Your inner critic is a protector: what parts work and reparenting share

The Short Version

Five people who work with different vocabularies describe the same structure. A child is hurt in a way nobody repairs, the hurt gets pushed out of sight, and another part of the personality takes on the job of making sure it never happens again: by being perfect, by pleasing everyone, or by criticizing you before anyone else can [1][2][5]. Richard Schwartz, who founded Internal Family Systems, says of the inner critic that "it's desperately trying to protect you," and psychotherapist Meg Josephson says the same of her own: that voice "is just trying to protect me" [1][2]. Because the critic is doing a job, all five work with it instead of fighting it. They get curious about it, thank it, and then turn to the younger part it is guarding [1][2][3][5]. They differ on how to do that: whether to question the voice or simply stop believing it, whether to start with the body or with a conversation, and how much of this a person can safely do alone [1][2][3][4][5].

Table of contents

What They Said

Richard Schwartz: managers, exiles and a Self underneath

Schwartz's starting assumption is that the mind is not a single thing. "We're all multiple personalities," he says, not in the diagnostic sense, but in that everyone has what he calls parts and other systems call subpersonalities or ego states [1]. In his view we are born with them and all of them are valuable. Trauma, attachment injuries and what he calls the slings and arrows we suffer force these naturally valuable parts into roles that can be destructive, and because they are often frozen in time at the moment of the trauma, they live as if it were still happening [1].

He arrived at this by failing. Around 1983, trained as a family therapist, he tried to cure young people with bulimia by reorganizing their families the way the textbook said, and it did not work [1]. When he asked his clients why, they began describing an inner sequence: a critic attacks when something goes wrong, which hits a part that feels empty and worthless, which triggers a binge part to take them away from the pain, which the critic then attacks again [1]. To a family therapist that sounded like the circular interactions of a real family, so he began to study the internal one [1].

The model that came out of it has three kinds of parts. Exiles are the vulnerable parts that got hurt and were locked away because nobody wanted to feel them, often because everyone said to move on [1]. Schwartz makes a careful point here: an injury does not have to be traumatizing. If you go toward the part that got hurt, embrace it and help it unload its feelings, you are not traumatized. The damage comes from the locking away [1]. The more exiles a person has, the more delicate they feel and the more dangerous the world seems, since anything could set them off [1].

Managers are the protectors that try to keep the exiles from being triggered in the first place. Some keep people at a distance. Some make you look good or perform at a high level to counter a sense of worthlessness. Many become inner critics, yelling at you to behave. Others become what he calls massive caretaking parts that look after everybody but you, which he says is especially common in women [1]. Firefighters are the third group, the impulsive protectors that rush in when an exile breaks through anyway, numbing or distracting at whatever cost to the body or to relationships; addictions, dissociation and rage are common examples [1].

His sharpest claim is about how the critic has been misread. Most of the field, he says, has made the mistake of assuming these roles are the essence of the parts, treating the critic as an internalized critical parent's voice, "instead of listening to it and hearing that it's desperately trying to protect you" [1]. He compares it to children in dysfunctional families who are forced into extreme roles that are not who they are [1]. From this comes the phrase most associated with him: "There are no bad parts" [1].

Under the parts, he says, is something that is not a part. When his early clients got the parts that hated their critic to step back, they spontaneously felt curious about the critic, or even sorry for it, and when asked what part that was, they said it wasn't one; it was them [1]. He calls this the Self, and after forty years he says it turns out to be in everybody, just beneath the parts, with eight qualities he calls the eight C's: curiosity, calm, confidence, compassion, courage, clarity, creativity and connectedness [1]. In IFS the therapist does not become the good attachment figure for your wounded inner children. You do, and the parts learn to trust you as an internal leader [1]. Andrew Huberman compares this to parenting yourself [1].

Schwartz demonstrates the method on Huberman, who describes a tense conversation with a family member. Huberman locates his frustration as pressure between his midsection and forehead, about the size of a teddy bear. At first he dislikes it; when he gets curious, it softens [1]. Asked what it fears would happen if it did not take over, the part answers, "That I wouldn't be able to discern the truth," and then, "because if you can't hold on to your truth, then nothing will make sense" [1]. It turns out to be holding back another part that would judge the family member harshly, which Huberman hates to feel [1]. Schwartz's reading is two polarized protectors, and he expects that the judgmental one, once met, would also turn out to be a young protector [1].

