Tuning In and Noticing the Judgment.
In today’s self-IFS session, I began by settling into a sitting posture and checking in with my body, noticing some physical feedback like shoulder stress and hip energy. As I turned inward, a judgmental part quickly surfaced, triggered by seeing people outside drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Initially, I noticed a polarization between this part that wanted to judge and another part that felt ashamed of being judgmental. I also found that I could approach this polarization with curiosity rather than anxiety, which I felt happily surprised because in the past I sometimes had an anxious part around such polarizations. The judgmental part spoke first.
Shifting from Deflection to Realization
As I listened to this part, I discovered that beneath the judgment was a deep sadness and a genuine desire for all people to be happy and healthy. Moreover, this part and my whole system came to a significant realization: it is much easier to deflect and judge others than it is to sit with my own wounds and pain. In a way, judgment was acting as its own form of “medication” to seek relief; the same way I interpreted the effects of people’s drinking and smoking. Recognizing that about 85% of this deflective, non-connecting behavior was actually handed down to me, the part felt ready to unload all this. We then did an unburdening ritual, symbolically filling a dumpster with this deflective energy and watching the garbage truck carry it away to be incinerated.
Welcoming Presence and Connection
Following the unburdening, my system felt noticeably calmer and many other parts felt more accepted. My inner critic expressed a desire to learn empathy instead of critiquing, and my exiles expressed relief that my energy was finally moving toward true attunement rather than external deflection. I closed the session by thanking all of my parts and inviting in the qualities of clarity, presence, patience, and compassion. It was a nice reminder that my protectors aren’t things I need to get rid of; my self-therapy is a process-oriented path of teaching my system how to practice self-empathy. It’s more about the process than any outcomes: the process is the outcome.
These posts are personal reflections on my own n=1 experiment with IFS and somatic inquiry. They are shared for educational purposes and are not intended as medical or psychological advice.