially against authority. My guardian part, formerly my intimidator part. This part was very good at intimidating others in order to protect me from vulnerability. And then my creative part, that part’s really good at distracting me. And so looking at my system, I do have a major subsystem that works with anger, that struggles with anger.

[00:45:25] Now, I used to experience a lot more conscious anger than I do now. Anger actually was my primary negative emotion for most of my life. That was the primary negative emotion in my conscious awareness, much more than fear or shame or guilt or sadness. Rarely did I feel a lot of fear. Rarely did I feel a lot of sadness. Rarely did I feel any shame, right? What I felt was anger, because anger was suppressing those other emotions. Anger was the emotion that got me into the most trouble in my relationships. Anger was the emotion that most harmed my close relationships. And frankly, I wasn’t that in touch, for most of my life, I wasn’t that in touch with my fear or my shame. My anger protected me against my fear and shame. In episode 87, titled Scrupulosity: When OCD Gets Religion. I said that “Scrupulosity was the son of anger and the grandson of shame.” That might be my most famous quote from all of my episodes. That’s the one that really sticks with people. “Scrupulosity is the son of anger and the grandson of shame.” Shame, in so many people with scrupulosity, generates anger, which generates the scrupulous symptoms. There’s a causal chain going back. In my case, the primary driver for anger was shame. The primary driver for anger was shame. And let me explain that in terms of parts.

[00:47:09] So my part, little one, formally called melancholio. The part doesn’t like the name melancholio. That was the original name. Parts can change their name. So this part I call little one right now. This is my primary shame bearing part. And I did a whole 13 episode series on shame, episodes 37 to 49. They are absolutely central to this whole podcast. Shame is such a central, important concept. I spent 13 sessions on that. I really encourage you to listen to those if you haven’t done that. We need to understand how shame drives so much. So little one is the exile at the middle of my subsystem that is most prone to expressing anger. So when I’m blended, when I’m not recollected, when I’m off balance, when I’m not grounded, what happens? My little one part disconnects from my innermost self and goes into a kind of isolation bearing shame at the center of that subsystem, right. At the center of that clove of garlic, if you will, in the whole bulb of garlic, which is my complete system. So when that’s going on, my good boy part, let’s talk about my managers first. My good boy part is very much the moral compass in my system when I’m not recollected. It takes that job over from my innermost self and my good boy part decides he’s going to call the shots, as far as what’s good and bad, what’s right and wrong.

[00:48:36] And this part, when this part’s not connected, when it’s disconnected, when it’s not in right relationship with my innermost self, it imposes very stringent moral criteria that are essentially unachievable. There are utterly unrealistic expectations of what I need to do, how I need to act, the level of virtue I should achieve, and so on. So that’s my good boy part, operating out of fear, blended, brings me to this place where he’s now going to be my moral compass. And my evaluator part, formerly known as my inner critic. That’s another manager who also defends against shame that my little one carries as a burden. And following the directives of my good boy part, my evaluator part very much criticizes other parts of me. And what that part’s trying to do, what that evaluator part’s trying to do, is to motivate those parts to meet the standards established by my good boy part, so that I can be good enough and productive enough to be acceptable to God and others, to earn the approval of God and others, again, to overcome and erase the shame held by my little one. My evaluator part cracks the whip in my system, driving me very hard in the pursuit of trying to get things done, to do things correctly, in the hope that somehow that will magically erase my shame. And my collaborator part, that’s the third manager.

[00:50:01] And that manager is my workhorse. That manager works so hard to get things done, to take care of things, trying to keep me safe. My collaborator part, when that part’s blended with me, it takes over. It proactively defends against shame, breaking into conscious awareness when it’s not in right relationship with myself. It holds this assumption that if it just works hard enough, if it just gets everything done on my to do list, then it can earn God’s love. And by becoming productive enough, it can somehow erase the shame that my little one bears as a burden. So that’s my management team, right? My good boy part, my evaluator part, my collaborator part, all working really hard to proactively suppress my little one who bears the burden of my shame. And when I’m all blended, when I’m un-recollected, when I’m not integrated, my management team fails to keep the shame out of conscious awareness, then what happens is that little one, he’s trying to be heard. He’s trying to be seen. He’s trying to be known. He doesn’t want to be alone with the shame, right? He’s trying to break into conscious awareness in this effort to be recognized, to be rescued. And when my management team is failing, when it can no longer proactively suppress that little one because things keep getting worse and worse, right? The more that they’re pressing and striving and exhausting themselves, and the more that they’re failing, the more the shame is building up, the worse it’s getting for my little one, the more desperate that part’s getting.

