Buddhism and IFS with Ralph De La Rosa
Buddhism and IFS with Ralph De La Rosa
In this episode of Going Inside, I’m joined by psychotherapist, meditation instructor, and author Ralph De La Rosa to explore his journey from trauma and addiction to becoming a leader in Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Buddhist meditation. We dive into the powerful intersections between IFS and Buddhist principles, including how self-energy aligns with the awakened state and the role of reparenting our wounded parts. Ralph also shares insights from his new book, “Outshining Trauma: A New Vision of Radical Self-Compassion,” which provides a step-by-step guide for turning daily life into a healing journey.
Self-energy in IFS aligns with the Buddhist concept of the awakened state, offering a foundation for reparenting wounded parts and fostering growth.
Trauma can condition us to mistake chaos for home, but cultivating peace and curiosity helps us reclaim a sense of balance.
True healing arises through deep self-awareness and compassion, allowing us to rediscover vitality, joy, and emotional intelligence.
Learn more about Ralph at:
https://ralphdelarosa.com/homepage
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Interview Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ralph: We have self energy in IFS, which, we have these 8c qualities, 5p qualities, so many letter qualities. When that aspect of our being comes in contact with parts of us that are maybe holding affliction or maybe wilding out or whatever it is, those parts start to be reparented. Those parts start to feel held, those parts start to shift their presentation, those parts just as anybody else would if they were in the presence of a caring, attuned person.
[00:00:28] Ralph: So this inner re parenting starts to naturally unfold. In Buddhism, the awakened state correlates with what's called Buddha nature, who we really are at the bottom of it all. So self energy, same, we're talking about the exact same thing. And the Sanskrit word, or term rather, for buddha nature isn't, doesn't translate literally to buddha nature.
[00:00:50] Ralph: Tathagatagarbha is the Sanskrit term, which translates to the womb of awakened intelligence. [00:01:00] And the womb aspect of it correlates with This reparenting business
[00:01:10] John: Going inside is a podcast on a mission to help people heal from trauma and reconnect with their authentic self. Join me, trauma therapist, John Clarke for guest interviews, real life therapy sessions, and soothing guided meditations. Whether you're navigating your own trauma, helping others heal from trauma, or simply yearning for a deeper understanding of yourself, going inside is your companion on the path to healing and self discovery.
[00:01:35] John: Download free guided meditations and apply to work with me one on one at JohnClarkeTherapy.com Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Ralph De La Rosa is a psychotherapist and long time meditation instructor. He's the author of three books about healing through meditation and IFS, including the forthcoming Outshining Trauma, a new vision of radical healing.
[00:01:58] John: His work has been featured in the New York [00:02:00] Post, CNN, Tricycle, GQ, Women's Health, and many more. Himself a survivor of PTSD, mental illness, and addiction, Ralph sees his work as an extension of his own path of transformation. Ralph, thank you for being here. Usually I start with the question of what else should people know about who you are and how you got here?
[00:02:18] John: So I'll offer you that question too. And I'm also really eager to ask you some of my questions about your book that I've, that I just recently started wrapping up.
[00:02:27] Ralph: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely good to be here with you and definitely good to be representing this powerful work that we have in common for sure.
[00:02:36] Ralph: And yeah, I'll give you my, my whole story is Out there everywhere online. But to give you the synopsis, I'm a trauma survivor. I'm multiple complex trauma survivor, a lot of bullying growing up, dad abandoned my family. Just to give you a brief inventory and the bullying became severely violent in high school to the point where I dropped out and just internalized the story [00:03:00] of I'm a nobody, I belong in the gutter.
[00:03:03] Ralph: And also that was one part of me, and I had another part that was a spiritual seeker and yo, this cannot be it. This cannot be why we're here to just get banged up and then to pass that on to others around us. And through young adulthood, there was Big exploration with both drugs and spirituality simultaneously and a view that both were the same thing.
[00:03:25] Ralph: They were like a way out where that made you feel better and put you in control of your emotions, right? And yeah, neither of those things checked out. Yeah, then that just got worse and worse until I hit bottom and had to get serious about some things and then in getting serious about some things, having to go to rehab and having a trauma therapist and discovering Buddhist meditation, which isn't about a way out, actually, it's about a way in and through and, and doesn't offer you at least the form that I started exploring doesn't really offer you too much, just Yo, make friends with [00:04:00] yourself, that was really the origin.
[00:04:02] Ralph: And then here we are 20 years later from that moment, somehow. Yeah. And I've just I just planned on being a broke social worker forever, working with kids. Yeah, it was a good path. I don't, not sustainable path and somehow my work just started getting attention. I, as a meditation teacher first and then the offer to start writing books just came at a moment that there was.
[00:04:32] Ralph: I think post pandemic, it's different out here in the mental health world. Yeah. 10 years ago there was a dearth of younger voices that could speak fluently to both spirituality and and psychology and the trauma lens and what have you. There, there wasn't as, it wasn't as prevalent now. And I was maybe for the first time in my life was like right place, right time.