He also offers himself as a case. The oldest of six boys, with undiagnosed ADD, he was called lazy and worthless by a demanding physician-researcher father, and a part driven to prove his father wrong fuelled the building of IFS through years of professional attacks [1]. He says he was dominated by those protectors and they got him through, but they did not serve him as the leader of a community, and students eventually confronted him. "I listened and I went and worked with that worthlessness. And now I don't have it," he says; he no longer feels driven [1]. Huberman tells a parallel story: 80-to-85-hour weeks as a young scientist, sometimes sleeping under his desk, which he traced to a fear of annihilation and finally of death [1].

Schwartz extends the idea to the most frightening parts. Even with a suicidal part, IFS asks what it is afraid would happen if it did not act; typically the answer is that the pain would be unbearable, and to an addictive part the therapist says, "Would you give us a chance to prove" the pain can be healed [1]. People who seem evil, in his view, are dominated by protectors terrified of their own exiles [1].

Meg Josephson: the people-pleaser as a part that learned safety

Josephson's subject is people pleasing, which she reframes as the fawn response, a fourth reaction to threat alongside fight, flight and freeze. "When we're in the fawn response, we appease the threat," she says: we try to be liked by it so that we can feel safe again [2]. The threat can be real or perceived, such as a boss being cold or a partner being quiet [2]. Unlike the other threat responses this one is applauded, which reinforces it [2].

She locates the origin in homes where it was not safe to have needs. If you walked on eggshells around unpredictable or critical caregivers, you learned that saying no was unsafe, and the reason the pattern persists is simple: it worked, it gave safety [2]. "Most people pleasers were parent pleasers first," she says [2]. In her own home she learned her father's moods from the sound of his footsteps on the stairs and the rhythm of his breathing [2]. After a volatile conflict she would retreat to her room, and an hour later her father would ask what she wanted for dinner, with no repair [2]. Repeated week after week, she says, that becomes complex trauma, and a child left alone with it concludes "I did something bad," which becomes I am bad [2].

Her description of where that child goes is nearly word for word Schwartz's. The younger version who learned that people must like her for her to be safe is, she says, still in you, "frozen in time" [2]. It takes over when something in adult life echoes the early moments [2].

Josephson describes six people-pleaser patterns, which she says are not fixed types and usually overlap: the peacekeeper who cannot feel safe until everyone is okay; the perfectionist who finds safety in achieving and looking right; the performer who stays "on," often through humour; the caretaker who finds value in being helpful; the chameleon who morphs to match the room; and the lone wolf, the quietest form, who believes their needs do not matter and so never asks for help [2]. People keep playing these roles as adults because "what feels familiar will feel safe and what feels unfamiliar will feel dangerous" [2].

On the inner critic she says two things that are worth holding together. The first is about its content: "It's a tape recorder of all the things we've heard growing up" [2]. The second is about its purpose. Speaking of her own harsh, perfectionistic voice, she says the task is to "recognize that voice is just trying to protect me. Because if I'm perfect, maybe I won't be criticized or judged or misunderstood" [2]. Self-blame, she explains, is a coping mechanism: because the fawn response finds safety in doing more, believing you are doing enough feels threatening [2].

She uses Internal Family Systems in her clinical work and names Schwartz as its source [2]. The people pleaser, in her framing, is a part that found safety through pleasing and being perfect and good, and "we're not trying to get rid of" it; the aim is a relationship with it so that it knows it does not need to work so hard [2]. The healing voice is the wise, grounded, regulated self, and what it says to the part is: "Thank you so much for working so hard. I actually don't need you right now. You can sleep. I will need you again, but I don't need you in this moment" [2].

She is honest that her own critic "could use some softening still," and she explains why attacking it would backfire. "It's not about erasing that voice, but changing my relationship to it," she says, because the voice is there on account of the little girl who is still inside her [2]. To ask what is wrong with her for having a harsh inner dialogue is, in her words, "really saying what's wrong with this little girl? She shouldn't be here" [2]. She greets the voice instead: "There you are again. Hello" [2].

Patrick Teahan: an inner child on watch, and an inner adult to answer it

Teahan, a clinical social worker, works in the language of the inner child and the inner adult. He says childhood trauma disconnects people from the world and from themselves, with shame at the centre; he compares shame to the one protein at a buffet, with every other emotion a side dish flavoured by it [3]. People who carry it feel they have no seat at the table, so they hide, mask and pretend [3].