[00:51:35] And so it gets to a point where everything is breaking down. The shame is about to break through. What happens then is my reactive firefighters leap into the breach. And the first firefighter on the scene is my feisty part. Now my feisty part, that’s the part of me that carries most of my anger. And it’s both a firefighter and an exile. It’s a part that’s usually disowned by my management team when they are blended. Right, why? Because my managers, my good boy part, my evaluator, my collaborator, they’re all terrified of the intensity of the anger that my feisty part has. Right. But when shame or fear is breaking into conscious awareness, when my little one, when that exile is coming up with all that shame, or when my adventurer is coming up with all that repressed fear, when that’s happening, when that’s breaking out, threatening to overwhelm my system, my feisty part reacts in anger in order to distract me from the intensity of the shame. Feisty anger directs my attention outward at other people so that I’m not looking at my own shame. And then other firefighters can leap into the breach as well. My creative part distracts me from my anger, often by telling me that, yeah, I should play euchre online, as an effort to kind of squelch the anger.

[00:52:55] Or another firefighter, my challenger part, who’s formerly my rebel part, that part encourages me to get into conflict with other people, in an effort to discharge the anger, to pick fights. This part offers me fantasies of conflict with others, especially authority figures, brings back memories of conflict and controversy that I’ve been involved with in the past. And a fourth firefighter, my guardian part. This is formally my intimidator part. This part wants to make sure that I am not vulnerable to being shamed by anybody else. And this part can be very large and in charge. And this part is pushed around by no one. This is the part of me that chases dogs who come after me and has made every single dog that’s ever come after me turn and run, because that guardian part goes on the attack. And this is the part of me that relishes chewing up hostile attorneys in courtrooms too, in legal proceedings, you know. But my good boy part, he does not approve of all my firefighter’s impulses and desires. He can be very critical of my firefighters. So what does this look like with a real issue, right? So over the last five weeks, I’m going to talk about what I’ve been up most about and what I’ve struggled with anger about in the last five weeks. So over the last five weeks, I have gotten way behind in keeping up with my email. And a number of things have contributed to this, including traveling.

[00:54:19] I’ve been presenting at conferences. I’ve had a difficult production schedule with the podcast, the weekly reflections. There’s also been Holy Week. My wife, Pam, had shoulder surgery, which is, you know, led her to not be able to use her left arm, which has had a huge impact on the family. So I’ve been way overextended in the past five weeks. I’ve not been able to keep up with the increased volume of email. And that’s corresponded with the the podcast getting more popular because you guys have done a great job spreading the word. So more people have reached out. And I have not been able to keep up with what’s going on. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to act out how my parts react, the chain reaction of events that happens inside of me that culminates in some anger. Now, I was a solo actor in high school, and from 1984 to 1986. This is where you would take a play and you would act out all the parts. And so I’m going to act out all the parts with some enhancements here. So I told you a little bit about my good boy part. My good boy part has always taken pride in being prompt in responding to others. It’s a courtesy. It’s the right thing to do. When my good boy part blends with me, this part gets very disappointed and concerned about how far behind I am in responding to my emails.

[00:55:45] He says these kinds of things. Jesus said that whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers that you do unto me. Now, do you realize, collaborator, do you realize, evaluator, that we have not responded to these 150 or 200 emails? We are keeping Jesus waiting. Do we really want to ignore Jesus, 150 times or 200 times over? Do we really want to keep Jesus waiting for five weeks for a response from us? We need to get on this. All right, so then what happens is that my blended evaluator part gets involved. He starts cracking that whip and demanding that my collaborator part, my workhorse, work even harder. He cracks his whip and he pushes hard and he says something like this. Come on, we’ve got to get going. We don’t have time to rest. We don’t deserve to relax. We have 150, 200 people waiting for us, people in need, people with Souls and Hearts. People that God loves. And you are neglecting them. Come on. There is no time to lose. Work harder. Work faster. Work better. Work more efficiently. Work more effectively. Time waits for no man. Right. And then my collaborator part, who’s exhausted, who’s faltering, says something like this. I am burned out. I can’t keep going. I’m trying as hard as I can, guys.

