If you struggle with a mean inner critic, then this episode is for you, buddy. Unfortunately, it won’t offer a magic solution or quick fix to ridding yourself of that inner voice, but it will help explain what the fuck is going on and offer a pathway to a life filled with greater self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-care.
In this conversation with art therapist and marriage and family therapist Celine Redfield (they/them), we walk through the concepts of shadow work, parts work, and the Internal Family Systems (IFS) framework. (Spoiler: all of those are basically the same thing with different names!) We also touch on dissociation as a coping strategy, recovering from alcoholism and addiction, creative healing modalities, and our own lived experiences of parts work – both as recipients and facilitators.
Major conclusion? Parts work is the magic sauce for lessening the cruelty of the inner critic and healing our childhood wounds.
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Find the episode wherever you listen to podcasts!
Connect with Celine
Visit their website – Inner Growth Therapy
Follow them on Instagram @Innergrowththerapy
Or, as they said, emailing them is probably the better idea: celine(at)innergrowththerapy.com
Have a convo with me!
Want to chat about whether working together will be a good fit? Grab a free, 30-minute chemistry call.
Or! If you feel inspired by this episode and want to just dive in and do some work together, book a $75 sample session.
You can also always email me your thoughts (I’d love to hear them!) at cate(at)settlingisbullshit.com
Resources, References, and Links
Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.
Also, we talked about a LOT of stuff in this episode. So, I mostly just googled things for you. 💜
Nervous system and polyvagal theory. Listen to episodes #21 and #22 for a detailed rundown!
Shadow work (as an indigenous practice).
Carl Jung and the Shadow.
ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families).
Internal Family Systems (IFS). Parts work system developed by Richard Schwartz.
Ego State Therapy. Precursor to IFS.
Janina Fisher. Therapist whose work Celine likes.
Moaning Myrtle. My self-pitying part.
The Critic. Cartoon character from the 90s.
Jafar. Villain from Aladdin.
Miss Nelson Is Missing. Kids book from the 80s.
EMDR. Tool for trauma processing we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast.
Huberman Journaling Protocol episode. Super good! Also talked about this in recent episode with Dr. Stacey Hettes.
Al-anon. 12-step program for friends and family of alcoholics. Really helpful for learning to stop trying to control other people!
No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. Book that I don’t actually recommend to anyone who identifies as an addict, but we talk about it.
Goldmining the Shadows by Pixie Lighthorse. Book that Celine recommends and I’m excited to read!
The 8 C’s of Self-Leadership. Kind of a cool concept that I had to look up after we finished recording.
“Waiting Room” by Fugazi.
Transcript
Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!
[intro clip and episode intro]
Hello my friend. I am super fucking excited to share today’s episode with you because I’ve talked about parts work a lot in a lot of different episodes on this podcast and we’re finally going to do a deep dive and really talk about, like, what parts work is and how to apply it in your life and with your therapist. Parts work has been incredibly healing in my personal journey and also in the work that I do with clients. Now, one of the things that you’re going to hear me talking about in this episode with our wonderful guest is the difference between what I do with clients in a coaching role and what they do in a therapeutic role.
Our guest is Celine Redfield, a licensed marriage and family therapist and a registered art therapist who has been in practice for 15 years. Celine uses they them pronouns, and in their practice with clients they use art, body awareness, breath work, energy work, visualization, hypnosis, emdr, and psychoeducation about the nervous system to help their clients gain awareness to make changes in their lives. They can see clients in California and Oregon online. So if you really like what they have to say, I highly recommend you reach out and hit him up for some therapy.
Celine is also a friend, and what’s super duper cute is that we’re both in recovery for alcoholism and addiction and we’re active in 12 step recovery programs and we both got sober on July 2nd just in different years. So next week I’m going to be celebrating 15 years sober. Celine’s going to be celebrating 19 years sober. And I don’t know, that’s just one of the cutest little universe synchronicities that makes me very happy. Selene and I both also love karaoke and helping people heal their shit. So it’s a great episode, a great little collaboration, and really helped me understand just some of the differences between different modalities of parts work and the nuances and like, how we can cultivate a greater sense of like, self love, self acceptance, self compassion, self care by disentangling who we are at our core, our beautiful, soulful self energy part that exists in each of us.
And that’s the part that I’m always talking to that I’m like, hey, buddy, you’re fucking awesome. So when I’m talking to you, listener, I’m talking to yourself, who I know is a beautiful, magical, wonderful being in the world. But we all have all these, like, parts that can be mean and get in the way of being able to hear that. So I hope that this episode kind of leaves you with some tools for disentangling a little bit from that mean inner critical voice and getting a little bit more access to that beautiful self that exists within you. And if you want to explore some of those more critical parts, I would love to help you with that. That is within my purview as a coach. And you can book a $75 sample session with me to hang out for an hour and maybe that’s what we’ll play with. The links will be in the show notes for either a free chemistry conversation, if you just want to chit chat about whether we’re a good fit, or you can book a session and we can like dive in and do some work and then you can decide if you like that and want to keep going. Regardless, I would absolutely love to hold some space with you, and I really hope that you get some good juju out of this episode. I found it incredibly helpful.
[transition music]
Cate Blouke: So you do, you do art therapy.
[05:17] Celine Redfield: Yes.
[05:18] Cate Blouke: And then what else do you specialize in?
[05:21] Celine Redfield: Trauma, adhd, neurospiciness, anxiety.
[05:30] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[05:30] Celine Redfield: Addiction, codependency. You know, all of the fun things.
[05:35] Cate Blouke: Yeah. All of all of the flavors. I’m like, oh, you’re like, yeah. Okay. And the, the groups you run are typically anxiety focused. Right?
[05:46] Celine Redfield: They’re usually. So since I was introduced to polyvagal theory, really what I try to do is to teach people how to nerve regulate their nervous systems, because I feel like Everybody has nervous system problems. It’s how they present that actually. And understanding what nervous system state they’re in is how like you treat it. Does that make sense?