[00:04:57] Ralph: Yeah.
[00:04:58] John: I want to congratulate you on this [00:05:00] new book that I have here. Thank you for sending me this advanced reader copy, which is cool. It's like a secret mission. And I have to tell you, I was so engaged by the book. I'm also, I was also entertained by it at times of your stories, your personal anecdotes, your humor.
[00:05:17] John: I felt like I have a sense of who you are through reading your book. I also resonate with the kind of punk rock parts of you. I'm also a musician and as a kid I was like into emo music and punk and all those things. I have so many parts that are resonating with just who you are in your story.
[00:05:32] John: And these, As overused as this is nuggets of wisdom about trauma. I was like, pulling them out and documenting them. And one I wanted to start with here was Was this quote as trauma survivors, we tend to mistake chaos, drama, impulsivity, and epic experiences for home. And then along these lines and in the realm of integrating [00:06:00] IFS and Buddhism, you go on to talk about this idea.
[00:06:02] John: I'm sure I'll say it wrong. Upeksa? Is self led trust in ourselves and loving kindness offers a path home. This was just really epic to me. This whole quote, this whole idea, this was like, when I felt like I was getting into the meat of the book and I was really eager to see how you were going to tie these worlds together of Buddhism and IFS, but I guess what's your reaction?
[00:06:27] John: Like hearing that quote back to you, both like the trauma piece, which I think is so illustrative of the lived experience of. of trauma, and also this Buddhist principle that's one of many Buddhist principles that you bring into the book.
[00:06:40] Ralph: Yeah we mistake our sense of home, right? We're, our sense of home gets conditioned in our first home, really.
[00:06:47] Ralph: And our first home isn't just the childhood home with, Our caregivers, it's also, the schools we went to and community institutions and what have you, that we were involved in and what the goings on there, can become [00:07:00] so normal to our nervous systems and so normal to our parts and.
[00:07:05] Ralph: I was talking to somebody about the Stanford Prison Experiment the other day. And if a listener doesn't know what that is, Google it. It's very fascinating. It has a lot to tell us about our cultural socio political moment right now, I think, actually. But one of the outcomes of that very famous study was like, the sense of identity, the sense of the self concept, who your parts think that you are and how life works, It's like one of the most powerful motivators and it can cut through our sense of ethics or just, it can cut through so many things.
[00:07:39] Ralph: And so if we develop a self concept around my home is, high drama, high stress, lots of chaos, lots of interruptions, et cetera. We can go on for the rest of our lives thinking that's actually the case, but that's just an adaptation to abuse and neglect. And so for me, [00:08:00] and I think a lot of.
[00:08:01] Ralph: Trauma survivors find this with meditation at first. It's Oh, this is boring. There's nothing going on here for me. And it's when I get curious about boredom, I often, sometimes there is real boredom, but sometimes I find no, actually this is peace. This is just being centered and this is just not a lot happening and it's unfamiliar territory for my parts.
[00:08:29] Ralph: And yeah, I think that's outcome of healing and growth too is. What we find through parts work is we can say to parts of us inside, that maybe believe stress and hustle is the way, like, where did you hear that for the first time? Yeah. Is that really an unassailable source?
[00:08:49] John: And then clients show up. to therapy with those values and they think I'm going to stressfully hustle my way through this healing, or I just need to get this thing [00:09:00] out of me. So what, it's a very basic idea that I know and love from Buddhism is accepting suffering as part of life.
[00:09:08] John: And a lot of our suffering comes from, resisting that suffering or the fact that suffering is part of life. I hear a lot of clients and especially trauma clients that have this sense of I shouldn't have to deal with this. I don't want to deal with this. I need to be done with this. So I can go on with my life or go back to who I was, before this thing happened.
[00:09:28] John: Yeah, you get the picture.
[00:09:31] Ralph: Oh yeah. All the time. The, the prospective client that shows up in the consult with like, how long will this take? Yeah, exactly. We ain't even looked under the hood yet.
[00:09:40] John: Yeah. Can you guarantee me results? Can you guarantee me that you'll restore me to exactly who I was before this whole thing or whatever.
[00:09:49] Ralph: Which is a noble thing to do. Noble stance, I think wisdom, and of course, and also, one thing I'll say that, that has blown my [00:10:00] doors open about IFS is the discovery that healing isn't necessarily a process of checking off a bunch of boxes of what's wrong or addressing symptoms per se.
[00:10:11] Ralph: It's actually the byproduct of getting to know yourself in a very deep way and at an increasingly granular level, a little bit at a time, of course, but get to know yourself in a profound way in the atmosphere of curiosity and compassion and the healing just thank you. unfolds around you.
[00:10:31] Ralph: And, to me, that's just so much more doable than like the list approach or the, addressing symptoms approach. Yeah.