[00:57:23] The demands are too much. I’m exhausted. There are too many people. There’s just too much email. I’m doing the best I can. I’m just going to keep working as hard as I can for as long as I can. Now, one of the ironic things about these parts being blended, all un-recollected like this, is that when parts are not in right relationship with your innermost self, they always get what they don’t want. And in my case, the way that these managers are pushing, the way that they’re striving, exacerbates the shame in my little one, because my little one is hearing all of this and becoming more and more and more burdened with shame. My little one begins to rise up and the shame is coming to the surface. My little one is overwhelmed with shame about how badly we’re doing and managing our email. How disappointing it must be to God that I’m not responding to his beloved children, that I’m failing, that I’m inadequate, that I made mistakes in time management, that I got myself all overextended. There’s going to be dire consequences for others. And when this part, when this little one is disconnected and exiled from my innermost self, he believes that if I don’t help everyone, God might not love me. And he sounds something like this. I’m clearly not good enough. I’m not measuring up to what God expects of me. God has left me with ten talents, and when he comes back, he’ll see that I fumbled them away and that I only have eight talents or maybe seven talents.

[00:58:47] I don’t know how many talents I have left. And I’m losing ground. And this is the worst. This is worse than the servant who buried the one talent. At least he could give that one talent back. I’m going to wind up with nothing. And God says everyone to whom much is given, much will be required. We don’t know the day or the hour he will return. And I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of not being able to respond. I’m ashamed of how poorly we’re performing. What will become of us? All right. So you can see that part starting to break to the surface. And that is when the anger comes in. That is when my feisty part steps up to the plate and he says something like this. This is all utterly unreasonable. No one can expect us to respond to this volume of email and have all these other things going on. There is no way that this can be done. No one can do that. And as far as all this Jesus stuff, Jesus left many people unhealed. He didn’t heal all the throngs that came chasing him. How are we supposed to heal everybody that reaches out to us via email? It’s utterly unreasonable. And if God expects that from us, then he’s not a God worth worshiping.

[00:59:53] He’s an unreasonable God, and he doesn’t have a so-called easy yoke and a so-called light burdens. It’s all nonsense. And I kind of toned it down a little bit because usually there’s swearing involved when my feisty part gets so activated. He can be quite artistic in his use of foul language. But then when feisty gets all wound up like that, then my good boy gets gets back in there and says, do not blaspheme against the living God. Do not offend God by such unwarranted criticism. He is the Most High, the Holy One, the all powerful. That is dangerous, feisty. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. So come on, boys, let’s all settle down. Let’s get back to being good. Let’s be really, really good, so that God might have mercy on us and tolerate us. All right. Then what happens is my guardian part comes up and he’s like realizing that we’re all vulnerable now. We’re all like raw inside. And he starts looking outward. He starts looking at the people that are sending me email, and he says things like this. You know, we don’t owe these people who email us. We don’t owe them anything. Not one thing. They have no claims on us. Some of these requests are just way out of bounds. We didn’t set up a 24/7 crisis intervention service. We didn’t promise them that we can solve their problems via email. They can wait. There is nothing more that we humanly can do.

[01:01:24] And if those email correspondents don’t understand that, they can go pound sand. And I hate it when you speak for God, good boy. God probably is not that unreasonable, driving us into the ground with impossible demands. That’s you. And if he’s like that, then I agree with feisty. He’s not worth worshiping. Why would I want to spend forever in heaven with a God like that? You know, and now this is where my lover part, this is a part that very much wants to please people, very much wants to connect with people, very much enjoys getting the emails. Really likes that connection. And the lover part says, yeah, but I really, I really love my listeners. I want to help them. I want to love them like Christ would. And I enjoy them. And we did invite them to email us. We said that they could. We told them that they could do that in the podcast, in the Weekly Reflections. I want to be connected with them. And many of them are hurting. They’re in need. We can do things to help them. That’s part of what we’re called to, and we want to be connected to them, don’t we? So come on, let’s love our people. Let’s not tell them to go pound sand, guardian, let’s not get frustrated with them, feisty. That’s terrible. Let’s love them. And then evaluator is back in there.

