Psychology of activism: A mirrored path of changemaking

It starts with curiosity

Healthy activism generally starts with curiosity in the midst of suffering:

         “I wonder how this situation could improve”

         “Would it be possible to fix this problem?”

         “What would we need to do to change this trajectory?”

         “Could we transform this system?”

         “How could we right this wrong?”

If the curiosity that ignites our inspiration toward activism is matched by our available resources as well as sufficient external social readiness for change, we can generally make big change quickly without having to going too deep into a more complex psychology of activism. But in reality, activism is rarely an overnight issue as our resources and external social readiness, or lack thereof, are factors that often complicate our actions. Further, our healthy curiosity and motivation can get blended with our wounding in complex ways that also transform our path to changemaking into a less linear and more multi-dimensional and multi-directional process – one that requires us to look both out there at the wounding and fragmentation of the world, and in here toward the wounding and fragmentation within ourselves.

In this article, I explore the personal applications of the psychology of activism: the ways that our own personal psychological development inside informs and is affected by walking the activists’ path, as well as the ways our personal path affects the world outside. I talk about Internal Family Systems, archetypal activism journeys, personal healing as an essential facet of activism, connecting with our unique ‘activist profile’, and how we are all meaningfully intertwined in our collective activism. For any activist who has struggled to make sense of their complex changemaking path, I hope this mapping out of the personal and shared psychological terrain will be helpful.

When curiosity is wounded

The genuine curiosity which awakens an inner desire to create change is beautiful and reflects our inherently creative and powerful nature. However, sometimes our curiosity gets blended in unhelpful or even destructive ways with our traumas, wounds, conditioning and cultural expectations, ultimately leading us to lose connection with the core of our curiosity. When this happens, instead of continuing our changemaking efforts from a place of openness, passion and even love, we can find ourselves taking the activist path out of rage, pressure, saviorism, revenge, narcissism or other forms of personal and relational disconnect. Naturally, activism formed from or motivated by the latter often ends up in burnout, as actions unconsciously borne from our wounds tend to recreate their original conditions, no matter how much we wish it were not so.

In the Internal Family Systems (IFS) world, this issue is juxtaposed as Self-led activism’ (open curiosity) vs ‘part-led activism’ (wounded curiosity). If you’re not familiar with IFS, what is termed ‘Self’ with a capital S is the curious, open, inclusive and holistic aspect of our psyche that shepherds our inner family of parts. I’ll say more about Self below. What is termed ‘parts’ are the fragmented and polarized aspects of our psyche, often due to wounding. They are called the ‘exiles’, ‘managers’ and ‘firefighters’. I’ll take a moment to explain these parts and their functions here.

Exiles, managers, firefighters

Exiles are our vulnerable parts that carry the pain, shame, fear, and trauma from past experiences (often from childhood). They are called ‘exiles’ because they are often suppressed or banished by other parts of the self to protect the us from re-experiencing our intense emotions. They’re the parts of us that we feel are “in a closet” or “unreachable”. They hide away deep in the psyche because their feelings of raw, intense fear, shame, rage, loneliness, terror, grief and powerlessness are overwhelming.

Managers are protective parts that work to keep our ‘exiles’ hidden and protected from their overwhelming feelings of pain. They proactively focus on control and prevention, managing day-to-day life in ways that prevent the exiles from being triggered into the feelings they carry deep within. Perfectionism, criticism, people-pleasing, overthinking, controlling or any proactive strategy that helps avoid triggering situations are the work of our manager parts.

Firefighters are also protective parts, but while managers are generally proactive, firefighters are reactive. They show up to “put out the fires” when managers are unable to shield the exiles from being triggered. When the exiles’ painful emotions start to surface, firefighters jump in to quickly to rescue. The issue is, however, firefighting parts often use rather extreme or impulsive strategies to numb and distract from the pain, as the system hasn’t learned or experienced how to feel or process the pain safely (usually, our early entourage didn’t provide context or support for learning how to feel and process the original pain safely, hence the pain having to be stuffed away to begin with). Common forms of ‘firefighting’ include addictive behaviors and acting out (from major addictions, such as extreme alcohol use, to more minor ones such as emotional eating), various forms of self-harm (from major self-harm up to suicide, to lesser self-harm, such as excessive exercise), and other similar behaviors (such as picking fights with others) that provide quick relief from consciously feeling the pain, but have negative longer term consequences and do not ultimately resolve the underlying causes of the pain.