[00:10:41] John: I've I've started to ask more and more people, more of my guests on the show about their own definitions of self energy, self and self energy. A quote from the book is self energy is synonymous with the awakened state.
[00:10:55] John: What does that mean? And what's your experience and current [00:11:00] working definition of self energy?
[00:11:02] Ralph: Yeah, this is like my favorite topic. Yeah, what was it you asked me for two? I got a little bit excited there. There was questions at the end there.
[00:11:12] John: Yeah. The, this self energy is synonymous with the awakened state.
[00:11:15] John: Basically, what does that mean? Or for all of us, what is the awakened state and from the Buddhist perspective and then just expanding on, yeah, your own definition of self energy.
[00:11:24] Ralph: Yeah. So When we touch in on self energy, and if a listener hasn't experienced this yet directly, this might sound a little odd.
[00:11:35] Ralph: It's something that really has to be tasted before you can hear a description of it that really lands with you. But we also all have had many experiences already of self energy. It's that moment when The stress calms. It's that moment when we, maybe go for a hike in nature and we sit down after, for a rest and we look out and something in us has shifted and we feel a little closer to who we actually [00:12:00] are, it's a place that we touch in life where we're not reacting or behind the ball anymore, but we actually, can settle in to what I think is really the heart space, when there's space inside of us, when things are less crowded, it's less like Times Square and a little more like maybe Central Park or hopefully more like Prospect Park for the New Yorkers out there.
[00:12:21] Ralph: But the awakened state is that place where you. Let go of all of those things that are attached to your name and all of those different roles you play and all of the running around and hustling and trying to be somebody it's just what's there. It's what we're left with when all of that stuff somehow seems to settle or step aside.
[00:12:48] Ralph: And so self energy, right? Self energy correlates very much with in Buddhism. The awakened state. Here's a cool correlation. We have self [00:13:00] energy. In IFS, which, we have these 8c qualities, 5p qualities, so many letter qualities, which for me is really that space inside. It's just this clear, open thing in the back of my heart that can expand out and connect to whatever parts of me are.
[00:13:19] Ralph: Our present can connect to whoever the person in front of me is, or people, as the case may be, right? It's what Ram Dass called the compassionate witness, right? And what's interesting about that is. When we experienced this directly all the time, that when that aspect of our being comes in contact with parts of us that are maybe holding affliction or maybe wilding out or whatever it is, those parts start to be reparented, right?
[00:13:53] Ralph: Those parts start to feel held, those parts start to shift their presentation, those parts just as anybody else would if [00:14:00] they were in the presence of a caring, attuned person, right? So this inner reparenting starts to naturally unfold. And here's that cool correlation in Buddhism, I mentioned a minute ago, is in Buddhism, the awakened state correlates with what's called Buddha nature who we really are at the bottom of it all.
[00:14:20] Ralph: So self energy same, we're talking about the exact same thing. And the Sanskrit word, or term, rather, for Buddha nature. Isn't doesn't translate literally to Buddha nature to dog at the Garba is the Sanskrit term which translates to the womb of awakened intelligence and the womb aspect of it correlates with this re parenting business, right?
[00:14:49] Ralph: Like the space that naturally automatically nurtures helps things mature helps, Again, our core beliefs get sorted out. [00:15:00] Yeah it's really become my favorite thing to talk about. My favorite thing to teach people how to get to, because it is so powerful and with enough practice, you really can get quite rather quickly, really.
[00:15:15] Ralph: Yeah. To a place where you can experience directly for yourself, what I'm talking about, that energy spreading through the body, spreading out to the room you're in, I have, if I can say one more thing one thing, one, what really sparked me up about IFS having been a pretty hardcore Buddhist for a lot of years in the moment that, I found Jay earliest self therapy book in my two little hands was in Buddhism.
[00:15:43] Ralph: It's taught. It's, it's going to be a while, it's going to be a while, maybe lifetimes till you experience, the kind of thing that I was just so casually talking about and IFS, they're like nah, here's the steps. You can have that. It's here and now. Yeah. It wouldn't be any other way.[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] Ralph: Yeah. Why would it be any other way? Yeah.
[00:16:04] John: Yeah. Building off of that, like this idea of becoming myself or self actualizing or reaching enlightenment or whatever the, like the goals of spiritual practices are, whatever the goal of IFS may be like how do you help your clients understand that?
[00:16:24] John: Or what's your understanding of the goal or the goal in your life.
[00:16:30] Ralph: That's a really good question. And I will have to check back with you when I have a clear
[00:16:35] John: Part two. Yeah.
[00:16:39] Ralph: I'll say this much that I have what I call it enlightenment within reach because the technical definitions of enlightenment in Buddhism are new, very nuanced and difficult to understand if you're not a practitioner.
