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Burdens lock doors for you

IFS has a theory of how bad experiences give people burdens and turn their parts into exiles and protectors. To get a sense for this theory, imagine a girl named Alma. She gets good grades, and has fun with her friends—her life is pretty good. But one year in school, she has a teacher who takes to embarrassing her in front of the class when she doesn’t know the answer to a question. Alma’s too embarrassed to talk to anyone about it, and so she doesn’t manage to process and release the shame.

Exile

That feeling has to go somewhere, so a part of Alma—let’s call her Belle—takes on the shame along with the belief “I’m not smart enough.” You can imagine Belle carrying a backpack weighed down with that emotion and belief. The painful things a part carries make up its burden.

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You are not your parts

A common saying in mindfulness is “you are not your thoughts.” When you start noticing them mindfully, it becomes clear that they are separate from you. You are the Observer; they are the observed. Noticing this separation often has a calming effect, giving you space from troubling inner experiences.

I believe that the whole story is something more like “you are not your parts, and your parts are not their thoughts, feelings, sensations, and impulses.” I’ll explore the first half of that idea here and the second half in Your parts are not their burdens.

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We all have parts

Internal Family Systems (IFS) holds that the mind is made of multiple subpersonalities – that when you say “a part of me is angry, but a part of me understands,” that’s literally true.

In modern Western thought, the idea of “multiple personalities” has been associated with extreme pathology, and that pathology has been extremely stigmatized. That’s given us a lot of incentive to ignore and downplay any experience of multiplicity we may have. But what do you notice if you tune into your inner world with an open mind about parts?

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