Time travel (part 1 of 2)

Author Kurt Vonnegut describes our experience of time as perceived from a moving vehicle—our head encased in an unmovable sphere, with one eyehole, to which is welded a six-foot pipe. In Slaughterhouse-Five (Delacorte, 1969), he writes, “Whatever poor Billy saw through the pipe, he had no choice but to say to himself, ‘That’s life.’” When (as Billy did) we become “unstuck in time,” it’s as if the sphere is removed, and we can see that all of the elements of the landscape that have passed by are still there, along with the views we have not reached. Vonnegut also describes a being who, when he sees a corpse, “all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.”

Past, present, and future all exist now. Can we use the ability to become unstuck in time to further our therapeutic ends?

In the IFS model, we recognize that much suffering and psychopathology is caused by parts that are stuck in the past. What does this actually mean? Is it just a metaphor? Dick Schwartz is often asked, “Do you see parts as real or as a metaphor?” The most practical answer to this question is to suggest that holding parts as “real” produces better results in therapy. I suggest that holding time travel as real does the same.

As someone with strong logical and analytical protectors, I used to get frustrated with people I judged to be irrational. Now, whenever someone says something that my parts deem to be irrational, I assume they are truthfully describing the experience of a part that is stuck in the past, since whatever they are saying or doing totally makes sense for the scene they are living in. I prefer to respond to that part by witnessing and validating whatever experience they are having in the past. By holding the current existence of that past timeline as “real,” I communicate directly with parts in the scene. No conversation will be effective without first witnessing and validating their experiences.

Of course, the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are largely generated by this same experience—parts who are stuck in the past. But on a sub-clinical level, parts are infusing us with their experiences from other timelines all the time; any time a person is triggered, they are hearing from a part stuck in the past. As another example, when we fall in love or feel infatuated, aren’t we influenced by very young parts who think they’ve finally found the permanent solution to their dependency needs?

Regarding these parts, Hendrix and Hunt’s Imago theory posits that they choose partners who will recreate childhood wounds in order to have a reparative experience, thereby healing their old attachment trauma. But it seems to me that trying to heal past trauma in the present is like searching for your keys under a street lamp, because the light is better there (regardless of where you dropped them).

In one of my recent process groups, a member did a great job of asking for what she needed, which was to have the other members comment on things that they liked and appreciated about her. Somehow, I felt that this would not really scratch her itch, because if she believed those things already, she wouldn’t need to hear them, and if she didn’t, she would discount their comments. Instead, we time traveled into her childhood when she was disregarded and maligned, enacted the scene with other group members, and then had her direct the reparative experience—all in the childhood timeline. The little girl stuck in the past got to receive positive feedback within the timeline where/when it was needed. This approach seemed to help her parts let go of their negative self-beliefs.

The juiciest part of the IFS model for me is asking an Exile to show me a scene from the past where it is having a difficult experience. This is our opportunity to time travel! Allowing ourselves to be unstuck in time, we can enter scenes and provide reparative experiences for traumatized parts. Of course, being there to witness is immensely helpful, because most traumatic memories are characterized by a lack of Self-energy in the scene. And we can also offer to intervene in any way that the Exile wants us to, keeping in mind that we have magic powers to make anything happen that we choose.

This part of the IFS protocol is sometimes called the “do over.” In Part 2 of this article, we’ll explore what happens during this maneuver.