[06:18] Cate Blouke: 100%. As someone who is not an expert in this by any means, but has been learning about all this shit in the last couple of years of like, oh yeah, my nervous system is activated. What do I need to do about that?
[06:35] Celine Redfield: So most of my, so I’ve been trying. It’s funny, I’ve tried to run my anxiety group like two years in a row and both time the universe has been like, you don’t need to do that this year. And I’m like, what? But the more that I do like nervous system based and like energy medicine based stuff, that’s way more woo woo people want to go to that more than they want to go to a group about anxiety.
[07:02] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I mean, I would want to grow to the woo woo nervous system stuff more than a group about anxiety. So I guess that makes sense. I’m, I’m the target audience. Cool.
[07:18] Celine Redfield: Because like, I mean, I’ve been sort of like witchy woo woo for a long time and like was sort of that way when I went to school, when I went to school in 2009. But it’s like grown so much more with my sobriety and with like the way that I understand my perception of reality. But I was much more science based because like my, my degree is in interpersonal neuroscience and art therapy and then marriage and family therapy.
[07:52] Cate Blouke: Right.
[07:53] Celine Redfield: So like, I can tell you how you’re fucked up and how your system has messed you up and then like how we can help your nervous system like learn to not be activated by those things.
[08:06] Cate Blouke: Amazing. Yeah, I feel like that is just like such a good, I mean, that’s my perception of what therapy should be. And there’s a lot of different modalities. And one of the modalities that I’m excited to talk to you about today, the sort of reason I invited you on, was to talk about parts work.
[08:27] Celine Redfield: Yeah. And so what I want to first acknowledge is that parts work is very old and it used to be called shadow work. And that’s been like, oh, a practice by indigenous people for a really fucking long time. So this is what therapists do. I’m gonna just call it out. People just take shit that’s indigenous and like brand it into their thing because everyone needs to have a product. Right. Because we live in a capitalist system society. But like, really what it comes out of is like shadow work, which is.
[09:04] Cate Blouke: Indigenous yeah, like, thank you for enlightening me in this moment about that. Because, you know, it’s like, I read about shadow work. I know shadow work’s a thing. I, you know, read about parts work. I know parts work a thing. Nobody’s like, oh, these are the same thing. But when I think that they’re pretty much.
[09:20] Celine Redfield: I mean, like, they’re packaged a little differently and people have different jargon for it. And that’s like kind of the way that the therapy world is, unfortunately, because you need to have a product in order to become famous or.
[09:35] Cate Blouke: Right. Or write a book or whatever.
[09:37] Celine Redfield: Yeah, but.
[09:38] Cate Blouke: But no, but what’s great about that is that you just made them connected in my brain so that I don’t have to be doing two different things. Like, I’m thinking, like, I hear people talk about, oh, doing your shadow work, and I’m like, oh, fuck, like another thing I got to do. So. So I feel so much better being like, oh, actually they’re very similar. So.
[09:58] Celine Redfield: And like, Carl Jung talked a lot about the shadow self. Right. And how that’s the unconscious mind. And then that became really popular in the 80s when also, like, if anyone doesn’t know about this, the ACA started then.
[10:15] Cate Blouke: Okay. So adult children of alcoholics.
[10:17] Celine Redfield: Of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. And so that also uses a parts modality in it, but they use the terminology like inner family. And there’s like multiple things in the psychological world that uses similar things. Yeah, but the thing that’s hot right now is like, ifs. But the thing that precursed ifs was ego state therapy, which was out of, like, Freud and Carl Jung. And it talks about how we have different ego states that we have to work with that hold different traumas basically for us.
[10:55] Cate Blouke: Okay. And the simplified version of that is that we have different parts.
[11:00] Celine Redfield: Exactly.
[11:01] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Right. Like, parts work is like, why. I think why I like calling it parts work is because I’m like, it’s pretty, like, self explanatory of like, oh, there’s all these different parts of us that have competing needs and desires and they emerge for different reasons. And if we ignore them at our peril, like, it’s.
[11:22] Celine Redfield: Exactly, exactly.
[11:24] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
[11:27] Celine Redfield: And then there’s even another model. Sorry, Tim. Throw another one into the mix that they used for people that, like, are pretty traumatized or have, like some sort of disassociative diagnosis or something to that aspect of them. And that one is called the structural disassociation model.
[11:49] Cate Blouke: Oh, okay.
[11:51] Celine Redfield: And that what I Like about that model, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the therapist Janina Fisher. I really like her a lot because she talks a lot about disassociation. And I love the way that she talks about it because it’s to help. You’re helping this. It’s helping the system do something.
[12:10] Cate Blouke: Okay. What is dissociation?
[12:13] Celine Redfield: Disassociation is one of the oldest things that your nervous system can do as a form of auto regulating your nervous system. So if you learn that your needs will not be met by your caregiver, you learn to leave your body so you don’t feel anything and you’re floating outside of your body or unaware that something bad is happening because you are not in your soma anymore. And babies learn how to do that when they are infants and.
[12:48] Cate Blouke: Yes. Oof. Yeah. How so? For someone who’s not familiar with this lived experience, but probably does have it, like, how do you recognize that in yourself?
[13:05] Celine Redfield: Once again, why I like Janina Fisher is she has a very good explanation about disassociation. So there’s a disassociative, like, spectrum. So the beginning of the spectrum, everybody disassociates at some point. It’s basically like daydreaming pretty much.
[13:25] Cate Blouke: Okay.
[13:25] Celine Redfield: That is a form of disassociation. And then highway hypnosis is also another kind of disassociation when you.
[13:34] Cate Blouke: Oh. And so when highway hypnosis being when we’re like driving and then all of a sudden we’re like, oh, I just went 10 miles and didn’t even notice.
[13:41] Celine Redfield: Yes.
[13:42] Cate Blouke: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[13:44] Celine Redfield: Because you are. So the way that I like to describe disassociation, if people are like, I don’t disassociate. And I’m like, well, do you ever just feel like you’re engrossed in your thoughts and you completely forget that you have a body? And most people are like, yes.
[13:58] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[13:58] Celine Redfield: Huh. That’s what I describe disassociation as. Because you’re only like a head that’s floating.
