There is no "Anti-You."
From Aubrey Marcus's "Anti-You" and Shirzad Chamine's "inner saboteur," to Phil Stutz's "Part X," a harmful idea has gained too much traction.
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You’ve no doubt noticed the part of you that wanted to stay in bed when you really needed to get up, or the part that criticizes you and says things you’d never say to anyone else; or the part that keeps you hidden, small, or withdrawn; or the part that eats, drinks, scrolls, or watches what you know you shouldn’t. Or maybe you have an even darker part that we won’t even mention here.
According to famous psychologists like Phil Stutz, executive coaches like Shirzad Chamine, or wellness influencers like Aubrey Marcus, those parts are intentionally working against you, dragging you down, and wanting you to fail, at worst, or keep you small, at best. There are differences between the approaches of Stutz, Chamine, and Marcus, but they all take seriously the ideas that
we have an inherent part inside of us that does not want the best for us, and
we must overcome, rise above, ignore, or vanquish this part.
I believe this idea is not just wrong, but is actively harmful. It is wrong because over 40 years of Internal Family Systems therapy has shown anyone trained in IFS that there are no bad parts (as the title of Dick Schwartz’s 2021 book announced). Schwartz and thousands of other therapists have found that when we slow down and really listen to parts, they ALWAYS have positive intentions. Like, ALWAYS.
This “Anti-You” idea is also harmful because if we approach parts of ourselves as adversaries, and we argue, resist, fight, ignore, or avoid, we only create more tension in our internal system. Parts always have a function. They do what they do for a reason. A part’s feelings, thoughts, and actions always make sense once we slow down and really listen to it. But arguing, resisting, fighting, ignoring, and avoiding only cause the part to dig in and often get bigger.
When Dick Schwartz was discovering Internal Family Systems, he was working with adolescents in an eating disorders clinic. In these early days, he thought of parts as out of control impulses or internalizations of parents’ criticism. So he encouraged clients to manage them in a similar way that Stutz, Chamine, and Marcus do. But it backfired big time:
In our first session, Roxanne said she believed her bulimia was related to having been sexually abused by a neighbor when she was young. She was the first survivor of sexual abuse I had worked with, and I was determined to help her overcome all the dreadful consequences of this transgression. Some sessions later she showed me fresh gashes on her arms, disclosing that she often cut herself. By then I had become very fond of Roxanne and I was appalled to see these wounds. I decided I wouldn’t let her leave until we had the cutting part under control. Around this time I was experimenting with the empty-chair technique from Gestalt therapy: The client sits in one chair facing another chair that is empty. Imagining a part in the empty chair, she talks to it. This time, however, I did something different with the chair technique. I asked Roxanne to move to the empty chair so I could speak to her cutting part directly. When I asked the part why it was cutting her, it replied that she was bad and deserved to be hurt. I told the part that cutting was no longer acceptable and it would have to find something else to do. I also recruited Roxanne to tell the part that it could no longer cut her. Roxanne gamely delivered this message. The part responded with disdain, so I badgered it for 2 hours until it finally agreed not to cut her until the next appointment. When I opened the door to Roxanne the next week, I gasped. She had a big gash down the middle of her face. My macho, not-on-my-watch coercion had led to disaster. As I looked at her face, all the fight in me collapsed. I was overcome with a sense of my own powerlessness. I said to Roxanne’s cutting part, “I give up. You win. This is a dangerous game and I can’t beat you.”
Astonishingly, Roxanne (speaking as the part) replied to Schwartz: “I don’t want to beat you.” Schwartz, humbled, softly asked, “Then why do you cut her?” The part, sensing his genuine and compassionate curiosity, told him that it cut Roxanne in the past when she was being abused to take her out of her body and keep her from feeling and expressing rage. The rage would’ve just led to more abuse.
Let that sink in. This part that physically harmed Roxanne was not a bad part. It wasn’t Part X, a saboteur, or Anti-You. It was a part who was doing a job of saving the person from even worse harm. And the good intention of the part was only noticeable once Schwartz dropped all of the adversarial and managerial energy.
As an IFS coach/practitioner, I get to meet parts like this ALL THE TIME. Suicidal parts, raging parts, addictive parts, lazy parts, violent parts, and so on. 100% of the time, they have a positive intention for the person’s system. They might have really negative outcomes externally for other people and even the person. But their intentions are always good, and the behaviors are always stemming from a role or function the part is playing in the system.
It’s often the case that the role is long outdated and the part just hasn’t realized that the person doesn’t need this sort of protection any more. We can go to these parts and slowly and compassionately update them and help them find new roles. Other times, the role is still needed because there are even younger parts in the system carrying a lot of pain. And the supposedly “bad” part is helping to protect and deal with that pain. In those cases, we can build trust with the protective part to let us eventually go to the younger one and heal the pain.
In any case, we always find that there are no bad parts, and only tension, frustration, confusion, and fragility come from trying to “overcome” these parts.
So what should you do with the parts of you that are dragging you down or otherwise causing problems in your life? Slow down and listen. You may notice there are other parts that hate the problematic (lazy, addictive, rageful, critical, etc.) part. You can slow down and listen to them too.
It’s not easy to do this on your own. That’s why IFS practitioners exist AND why they see their own IFS practitioners. We need help untangling the parts that are polarized and frustrated. But with a little Self-energy from a trained practitioner, it gets a lot easier to see and really experience the truth that there is no Anti-You.
P.S.: In very rare cases (like 1-2% of clients), there are things that can show up in a person’s system that do not have a positive intent. They’re not parts; in IFS we call them “unattached burdens” or UBs, and they can be released with expert guidance. I might write a post on them because they’ve become better known recently with the IFS expert on UBs, Bob Falconer, writing a book on them and giving multiple interviews like this one.
If you’re interested in working with your challenging parts in a compassionate, healthy, and growth-oriented way, you can reach out to set up an intro call with me by emailing at justin@justinwilford.com