Our internal family and the fight to survive
by The MotherMind doctor
We all have parts of us that have competing needs.
The Queen song, “I Want to Break Free’, perfectly captures the push and pull of a relationship by needing freedom but also wanting security and realising this too late.
Even the simplest of actions can create this tension: part of me wants to go to the party, part of me wants to stay home curled on the sofa with a good book or movie.
What if we take this further to explore the competing parts of us in our lives, created from our earlier experiences, that influence our reactions to other people, our beliefs about ourselves and our attitudes to things such as success and security?
Welcome to the brave new world of internal family systems (IFS)
IFS is another way to understand our inner world without blaming, but rather aiming to understand and develop new ways to exist and relate to people (our outer world).
That all sounds very abstract so let’s look at a classic problem.
An outwardly successful professional woman, let’s call her Karen, laments she needs to feel seen and valued but hates public speaking.
In doing the IFS work, she identifies that when she was in primary school, she had to do a dance demonstration in front of the year group but tripped and everyone laughed at her. Since then, the part of her that wants to protect her from humiliation, attempts to minimise exposure to any threat of embarrassment, including public speaking.
If she were content to stay in her current work role at the office, she would not have to participate in public speaking, but in order to advance to a more senior role she will.
This is where another part of her is conflicted, because success is a way to be seen and valued. It is also a survival instinct because ‘losers’ could be isolated from the tribe, which inherently impacts the ability to survive.
The different parts of her are in opposition to each other and the decision to move forward can depend on other influences such as her childhood experience. For example, if Karen’s family measured success in terms of work achievements and status, or she only received praise for obtaining good grades, then her interpretation of this could mean that she was not valued unless she had good grades or achievement at work.
Then the weight towards needing to succeed may push her to engage with aspects such as public speaking with the goal of ultimately being seen. And the inner critic may help to motivate her further by using harsh words to drive her to keep going, when she secretly dreads being embarrassed. This may present as perfectionism, over preparation or anxiety, and hypersensitivity to rejection.
Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?
Many of us may have a story like this, or similar, if we have a cultural experience that prizes individualism and monetary success. And many of us may feel misunderstood in our interactions that can be perceived as aggressive or reactive, when we are as much internally conflicted.
Learning to Love ourselves
In looking at the core motivations of the different parts of us, and the protective behaviours, we can untangle the reasons why we act the way we do. We may even discover that those parts of us don’t like the roles they have and can serve us in more supportive ways once they are better understood.
Or we may discover we are living inauthentic lives and can adjust to a more aligned value after we allow our hidden inner selves, to be freed from the chains of the misunderstanding past they were in.
For example, Karen can then re-evaluate whether she really wants to continue to push herself to succeed at work, doing speeches she doesn’t like, or focus on a hobby she would rather invest her energies in. She may even decide to seek another role.
Conversely, she may have clarity about why she now wants to succeed, which helps to drive her from a more authentic perspective, helping her to enjoy what she is doing.
Ultimately, working on understanding the parts of us and the roles they play, can help us determine what we really want and how we want to live our lives.
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