[00:16:52] Ralph: And they also, they're also vary from school to school, but so enlightenment was in reach like [00:17:00] something we can actually, a lay person can. Begin to grasp and orient themselves around is imagine this you do enough healing that your inner child parts begin to reclaim the best of their childlike qualities, wonder, joy, spontaneity, uninhibitedness, sweetness, playfulness, like endless imagination, like when you were a kid and you could just enter self entertain with Two rocks and make up a million stories about what those rocks actually were.
[00:17:31] Ralph: And, for hours, if you need it to like that kind of imagination, you reclaim that sort of vitality as well, but in the context of the best of maturation. The best of adulthood. Emotional intelligence, communication skills, financial intelligence go down the line of things that make an adult life really work.
[00:17:57] Ralph: And then those two things being able to coexist. [00:18:00] So you're in your childlike spontaneity and wonder, but you're not an idiot. And you are in your full maturation as an adult, but you haven't shut down. You know what I think is like the really good stuff in life.
[00:18:16] John: A part of me says it feels like a rare combo.
[00:18:20] John: I remember when I was in high school and I had a lot of. issues as a kid, as a teenager and I got in a lot of trouble and my therapist was literally saved my life. And, but I remember even as a high schooler, parts of me felt very serious, like I had to be really responsible. Other parts of me fought that and rebelled quite significantly.
[00:18:47] John: And even a few years out of high school, I would go back and see my therapist at home. And a couple of years into college, he told me, You know what you need? Like your homework is to go home and just [00:19:00] play whatever that means. Do something without an objective. And for whatever reason, and all my parts of my managers had just become so obsessed with advancing myself or a skill, or even for me as a musician, been playing drums since I was 10 at times, drums playing drums has been ruined for me.
[00:19:19] John: Because every time I sit down, either my parts are too loud and they won't let me play. And I just think I suck and I'm not advancing. And if I can't be the best jazz drummer in the world, why do it? Or I think it's only, I have to be doing productive things, right? Like I have to be advancing myself as a drummer and the past few years, I've been really trying to just play.
[00:19:39] John: And my four year old daughter is a great inspiration for that because the first time I put her behind a drum set, she just, Plays and experiments and thinks it's cool and holds the sticks in a weird way and just loves what she's playing. And I'm just like standing there with my mouth open being like, I used to do this, and then being like, my new goal is to play drums tonight.[00:20:00]
[00:20:00] John: And just play, just make sounds and be as playful as possible. And it's so hard for me. Yeah.
[00:20:07] Ralph: Yeah. So you're good at the mature aspect, right? The rudiments, the progression, et cetera. And then the childlike aspect needs to be reclaimed. I'm the opposite former metal goth, punk emo kid here as well.
[00:20:20] Ralph: And I'm a drummer also, and I currently sing and play guitar in a post punk band. And and the opposite, I actually don't know the notes that my guitar strings are tuned to. I don't know the names of the chords. I have no training. I'm doing vocal training now, but that's the first time I've ever really had consistent lessons and.
[00:20:42] Ralph: 30 years of music. And so I'm too good at the childlike aspect and need to bring in some more of the rudiments.
[00:20:50] John: Probably jam then that's probably what that means.
[00:20:53] Ralph: But there was a time in my life where like I can relate, where I first read, and I can't remember where that play is the opposite of [00:21:00] anxiety.
[00:21:00] Ralph: And this is pre discovering IFS. And I was like, Holy shit. Like the only thing I ever do for fun is go out for drinks with friends. Yeah. That's the only laughter in my life that is something that's oriented around alcohol and yeah,
[00:21:18] John: we
[00:21:18] Ralph: got to
[00:21:18] John: work
[00:21:18] Ralph: on
[00:21:18] John: that. Yeah, totally it's also that you can't we can't be in curiosity and also anxious, right?
[00:21:27] John: And so when we're helping clients connect with their self energy and just even asking directly Can you cultivate just a seed of curiosity inside and see what happens? That is a way to work from anxiety to feel more calm to feel less anxious, which is what most people want, right? But so much of therapy is about coming in and tamping down the symptoms and just breathe more Which is a way of saying can be a way of invalidating Our fears or [00:22:00] anxiety or saying don't be ridiculous.
[00:22:01] John: Just breathe. Everything's fine, right? Or a lot of the messages from our well intending parents of Just breathe. You'll be fine. I'm sure nothing bad it will happen at school. It's but you don't know Right and our parts are waiting for They're waiting for that reassurance, or they're at least waiting for the reassurance that regardless of what happens at school I'm with you and we can get through this together.
[00:22:25] John: Right.
[00:22:27] Ralph: That's powerful. That's powerful. When somebody can provide you that, and if you didn't get it from your parents, hopefully you can get it from a therapist and you can also become that for your parts inside. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what, I don't know half of what's going on in life.
[00:22:42] Ralph: That's something a lot of people are terrified to admit, but it's true. None of us really know what to do. All we have is trial and error and what we figured out so far, but I'll be here, like another Definition of I think being self led or that enlightenment [00:23:00] within reach. It's like the Cultivating a genuine, heartfelt sense of I always have me no matter what goes down.
