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Welcome to Doug’s Newsletter. Every Thursday, I share a theme from my journey to provide you insight along your spiritual path.

Today’s Setlist

🧱 Making a Joke: The “What If” Approach

😄 Funny Business → Trial & Error

📊 Community Poll → How do you remember?

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🧱 Making a Joke: The “What If” Approach

Background on IFS, Inner Child work

In the early 1980s, Dick Schwartz invented Internal Family Systems (IFS).

IFS is a therapeutic approach that identifies and addresses multiple sub-personalities—or "parts"—within a person's mental system.

These parts include wounded parts and painful emotions, such as those of the "inner child," which carry the traumas, fears, and hurt from the past. The inner child concept refers to a sub-personality embodying one's childhood experiences and emotional state, often needing healing and integration into the present self to resolve emotional distress and foster psychological harmony.

I engage in IFS therapy almost every week with my therapist and highly recommend it.

She also shared this Inner Child meditation with me, which I practice 3 to 5 times a week in the morning. (It’s part of my Resource Toolkit I share when you refer someone to this newsletter!)

Ask “What If”

There’s obviously not a literal child inside of you. That would be insane.

BUT...what if it were true?

Humor me. What if that one variable were changed, but the rest of reality stayed exactly the same.

Think about Would You Rather games.

Would you rather be able to eat anything you want and have it be perfect nutrition OR have to only sleep 1 hour a day and be fully rested?

The more into this new reality you go, the more entertaining it is.

“Does the taste of the food I eat depreciate the more I eat it? Am I able to sleep more if I wanted to, or do I have to be fully energized for 23 hours a day?”

There are infinite realities you can create and explore! I call this the “What If” approach to joke-making.

Change one small thing — and have fun exploring the thread

When contemplating the idea of an inner child, most thought threads go something like “Oh inner child means parts of me that are a child, not a literal child. Okay got it, moving on”.

Few thought threads go “What if it were a literal child? What would that reality be?”

One thought thread went “What if it was a literal child for just one person and everything else in the world was exactly the same?”

In such a world, we get this riveting news break:

Local Man Arrested for Harboring Inner Child

Kansas City, MO — A local man was arrested outside his apartment on Wednesday night following a SWAT operation that revealed he was harboring an inner child. Richard “Dick” Schwartz, 38, has been identified as the alleged perpetrator.

“He’s looking at numerous charges of neglect,” stated Attorney General Ayef Ess. “It appears his inner child had hundreds of parts, all of whom Schwartz was hiding from himself — and the authorities.”

Police were tipped off about the hidden inner child after the child was discovered by Schwartz’s therapist, Dr. Trisha Palmer, during a routine session. "I am ethically obligated to notify the police when a client causes harm," Dr. Palmer explained. “These inner child parts were all made unwillingly…and based on what he told me during our sessions, Dick has been gathering more and more of them at significant junctures of his life since he was born. In my professional opinion, he is truly a sick fuck.”

As of press time, Schwartz’s legal team is weighing their options between two defenses: 1) Schwartz had been trying to heal his inner child or 2) the inner child was running the show all along, and Schwartz is in fact the victim.

😄 Funny Business

📊 Community Poll

Results for last week’s question: Do you sleep with socks on?

Interesting! If you’re a sometimer, drop me a note and let me know: How do you decide if it’s a sock night? Is it pre-determined or do you never take them off from your day? Do you have different sleeping socks from your day socks? Why not always do it, if you like it?

🎉 Shoutout to us all reaching double digit answers! 🎉

Our reward is my favorite GIF of all time.

On to this week’s question…

People are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. - Epictetus