Thoughts about Thoughts

If you watch your thoughts, you will notice that they are happening without your conscious awareness much of the time. If you don’t believe me, stop reading, set a timer on your watch for 60 seconds and stop thinking until the alarm goes off.

How did that go?

You’re not in control of your thinking most of the time. Thoughts happen.

For example, you’re driving and your passenger asks, “Why are you driving this route to the restaurant?”

“Why this route?” you think to yourself.

“Oh,” you say, as you watch and listen to your thoughts. You ‘hear,’ “Because of the bridge.” You ‘see’ a post about the bridge in the neighborhood app you looked at yesterday. Now you have the idea that you could shared the post with your passenger but immediately have the thought, “Bad idea, we’re driving.”

All of this happens in a split second. You’re not consciously noticing all of these thoughts You just answer the question, “Because I knew they were working on the bridge today.”

In this example, you unconsciously engaged your thoughts. You asked yourself a question, “Why this route?” and your thoughts answered. “Because of the bridge.” You remembered reading the post in the neighborhood app and saw an image of the phone in your hand and the words on the screen that provided the details about the work on the bridge.

You said, “Oh,” when you got the answer from your thoughts. When you said, “Because I knew they were working on the bridge today,” you were simply reporting what your thoughts told you.

Another thought showed up with the idea of sharing the post and it was accompanied by another image. But before you could reach for your phone to share the post, you had another thought, “Bad idea, we’re driving.”

Thank you thinking. Thank you memory. Thank you imagination.

“Bad idea, we’re driving?” Who is this ‘we’ that the thought is referring to? Are we going nuts?

There’s only one of me here, right?” you might wonder if, in fact you slowed it all down long enough to realize that none of what just happened in your mind could be possible if you only have one mind.

“So, how did that all work?” you may wonder. How you can have thoughts that you aren’t thinking and aren’t aware of until you bring your attention to them. How can you imagine images? How do you remember the past?

How, if you have just one brain and one mind, can all of this happen?

A therapy model helped me make sense of all this. What a relief to learn that my psyche is made up of innumerous sub-personalities, each of whom have their own perspective, values, missions, and yes, thoughts.

I just happen to notice those thoughts sometimes. Most of the time I think, feel, and act acccording to the most dominant part of me that happens to be running my life in the moment.

So where did I get all these parts and what made them think they should run my life for me?

Thanks to my training and experiences using the IFS model, I now understand that I don’t have just one mind. One brain, yes. But one mind? No. I have a countless number of parts that have their own minds.

At least, this is how it seems to be. When I isolate the influence of a single part, IFS shows me how to understand what that part is trying to accomplish. Surprisingly, my parts are all doing something to help me. And it almost aways surprises me when I get surprised by what I learn from talking to my parts. I thought I knew myself until I started getting to know my parts.

Now that I have learned to slow down and get curious about my thoughts, feelings, and reactions to life, I have a much better, more compassionate idea of what makes me tick.

Some of my parts are concerned with my safety, some are concerned with organization and efficiency, some specialize in relationships, some focus on communication, some worry about money. They’re all trying to help and they all get involved.

So with all this help, what’s the problem?

It’s not especially a problem that I have a psyche made up of so many parts. In fact, the one thing all of my parts have in common is that they help me function. Without them, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, remember my name, or know what to do when my bladder gets full.

I need my parts.

However, the influence of parts can become problematic when they are faced with trauma, crisis, or anything that happens in my life that overwhelms me. Even then, my parts are trying to help.

For example, when I was about five years old, my mom slapped me. I’d seen her angry before. I’d even been spanked before. I was used to it. All the kids got spanked. But she had never slapped me in the face. When she did, I was stunned. I went into shock. What had I done to deserve her hatred? The look on her face made me want to disappear. After she slapped me, she shook her finger at me and, in an angry voice, sent me to my room to stay until she told me I could come out.

I went to my room and waited a long time. She didn’t come back for me and I fell asleep.

Using the IFS model in therapy, I learned that many of my parts took on the job of making sure that never happened again. Thanks to their help, I became quiet and invisible. I made sure I got good grades. I always helped. I showed appreciation for all that mom and dad did for me. And most of the time it worked. Sometimes my parts weren’t vigilant enough and she slapped me again.

This stopped happening when I was about 13 years old. She slapped me and an angry part of me rose up and took over, influencing me to say, “You don’t ever get to do that to me again.”

I don’t know who was more shocked this time, me or mom. But she never ever did it again.

My parts kept me safe around her. But they also kept me safe around anyone else that looked like her or who got angry like she did. That became problematic as an adult who was trying to have a healthy relationship with a spouse or relate with female coworkers.

IFS helps me help my parts recognize that not everyone who reminds me of my mother is going to hurt me. Over time, my parts have begun to trust me and recognize I don’t need so much of that kind of help.

Now they help in different ways.

For example, a lot of the energy that used to be committed to staying safe goes into helping others whose young parts are still trying to help them solve problems that no longer exist.

If I use IFS will I be able to control my thoughts?

The goal is not to control my thoughts. I’ve learned that being aware of the thoughts that are showing up helps me know which of my parts are actually being helpful, and which of them still need my help.

It’s not realistic to believe I will ever be in control of all my thoughts. While I can think intentionally when being creative, when problem solving, and when communicating, I also want to be able to trust my thoughts without constantly having to monitor them.

The parts that infuence my thinking are either being ‘Self-led,’ or are still acting and reacting to unhealed wounds from the past. In the IFS model, to be Self-led means to think, feel, and react to life in a way that reflects current reality. When Self-led, the fears, worries, pain, and hurt of the past aren’t distorting my perspective. I have access to innate resources like courage, compassion, playfulness, and perspective that allow me to show up as the highest and best wise adult version of myself that I can be.

Now that I know how to do it, I am responsible for tending to any parts that become activated with maladaptive strategies that were needed in the past but that no longer serve me.