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?

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.

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.

Your parts are not their burdens

As I mentioned in You are not your parts, “you are not your thoughts” is a common saying in mindfulness practices. IFS introduces a layer into this picture: there’s you, and then your parts, and then your thoughts:

• You are a Self
• You have parts
• Parts have thoughts, emotions, sensations, and impulses (some of which are burdens)

The way I see it, differentiating your Self from your parts allows for mindfulness, and differentiating your parts from their thoughts and feelings allows for self-compassion (or rather, parts-compassion!).

Release, not self-restraint

In You are not your parts, I introduced the concept that you are a Self underneath all of your parts. Your Self is pretty great! When you’re centered in your Self, you can handle any feeling, and you’re in touch with your natural wisdom about what’s best for you. But we learned that some parts of you carry burdens that are like bulky backpacks, taking up space in your inner world, blocking the influence or “energy” of the Self from shining through. So one of the goals of IFS work is to release those burdens and allow Self-energy to flow more freely.

I also pointed out that burdens have the effect of locking doors in your inner world, isolating parts from each other and from the Self. In the story of Alma, it’s obvious that Belle, Alma’s exile, is locked up and alone. But even Alma’s protectors Clara and David feel like they’re on their own, which makes them believe that they can’t give up their problematic strategies. So it’s not just the burdens that create problems; it’s also the isolation. Another goal of IFS work, then, is to unlock these doors and foster connections in the inner world.

The friends we made along the way

In the last post, we saw that Self builds relationships with parts, and those relationships make it possible to release burdens. Since burdens are the source of so many of our problems, this release can transform our lives for the better. And yet, I don’t believe that Self builds relationships in order to release burdens. I believe that Self builds relationships for their own sake. The real treasure, as they say, is the friends we made along the way.

Techniques for releasing burdens are not yet as widely known as they should be, but there are in fact many such techniques. However, I stick with IFS instead of, or in addition to, everything else because it gives me the ability to explicitly maintain long-term relationships with my parts.