Episode 64: Are The Trauma Parts Of You Making You Sick? with Dr. Richard Schwartz

Listen to Episode 64 with Dr. Richard Schwartz →

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When Your Internal Conflict Becomes Physical Disease

You have chronic health issues that doctors can't fully explain or treat successfully. You feel internal conflict constantly between different desires, needs, and impulses. You've tried medications, therapies, and lifestyle changes but your body continues breaking down in ways that seem disconnected from any clear cause.

What if the battle happening inside you between different parts of yourself is creating the physical illness you're experiencing?

Your trauma parts might be making you physically sick through mechanisms you've never considered. When parts battle inside you for control or protection, your body bears the biological cost of that internal war.

Dr. Richard Schwartz joins me today as the founder of Internal Family Systems therapy. He developed IFS after discovering that family therapy alone didn't achieve full symptom relief for his clients. Now he explains how your parts affect your physical health and why connecting to Self is essential for healing.

Understanding Parts and Physical Health

Are your trauma parts making you sick through their ongoing conflicts and protective strategies? And what can you do about this connection once you recognize it exists? The relationship between parts and physical health is real and measurable rather than abstract or metaphorical.

Everyone has parts as different aspects of yourself with different roles, perspectives, and agendas. Some parts hold trauma and the unbearable feelings from overwhelming experiences. Some parts protect you from feeling those emotions by creating distraction, numbness, or physical symptoms that demand your attention elsewhere.

Parts work through Internal Family Systems addresses trauma at a different level than traditional trauma processing. You're not just working to process traumatic memories or discharge stored activation. You're working with the entire internal system that those traumatic experiences created including the parts that carry the trauma and the parts that developed to protect you from feeling it.

Understanding the Biology of Trauma® alongside IFS reveals how parts operate at the biological level through your nervous system states. Your protector parts activate sympathetic fight-flight responses or dorsal vagal shutdown to prevent you from accessing painful emotions. Your exiled parts hold trauma in frozen states waiting for safe conditions to release. Your Self represents your regulated ventral vagal state where healing becomes possible.

How Protector Parts Create Illness

Your protector parts developed to keep you safe from overwhelming feelings during trauma when you couldn't handle the full emotional weight. They're still operating with the same protective strategies even though you're no longer in the original dangerous situation. These protective strategies affect your body in ways that create symptoms and illness.

Protector parts create physical symptoms to keep you from feeling too much emotion or moving forward in ways they perceive as dangerous. Fatigue stops you from doing things that might lead to vulnerability or failure. Pain distracts you from emotional pain by giving you physical pain to focus on instead. Your body becomes the battlefield where parts wage their protective campaigns.

The battle between parts creates constant internal stress that your body cannot ignore. Some parts want healing and growth and forward movement in your life. Other parts block that progress because they fear the vulnerability that healing requires or the changes that growth would bring. This internal conflict generates chronic stress that shows up as physical symptoms and progressive health issues.

When parts create ongoing internal battles, chronic disease often develops from the sustained stress on your system. Your immune function suffers when you're in constant internal conflict because your body allocates resources to managing the stress. Inflammation increases throughout your body as a response to the chronic activation. Disease develops from the constant internal war that never resolves because parts don't trust each other enough to stand down.

The Role of Self in Healing

In Internal Family Systems, Self represents your core essence beneath all your parts. Self possesses qualities like curiosity, compassion, clarity, connectedness, confidence, courage, creativity, and calm that parts lack when they're activated in protective roles. When you connect with Self, parts can finally relax because Self has the capacity to lead them that other parts don't possess.

Dr. Schwartz explains how accessing Self changes everything about your internal system and your physical health. Parts trust Self in ways they can never trust other parts who have agendas and limited perspectives. When Self takes leadership, protector parts don't need to work so hard because Self can handle what they were protecting you from. Exiled parts feel safe enough to release what they're holding because Self has the capacity to witness and heal their pain.

Connecting to Self to improve your health involves learning to recognize when you're in Self-energy versus when parts have taken over your consciousness. Self feels spacious, curious, and compassionate toward all parts even the ones creating problems. Parts feel urgent, afraid, rigid, or reactive from their limited perspectives and protective mandates.

The power of Self-leadership extends to physical health because when parts relax their protective strategies, your body can exit chronic stress states. Your nervous system can regulate properly instead of staying in activation or shutdown. Your immune system can function appropriately without the burden of managing constant internal conflict. Your body can heal when the internal battle stops consuming your biological resources.

Practical Application for Mind-Body Healing

Understanding how trauma parts create physical illness changes how you approach both mental health treatment and medical care. You recognize that your chronic symptoms might stem from internal parts conflicts rather than purely physical causes requiring only medical intervention. This doesn't mean your symptoms aren't real but that addressing the parts level might resolve symptoms that medicine alone cannot heal.

Dr. Schwartz's work with IFS demonstrates that when people heal their internal systems through parts work, physical symptoms often improve dramatically alongside psychological healing. Chronic pain conditions resolve when protector parts no longer need to create pain as distraction. Autoimmune conditions improve when the internal war between parts stops creating constant systemic stress. Fatigue lifts when parts no longer need to shut down your energy to prevent dangerous vulnerability.

The integration of IFS with the Biology of Trauma® framework provides a comprehensive understanding of how trauma affects you at multiple levels. Your nervous system holds trauma as dysregulation patterns. Your parts system organizes around trauma through protective roles and exiled pain. Your body expresses both the nervous system dysregulation and the parts conflicts as physical symptoms and disease.

Working with both the Biology of Trauma® through nervous system regulation and with your parts through IFS creates more complete healing than either approach alone. Your nervous system needs to regulate so parts can relax enough to do their healing work. Your parts need to heal so your nervous system can maintain regulation without constant activation from internal conflicts.

Dr. Schwartz emphasizes that Self-leadership is the key to sustainable healing at all levels including physical health. When Self leads your internal system, parts can finally release their extreme protective roles and trust that someone is taking care of the situation. This shift from parts-led to Self-led functioning allows your entire system including your body to move from defense mode into healing mode.

This Episode Is For:

✓ People with chronic health issues who've tried everything without lasting relief 

✓ Anyone who feels internal conflict constantly affecting their wellbeing 

✓ Practitioners wanting to understand how IFS addresses the mind-body connection 

✓ Those recognizing that emotional patterns affect their physical symptoms 

✓ Anyone interested in parts work for both psychological and physical healing 

✓ People ready to explore the Self-led approach to health and healing

What You'll Learn

Listen to hear IFS founder Dr. Richard Schwartz explain how trauma parts create physical illness through internal battles and protective strategies. Discover why connecting to Self is essential for both mental and physical health. Learn how parts conflicts manifest as chronic symptoms and disease that medicine alone cannot resolve.

Your chronic health issues might stem from internal parts battles rather than purely physical causes.

Listen to Episode 64 with Dr. Richard Schwartz →

Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The information shared reflects my clinical expertise and research, but every person's biology and healing journey is unique. Always consult with qualified healthcare providers before making changes to your treatment plan or starting new interventions. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact emergency services or a crisis helpline immediately.

Join the Conversation

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What resonated with you? What questions came up?

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