Internal Family Systems

Seeking to understand, rather than judge, the different parts of ourself

The anecdote

I am chatting on the phone with my friend. I'm talking about a time when I broke with a commitment that I had. The commitment was to not date until I had completed six months of working at my new job. I wanted to direct all of my energy to this, and I knew that as much as I would like to date, it was not going to help with this in the first six months.

And it worked. I was super focused and kicking ass. I was in my flow and delivering heaps of value to the organisation. The final step in my six-month plan was to complete the delivery of an offsite. And then she came back into my life.

I had been dating somebody for two years on and off, and it had been pretty special. The physical connection we shared was simply beautiful and at times spiritual. We trusted each other and intuitively knew what the other wanted. But we also knew that it could not last. She had decided that her life was going to be living in another country. And perhaps among other reasons, that was the one that meant we could not have a relationship that had some kind of ongoing nature to it.

She had been travelling for a couple of months and asked if we could have a coffee. And after catching up again it was clear that the chemistry was still there, and despite not being at the six months point in my new job, I decided to give in and start dating again.

As amazing as it was, part of me was disappointed in myself. I had gone against my commitment, and I felt a sense of internal betrayal. However I decided to keep seeing her, and this went on for another four amazing months. Amazing in the sense of the connection that we had together. Not so amazing in terms of the impact it had on other aspects of my life. I started to feel run down and sick. My work output was not at the same level that I wanted it to be. I stopped exercising as much. And I started to feel more anxiety.

What had happened here? There was so much good in the connection that we had. Part of me loved it. It was a wonderful release and so pleasurable. But other parts of me were suffering.

This was essentially the conversation I was having with my friend. He is a single dad himself, but more relevant in terms of the conversation we were having, he is a therapist. He reflected that what I was experiencing could be explained by a way of seeing our internal psychology which is called Internal Family Systems.

The insight

Through my friend’s insight, I started to immerse myself in an Internal Family System way of seeing the world, reading as much as I could and turning my meditation practice to focus on these things. I eventually started seeing an IFS therapist and slowly started to reconnect with different parts of myself and to understand the role they play in my life, and what they are looking to protect me from, sometimes in misaligned ways.

I came to learn that there was a part of me that wanted to connect deeply with another human. And when it got the opportunity to do this again, it jumped at it. And it jumped so hard that it was willing to stop all over other parts within myself. It was behaving in a way that was for its own benefit, and what it understood to be for the benefit of my whole self, however in doing this it was hurting me in many ways at the same time.

The thing I loved about this process is that it moved away from being disappointed in any of my parts, to thinking that I needed to ignore them or to move away from them, to embracing them and connecting with them, listening to what they wanted to say, and allowing them to move into the role they want to play in my life.

The consequences

I am still working through this process - bit by bit I am learning about new parts of myself, and I am understanding why they behave they want to do, and what they want to bring into my life. I can sense my system is realigning, and the consequences are yet to play out fully. However, I can see some things starting to come to life that have been dormant in me, like writing this essay.

The mindful wrap-up

IFS practice is in itself a mindfulness practice. It is about coming to an understanding of Self, and the other parts that make up who we are. In IFS, Self is the part of us that is compassionate, confident, curious, calm, connected, courageous, creative, and clear. And as we are able to connect with this part of ourselves, and engage with the other parts of ourselves, we can create a separation between them, and the ability to heal and align our internal family system.