Who is in Control
I’m sitting in the passenger seat. My wife is driving. We are both very familiar with this part of town, but we don’t share the same brain so when she turns left, I hear myself say, “You should have gone straight.” This is the third or forth time I have back-seat driven from the passenger seat and she’s running out of patience with me. “You shouldn’t tell me how to drive,” she snaps. I can tell that she regrets the words almost before they leave her mouth. I try not to offer free navigating advice for the rest of the drive but find it difficult to remain silent as she makes another wrong move.
Why did I tell my wife she should have gone straight? She had already turned left. The truth is that I didn’t consciously know why. I noticed that I said it in the same moment that she did. If she had asked me, “Why did you tell me I should have gone straight?” I probably would have made up a story.
I suppose you could say that making up a story to explain why I said what I said is a lie. You could say I was being deceitful. And on the surface, you would be right. But what is really going on is that there is a part of me who tries to help by providing explanations for why I think, feel, choose, and behave as I do. This part of me wants to be sure that I never hurt or disappoint anyone.
I don’t mean to be deceitful. In fact, there is another part of me that is committed to honesty. My awareness of these two internal influences usually flies under the radar. Both influences seem to be out of my control. It’s only by slowing down to notice that I am aware it is happening that I regain something like control of myself. I become self-aware and consciously governed. The Internal Family System calls this Self-leadership.
Had I seriously considered why I had such a strong impulse to offer unsolicited navigation advice, I might have been able to shift my focus from my wife’s driving to my internal discomfort. And I might have learned something about myself.
What if you knew it is normal and predictable to have thoughts, feelings, impulses, choices, and behaviors beyond your awareness?
At some level, we know this. Cognitive dissonance is experienced when having two or more conflicting thoughts that result in behavior incongruent with values and beliefs. The IFS model teaches that this happens because our parts are working in the background to protect and help us. When the interests and concerns of our parts are activated due to life’s circumstances, our parts influence how we show up. And sometimes this creates internal conflict that can cause problems in our external world.
What if you could govern these sources of internal influence? If your life is working well for you, you may not feel the need to give this anymore consideration. But if you notice that what is happening inside is causing problems outside, there is something you can do about it.
If you are ready to increase awareness and become more self-governed (or Seld-led), let me suggest a practice.
Practice
For the next week, when you notice your thoughts, ask yourself, “Am I intentionally thinking this thought, or am I just noticing that I have a thought?”
If your thoughts are intentional, they are self-governed. In other words, you are aware and responsible for your thoughts. If you are simply noticing that you have thoughts, you are in the observer position. The thought has already happened. You didn’t originate it intentionally. You didn’t think it. You noticed it.
As the observer, get curious. Assume that one of your many parts had the thought and you noticed it. Now, notice the impact of the thought. Does the thought influence your perspective by changing how you view what is happening in the moment? Does the thought influence you emotionally? Does the thought generate an impulse to act?
I hope you enjoyed this article and got something of value out of it. I wrote many of my articles before I discovered the Internal Family Systems model and started using IFS in my Spokane, Washington coaching practice.
So now, any strategies that I discussed in the past can be supercharged when we also take into account the principles of the IFS model which include:
Self - which is in the IFS model who you are - your True Self
IFS Coaches use the IFS model to help their clients make changes and get results
I have created an IFS Workbook to help my clients get lasting results
Although I trained with IFS Therapists, I am not a therapist myself. I am an IFS Practitioner and can be considered an IFS Coach which means I can coach you on how to use the IFS model. And I can use IFS in my coaching to help you get the results you want.
