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Therapy Letters

Letters from parts within

Parts that hold bitter root judgments

This explains how we will connect to our emotional parts within our Internal Family System to receive prayer when we are facing long standing bitterness or offense. 

On one hand forgive the person for what did or did not do.

On the other hand forgive yourself for hating and judging them


To incorporate the healing of each individual emotional part you need to use your SELF leadership, which is Holy spirit. Any emotion can be used as a "target part" to gain understanding about why it shows up for you and how it believes it is helping. After you have identified it either through a feeling, sensation, image, thought, color or shape, you want to establish a relationship with it. You can begin with asking it "how are you trying to help me?"  If you dislike the part because it causes trouble in your life through "bad behavior", then you may have another part that is blended with you and judging it.  The important thing to remember is that you are trying to remain curious toward the parts inside of you so unblending will engage a conversation that helps it relax and share its story.  To un-blend, ask the judging and concerned parts to give you some space so it can look at you while it is talking. You want to ask it about its experiences in trying to help you within your internal family systems. It will respond. It will feel weird when you start talking to yourself inside. And it’s OK to let your parts know that it feels weird or awkward. Just keep asking them for space until one target part is focused on. When you get stuck or frustrated there are other parts involved who may need some attention by asking them what their role is about before returning to the target part. The slower you go inside the faster the breakthrough because we’re looking to establish trust between your SELF and your parts so you can lead them away from the reactive roles and back into the headship of the spirit. Once you pick either a situation or the emotional part as a trailhead, which is the focused issue, then you can bring it into the awareness of prayer. 

The wellspring prayer has four parts and I follow the scripture references to actually pray out loud for each part especially if you believe it makes you behave badly and you’ve had a struggle with a certain issue for concurrent years.

As an example we can use bad relationships to food.

Part one speaks of forgiving and repenting. 

Matthew 6:13-15 invites you to ask for forgiveness for your love-hate relationship with _____, food being the case here. "I have nurtured hurt and anger over the consequences of binging and starving and dieting and self judgment". James 4:7-9 can be applied, "I submit to your authority and resist the temptation to judge myself for the times in which I’ve indulged, abstained, or been unbelieving that you’re capable of helping me with this long-standing problem. I humble myself before you and I repent because I have been slanderous towards others who do not seem to commiserate with my struggle. I have been a hypocrite. I've been angry at you and I have been both judge and jury of myself and others. First John 1:9 helps me admit that "I have wavered from your truth and I have doubted your promises and I have fallen into frequent wrongdoings. Forgive me for partaking in hurting my temple and not honoring it through over exercising, being lazy and all of the ways in which I have made my relationship to eating and purging an idol of coping".

Part two speaks toward satan's authority and cancels it.

Ephesians 4:27 claims, "I do not give the devil an opportunity to keep me sitting in thought and action because I have held a grudge or nurtured resentment, bitterness and anger. For the ways in which I have spoken against myself and others in judgment and criticism I choose to bless and not curse".

Part three seeks healing.

Psalm 103:1 directs, "Lord I praise you because you go to the deep places within my soul I do not want to forget all of your benefits. Please forgive me for all my sins, heal all of my diseases and redeem my life from the pit. Ground me with loving kindness and tender mercy and renew my youth like a soaring eagle". 

Romans 12:2 restates, "I asked that you would change me from the inside out, that my mind would be renewed, that you would prove to me that your absolute best will manifest as I surrender my thoughts to you. Heal me from the mind that connects to all of my inward parts of emotion and change me". 

Hebrews 9:14 declares, "how much more will Jesus cleanse me from the lifeless pursuits through his blood of perfection".

Part four listening and talking with God 

John 14:26-27 reads, "The helper, comforter, advocate, intercessor, strengthener, and counselor will teach you all things and help you remember everything. Peace I leave you, do not let your heart be troubled nor let it be afraid, let my peace calm you in every circumstance and give you courage and strength for every challenge".
In the area of food Lord I asked that you would be my guidance, that you would tell me how you see me, that you would strengthen me from the inside out and that even as I make my choices you will be with me. I receive your mercy when I make mistakes. I extend grace to myself instead of judgment and I ask that in all things I do them unto you.

