Meeting My Anger

A conversation about Internal Family Systems

Hello friends, it’s been awhile! Thanks for being here with Messy, She Wrote, my newsletter exploring life and motherhood after religion and divorce.

I took a break from writing in November and had plans to come back talking about anger in a very I’m Recovered sort of way (LOL). I was going to share all the progress I’ve made with anger through reading about Internal Family Systems and even (don’t laugh) self hypnosis (which I do recommend - check out the app Reverie). And then, wouldn’t it happen that something happened in my life that bubbled all that anger right back up, hot and frothy. 

My dad always tells me about this. That Lao Tzu says something about “to be aware is to live a life of constant [self] correction.” Just because we begin to understand something better or even feel for a moment we’ve mastered it doesn’t mean we won’t be humbled by it again. In fact, we are guaranteed that it will come back around again, and again. And so I see my anger at the door, and I sigh and let her come in. 

So I’m back this month to share more about Internal Family Systems, which has helped me soften in the face of my own anger. In a nutshell, Richard Schwartz purports that people have not just one identity they operate out of but many “parts” in their psyche that as a whole make up who we are. These parts affect us and interact with us (or sometimes completely take over) and have an influence over how we think and act. 

Sometimes we can be so unconsciously controlled by these parts we don’t even realize we aren’t truly running our own lives. These parts each have a story and reasons for why they might try to influence us to be this way, or that way. Many of these parts were formed when we were children and became like little wild animals trying to run the show internally without supervision. (Have you ever seen the movie Inside Out?) The purpose of understanding yourself as a conglomerate of parts is to start helping the parts to step down, and operate out of Self, instead.

Self or “true self” - this would be the part of us that can recognize the other parts, engage with them, and most importantly, embodies a fundamental sense of loving calm if and when we can quiet all the many other parts inside of us. I might say it’s the divine in us, but the author points out that you don’t need to believe in a deity or divinity to agree that everyone seems to have that core self that feels full of light and longs to love and receive love.

In the book, you are guided through a few exercises to find and engage with your parts. At first it was difficult to conceptualize until I read through his conversations with patients. Like, am I looking for people? Creatures? Emotions? Colors? Symbolism? What do these parts look like? I think everybody has different experiences with what they find when they close their eyes and do the exercises, and that’s part of why it’s so interesting.

Through this book, I was able to recognize which of my parts are doing the most at the control panel (um, spoiler alert, it is anger and fear) and more than that, I was able in my mind to meet with these parts face to face (?!) and have conversations with them (??!!), and over time, see how they presented in my imagination completely transform as they received the attention and and love they needed (???!!!). 

I’ll be honest, I struggled to believe I could conjure all of this in my head. It seemed… far-fetched. Also a little outlandish. But I wanted to try. And when I did, the parts came. Engaging with them has been transformative for me. Read on if you want to hear what it was like to meet my anger.