As the modern digital world hums with a new crisis every hour, I’ve found it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain a calm, focused mind. Every day new posts, emails, and videos compete for my attention and grip my nervous system with an exhausting sense of urgency. Why do I keep watching media I know will drain me and consume my valuable time? Is some part of me sabotaging my efforts for peace and productivity? Why would I sabotage myself?
Whenever we find ourselves behaving in confusing or contradictory ways—especially when we know the behavior isn’t good for us—it’s time to learn more about ourselves. There is always more to us than what we are consciously aware of. In fact, we all have many different personalities who often feel they’re living all alone in a dangerous world. When we take time to discover these inner personalities and introduce ourselves to them, we unify all those lonely parts of us into a whole and loving inner family. This is the practice of IFS (Internal Family Systems).
Discovering the Inner Family
We could call these personalities “shadow aspects” or “subconscious fragments of self” or we could just call them “parts.” We are all comprised of lots of different parts. If we take time to get to know them and bring them into connection with one another, our inner experience becomes more unified, compassionate, and whole. We become our own best friend. This is the essence of Internal Family Systems.
When we act in ways we don’t understand or like, it often means that one part of us is at odds with another part of us. To resolve that inner conflict, we need a method of inquiry—a way to investigate what’s really happening beneath the surface of our conscious awareness. This noble endeavor is known as self discovery and there is very little that is more rewarding than discovering who you really are.
IFS teaches us how to meet all the different parts of our personality without judgment or frustration. IFS teaches us how to listen deeply to what each aspect of our self believes. We are not always aware of what we believe. Our beliefs often run in the background as hidden conclusions we never took time to check. What they believe determines why they act the way they do. Faulty logic may not seem faulty to the part of us who is operating under its influence. Every part of us has a good reason for his or her behavior—but many of our parts operate from outdated or mistaken logic formed from childhood. IFS is a journey to meet young parts and inform them that we grew up.
Discovering Faulty Logic
Through IFS, we learn to sit with these young parts patiently, with genuine curiosity instead of frustration. When they feel safe and heard, they reveal the beliefs they’ve been protecting. They then often welcome a new, updated understanding with relief. IFS is a journaling and a visualization practice I use weekly to investigate my own confusing behaviors with compassion and a sincere interest in truth.
Whenever I discover a part of myself I do not understand, I know that there is part of me who is functioning from faulty logic. There is a part who feels alone and responsible for more than is a reasonable load of responsibility. Frustration with myself means it is time to take a moment to discover the misguided beliefs being held by isolated parts of me. Once I can find them, I can then lead them towards more accurate beliefs.
For me, self-discovery is a shamanic journey into a safe space in my mind. When I take a moment to close my eyes, feel my feet on the ground and observe my breath, I am able to see my thoughts happening rather than be swept up into them. I become a witness to the noise within.
An IFS Journey Example: Meeting the Part Behind the Doom-Scrolling
Here is a glimpse inside one of my recent self-therapy IFS Journeys to learn more about my impulses to scroll stressful media… Using a notebook, I switched back and forth between journaling questions, and watching my inner vision as my imagination unfolded.
To begin, I imagine an empty clearing in my mind, a place that feels safe and inspiring. Sometimes it is a grove of trees. Sometimes it is a specific place from my childhood. In this clearing I ask, “Who needs to scroll on social media? Will you come and talk to me?”
Whenever we take time to get to know parts of ourselves, they are usually eager to talk with us. All the parts within us long to be understood. When we ask them to come join us, most of the time they leap forward and are eager to share. If a part of us does not leap forward, it is usually because some other (older) part is stopping them out of fear of what might get revealed. In such a case, we want to then hear from that worried, frightened part first then circle back to the part we wanted to talk with in the first place.
When I asked if my Doom-scrolling part would come talk with me, she emerged right away. Her reasoning was very clear.
She explained:
“If I keep up with all the conflicts in the world, I will understand them. If I understand them, I will be safe. If I do not check in with current events, something terrible might happen that I won’t be ready for.”
This young part of me believes that paying attention to conflict equals protection. And she is willing to suffer the anxiety it causes in order to keep me safe. With this understanding, rather than be frustrated with her, I can see that she is actually exposing herself to frightening content out of a sense of bravery in order to be prepared to defend and protect against some future abstract danger.
When I realize her perspective, I imagine myself kneeling down and looking this young part of me in the eyes. I say to her, “Thank you for working hard to keep me safe. The news is not a reliable source of information about reality. Reality is what is happening right now in this room. Let’s put our attention on our immediate surroundings.” I then spend quiet time with her helping her understand that I am an older, more capable part of her. I help her understand I am the part of her who grew up. She is a young part who does not need to feel responsible for our safety. She can just be young and have young interests.
Creating New Inner Agreements: Scheduling Safe Media Time Together
I ask her if she would like to give that task of protecting us to me (the big one). She says yes right away because she does not like being scared and overwhelmed by the larger world. She is relieved to learn that being frightened is not an effective way to keep us safe. I then ask if she would like to go do something else besides doom scrolling. She immediately lets me know she would rather be petting bunnies. In our imagination, we go find a meadow of bunnies and sit there with them. She discovers that she likes our imagination much more than the doom scrolling activity and is now more interested in supporting our efforts to protect our imagination and limit exposure to the outside world.
I let her know that I think it best to schedule a specific time each day for getting online and glimpsing the big, wide world. We decide that the hours between 4 PM and 6 PM are a safe enough time to get online and we decide to set a challenge for ourselves. I ask if she’d be willing to not get online before 4 PM for the next week. She likes that this is a challenge rather than an order. We are going to track our efforts.
And I also tell her I will come back to her in another dedicated IFS journey to see how she is doing. I do not leave it up to her to reach out to me. I schedule time to visit her. She lives in a creative world and loses track of time easily. I, on the other hand, keep track of time and keep my appointments. I am the adult here. So I promise her journal time, and I keep that promise.
This builds a profound friendship between us where each of us feels safe to be who we are. It is up to us to learn how to protect our minds from the assault of distractions. The world has become too large. It is our job to keep it small enough to empower our talented creative parts and learn how to be content with the simple room we are in and all the tools at our disposal to express ourselves.
We will, of course, again be drawn into the next latest drama. We don’t have to avoid media altogehter. We can schedule exposure and set up a structure to keep the influence of the big wide world at a managable distance.
Invitation to Begin Your Own IFS Journey With Compassion
This week, before you open an app to scroll the latest events, close your eyes and sense who within you wants to scroll. See them in your imagination. How old are they? What are they wearing? What do they need? Do they sense you seeing them? Take them by the hand and go with them into the media. Set a time limit and step away when that time is up. Then remind yourself, “I am not here to fix the world. I am here to find my own inner well-being.”
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a powerful self-therapy method that not only improves your imagination, it also builds understanding with aspects of yourself that have been frustrating you for a while.
When we have more patience with our own parts, we also develop an understanding and patience for other people and their parts.