Parts-led activism

Exile-led activism. You can imagine how exile-led activism is often fueled by our deep, unresolved emotions of anger, grief, fear, shame, or a sense of past injustice. Activism led by our exiles is a way for these parts to seek validation, revenge or reparation for the pain they have experienced. Rather than healing or creating sustainable change, it is more about expressing and projecting the unhealed pain outward. For this reason, exile-led activism is characterized by intense emotional reactions, a sense of urgency and desperation, and a lack of long-term and sustainable strategy. It can be seen in a highly polarized view of “us” (the oppressed and wounded victims) vs. “them” (the oppressors or enemies), which contrary to the goal of positive change, often inhibits constructive dialogue, collaboration and compromise. One can feel as though an exile-led activist is externalizing their personal wounds and that their fight is more about themselves than about their external cause.

When any of our parts are in the lead, as you can see, our essential curiosity is, in the language of IFS, ‘taken over’ by our parts and this tends to create battles, wars, polarization and exhaustion both within and without, rather than collaboration, solutions, healing and hope.

Self-led activism

Self-led activism is not driven by helplessness, control and addiction, but rather by integration, openness, acceptance, creativity and equanimity. In IFS, the Self is known for and recognized by its eight qualities: curiosity, compassion, clarity, creativity, calm, confidence, courage, and connectedness. Self can address profound injustice while remaining open, because it accepts things as they are, while having the confidence and courage to invite and facilitate change.

We can see self-led activism in more balanced, thoughtful and inclusive changemaking. It allows for a blend of urgency with strategic thinking, passion with empathy, confrontation with dialogue, and inner and outer healing. It can harness the energy of our exiles, managers and firefighters, but does so in a way that is more integrated and sustainable, less reactionary, and more likely to lead to constructive change. Self energy allows us to direct our action without becoming overwhelmed by it.

Of course, many activists may have some aspects of their essential curiosity in tact, and in those areas are leading from a place of Self, while other aspects of their essential curiosity are disconnected from Self, and in those areas they are leading their activism from their parts. Most of us are a combination of wholeness and fragmentation, so naturally our activism reflects that mix back to us.

In the rest of this article, I’ll answer some common questions I’ve heard over the years (and have asked myself at times on my own activism path) from activists who are aiming to lead their activism from Self and open, balanced curiosity.

As without, so within

So what do I do with all the rage inside? What about the parts that want revenge? How do I make any difference if I don’t speak out against evil?

That’s the interesting thing about activism and the curiosity that leads us to it: they actually lead us back to ourselves, time and time again. Engaging in activism is not just an outer path we walk. It’s also a path for us to get curious about ourselves, to refine our connection to Self and our capacity to engage as Self, rather than as a collection of wounded fragments. Outer without inner as an activist doesn’t really make sense: the world consistently shows us who we are and how we can regain access to Self, and that regaining access takes us through inner challenge, change, transformation, growth, renewal and often, transmutation. As an activist, we deepen our connection to the outer, through shifting the inner.

Who I am as an activist today is quite different than who I used to be. The parts-led aspects of my own activism helped me along the way to see where the inner polarizations existed, to run up against walls in my “inner family” and to, ultimately, need to connect with the curiosity of Self enough to want to break down those walls.

From the early days of my activism work, I have been inspired by the Dalai Lama’s incredibly devoted and passionate Self-led activism. He has engaged in political activism, climate activism, and many other forms of global changemaking, and he has consistently done so from a place of love, curiosity, respect, and Self. He is very open and has written and spoken widely about his inner process of the cultivation of Self (using IFS terminology here) in his activism attitudes, behaviors, growth and development. In fact, it was his book, The Art of Happiness, that I read when I was 26 years old, which ignited my curiosity to wonder if maybe I could really make change on a wider scale, and who I would need to be as a person inside myself to do that.

In the nearly two decades since then, I have worked to become that person; to address various parts of me that wanted to take over and lead my activism at times. Mindfulness and contemplative practices have helped me greatly in this endeavor, but there have been parts so wounded that my efforts alone didn’t suffice to address them. Therapy, including IFS-style therapy and Compassionate Inquiry in particular, have supported me in addressing those deeply exiled inner polarizations and the parts-led activism that had grown out of their dynamics.