[01:02:41] Hey, boys, let’s just all settle down. None of us is getting us anywhere. Back off, all of you! Settle down, shut up, and let’s get back to work. Emails are not going to get written if we keep bickering back and forth. Collaborator, get on it. You’ve wasted enough time. And then my challenger part, this is my former rebel part, might say something like this. Nope! No sirree. No way, Jose. We are going to watch YouTube videos now. We’re going to watch YouTube videos of vigilante justice, videos of bad authority figures getting their just deserts. I don’t care what you all say. We are not going to be overwhelmed by shame. We are not going to be overwhelmed by work. I don’t care whether we respond to the emails or not. We are now taking a break. Everybody, we’re on break. And then the little one might say something like, hey, can anyone hear me? Can anyone see me? Why do I have to be all alone? Why are none of you helping me? So can you see all the polarizations here among my parts? It’s sort of like an eight man rowing shell where all the rowers are trying to go in different directions. Every part has a different agenda. Every part is holding on to a different part of the elephant. You know, like the story of the six blind men and the elephant. They’re all trying to help, but they don’t have an effective inner leader.

[01:04:24] Why? Because the self is suppressed, the self is occluded. The self has been silenced. And so it’s not going very well. Now, when my parts are in right relationship with my self, when my innermost self leads and guides my system with mercy and justice, with kindness and firmness, it’s an entirely different story. You know, if you notice when all that blending happened and all that conflict, what terrible God images there were. I did a whole series on God images in episodes 23 to 29 of this podcast. Those parts were not in relationship with God. They weren’t connecting with God and seeing what he really wanted. They weren’t with me. They weren’t consulting a spiritual director. They weren’t getting outside counsel. They were going off of their assumptions. They were going off of a very narrow view. They were projecting onto God what they experienced in other relationships with human authorities. Right. But when my parts are in touch with me, when they are under the leadership and guidance of my innermost self, then they can share in that broader, much more mature vision. Then they are connected in, they’re wired in. And they don’t struggle so much with whatever their burdens are. If I can be a secure attachment figure for all my parts, if I can witness my parts’ concerns, then feisty’s anger doesn’t have to be suppressed, and little one can share his shame and not have to bear it alone.

[01:06:16] And it’s such a relief to not have to be alone with their issues, for parts to be seen, heard, known and loved by me as their innermost self. And also by Our Lady, by God. Because I’m the conduit for my parts to connect with God. My innermost self is the conduit for my parts to connect with God. So we have this way that we can work together in collaborative problem solving, that there can be respect and acceptance for all my parts. No part left behind. Negative God images are very much less activated. Why? Because parts can share my vision of who I am as a beloved Son of God. Anger, shame, fear, guilt, they all diminish. And then I really do have this experience, when that happens, when that happens in the natural realm and my eyes are on my Lord, then like my namesake, like Peter, I can walk on the water. But when I get caught up, when my parts take over, when they look at the wind and the waves, I sink like a stone. I sink like the rock that Peter was. When we’re blended, when we’re not recollected, when my parts are blended, when my parts are not recollected, when we’re not integrated, I will stumble and fall. So that’s a little description of what goes on inside of me. I hope that was helpful to sort of illustrate what this can look like inside.

[01:07:48] This is not going to be the same for every person. You’re likely to experience it in different ways, but I offer it to you as a model, as a way of trying to understand at least how I experience it within my own self. I’m going to invite you to join me for the last episode in this series on anger, episode 113. We’re going to record that episode live on Tuesday, May 9th, 2023 from 7:00 PM to 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time. Episode 113 will finish out our series on anger. It’s going to be 75 minutes of the Resilient Catholics Community lead navigator Marion Moreland and me, we’re going to answer questions from a live audience. Any questions you have about anger from our whole series on anger in the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. That’s episodes 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, and 112. Our live episode will be recorded on Tuesday, like I said, May 9th from 7:00 PM to 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time. You can register for free. You can join us for free. Just go to our landing page, soulsandhearts.com/iic. Or just click on the IIC podcast tab on our home page at soulsandhearts.com. There’s a registration link there. You can also email me questions beforehand at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. Now I’m just going to invite you to stay connected with me each week. Each week I write a weekly reflection and I’m in this series on human formation.