[14:05] Cate Blouke: Okay.
[14:06] Celine Redfield: Flag that’s floating. And then like, how serious the disassociation is. Has to do with like, how much time are you losing? So like, someone who’s got ADHD might be in the middle of the thing because they are still in touch with reality and can come back, like in five minutes. If you’re losing over five minutes, it’s quite possible that you might have some kind of disassociative disorder going on or that’s part of if you have complex PTSD or ptsd, you have the dis. There’s a disassociative aspect of it.
[14:45] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And so that’s a, like, that is a unconscious coping strategy for dealing with the stressors of life trauma responses, et cetera.
[14:56] Celine Redfield: It’s a nice like vacation that you take for yourself.
[15:01] Cate Blouke: Pretty much. Is it nice though?
[15:04] Celine Redfield: I mean, sometimes it is when it’s your only tool that you have in your toolbox.
[15:10] Cate Blouke: Right.
[15:10] Celine Redfield: Can be problematic, but it like. And if you’re aware that you’re doing it and then you’re choosing to do it, that that’s different than just it being an automatic response.
[15:21] Cate Blouke: Right, Right. My brain just went down the like, oh man. Like I. So this isn’t something that happens for me that often given my particular flavors of neurospiciness and cptsd. But I was just like, oh, if I could do it on purpose, like, would I? I mean, isn’t that kind of like what we were trying to do with like drugs and alcohol of like, oh, I don’t wanna be here. Well, like, let me go Chase. Let me just go. Not be here.
[15:50] Celine Redfield: Well, I think that a lot of people that have drugs and alcohol problems, disassociation was probably there or like some kind of altered reality or like escape from reality was their first drug.
[16:03] Cate Blouke: Right.
[16:03] Celine Redfield: And then that just helped create more of a longer lasting version.
[16:10] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. So I’m like, I’m thinking about my own experience here with like losing oneself to. In fiction or television. So that is a form of dissociation. Disassociation. Yeah. Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, I used to do that all the time and I still do that sometimes. Cool. This is so helpful. Yeah, Yeah.
[16:30] Celine Redfield: I mean it’s a, like it’s a distraction. I mean, that’s why like media is so powerful, is because it takes you out of it, like puts you somewhere else. It allows you to be floating somewhere else.
[16:45] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Okay. So am I hearing that to a certain level there’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to watch out for it becoming a problem?
[16:56] Celine Redfield: I mean. Yes. And if it’s making it hard for you to be present in your life and like your friends or your family or your partner is like, are you there? Where are you? That coping skill, it might be something to look at.
[17:14] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Okay, cool. So disassociation, great. I feel like I have a better understanding of it now and, and then.
[17:24] Celine Redfield: But I wanted to say like an even further into the spectrum of disassociation would be someone that has like disassociative identity or disassociative disorder. Not. Not otherwise specified or where there’s not specific parts. So this is another part thing. Like, but they lose large chunks of time and then you go into disassociative identity disorder. And those people have multiple selves and they have like different personalities in the way they dress and the way they talk and how they write.
[18:00] Cate Blouke: So that’s kind of the spectrum of dissociative disorder. I took us on a little bit of a tangent and. And that’s there’s a particular FL flavor of parts work for that specific. Yeah. Okay.
[18:14] Celine Redfield: But I think that it also actually works for everybody because usually everyone has. What I like about this model is it talks about the nervous system.
[18:25] Cate Blouke: Right.
[18:25] Celine Redfield: And so we have a fight vigilance part, a flight escape part, a freeze fear part, a submit shame part, and a cry for help or needy part.
[18:37] Cate Blouke: Hmm. I identify so closely with the cry for help part.
[18:43] Celine Redfield: And like, and that is usually when you. To go back to the disassociation. Like if you don’t get your needs met as at a. As a little kid and are not attuned to properly. Like, that’s what creates that needy part.
[18:58] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[18:59] Celine Redfield: And everybody has that part, but it’s whether or not they listen or acknowledge that it’s there.
[19:05] Cate Blouke: Right. And, and the level of like, like just listening to you list those. Like, I can identify. Like. Yeah, I, I have all of those parts. But like one of them tends to be louder or one or two of them tends to be louder than the other ones. Like the fight part for me is pretty quiet. Like that partly doesn’t come out very often. And it’s funny because my first like completely non therapizy introduction to parts work actually came through a former sponsor in 12 Step Recovery who helped me like just start thinking about some of the kind of voices that would come in as fictional characters. And so for me, my like cry for help part is absolutely Moaning Myrtle from Harry Potter. So helpful to care to like wreck it. Like, that was really helpful for me to be like, oh, that’s not me. Like Kate conscious healthy me. Like, that’s just this character that I have in my head that comes in that is just like, why doesn’t ever anybody love me or call me? And it’s so terrible. And I just want to cry all the time. And I invited people and they didn’t come and you know, and she got. Oh man. She would drive the bus a lot.
[20:26] Celine Redfield: Yeah, it’s hard when they drive the bus a lot.
[20:28] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[20:29] Celine Redfield: But I mean, that characterization. I Do that a lot with my clients. And if so, I am an art therapist, but frequently people do not want to do art therapy. So a lot of what I do is work with metaphor and like, let’s make this into a character because at least it’s creative and then it allows a different part of your brain to work, you know. But I find like, like one of my clients, their critic literally is the critic from the 90s, like animated cartoon. And he was like bald and was kind of mean. And I was like, but it’s very clear who it was. It was Jon Lovitz played that character.
[21:11] Cate Blouke: Okay, now like, yeah. And for me, like, that was just such a helpful way in. Right. I also like identified like Jafar from Aladdin was the one who would come in and be like, you don’t need to brush your teeth, you don’t need to wash your face, just go to bed. Like, you don’t need to do any of those self care things. Why would you do that? Those sort of very sneaky, hypnotic. And like, that was just so helpful. And that’s, and that is something that I do with sponsors, it’s something that I do with clients. I work with metaphor as well. And one of the distinctions to me in terms of my understanding of what like parts work in an official therapeutic framework is, and tell me if I’m wrong is really having a conversation with those parts and like working on healing that relationship. And so for me, that’s kind of one of the distinctions between coaching and therapy is like, I will help you find them and notice that they are not you. And then if you want to really go like, figure out what’s going on under the hood, like, that’s, that’s. I’ll send you to Celine. Like, that’s the therapy, that’s the therapy realm. Because I’m not trained as a therapist totally.
