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kabre t1_j8op5ff wrote

Reply to comment by LucilleAaronWayne in Hi, I'm Lucille Aaron-Wayne, MA - Certified IFS therapist (Internal Family Systems therapy). Ask me anything! by LucilleAaronWayne

>From my view, it's critical to honor the mystery inside, that we can't
pin down everything, and that we have no right to, in fact. Our
unconscious has the right to exist, too.

I've got a part that gave a big grin and double thumbs up to this bit of what you said, ha!

I like this take, and it tracks a little with my own (admittedly untrained) theory. IFS is a particular tool for a particular job, and it's very good at that job, and at seeing parts who are in distress. I came to IFS with a working knowledge of a good handful of parts already, via creative work, and while some of those parts have slotted tidily into IFS roles there are others who don't. So this makes sense to me, but it's also good to hear it from someone trained in the modality as well.

A bit of a diversion, but, having not looked into Jungian stuff much but being passingly aware of the concept of anima/animus, I'm very curious about how you would look at the idea of the anima/animus when considering someone who identifies as agender or nonbinary.

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LucilleAaronWayne OP t1_j8or0zy wrote

Sure! Some Jungians feel that we all have both an animus and anima.

Another way of viewing it is that the animus/anima is essentially the guide between our ego (the regular you, the person you feel you are, your consciousness) and the unconscious.

We all have that, and one view is whether we call it the animus or anima is somewhat irrelevant.

That said, there are some recognizable characteristics that are traditionally recognized to cluster around the animus and others around the anima. So an agender or nonbinary person might feel their inner guide more resembles the animus or the anima.

The anima and animus are really hard to understand. We can't truly pin them down. Kinda like you and I were just discussing with parts in IFS ...

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