His version of the protector is the performative identity. At 11 he took up drums, not at first for love of them but because he was not good at sports or school, did not feel lovable at home, and wanted something that made him visible [3]. It worked: by 16 men in their mid-twenties were hiring him to play in Boston clubs [3]. By 19 it had stopped working, because a performative identity cannot give you relationships, self-worth or intimacy, and he would have great nights and still go home feeling less than everyone else [3]. A healthy identity, he says, is knowing you have a basic goodness that you do not lose whatever happens [3].

Teahan does not separate the protector from the child as cleanly as Schwartz does. In his account it is the inner child who stands guard: "the inner child who is hyper vigilant their job is to look for a threat" [3]. That is why calm can feel wrong. Asked why a healthy relationship feels scary to someone from a dysfunctional home, he says "hypervigilance hates the absence of a threat"; it dislikes safety, calm and peace, so survivors watch a partner's moods, get bored, or build stories that things are going too well [3]. He adds that "healthy people are intimidating" [3]. The same inner child speaks as the impostor: "see, I don't belong here," or, on entering a therapy group, that it is either too messed up or not messed up enough to be there [3].

His mentor taught him that "we look at the present through the lens of our childhood," so the inner voice keeps confirming old beliefs, turning a date that did not click into proof of worthlessness [3]. Inner child work means asking what a situation takes you back to. A one-word email from a boss may take you back to always being in trouble and having to read a parent's mind; seeing that lets the inner adult tell the inner child that you are not in trouble and the boss is merely terse [3]. He says this can shrink a three-day trigger to 20 minutes [3].

For reaching the younger self he recommends tactile tools: childhood photos, a stuffed animal, the shows and foods you loved, and "dialoguing," a written conversation with the dominant hand as the inner adult and the non-dominant hand as the inner child [3]. People respond differently. Some connect at once, some are too dissociated to find a foothold, some refuse, and some find the child is angry and wants nothing to do with adults [3]. What is at stake, he says, is tenderness: people who cannot reach it "will be stuck in bitterness" [3]. For skeptics he restates it in brain terms: the inner child is the limbic system and emotional memory, with the amygdala as the file cabinet of bad experiences, and the inner adult is the prefrontal cortex [3].

The end point of his own three and a half years of group therapy is a conviction held by the deepest part of you, not only the intellect: that you were a good kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time [3].

Nicole LePera: archetypes as coping, and why naming them is not enough

LePera, a clinical psychologist, calls the protective patterns inner child archetypes: very conditioned ways of being that usually form early around painful experiences [4]. She names the overachiever; the caretaker, who serves everyone's needs but their own; the yes person who cannot say no; the hero worshipper, always looking outside for the answer; and the life of the party, who never lets sadness in [4]. She agrees with Lewis Howes that these are coping mechanisms aimed at being seen and heard, and adds a second function: avoiding a pain that was once unbearable. A child whose sadness was not accepted shares a little less of it each time and grows into the life of the party [4].

She presents her own critic as the working of her archetype. Even being offered a book contract set off a voice asking whether anyone could care what she had to say [4]. "I hold myself up to almost a tyrannical, unachievable standard in a lot of ways," she says, and she takes any moment as evidence she is not meeting it [4]. Her overachieving did not begin in adulthood; she took on the role in her childhood relationships [4].

Her emphasis falls on what comes after the insight. For some people, seeing the role as a result of what happened to them is healing in itself [4]. But: "Awareness isn't going to create change" [4]. The habits live in subconscious pathways the brain prefers. She imagines the reader saying, "Yes, I'm an overachiever. I have that part in my mind. Yet now what?" and answers that the work is refocusing attention, spending less time spinning down the old story, while slowly unlearning the belief beneath it [4]. An adult can choose a new response, which a child could not, and has to tolerate the discomfort that comes with it [4].

She explains the pull of the old pattern with a week-of-launch confession: she feels drawn to read the one negative review. Excited and vulnerable, flooded with stress hormones, her mind hunts for a cause that matches the stress she grew up in. "Our subconscious works on the familiarity principle," she says; a path already walked feels safer than an unknown one [4].

Reparenting, in her approachable version, begins with daily habits. How we care for our bodies and handle our emotions as adults usually mirrors how our caregivers did, and reparenting means noticing where you do and do not meet your own physical, emotional and spiritual needs and building new habits [4]. She puts the body first, because she thinks affirmations fail when the "whole body is actually rolling its eyes" [4]. Breath is her main tool: "We have the access to the most powerful regulator of stress through our breath" [4]. Her process with a core belief (hers is "I'm not considered") is to notice the belief and the body's reaction, let the old feeling be felt, and bring the body back to safety [4].

