Break-ups can be foundationally shattering. The end of a long-term relationship can be shocking to the core. There is the grief that comes from severing a deep, meaningful connection, of lamenting what has been lost, but there is also a sudden shift in daily routines that now feel hollow and future plans that will never come to fruition.
The day after Rango came to get his stuff from the house, I struggled just to maintain. I woke early, fed the cats, and cried for a while before falling back asleep. At noon, I realized I needed to get up and do my normal Sunday chores. The boys would be home from their dad’s that evening, and they would be expecting clean laundry and food for the week.
Walking through the grocery store, I felt raw. I felt like everyone who passed me in the aisles could see the sadness dripping from my every pore. I was certain that my hard-fought composure would come undone if anyone spoke kindly or smiled at me.
It’s not just that the sadness is a part of the grieving process. The sadness fulfills a purpose.
When I realized the futility of the relationship, I started looking for a new therapist. Therapy had been incredibly helpful through the demise of my marriage to DH. I was fortunate to have found an incredible therapeutic partner to help guide me through a couple of years of divorce and dating and loss. But my insecurities undoubtedly played a role in the tensions and break-up with Rango, and I knew I never want to feel those things again. I never again want to feel so easily broken by another person, especially when my head knows it shouldn’t be possible.
As I did some research online, I came across the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It seemed to be especially effective in treating anxious attachers and rejection sensitivity. The idea is that we are each a Self, which is the true, whole, spiritual center of us. But we also have these discrete subpersonalities with their own intentions and needs and quirks and purpose. Each part has a specific viewpoint, developed from its interpretations of life experiences. Each has its own memories and interprets them according to its unique perspective:
- Managers handle the way we interact with the external world. They try to protect us from hurt, whether from others or from our own memories.
- Exiles are the parts that feel the worst emotions—pain, hurt, shame, fear—usually resulting from childhood trauma. Managers and Firefighters try to exile these parts to prevent their emotions from coming to the surface.
- Firefighters show up when Exiles break free and demand attention. They try to distract us from the pain, often encouraging unhealthy behaviors as coping mechanisms.
The goal of IFS is to allow the Self to access and connect to each subpart, healing them one by one. Thus, the Self leads the other parts in harmony and health. We become a whole, heathy person, rather than an amalgam of these smaller bits that exhaust themselves fighting to maintain a losing battle.
I have long believed that we each are made up of various persona, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone….
In an online interview reposted through the band’s Facebook page, Alex Wheeler said the title, Persona Non Grata, referred to all of the unacceptable and unwelcomed parts of everyone—the lurid, the shadowy, the hidden, the broken.
“Each of us has a persona, all the time,” he said. “I’m one persona with the band, someone a little different with my fans, someone else entirely with my wife and daughter. Sometimes that persona is ‘good’ and sometimes it’s ‘bad’. I spent a lot of time exploring the bad sides of normal, everyday people, you know? Not serial killers or rapists or anything. I wanted to look at the things regular people like to hide from the people they know and, most especially, from themselves.”
I have, at times, named some of my subpersonalities, though I wasn’t thinking of them within the context of IFS.
- Cissie is the sweet, blond girl who never seemed to be pleasing to her parents, no matter how hard she tried. She never felt like she was enough. She was also molested for years, and she spent a lot of her time agitated and afraid. She is an Exile.
- Quinn is the rebellious teen who learned to trade sex and secrets for affection, often in an attempt to protect Cissie. She has her own anger and hurt, but she will bear it all to protect that little girl. She is a Firefighter.
- Stephie is a loud ball of angry. She will erupt and tantrum and demand her way when she feels she is being ignored. She is potentially a special subpersonality called a Tormentor. (She secretly wears that like a badge of honor.)
- Sassafras Bombalurina O’Malley is the one who reminds me to be shiny and sparkly and to tell the world to go fuck itself if it doesn’t like it. She is an eccentric, outrageous Manager who knows how to call on the Firefighters to back her up.
- Wonder Woman is the Amazonian princess who does it all, because she has to. She handles the day-to-day business of life, and she is remarkable. She is strong and capable, smart and intuitive, and she can predict everyone else’s needs and desires before they can. She is a Manager.
- Stephanie Quinn Jackson is the writer who sees it all, who arranges it and espouses the shared perspective of the others, who bears witness to it all and gives them a voice when it seems that no one else will listen. She is a Manager.
There are others, nameless but all with some variation of my face. Each has its own role and purpose in getting Stephanie through her life. Not to be confused with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I am not claiming to have multiple, distinct personalities. These are simply facets of my personality, and each strives in its own way to help me be secure and healthy and safe—even when its influence result in dysfunction.
The sadness is tied up with the hurt, and it’s not just from this break-up. This is hurt that hasn’t healed in 40 years. This is sadness that helps me to keep others at bay, or to curl up in bed and sleep when I should be doing productive things, so that I don’t have to feel the hurt. So I don’t have to delve back into every haunting memory and question again why I was both too little and too much. Why I wasn’t worth careful, healthy love.
None of these parts can or should ever be exorcised. Each is valuable and necessary, both as its own part and as a part of the larger whole. But the hurt can be healed enough so that it doesn’t make more hurt, create more sadness, because somewhere in there is joy and beauty. Somewhere in there is a sad and lost little girl who desperately wants to be loved.
I have to find her and help her.
We have to find her together.
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