At least once in your life you've probably said the following phrase: "Wow, I really wasn't myself, I don't know what came over me!"
Well I'm here to tell you that you really are not "yourself" sometimes! It's as if a little inner gremlin possesses you temporarily. AND there is a solution for it. The solution, as you can probably tell, is Parts Work. Parts Work is a therapeutic methodology that was developed in the 1990s by somebody named Richard Schwartz, who noticed the benefits of naming and exploring parts within his clients. We also call these parts sub-personalities. Schwartz saw these sub-personalities as an internal family system, and just like in a real-life family, relationships between parts can improve. He then developed the Internal Family Systems model (IFS), which you can read all about here if you want an in-depth explanation; or continue reading below if you're looking for the tl;dr version.
The basic premise of IFS is that we all have a core self - which is generally calm and has clarity - and we have sub-selves, which developed as defense mechanisms to deal with our environments and/or trauma.
Everybody has some version of self and sub-selves! Think Leslie Knope Season 6 of Parks and Recreation (Spoiler alert!). Leslie is generally ambitious and hardworking, as we can tell from her colorful pant-suits and her undying optimism while working a thankless government job.
In IFS terms, Leslie seems to have a very strong manager part with a relentlessly positive, overachieving and unsparingly generous tendencies. This is how she generally functions:
When her dream of being on City Council gets taken away by the Recall Vote, Leslie shows up as someone nobody recognizes:
Notice how this part of Leslie takes over when her overachiever part can't handle the news of losing the spot on city council. This is what happens to most of us in some capacity; the sub-personalities we've develop step in as needed. We can define what is happening here as Leslie fusing with one of her parts, the ego no longer capable of making room for flexibility, and fully swinging into an operating mode mutually exclusive from her day to day manager mode.
Now let's move into how this might look in the brain. I remember loving my neurobiology classes so much I almost went down that path. If I had been any more apt at acing my microcellular biology classes, I would have. Anyhow, based on what I learned in these classes + from Dan Siegel's work, we can think of parts in terms of programming:
1. our minds are conditioned by genetic imprints and life experience
2. how we respond to life events creates neural pathways in the brain
3. these neural pathways manifest in the subjective experience of sensations, thoughts, emotions
4. the more we repeat the sensations, thoughts, emotions, the stronger and faster the neural pathways become - they end up reinforcing each other in a positive feedback loop
You've probably heard the saying "neurons that fire together wire together" - this may very well be the practical basis for Parts Work. Think of each sub-self / part as a repeated pattern of the 4 steps above. If we had brain scans of people undergoing a fusing with a part, I imagine we'd see something like this: when one neural pathway system is overwhelmed, we switch to another, a bit like train tracks.
Ok, maybe you're fascinated by this now. I know I was right away. Maybe you relate and you'd like to have at least a first step. I got you.
The antidote to fusing with parts is to bring the Core Self online and to relate to parts from the Core Self. We know we are in balance when we can observe each part of us from a calm, compassionate, curious place. In the context of the internal family, the Core Self would sit at the table with all the internal parts, taking each's point of view into consideration, and making a decision that benefits the whole family. It is the benevolent parent of your dreams. And I believe we all have the capacity to contact this internal energy. I suspect, in brain terms, this would mean we have access our higher thinking centers while our fight / flight / freeze centers are activated. We also call this "dual awareness" in psychology, often used in EMDR.
Do you remember the last time you've experienced a burst of calm and clarity after having been tormented by something? Or those moments of epiphany, realization? I believe that's Core Self energy. The more we work on connecting to this energy, the easier it gets to move through life. And if you've never experienced this, it does not mean you don't have a Core Self - it only means it may be time to strengthen your connection to it. And that is a beautiful first step toward creating wholeness.
If you're interested in exploring your own internal family system, or if you have questions, let me know! You can book an intro call by reaching out to alexandra@yourtherapycorner.com
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