Katie Clarke: the moment a protector is born

Clarke, a spiritual coach, gives the most explicit account of how the split happens. She defines trauma as distress that is not resolved in the moment [5]. A young child excitedly shows her mother something she made and is met with criticism or dismissal, and nobody comes along to say it was wonderful [5]. To cope, she says, the psyche fragments. The hurt part, which feels harshly criticized and not enough, is pushed into the dark, and "a protector part is also born at the same time," whose role is to keep the hidden part from ever being hurt like that again [5].

In that example the protector may become a perfectionist. "Because if I'm perfect, then nobody can criticize me. And that means I'm finally enough," Clarke says; perfectionism, in her words, is "actually a protective identity trait" [5]. Her second example is a child who happily performed Britney Spears songs until someone made fun of them. The expressive part is pushed down in shame and a shy, quiet, people-pleasing protector takes over [5]. These events need not be dramatic, only moderately distressing situations a child lacked the tools to handle, and she says everyone has hundreds of such parts [5]. The hidden parts form the shadow; the protectors form the dominant personality we take to be ourselves [5].

Her own core wound was feeling she did not matter, though no one ever told her so [5]. It showed up first as relationships in which she was treated badly, and later when she posted a few YouTube videos and stopped. When she finally sat with it, she found a small part of her that wanted the first videos to go viral because that would prove she was good enough, and she had to reassure it that a hundred views was fine [5].

Her process has clear steps. Admit you do not feel good and drop the resistance; she suggests turning inward and saying "it's okay" three times, because "You can't be in judgment and understanding at the same time" [5]. Name the feeling, find it in the body, ask which part it belongs to [5]. Let that part vent completely, crying or shouting if need be, ideally alone, while you stay in the role of compassionate observer [5]. Then reassure it: you see it, you love it, you are sorry you pushed it into the dark and you will not leave it again [5]. Finally give it a new role, such as reminding you of the times you have been capable [5].

Howes puts the same choice in his own words: "do you want to be the most empowering coach to yourself or a constant critic to yourself?" [5] What he would say to the old part is close to what Josephson says to hers: "you served a purpose, you were here for a reason to protect us," and now the conscious coach can lead [5].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

The pattern is shared. In all five accounts there is a hurt younger part (Schwartz's exile, Josephson's little girl, Teahan's and LePera's inner child, Clarke's shadow part) and a protective pattern built around it (managers, the fawn response and its archetypes, the performative identity, the inner child archetypes, protector parts) [1][2][3][4][5]. All trace it to childhood moments that were not repaired, and several stress that the moments can be small [1][2][3][5]. All say the protector is not the person's true identity, and all refuse to attack it [1][2][3][4][5].

Is the critic's voice a parent's voice? Schwartz says treating the critic as an internalized critical parent is the field's big mistake [1]. Josephson calls the inner voice a tape recorder of what we heard growing up [2]. These sound opposed, and partly they are: Schwartz wants the part heard as a being with its own fears, not as an echo to be dismissed [1]. But Josephson also says the voice is self-protective, so her position is that the words were borrowed and the motive is protection [2]. Schwartz's objection is to stopping at the first half.

Turn toward the voice, or away from it? Schwartz asks the critic questions and waits for answers [1]. Clarke lets the hurt part say everything it has to say [5]. Josephson's main instruction is to notice the voice without automatically believing it, creating some distance [2]. LePera goes furthest in the other direction: pull your attention away from the story and put it elsewhere, because rehearsing "this is why I'm unworthy" only strengthens the old narrative [4]. The difference follows from what each thinks the voice is. If it is a part with a fear, as in IFS, ignoring it leaves the fear in place [1]. If it is a practiced thought in a brain that confirms its own beliefs, as in LePera's account, attention is what feeds it [4]. They converge on one thing: neither obeying the critic nor arguing with it works.

Body first or conversation first? LePera holds that a dysregulated body will defeat insight and affirmations alike, so regulation comes first [4]. Josephson also starts in the body, with inhaling for four and exhaling for six [2]. Schwartz uses the body as a doorway, locating a part physically because that gets around the thinking mind, but the work itself is a dialogue [1]. Teahan's tools are tactile and written [3].

