The Landscape of Brokenness: Four Modes of Human Functioning
When Jesus gave us the Parable of the Sower, he was illustrating the core problem in the human condition, first announced in Isaiah, that he came to remedy. People’s hearts are blocked, their eyes see but do not perceive the truth they need, their ears hear but do not understand how to become free, (Isaiah 6:9-10). This condition is described in Isaiah 40:4-5, In the wilderness (the desolation of the heart), make … a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Isaiah is saying that there are different kinds of obstacles in the heart that block the healing presence of God.
The Bible is clear. There are obstacles in the heart that block us from connecting to God, and those obstacles set up in the places where we experience damage to our hearts. The greater our internal stress and disruption, the more powerful those obstacles become.
Among the four modes in which our minds and hearts function, three can be obstacles to connecting with the healing presence of God. Isaiah 40:4-5 tells us that removing these obstacles is part of the process of healing the heart.
Note: The four modes listed below come from the therapy model of Internal Family Systems (IFS). This four-part model is designed to empower lay people to better understand the “landscape” of their own hearts and minds. Other labels for these four categories, that are not based in a form of therapy, are used in other ministries. However, I find the IFS categories to be the most easily understood by the average person. While ministry is not therapy and should not be thought of as a substitute for therapy, we have found these categories to be very applicable to understanding the biblical concept of the broken heart. They help understand our deepest healing needs as well as define internal blockages that can prevent us from entering into healing encounters with God.
The Four Modes
All of our basic mental processing, including broken parts, fall into one of four categories of functioning. They are manager, firefighter, exile, and true self. Think of each of these modes as a type of part that we can find ourselves in.
Manager:
Our internal managers are proactive. They set goals and try to produce an orderly, well-managed life. Managers can accomplish many good things. They get us through school, produce results at work and home, help us walk out our Christian life, etc.
Our manager part(s) are also involved in managing pain, trauma, and mental struggles. The problem with managers is that, for all of the good they do, they cannot heal wounds. Managers are a response to wounded inner children rather than being the inner child themselves. Yet, they can be engaged full time in trying to get us healed. They try to understand and solve problems in our inner world, develop plans to live differently, control interactions with people to produce positive outcomes, self-protect, and try to avoid things that trigger wounds. But they do not heal. This can leave us feeling like we are spinning our wheels. It leads to emotional exhaustion, hopelessness, and even depression. When Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,” (Matthew 11:28), I believe he is speaking to the impact of the management mentality in all of us and the fact that only his healing brings true rest.
Firefighter:
Where managers are proactive in trying to prevent pain, firefighters are reactive, working to extinguish emotional flare-ups after they happen. Firefighters have one objective, to put out the fire. The fire is usually perceived as another person or something we don’t like within ourselves. When we are in firefighting mode, we are not always considerate of what is good for ourselves or others. Firefighting can include things like anger, fits of rage, cutting, alcohol, bulimia, and at its most extreme, suicide. Once triggered, firefighting can be the most difficult state of mind from which to escape.
In deeply wounded people, firefighters can take over when they try to access their deepest wounds for healing. Firefighters can make it difficult to identify emotions or make it impossible to form logical thoughts. Firefighting can shut down emotions completely and take us into long analytical or explanatory discussions that function as diversions to dealing with deep wounds, etc.
Deep wounds always consist of a triad of a manager, firefighter, and an exile. They can function so closely together that they feel as if they are one blended part. They are always working, consciously or subconsciously, to exile the wounded inner child and prevent them from becoming active and causing further problems in our lives. The problem is that nothing can completely prevent a wounded inner child from being triggered.
Exile:
Exiles are our original inner children who became stuck in the past because of the unmet needs of feeling loved, valued, or enough as a person. They are called exiles because managers and firefighters try to proactively and reactively push them out of our daily lives. Where managers and firefighters focus on what to do, exiles are processing who we feel we are (or are not). The more deeply wounded our exiles, the harder our managers and firefighters work to exile them. The term for this is internal polarization.
Think of it like a boat where an exile is on one side, and its manager and firefighter are on the other. The more wounded the exile, the further they are leaning out of the boat. The further the exile leans over one side, the more the manager and firefighter must lean over the other to balance things out. The further out everyone must lean, the more unstable the boat becomes.
This can require so much energy that our true self (below) gets pushed entirely out of the boat. When that happens, a manager will have fully taken over in place of our true self, becoming a false self who works full time to keep our lives under control. The more polarized we become, the greater our sense of internal rejection and the more difficult and lengthy the inner healing journey.
An Inner War
The Apostle Paul wrote of an inner war within himself caused by his polarization in Romans 7:23 when he said, “I see in my members (parts of myself) another law (governing principle) at war with the law of my mind.” It is not uncommon for managers and firefighters to hate an exile. (You can identify this when you hate some of your own problem-causing emotions.) In verses 15 and 19, Paul agrees. He feels “hate” for the “evil” behavior that he cannot manage to get out of his life. In verse 19 he says, “The willing (to do good) is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.” (He cannot stop his exiles and firefighters from being triggered.) Romans 7:15-25 is a very insightful passage acknowledging the fact that self-management and firefighting cannot produce the inner healing that we need.
True Self:
Our true self is our reasonable, understanding adult self who is at emotional and relational rest with self and others. Our true self is who we are when we are not managing self or others, fighting emotional fires, or living out of our wounded exiles. When we are functioning as our true self, we have a clear and positive sense of our identity. Therefore, we are able to be a life-giving presence in relationships. Our true self has our clearest connection to the presence of God and is the truest expression of our God-created identity. It is the foundation of our mental health.
The true self is so grounded that when we are in it, even a deeply wounded and confused person will feel strong and free of fear. I have had suicidal people and bulimics, who can be riddled with anxiety and fear, tell me they are fearless, strong, and functional when they are living out of their true self.
As previously stated, the true self can be pushed out and rendered inactive by managers and firefighters for days, weeks, months, or years at a time. Some exiles can be healed with an inactive true self. But experiencing our true self and understanding how it feels to be our competent, functional self becomes mission critical to deep healing. Finding our true self gives our wounded exiles, managers, and firefighters an understanding of what the destination in healing looks like. Therefore, if the true self has been pushed out by a manager acting as a false self, then finding and (re)activating the true self can be very important in the healing process.
The more deeply wounded our exiles, the more challenging it becomes to navigate the world of managers and firefighters who manage and protect those wounds. Often, navigating this landscape in the healing process happens in stages. For more information on that, see The Three Phases of Deep Healing.