What Does it Mean to 'Work Through' Your Baggage?

Concerns From the Past

All right, so by virtue of the fact that you are reading this post, you are some number of years old. These years have afforded you experiences. And the nature of experiences is that they can be either good or bad. Both have affected you in some way. Sometimes you draw upon moments of success and triumph to inspire yourself today. Sometimes you utilize the lessons of hardship and failure to make better judgments moving forward.

Other times, though, it is difficult to find any meaning in your past other than just pain. Sometimes when you draw upon certain memories, all you can do is hope that they recede back into the depths of your mind to keep from putting you through it all again. These memories are your traumas, your wounds, and any other unresolved pain.

How the Past Affects the Present

It is easy to find comfort in the idea that making it through a difficult time is all you might need to come out better on the other side. And sometimes that is absolutely the case. When it isn’t the case, though, the past has many ways of working its way into disrupting your life today.

As mentioned previously, finding meaning in past experiences opens the door to drawing upon those memories in positive ways. However, when it is difficult or impossible to find meaning in them, their context in our lives deteriorates, but the memories remain. And this remains to be true even if we do our best to push such memories away. Maybe, you could even say that this makes it worse. Now, we are dealing with an inherently painful memories that stirs up certain negative emotions compounded with a sense of anxiety about even bringing it up in the first place.

This is the part where you have likely heard somebody else express the unwarranted advice that you just need to work through it.

How to Actually Work Through It

It is worth taking a moment to note that as I am talking about past events and their effect on the present, specifically do not mean very recent events. If you have just gone through something, there is naturally a period of recovery (and that period can vary depending on how severe it was). What I am talking about are the situations when you have had adequate time to heal but it simply has not happened. This takes a different mindset and approach, and it is

Being perfectly honest, there are many different ways to do it. However, there are certain goals and markers along the way that should help. First, if recalling a certain memory stirs up a significant amount of pain (similar to the level as when it happened), that is a clear indication that this is a point of focus. Ultimately, one of the most important ways of dealing with this is to be able to provide yourself some context.

While you are living through something painful or difficult, you have no way of knowing how things will turn out. Even right after you make it through a trying time or traumatic event, it can be difficult to foresee how things will settle down. The more time that builds between that event and where you are now, the more opportunity you have for context. Sometimes it is even necessary to let that time build before you can revisit your pain in a constructive way.

Once you have reached that threshold of time, though, the tempting nature of trying to forget begins to become more and more of an obstacle. Many times, it takes support from somebody else to muster the courage to revisit the event again, but being able to acknowledge what happened in as unfiltered terms as possible will go a long way in beginning your journey to healing. As you do this, your beliefs and feelings that you hold in regard to your memories begin to come to the forefront of your mind. Once you have the opportunity to face these beliefs, you will find much of the source of your current pain.

And this brings us to one of the keys to healing. The beliefs that you hold in regard to your painful memories influence the meaning that you derive from your experiences. This meaning drives the narrative that you tell about your own life. All of this starts with your understanding of your pain in the greater context of your experiences overall. But gaining any understanding means that it is necessary to take a courageous look at your pain to begin with.

I'm Hearing more about IFS, but what is it?

How IFS Developed

The first important thing to remember about Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) is that it did not come about by accident. It was not the product of a long shot hunch. Instead, it was born out of people’s natural pattern of talking about themselves in terms of separate, internal parts. Very commonly, people will say things like, “Part of me wants to read this book I’ve had my eye on, but part of me doesn’t even want to start it until I have the time.” This is a clear articulation of the feeling of having conflicting parts inside that pull in different directions. In this example, it seems that the part that wants to put off starting the book is winning out.

In any case, this is likely similar to something that you have heard in your own life. Whether it be in a movie, from a friend, or even in a song, you have almost certainly heard somebody express different desires in this way. Because people do this so frequently, it seemed worthwhile to lean into that and to engage with those ‘parts’ that have such starkly different motivations.

How IFS is used in Counseling

Another understandable question to the fact that people naturally speak this way is, “So what?”

