Your Inner Family, Original OneSelf, and The Fabric of Wholeness

Living life in the key of aliveness

Aug 05, 2024

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These posts make the most sense when you start here.

Our Original OneSelf-Russian doll nests a multitude of additional Other selves: who we are with our friends, with colleagues, different family members, in our private moments, and so on. I call this tapestry of many selves The Inner Family—not to be confused with Internal Family Systems Model or IFS.

In fact, at the time I was exploring the Inner Family with my friend (an older student getting his masters degree in psychological counseling), I had never heard of Richard C. Schwartz’s work from the 1980s. And by the time I did, my own years of experience with my Inner Family had already shaped where I found umbrage with specific aspects of IFS.

That said, my Inner Family and Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems Model seem to arise from a basic human paradigm that shares the same core elements:

We all have a core Self with multiple other aspects of the self in attendance.
There is no such thing as a bad or good self.
All aspects of Self + Others hold a positive, principal intention: to be helpful to the personality in question.
Without conscious awareness of the individual viewpoints of both the Self and the Others, we remain at the mercy of behaviors and emotions ranging from perplexing to destructive, and everything in-between.
With conscious awareness of the structure and members of our Internal/Inner Family, we can become more internally balanced and harmonious while living life to its fullest.

However, the differences between Schwartz’s “system” and my “approach” is substantial.

Internal Family Systems Model (IFS)

The Internal Family Systems Model comes from a clinical branch of psychology concerned with trauma and dysfunctional behavior. The language and processes it developed paint a picture of mixed signals alternating between the intensely personal and the clinically impersonal.

IFS identifies an always-healthy core Self with multiple sub-personalities that may, or may not, be the operatives behind dysfunctional behavior or former recipients of trauma.

It labels these sub-personalities with pre-assigned titles based on the common sense assumption that a person in therapy is dealing with difficult emotional/behavioral problems.

Most clinical “systems” impose a static framework on clients because of what the clinical system needs and wants—a way to assign meaning that can be replicated across multiple providers, along with a process to track progress and results that can be easily understood and shared because everyone is speaking the same language.

The first assumption is that every client fits with all aspects of the system.

The second assumption is that what is good for the clinical system is also good for every client who comes with the problems IFS has identified they can help.

What seems to be missing from IFS thinking is how static labels can skew someone’s perception of their inner reality, causing them to dismiss aspects of their own knowing and awareness. And like all amenable clients in a therapeutic process, giving them definitive, static parameters often means clients find themselves adjusting to the expectations of the process itself.

When all of the sub-personalities in all clients get the same set of definitive labels—in this case Exiles, Managers, or Firefighters—it highlights how the therapy structure dominates the process.

Then, there is a case to be made for the power of language. The term “sub”personalities implies the demotion from Whole to Part while, at the same time, it establishes a one-up/one-down hierarchy. The core Self is compassionately dominant, but dominant nonetheless by virtue of being dubbed “whole,” while all Others are relegated to a “sub” position, and simultaneously tainted by being assigned the instigator/holder of the emotional/behavioral dysfunctions of the core Self.

That said, IFS has been enormously successful in helping thousands of people live with less stress, anxiety, and depression, and with more balance, clarity, and grace. For this, and for bringing the concept of an Internal Family into our collective consciousness, I deeply value and respect their work.

The Fabric of Wholeness

In order to reliably and wholly take care of my adult self, I discovered through the Inner Family lens how establishing intentional, conscious relationships with different aspects of myself feeds the aliveness that comes with living life whole.

At its core, the framework of the Inner Family is a living, emotional paradox whereby a conscious recognition of the individual members of our Inner Family strengthens the psychological fibers weaving together our whole OneSelf.

Flipped on its head, this is also the framework behind what happens when this fabric of wholeness gets ripped apart by extreme personal trauma.

In 1957, with the release of both the film and the book, The Three Faces of Eve, our cultural consciousness experienced what happens when the fabric weaving our Inner Family becomes severed.

This dramatization of a real-life, psychiatric client, who presented as three different personalities (Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane), followed on the heels of Shirley Jackson’s 1954 novel, The Bird’s Nest. Suddenly, the idea of multiple personalities got injected into the mainstream consciousness.

It took almost thirty years more before we culturally recognized, and named, the Fabric of Wholeness that keeps every one of us functioning as a coordinated, unified system: the Internal Family System.