[22:23] Celine Redfield: And if we were, if we’re to like go into like internal family systems, like what Dick Schwartz has created is that there are like specific kinds of parts and you can identify what those parts are, are. And like what I enjoy about his model is the self, which he describes as the part of you that has been never wounded or traumatized at all and is just like the pure, beautiful essence of you.
[22:57] Cate Blouke: Oh, the listeners can’t see me making a face right now, but I’m oh.
[23:03] Celine Redfield: That it’s not lovely, pure like loving, sweet part. Right. And it has no judgments and it’s curious about what’s going on with you and it’s compassionate towards you and it Has a sense of calm. And it’s really clear how it talks to you. And it uses creativity to, like, help soothe you and see you. And it has courage because it’s willing to do that with you.
[23:38] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[23:38] Celine Redfield: And it’s confident and it’s connected to you. And everybody, no matter how traumatized you are, has this part of self.
[23:48] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Yeah. Like, when you were first describing that, I was like, oh, that’s so nice. And I don’t know that I’m very connected to that. And then I listened some more, and I was like, okay, I am. But, like, not as consciously as I’d like to be. That does show up in my life for sure. Especially now after all the fucking therapy I’ve done. Um, but I’m like, oh, cool. I. I love having these conversations. Cause I’m like, oh, great. Like, now I get to have a conversation with my therapist. Like, yeah, yeah.
[24:22] Celine Redfield: And it’s. That’s what I like about his model is like, if we can be anchored in self enough so that we can hold a little bit of space for one of our more difficult parts or, like, something that’s challenging, then we might not activate all of the other things. Because a lot of the time, parts have, like, cohorts or, like, multiple people or a team that works.
[24:53] Cate Blouke: Entourage.
[24:55] Celine Redfield: Yes, they have an entourage. Or like, when I was first in aa, they would call it the shitty committee.
[25:01] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[25:02] Celine Redfield: There’s a lot of things that we’ve created in order to, like, survive in our lives. Right.
[25:09] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[25:10] Celine Redfield: And sometimes they’re not. Always they’re trying to be helpful, but sometimes they’re not. The most, like, recovered or open or calm.
[25:25] Cate Blouke: Yeah. They, you know, I. I mean, I do. Having delved into this.
[25:32] Celine Redfield: So he also identifies that we have, like, protectors. Right. And so. And they fall into, like, two categories. One is a manager, which he says are adaptive parts. But I find managers to be mean sometimes. So I don’t know how adaptive that is.
[25:53] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Ok.
[25:54] Celine Redfield: I don’t know how I feel.
[25:55] Cate Blouke: Yeah. To slow down. Like, so what do you. What does it mean for them to be adaptive?
[26:02] Celine Redfield: So they are created so you can adapt to your environment.
[26:08] Cate Blouke: Okay. And so do. Do the manager parts tend to be pretty critical? Because that’s what my brain immediately goes to, is that, like, the manager is the one that’s, like, telling me what to do and how I’m not showing up correctly. And that’s why I say I don’t.
[26:24] Celine Redfield: Know how adaptive I feel that is. I mean, technically it is, because it’s helping you Survive your environment and survive. But I mean, like, all of these are survival strategies. Right?
[26:36] Cate Blouke: Right.
[26:37] Celine Redfield: Like, but they tend to, like, suppress the feelings. And the protector parts are protecting the exiles.
[26:46] Cate Blouke: Okay. Right.
[26:47] Celine Redfield: And those are your most tender, wounded parts. And they show up so you don’t look at the exile.
[26:56] Cate Blouke: Yeah. So I’m thinking, like, I can sometimes have a football coach ish manager part that’s like, suck it up, buttercup. Like, it’s fine. Like, don’t. Don’t cry. And what are you upset about? Blah. And so what I’m hearing you say is that that that part is actually trying to protect the little tender, sad part of me from having to be tender and sad. Yes.
[27:25] Celine Redfield: I think that sometimes. So I think I have a manager part. Do you remember Mrs. Nelson’s missing that book?
[27:35] Cate Blouke: I don’t.
[27:36] Celine Redfield: Okay. It’s a children’s book from the 80s. And the substitute teacher in it is like, kind of this goth looking teacher, but she’s really mean. And I would say that, like, my manager looks like her.
[27:51] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[27:52] Celine Redfield: And she’s like, what are you doing? Why are you doing it that way?
[27:55] Cate Blouke: Right.
[27:55] Celine Redfield: You could be doing it this way. Yeah.
[28:00] Cate Blouke: Okay, so that’s one. So the manager. So the manager is one of the protective parts.
[28:04] Celine Redfield: One of the protective parts. Then we have the firefighters, and they’re a little more fun. They’re the ones that, like, they’re gonna make you eat the thing that you don’t need to actually eat. Drink the alcohol you don’t need to actually eat. Buy the thing you don’t actually need the person. You should probably not.
[28:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[28:27] Celine Redfield: That’s my, like, distraction and are real dramatic.
[28:32] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[28:33] Celine Redfield: Because they’re like, don’t look behind the curtain. Look at this fire I just created.
[28:39] Cate Blouke: Oh, my God. Yeah. My. I’m just thinking about before I got sober and like, yeah. One of my firefighters. Yeah. She was the rescuer. She was like, oh, this like, broken, very emotionally chaotic person. You should date them so you don’t have to look at your stuff. I feel like, love them.
[29:03] Celine Redfield: I feel like that couldn’t be a managerial firefighter, though, because I find that the firefighters tend to be my addictive parts.
[29:12] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[29:12] Celine Redfield: Which I guess technically, like, if you’re doing codependent behavior that.
