First time poster here. Done inner child “parts work” with my regular therapist but not quite IFS formally per se. Those were interesting but not transformative sessions. Today I had entirely different experience. I had a medicine-assisted session with a shaman/spiritual coach Ive been working with. We went into some inner child related conversations and somehow he started conversing with an inner critic-type part. In the context of the medicine this “critic” kind of took over, I couldn’t believe the venom coming out of my mouth toward myself and him—felt like the Exorcist! The general themes were that I’m lazy, a failure, a loser, and misguided and deluded on my spiritual path.

Basically through this conversation articulated all the critical and judgmental thoughts about (mostly) myself and others that attack me on a daily basis but that I hadn’t previously considered a separate “part”. The conversation went on for a bit until he stopped it and “I” came back into the session.

It was a wild ride and very revealing. Now I’m not quite sure where to go from here. It feels like a character within me has revealed himself, and I’ve got to make peace with this angry, impatient, and paternalistic voice, or otherwise this internal battle will continue.

Welcome any thoughts or suggestions, but I’m not interested in thoughts about shamanism, etc. I know it’s not everyone’s thing :)