[00:23:09] Ralph: I got me
[00:23:11] John: Yeah, the only guarantee And that self is enough. That's the offer of IFS. Also, talking shop for a second as therapists and given that the state the moment in time we're in right now in the world, clients coming to us as therapists, wanting to know, like Ralph, tell me it's going to be okay.
[00:23:32] John: And for some therapists the temptation to want to Reassure clients or the pressure that clients put on us to want to tell them everything's going to be okay You also you made a post on instagram recently about how A lot of our training as therapists is about not bringing your stuff into the room Right or even going all the way back to freud in this blank slate idea, right?
[00:23:56] John: It's like that wasn't that long ago and a lot of models are built on that idea of [00:24:00] blank slate And yet here we are As people and real people in the room, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy and psychic effort to like, not be a person in the room. So you were saying something in the post about how it's inevitable.
[00:24:14] John: It's impossible, biologically impossible to not bring yourself into the room. How do you think of all that right now? And how does that look in your work?
[00:24:23] Ralph: Yeah, for one, we shouldn't be telling people that it's going to be okay. Cause we just don't know. And it's just it's just like the rule that you never make a mistake.
[00:24:30] Ralph: Promise to a kid that you can't like, just like that. You can't promise that we don't know what's going to happen. We really don't know. We know something's going to happen, but we really don't know. And we're in that uncertainty together. And can I leave that outside the room? No, I can't. Now, some people hold the view that it is a service to the clients to be that tabula rasa blank slate.
[00:24:54] Ralph: And I honor that 100%. That is a professional choice. [00:25:00] That can be a service to clients, to I'm thinking to a moment when I asked a psychoanalyst that I worked with for several years I decided to ask him about himself one day and he said, Ralph, You're pretty smart and I'm pretty sure if I give you even anything, you're going to figure out how to use it.
[00:25:23] Ralph: Yikes. I was so mad and he was so right. Yeah. But, there are some of us,
[00:25:38] Ralph: That may feel more comfortable with another way and for those folks, I want just to just highlight one of the reasons why I tell my story in my books on podcasts everywhere even though it was my training not to in both meditation and psychotherapy is the power of [00:26:00] normalization to undo shame. That is when, when I sense that a client is struggling with something and their story is so parallel to mine and there's shame in the room, that's when I'll just maybe say, Hey, can I let you know something about me?
[00:26:18] Ralph: Here's what happened with me. That's so similar to this. I've been there too. In that moment, almost every time somebody is going to be like, the therapist has had, what? Okay. It's okay to be me again with that. And that is when I started picking up on how powerful that was is when I started breaking that rule and with regards to the election.
[00:26:53] Ralph: I had a client write to me and say, I just remember the session we had after Trump got elected the [00:27:00] first time. And you saying to me that you were scared too, and that you hugged me at the end of that session. And I just, that was one of the most powerful things ever. And in that moment, I was breaking all the rules, but intelligently, in these moments where our devastation is matching the clients in some way and that Sociopolitics is one thing but we're also going to have people die in our lives and all kinds of heartbreaks Unfold and then have to show up in the therapy room with folks.
[00:27:28] Ralph: I think the veil of separation It's that much thinner in those times, our interdependence is really laid more bare. We are truly at eye level with one another. And it's one of those it's one of those things where if we think there's a hierarchy, if we think that it's, me helping you down there that, that doesn't, to me, that doesn't hold a match as us linking arms and walking together.
[00:27:56] John: I have to throw in this, another quote from your book. You're just [00:28:00] throwing me a. A softball or whatever it's called. A layup? I don't know. The world will continue to burn, and while we can't save ourselves by covering it in leather, we can make a fantastic pair of sandals and help others to fashion their own.
[00:28:16] John: That was from this Buddhist principle. Shantideva? How do you say
[00:28:20] Ralph: it? Yeah. Close enough. Shantideva. Yeah. Shantideva.
[00:28:27] John: Yeah. Pretty powerful stuff.
[00:28:32] Ralph: In Buddhism, something that I'm really thankful for is the teachings on what's called samsara, which most of us have, as a Sanskrit word most of us have heard at this point, it just points to the cyclical nature of everything, the way that seasons go round and our behavioral patterns go round and, but that samsara connotes something terrible as well, because that's, again, how trauma works is cyclical and how our confusion works and [00:29:00] how violence works and what have you, it's all cycles. And in the Buddhist, in the end really in the Indo Tibetan sense, we'll say samsara is endless.
[00:29:11] Ralph: Samsara is, in other words, we're not going to fix the world. We're not going to get there. This the Human condition of fundamental confusion and frankly, having nervous systems that aren't wired for the 21st century. We have hunter gather nervous systems hunter gatherer nervous systems.