Vent or go carefully? Clarke's key step is full emotional release, on the grounds that "if it was stored with pain, it needs to come up with pain" [5]. Schwartz is more cautious. His team's workbook is limited to getting to know protectors, because going straight to exiles can be destabilizing for people with a lot of trauma, and he says healing exiles is where a therapist is still needed [1]. He opens his guided exercise with "please don't do this if you have fear about doing it" [1].

Who does the healing? Schwartz says you become your own attachment figure, yet reserves the deepest work for therapy [1]. Teahan healed in a three-and-a-half-year group and offers a six-month introductory version, noting it takes about 20 years to become trauma-conditioned [3]. LePera's whole approach is self-directed daily practice [4]. Clarke teaches journaling and meditation alone [5].

What happens to the protector afterwards? Josephson tells it to rest and says she will need it again [2]. Clarke assigns it a new job [5]. Schwartz asks the part what it would like to do if freed from its role and finds that parts transform, as when a suicidal part becomes one that wants to help you live [1].

Framing and evidence. Clarke's account sits inside a spiritual framework of frequency and manifestation, Teahan translates his into brain regions, and Schwartz treats Self as something close to a spiritual fact [1][3][5]. On evidence, Huberman says IFS has now been studied and has a lot of peer-reviewed science supporting its efficacy; the other four speak from clinical or personal experience and cite no trials [1][2][3][4][5].

Why It Works

Protectors are stuck in the past. Schwartz says parts are frozen in time and live as if the trauma were still happening, and that many protectors still think you are a young child; simply updating them brings relief [1]. Josephson uses the same phrase for the people-pleasing part [2]. Teahan's version is that we see the present through the lens of childhood [3]. A guard who learns the war is over can stand down.

Children blame themselves because it is safer. Clarke explains that a child depends on parents for survival, so when something is wrong at home it is safer to conclude that the fault lies in themselves than that the caregiver is flawed, and self-blame even offers a feeling of control: maybe better grades will fix it [5]. Josephson describes the same slide from doing something bad to being bad [2]. The critic's message, that you are the problem and must do better, was once a strategy.

The strategy worked. Josephson's answer to why fawning persists is that it gave safety [2]. Schwartz's father-driven part produced IFS, and Teahan's drumming got him hired at 16 [1][3]. Society rewards these parts, which is why they are hard to give up [2].

Familiar feels safe. LePera's familiarity principle and Josephson's line about the familiar feeling safe explain why people return to self-criticism, bad reviews and difficult partners [2][4]. Teahan's hypervigilance that hates the absence of a threat is the same mechanism in relationships [3]. LePera adds that beliefs are reinforced by the brain's filter until "we're a self-confirming machine" [4].

Judgment keeps the system locked. Clarke's rule is that judgment and understanding cannot coexist, and without understanding nothing integrates [5]. Schwartz found that curiosity toward the critic appeared only once the parts that hated it stepped back [1]. Josephson notes that criticizing yourself for having a critic is another attack on the child [2]. Even healing can be hijacked: she warns that perfectionism seeps in as "why haven't I fixed this yet?" [2]

Fighting a protector strengthens what it fears. Schwartz says protectors "will generate often what they fear," and that compassion toward them makes you less vulnerable, not more, since the Self can still be fierce [1]. Josephson gives an everyday case: constant apologizing burdens others, so "people pleasing isn't really pleasing many people" [2].

The protector relaxes when the hurt is tended. In IFS the aim is for the exile to unload its feelings so the protector no longer has to hold the line [1]. Clarke describes emotions as cycles of energy that need to complete [5]. Teahan's inner adult speaking to the inner child is, in his terms, the prefrontal cortex calming the limbic system [3].

The body has to believe it. LePera's account of neuroception is that the nervous system scans for threat outside awareness, using the past to define what counts as a threat, so some people are activated all day without knowing it [4]. That is why she and Josephson pair parts language with breathing [2][4].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It fits everyday protectors best. Schwartz's guided exercise is aimed at a critic, a part that makes you overwork, or one that takes care of too many people [1]. Clarke notes most people feel no need for this work until a protector blocks a goal, like the perfectionist who obsesses over a presentation for months [5].

It is not a do-it-yourself method for severe trauma. Schwartz draws the line between getting to know protectors, which can be done alone, and healing exiles, which calls for a therapist [1]. Teahan observes that some people are too dissociated to connect with an inner child at all, and others meet a child who is furious [3]. Anyone dealing with trauma, suicidal thoughts, addiction or panic should do this work with a qualified mental health professional.