And here is where I’m going to insert my Surgeon General’s Warning:

NOTE: Because I know a few adults whose teen years include horrific events that were life altering, I expect everyone reading these posts to be kind to themselves, and to take personal responsibility.
If you know, or even suspect, there is alarming trauma in your system from past history in your life, please, please be sure you have the psychological support you might need before engaging in any exercises regarding the Inner Family. Some people have triggers in their system that, once engaged, take on a life of their own.
I am not a psychologist or counselor. I am a psychologically-savvy, independent researcher and educator who is sharing a concept and process that, under most circumstances including mild to minor life traumas, is deeply life affirming.
If anything you read here begins to stir up overwhelming anxiety, I strongly recommend you connect with your support system before continuing. Or, find a reputable IFS counselor in your area.

The Inner Family Approach

Rather than a ready-made system like IFS, The Inner Family is an approach to living life in the key of aliveness. It flows from a desire to know, and understand, our OneSelf, not through the lens of trauma and dysfunction, but through the lens of expanded possibility and awareness for how we can live our one wild and precious life.

Do I, like the majority of humans, have dysfunction and trauma in my history. Goodness, yes.

But the working premise of the Inner Family is to experience the whole fabric of the Self. To approach trauma and dysfunction, whenever these show up in the process, not as the starting point, but as an organic part of being wholly human.

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The Inner Family wraps all trauma and dysfunction within a cocoon of care, compassion, and cooperation that honors both our Oneness and our Multiplicity through a framework based on the mutual respect of the core Self for the Others, for the Others to each other, and for the Others to the core Self.

The only labels in this process will be the names our multiple Others give themselves—both a personal name, like Windywild, and a role title, like the Inner Teen.

Sometimes, once an Other Self has established who they are, where they are, and what they want/need from the OneSelf, the OneSelf might offer (not impose) a role title. It’s up to the Other to accept, counter offer, or simply dismiss the suggestion.

In contrast to the Internal Family Systems Model of a central Self, around whom the subpersonalities gather, the Inner Family recognizes two core OneSelves: the Original Self and the Historical Self.

Our Original Self is who slipped into this blood and bone body at birth. It is the complex matrix of genetics, conscious and unconscious family history passed along by the birth mother through mysterious channels we’ve yet to unlock, and—if you’re inclined towards mysticism or spiritual awareness—whatever mandate/desire a soul might have imposed.

The Her/historical Self comprises all the events and conditions the Original Self gathers along the life path from birth to death.

These distinct core OneSelves reflect that feeling so many of us have had: that, sometimes, what is happening in the moment either correlates or goes against some deep, immoveable sense of who we know ourselves to be at the heart of all of our external and internal experiences.

Overall, the Inner Family structure signals the polar opposite of static; it renews itself throughout our lifetime. The continually unfurling of time and experience, which shifts and shapes who we know ourselves to be, simultaneously shifts and shapes our Inner Family.

The Inner Family structure evolves organically out of our curiosity, body awareness, the radar of our inner knowing, an active imagination channeling a series of open-ended questions. It is also acutely sensitive to the power of language, the power in a name.

Instead of sub-personalities, we discover Whole Beings, complete Others with their own names, inner landscapes, and gifts to offer the everyday, hardworking core OneSelf.

Windywild tosses back her long dark hair and hoots, “Sub-whaaat? Do I look like a Sub-anything to you?” Her myriad chains chatter in agreement. The Pacific Ocean behind her rolls rhythmically onto the beach, equally unimpressed.

My Inner Teen isn’t buying any of it.

“That’s both silly and insulting. Worse, calling me a sub-personality means I’m not whole so you can be justified at keeping me emotionally at arm’s length. I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. A family, inner or otherwise, is made up of whole beings, not sub-parts.”

Windywild is fully aware that within the Inner Family approach, everyone, and anyone, may emerge fully born into our consciousness from Carl Jung’s anima and animus, to The Wise One, mythical beings like my Wanalee, to the historical versions of ourself like the Inner Child, Inner Teen, Inner Young Adult, etc.

Not to mention who might turn up in your Inner Family with entirely unique, whole aspects of yourself.

Perhaps, internally, you entertain Others who are deeply connected to what your core OneSelf wants to offer the world—artist, writer, musician, parent, home builder, brick layer… the possibilities of your Inner Family are as infinite as humanity itself.

What’s Next?

Great… You just read the 5th post in this series.

These posts will make the most sense if you read them in order, like chapters in a book.

You can read the 6th installment/post here: Where, Why, and How I Found My Inner Family

Meanwhile, please…

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