Still struggling with blankness and not getting a response from parts/not feeling anything there
I posted in this sub a few weeks ago about struggling with IFS after a few months of trying it with my therapist and reading just about everything I could find on the subject (I'm 7 books deep now!)
Still having a lot of trouble relating to the language that the books use, especially anything around "seeing" or "hearing" from a part, and honestly still struggling with even identifying any parts in me somatically. I can logically deduce that certain parts exist and can name them as the emotion I'm feeling (Frustration, Overwhelm, etc) but can't get much past that. Whenever I try to do an IFS meditation by myself, nothing comes to me after I close my eyes and try to take stock of my bodily sensations or search my mind for a presence. It's like sitting in a totally dark room and going "hello? hello??" and getting nothing in response, and I'm struggling to even identify sensations in my body beyond my chronic pain in my shoulders and neck that never goes away. I mean, I can feel my butt in my seat, but I highly doubt that the sensation is trying to "tell" me anything, you know?
I wanted to come back and request more guidance because I found a few old posts from others dealing with similar issues, and it led me to finding this exercise in "The Self-Led Internal Family Systems Workbook" by Tanis Allen about dealing with "blankness" when attempting IFS.
(I hope it's okay to include screenshots here)
At first I was excited to find this exercise, it seemed like finally someone was really understanding and ready to address the challenge that I've been experiencing! But almost immediately upon reading it, I found myself really frustrated with the language being used and how different this example is to my experience trying to work with the "blankness" that I'm coming up against. First, the author writes all of their examples as a conversation, like they are hearing a distinct separate voice in their head and that voice is talking back and forth with them. This really doesn't resonate with me at all, I only hear my normal internal narrative in my head and when I try to "converse" like this with what I think might be a part, I just get absolutely nothing back. I could relate to the part where Frustration and Confusion came in, as those are definitely emotions that come up whenever I'm trying an IFS exercise and running up against a blank inner world, but even then, I certainly don't "hear" them saying anything to me like the author describes. Then I got really frustrated reading the part where the author started conversing with the blankness and got images projected from that "part." Not once in any of my attempts at an IFS session have I gotten images, sounds, shapes, etc. coming to me.
Some previous commenters have pointed out that I might be taking the language too literally, but every single one of the IFS books I've read uses the same words -- "what is this part TELLING you?" "what IMAGES come to mind?" At one point this author explicitly says "I'm experiencing this part as a voice in my head." None of this connects for me.
When I try to do some somatic work and take stock of my bodily sensations, it's like there's nothing going on in my body at all, but every book also emphasizes that you have to start from a bodily sensation to "locate" a part. When I'm particularly triggered in my day-to-day life, I get bodily sensations like tension in my neck and jaw, tightness around my eyes, the burning of tears behind my eyes, etc. but it doesn't ever seem to come up when I'm sitting and trying to intentionally take stock or meet those parts. I've tried triggering emotions in myself to work with them, but the sensations seem to disappear as soon as I give them any attention, which really makes it impossible to "be with" those sensations/parts or dig deeper with them.
I think I might have met one part in a therapy session the other week, it was a very interesting experience. I said one sentence to my therapist and suddenly there were tears welling up in my eyes out of nowhere, and we then took the rest of the session to sit with that feeling and eventually try to calm it down so I could go about the rest of my day after the session. The more I sat with the sadness, the bigger it got, and the stronger I could feel tension in my face and jaw and eyes. But for the whole hour we spent with it, I swear that part had absolutely nothing to share with me in any meaningful way that I can figure, except that it was there. I left feeling calmer but pretty sullen for the rest of the day, and I've spent the past week trying to do anything meaningful with the experience or duplicate that result to no end. Speaking out loud seems to be the only thing that has helped me conjure a part, if that's actually what happened, but I don't know what to do with that from here. More talk therapy??
I'm also still really stuck on the idea of a part "stepping back," something my therapist has asked parts to do before. I've tried it with myself as well, but it's hard to get to that step when I can't even "find" a part in my body to work with. Frustration is what comes up the most often (aside from the blankness) and I've tried to work with that frustration but just feel like I'm shouting into the void. Can anyone describe what the heck it feels like for a part to "step back," so I can better understand it? When my therapist or I try to "ask" a part to "step back," nothing seems to happen, but I'm also not sure I've ever found a part in order to really try it.
Just feeling really stuck and like none of the language in any of the IFS books I've found makes sense to me intuitively, and I know this is supposed to be a really intuitive practice. A few people suggested on my previous post that I give up on IFS and try something else, but I've tried several different modalities and don't feel like I'm getting anywhere in therapy. I have deep abandonment wounds and past trauma to work through and so many people believe that IFS is the most powerful way to work with those issues. I want to remain hopeful, but I'm starting to feel skepticism and defeat taking over any interest and hope I had. When even the examples of what to do with my "blankness" don't resonate/sound alien to me, what do I do?