A Wider Perspective

Imagine you're the parent of a teenager. They just got home from a school dance, and their date ditched them in front of their friends. Your kid slams the door on the way in, and exclaims: "My life is over! I'm never leaving this house again! My friends will make fun of me for the rest of the school year."

As an adult, you know that in five, ten...twenty years, no one will care that a date ditched your kid at a school dance. There will be more crushes and breakups. The shelter of school life will end and your kid will enter a world much larger than they could ever imagine.

This scenario is an analogy for a concept called the Higher Self. It's found in many psychotherapy and spiritual traditions. Whenever we feel stuck, each tradition has a different way of describing essentially the same path: what's bigger than this right now?

Psychologist Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems therapy, writes about a wise part we have that he calls the "Self" with an upper case "S." In his book "No Bad Parts, he explains:

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"“Because the Self can maintain a long-range perspective, you can be patiently persistent in your efforts...

you can see past your opponents’ protectors to the exiles that drive their extremes and have compassion for them.

When you are present in Self, you can be highly forceful without escalating conflicts, because the other doesn’t feel denigrated.”

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What wider perspective would help you today?

Warm regards,

-Mariya