Doing the Work
People talk a lot about doing the work — in therapy, recovery, or spirituality — but when I ask clients what that means for them, many can’t quite say. They know it’s more than reading self-help books or journaling about their feelings, but the definition slips through.
For me, doing the work isn’t about chasing insight or collecting healing language. It’s about sitting with the parts of myself I’ve spent decades avoiding — the ones I’ve criticized, silenced, or exiled. It’s not tidy or inspirational. It’s the private labor of learning to stay present with what I once buried.
These pages aren’t a guide or a prescription. They’re a window into what doing the work has looked like for me.
The Magical Kitchen and the Basement Children
I’ve known the rumble of hunger — what Anthony Hopkins, who has spoken about his addiction and sustained long-term recovery, once described as a looming abyss. Not the kind food quiets, but the kind that hums beneath the surface even when life looks full. It’s the sound of a body that learned to survive on scarcity — emotional, spiritual, physical — and still doesn’t fully trust abundance when it appears.
The metaphor of The Magical Kitchen comes from Richard Schwartz’s book You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For — his work applying Internal Family Systems (IFS) to intimate relationships. In it, he describes what it means to live from inner abundance. When we carry a boundless source of nourishment inside — love, curiosity, compassion — we stop bartering for crumbs from the outside world. We give freely because we’re full. We share because we have plenty.
Most of us don’t grow up in that kitchen. We inherit scarcity: the kind that teaches us to earn affection, to stay small for safety, or to hide the parts of ourselves that feel too needy. Schwartz calls those hidden ones basement children — the exiles, the parts that carry our wounds and shame. They’re the ones we lock away when the crying gets too loud, hoping the sound will fade. It never does.
The Starved Child
One of my own basement children isn’t crying for love in the abstract. He was starving. He learned early that his worth was measured in inches — that a smaller waist meant more approval, more belonging, more safety.
I can still feel that part of me: a boy so desperate to be seen as worthy that he starved himself into visibility. His sense of value swung on an eighty-pound yo-yo — hating the heavy version and loving the ribby, hollow-eyed one. He believed that if he could master his body, he could master rejection. When the protector parts took over, they applauded every skipped meal as discipline and every visible rib as progress. People even praised it. “You look incredible.” “You’re almost unrecognizable.”
And that starving child — that exile — believed them. You’re almost out of the basement, they said. Keep going.
But no one told him the door only led deeper underground, where the ache would change shape but never leave.
The Religious Wound
Another basement child grew up believing that God was disgusted — that desire, longing, or even simple pleasure were suspect, signs of weakness or sin. The message wasn’t always spoken directly, but it lingered in silence and in the way shame attached itself to joy. Over time, that belief hardened into a quiet fear: that the most human parts of me were also the least lovable.
That child was torn between wanting to please a God he was told to fear and resenting a God who seemed impossible to reach. Out of that tension, a new protector emerged — the one who rejected anything that smelled like faith. He distrusted believers, recoiled from doctrine, and braced for hypocrisy wherever it appeared. What started as self-protection eventually became defiance.
There was also a spiritual wound underneath it all — a deep envy of the normal straight people who seemed to fit effortlessly into the story the church told about belonging and holiness. I tried everything to change what didn’t feel “right” inside me, believing that if I could just fix it, I’d finally be worthy of love — or at least acceptable to God. I prayed harder, stopped “hardening my heart,” dated people I didn’t desire, and repented over and over — all in service of an image that would never fit. The more I tried to become what they said was righteous, the further I drifted from what was real.
From that crossroads of fear, rebellion, and longing, several protectors stepped forward:
The hedonist, who chased intensity and sensation to drown out the ache, burning through dopamine and reason until nothing satisfied for long.
The perfectionist, who tried to earn approval through performance — grades, promotions, good behavior — hoping worth could be proven.
The avenger, who lashed out at anyone preaching spirituality, arguing with venom disguised as intellect.
The punisher, who loves watching perceived tormenters suffer their ‘just deserts’
The cynic, who dismissed anything spiritual before it had a chance to disappoint him again.
The jealous one, who believed that every beautiful person was proof I could never be enough.
Each protector thought it was doing the right thing — guarding against humiliation, rejection, and hypocrisy. None realized they were only keeping the basement children locked away.
And in time, I began to see something softer beneath it all. I don’t blame faith. I blame the fear that was misshaped and handed down through wounded people. The intent was never to harm me — only a misguided attempt at love filtered through their own pain.
When Recovery Reinforces Exile
By the time I entered recovery, the language had shifted but the message sounded familiar: don’t feel sorry for yourself, self-pity is a maudlin defect, what’s your part? what’s the nature of your wrongs? The literature called self-pity “one of the most unhappy and consuming defects — a bar to all spiritual progress.” The warning was meant to promote humility, but to some of us, it carried an undertone of fear — the idea that God’s help would be withdrawn if we didn’t do the work just right.
The basement children who carried grief and longing were told they were manipulative, weak, or self-absorbed. So the protectors tightened their grip. They learned to translate pain into service, loneliness into slogans, and hunger into gratitude.
There’s real grace in surrender, but without compassion, those words can become another form of self-abandonment. Recovery gave me structure and community, but for a long time, it didn’t give me permission to grieve. I was applauded for insight and restraint but not for softness. The message was clear: your pain is valid only when it’s past tense.
