Since then I’ve done some (coach-led) IFS which I think has made it easier to reconnect with some younger parts, but really I think the key change is just that doing it with a coach/guide is a million times better
I’ve found this with meditation too → today me and a friend at the EA hotel did a social noting meditation practice for 40 minutes (where you name things in your experience like “tension”, “stability”, “smiling” etc), and that shit makes you like 95% mindful, vs in a guided meditation it’s soooo easy to be distracted as hell
Tableau 1 → ~8 year old me playing by an iconic tree with my two ideal parents
Check out this iconic tree from my childhood:
What a perfect tree, right?? The bark is actually super slippery from thousands of kids climbing up it over decades, lol. It was really cool to visit this place (Calke Abbey) loads as I grew up and actually track my growth by how far up I could get - I remember being really young and not being able to get far, vs reaching the age where you’re just like gg ez and walk up it with no hands like an absolute hero
Anyway so my ideal father was Conan O’Brien and my ideal mother was Molly Weasley, lol. Both great parent archetypes who I’ve spent a decent amount of time with (probably 1000+ hours of Conan’s podcast + youtube clips, and I read Harry Potter probably 20+ times as a kid)
I received loving support from my ideal mother figure, and then my ideal father entered the scene and put his arm around my mother and there was this visceral sense of “woah, I’ve literally never experienced my parents loving each other before, that I can remember, this rules”
Tableau 2 → ~15 year old me putting on a film to watch with my ideal parents
At ~15 I fucking loved the film Scott Pilgrim, and in this tableau I imagined me and my ideal parents in the actual living room where I grew up, all on the same sofa with me in the middle, me getting ready to put on the film and feeling kinda nervous about it b/c I didn’t know if they like it
Unconditional love and support/encouragement from my mother, and my father was witnessing her support and loving her, and I was sat in between feeling that, which felt really great. A sense of like “there’s love in this triangle, it’s not just pointed at me, I can love my parents and love witnessing them loving each other”, etc. Felt very cosy and non-egoic