[00:29:31] Ralph: That is where we are evolutionarily. So we're mismatched for this world. And yet we also have the principle of the Bodhisattva. In Buddhism, and there's even a Bodhisattva vow that one might take at a particular point in their journey. And the Bodhisattva principle is, you literally vow to keep being reborn in this world and to not transcend this world until all the [00:30:00] suffering is gone.
[00:30:02] Ralph: And in that vow, you even acknowledge that it's going to be endless. And so you're vowing to not transcend this planet, to not leave any beings behind, even though it's impossible. Wow. Yeah. I think that really speaks to our situation right now. It's even though like it's never been more dark, honestly, and even though it feels so impossible, even though there's so many shards of glass rushing towards us right now, we can still Make a pledge like, no I'm going to stand here, I'm going to stand here.
[00:30:40] Ralph: I'm not, and I'm going to be with my feelings about this. I'm going to process, but I am going to stand up and I'm going to work towards what I believe to be right. And what I believe to be the compassionate resolution of this, no matter how impossible it feels, no matter how powerless I feel, no matter how miniscule the [00:31:00] change that I perceive that I affect is.
[00:31:03] Ralph: Yeah. That's still worth it to me because I'm in this one for the long haul.
[00:31:07] John: I wanted to ask you about something else in here, which is, and this might need its own hour. So everyone keep in mind for the sake of brevity, this idea of Buddhism and the self or no self and maybe a lot of it can be summed up with semantics between IFS and how we view the self. Even this idea or the part of the subtitle of your book of self compassion, right?
[00:31:36] John: I think of compassion as sending compassion from self to parts. But let me just stop there. This idea of the Buddhist definition of self versus the IFS definition of self.
[00:31:49] Ralph: Yeah.
[00:31:53] Ralph: There's so many ways to come at this and I'm going to give you a really brief one.
[00:31:56] John: This might be a hairy one,
[00:31:58] Ralph: The Buddhist said, the, [00:32:00] Doctrine of no self, a notman, which was a confrontation of the Hindu notion that there is like a person inside of you, like the real you is inside of you.
[00:32:10] Ralph: And that person has, a fixed set of qualities and traits and is, that's how a lot of folks think of the soul. And so the Buddhist said, no, that's not it. That's not it. The, but he. Didn't say there's not a true nature. He, in fact, taught heavily on, Buddha nature, our deeper nature, who we truly are underneath it all.
[00:32:31] Ralph: Except who we are truly underneath it all isn't really a who. In IFS, we, this, the corollary of self energy, First of all, when you experience that aspect of your being, it's not, there's not actually a personality there, right? It's an energy and it's, it doesn't have a fixed set of traits. Yeah. It can be calm.
[00:32:56] Ralph: It can be curious. It can be playful. It could, it gives [00:33:00] rise to so to a wide array of things. And it's a dynamic force. It's not just like some fixed stayed thing. It just, It, we open to it and it begins to exert its influence quite effortlessly within the system, but it's not like a little person inside of you.
[00:33:20] Ralph: That's the real you it's more fluid than that. And. When you start to see that everybody has it and that the earth has it, and that trees have it that this is really the energy that is behind our vitality, that makes everything live and grow. You start to realize calling itself is a misnomer.
[00:33:42] John: Yeah, exactly.
[00:33:43] Ralph: It ain't personal. It's human.
[00:33:46] John: Yeah.
[00:33:47] Ralph: No self.
[00:33:48] John: That's a really good answer. Yeah. Calling it a misnomer is helpful because again, we have so many connotations around self or getting to know yourself. It's I've always thought what the hell does that [00:34:00] mean? I don't, again, even this idea of like self compassion, which I have clients that come in and go I've been told, or I went to a yoga class and they said, be compassionate with yourself, but it's also like, how could I be compassionate with myself when I am drinking myself to death every night, or I just yelled at my partner, or I'm got this perfectionist part of whatever it is.
[00:34:21] John: And a lot of clients, and especially around when we have core wounding. From trauma, coming in and going like telling you to do the exact opposite of what your inclination is you should just love yourself. But there's parts that carry deep fears around being unlovable, unworthy, and fundamentally broken.
[00:34:38] John: So this idea of Just be compassionate. Just practice self compassionate or do self care. Like these things become buzzwords and lose meaning. But again, they can almost like trigger reactions in people of I certainly don't want to endorse my own bad behavior. I don't want to endorse my drinking.
[00:34:54] John: Cause I know it's a problem.
[00:34:55] Ralph: Yeah. That ain't love endorsing your drinking. It [00:35:00] ain't love.
[00:35:00] John: Yeah. And then the fear is if I get to know that. part that likes to drink, I'll just be endorsing that part or condoning it, which is obviously we know not the case as IFS practitioners, but.
[00:35:10] John: Yeah,
[00:35:12] Ralph: we can note love with approval because that's how so many of us were raised, right? If I like what you're up to, you get the love vibe. If I don't, the love vibe gets shut down, right? And that ain't it. That ain't it. So here's a matter of semantics where just, a kind of turn of phrase sometimes can help us understand a concept in a different way.