Because the success of counseling often hinges on being able to build a relationship between counselor and client, one important thing to consider is how a client speaks. Because it is such a common pattern for people to refer to their parts without thinking much about it, it only made sense to explore that further. Another way of thinking about this is that people often use different words to say the same thing and similar words to say different things. Without taking a deep dive into what is behind a sentiment like, “Part of me really feels like I should study for this test, but I can’t find the motivation,” it is much more difficult to gain an understanding of what is inhibiting the desired behavior.

This is where IFS in the counseling room comes into play. It might seem initially beneficial to lean into that desire to study. You might think that if you can just channel that energy hard enough, you can overcome your perceived laziness to just do it. However, what if we explore the part that is taking control enough to inhibit studying?

Think of it this way. Imagine being at a party where several people are talking about the same topic in a group. Perhaps a few of the participants are comfortable asserting their points of view, a few aren’t particularly moved enough to interject, and then one is trying to find the moment to speak his mind. Maybe he isn’t comfortable finding the right amount of space to effectively say what he wants to say. So instead, he waits. He waits and waits, and his point of view now builds up inside of him. Maybe it builds up with so much frustration that instead of finally finding his moment to be heard, he acts out instead. Maybe he throws his drink or storms off. At this point, all eyes are on him, but his emotion has pushed him into a state where he can no longer voice his sentiment in a way that accurately reflects what he believes on the inside.

This same phenomenon happens all the time internally with our parts. By gently engaging with the parts that have felt suppressed to the point of lashing out, we can more meaningfully gain a perspective on why our actions don’t match our desired behavior. With a skilled IFS counselor, it is much easier to build that internal relationship and adjust the feelings that we are slightly out of touch with.

Do you Procrastinate, or are you Internally Conflicted?

The Misconception of Procrastination

We’ve all had that experience where the end of the work day comes, and the whole world is there for us to take advantage of. We’ll go home and check off the next ten items on our to-do list. We’ll write the next chapter of that book we we have planned. We’ll call our friends for a game night. All we need to do is get out of these work clothes.

Only, we get home and push all of the rest of that aside to just do… nothing.

Often times, we hear this phenomenon get brushed off as procrastination. “You’re not a self-starter!” you might tell yourself. “You always do this.” Maybe you even hear such comments from someone else. In either case, the question of ‘why?’ has likely come up. Why is it that we can feel so motivated when we’re leaving work (a time we might think of as the most drained moment in our day), yet we feel it fade away by the time our evening commute is over.

One of the misconceptions about this is that you likely aren’t simply slipping into a passive state. This is not an instance where you recede into the background while life begins to rush by for a few hours. Instead, what has actually happened is that you have, indeed, made a very deliberate choice. This particular choice comes down to the fact that you experience that rush of motivation right after leaving work.

A Brief Analogy

Throughout the day, everyone expends energy. That seems obvious. After enough energy has been expended, you will need some amount of sleep to regenerate. At some point during the day, your body starts sending signals that it would be a good time to disengage and to get some sleep instead.

However, you probably still have things that need to be done before you can get that sleep. So you ignore those signals. In turn, your body takes measures to keep you going. You have a stress response that produces adrenaline. Now if you try to sleep, you likely feel to hyped up to calm down.

How this Applies to Procrastination

At the end of the work day, it makes sense that a few competing feelings run through you at the same time. On one hand, work has potentially worn you out. Whether you have a physically demanding job or a mind-numbing one, it becomes taxing to do it day after day. Therefore, there is a part of you that absolutely is somewhat exhausted and relieved to be away.

However, a different part of you is very excited to be done with work. This excitement fuels a drive to get other things done. Everyone has a running list of things that they have to tend to, and this is finally the opportunity in the day to accomplish as much of it as possible.

Then the commute comes. Whether it’s five minutes or an hour, there is a pause between the moment you walk out of the office and the first opportunity you have to engage in anything else. This pause opens the door for that exhausted part of you to take over. Once this happens, you act out of that desire to unplug a little bit. After all, you have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.

How to Overcome

Becoming aware of the different parts that pull you in different directions allows you to understand and connect with why you are engaging or disengaging when the opportunity arises to check off some to-do items. First, though, it is necessary to form a relationship with yourself and the different parts that have different motivations. This allows you to take a step back and bring your decision-making process to the forefront of your mind instead of allowing it to happen in the background.