Painting with Tall yellow figure in the middle eminating golden light out and above a variety of colorful figures surrounding the central image. Some are tall and some are short, like children. Some have speech bubbles with indecipherable words in them.

𝗔 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 & 𝗔 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗠𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁

“All Parts Welcome”

Have you ever had the experience of making a decision, and in your thinking, you have a part that has one strong opinion about your decision, and then from another side of your brain, or maybe your body, a second part comes in totally doubting?

In all 2o years of my coaching practice, I’ve heard clients say, “A part of me this. . . and a part of me that . . .”
Bonnie J Weiss, LCSW, in her book
𝘚𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘺 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘈𝘯 𝘌𝘹𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘍𝘚 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴, says,

“IFS is. . . compassionate, inclusive, spiritual, powerfully healing, and deeply respectful of our inner life. IFS recognized that our psyches are made up of different parts…you can think of them as little people inside of us. Each part has its own perspective, feelings, memories, goals, and motivations.”

We are naturally of miraculous multiple minds. You may more commonly know these parts of you as things like:

The Inner Critic
Your Inner Child
The Ego
The Monkey Mind

All parts have had reasons for everything they do, they are motivated by “benevolent intent” at their core, but their strategies are protective devices that, at some point in your life, made sense but now are out of date. These strategies can often be uncomfortable, mean, and even destructive.

Recently the founder of IFS, Dr. Richard C Schwartz, Ph.D. published his IFS book 𝘕𝘰 𝘉𝘢𝘥 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴. Check it out if you want to learn more about this model I’ll be sharing with you over the next month.

Here is a painting I did – when I was very first introduced to this framework – My core SELF-energy and some of my parts. Add a whole lot of language/words, some visual images, and sensory waves, and that’s a good front porch image of my internal psyche.