Why do people select people that are fundamentally bad for them? OK, so I did a book called You're the One You've Been Waiting For, and in it I talked about this whole issue. And so for a lot of people, you get hurt by your parent, and there are parts that want to protect you from your parent, but there are other parts who are desperate, who took on the worthlessness from being rejected by your parent, and are desperate for redemption.

Do you follow this? And so as you leave and you're looking for a partner, that part from a subconscious place can influence your decision to find somebody who resembles that parent in their effort to be redeemed again. Is this anything like the repetition compulsion that we tend to repeat a pattern over and over again as an attempt to resolve, not just a manifestation of dysfunction?

That's a version of what I'm talking about. And so you find somebody who does resemble that person, that parent, and unfortunately they do resemble that parent, and so they'll hurt you in the same way. And then your protectors go into one of four modes, they'll say, "I've got to change that person back into who they're supposed to be," so they'll try to change the person's behavior, or they'll say, "I've got to change myself so they'll be who they're supposed to be," or they'll say, "Oh, this wasn't the Redeemer after all," and they'll go looking for the real Redeemer who's still out there.

As always, inside. And, yeah, that's what I try to do, is to help them see that that Redeemer is inside of them, it's self. And if we can go to that exile who's got this thing for this parent-like person and help it connect to self and help it unburden, that whole repetition compulsion disappears, because now they can take care of themselves.

They trust self to do it, they don't need that from some other person like that. And so when we're working with couples, and you always find some version of that in couples, if we can get each of them to become their own good attachment figure, good caretaker inside, that frees up the partner, because when this exile is leading the relationship, your partner feels a lot of sort of demands, or feels a lot like your partner has to take care of that young part of you, and can't, can't fully do it.

So there's always this sense of, oh, a burden, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting how romantic relationships are where these patterns get repeated. And at the same time, numerous examples in my life of healthy relationships is that usually the case because people have done the work before, or because they had a minimum of trauma in their upbringing?

Both. Yeah. Yeah. What percentage of kids, adults as well, do you think had a minimum of trauma, are just because of the way they're wired, and the way this stuff is organized within them, that they naturally attach to a good partner and are pretty healthy? Is it like 25%, 30%?

Is it-- I really can't say because my sample is very skewed. I'm working with psychotherapy patients who always have a lot of trauma. So I really can't say. I mean, I'm very biased. Half of marriages in this country end in divorce. And presumably of the ones that don't, I'm guessing somewhere between a half and a quarter of those people are really unhappy.

Sounds so pessimistic. But if you just look at the numbers, and I'm an optimist, I already acknowledge that I don't like to think about bad stuff. So yeah, I'm guessing that a lot of people repeat these patterns. But it seemed as if maybe 20, 30 years ago, because these ideas weren't discussed really.

So many fewer people were in any kind of analysis or personal exploration work, that as a society, we defaulted to just sort of role execution. You're a father and a husband, so you do certain things. And you don't do certain things. You're a wife and a mother, so you do certain things, and you don't do certain-- and so on.

And I think nowadays, there's a lot of discussion about is there a resurgence of organized religion because we've drifted so far from these kind of core structures? I mean, love your thoughts on that. And also what you think doing this kind of internal work on oneself without requiring any input or participation from another, what the value of that is.

It sounds like there's tremendous value to just doing this work for oneself, maybe with someone trained in IFS. Yeah. I mean, like I was saying, there's a lot you can do with working with your protectors and helping them get to know self. We didn't do it, but had you asked that titanium teddy bear how old it thought you were and just really waited for the answer, most people will get a single digit.

It still thinks you're very young, and it still thinks it has to protect you the way it did when you were very young. And just even updating it creates a huge amount of relief with these protectors. So there's a lot that can be done just by working with protectors, introducing them to self, helping them see they don't have to keep doing this all the time.

Some protectors, it's very hard for them to totally drop their weapons until what they protect has been healed. So that's where the therapist comes in. There are coaches doing this work, for example. They'll work with some executive, and they'll do great, and then they'll get to an exile. And then they'll have the person see an IFS therapist for a couple of sessions to heal the exile and then come back, because coaches aren't trained as therapists.

So yeah, there's still need for therapists, but you can do a lot on your own.