Finding Compassion for Your Critical Parts
Episode 2: Michelle Richardson on Helping Women Heal
Are you at war with your inner critic? Maybe it’s time for a different approach. In this episode of Awaken Your Wise Woman, host Elizabeth Cush talks with Michelle Richardson about making friends with your critical parts.
“Often our parts, even critical parts, are actually trying to keep us safe in some kind of a way.”
Show Notes:
Many of us have parts that give us negative messages: we’re not good enough, we shouldn’t try, we better not… And we can spend a lot of energy trying to shut those voices down—often unsuccessfully. What might happen if we took a different approach? In this episode of the Awaken Your Wise Woman (previously Woman Worriers) podcast, host Elizabeth Cush, LCPC, a licensed professional therapist, founder of Progression Counseling in Annapolis, Md., and a mid-life women’s life coach, welcomes back Michelle Richardson, MSW, LCSW, of Mindful Soul Center for Wellbeing, to talk about Internal Family Systems (IFS) work and how listening to your inner parts with compassion and curiosity can help you find your way to Self.
Listen and learn:
What Internal Family Systems (IFS) is and why the framework is becoming more popular
What “parts” are in IFS, what they do and why
What the Self is in IFS and why it’s role is so important
The key “C” qualities of the Self
What a perfectionist part might look like when we bring it into harmony with Self
Different life circumstances or events that might give birth to an inner critic
Why it pays to have compassion for your parts
What it means to speak FOR our parts instead of FROM them—and how it can change the way we experience things
Where to find more information on IFS
Learn more:
Guided meditations from Progression Counseling
Michelle Richardson’s Mindful Soul Wellbeing website
IFS therapist directory
Books & meditations from the IFS Store
Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Daily Parts Meditation Practice: A Journey of Embodied Integration for Clients and Therapists by Michelle Glass
IFS Community Group on Facebook
Other episodes you might enjoy
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