When we begin exploring Internal Family Systems (IFS), we often arrive eager to identify our parts, understand what's causing our suffering, and ultimately change what feels difficult about ourselves.
But what happens when our exploration becomes so focused on what's wrong that we lose sight of everything else within us?
In this second episode of Unlearning IFS, I invite us to shift our attention beyond parts and toward a fuller experience of our humanity.
We explore how the familiar categories of Parts and Self can unintentionally create binaries and hierarchies, where Self becomes something to strive for and parts become something to manage or fix.
What if, instead, we cultivated our capacity for awe, wonder, pleasure, relaxation, and steadiness? Not as permanent states to achieve, but as experiences we can move into and out of, even in the midst of difficulty.
I also introduce the idea of a third space, recognizing that our internal experience includes far more than Parts and Self. Our biology, physiology, nervous system, and the many dimensions of being human are all part of our internal system.
This episode is an invitation to move beyond categorizing ourselves and toward experiencing our whole system with greater flexibility, compassion, and curiosity.
In this episode
Why focusing exclusively on parts can reinforce the idea that something is wrong with us.
How the Parts/Self binary can create an unintended hierarchy.
Moving beyond intellectualizing the qualities of Self toward actually experiencing them.
Cultivating access to awe, wonder, relaxation, and steadiness.
Understanding Self as something we can move into and out of rather than a permanent state to maintain.
Exploring the third space of biology, physiology, and the nervous system.
Meeting our internal system without making one aspect of ourselves the authority over another.
An invitation to explore
Where in your life have you experienced awe, wonder, pleasure, calm, or steadiness?
Who were you with? What were you doing?
And what might become possible if your inner exploration included not only the parts of you that struggle, but the fullness of who you are?