Burnout and IFS: Could I finally be set free to be authentic and happy?

[Papa Coco]

As I'm reading Richard Schwartz's books on Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, I'm learning some of the mechanics behind how it works.

The Manager role
For years my therapist has been helping me to connect with all sorts of little "parts" within me. I didn't know that what he was doing was called IFS. It's been working really well, but I admit now, that he and I have been focusing on my exiles. Exiles are the little victims who need protecting by another part called a Manager. Schwartz's book An Introduction to Internal Family Systems, says that the managers are the ones who protect (by imprisoning) the exiles, which is why they're called exiles. Up until today, I've never even considered working with my manager parts, but as of this moment, I'm shifting my focus onto them. I will be reading more about them and going into meditation to find them and talk with them more starting tonight.

Burnout is killing me
For the past few years I've been utterly exhausted. This winter has been torture for me because I can't work up the energy to even clean the kitchen, let alone complete my bathroom remodels, and repairs on my truck. As of the past two to three weeks I can't even stay awake for a full day anymore. I sleep 8-9 hours a night, without even getting up to use the bathroom. Then around noon or so I can't keep my eyes open. I see double. I crawl to bed. I was sleeping for two to four hours during my naps, but they've become about an hour to 90 minutes now. Then I watch TV with my wife during the evening, struggling, all the while, to keep from dozing off for a few hours until we finally turn off the TV and go to bed.

I'm exhausted. I was starting to want to go see a doctor to get some bloodwork, when, TODAY, while listening on audiobooks to Schwartz, he piqued my interest in my managers.

How I burnt out my managers and myself:
I've been a sick workaholic my entire life. I've believed that if I don't outperform everyone around me that I'll be kicked to the curb as useless. It was burrowed into me by my family as a boy that I have to work harder than everyone else on earth if I want them to respect and love me. So I have devoted my life to working 60 hour weeks, raising a family, volunteering at hospitals, maintaining my own yard, doing all the cooking and cleaning, and building all my own fences and sheds and decks and landscaping, all without any help from anyone, and all because if I were to hire help, I'd be seen as an utter failure and would lose the love of my family and friends.

According to what I believe I just learned about IFS, In my early years, I enlisted the help of some IFS managers to keep me from failing, and to respond to the fire alarms whenever I felt like I was going to be humiliated for being worthless. As they have never gotten a single day off in 60 years, they are now utterly burned out. So therefore I am utterly burned out with them. Nothing is getting done. Shame, which drove them to a life of hard work, is on the rise while energy to keep overdoing life is on the decline. I'm not even sure I can live much longer due to my lack of exercise, my poor diet, and my lack of will to live. A week prior to Christmas 2023 I felt the words go through my head "You won't be here for Christmas 2024". I believe this is my one final chance to release the shame and the false belief that I have to do more than everyone else on earth if I want to earn the right to live another day.

Could this be my salvation?
I shriek with excitement when I think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I can find peace for the first time in my 6 decades of life, enough to rest, relax, enjoy life, and find my energy again--SHAME FREE! The idea of not hating myself, and not pushing myself, and not feeling like sleep is the only thing I can do to pass the time, feels like a distant light has appeared for me to follow. A light of hope. I've been praying for hope for three days now. I've been saying that hope is the motivator that I'm lacking so as to keep going. Is this the hope I've been praying for? Is this the answer to my prayer?

Shame drives overwork which ends in exhaustion
I have lived with massive shame over things that were said about me that others believed, and used as evidence that I was unlovable, valueless, and that even God himself hated me. Since kindergarten in 1965, I have put these poor managers to the task of protecting many little exiles who are afraid for their lives for being called lazy and useless and stupid. I now see that the energy I've made these managers expend on my behalf is wiping them out. They are exhausted. Burned out. And as a result, I am also exhausted and burned out.

My plan for what to do with all this new information
During the next few days, I hope to find some connection with at least one of these manager parts, or firefighter parts, and begin building some trust with them so that they can help me work with them to release the pressure.  I know that I held a lot of deep secrets that most likely forced them to work 24 x 7 x 365 for 60 years keeping vigilant watch on protecting my secrets because I believed my life depended on it. I kept it secret that I was being SA'd as a boy, and that I was falsely labeled as gay, and then abused by my entire school for it for most of my childhood. That was a secret I didn't want my family to know, because if they believed the lie too, then I'd be put to death. That was what I believed for my entire childhood, and that fear followed me for my entire life. So I've forced these managers who live within me to work round the clock keeping my secrets safe so that no one would kill me because of them.

I predict that as I meet any of these manager parts or firefighter parts, that I will discover that in order to make peace with them, I'll need to give in and allow myself to let the secrets out. If I can prove to my manager parts that I'm willing to live in the freedom that my secrets are all out in the open, and that I'm NOT ashamed that I didn't build my own house with my own hammer, then maybe they'll appreciate being let off the hook for helping me live in darkness for 60 years.

