How are you {doing} BEING?

Day 4

Day 4 – “Send compassion”

It’s the penultimate day of this series on work-related stress and distress, and we’ve been starting to get to know our “internal family” of parts of us who are involved in the struggle between “doing” and “being”.

How was it, experimenting with “speaking inside” to parts of yourself? For most people it’s a fairly strange suggestion. And yet many people find it’s the start of positive change in patterns that have been stuck.

Here’s Exercise 4…

First, we created a little more clarity, then we brought curiosity to tracking our parts through the day, before trying to create connection with them.

Today you’re invited to build even more on the same kind of exercise – setting reminders on your phone – by not just connecting by speaking to the part of you you’re focusing on but seeing if it’s possible to offer each part that you become aware of some genuine compassion.

Hopefully, it’s relatively straightforward to feel compassion for and send compassion to a part of us who’s feeling sad, overwhelmed, afraid, or powerless.

But a part who won’t stop thinking about work even in bed?

Or a part who’s decided to get another bar of chocolate despite your best intentions?

Fortunately, IFS practitioners the world over have discovered fairly reliably that there’s a question that can unlock our compassion for these parts. The question is

“How are you trying to help me?”.

An alternative version is:

“What would happen if you couldn’t do this thing?”.

So today, you’re invited to set the same reminders as yesterday, and use all the same prompts, and then see whether you’re already able to feel compassion for the part, or whether you need to “ask the part” one of those questions above.

Either way, once you can sense some compassion – and it doesn’t have to be slushy big waves of anything. Just a warm-ish or softened sense of “OK yeah, I get that”, then send that compassion to the part you’re focusing on. Simply notice the warm-ish “getting it” feeling – it often comes with some small sense of muscles relaxing - and tell the part in silent words or wordlessly exactly that; that you get what they’re feeling (if it’s an Exile) or what they’re trying to do (if it’s a Manager or Firefighter).

And then notice what happens, being ready to notice a shift even if it’s subtle.

Here’s a Worksheet to support you with this exercise.

We’d love to hear about your experience in the Comments.