The mini world inside your mind

So first things first, I am just absolutely in love with Psychology, and all the cool, new concepts and theories that I learn on a daily basis just absolutely fascinate me. Ok, so why would I start a blog post with this completely random fact about myself? Well, this is your disclaimer to bear with me if I start to completely nerd out while trying to explain this wonderful concept I came across recently in my internship.

Before I go any further, while reading about this particular theory(or basically any of the other many theories of psychology) you might feel like you knew all about it already, that this is just common knowledge, and that you would have stumbled onto the clarity that the theory gives you eventually. But trust me, having a vague idea or construction of how the mind works is completely different from learning about a legitimate, well-researched theory of the same based on science and backed up by the study of the various researchers trying to learn more about it.

Well, now coming to the point of the whole article, let me please have the pleasure of introducing you to the Internal Family Systems, or IFS in short. And no, it's not just another type of regular family therapy. In fact, I would say it is almost the opposite of that in terms of its principle and core ideas. That is, as opposed to family therapy, which majorly focuses on gaining support from external forces to better your emotional health, it focuses on you exploring your inner self and discovering and rediscovering parts of yourself. Literally. So the core idea behind IFS is that you are not one singular black or white persona, but rather you are made up of various parts or sub-psyches that exist together and make you act the way you do. A bit of a disclaimer here, this theory might seem too philosophical at times and some concepts might seem like they're going over your head a bit. But remember that I'm just going to talk about the basics here and in no way claim to cover the enormous mountain of literature on the topic. 

To make sure you don't doze off with your phones in your hand cuz I very well recognize that things I find wonderfully mind blowing are dead beat boring to some people I'm going to dramatize this theory a little bit for you. 

So now I would like you to imagine that there are thousands of little tiny people in your head, living in a world of their own, operating it in a way so that you are the person you are right now (yes, very much like the movie Inside Out). Now all these people in that world are not called people, but are called 'parts'. And a new part comes into being every time you experience something, good or bad. For example, let's say you just lost your pet. This loss creates a part that is the literal embodiment of that loss. It is that part that feels pain, hopelessness, shock, anger and all the thousand other emotions you feel when you grieve someone you lost forever. Now the parts created as a result of such traumatic experiences in life are called 'exiles'. Now in that world inside your mind, whenever an exile is formed, the ecosystem of that world becomes unbalanced. That world cannot take a part causing pain to you cause your well-being is the most important goal of that entire world. The presence of an exile sends the whole world into an overdrive that causes the formation of new parts called 'protectors' that are created solely to help soothe the pain of the 'exiles'. These protectors are what cause us to behave in a certain way, more particularly, in a way to take the pain away from you and to basically, as their name suggests, to protect you. 

Now, taking the example of your pet dying, as a response to the exile created by your loss, a 'protector' can emerge in the form of excessive eating or excessive binge watching or in extreme cases, an addiction to alcohol or drugs. These protectors that emerged as a response to your exiles, are called 'firefighters'. Firefighters are like overprotective and irrational friends, with a sword and spear in hand, ready to do anything to not see you in pain. In their zealousness, they might act naively and often become another source of problems. There are another form of protectors that emerge whose literal existence is to make sure you don't get hurt or you don't feel pain again. Again, as a response to your pet's death, you might become prone to excessive worrying or overthinking, or become too care-taking and smother your future pets or even your children. These protectors are called 'managers' and like firefighters, their role is to make sure you remain happy and content, but unfortunately they are also prone to the occasional misjudgments and might end up becoming a problem instead of a solution. And the unfortunate thing with protectors is that they tend to overstay their welcome and don't exactly disappear out of existence, even after we have overcome the problem we were facing.

Now the reason why I like this theory so much is that it recognizes that all our eccentricities and mental distortions come from a place of pain and hurt. And even overall, it is such a beautiful way of thinking about ourselves and how our mind works. That everything the mind does comes from a place of love and the thought of not wanting you to hurt, ever.

Coming to what we can do to deal with these protectors who unknowingly became a source of our problems instead of the solutions they were meant to be, is to first recognize them. Find out the various protectors in you one by one and handle them with compassion, never forgetting that they are there to help you out in the first place. You have to talk with the protectors and let them know that you are fine now, that you are a different person from who you were when they emerged. Let them know that their work is done, that they can finally rest now and that they don't need to be so worried anymore. This can be a painful process because protectors are for you. They were bought into existence for you, and saying goodbye to you and giving up the role of protecting you, something they've done for so long, can be very hurtful. 

So what if we aren't fine? What if we are still struggling but we need to leave our protectors behind because they are too disruptive? According to Internal Family Systems Therapy, before we start to confront our parts, we first need to work on our 'Self'. The self is the center of our consciousness and what we are at our core. It is who we are, with all our parts separate. The self is said to have 8 core properties that everyone has and that can be uncovered through therapy. Now the Self has healing properties and can heal parts. By uncovering the qualities of the self, a person can start to heal their parts. There are 8 such qualities called the 8 C's of the Self. These are: Curiosity, Compassion, Clarity, Connectedness, Creativity, Courage, Confidence, and Calm. 

Let us assume that when you were a child, you forgot to do your homework and the next day, the teacher called you out in front of the entire class and started to reprimand you. And now let us assume that this humiliation and fear caused an exile to form inside your mind. To protect this exile, you created a manager of perfectionism and wanted to do everything just right all the time. But as time went on, you started to realize that this was unhealthy and being perfect always is an impossible ideal to achieve. Now with IFS, you would try to work on your Self, especially your Courage, Calm, Confidence and Compassion. With these you will feel less afraid of failure, be confident that even if things go wrong sometimes, you can work through them and remain calm during those situations. This will cause your exile to feel less and less pain as time goes by. After this, you can start a talk with your manager that is your perfectionism and let them know that you will be okay, even without them. 

Now I'm not saying this theory is perfect, and I accept that you can find so many shortcomings in it. But for me, it's focus on love and compassion and its teachings of practicing them on yourself first, is something that stuck a string, deep in my heart.