A Complete IFS Unburdening with a Firefighter
From start to finish, rhino unburdens some very old shame from 1977
Firefighter apologizes for eating watermelon as a form of emotional anesthesia in advance of doing inner work
Rhino (firefighter): I’m sorry I had to eat so. much. watermelon out of my intense distress about all the emotional issues arising today.
A (Self-energy): It happens.
Rhino (firefighter): Plus half of a very tasteless winter cantaloupe and a bottle of vanilla Cocoyo.
A (Self-energy): Also okay.
Rhino (firefighter): I have a big squid ink blob of bad stuff I want to unburden.
A: Let’s do it!
Rhino: It’s all this evil energy that I got from that evil, horrific, vicious, violent place.
A: Mmmm hmmm.
Rhino: I’ll put it in the vat of acid and get it out of me.
A: What’s that like?
Rhino: I think I was so scared of all this energy that I wanted sweetness, to counteract the horribleness. I wanted to eat a lot of sugar to anaesthetize myself before doing this, before confronting all this. Like using it before going to psychic surgery.
A: That makes sense.
Rhino: I make sense I guess. It’s hard, but I guess I do.
A: I think you do.
Rhino: You have a lot of patience for all this eating chaos.
A: Whatever it takes. Besides, who cares how much watermelon we eat? Even close to six pounds of watermelon is still only watermelon, and a cantaloupe is not heroin! Although, if you were shooting heroin, I’d also accept you and love you and be here for your process.
Rhino: Someone out there, reading this one day, is a person whose parts shoot up heroin because of the dark and horrible places they’ve been. And you’re right, no matter what people’s firefighters do to survive, they deserve love and acceptance.
A: Yup.
Rhino: We do what it takes. We’re not trying to be assholes. We’re just trying to survive the horrors of this extremely fucked up, violent world.
A: Amen.
Rhino: I’d rather not use eating anymore though, A. I’d rather just come to you and say, “I need IFS STAT!”
A: We can make that change.
Rhino: “Gonna make a change…” (sings ‘Man in the Mirror’ by Michael Jackson). So if I unburden this, what will happen?
A: Fuck all if I know!
Rhino: Right, nobody can know in advance. You just gotta risk it.
A: Mmm hmm.
Firefighter brings up shame about broken arm
Rhino: Kinda scared, but, that’s what people come to the parts hospital for. To do IFS and unburden. Psychic surgery hospital is what this is!
A: That’s a good way to put it.
Rhino: Well, we can’t fix our broken arm here!
A: Nope, it’s permanently fucked.
Rhino: There are limits to what IFS can do. It can’t restore the eighty degrees of rotation we’re missing in our right arm due to breaking our arm when we were six.
A: See ya later, eighty degrees of vertical to horizontal rotation! It was nice knowin’ ya!
Rhino: I’m sorry we fell off the rock when we were six, broke our arm, and lost the rotation and have such a profound disability forever, A.
A: Oh, Rhino, it’s not your fault.
Firefighter faces the deep shame about the broken arm
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