[00:35:38] Ralph: I think about it as offering the heart. Can you offer the heart to that part of you? Can you appreciate its struggle? That alcoholic part of you is in hell, that it can't get out and it thinks this is the only way. Doesn't that break you open a little bit for that, yeah, offering the heart is love, but [00:36:00] our concepts about love are just, yeah, sometimes very confusing to yeah, to apply.
[00:36:07] John: Confusing, and as you pointed out, for many of us, largely conditional, right? When kids are good, or more good, or more well behaved, they get more love, even from a teacher. When we're not that love is withdrawn or withheld or held over our heads, as this carrot on a stick that we have to, to chase, and then, fast forward two decades later, in my case, having worked in private practice in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley for all these years, you have someone who has parts with manager parts with incredible burdens around striving and perfectionism and being good and being the golden child.
[00:36:45] John: And if I can just be, the most successful 20 something year old in Silicon Valley. Maybe I'll finally be more worthy of love. Maybe. And then they do it and then they get there and they make the Forbes 30 under [00:37:00] 30 list and they've never felt more low in their lives, right? Or they go into a deep depression around what the hell was the point of all that.
[00:37:08] John: Then they come to therapy.
[00:37:10] Ralph: Or become therapists, or
[00:37:11] John: become
[00:37:12] Ralph: therapists. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. So it's true. It's the other side of the coin. With regards to sometimes when you talk about self-love, it's wait, you want me to be a zen out hippie And what you want I'm gonna, you want me to just be a budd?
[00:37:24] Ralph: The, yeah. Yeah. How am I going to get things done? How, what am I going to do with my bills show up? I've got taxes to pay, kids to raise and everything else. So and this, I'm pretty sure what I want for you is what self love means is like, can those parts of you that are engaged in worldly activities still do that, but also take a break sometimes so that they're rested and resourced for when you need them, that's part of it.
[00:37:55] Ralph: That's part of that story. A lot
[00:37:58] John: of what I try to [00:38:00] do is help clients, especially somatically feel the difference between self and parts. Not that the whole game is like parts are bad self versus parts, but the sensation of and I try to be as agnostic to their lives and their values as I can.
[00:38:15] John: Meaning if a self led decision and vision for their life is being the most successful 27 year old venture capitalist. then I want to help you go and do that. But I also want you to feel what it's like. And even in your body, when that feels like a yes, when that feels like it's coming from a place of wisdom, that's my purpose in life.
[00:38:35] John: And I want to head there. And for a lot of people, I just find that it's not for people that are quote overachieving. I find that they have, again, parts with massive burdens or they have trauma histories that have never been touched into whatsoever. If it feels extreme, if it feels like an impulse, it might be, coming from a part of you and we can get to know that part right now, today, in this moment.
[00:38:58] Ralph: Yeah. But also [00:39:00] sometimes there are things that we can only learn by making mistakes. Or by falling. A hundred percent. That we need to learn. And we won't learn any other way,
[00:39:08] Ralph: Yeah.
[00:39:09] John: And as therapists, sometimes we want to save clients from those mistakes. Because we can see the writing on the wall and that's, and then our own, Rescuer parts, right? Parts of savior complexes can jump in and overreaching and rescuing and then burning out, crashing and burning. That's it.
[00:39:26] Ralph: Yeah. I cannot take responsibility for someone else's path. We just walk with them, yeah. That's it. I could tell us a personal story about that, if you're game. Sure. I don't have to, but I sat a silent, long, silent meditation retreat once upon a time in Creston, Colorado, and I got there and I, Don't know.
[00:39:51] Ralph: I didn't know why I was just bugging out like that, like real bad, could not sit still, could not meditate. It [00:40:00] just was in hell. And after two days of it, I was like, I'm just I'm gonna I'm gonna have a psychotic break. Honestly this is really intense. I don't know what's going on. Every part of me wants the hell out of here, and this really sucks.
[00:40:12] Ralph: And in Buddhism, there's a rule. You do not leave retreat. If you leave retreat, you're disrupting the container, and it affects everybody. Like it's just, it's a big no. But I was wigging out in such a way that it was like being noticed to where the retreat leader, I get a note passed to me, like the retreat leader would like to see you.
[00:40:35] John: You could break the rule.
[00:40:39] Ralph: And yeah that's what he said to me, we went into this process around what was going on. And I was like, I don't want to leave because I'm feeling impulsive. That's not a, that's not a reason to go. And he said staying because you should, isn't a good reason either.
[00:40:54] Ralph: And he was the one who was like, yeah, maybe you need to make a big mistake [00:41:00] here in order to learn something that you can't learn any other way. So why don't you get out of here? And getting that permission, I wanted to stay suddenly. And it turned out actually in hindsight, I realized this like about a month later Oh, my parts, because of some things that, you know, about how I was raised really needed to be in their confusion.
