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A space to settle in and listen, and see where the episode takes you. This inspiring, reflective podcast is an invitation to travel deeper, with compassionate self-enquiry.
Henny shares insights from her own life, alongside practices that help us connect with our inner wisdom, explore our relationship with change and find a greater sense of flow. Henny believes we all hold our own answers, so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions here. This is a space to be with whatās true for you, and to grow from there.
If youāre drawn to slowing down, listening in, and exploring what it means to live with greater authenticity, this podcast is for you. Guided by psychology, mindfulness, therapeutic coaching, flow journaling, and everyday compassion, we explore ideas that help us step further into our inner worlds, in order to shape the changes we seek in our outer worlds.
Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self awareness with profound self compassion. I'm Henny. I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self love. Settle in, and listen, and see where the episode takes you.
Henny Flynn:Hello Soulla.
Soulla Demetriou:Hello Henny.
Henny Flynn:So settling in and actually that word medicine that you just sort of brought in I think that's such a beautiful and far reaching word particularly when it's used in the context of this work, this work that you do and the work that I do where it's non pathologising medicine. That feels really important. Think I might like to return to that at some point in our conversation.
Soulla Demetriou:Yeah I'm an an enormous fan of the non pathologising and the freedom and space that comes with that. Definitely. I was just actually talking about this with someone about running a workshop and we were exploring like what would be the key takeaways that you would want someone to have from internal family systems and it is this idea of like this is not who you are, these are parts of you and these parts are not bad. They've just adapted the best way that they could. And I I will always be reminded of the story shared by Gabor Mate about nurses bringing in clients, patients to rehab and saying to them you know well done for finding a way to survive Because that's all an addict's done, really.
Soulla Demetriou:They found a way to survive. Now maybe it's time for another way. And I love that. I just love the freedom when we step away from things that can feel so bad or negative or that we can resist or we can banish from ourselves. The anxieties, depression and instead we open our arms and just say this is a part of me and this part is carrying such a great load.
Soulla Demetriou:And how would it be to be with it now in the way it might need to know that it can soften and surrender. Just a little. Not because I'm telling it to do that but because it might feel safe to do that itself.
Henny Flynn:Yeah and that to me that not because I'm telling it to do it because I think it's illusion of control you know the thing that Tara Brack talks about this idea that we can control our environment or we can control our internal environment that we so often that kind of comes with the language of must and should and ought and you know and just listening to you there that sense that you know when we're doing the work with the parts it's not about telling them how they should show up or where they should be or what they should do or what they should now think or how they should now feel. It's literally having a conversation with that part in such a way that the part is able to express itself and we're able to accept what we hear and be able to meet the part in a way that we feel equal. I'm really mindful that we've kind of dived into this whole topic and it's
Soulla Demetriou:always We're straight in there. Just in there.
Henny Flynn:The thing is of course, you know, when you're doing this work you're able to operate on so many different levels simultaneously. When you're doing this work with the parts, you're able to operate on so many different levels. From the outside it can sound weird and like how and you know just sounds a bit kind of bonkers that you can talk to a part of yourself and have this relationship with a part of yourself and yet when you actually step toward it it feels like the most natural thing in the world. So I feel I would love to ask you Sula, God there's so many starting points for this conversation which aren't where we started today but like so many other starting points. What I really want to ask you is what was it that led you to the parts work and learning the internal family systems work knowing that there was so much that came before it.
Soulla Demetriou:It was like the suspense then of what the question was going to be. All my parts were like what are going to ask? Are we going to be able to answer it? Are we going to be able to give a good answer to it? I love sharing when I do podcasts the parts that are coming up.
Soulla Demetriou:Because there's always that part that's like, are we gonna mess it up? Are we gonna say something stupid? Then I have to remember like, didn't make this up. I have been doing this for like fifteen years. And that trust.
Soulla Demetriou:And that's the part of that right? Isn't it? It's that continual listening. Like listening with care and tenderness. That is happening all the time and we integrate it more and more you know over the years.
Soulla Demetriou:I'm sure it's the same for you and there's a whole sort of there's a whole situation going on within in any one given moment. But to go back to your question, it's a really I'm glad you asked it because I actually sent an email last week to the person that introduced me to internal family systems. Thanking them and saying I have just written a book and I want to thank you because you introduced me to internal family systems. And so that person was Sarah Powers. For those that might be familiar with her, she is, the creator of Insight Institute.
Soulla Demetriou:She was also one of the the creators of Yin Yoga back in the day. So she's a mindfulness, dharma, incredible teacher, spiritual teacher and my path to her to go back a little bit further started by realising that I was suffering a lot. I was in a lot of pain and there was a lot of suffering and so I set out on a journey to try and understand how to fix that or how to just how to free myself from that because I felt I was losing just more and more of myself. It was like the essence of me was just so obscured by anxiety and by worry and by this emotional dysregulation I was experiencing. And so I kind of broke free from life as I knew it in London.
Soulla Demetriou:In corporate land. I set out on a journey. I trained as a yoga teacher first partly because I wanted to be able to earn money anywhere in the world. That was kind of one of my drivers. But also there was a deeper wisdom that this was something important.
Soulla Demetriou:This was going to be something important in my life. I didn't know why but it was. And the more I went into yoga, the more awareness I built and the more I realised how yoga alone kind of asked questions but didn't necessarily bring me the answers in a way that made sense for the pain that I was experiencing. I'm very I'm being careful when I use the word pain and suffering because there was both. There's pain and then there was the suffering that was caused by the pain that I'd experienced in my life.
Soulla Demetriou:Both both are true and and and at the time going back, I mean this is going back like twenty ish years more or less. There was a lot of sense of kind of affirmation and love and light. You know the love and light movement. And you know the journey of yoga is about union and remembering the remembering the wholeness of our nature but just telling ourselves that is is often times not enough. And it's certainly not enough when you've been through a shed tonne of trauma and when you're suffering.
