I was talking to a friend who gave me permission to share her story in my upcoming book Relationsick about how over-giving, fawning, and people pleasing to an extreme degree led to depletion, burnout, and cancer. I had shared a book with her about how to discover what’s hidden in our shadow- and how to use IFS to get to know those shaded, in the dark parts. She felt busted as she read the book. Busted. Busted. And busted. I laughed. I had felt the same way when I read this particular book back in 2014.
We began talking about the kind of changes she might need to make in her marriage if she were to stay cancer-free, now that her treatment is done. She’d need to get more assertive. She’d need to be willing to let her partner down sometimes in order not to let down her own needy, scared, or vulnerable parts. She’d need to express anger when her boundaries were getting violated and make it clear with an expression of displeasure when she felt hurt by his behavior. She’d need to demand justice when her partner had unreasonably entitled and unjust expectations that bordered on exploitation.
She put a hand over her mastectomy scar and said her breast just started hurting when I was talking about that. “If I do that, my cancer will come back,” she said.
I wondered if that was true. I suspected maybe the opposite was true, that her cancer might come back if she didn’t change her behavior and start standing up for herself. But who am I to know? Nobody knows her parts better than she does.
It’s easy to get tricked by what we think is intuition or spiritual guidance. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was following synchronicities, following what I thought was the path of Divine Will like Hansel and Gretel got lured into a trap with breadcrumbs. I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as intuition or spiritual guidance. I’m just saying that if we’re not hip to the trip some parts will pull in order to cause us to indulge secret desire or avoid secret- or not so secret- fears, we can get duped by our own parts, without even knowing that’s what’s happening.
We’d all like to believe that we are in control of our lives, or at least that some benevolent being has got a plan and can communicate to us. It’s so comforting to our parts to believe that we won’t make mistakes or get hurt or follow an unwise choice or that we can get everything we want- if only we follow our intuition or trust some Divine plan for our life.
But at least in my internal family, sometimes, what I’ve originally thought was my strong intuition or God’s guidance for my life sometimes turned out to be a magical thinking part masquerading as inner guidance- or a scared part trying to trick me into making sure I don’t get hurt again.
All of this sneaky trickery is easier to spot if we’re just a wee bit skeptical of making a reflexive interpretation of something like a suspiciously timed breast pain, an emotional reaction, or what appears to be a synchronicity that validates what we desire in what feels like a magical way.
How Easy Is It To Get Tricked By Intuition Or Spiritual Guidance
A friend of mine fell prey to getting hijacked by a part when she interpreted a con artist’s manipulation as God’s will for her. She was married but not entirely satisfied in her marriage, when a hot young guy she met at a spiritual retreat center started making the moves on her. But he didn’t hit on her like normal people do- “Hey, can I buy you a drink?”
No, he told her that he’d received a message from her spiritual mentor, who he named by name and who she hadn’t told him was her dead mentor. The mentor, we’ll just call him Guru, told the guy, who we’ll just call Jack, that Jack had been chosen by the Guru to be the messenger for my friend, who we’ll call Alice. Alice, as it turns out, was chosen to perform a grand mission of planetary importance, but she’d only be able to pull it off if the Guru from the other side used Jack as the conduit for her Divine instructions.
Alice was initially skeptical, but she asked Jack some questions about the Guru that she thought only she could know. He passed all the tests. Alice took this as a miraculous sign that not only was the Guru with her and choosing to work with her for an important planet-saving mission; this was also a sign that she should leave her husband and stick close to Jack, who she found herself fantasizing about.
After that, Alice was on the lookout for signs from the Universe to confirm her intuition, which told her Jack was her soulmate and that soulmate bonds and spiritual ethics overweigh earthly agreements like marriage and monogamy agreements. Over the next few days, she felt like her intuition was dictating instructions to her, which she wrote down and took as gospel truth.
She also felt like her physical intuition was confirming what she felt guided to do. When she opened her front door and found a photo of her Guru on the floor in front of her, knowing she hadn’t placed it there herself, and her body broke out in goosebumps (her signal that it was time to proceed), she understood her next steps.
So, she agreed when Jack made advances towards her that night, feeling supported by her Guru and in alignment with God’s plan for them both.
Little did she know at the time that a part of her, driven by magical thinking and grandiosity, had taken control and led her to compromise her morals, betray her husband, and ultimately give away all her money to a fraud who, once he had what he wanted, abandoned her and repeated the cycle with someone new.
Despite believing she was following the right path, certain parts of her psyche can deceive us if we are not skilled in managing them.
In Part 2 of this series, we will explore how to recognize when our parts may be deceiving us and provide guidance on how to address this. Additionally, we will delve deeper into this topic in a weekend workshop called IFS For Self-Healing on October 4-5, where we will introduce the fundamentals of IFS, teach self-help techniques for working with our inner parts, and offer a supportive community for learning.
Register now for IFS For Self-Healing and save $100.
Through practicing IFS, we learn to identify when our sneaky inner parts are trying to deceive us, approaching them with love and understanding rather than shame or judgment. It’s about being clear-headed, logical, and realistic, not falling for magical thinking or manipulation. Remember, even our deceptive parts have good intentions, albeit hidden ones.
The key difference lies in the agendas of our parts – fulfilling secret desires, avoiding vulnerability, or seeking protection from past hurts. The agenda of the Self, however, is vastly different, a topic we will explore further in the workshop.
Was her friend with breast cancer truly receiving a message to remain passive and avoid conflict for a better cancer outcome, or were her inner parts simply afraid of assertiveness due to past experiences? In Part 2, we will address how to discern the truth and offer alternative approaches to hasty conclusions about her symptoms.
As the saying goes in IFS, “Just ask.” Could you please rewrite the following sentence?