by Karoline | Apr 30, 2023 | Dick Schwartz, IFS, Mental Health, Relationships, Social Justice, Spiritual Bypassing, Spirituality
When I first got involved with Internal Family Systems (IFS) a decade ago, I did not expect it to wind up being a spiritual path. I started practicing IFS for the reason most people do- as a way to deal with untreated trauma and as an antidote to the spiritual...
by Karoline | Mar 6, 2023 | Dick Schwartz, IFS, Mental Health, Relationships, Social Justice, Spiritual Bypassing, Spirituality
I was lucky to grow up with a nervous system that likes close, bonded, intimate relationships. Getting close to people isn’t hard for me. I have a low tolerance for relationships that lack the capacity for intimacy and am absolutely awful at small talk. If...
by Karoline | Mar 4, 2023 | Dick Schwartz, IFS, Mental Health, Relationships, Social Justice, Spiritual Bypassing, Spirituality
Nobody could easily see how badly the little boy in the middle pew in the fundamentalist Christian church had been beaten because his father always made sure it was the boy’s hind-quarters that bore the bruises, cuts, and oozing welts, safely hidden beneath overalls....
by Karoline | Mar 1, 2023 | Dick Schwartz, IFS, Mental Health, Relationships, Social Justice, Spiritual Bypassing, Spirituality
I was raised to be a good little Christian girl. Independent thinking or rebellion of any kind were suppressed from as early on as I could remember. The rules were clear, and disobedience was punishable not only by a lifetime of blistered flesh in the torture of...
by Karoline | Feb 24, 2023 | Dick Schwartz, IFS, Mental Health, Relationships, Social Justice, Spiritual Bypassing, Spirituality
I used to have a very grandiose, inflating, “othering” idea of what a “spiritual” person was or wasn’t. Having already rejected the fundamentalist Christianity of my mother’s persuasion, I considered “spiritual” people...