Soulla Demetriou:Because then you're like suffering and then you're blaming yourself because you're like I can't manifest myself out of the suffering. Know? And that's just another way that we kind of beat ourselves up in a way. And it was when I remember I started to read Pemma Chodron, who's just such a wonderful teacher. And she said affirmation is like you cut off your arm and it's know it's hanging off by a thread.
Soulla Demetriou:And you're shouting at it, I'm okay! There's nothing wrong with me! When blood's gushing out of your arm. It's just not effective. And it's just too much to ask of a human.
Soulla Demetriou:And I think that's a little bit with all respect to everyone and their journeys. In my experience that's how it felt to me. There was just such accumulation of challenging experiences and I couldn't just you know believe my way out of it. And so that finding that curiosity and I'm very grateful I've always had even in the darkest moments like curiosity and some kind of spark in me that's kept me moving forwards and kept me saying there has to be another way. That took me into kind of like a Pematrodden which took me into mindfulness which landed me into within that world hearing one day.
Soulla Demetriou:I can't remember exactly when the teaching of Buddha that you know paraphrase is to be is to experience pain, to be is to suffer basically. And it was that sense of like oh I'm not doing it wrong. Like to be human is to experience these challenges Is to experience these pains and these challenges. And again I'm using that know care that word the difference between care pain and suffering because you know the teachings say that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. And that took me onto a journey of mindfulness practices, of the wisdom insight practices which led me eventually to Sarah Powers because I wanted to train as a a Yin Yoga teacher.
Soulla Demetriou:And then of course, as is often the way, we'd go for one thing and we get the medicine that we need. So I went to train for Yin without really understanding that it was actually mindfulness training and retreat. And that began my journey of mindfulness with these amazing teachers and my spiritual mentor who I've had now been working with for over ten years. Incredible woman called Ayala. The mindfulness took me so far in that it allowed me to start finding I'm giving you the long version.
Soulla Demetriou:Were you after the longer version?
Henny Flynn:Yeah, I love the long version.
Soulla Demetriou:I've got so
Henny Flynn:many thoughts going through my head as I'm listening to you. I'm actually going to have to grab a piece of paper because there's things I want to come back to, but keep going.
Soulla Demetriou:Listeners, this might be a six hour podcast. We have a lot to share with you. Penny and I, we do like to talk. So within the mindfulness, I went down that path and it brought a lot of relief just understanding that you know, making peace with our imperfection. Know, the Zen teachings of how suffering comes from making things more complicated than they are.
Soulla Demetriou:And it was it was an incredible support to me to know that I was human and to know that pain wasn't something that we dodge. And that the mindfulness practice allow me to cultivate this, you know, this phrase which has become such a core to my teaching, which you know, the the pause between stimulus and response, which is often attributed to Viktor Frankl. It's actually not him but it came by him. And that pause between stimulus and response is all to say it's a space where we start to recognise what's happening and learn how to be with it without turning away. But in that pause, it's like the understanding is allows is what allows us to break the reactivity and to come into a new place of responding.
Soulla Demetriou:So there was, as is always the case, thinking mindfulness. This is the one. This is the thing. I'm in for it. But what I actually found was having a lot of trauma because when you've had a lot of trauma mindfulness can be quite challenging.
Soulla Demetriou:It's not actually always the one. Certainly not alone because you're basically saying to someone who's been through a lot of really difficult painful experiences, I'd like you just to sit with all of those please. And also have ADHD. So you add another layer on to having this internal restlessness. So I remember doing a silent retreat for a week and I don't know how it would be today.
Soulla Demetriou:I do believe it would be different but in that moment it was a certain kind of hell on earth for me. It was really tormenting. I came out of it and it was very challenging. Was like okay so I can see because I was there for a week being like I'm aware of everything. I'm aware of everything.
Soulla Demetriou:Now what? It's so painful. The now what? Was self compassion. And there there's been a whole cast of characters and these divine beings on earth who've guided me.
Soulla Demetriou:But now it was tardrack. And that was the balm for my soul because it was like okay with presence now I can start to respond with self compassion. And so it came from mindfulness, then self compassion. And that was such a gateway. That's where the paths because they say mindfulness and self compassion are like the wings of freedom as they're called.
Soulla Demetriou:I really they're the first step of the methodology that I work with because it's like if we start here as our foundation, know these are lifetime practices. We're already transforming so much. And so then with the mindfulness and the self compassion, there came this possibility to start layering. I was lucky with the teach I had to bring self compassion. First of all, like, how can I be a friend to myself?
Soulla Demetriou:And then there was this curiosity of like, oh, and where do I feel that in my body? And what shape does it have? And what words does it have? And how can I be with that? Does it have an age?
Soulla Demetriou:So before IFS was even introduced, IFS was introduced internal family systems. And then still studying with Sarah Powers, still studying self compassion. Sarah Powers introduced internal family systems on a training one weekend and it was like just the jigsaw piece that made sense of everything. And for me it just made sense and it's continued to since then. Mean that must be nine years ago maybe.
Soulla Demetriou:And it's a practice for which I'm just so deeply grateful for because it's been such a great support for me. But I've just seen it transform people. So free free people. Like free people. To be their truest most unburdened self.
Soulla Demetriou:And yeah so I hope that everyone gets to experience themselves through this lens in one way or another in a way that makes sense to them because it's not a practice you do. It's not like you go and do nine sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy. It's paradigm shifting. It's how you understand yourself and the world and it becomes just as we practice presence and we practice self compassion. We bring our parts everywhere with us and it just creates a completely new understanding of the world.
Soulla Demetriou:Both the world close to us, within us. And when we look at what's happening in terms of economically, politically, it just you know like ah parts. Parts everywhere.