[29:17] Cate Blouke: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was like, let me. Let me love them into loving themselves. Like, I’m not okay if you’re not okay. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[29:25] Celine Redfield: Let me go down in the ship with you. It’s better when there’s two.
[29:30] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I’m so glad I don’t do that anymore. It’s way better. It’s way better being single. Uhhuh. Okay, so. So in what model are we in? This is ifs.
[29:45] Celine Redfield: This is ifs.
[29:46] Cate Blouke: Okay, so we have managerial parts, firefighters, and those are the protective parts.
[29:51] Celine Redfield: And then the exiles behind would be the exiles. And those are the ones that hold your, like, most tender things. And usually there is at least one protector for each exile.
[30:08] Cate Blouke: Okay.
[30:09] Celine Redfield: So I, for me, in the work that I’ve done for myself, I like to think of them as specific ages because that helps me. So like, I definitely have people that are in their, like, teens and twenties that are the more like managerial or firefightery. And then it’s like my younger selves are the exiles.
[30:32] Cate Blouke: Yeah. My middle school self was really the, like, big category of exile for me. Like, she’s usually the one that gets real activated because, like, for me, as a like, undiagnosed neuro. Spicy kiddo. I ended 8th grade having been like, mercilessly bullied for not for being overweight and being the weird smart girl. And like, I didn’t have any friends at the end of eighth grade. And so like, that poor little part of me, man. Oh, we’ve had to do a lot of work.
[31:05] Celine Redfield: I. I relate on. On that tip also. Yeah, middle school is the worst. Whenever I get someone, I’m like, oh, you know, you’re in hell right now. I just want to let you know you’re in hell. And they’re like, why are they so mean? And I’m like, because you’re in the asshole years, honey. I’m so sorry.
[31:27] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Oh, it’s so bad.
[31:31] Celine Redfield: It is so bad.
[31:33] Cate Blouke: And our little. And those. So those little middle schoolers in our souls just still need love.
[31:40] Celine Redfield: They do. They really do.
[31:44] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Okay, so there’s usually at least. At least one protector per that part.
[31:51] Celine Redfield: It depends on, like, how many things that a protector has been created to take care of. And this is where like, so like, to go back to when we were talking about the disassociative identity disorder. Like, basically they needed to create a whole nother personality that was a manager or firefighter in order to protect their exile.
[32:16] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[32:17] Celine Redfield: So it’s the same, just on a larger scale.
[32:20] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And so what? Yeah. So then what happens? So I know it happens sort of. You know, I haven’t like, explicitly done parts work necessarily with. In. In therapy. Like, it’s come out in EMDR sessions for sure. I know. Um, that still counts. Yeah. I get. Well, I get So I guess my question is, what does it look like in a therapeutic context beyond emdr? Like, how. How does parts work? What do you do in therapy with that? Like, obviously the first step would be identifying the parts. Yes. And then what happens?
[33:00] Celine Redfield: Then you get to try to bring self energy in.
[33:04] Cate Blouke: Okay.
[33:05] Celine Redfield: And see if it’s possible to like, help unburden that. Because everybody is carrying a burden within your system and the reason why your system is staying the same is because the. Those parts have not been unburdened because no one has listened to them and they don’t realize that they have a choice to do something else.
[33:31] Cate Blouke: Okay, can you give me an example?
[33:34] Celine Redfield: So a firefighting part might tell you to smoke whenever you’re feeling anxious, right?
[33:42] Cate Blouke: Oh, my God. And so, so I do. So my like, little 20 something firefighter part, my little party girl firefighter part, like, does miss cigarettes sometimes? Like, I haven’t had a cigarette in 15 years, but like, every once in a while I’ll smell one and she’s like, oh, man, we should smoke that.
[33:59] Celine Redfield: I, for me, me, I have also not smoked in 15 years. But the only thing I, my teenage self misses is clove cigarettes, not fucking real cigarettes. Because real cigarettes smell so bad to me now. I.
[34:16] Cate Blouke: You know, they should. It’s funny because it’s like, I don’t really miss. Like, it’s rare that I miss drinking. I am finally in a place where I super don’t miss smoking weed. But, like, especially when I’m stressed, like, that’s, that’s one of my little canary in the coal mine signs, is when, like, cigarettes start smelling good. I’m like, oh, something’s up.
[34:38] Celine Redfield: I understand that. I mean, I kept relapsing on cigarettes for the first, like five years of my sobriety because it was the one I was like, I’m not doing good. I need to shove down these emotions. I’m gonna smoke some cigarettes.
[34:53] Cate Blouke: Yeah, I’m really glad that I just like, happened to quit smoking cigarettes, like six months before I quit drinking because I, I gotten to the place where I wanted to quit and then was only smoking when I was drinking. And so then like weaned myself off that. But if it had been the other way around, it would have taken me way longer to quit smoking.
[35:12] Celine Redfield: Yeah.
[35:13] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Okay. So.
[35:15] Celine Redfield: So the firefighter part, that tells you you need to smoke in order to not have anxiety. So working with that part, we can ask that part and be curious. Like, I’m just curious, why do you think that this works? And is there anything like, are you trying to protect anybody? Will you let us talk to that part that you’re trying to protect? And once you build enough, like, trust within your system, some of your protectors might actually allow you to talk to your exiles.
[35:57] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah.
[35:59] Celine Redfield: They are there in order to protect that part. And they’ve been there for a long time sometimes. So they might be like you.
[36:11] Cate Blouke: No. Yeah. Now I’m thinking about my EMDR experiences and like my very angsty teenage cigarette smokey self just being like, mad and not wanting to let me talk to my little kiddo part and being really mad at my kiddo part also. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so that’s where, like, the protectors can be mean.
[36:35] Celine Redfield: Yeah. That’s why you have to bring self energy in. Because usually when there’s no self energy, there is, like, fighting going on between your parts.
[36:45] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[36:46] Celine Redfield: That’s why there’s so much dysregulation in the system, because there. There’s like not congruence within the system. Does that make sense?