It does not require an obviously terrible childhood. Teahan distinguishes blatant trauma from "tricky" families where nothing looks wrong but there is no real emotional attachment, and says that when he mixed both groups the symptoms were the same [3]. Clarke and Josephson both say small, repeated moments are enough [2][5].

Insight alone will not do it. LePera is emphatic that naming your archetype leaves the pattern running [4]. Teahan says the proof is in how you live: whether you can have intimacy, and whether triggers fade in an hour instead of a week [3]. Josephson calls it a daily, moment-to-moment practice [2].

Not every act of pleasing is a wound. Josephson says context matters: pleasing a boss to keep a paycheck may be real safety-seeking, while pleasing a best friend who would understand probably is not necessary [2]. Her test for telling kindness from fawning is to ask "do I mean this?" and to watch for resentment [2].

Seeing the critic as a protector does not mean obeying it or keeping everyone close. Schwartz says parts should be spoken for, not from [1]. LePera says compassion toward parents is not required and neither is continuing those relationships, and Teahan says no one can fully heal while in an abusive relationship [3][4].

It applies to parenting through repair, not perfection. Josephson says "the most important skill in parenthood and in any relationship is repair," and that trying to be a flawless parent does damage too [2]. Clarke's one-line handbook for parents is to heal your own stuff [5].

What To Do With It

1. Pick one protector and locate it. Choose the critic, the overworker or the caretaker. Notice the voice, emotion or sensation and where it sits in or around your body [1]. Schwartz advises skipping the exercise if the idea frightens you [1].

2. Check how you feel toward it before you speak to it. If you feel anything other than openness or curiosity, ask those other reactions to relax back [1]. Clarke's version is to say "it's okay" three times and drop the judgment [5].

3. Ask it what it is afraid of. Schwartz's questions are: what does it want you to know, and what does it fear would happen if it stopped doing its job [1]? For a perfectionist the answer is often the one Clarke and Josephson give, that being perfect prevents criticism [2][5].

4. Thank it, and update it. Offer appreciation for how hard it has worked [1]. Ask Schwartz's question, "How old does this part think you are?" and correct it if it has your age wrong [1]. Josephson's script is to thank it and tell it that it can rest for now [2].

5. When the voice shows up in daily life, greet it and don't take dictation. Notice it without automatically believing it [2]. If you catch yourself rehearsing the old story, move your attention elsewhere, as LePera advises [4].

6. Trace the trigger back. Ask what the situation takes you back to, as Teahan does with the terse email, and have your adult self tell the younger one what is true now: you are not in trouble [3].

7. Make contact with the younger part. Use a childhood photo, or write a dialogue with your dominant hand as the adult and your non-dominant hand as the child [3]. Tell that part what Clarke tells hers: that you see it and will not leave it again [5]. Teahan's sentence to aim for is that you were a good kid in the wrong place at the wrong time [3].

8. Settle the body first when you are activated. Breathe in for four and out for six, or direct the breath into the belly [2][4]. LePera's warning is to practice outside the crisis, because a skill never rehearsed will not be available in the middle of panic [4].

9. Reparent through ordinary habits. Look at how you meet your physical and emotional needs, notice where you copy what your caregivers did, and build one new habit at a time [4]. Expect to feel bad when you first set a boundary; LePera says to "throw out the expectation" that you won't, and Josephson says to practice first with safe people [2][4].

10. Give the protector something else to do, and keep checking in. Ask what it would like to do if it were freed, or give it a new job such as reminding you of what you have handled before [1][5]. Schwartz checks in with his parts each morning and treats a closed heart or a loss of curiosity during the day as a sign that a protector has taken over [1].

Sources

1. Dr. Richard Schwartz on Internal Family Systems: Parts, Self and a Live IFS Session · Huberman Lab
2. Meg Josephson on People Pleasing, the Fawn Response and How to Stop Asking "Are You Mad at Me?" · The School of Greatness
3. Patrick Teahan on Childhood Trauma, Inner Child Work, Triggers and Going No Contact · The School of Greatness
4. How to Heal Your Painful Memories, Thoughts & Beliefs to Create a Greater Future with Dr. Nicole LePera · The School of Greatness
5. Katie Clarke on Shadow Work, Protector Parts, and Rewiring Limiting Beliefs · The School of Greatness