IFS helped me rewrite that. It taught me that self-pity and self-compassion are cousins separated by shame — both longing for someone to stay. One circles the wound; the other sits beside it.
Meeting the Basement Children
When I began IFS work, I realized how many rooms my internal house contained — and how many doors were still locked.
The starved child needed permission to eat without earning it.
The religiously exiled child needed to hear that desire wasn’t sin.
The grieving child needed to cry without fear of being seen as weak.
I started visiting them one at a time. Sometimes I’d picture walking down the basement stairs with a candle, not to rescue them but to sit with them. I’d say, I know you’ve been down here a long time. I’m not here to drag you out — I just want you to know that I see you, and if you’re willing, I’d like to get to know you.
The first time I did that, they didn’t trust me. Why would they? I was the one who locked the door. But over time, as I stopped forcing insight and started offering presence, something shifted. The hunger quieted. The air felt lighter. They began to believe that the kitchen upstairs might finally have enough for them too.
The Protectors
The protectors didn’t like this new arrangement. They’d spent decades keeping order — regulating, repressing, keeping everything contained. To them, compassion looked like chaos.
The avenger worried that without anger, I’d have no power left, or that I wouldn’t be heard.
The perfectionist feared that if I stopped striving, I’d disappear or be mediocre.
The jealous one believed that every beautiful person was proof I could never be enough.
The hedonist thought stillness would feel like death.
The punisher warned that mercy could make me vulnerable again.
So I learned to talk to them differently. Instead of fighting them, I thanked them. I told them I understood why they worked so hard. They had taken over when I was too young to know that love couldn’t be earned.
They began to trust me only when I stopped trying to get rid of them. I promised them rest, not extinction. That’s what Self-leadership really means — not dominance, but stewardship. It’s the adult part of us saying, You’ve done enough. I’ll take it from here.
Rebuilding the Magical Kitchen
When the Self starts leading, something subtle but profound happens. The starving child no longer reaches for control through deprivation. The religious exile begins to imagine a God who isn’t disgusted. The avenger doesn’t need to punish beauty or freedom in others to feel powerful. The punisher loses its bite when pain is no longer the means of feeling safe.
This is what it means to reopen the magical kitchen. We begin feeding our parts from an internal source that doesn’t run dry. The meals aren’t fancy — honesty, curiosity, patience — but they satisfy in a way no external validation ever could.
From that place, relationships shift. We stop choosing partners who feel like punishment or proof. We stop performing empathy to keep connection. We stop confusing intensity with intimacy. We can love because we want to, not because we’re starving.
How the Culture Rewards Protectors
We live in a world that rewards protectors and pathologizes exiles. Productivity is worshiped; grief is an inconvenience. Discipline is called virtue; hunger is called weakness. Even therapy gets marketed as optimization — another way to fix what’s “wrong.”
But integration isn’t optimization. It’s hospitality. It’s saying, Everyone in this house gets to eat — the hungry, the angry, the ashamed.
The goal isn’t to become spotless. It’s to become whole.
That’s what the Self represents in IFS — the calm, compassionate host of the internal household. When the Self leads, the protectors don’t have to retire; they can take new roles. The perfectionist becomes a craftsman. The avenger becomes an advocate. The hedonist becomes a lover of life without needing chaos to feel alive. The punisher can become a guardian of boundaries rather than a dispenser of pain. The jealous one learns discernment. None of them are kicked out; they’re just fed something real.
What Self-Leadership Looks Like
Being Self-led isn’t about achieving serenity; it’s about honesty. It’s acknowledging when a protector is in the driver’s seat and gently asking it to move over. It’s recognizing that the starved child doesn’t need another diet — he needs dinner. It’s realizing that the voice calling us unworthy in God’s name isn’t divine; it’s trauma wearing a halo.
Self-leadership is quiet power. It’s the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into shame. It’s being able to say:
“A part of me wants to disappear, and another part wants to be seen.”
“A part of me still believes I’m unlovable, and another knows better.”
“A part of me craves control, and another longs to surrender.”
When that balance begins, life doesn’t suddenly become easy. But it becomes integrated. Hunger no longer feels like failure; it becomes a signal. Anger stops being destructive; it becomes information. Desire stops being sinful; it becomes sacred.
A Reflection for Readers
If any of this resonates, pause for a moment and ask yourself:
Which of your parts has been locked in the basement?
What story did it learn about love, worth, or belonging?
Which protectors took over to keep it quiet?
What would happen if you offered that part food instead of silence?
We don’t need to fix them all at once. Start with one. Bring it a plate. Sit down. Listen.
INTEGRATED
Every time we feed a starving part of ourselves, we weaken the illusion of scarcity. Every time we offer compassion to a shamed part, we dismantle the theology of exile. Every time we grieve without apology, we reclaim our humanity from systems that taught us to despise it.
The magical kitchen isn’t a metaphor for self-sufficiency; it’s about reintegration — with the parts that once hid in the basement, with the God who now feels like a partner rather than a judge, and with the recovery peers who remind us we were never meant to do this alone. Each is a piece of the whole, none of them the entire meal.
Love, grace, and connection move through all of it — not as proof of worth, but as nourishment freely given. And when the basement children smell the feast through the floorboards, they don’t rush the door. They wait, listen, and start to trust that this time the invitation upstairs is real, and they deserve a seat at the table.
Author’s Note
This essay reflects my own lived integration of recovery, faith, and parts work. It is offered for reflection and connection, not as clinical advice or treatment guidance.