Henny Flynn:So thank you. Thank you for sharing that and for taking us on your journey. I think there are a number of things in there that really sparked thoughts for me but one of them you know just your closing point there about how everywhere we look we can recognise. For me, it began with recognising that everywhere there are systems and that was such a big part of my training in my coach training was in systemic and constellation work and then when you and I did some work and you helped me under sort of meet the very first part that I connected with and recognising like oh so basically it's my internal system and then it's like oh internal family systems understand it now. Like this kind of, it was, I remember there being this like, you know, the curtains part or the, you know, yeah, so that's really how it felt.
Henny Flynn:It's like, the veil parted parted and suddenly this like that's why this work with systems resonates so deeply within me because I recognise that I've been working with my internal system without knowing that that's what I've been doing but all of the compassion work that I had been doing had been speaking to these parts of myself but I didn't have the language or kind of that very gentle framework that IFS gives us to be able to articulate what was happening. Does that make sense? Yeah
Soulla Demetriou:and it reminds me of a point you made earlier which is we all have, this language already we speak of. A part of me wants to do this. A part of me wants to do that. And when you take someone into IFS, it's a it's a deep experiential process. Know, it's a bit like, It's somewhere between what might feel like a meditation and how you might imagine hypnosis in a way.
Soulla Demetriou:It's not hypnosis, but you go into that kind of gentle inner almost trance like space. And when you allow someone to go through that you take them into that space, when they come out they're like that was completely bonkers. And it was also I can't really doubt it because it just arose from Which within is what you said earlier. It's like the sense of 'I don't understand it but it's truth'.
Henny Flynn:Yes absolutely.
Soulla Demetriou:It's truth from a place that oftentimes we've never touched until that moment. And could you imagine that you've got an entire family of these parts or yeah, a family or a collective parts within you that have been there your whole life. And then can you imagine if you're 25 or 35 or 45 or 65 and the very first time that you open the door and you go, hi. Hi. Hi, guys.
Henny Flynn:We're like what? And suddenly seeing sort of everyone who's here and also the ones that aren't you know. So you know this language of exiles that IFS uses you know these parts that have been sort of pushed away suppressed or ignored or tucked away, hidden away in some way and sort of, and this work to bring our whole self home, you know. That for me is so, oh, just like my whole system softens when I when I recognise that that work and and also well recognise it within myself but also recognise it within the work with others. This just this gentle you know warm compassionate welcoming home of the whole of us and I'm really mindful as I say that of you know you talked about the Buddhist sort of practices that were part of your journey or the Buddhist teachings that were part of your journey and this idea that you know this sort of the correlation between pain and suffering and how for so many of us in, in oh such a human way, the only way that we've been able to navigate the world has been to suppress because the pain has been too painful to turn And so clever beings that we are, we learn all these strategies to distract, to suppress, to dissociate, to numb and we push down the stuff that feels too hard in order that we can survive, in order that we can keep going in some way.
Henny Flynn:And so much of this work, I think, so much of what I, you know, have learnt and you were definitely, I would credit as being really the first sort of, the first teacher that I had that I consciously recognized as a teacher, obviously, like all through our lives, there are many, but I I think you were the first person that I came across that I went, oh, hang on a minute. There's some stuff that this woman is saying, which is speaking so deeply to me. And this is before you trained in the IFS work. This was really about the compassion work. I feel like you you gave me this kind of leapfrog directly into Tara Brack actually and radical compassion.
Henny Flynn:That meant that I was immersed in compassion right from the moment where my system was at its most vulnerable, its most open and raw and ready to receive. And luckily it was you and not you know something which might have you know taken me longer to navigate or to make sense of or whatever. But I'm so I'm kind of mindful of this the some of the you know that the complexity or what can feel like the complexity or the challenge of this work is actually it is about turning toward ourselves and it is about this slow and very gentle releasing of some of the strategies and behaviours and the thought systems that we've had, that we've been using to try and keep ourselves free of pain. And actually kind of what feels so counterintuitive is that if we turn toward ourselves with profound compassion that stuff feels so much easier to bear when we actually do listen to what's going on inside. But I think that then leads me on to something else that you said which is that it's all very well-being told this stuff and I definitely recognise that there are you know many sort of you know wonderful humans kind of sharing you know very like beautiful messages maybe about like things like affirmations or whatever or kind of love and light.
Henny Flynn:But if we're not shown how it can just feel like another burden to carry. Oh now I've got to kind of heal myself. But if we don't know how to do it it's incredibly difficult.
Soulla Demetriou:Yeah I'm always reminded of from years of teaching yoga and running retreats and you know teaching people arm balances for example. You know you've always got in yoga this like the cast and a crow pose that everyone wants to do. It's an arm balance and it's like it feels impossible until you feel it in your body even for a second, really feel it.
Henny Flynn:I remember doing one on retreat with you and just being absolutely flabbergasted that it was I could ever ever get my body to do that, to trust I could ever trust my body enough to do it.
Soulla Demetriou:Yeah. But it's like once you have the feeling, can remember the feeling of, in this case, an arm balance. But what if you've actually never felt safe? Yes. What if you've never felt compassion?
Soulla Demetriou:What if you've never you know part of our jobs as the people that sit opposite our clients is sometimes lending that energy so that you can have your own embodied experience of it. It's only once you really feel it. You can't tell someone they're safe if they've never felt safe. They need to feel what safety actually is. And you know that's I think what's really beautiful about the the IFS practice is that you have this felt embodied sense and experience of love, of compassion, of safety.
Soulla Demetriou:And and not only do you have that, but you have it from within yourself. You know, our job is to help people arrive at that point. But it's not to be that for all eternity. It's to help that person be that for themselves. And then you can not only feel this have this experience or something you've yearned for consciously or unconsciously your entire life.
