S2 E9 Inner Parts Work and Our Inner Critics with Coach Heather Ussery-Knight

I enjoyed this conversation with one of my friends, Heather Ussery-Knight, who is a coach with an extensive background in counseling and psychology.

Heather has Masters in Counseling Psychology, over 20 years in the field of counseling and psychology. She currently works as a coach focusing on Inner Parts Work. Because she is a MultiPod with a penchant for writing, creativity, Integral Theory, video gaming, Systema, crafts and other artistic endeavors, and learning, she uses all these interests towards her work.

You can find out more about Heather's coaching work at Lizard Dreaming, her coaching practice.

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We talked through "inner parts" work and inner critics, which she developed in parallel to the development of Internal Family Systems Therapy. It really has come about as an understanding through other therapeutic practices as well.

The notion that some of our parts as being non-humanoid is also a really creative approach to our inner "cast of characters." We sometimes have a "truculent teenager" part or other places where they take over our bodies energetically.

There are many ways we can unburden our parts through the kinds of work that Heather provides in some very creative ways. We talked about parts that get us in trouble. For me, this is my "Peter Pan" part and for her she mentioned a "caveman" part that might come out when she hasn't been taking care of herself.

She mentioned that most of our parts are "younglings" and they serve(d) a purpose in our lives. Awareness is the key part of this process.

We talked about her journey through a Russian combat martial art called Systema and how that has helped her, and deepened her somatic wisdom. Systema helps her understand pain and the way stories increase our pain.

Inner Critics have a function. As Heather explained, there are many ways they try to serve us, but they may be misguided. Expending energy can seem "dangerous" to our system, and inner critics are quite clever. I love her ways to engage with the critic and helping us work through this when it is holding us back.

Embodying our full energy and surrendering to the process helps us get out of our own way.

Heather is a gamer and she talked about ways we can engage in a somatically healthy way while gaming. We talked about how the psychology world and the gaming world have some very interesting intersections.

We explore the synchronicity of the 100th monkey and Carl Jung's work on the collective unconscious.

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You can find out more about Heather's coaching work at Lizard Dreaming, her coaching practice.

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Music credit: https://www.melodyloops.com/composers/ihsandincer/

Cover art credit: https://www.natalyakolosowsky.com/