Help change my perspective of my body image and go deep into all the inward parts that are associated with pain that causes me to use food and drink to self medicate. 

Forgiveness prayer is going to take you into the bitterroot judgment issues that become apparent after subconscious parts were met inside the system.  The need to repeat forgiving diminishes as inner healing is sought with each individual part that you become aware of.  This is the reason scripture says to forgive 70 times 7 because a blanket prayer to forgive won't suffice a system of multiple parts that are suffering.  Each part needs to have its own "Coming to Jesus moment" and share it's gripe before laying it down.  This opens the door of communication between your internal system and those parts of you that are still dormant.  You are only responsible for what you remember and parts work dislodges memory when it believes you are ready to follow through with recovery.

So first, you’re going to forgive the person for all that they did or neglected to do. You’re not making excuses here, you’re just being as descriptive as you want about the injustice or betrayal or action that caused you suffering. You’re connecting your will to the parts within that have surfaced and ignited change to make you aware of unresolved judgment.

Secondly, the repentance prayer is going to help you forgive yourself for hating and judging that person for what they did. This is where you’re going to have to acknowledge those patterns or habits that you are aware of in your own life that brought fear, doubt, rejection, anger, jealousy or heartache. These patterns may be from judgments that you have made against your parents and every other subsequent person that reminds you of them thereafter. Notice situations where you repeat the same behavior over and over and that’s indicative of a bitter root judgment even if you have worked with parts connected to that situation. Patterns that play out indicate many parts are familiar with themes or years of behavior that you expect to repeat.  It becomes the thing that you believe is too big to eradicate, and that’s when you need to break down beliefs even further by going through the prayer process again as deeper protective parts are unveiled.

On the most simplistic level you can simply say I forgive my mother for abandoning me and I forgive myself for judging her in that circumstance. I forgive her for all the ways in which she made me feel stupid through name-calling, through facial expression, through dismissal, through punishment and through criticism. I admit that I have hated her for her reckless and willful assaults against my mind and my belief system. I ask now that you would forgive me for all the ways I have expected other people to treat me just like she did, especially other women in authority, or other women that I have longed to replace my mother with because of what she lacked. An example would be if your mother was very loud and outspoken, and she would even speculate that other females were jealous of her because she got attention. But if you also feel or know that women react to you in the same way that they did her, even if you’re not seeking attention, that is an example of a bitter root judgment and expectancy. It would be like walking down the sidewalk with your puppy on a leash and you see a big dog the next street away who is not on a leash and you presume that that dog is going to come over and attack your puppy. Sure enough the big dog comes running over and you have to snatch up the pup to protect it. The bitter root judgment was already sent towards that dog expecting it to misbehave. On a deeper level if your mother was shaming, dismissive and punishing, she could have often controlled you through fear, anger or manipulation which ignited a hyper-vigilance to look for something to go wrong, and sure enough you will find the answer you’re looking for. 

In reality you brace yourself for the worst case scenario and any off-putting consequence will determine a catastrophe happened where someone else might brush it off. The parts believe they always have to be on the lookout and that if SELF leadership does not exist within the system they are going to have to step in and usurp that role. 

This is why we react from firefighting parts that bring instant gratification and we control our routines through manager parts, all in hopes that we will not be hurt again like we were when we were children. Matthew 7:1-2 speaks of, "not judging, criticizing or condemning others because of the pain that you have suffered because in reality it further condemns yourself". So if we get to know each of these parts in session and then outside of the office you’re working on what you can remember with the Lord, then you’re going to create relationships with each individual emotional part inside your system. The internal family system is very much like any family of origin where sibling rivalry breaks out of conflict because their views on preservation are polarized. Some parts that say "get it together" have formed entire personalities over what they believe they should accomplish inside of your psyche. We want to give every part a chance to be heard with extended grace and mercy because in reality God understands when these roles had to start working on your behalf during your developmental years.