Soulla Demetriou:But to find the resolution within yourself. I mean imagine the the what is the word I want to use? The trust and the hope and the courage and faith. So many words that come from that. From inner resourcing, that re parenting process as we call it.
Henny Flynn:I think your analogy of the crow pose is really beautiful actually. And when I, because you know, so my like, oh I remember that feeling. And then I heard myself work out what it was. And it was learning how to trust, learning how to trust my body because I had never learnt how to trust. I'd always so for me a big part of my story was always rejecting my body, not trusting that I was strong enough, fit enough, brave enough, capable enough to do things, to achieve things like physically and also rejecting myself with the way that I looked and you know so much, so much disconnection.
Henny Flynn:Just makes
Soulla Demetriou:me Let's put that we have to pause for a moment to allow like a hug of that.
Henny Flynn:Just so much love. I have so much love for her. I went, this is a slight segue, I went for a walk, there's a really tall, very feisty hill at the back of our house and I've been walking up her every morning for the last few weeks just as a as a way of like coming back into my body and my legs were so tired this morning and I had really big boots on and I had to have a little chat with my body. So I was like chatting with my legs and just going it's okay my darlings, like we're entirely capable of doing this and it's okay heart, you're entirely capable of moving the blood around and it's okay arms, you can help the legs like this whole sort of thing but this in a way it's like it's a version of parts work because it's about like the language that we use to connect with ourselves is so profound. And, you know, listening to you sort of talk about that crow pose, like for me it was like a it was a revelation that I could become so trusting of my own self that I could hold myself in that impossible seeming posture and do it for myself and with myself without having to look outside of me for something else to make me feel safe enough or safer like to feel entirely safe with myself in that pose really profound and I think so you're you know as you sort of then spoke and said but what because I have never felt like I could trust my body in that way.
Henny Flynn:If you've never felt compassion, if you've never felt safety, if you've never heard words of comfort, like deep words of comfort, if you've never learned how to speak to yourself with kindness, Being told well that's what you now need, that's all that's what you need to do. But you don't know that it's even possible. Like we can have that intellectual kind of knowledge, oh I should speak to myself more kindly. But if we don't know what that sounds like or what those words are
Soulla Demetriou:and I remember I have this really distinct memory many years ago wondering you know in this practice of somewhere between self love and somewhere between learning about self compassion. You know I could see that there was there was a gap somehow within me which is you know hence his whole work about feeling enough because I could see that that certainly wasn't the case. And I remember really reflecting on is there a possibility to get behind the first thought? I'm gonna say I find it really hard to put this into words still. It's like I can practice self love.
Soulla Demetriou:I think I was using self love as the term then by kind of responding to my life in a way or responding you know, caring for myself, let's put it. But like, can I get behind that moment of pain? The moment so even earlier, the actual scaffolding of my system changes into one that has more capacity for love. It was like rather than just being like, okay, now I'm gonna respond, which which is, you know, where there's a lot of time spent. It's like, is it always just about responding in new ways?
Soulla Demetriou:Or is there a way that in time what lies behind that starts shifting as well? I guess the foundations of our system. And that was before I found IFS. And I think IFS was really one significant it was my significant answer to that. And even though life still involves responding when there's a forgetting, think the cumulative shifts that happen in the system, I think there is a baseline that has changed as well.
Soulla Demetriou:So even though I'll always be responding in self compassion, I'm always gonna have to remember with many critical this or that to level. It's like the poem, you know, I walk down a street and there's a hole and I fall in it. And you're familiar with that poem and you keep know you keep walking down the street and eventually you just walk around the hole in the pavement you don't fall in it. It's like the holes are still there but the amount of time you spend in them is different. I think self compassion allows us ongoing in a daily practice to meet ourselves and respond with love.
Soulla Demetriou:But the more we do that, I often think it's like the reservoirs of self compassion are filling and so our baseline also starts shifting. When you overlay that with the parts work you actually get to reconcile some of the reasons that perhaps self love and self compassion was so obstructed in the first place.
Henny Flynn:And also recognising that so many of the strategies that we might have used to numb the pain, to divert our attention from the things that feel uncomfortable about ourselves from shame you know past behaviours whatever. That they are constructed out of self love. Think that's something that I found really, I mean I found quite hard navigate when I first started noticing like okay so I have this understanding that I've been doing this in some ways and again this is before I sort of came across IFS and the kind of like the beauty of the simplicity of those teachings and the way that Richard Schwartz has translated that parts work language. So one of my stories is I realized one day when I was looking in the mirror that I was pulling this horrible face at myself. I was cleaning my teeth and I was making myself have like you know the biggest double chin that I could and I was like screwing my face up.
Henny Flynn:Mean honestly Sula it was like when I actually saw what I was doing in the mirror it was like oh my like literally that voice of oh my darling what what is happening here? And then the recognition that I'd been doing it for a really long time. That every time I'd looked in the mirror when nobody else was there I'd do some like funny like face, something to wound me. And so two things from that one what a practice in self compassion it was to start to shift that behaviour and now when I catch sight of myself in the mirror it kind of like it makes me laugh, I give myself you know, I send myself love. It's like it didn't just happen overnight obviously.
Henny Flynn:Was quite a process. But also then sitting with this like so what was happening with the part of me that was making those faces in the mirror and how was that an expression of love or how was that an expression of this part doing sort of doing the the work that it felt it needed to do in order to what keep me safe, stop me getting too big for my boots, You know, what was it? Like took me, it was such a, well, the curiosity of that, of sitting with that and really ultimately recognising it was a part that was just desperate to be seen. Absolutely desperate to be seen and it felt so ugly that the only way it could show itself was in private in the mirror and then the recognition that it was asking for something. Why have I started telling you all of that?
Soulla Demetriou:Well and thank you for sharing with all of us. There's on one side I wanted to kind of share these questions that I often train clients to take out of the session which is when you notice something coming up. In the first one you know in this moment the story I'm telling myself is or in this moment what might this part be the story it's telling itself? And what is the fear of what would happen if it didn't do this?