Through therapy, I have been able to restore my essential curiosity in the places where open curiosity and acceptance had come to feel synonymous to threat. And that has outward effects: in those areas, rather than judging myself and others (an expression of my manager parts in the lead), I have become more able to sit with nuance, and see the complexities involved in any situation, no matter how dire (an expression of integrated Self). Rather than seeing myself and others as wronged and helpless victims (my exile parts at work), I have become more able to accept the challenges and legitimate suffering inherent in living and see the creative potential in healing, learning, growth, recovery and reconciliation (a Self-led worldview). Instead of holding my ideals as “right” and condemning other points of view in those areas of my wounding (a manager-led perspective), I have become curious about how my own and those other points of view came about, and where possibility lies for positive change given how things are now (a Self-led attitude). Instead of needing to “overwork to fix everything now” (with firefighter parts in the lead), I have become able to grant myself and others space and time, and realize it’s okay to suffer sometimes (Self in the lead). Perhaps most of all, instead of focusing on what hurts and what is lacking (as I tended to do when exile parts were in the lead), I’ve developed the capacity to appreciate the world as it is right now before anything changes (being led by the presence of Self).

Action from care vs. action from fear

But doesn’t that lead to laziness and uncaring? Won’t you just stop advocating and changemaking if everything’s ok as it is?

No, because I’m still a creative, alive being in a creative, alive world. Appreciating the world the way it is, in all its paradox and complexity, doesn’t mean I don’t have any influence. If I think my child is beautiful and perfect just as they are, it doesn’t mean I believe they’ll stop growing or that they need no further care from me. Rather, my care and influence emerges organically from and is structured and guided by admiration, respect, love and openness, rather than by judgment and fear.

For those of us who have been fragmented and polarized inside, our inner managers and firefighters tell us that if we’re not controlling everything and frantically fixing “problems”, everything’s just going to get worse. Then the inner exiles panic, because they can’t handle any more pain. This is the dynamic that can keep the inner family system in a hyperactivated state, unable to be curious, calm, compassionate, and appreciative of life today. I get it; I’ve lived various parts of my life in some version of this dynamic. And I can attest to the fact that resolving this dynamic through inner work and therapy does not turn one into an apathetic automaton. Rather, it frees us up to reconnect with our essential creative agency, our open-hearted curiosity and our sense of personal power to lovingly influence the world in which we live.

This is not to say that being wounded and fragmented is bad and being healed is good. They are two different experiences of living the same life. They both have value, and they are both intelligent and meaningful in their own way. My point here is that activism is a mirror for us to see where wounding and fragmenting is compromising our creative agency and access to our essential Self, and to see to what degree we want to and are able to expand our experience of life into more re-connected and healed spaces, and how that opens up our creativity for changemaking.

From my own experience again, I can say that my creative agency which arises from Self, and is informed by but no longer led by my traumas, feels so much more powerful and connected. That’s not “better” than it was before, which contained a painful mixture of powerlessness and disconnection, hope and frustration; it’s just different, and that difference feels subjectively more powerful and less constrained by my prior limitations. As a result, I’m able to sustainably engage so much more collectively, because I’m so much less triggered personally.

Activism & archetypes

If my activism is Self-led, what will it look like? Without being angry, focusing on the rage of injustice or compulsively fixing things, how will I know what to do and how to do it?

Exploring activism on a larger scale, we can identify life themes, like archetypes, which tell us a story about our own activism path and where it fits into collective change.

In my own case, one of my main life archetypes is the Slave archetype. Activism has mirrored back to me how I’ve lived and felt stuck within the painful sides of this archetype, and how I can creatively engage with its opposite, the Master archetype, in generative ways in order to pull me out of fragmentation and polarization into wholeness (I’ve written about this in the book Retrieving the Bones). Feeling stuck in the Slave archetype, activism felt like a duty to me, something I had to do to keep my life and the world from getting worse. Life was the cruel Master and I was its Slave, trying to fix everything so the Master would stop punishing me. Of course, this is another take on the same themes above – my exiled parts, managers and firefighters were enslaved by my wounding, and the Self was the integration of all the parts into the whole – “Master and Slave”. Working with these archetypes helped me to embrace the wholeness of Self, to bring it consciously to my activism. I’m neither the Slave (helpless) nor the Master (all-powerful), but a combination of both personal responsibility and personal power. That certainly changed my orientation!