[00:41:35] Ralph: And to just have that witnessed in a place where people weren't reacting to it. And and actually what the teacher did was so skillful of I'm gonna just offer you a way to work this out on your own. I grew up in an environment where I was constantly being told what to do and constantly my, Because of my [00:42:00] neurodivergence, my parents were very afraid that I was going to go the wrong way in so many different ways at so many different levels.
[00:42:07] Ralph: And and so there was a lot of redirection of that's weird. No, you can't do it. You can't be a musician. That's not going to make you any money. You got to be an architect. You're good at drawing. Do that. It was a lot of that growing up in my, bless my mom, especially who, she was coming from love and concern with that.
[00:42:24] Ralph: But. I needed a place where somebody said, here, I'll explore this with you, but you can break the rules now, if that's what you actually need. And then that put my nervous system at peace.
[00:42:38] John: Yeah. I love that.
[00:42:41] Ralph: Paradoxical. Paradoxes.
[00:42:43] John: Permission. Yeah. That permission to stay or go was what your parts needed to soften and allow yourself to be in it.
[00:42:51] John: And I,
[00:42:51] Ralph: I had to do a silent meditation retreat, totally wrong in order to get there as well. That'd basically be an asshole to [00:43:00] everybody to get that.
[00:43:03] John: Yeah. To your point, as therapists, we don't want to steal. Lessons away from our clients, right? These parts of us that want to save them from their suffering.
[00:43:14] John: Of course, again, we could do another episode on this. That's how a lot of therapists get into this field in the first place, right? As I was always the rescuer or the middle child or the peacekeeper or whatever. So that might be the thing that kind of got you to the dance, but you get five years into this 10 years into this doesn't, that's not sustainable.
[00:43:34] Ralph: You will definitely work way too hard. Yeah. Yeah. And your parts will comment your, yeah, your parts will comment through the process, you
[00:43:41] John: know yeah Ralph, somehow we're getting close to time. I just want to, again, make a plug because I think by the time this is out, your book will officially be available for people outshining trauma, a new vision of radical self compassion before it is by Dick Schwartz himself.
[00:43:57] John: The book is on integrating internal family [00:44:00] systems and Buddhist meditation. Ralph, with the couple minutes we have left, anything that you feel like is unsaid, at least for today, anything you want to leave people with or about your book, and then how can people follow up and follow along with your work?
[00:44:13] Ralph: Yeah. I think the
[00:44:18] Ralph: I think it's important to always remind people that where you are right now is not, there's more to the story. Where you are right now does not determine, what's possible for you. It just determines your starting point and you can go so much further in life. I went from heroin addict, 150 a day habit, lying in the gutter on the verge of homelessness to this and what, There's so much that's possible.
[00:44:41] Ralph: And with regards to the book, it's really about that. It's like starting exactly where you are. And this book in particular, it's different from my other books in that it's really a guidebook for walking the path. And it's a fantastic accoutrement, especially if you're in therapy, but you don't have to [00:45:00] be.
[00:45:00] Ralph: And how to Turn your daily life into a healing path to supercharge that process. And so we start from the very beginning and we get all the way up to the more refined IFS and processes and Buddhist worldview in tandem as well. We find synchronicity throughout the whole thing and then to find me as easy as Ralph de la Rosa.
[00:45:23] Ralph: com or Ralph de la Rosa. 108 on Tik Tok or Ralph De La Rosa on Instagram and lots of online courses, lots of free stuff. Yeah lots of offerings exploding out of me these days. So
[00:45:35] John: yeah, I love it. Ralph, thank you so much again. I really love the book. It's both informative and unwanted in some parts, very technical and gets into the nitty gritty, which I really love.
[00:45:46] John: as a therapist, but also it, it becomes very practical. And a lot or most, most, if not all chapters have a meditation at the end, which is really neat. And so I even like your idea of having folks record that [00:46:00] text and use it for their own meditation. I think that's a really nice way to use the book. And again, just the sheer understanding and your grasp on trauma, what it is and how it affects people is tremendous.
[00:46:10] John: So I, in reading this, I'm like, This, I'm like, Ralph has a serious grasp on, What this stuff is and how we can help people through it. Kudos to you for all the work. And I know that years you've spent developing these ideas and picking up on these things from your work with trauma clients.
[00:46:28] John: So thank you for this contribution. And I'm excited for people to get their hands on it.
[00:46:33] Ralph: I was extremely gracious. And so thank you. Thank you for reading the book and being a fantastic interviewer as well. And I'll just say it takes one to heal one,
[00:46:42] John: takes one. So
[00:46:44] Ralph: I think you're welcome
[00:46:45] John: back anytime, Ralph.
[00:46:46] John: Thank you again for doing this and yeah, keep in touch. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode of going inside. If you enjoyed this episode, please and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching and share your favorite [00:47:00] episode with a friend. You can follow me on Instagram, @JohnClarkeTherapy and apply to work with me one on one at JohnClarkeTherapy.com. See you next time.