[36:55] Cate Blouke: Totally makes sense. Right? I’m just like. It’s so interesting to me. And again, I’m just really glad we’re having this conversation. And hopefully people who are listening are getting a lot out of this, but because it’s like, this is a lot of what has been happening in therapy for me, but we haven’t been really like, using the language of self protector exile. Parts work. And having language for stuff just really helps my little neurospicy brain. And what I can say is that it’s been so powerful and transformative. It’s been the most accessible for me through the context of emdr, which we’ve talked about a little bit on the podcast before. But if you haven’t listened to that episode. Celine, would you tell us what EMDR is?
[37:42] Celine Redfield: EMDR was created by now I’m not gonna remember her name. Her last name is Shapiro, and she worked with combat veterans and she started having them do bilateral eye movements in order to reprocess their trauma. And she learned that people could move pretty quickly through reprocessing trauma just by doing eye movements, pretty much. And so what EMDR mimics is the REM sleep, and that’s why they think it actually works. But basically it’s eye movement desensitization, reprocessing. But in emdr, you don’t have to do eye movement. Some people can’t. So you can use paddles. It’s the bilateral stimulation between the right and left hemispheres of the brain which brings an adaptive perspective to the situation that you are working on.
[38:47] Cate Blouke: Yeah. When I did it, I had an app that would do. And I would wear headphones, and it would do beeping. Right. So it’s really about. About the bilateral stimulation, and that does brain jiu jitsu is what I would call it, to get your brain into a state where the stuff that is stuck can get processed appropriately and filed where it should be, instead of being activated and making you think like, the thing that happened back then is happening right now.
[39:22] Celine Redfield: And that is because most traumatic memories are stuck on the right hemisphere of the brain, which is the more creative part of the brain, but doesn’t have a way to process that information in a helpful way. So when you do emdr, you’re integrating left hemisphere of logic and creativity and trauma together, and that’s why it’s redoing it.
[39:48] Cate Blouke: Interesting. So trauma typically gets stored in the right side of the brain, which is the creative side of the brain. So is that where art therapy comes in? If people are willing to do it, yes.
[39:58] Celine Redfield: And that is why, when I have someone that’s like, I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m. I’m like, can we make an image of what’s going on with you? So, like, I used to work at the LA Gay and Lesbian center before it was the LGBTQ center in 2012 as an intern, and this guy had HIV, and he was coming to get services, and I was like, so, what’s going on? And he’s like, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. And I’m like, okay. And I was about to not give him therapeutic services because I was like, this guy’s fine. And then I was like, could you draw me a picture of what’s going on with you? And then we talked about the picture, and he’s like, oh, this is the deep sadness that I feel within me right now. So, like, when you get into the right side of the brain, that side can’t lie. The left side can lie and can tell you that you’re fine.
[40:57] Cate Blouke: Interesting. Yeah. I’ve been reading a lot lately, and there’s a Huberman Lab episode all about a journaling protocol for working through trauma and, like, writing out your experiences and, like, how is it cognitive processing or. No, probably. I don’t know. If you haven’t picked up by now, I. The, like, official terms for things don’t. Like, it’s. If it sounds sciency, it doesn’t stick in my brain so good. My little right side’s like, we don’t need that information. La, la, la.
[41:36] Celine Redfield: I think it’s cognitive processing, but I completely. I am not trained in it though.
[41:42] Cate Blouke: Yeah. But it. Well, it just has me thinking about, like, the way in which creative or narrative practices designed to just like. So one of the key criteria of it is that you just like, keep writing. Like, you don’t let yourself edit and whatever. And so it’s really about that, letting that creative part come forward and say, like, here, here’s what, what I see.
[42:12] Celine Redfield: And when you’re. So the other thing about art therapy that I have learned and just writing in general as well, especially by hand, anytime that you’re physically externalizing something, and this would also go with like dance or movement or whatever, you are creating a new neural pathway in the brain to have a different experience.
[42:40] Cate Blouke: Oh, can you say that again? Because, like, I’m excited about it and I want everybody to hear it twice.
[42:48] Celine Redfield: So anytime that you externalize something physically. So with dance, writing by hand, drawing by hand, creating art by hand, something with your hands, feet, that’s like kinesthetic, you are creating a new neural pathway and you get to create a totally new experience for yourself.
[43:13] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[43:14] Celine Redfield: That’s why step work in 12 step, if you write it by hand, works so well.
[43:20] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[43:21] Celine Redfield: Because you are externalizing it and like.
[43:25] Cate Blouke: Right.
[43:26] Celine Redfield: That’s why I think journaling is so important or. Or like movement therapy or whatever. You need to move it out of your soma.
[43:38] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[43:39] Celine Redfield: Mm.
[43:41] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I mean, that articulates what I’ve kind of long practiced for myself and encourage sponsors to practice and like, encourage clients. Like, I’ll give them reflection questions. And I’m like, go write those. Like, just thinking about it isn’t the same.
[43:56] Celine Redfield: Well, and this is where the managers come in so we can bring it back to the parts work.
[44:01] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[44:01] Celine Redfield: Firefighters, they’re like, you don’t really need to do that. Or the manager’s like, we’re going to have too many feelings if you do that. Let’s not do that. Yeah, we need to go be productive right now. And then the firefighter’s like, you don’t need to do that. You can wait until tomorrow. It’s fine.
[44:19] Cate Blouke: Right?
[44:19] Celine Redfield: You’re fine. Like, let’s go smoke a cigarette. Let’s have a joint.
[44:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. Or. Or like, that sounds like mushy woo woo stuff. We don’t need to do that. Like, that’s cheesy. I mean, there’s so much shit that I have found so, so powerful. That part of my brain’s been like, that is cheesy. Are you kidding me? I can. I can actually picture my like angsty 20 year old, some so smoking her little cigarette and being like, that’s so lame. Like what? That’s not going to do anything. And it does.
[44:53] Celine Redfield: It does.
[44:55] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[44:57] Celine Redfield: Sometimes it’s not as fun or as easy as you would like it to be, but it does make the change in the long run.