[01:09:24] Right now. We’re covering the what, when, who, why, and where of Catholic human formation. If you’re not getting those emails, you’re missing out. You really are. Go to soulsandhearts.com. That’s our home page. Click on the blue box that says, “Get Dr. Peter’s weekly reflections in your email inbox each Wednesday.” You can also go to the archive at soulsandhearts.com/blog, and you can find them there. Or you can just go to our home page, soulsandhearts.com, and click on Weekly Reflections. There’s a tab at the top. I want to tell you about the Resilient Catholics Community. We are one month away from reopening the Resilient Catholics Community to new members. We do that twice a year in June and in December. You have another opportunity to join us if you’re not already on our pilgrimage. So within Souls and Hearts, I founded the Resilient Catholics Community, the RCC, for Catholics who are committed to going to the deepest natural levels within themselves to work through unmet attachment needs and unmet integrity needs. Those unmet attachment needs, those unmet integrity needs, that are parts carry, that our exiles are burdened with. Those are the ones that generate so much anger. We don’t just deal with the symptoms. We address the root causes. It’s not therapy. It’s a great adjunct to therapy. If you’re doing therapy with a Catholic therapist and you want to bring in an IFS component, or if you’re seeing an IFS informed therapist who’s not Catholic, it’s a great complement.

[01:10:56] And some people do it on their own as well, without the benefit of therapy. The RCC provides a very structured, year long human formation program with many resources and the support of other Catholics in small companies, usually nine, making a pilgrimage toward better human formation with individualized human formation plans. The camaraderie, the connection, that makes all the difference. So join us. Consider coming with us to learn about the three loves that our Lord commands in the two great commandments: to love God, love neighbor, and to love oneself. We already have 150 that are on the pilgrimage together. We’re expecting maybe 100, maybe a few more, to sign up, and to join us and begin that whole application process in June. If these Interior Integration for Catholics podcast episodes resonate with you, if you like the weekly reflections, if you’re really committed to your own human formation and you just need a little structure, some help, some guidance, you know, to not do it on your own, but to do it in community, go to our Resilient Catholics Community landing page, which is at soulsandhearts.com/rcc or just Google Resilient Catholics Community, you’ll go right there, and sign up on our interest list. There’s a little form. It says join the June 2023 interest list. And that way you’ll get the updates that we’ll be sending out later this month.

[01:12:27] Now, I discussed unburdening parts. I didn’t spend a lot of time on that because it’s better to show that than it is to try to explain it. And I wanted to let you know that Drew Boa of the Husband Material podcast published on March 6th, 2023, a 79 minute demonstration of me and him together unburdening three of his parts, including two exiles. Now, that wasn’t therapy. It was a demonstration with parts in Drew’s system. It was real work. This was not a role play. Drew is a therapist. I’m a therapist. Sometimes we therapists do these demonstrations so you can see what an unburdening looks like. If you go to that episode, which is called Unburdening Sexual Arousal. It was released on March 6th, 2023 at husbandmaterial.com. And again, conversation hours, every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time. I’m on my phone, my cell phone, 317-567-9594. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me and talk to me. I set aside that time for phone calls. You can also email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. I’m in a good place right now. I’m in an integrated place. I’m in a recollected place. I’m doing okay with the fact that I haven’t responded to all those emails. And I see time opening up in the next two weeks to be able to get back to every single one of them.

[01:13:57] So you can also email me. Just please, I ask, you know, that you have some patience with me in responding. It is a pleasure to be with you. I am so glad that we are able to discuss these things, that we are able to be together in the mystical body of Christ and to be together in this podcast. Just spread the word. Maybe there’s somebody that you know, that would really benefit from this podcast episode, that would appreciate learning something about this kind of IFS-informed approach to dealing with anger or that might benefit from some other of the offerings that we have at Souls and Hearts. So we don’t have a big marketing budget. We don’t have a marketing team or firm or anything like that. We rely on word of mouth, you guys putting the word out. I’m going to ask you for the most important thing. And that is to pray for me and to pray for all of us at Souls and Hearts. Prayer fuels everything we do at Souls and Hearts. We cannot do what we do without prayer. It’s the most important thing. And know that we are praying for you as well. And with that, let’s go ahead and wrap it for today by invoking our patroness and our patron. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.