Henny Flynn:And
Soulla Demetriou:I suppose and you absolutely don't need to share there's a little bit of me listening with curiosity and wondering what was the fear of this part? What would happen if it didn't do this?
Henny Flynn:So I'm very happy to share. The fear was that I would get too big for my boots. That was the fear was that I would be so exposed that the true, inverted commas around that word, the sort of the pain and the self loathing that that part was holding would be seen by others. Because I would be too visible, too exposed if I got too big for my boots. And so what it wanted to do was keep reminding me that actually I wasn't all that.
Soulla Demetriou:So just to put that like in a to repeat that back in the language so people can really get a sense of how our protectors are love. There's a protective part of you that had developed this way of kind of creating an ugliness to have a sense of diminishing your sense of power and worth. So that was how it did its job and its fear was that if it didn't do that job something would be felt and revealed. So behind that will always be the wound right? So your
Henny Flynn:book is called you have always been enough' my fear has always been 'I am too much'. Yeah. And so that was the root of it.
Soulla Demetriou:Beautiful and so then that part that protected like what did it need to know and hear in order to feel safe to allow you to now come to a point where you smile at yourself in the mirror?
Henny Flynn:Okay what did you need to know?
Soulla Demetriou:Only if you're happy sharing.
Henny Flynn:It's been such a long time since she was in such a difficult place. She's laughing actually now. Yeah what she needed to know what she needed to know was that she was safe with me that's it yeah she needed to know she was safe with me because she didn't feel safe anywhere That's going make me crying. She didn't feel safe anywhere.
Soulla Demetriou:Well all of you is always welcome. Thank you for sharing that because you know we talk about this really profound practice and it's so abstract and there's such generosity in sharing and experience. Because that's how we make sense of it. Because I'm sure there's so many. I mean I can relate to what you've just shared and I can feel like my heart is wide open right now just with love for that experience and for all those parts of you and it's sometimes just knowing.
Soulla Demetriou:Imagine if you work really really hard every day in your life and you feel alone in that. And we don't even need to talk about parts to imagine this. Imagine you're the parent who feels like you carry most of the emotional load or you're in a job where you're like carrying it or imagine how it feels if one day someone just turns up and goes I've got you. Wow you've been working so hard. I'm here now with you.
Soulla Demetriou:You're not alone.' I think we can probably all relate to how that would feel in a very felt tangible way. And that's what we're doing to these deep tender parts of us that you know holding such great fears. Such great fears.
Henny Flynn:And also what I notice is that she's now become a barometer for me. So if I notice that I'm cleaning my teeth and I start giving myself a double chin or frowning as I'm looking in the mirror it's like oh hello honey, okay there's something going on here, there's something. So she's doing the task of letting me know that on some level, some part of me is feeling unsafe.
Soulla Demetriou:Yeah. Absolutely. And that is so but I think it's really important to name that that it's not these parts disappear. I mean, they lessen.
Henny Flynn:Yeah.
Soulla Demetriou:But they also still, as you say, become ways of letting us know oh hold on'. You know I was just recording the audiobook recently and it was a very it really made me laugh because as I was recording the audiobook for You've Always Been Enough. You know you have to obviously read the book and they say once you've written something never read it again. You have to read every single word of it. And so all my parts are coming up.
Soulla Demetriou:At first they were like la la la this is so exciting. I'm recording an audiobook with Harper Collins. This is amazing. And then, yeah, I was like, oh my god. Is this book okay?
Soulla Demetriou:Is this alright? And then having where I was in, I'm like, that's it. This is terrible. Everyone's gonna it was a whole and I was reading step two, which is all about the parts work. So was literally reading it, and then you have your protective parts, and this is what they do.
Soulla Demetriou:And in the background, these parts are going, well, look. If everyone hates it, like, they really, really, really hate it, like, if your entire business is annihilated, if you're destroyed, like, if you're ashamed, if they heckle you out of the country I mean, if anyone's gonna care that much, you know, bless them. And but this this is how it feel. Like, it was like, don't worry because you can just move to Costa Rica and set up a surf camp. So and then I was suddenly like, hold on, parts.
Soulla Demetriou:Hold on. Whilst reading my book about parts, there was a whole committee meeting going on. Part that needed a backup plan, the vulnerability, the shame, And they were all there and they just let me know. They just needed me. They needed me.
Soulla Demetriou:They needed me a lot because it's a very vulnerable moment right now. Understandably it's like really putting yourself out into the world and saying, 'Here's my heart. What do you think about it?' And so I love that idea of it being a barometer, this inner language. And that's where the presence and the mindfulness practice always forms a foundation. Because that's where we continually are building that capacity to notice.
Soulla Demetriou:Because we have to first notice. If we can't notice then we can't unblend and we can't become the friend. And that's you know that's why that's kind of the entry point in my experience in my system.
Henny Flynn:I think something
Soulla Demetriou:has
Henny Flynn:yeah that there's so much in your language and actually having picked up the book and also the astonishing honor Sula that I need to name that you've included quotes from the My Darling Girl poems. I'm rubbing my knees for some reason it's like I don't know sort of metaphysically what that actually means but I'm holding my knees as I say this, I feel like a little girl you know this kind of the fact that you've quoted words that I've written alongside teachers like Tara Brack and Thich Nhat Hanh and Mary Oliver.
Soulla Demetriou:Opening yours is the like a poem. Think Henny it's because, mean one your words are beautiful and I love them. But I think it also shows our connection and our resonance and the path we've both walked that is very interwoven. Because it's almost like you came on And this is by no means me taking credit for your work. Your work is your own and it's beautiful.