[45:06] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I mean my experience has been that the like, significant changes in my life have been neither fun nor easy. Oh, no.
[45:21] Celine Redfield: Nope.
[45:22] Cate Blouke: But. And that’s where the firefighters, you know, can really keep us stuck.
[45:28] Celine Redfield: Yeah.
[45:30] Cate Blouke: You know, because they don’t want us to have to be uncomfortable. Even if we are kind of uncomfortable. They don’t want us to see that. Because if you see it, then you have to change something. Maybe.
[45:48] Celine Redfield: Maybe you could just be in purgatory if you want.
[45:53] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I. I’m not one of those people. I see them and. And you know, one of the reasons I go to Al Anon is because it’s not my job to save people. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is there anything we haven’t covered about parts? Work that feels important to bring forward?
[46:18] Celine Redfield: So really learning to love all of your parts, even if you find them to be annoying or uncomfortable or like needy or mean or whatever. You look at them and they’re. You’re like, oh, this makes me unlovable or something in some sort of way. Like you need to love those parts even more. So like this work is about like loving all parts of you, no matter what.
[46:56] Cate Blouke: Oh man. I like know you’re right. And then. And I like can embod like, you know, when I’m really accessing myself, I can do that. But it’s like I’m just like. I’m thinking about the example I brought up at the beginning and it’s like even Jafar, like Jafar is so unlovable. Like, how am I going to get.
[47:17] Celine Redfield: There was a little kid at some point too. He just turned into that as a coping mechanism and survival stance.
[47:27] Cate Blouke: I mean, when you put it like that.
[47:31] Celine Redfield: All. All villains are lovable in their own special way. You just like my true trick. When I’m like really pissed at people or think they’re evil, I try to see them at the age where their wounding was.
[47:49] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[47:49] Celine Redfield: And then I have a lot more compassion for them, even if they’re fucking shit up.
[47:55] Cate Blouke: Totally. And you know, and I. I’m in a place in my life where like I’m. I can do that with like people who don’t live in My head. Right. That it’s like, oh, yeah, I see you’re wounding. Like, I’m gonna excuse myself, but, like.
[48:12] Celine Redfield: And also some of your parts. I believe this. It doesn’t. So this is my theory. It may already be out there, but I will just say I don’t. This is coming. This is my belief. I don’t have sources to back it up. I think that some of the parts are from inter generational trauma and aren’t always yours.
[48:41] Cate Blouke: Ooh. Yeah.
[48:43] Celine Redfield: I have done a lot of, like, ancestral healing work personally and a lot of the work that I’ve done around that has been around, like, healing ancestral trauma. So, like, I have parts of me that believe that being sad is not worthwhile and it’s weakness and you’re gonna die if you get our sad. Because so many of the people in my lineage, like my great great grandmother owned her own business.
[49:20] Cate Blouke: Wow. Yeah.
[49:22] Celine Redfield: But she didn’t have time to be fucking sad.
[49:25] Cate Blouke: No.
[49:26] Celine Redfield: Right.
[49:27] Cate Blouke: Yeah. You can’t. I mean, that was a while ago and you certainly couldn’t be sad. And a woman owning a business back then.
[49:33] Celine Redfield: No.
[49:34] Cate Blouke: Okay.
[49:35] Celine Redfield: So certain things I believe and have experienced through other healing modalities that I am carrying things that might not be mine, they’re just a part of my DNA.
[49:50] Cate Blouke: Yeah. That lands really well with me. Um, I haven’t really explored that, but it definitely tracks that. Like, I can identify some of the parts of me that don’t. That don’t really feel mine.
[50:08] Celine Redfield: And that part looked like when I was doing the work that I was doing, literally, I thought it was a shadow person, like, coming into the healing space that I was in. And I was like, no, you can’t come in. No, you can’t come in. And then I looked and I was like, oh, it’s a person that’s like rotten. Oh, that is like all of the grief and sadness that people were not allowed to feel in my family.
[50:36] Cate Blouke: Mm, Interesting. That makes me want to bring forward kind of where we. Where we started the conversation with the acknowledgement that parts work is shadow work.
[50:48] Celine Redfield: Yeah.
[50:49] Cate Blouke: How would you describe shadow work? Would you describe it any differently? I mean, it obviously doesn’t have the sort of systemic ifs label.
[50:59] Celine Redfield: I mean, I think it’s learning to face all of your parts and make friends with them, accept and love them.
[51:10] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[51:11] Celine Redfield: So it is, like, more about going into the under. If we’re going to go woo, woo. Going into the, like, underworld of, like, visiting your ancestor, visiting the parts of you that you may be disenfranchised. From that you deny even exist. And really learning to, like, tend and love the. It’s similar to parts work. It just really is.
[51:42] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah, it is.
[51:44] Celine Redfield: It’s. It’s funny because I signed up for a shadow work class, and then I noticed she was using no Bad Parts, which is by Richard Schwartz, you know, and I was like, oh, right. It’s the same thing. Like, I was thinking that, but then I was like, yeah, it’s the same thing.
[52:01] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[52:02] Celine Redfield: The other book that I recommend, though, for shadow work is called Gold Mining the Shadows, and it’s by Pixie Light Horse.
[52:10] Cate Blouke: Ooh, I’ll put that in the show notes and pick up a copy for myself, because I don’t. So I will say on the no Bads Parts book, because I have read that and find the way that he talks about addiction in particular, rather frustrating.
[52:25] Celine Redfield: Oh, how does he. I haven’t read the book.
[52:28] Cate Blouke: Oh. I mean, he basically says that sort of the addict part is a part that, like, if you do parts work, you can heal and then maybe you won’t be addicted. That’s my takeaway from it. And I didn’t particularly like that. As someone in recovery who finds it really helpful to just be like, I’m in recovery and I need to stay in recovery, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[52:51] Celine Redfield: I don’t think he’s an addict, though.
[52:54] Cate Blouke: Yeah, right. I mean.
[52:55] Celine Redfield: I mean, like, what I’ve heard, he and Gabor, mate, and I don’t remember the other person. Like, they all talk about, like, doing hallucinogens for doing parts work together. Like, it’s no big deal.