And maybe, just maybe, they will find peace, and I will find peace, and maybe I can become my authentic self, which requires very little energy. It burns a LOT of fuel to keep secrets from the world. It also burns a LOT of fuel to live under someone else's rules. What if I can feel so free that I actually feel energetic in the morning, and stay awake and productive during the day? I have always envied the people who's families supported them and allowed them to grow up to be who they are. Those people have fun, good energy. I have thick, exhausted energy. Living the life I was born to live is a fantasy. But Schwartz claims this type of parts work can free the soul. My fingers are crossed. I'm old, but I'm not dead yet. What if I could spend the silver haired years happy and proud to be who I am?

I'm exhausted just by writing this. But this little, tiny flicker of hope that was lit today by Schwartz's book...well...God help me so that I'm finally on the right track here.

The truth is I can't stand living under this state of utter exhaustion anymore. I won't see Christmas if I don't do something now.

[Little2Nothing]

Papa Coco, it is my sincere hope that you will be able to reconcile with your past and put the shame and fear away. Shame can be relentless and it is fed by the secrets we keep. You deserve to find peace and rest. 

[Papa Coco]

Thanks LIttle2Nothing,

My manager is working with me very enthusiastically. I had a lot of memories pop into my head last night in bed. This morning's meditation was rich with information. My manager has told me that he himself isn't exhausted, because exhaustion is a physical thing  and he's metaphysical. He has no human body to wear out. He said that he recognizes how and why I'm so exhausted. He's ready to help. He's been giving me memory after memory, showing me why my knees are so sore and why I'm so sleepy and so tired and so exhausted. He's promising that if I will continue to work with him, and if I'll commit to letting go of my secrets, and allowing myself to become my authentic self (Whatever that might look like) that I'll live longer and happier and freer.

I've had a productive first day or working with this manager.

[Desert Flower]

Dear Papa Coco,
It's been a while since you posted this, but I'd like to respond anyway. It sounds like you're doing a lot of very important work for yourself, your manager and your exiles. I think you can actually find peace with yourself this way. Even if it is at our age (I myself keep beating myself up that I'm already in my fifties and I'm only now starting to figure out what is going on. But on the other hand, we don't need to be so harsh on ourselves, we had to become strong enough to face it first, I think.) So next, you may have some beautiful times ahead of you.

This part of your story reminds me somewhat of mine and of some work I've been doing some years prior to this. I used to be tired (well, exhausted) for years and years, and I would still keep going with all sorts of different activities, like you, and never give myself a break. (And in addition, I had pains all over the place, allergies, headaches, etc. etc.) Untill one day, I heard a podcast by Nicole Sachs on TMS, how the brain is generating al sorts of 'physical' complaints because we cannot deal with our emotions and keep pushing them away. And she has this metaphor of a person holding a ball under water between their knees, while they're also trying to do al sorts of other tasks and being friendly at the same time. And how this is so exhausting. This ball being our secrets, our emotions that we don't want others or ourselves to know about. And imagine what would happen if we would just let the ball escape to the surface. How much energy this would release for us to be used on other stuff (or to just relax, ha ha, imagine that!). I've found this a very helpful metaphor. For me personally, it has somehow become easier/less tiresome to begin talking to others about what's been going on (somewhat regardless of how they will react) than keeping it all inside. Hope this helps. Wishing you all the best, Papa Coco.

[Papa Coco]

Desert Flower,

Thanks for the updated post from my previous post of March.

I absolutely agree that our brains generate complaints because we can't deal with our emotions. I'm about to go out into the yard and do a couple of hours of meditative tree trimming. I'm going to use your post from today as my starting point. Emotions come up and we need to feel them.

I've been reading Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, by Dr. David Hawkins. The entire book is about how to feel our emotions and release them. He says that there are three things we do to perpetuate our emotional distress: When emotions come up, we need to let them breathe. We need to let them air out and follow their path to conclusion, which will allow all the memories and struggles to dissipate and leave us for good. But most of us do three things to stop our emotions from living their truths: We; 1) Suppress or repress them. Suppression is intentional, repression is automatic). or 2) We express. To express emotions is to scream, or act out, or become mean, or paint graffiti on a wall so people can see our anger. Or 3) We Escape. Escapement happens through addiction, medication, dissociation, distractions, etc.

According to Hawkins, when an emotion starts to bubble up, all we need to do is love that emotion and let it have its moment. He says that THOUSANDS of memories can be tied to a single emotion. I suppose that explains why we have triggers. When I have certain moments of emotion surrounding my CSA when I was seven, memories of all sorts of abuse come flashing before my eyes. It's like, the one emotion that I didn't release when I was seven years old, gathered more memories of other times when I was not respected or rescued from abuse. So, when I trigger any one of those memories, all the memories that attached themselves to that one emotion, come up all at once.  My job, today, is to allow them to come up, accept them all as valid pains that just want me to release them into the light. Sort of like our IFS parts, who just want to be released from their chains and allowed to go into the light where they belong.

Good fodder for yard-work meditation for me today.

Thanks so much for responding to this post today. Today is the day I needed to read what you wrote.

[Desert Flower]

And thank you too Papa Coco for all your wonderful contributions.

(As it is, I just did some much needed gardening/angry sweeping myself. )