Soulla Demetriou:But it's like you came into a space that I held and I introduced you to a practice. And that practice turned into something which you evolved. And then we work together in parts and your med We often joke don't we about what our medicine and what our love languages are and words. We talk about words and it's like you took something and turned it into this beautiful expression which reflected back a teaching to me in a way that was so beautiful for me to receive and made so much sense of the teachings I offered in another language that I then went on to offer on retreats. When I run my IFS retreats, I actually the first IFS retreat I ran, I gifted everyone your book because I was like, there isn't a way I can put this better than my darling girl.
Soulla Demetriou:Know, That that just isn't because it speaks so deeply to that. And so of course, of course, when we talk about befriending our parts, it would be your words that would, you know, speak so beautifully to that. Yeah so thank you for letting me include them.
Henny Flynn:Gosh well thank you for receiving them. I am you know you're saying this this place that you're in right now it's very vulnerable of course because I know I know many writers and often those who write fiction say it's much easier than when you write, you know, a book that is, you know, about yourself, you know, that is kind of real life in some way. Because you know fiction although it might have elements of your own story it's fictionalised it's fantasy it's you know something so slightly separate whereas your book you know the thing that really struck me when I was beginning to read it over the weekend was just oh my goodness me Sula I feel you in every word I really do I'm also what it just sort of feels like it is this beautiful guiding hand you know companion guiding hand to sort of to support you through these these things that we've been talking about you know how how do you feel what is compassion like for so many of us like even understanding what that word actually is or or how do we start to deepen our self awareness you know what are the steps that we can take and what I love is that how you've you know while there's it feels to me like there's so much kind of poetry within and lyricism within the way that you've written it's also really rooted in very practical aspects of this work too it's not esoteric and know wafty it's really rooted and grounded and I think it's that principle that then enabled me to go on and do the learning and the training and the work that I've done it's in a slightly different path but it's still rooted in this work of self compassion because for me we can't change anything unless we know it's there and if we only know it's there in a really critical way it's the way that we choose to change it is possibly going to be less far reaching than if we can have self awareness with self compassion.
Henny Flynn:If we can have those two things like you say the wings then the change becomes much more possible and so you know I sort of see this yeah this kind of the place where you and I meet is feels so it feels so safe to me actually that's the word like I have this like this deep deep sense of safety in the sort of bottom of my belly this rooted grounded place of safety which then means that ah now I can move on I can take action I can find my way through things whatever that might be yeah and was there another thought there there was another thought. I think what that reminds me of is something that you said about that even in the darkest times you've always had this sense of curiosity and this spark, this ability to keep moving forward. And I'd really love to touch on that a little bit actually if that's okay because that feels really really significant for so many of us that when the time when the days are really dark when to me the language of the I have like a veil can come down and knowing that I can move through is something that I didn't always have before.
Soulla Demetriou:So I'd love you to talk about that. So nice and light bit of it then.
Henny Flynn:Yes something really easy.
Soulla Demetriou:Something really easy to talk about. It feels like there are maybe two aspects to speak to. Maybe one is to start almost slightly more on the surface it feels. So for those who can't see me, Henny and I frequently close our eyes and we are very much somatic body based practitioners. We can't just answer.
Soulla Demetriou:We have to close our eyes and we have to listen to what we're feeling first. There is one which is perhaps a little bit more clear cut in a way which is what is the alternative and am I willing to choose that alternative? No. Okay. So I don't have a choice.
Soulla Demetriou:I have to keep going.
Henny Flynn:Gosh that's a light answer. Or
Soulla Demetriou:maybe that's the more straightforward. Is I cannot choose the alternative? And that alternative has been in various degrees of extreme darkness and extreme pain. Some of the darkest, darkest moments. And it's like well that's if I'm at that crossroads that's one way I can't choose that.
Soulla Demetriou:So that has picked me up from the depths in a you know. I always have an image of like an exhausted soldier. Like Okay then put another foot in front, one foot in front of the other and keep going because what's the alternative? I remember talking to another facilitator I'd worked with a lot who's phenomenal and has been through. She's a survivor of some very difficult moments.
Soulla Demetriou:We both agree that it's almost like well what's the alternative when you've been through a lot? So that's one which is in some ways slightly less hope filled. But it certainly speaks to our human resilience. Don't know if you remember when you did your coaching training. I feel like they shared these all people learning how to coach and talk about the grass that will grow through tarmac.
Soulla Demetriou:It will always grow towards the sun. Nature always tries to grow towards the sun and that is our human spirit and resilience. And then the depth behind that, that holds all of that is something different. That's my intuition. And so what I'm very grateful for Well one is the resilience of that soldier that just kept going.
Soulla Demetriou:But for the way that I've always just had a sense of something and that I've had the courage, the capacity, the desperation. Who knows? Probably different in different moments to listen to that. Almost a point that I can't not. And that was really hard because I remember being like in London at the end of my twenties.
Soulla Demetriou:I worked in advertising, an agency. I had a very good job. I had an amazing opportunity. Two amazing opportunity comes up. Really unusual for that level of my career and my life.
Soulla Demetriou:And it was really I had a home there. I had a a very kind partner. You know, it was all there around me. Everyone was like doing the thing, the marriage, the babies. And I just had a feeling.
Soulla Demetriou:I was like I don't want the feeling but the feeling was there. And the feeling you know took me to training yoga, took me to travel around the world several times, took me so out of the comfort and certainty that so much of me craved. And yet I just had to keep following and listening to it. And so on the surface what it looked like is I threw my whole life away with no idea of anything. And that was hard.
Soulla Demetriou:There were many moments when it was really hard and it was really scary. Like what am I doing? And yet in there somewhere was the feeling. And just learning to trust that feeling. So I think there's two things within that in those darkest moments.
Soulla Demetriou:One is just like the gratitude for deep listening and the capacity to be kind of tugged by something beyond words, beyond clear answers but a knowingness. And it's the same knowingness that I've surrendered to in my coaching. When I sit with someone it's so beyond what I need to know now. I just listen. I mean in shamanic practices, in medicine, practices energy medicine, talk about being the hollow bone.