[53:09] Cate Blouke: And.
[53:09] Celine Redfield: Yeah.
[53:10] Cate Blouke: Yeah. So I guess I just, like, wanted to throw the disclaimer as someone who identifies as an addict and alcoholic and finds that really helpful that he does. He does present it in a way that could make it sound enticing. That, like, oh, maybe if I just do enough therapy, this won’t be an issue for me, which I don’t find to be helpful personally.
[53:29] Celine Redfield: I mean, maybe if you healed all of your traumas, but, like, why, if you’ve already stopped, why do you need to start again? Is my opinion. It was so fucking hard for me to stop in my 20s that I’m not interested in fucking with that.
[53:51] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s.
[53:53] Celine Redfield: And I mean, like, cigarettes were so. But I. And yes, I am more healed now, but I know that I still have more that needs to be healed.
[54:03] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. I mean, same. I. When I got sober, I hadn’t had sufficient external consequences. I wasn’t A daily drinker. Like, there are a lot of things that my little firefighter part in the background was wants to grab onto and say, like, oh, but you’ve done so much therapy now. Like, it could be fine. Like, and it could be fun because it was, it was still fun for me when I quit. And for me, that’s why it’s really important to me that I stay pretty connected to going to meetings and like, get the reminder of why I don’t actually want to fuck with it because I don’t want to believe her. She was fun, she was a woo girl, she liked doing shots. But like in my 40s and it is not gonna be fun anymore, so.
[54:51] Celine Redfield: Oh, being hungover just sounds. All I can think of is being a wrung out sponge and I don’t ever want to feel that way ever again.
[55:00] Cate Blouke: No, no, it’s not fun. Okay, well, on that note, what would you invite listeners to do or practice or think about having listened to us talk about this for an hour?
[55:18] Celine Redfield: Like, cultivating more of a wise sell when something comes up. Number one. Because usually, like, I think it’s six Cs that he uses in his model. The easiest one that people can usually do is being curious. So, like, try being curious when something comes up instead of judgmental.
[55:48] Cate Blouke: What might that look like, huh?
[55:50] Celine Redfield: Why could. Why would my mind be saying that right now? Yeah, is there something that’s trying to tell me instead of, what the fuck? Why are you talking to me this way? Can you just fucking go away? Like, I don’t need this shit today? Like, you’re not being helpful. Can’t you be helpful? No, obviously it can’t. It wants you to look at something and like, if you’re going to embark on this, like, it is not for the faint of heart. It is about transformation. So like, when you’re transforming, it’s going to be icky and it’s not going to feel great, but then you can become a beautiful butterfly because you’ve thrashed yourself to death in your chrysalis.
[56:37] Cate Blouke: Yeah, I was just gonna say, like, that metaphor of just being the goo has been very helpful to me in the last couple of years, especially as I’ve been launching my own business and going through like, radical life changes and launching this podcast of just like, oh man, the goo is not a comfortable place to be. But if I wanna be a sparkly, I would be a glitter butterfly. Let’s be clear, if I want to be that, then, like, I gotta be the goo for a while.
[57:06] Celine Redfield: You do need to Be the goo for a while. And if you need to, you could always sing the Waiting Room by Fugazi if you’re having a bad day.
[57:18] Cate Blouke: Oh, amazing. I don’t know that song, so I’m gonna put it in the show notes. I don’t and gonna listen to it.
[57:24] Celine Redfield: It’s very much a punk song from the early 2000s, but, like, if I’m having a hard time, it’s good to sing because he’s talking about being in a waiting room.
[57:37] Cate Blouke: Great.
[57:37] Celine Redfield: And a lot of life is being in a waiting room.
[57:41] Cate Blouke: It really is. And that’s very annoying to most of us.
[57:45] Celine Redfield: But if we just get used to, oh, I’m in a transition again, and this is just what it looks like, then we’re fine.
[57:54] Cate Blouke: I.
[57:54] Celine Redfield: You want. I want to blame capitalism for us not knowing how to wait.
[57:59] Cate Blouke: Okay, that seems. That sounds reasonable to me. I want to blame the Internet for sure.
[58:03] Celine Redfield: Yes.
[58:05] Cate Blouke: Like, definitely. Smartphones in the Internet are deeply to blame, but it probably did start before that. Oh, awesome. Celine, thank you so much. This has been lovely. If someone wants to work with you or find you, how do they do that?
[58:27] Celine Redfield: They can reach out to me on my website. It’s inner growththerapy.com and I believe my handle on Instagram. But I’m not great at looking at it, so emailing me would probably be better.
[58:40] Cate Blouke: Uh, and then final question. What brings you joy?
[58:47] Celine Redfield: Um, lots of things bring me joy, but I really love private room karaoke. So if you’re having a shitty day, you can always go do private room karaoke.
[58:58] Cate Blouke: Yeah.
[59:00] Celine Redfield: Or like going for a walk without headphones and just listening to the birds and looking at whatever nature is around you. So you can see that stuff is always changing all of the time.
[59:15] Cate Blouke: Stuff is always changing all the time, and often that is awesome.
[59:21] Celine Redfield: Right? Nature just goes through the its cycle and it doesn’t have any opinions about it. We’re not like nature. We don’t go through our cycles and have no opinions about it.
[59:33] Cate Blouke: No, we have strong opinions about it. Yeah. So, yeah, I love that it’s not raining this afternoon in Portland, Oregon. So I think I’m gonna end this conversation by saying thank you so much. I’m gonna go for a walk.
[59:49] Celine Redfield: Yay. Me too.
[59:57] Cate Blouke: All right, friend. I hope you got as much out of that episode as I did. And I just wanted to jump in and remind you that if you want to keep chit chatting about this, you can book a call with me, you can book a session with me, or you can just like, hit me up on the social media or via email. Katettlingisbullshit.com and and like, let me know your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you. I want to know what is working for you, what you like, what hit a chord in this episode or any other episodes that you’ve been listening to. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one on one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.
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