In Internal Family Systems (IFS), the key to lasting, long-term transformation is healing our exiles — the parts of us that carry our deepest traumas.
Making surface-level changes softens up our personalities so that there is more space to address the deeper underlying wounds we carry. Which is why EVERY tiny shift we can make, from eating a can of non-dairy whipped cream versus a can of dairy whipped cream (if dairy phlegms us up) is worth it. (Shout out to my excellent harm-reduction strategy last night!)
In my opinion, NO tiny change goes unnoticed by our overall system. Every effort is worth it. AND the more strength we gather to address the deep, core wounds we carry (IFS calls them ‘burdens’), the more lasting change we will accomplish.
It takes a village of strategies to do this work. One, two, or ten techniques is not going to cut it. Whatever we can do to till the soil, loosen up the clods of gnarly old patterns and make our consciousness fertile, creative and generative — that’s what’s worth doing. And then if deeper work is needed, digging deeper to do that work. It sucks sometimes. If it takes a can of whipped cream for dinner, so be it. But whatever we start with, wherever we start, at least starting.
My goal for this week is to just keep digging. Glad to be digging with you!
Shout out to Chris Guillebeau of A Year of Mental Health! I enjoy his 3x a week invitations to transform your wellbeing. I make comments on his posts every week, and I’m going to start sharing my comments on my Substack as well. This post was originally a comment on the post below: