Welcome to Indy Maven’s Mental Health column coming by way of Adair McDonald, LMHC (she/her/hers). Check out her website for information about how Adair works with clients, and to contact her directly to book a session.
As the seasons change and we approach days with less light, more darkness, cold, and the potential for a dip in mood, you may be feeling that sense of foreboding that comes for many this time of year. And if you are a human with a heart, you are likely overwhelmed by the enormity of challenges facing our societies and planet. It is very easy to get pulled into all of it, feeling that life is hurling us into sinking, swimming, fighting, fleeing, or freezing from the weight of it all.
More than ever, we all need and deserve to slow down and PAUSE. And I have a neat little tool from the recent IFS therapy conference that I hope will help you do just that.
IFS (Internal Family Systems) helps us all understand the root causes of our thoughts and actions. It’s an increasingly popular and effective therapeutic modality often sought out to help heal from anxiety, trauma, depression, or simply feeling stuck. It has a confusing name because it isn’t all about literal families, it’s about how we all have delightfully dysfunctional families inside of us, including all of our parts and SELF, a wise centeredness that is our innate presence. When we are guided by this energy, we feel some combination of CALM, CURIOUS, CONNECTED, CLEAR, COMPASSIONATE, COURAGEOUS, CREATIVE, and/or CONFIDENT. When we are SELF led, we improve our interactions internally in our own system, and with others in our communities.
We have lots of parts inside of us. Some common parts that most of us have are critics, those that are compulsive or addictive, those that strive for perfection, those that use anger to cope with pain or fear, those that feel so ashamed they must stay hidden, or those that need control at any cost. None of these parts are “bad”, yet if you think of our emotional state as a complex system, we can see that when some of these parts take over the command center, we may find ourselves in trouble.
The Pixar movie Inside Out gives a pretty good idea of what I’m referencing here. I don’t care that it’s a movie for kids; it is wonderful! Inside Out 2 is particularly great because the character Anxiety is introduced, and she is oh so relatable.
In the short term, it often feels good or comfortable to allow our parts to lead. For example, I have an angry part that comes up when certain hot-button political issues are being discussed. As a specialist in perinatal mental health with a background in childbirth education, it absolutely infuriates me to think of ignorant politicians making decisions about women’s healthcare. Even as I write this, I can feel my blood beginning to boil. Yet if I were to pop off from this emotion, my words would likely be antagonistic, and my tone would be combative towards those who disagree with me. Though that might feel good briefly, I am quite sure that if I could stay CALM and CLEAR, and share thoughts, examples, and anecdotes in a way that invited CONNECTION, I would be far more likely to elicit CURIOSITY in others- and maybe just maybe promote a positive mind shift.
At the IFS conference, I had the chance to learn several new ways of working with SELF and parts. The workshop that inspired this article was run by a group of educators, therapists, parents, and business coaches from the Self-Leadership Collaborative who’ve been teaching people all over the world to PAUSE, especially when triggered or upset in some way. It goes like this:
P: Pause. What am I noticing?
A: Aware of myself. How am I feeling? What part of me is activated?
U: Understand others. How might they be experiencing this?
S: Search for solutions. What might improve this situation?
E: Experiment. Repeat as needed!
They encouraged us to try it right there in the workshop, so I did. When I PAUSED, I checked in with which part of me was feeling loud. I became AWARE of myself, and I noticed that my Justice Collector/Judgemental part was highly activated, as evidenced by my excessive annoyance with the check-in process at this event. This was interesting because I’ve done a lot of work on this part of me, and these days, I’m far less likely to get easily annoyed with procedural missteps. As I reflected, I realized the Justice Collector had come in HOT to this event due to some unfair stuff that was happening at my kid’s school, and this Justice part was looking for a fight! It made me feel tender towards this part of myself, but I also realized she could calm right down- it wasn’t that deep. I assured her that we would continue to advocate for the child when we were in the right setting, but for now, she truly could relax. (yes, I inwardly talk to myself regularly).
In thinking about how to UNDERSTAND others, I realized much of the labor for this event was probably done by volunteers or interns, and they had thousands of people they were trying to please. I took a breath and realized that if I needed to do a bit more work to ensure my own smooth process, that wasn’t such a big problem.
One of the issues was that the scheduling was very tight, and at times I had to choose between taking a break and connecting with others over meals or rushing off to extra learning opportunities. I SEARCHED for a solution and realized both scenarios had value, and I vowed to get the most out of whatever I could squeeze in.
The rest of the time at the conference, I EXPERIMENTED with optimizing time. I was able to locate some grab-and-go food options and, therefore, skip some formal meals in order to attend more breakout sessions. I also allowed myself to miss one breakout session in order to reconnect with a colleague. She’s a wise and wonderful soul. I really savored that meal with her rather than stressing over what I was “missing”.
There are so many times in life that slowing down like this for just a few moments can lead to huge shifts in perspective that ultimately benefit whole systems. Can you imagine how much different it would be in schools, hospitals, boardrooms, governmental meetings, and your own family’s interactions if we all developed this habit to PAUSE?
At the end of the presentation, we were asked to share this with others. I personally have shared it with a few clients so far, as well as my own family, and now with all of you. What do you think: are there spaces you move through that could use this tool?
As you head into this next season of whatever life is bringing for you, I encourage you to turn towards yourself with curiosity, slow down, and take a really lovely PAUSE.
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