Burdened Internal System with Food and Body

Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic modality that can help support understanding one’s internal world and their inner psyche, what is conscious and unconscious. For those of you who struggle daily with your body, feel a sense of lack of control or over control when it comes to eating, when to eat and how to eat, this message is for you. If you feel lost or overwhelmed then I encourage you to keep reading in hopes that it will make your story feel as though it is beginning to make sense.

In IFS (internal family systems) internal parts are the messages we have inside that send us information, often without conscious control. These messages can come in the form of thoughts, feelings, sensations, movement, or energy. If you are asked the question, “When you are sad, how do you know?” Sit with asking yourself how do you get a sense of sadness within. What signals or messages come up that let you know sadness is there?

Once you start to NOTICE that there is a world within you that gives you messages of what you sense, then you can begin to group those messages (if that feels right for your system) into teams. Managers are the parts within us that proactively do, manage, and control as a way to not feel into difficulties that would be hard for us to be with. Firefighters or distractor parts are the parts within us that react to difficulties within us as a way to manage the anxiety or stress felt within. Exiles or vulnerabilities are the tender parts of us that are the difficulties and are difficult for us to be with those parts that feels safe.

When it comes to food and our bodies, many of us will turn to food (hello accessibility) as a way to help cope with life and trauma. From that place we can often place burdens for these parts within us to feel as though it has to do this for us in order for us to survive and move through our difficulties.

Here is a BURDENED Manager system when it comes to food/body:

Hypervigilance around food, always looking at what other people are eating and comparing what you should or should not eat based on that
Dieting and using external measures to tell yourself what to eat
Weighing food, counting calories, using numbers to guide your body to tell you what to eat and how much
Weighing body and using that number as a measure of what you should/should not be
Perfectionist thinking on how your body should look
Self judgment and inner hate on how you look or feel
Ultra independence and unwillingness to ask for help or depend on others
Anxious state, difficulty sitting still, feeling the need to always be doing something

BURDENED Firefighter system when it comes to food/body:

Restricting or avoiding food. Enjoying the feeling of “being empty” and discomfort with “full”.
Numbing by using food or exercise to not feel
Dissociation from feeling present and feeling brain fog or tiredness/exhaustion throughout the day
Binging or purging and lack of control when it comes to food
Cut off from internal cues of hunger, rest, tired, sick, stressed
Poor circulation, headaches, migraines, difficulty concentrating, stiffness, autoimmune conditions
Hopelessness and resigned to goals

BURDENED vulnerability system when it comes to food/body:

Fear and/or panic that is too overwhelming for the system
Fight/flight/freeze/faint responses that block off access to processing the trauma
Shame about body and/or who these young parts feel that they can or cannot be in order to be loved or accepted
Inner child parts hold burden of the pain from trauma
Sadness or hurt that cannot be expressed or felt by the system in a safe way

These are just areas or indications that there may be parts within that are carrying burdens that limit their expression of how these parts can fully exist. The burden that is placed on these parts is the belief that this is how they have to exist in order for the system to function. Once we can see and understand the burden that was placed on parts, we can update the parts if they need that, release the burden if it is no longer helpful to them, and integrate these parts into the system as they were always meant to be, in their fullest expression. This is how we move towards healing and wholeness.

I will do the following blog post on what an unburdened system may look like so you too can have a vision of what these parts can offer you when they are released of the burdens they hold. If this is an area you are interested in getting more support around, I encourage you to reach out and I’d love to be with you on your journey towards wholeness and freedom in your body.

Warmly,

Leslie