SELF-LEADERSHIP/INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS

(cont'd) The theory of self-leadership assumes that we have aspects or sides to our personality that serve different protective functions for us. For example, a person may have underlying feelings of pain, shame, and rejection as a result of past experiences. Consequently, she suppresses those feelings and fears rejection. She will do everything so that she does not experience any kind of rejection. Thus she tries to be perfect and highly self-critical and this way people will accept her.

Everyone has different ways of coping with suppressed feelings. Having these coping styles is not the problem. In the above case, for example, if I have issues of rejection and become self critical, it may work for me because I makes me a high achiever, which gives me respect and recognition. Problems happen only when these coping styles become extreme. And that’s what we call “symptoms” in the psychology literature. Symptoms are also ways of coping with something that has been suppressed. Suppose, in the same example, respect and recognition is not enough because my feelings of rejection are very strong. In that case, I may employ other ways of coping, for example, I may withdraw from people or push them away whenever I feel getting close to them. Consequently, I may develop a fear of intimacy so that I would not be rejected again. In therapy, that fear need to be addressed, which will release the symptoms, heal the burden of rejection; and consequently remove the “symptom”. Continued...