Soulla Demetriou:It's like something that just comes through. So I think that's been the gift of that being able to listen and just trust. Because when we can listen to that it takes us so beyond the limitation of words. Words are wonderful, beautiful gifts. They are a love language and they're also kind of limited because they're still created humans you know and by the head.
Soulla Demetriou:So being able to trust in the wordless and to follow that even when it makes no sense has been the comfort I think and the guide.
Henny Flynn:There's so much in there which resonates for me and the phrase that keeps coming up is this what trust has been a word that's emerged several times as we've been speaking. Also this sense of what I would call my wisest kinder self, you know, the part that writes my darling girl poems.
Soulla Demetriou:I would challenge that isn't a part.
Henny Flynn:Exactly, there we go.
Soulla Demetriou:I would say that that's your self energy. Exactly. I would say that is the container that holds all of your parts. That container is tapped into the infinite.
Henny Flynn:And
Soulla Demetriou:so it becomes like a transmission.
Henny Flynn:So I remember thinking when I first published that first volume of My Darling Girl. A) it no longer belong, it doesn't belong to me, I didn't recognise writing any of the poems, like I still turn to the book myself now, if I'm struggling I'll still turn to the book and open up a page and just see what's there. So, the part of me that is needing the reassurance will turn to the book as a way of turning toward myself capital S. And I had this terrible fear as well that she was never going to speak to me again. The part at the time that thought that she was something external from me.
Henny Flynn:So when I was first writing these poems it felt like it was something external from me that was writing. And I thought oh gosh is that is that it? Am I never going to hear her voice again? And then through this work, this work, this work recognising that to your point of course it's myself. It's my the self that holds all my parts is actually you know who has written all of these words and now my understanding is because I do reside in self in a way that I didn't know was possible ten, fifteen, twenty years ago.
Henny Flynn:I need to write to my parts less. So the My Darling Girl poems don't emerge in the way that they flooded out of me when I was first on the journey. And so yes so I think that the sort of the upshot of all of that really is this sort of sense of the inner trust that I hear from you you know this what
Soulla Demetriou:you call your sort of
Henny Flynn:intuition and trusting that voice inside you that said there's something else there's something else my darling yeah it's not this and that can be very challenging can't it because also sort of through so much of our life in a very human way according to our conditioning and the culture we grew up in we're often taught to suppress that voice. We're taught not to listen. Ended up working for twenty years in financial services, which is not a natural home for me, I would suggest. I say that with deep love for everything that it gave me, everything that I learned in that experience and you know all of the beautiful connections that I made with people through that but really it's not a natural home for me but because I was suppressing the voice that was going all you want to do is live in a field. I know.
Soulla Demetriou:And yet had you tried to live in a field when you were 25 it wouldn't have been possible. And so it's so funny there's a point in the book and I remember my teacher Ayalla saying to me you know but if you could change who you were would you? And you're like It's actually yeah I invite anyone to reflect on that question. It's like actually no because there is an essence and it's like behind that question was where would I actually have to go back to if my life had changed? I realized I couldn't.
Soulla Demetriou:I couldn't in order to be in a different expression there isn't like a moment. It would be to completely alter the essence of who I am in this lifetime. I could have to go back to another lifetime to change this reality. Then you start seeing how everything is in a way unfolding in the timing, in the way and in the moment that it needs to. I think that's why we talk about this soul journey somehow.
Henny Flynn:And that the work arises when we need it to as well. And I think that that's also when I think about when books emerge into the world or the moment when a book like lands in our hands or, you know, we pick a book up off a bookshelf or, you know, however it reaches us or someone recommends it to us. It's because on some level some part of us understands that there's something here that is going to support us in some way on our journey deliberately being so like super vague about it all because it's so unique
Soulla Demetriou:to us. Yeah. You
Henny Flynn:know and what each person takes from your book will be different for So I'm really mindful of you've sent this body of work out into the world and you've touched on it before and said that sense of vulnerability, but I just wonder how is it now? Particularly seeing as the book decided to be launched.
Soulla Demetriou:It didn't launch. It was a whole week early spontaneously. No in fact it was a week early spontaneously. I'm on a full moon which I love. It's very interesting.
Soulla Demetriou:It does feel exactly as you and many others have said. It's no longer mine. It's out there. There's a real surrender now. Mean, that said, my publisher did suggest that you never read reviews.
Soulla Demetriou:I'm certainly still human within that and still curious to know how it lands in the world but it does feel like it's taken on an energy of its own. But even as I wrote it, I wrote it as like a ceremony. I wrote it in ritual and in ceremony. Would actually drink cacao every time. I would open the space.
Soulla Demetriou:I would light a candle. Would be like a prayer and then I would say like 'let what comes through me obviously there's me and everything I've learned and accumulated but let it take on this intention of meeting the people that need these words in the way they need to be met. That will be meaningful to them. So there's kind of the science, there's the psychotherapy, there's the wisdom practices and then there's something alchemical that happens which is called in through the intention of it. May this reach whoever it needs to reach in the moment they need it.
Soulla Demetriou:I really trust that. I've worked with thousands of people on retreat and I've just seen that. My clients, I rarely have advertised my client where people just arrive and we're always a bit like, where did you come from? I mean, like, I don't know. They're always like, look, but here I am.
Soulla Demetriou:Not sure why, but I'm here. I'm not even sure how I know about you, but I'm here. And so I just that trust. And I do think you know it's interesting at several points through this conversation. I've also just felt that word trust and that is the greatest gift any of us can have is self trust.
