Maybe it’s a Mother’s Day vibe, but I have care on the brain. Care for creatures, planet, human compadres. But also, what would it be like to offer genuine care to all parts of ourselves?
The lazy and procrastinating parts.
The uptight and meddling parts.
The overly striving, judging, addicted, and depressed parts.
I’m not talking about self love, necessarily. Or even about loving the parts of ourselves we don’t like.
I’m talking about, asking, what it would be like to stop—or at least hit pause for a moment—on the relentless task of fixing and figuring ourselves out in order to hear what the parts themselves have to say.
Why would you want to know what procrastination or depression has to say?
Because valuable insight on the origin of a mental habit or pattern may need to come from the habit or pattern itself. It may not be a thing to be fixed or self-improved away by a shift in attitude or positive thinking. It may get louder, and create more upset in your life and relationships, the more you try to manage it. It may need to be heard and held by a wiser, more attuned part of you—like a good mother offering the care of her attention to her scared or injured child.
This concept comes from Internal Family Systems, a deeply useful psychotherapeutic model based on the notion that the mind is composed of sub-personalities or “parts” that can take on extreme roles, such as the procrastinator or the angry husband or critical parent, as an adaptive strategy. The model is more involved than what I’ve introduced here and I’m not going to attempt to do it justice, but I highly recommend its teachings and tools as a framework for personal and relational healing.
For today, I want only to investigate the felt sense of making space for all parts of ourselves. Taking a few moments to offer space and care, perhaps as an antidote to avoiding or fixing, and just seeing how it feels. A place to start.
xo,
Christa
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