Similarly, a mentoring client of mine recently shared how they have historically operated from the Outcast archetype in their leadership and activism, and we explored what it would be like for them to also embrace their Belonging (or Citizen) archetypal qualities in their attitude and actions going forward; to be informed by their experience as the Outcast, while embracing the capacities they’ve developed as the Belonger. The possibility of taking action from a holistic perspective of this archetypal dynamic shifted their perspective considerably on the activism project they are currently undertaking. It allowed them to see how they are not only fixing problems “out there” or playing out their wounding dynamic “in here”, but rather taking a holistic archetypal journey in the inner-outer creative interplay of their activist life experience. Consciously embodying the Outcast-Belonger dynamic will open up possibility spaces for everyone who comes into contact with them in the future, and whoever engages with their cause.

What are the archetypal themes and journeys you’ve felt yourself living out in your life? How do they inform how your parts may be tempted to take over leadership of your activism, and how your Self can encourage a balanced approach by expansion into the full power of the archetypal process? Here’s an excellent guide to exploring your activism archetypes, their strengths and shadows, and their possibilities for meaningful expansion: Exploring Archetypes, by Shamillah Wilson. She’s got a great collection of other books & resources on activism too.

Activism profiles & contexts

Are there other ways I can map out my unique activism calling?

Yes, there are other ways to approach this too, beyond just archetypal themes. One could look at enneagram types, MBTI types, human design profiles or any other personality styles or classification tools, and see how their type, style or profile informs their own activism journey.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll share my profiles: enneagram 5w6, MBTI INFP, human design manifesting generator. I can look at each of these types/profiles and see how my activism allows me to creatively explore and express essential aspects of my personality, style and purpose, both for my benefit and for the benefit of others. The 5w6 likes to build structures (that’s certainly what I’ve done in my activism), the INFP likes to work from a place of deeply rooted values and harmony (my activism needs to be aligned with my highest values and to promote harmony), and the manifesting generator both innovates in advance and waits for needs to arise (a profile that requires a level of patience I have worked very hard to cultivate!). Of course, my activist calling looks quite different in practice from someone who, let’s say, has a profile of enneagram 2w3, MBTI ESTJ, human design projector, or some other combination of traits, preferences and characteristics.

These perspectives help us to understand that our activism will look specific to us, because just as everyone has their own archetypal life themes, everyone has their unique personality profiles and styles and different combinations of traits. Bringing IFS back into the discussion, everyone has their own wounding and parts working to protect from differently perceived threats. And we’re all in different social locations, places, communities, cultures and timelines. Activism as it looks for me as a white Westerner living in a pretty stable place (Switzerland) might look very different from activism for you and everyone else, depending on where you all live and what’s relevant to you in your life. There will be different relationships, social issues, injustices and opportunities depending on context. So it’s how your profiles combine with your context that gives your Self its unique activist map to navigate and lead in. Walking that path is your creative expression of Self in the world.

Multidimensionally meaningful and collectively braided paths

What about the collective aspect of activism? How are others’ activist maps and activist Selves intertwined with mine?

Deep appreciation, solidarity and profound transpersonal collaboration can arise when we realize we’re all unique as activists and we’re all equally necessary. My voice is important, and so is yours and so is everyone else’s! All of our paths are multidimensionally meaningful. I’ll be publishing an article soon on the quantum nature of activism, but till then you can check out Karen O’Brien’s writings on Quantum Social Change (I highly recommend her book, You Matter More Than You Think). Similarly to what I spoke about above, when we work with wholeness and Self in the collective, we realize there is a place for all of us, and that together we have the chance of healing collective wounds and regaining access to Collective Self. You can also learn more about this via Thomas Hübl’s work on Healing Collective Trauma.

So, we find that the path to changemaking is both an inner path and an outer path to walk, as well as an integrated inner-outer path that cannot be separated into two. We are all walking these braided paths together, in a sort of Collective Activism, both developing appreciation for the life we are given just as it is and loving Self and Collective Self so much that we cherish our role in stewarding, caring for, healing and providing more holistic possible futures for us as individuals and for us as a collective to live into. We do this by acknowledging what the mirror of activism shows us about our own fragmentation, working to heal and integrate it, and in turn, contributing to the healing and integration process of the fragmented parts of our collective.

However you’re showing up to your part of the braided activism path, I thank you for walking it with me and with all of us.