Soulla Demetriou:And I believe that IFS brings you into that connection because it brings you into trusting that you can be that safe and secure anchor and you can listen and meet yourself in the way that you need. But the more time you spend in that capital S self, the more time you spend in connection to something, whatever language feels true to your higher consciousness, the intuition, spirit, God, nature, love. And and so then you're like shrugging off some of the load of what it is to be human because you're plugging right into this infinite source that's like there. If you listen, showing you and guiding you.
Henny Flynn:And that it sounds to me like it's in the most sort of beautifully perfect way writing the book is the same practice as working with someone one to one, as working with group. It's about allowing I'm going to use a phrase that often gets used and it's a bit confusing in the context of the language that we've been using, but you know the sense of like taking ourselves out of the way. But actually it's the opposite. It's like really being in self and trusting that will find the way. Because I know when I sort of first trained as a coach and I was doing a lot of work in executive coaching, doing a lot of leadership coaching and so spending time with other executive coaches.
Henny Flynn:And they talk about all the preparation that they did before a coaching session and I just be like but how? How can you do preparation? You don't know what the client's going to bring. Like you don't know what's been happening for them since your last session.
Soulla Demetriou:Yeah it's funny because I find people ask me about my coaching. I'm like it's really hard to explain to you because because I'm like because everyone's different. And so I'm gonna sit in front of you, and your journey is gonna be different to the next person. But what I can guarantee you is that we will you and we will come into relationship with your system and we'll transform your relationship to yourself. Yes.
Soulla Demetriou:And everything will change from there.
Henny Flynn:Yes.
Soulla Demetriou:Because everyone is different and will be met from that place. And
Henny Flynn:so all of that knowledge that you have, all the knowledge of the psychotherapy is and the trauma informed somatic work, I know that's all part of your offering and the IFS of course. All of that is there, but I really have this sort of sense of just in the way that you talk about writing the book. I know having worked with you, you know, you have coached me. And recognising the way that I work with others, it's about we kind of like the thing emerges that is needed in that moment. We don't have to sort of have this rigid preparation.
Henny Flynn:Here's everything and I'm going to bring it all in immediately.
Soulla Demetriou:But that's all that's ultimately what we're hoping to bring to our clients isn't it? Because if we go back to mindfulness and the essence of mindfulness is like can I notice what is here and can I be with it without changing it? Can I sit with pain? Can I sit with discomfort? Can I be with it without changing it?
Soulla Demetriou:With that is this sense when we have all the parts and we lay that. It's almost like if we go back to those two wings of freedom, they're like the doorways that open into your system. There's so much depth you can go right into the depth of your parts. Then if you come right back up to the doorways again, it's like, I notice what's here? Can I respond to it?
Soulla Demetriou:And can I be with this? We're really creating the greatest self trust that says, don't need to rely on a certain set of circumstances in my life to be okay. I can trust that whatever life brings I have connection to my wisdom and myself that I will be able to navigate it in a way that is true to me. And that is freedom.
Henny Flynn:Which brings me back in this lovely alpha and omega of conversation, which is the bit that I hadn't pressed record yet. But you know I mentioned that I had been in conversation with someone this morning. And one of the things that they said today I asked them just to let the part know like whatever felt most true like what was it self really wanted to let the part know? And they replied or they spoke and said we are okay, we are okay, we are okay. And it was this for me it felt like this like the head it's like we are we are okay like logically intellectually we will find a way we have the answers we'll work it out Into the heart we are okay, like we can hold all of these feelings, we can hold the pain, we can hold the hurt and then down into the the horror, the wisdom in the belly like ah we are okay, we are okay, we are together.
Henny Flynn:I found you, I'm here. That sense of self trust that feels like the thing that you have been offering and are offering into the world you know also recognising that you know it doesn't mean it's a magic wand and suddenly everything is going to be okay there won't be any more potholes in the road you know it doesn't mean that does it That's the thing. It's not a magic wand. But what it is is a way in which we can navigate the world. Yeah.
Henny Flynn:In a way that feels a little easier.
Soulla Demetriou:Totally. Yeah, may we welcome more and more of that in for each of us.
Henny Flynn:Oh, Sula.
Soulla Demetriou:So, I
Henny Flynn:have no idea how this conversation is going to be for anyone listening to it.
Soulla Demetriou:Well, we loved it though. We loved it. We had a great time. We hope that you're still here listening to us. Henny and I can talk for hours.
Henny Flynn:What I really wanted to do today was not to not to sort of have like a kind of framework or you know a structure for the conversation but to allow it to unfold because I think that is what the work is. I think it is Yeah. A willingness to kind of hand ourselves over into the moment and see well what is here. Yeah. What wants to be heard?
Henny Flynn:So maybe we've got
Soulla Demetriou:that intuition at the end of the day isn't it? Letting what needs to come forward flow. Yeah thank you for having me. A little space here.
Henny Flynn:Gosh, gosh. The absolute beauty of the circular nature of being sat here with you with that book there. Literally that book has got your back Sula. I just want to like name that.
Soulla Demetriou:Oh I like that. Oh yeah. Yeah. I like them sit with that. Thank you.
Soulla Demetriou:And
Henny Flynn:yes and this connection with you. It's funny I had a message from someone on Instagram about I think I'd posted about your book. Someone messaged me and said is that your Sula?
Soulla Demetriou:I love that. Love well just to reflect that back I had a client message me who's also a client of yours because she met you on retreat and then joined you on retreats. And she's like, I'm reading the book and I'm overwhelmed. She's like, it was already a lot because it was like being back with you. And then you put Henny's coats in.
Soulla Demetriou:And she's like, I'm sobbing on the sofa with joy. She's like, You and Henny in the same place? Yeah, so it's our Henny and our Sula. Our Henny and our Sula. There we go.
Henny Flynn:Apologies to anyone for that accent. Just so lovely. Thank you so much and thank you for the book.
Soulla Demetriou:My great pleasure. Thank you so much.
Henny Flynn:Alright, my darling.