An Update on the Inner Mud Creature

Last fall I blogged a bit about my inner mud creature (here and here), but I haven't updated the work I have been doing.

As a reminder, when I discovered this exile last year, he looked a bit like Trent Reznor at Woodstock 94:



The mud demon was angry, dirty, and loved to create chaos. He came out in disruptive ways in my life, and was usually stuffed right back down again.

Over the last year, however, I have been working with this part from time to time. Rather than a mud demon, it turns out that once he was unburdened he was just a curious, creative little kid.

Unburdening is what IFS does to free a part from the weight it carries. Most exiled parts carry some form of burden, as do managers and firefighters. If they can be freed from their burdens, they often transform into nearly 180 degree opposites of their original form from when we discovered them.

So in working with my mud creature over the last year, the burden that he carried was my anger -- much of it from childhood -- anger that was never allowed to be expressed in my family. A lot of it also came from the period around my father's death, when I was angry with my dad for dying, and just plain angry, but was never able to express it because I had to be the responsible one.

As a teenager, I acted out a lot -- and some of that was the mud creature. But it was never allowed to say what it needed. As part of the unburdening process, it got to say what it needed. And in doing so, it released its anger.

What was left was a creative, curious little kid. The transformation alone was great, but it was incomplete. This morning, in a session on embodying transformed parts, Apollo, my primary manager, agreed to allow The Kid to come present more often. They made a contract to contribute to each other energetically. In addition, one of my firefighters agreed not to get freaked out if The Kid comes out. In the past, the firefighter would shut down the system any time The Kid was near because he was seen as too vulnerable to allow to be present.

This all may sound pretty woo woo, but it works. The difference in my body energy is amazing. The difference many of the therapists have seen in their clients is almost miraculous. Schwartz's work with bulimics has been more successful than any other form of therapy. I trust this stuff, not matter how much my cynic says it's a load of shit.

Tags: Psychology, self exploration, personal growth, shadow work, Internal Family Systems, parts, mud demon, NIN