The Enemies Inside Us

The Enemies Inside Us

Is there a part of you that drives you crazy? Maybe you have a habit of finding any possible way to distract yourself when you have a task to complete. Maybe there’s a part of you that tells you that you are never good enough and that no one likes you. Or it could be a part that disregards your own desires for the sake of others. It might feel like if you could just get rid of that pesky little voice, your life would go much smoother.

In Internal Family Systems, or IFS, (a model of therapy that informs much of my work as a therapist) we assume that every person has an inner world that is divided amongst various ‘parts’. Each part is like a little sub-personality within you and is actually the natural way of being. Parts have varying feelings, drives, and views. Often they are in conflict with each other and sometimes do things that are not helpful to us. In IFS we learn that however dysfunctional a part’s actions or urges may be, they always have a positive intention, and before they can change, it helps to understand what that intention is. 

Let’s use as an example the very common inner critic. This critic is the voice that tells you the most awful things about yourself. It tells you that you are stupid, fat, lazy, and awkward. It would make a lot of sense to hate this voice. It makes you feel like garbage. It keeps you from engaging in life. It hurts you and tears you down. It is time for this inner critic to change its tone because it isn’t serving you anymore.

And…can you ask yourself what is it trying to do? What is the intention that motivates this part of you? When you spend enough time with it and are curious about it, you may start to realize that it is very concerned with protecting you-keeping you safe from failure, rejection, becoming overwhelmed, whatever it may be. While the ultimate result of what this critic is doing is something that you don’t want, when it wins, it momentarily takes you away from what it perceives as a threat to your well-being. If it tells you enough times that you always say everything wrong, it may keep you from saying anything at all and then you don’t say anything wrong-at least for a while. 

So, what if rather than banishing, silencing, or distracting from this part, you instead listened to its story. You might realize that this part really cares about you. It wants you to be safe. 

I have found in my work with clients and in my own life that when we can acknowledge and even appreciate what is good about a part of us that may be causing harm, that part naturally begins to relax. It becomes less extreme. Usually, we find out that it doesn’t really want to do what it has been doing anyways. From this point, we can continue working with it to help it find its naturally valuable qualities and it is able to step down from the oppressive role it had previously been stuck in and it becomes much less intimidating.

This shift in perspective can change the whole tone of how a person relates to themselves, opening them to self-compassion and change that had previously been elusive. If that can happen on an individual level, imagine what might happen if we took this same change in attitude into our external world and relationships. 

Give it a try. Be curious about your own reactions and about what drives other people. You might just be surprised at what doors this opens. 

For more information about IFS, check out the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.