Healing Requires More Than Noticing — It Requires Learning to Stay

Awareness opens a door. But walking through it is a different thing entirely.

Once we begin to notice what's happening inside us, the next task is learning to stay there. To remain. To not immediately run from what we find. And for most of us, this is exactly where we instinctively pull back.

Because trauma disconnects us. From our bodies. From our emotions. From our history. And ultimately from our experience of God. We learned early that the inside wasn't always a safe place to be. So we left. And we've been finding ways to stay away ever since.

Healing begins as those connections are slowly, gently restored.

Going Downstairs

Most of the work we do in therapy is not upstairs work.

Upstairs is where we think, analyze, explain, and theologize. Upstairs is where we have all the right answers and none of the felt experience. And while thinking has its place, it won't get us where we need to go.

The work here is less and less of a cognitive conversation, and more and more of an interior experience. You come in, focus on your senses, move your attention into the body, and simply notice what's there. No performance. No getting it right. Just noticing.

Try not to think. Try not to go upstairs and analyze. Just relax and feel it. It's much more authentic that way.

Learning to Feel the Parts

As you drop into the body, you'll begin to notice that different parts of you have different textures, different energies, different locations.

This is the work — learning to feel the parts, not just name them. When a part shows up, get curious. What age is it? When did it first appear? What is it afraid of? Ask it those questions, and then wait. Let that part respond.

And then — this is the crucial part — just be with it. Not fixing. Not rescuing. Just remaining.

Don't Go Back Upstairs

Here's what almost always happens.

We make contact with something real — a part, a feeling, a memory — and almost immediately another part rushes in to analyze it, explain it, or shut it down. We go back upstairs. We start thinking about the feeling instead of staying in it.

When that happens, just notice it. See if it'll give you a little space. Then return. Come back to the body. Tune back into your breath. The goal is to stay a little unblended — aware of the part without being swept away by it.

That space is everything. That's where healing lives.

Welcoming What You Find

Most of us have spent years trying to push certain parts of ourselves into a box and shove them under the bed. The parts we don't like. The parts that embarrass us. The parts that seem to contradict who we want to be.

But we want every part sitting at the table.

So instead of pushing a part away, try this. Relax into an open state — almost like you're welcoming this part in to tell its story. See if you can find even a simple acceptance: okay, I can make peace with the fact that you're here. It makes sense that you're here. It would be kind of weird if you weren't, given what happened.

That is not weakness. That is courage. That is the work.

Self — or Christ in Me

As you learn to sit with your parts, you'll notice there's a place inside you that feels different from them. Calmer. Clearer. Less reactive. In IFS we call this Self.

But I want to offer something more than a clinical framework.

I think this Self state is actually in Christ — that what we access when we drop into that calm, clear, connected place is the reality of Christ in me, the hope of glory. This isn't just a therapeutic exercise. It's relational. It's where I meet with him.

And something lovely happens as you work from that place. Parts are drawn toward Self. They settle. They slowly let go of the story they've been carrying and come into connection.

Simply Remaining

There's a reason Jesus chose the word abide.

Not achieve. Not perform. Not fix. Abide. Remain. Stay.

Most of us can notice pain. Few of us can remain present to it. But healing requires learning to stay — with the body, with the fear, with the part, with Jesus.

That's abiding. And it's some of the most important work you will ever do.

Abide in me, and I in you. — John 15:4