IFS Therapy For When The Holidays Make You Feel... Off

What can you do when you’ve just fought with a family member, had a painful grief-y memory come flooding back, and suddenly spent way more on Christmas gifts than you had budgeted for (besides rolling your eyes at every chorus of “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”)?

The holidays can be a busy time, internally and externally as you manage work, family dynamics, parties, your health, grief or loss, reminders of goals that didn’t materialize, or whatever else is in the air for you around this time of year.

Thankfully, Internal Family Systems therapy offers some perspective on why these things can create so much chaos, and strategies you can use to move out of some of the less-than-wonderful cycles you’ve felt yourself being pulled back into this winter.

How Internal Family Systems Helps Make Sense of Holiday Chaos

In Internal Family Systems, kind of like in the Pixar movie Inside Out, each person is understood to have different “parts”. Some of those parts work together, some not so much, but each of those parts are like members of an internal family, guided by your Self.

If all that sounds a little out-there and not super relevant to your holiday season experience, let’s make sense of it a little more.

IFS helps us understand each person’s “Self” as the part of themself that is easily compassionate, calm, curious, connected, confident, courageous, creative, and has clarity (those are the 8 C’s of the Self). While IFS shows us that there are no bad parts, you might find that some of your parts (they might be what are called “protectors” or “exiles”) are making it harder to find your “Self” than you’d like as you engage with familiar patterns and people and places during the holidays.

Common Parts That Get Activated During the Holidays

Here are some parts that might be showing up in ways that make you feel a little bit… off during the holiday season:

• The Grieving part is missing a family member or loved one, or still mourning a loss others may not acknowledge or understand

• The Anxious part stays awake at night thinking about seeing a family member you have a challenging relationship with, or spends too long in the shower rehearing how you’ll approach conversations with them

• The Impulsive or Spend-y part might want to make the seasons feel fun or special and through the budget out the window to do it, or might be replacing intense feelings of discomfort with more stuff

• The Alcohol/Substance use part could be more comfortable than you’d like them to be with drinking or using substances to create some distance from difficult situations or people 

• The Avoidant part hides, puts things off, or shies away from sticky situations or obligations

• The Guilty part gets consumed with their negative self-talk surrounding your decision to stay home, voice an opinion, or do something that may disappoint others 

• The Binge-eating (or under eating) part might be the reason you resort to eating the whole sleeve of holiday cookies in secret after a tense evening with family, or they might want to under-eat and make excuses for skipping holiday meals to avoid the stress

• The Lonely part is drowning in feeling alone, even when you are surrounded by people you know well

“So… Now What?” When You Recognize Yourself in These Parts

If you read through that list and found a few parts that sounded a little bit like some of yours, you’re not alone if you’re wondering, “great, now I know I’m causing my own problems. What am I supposed to do with that?!” 

Well, the best place to start is with something I mentioned earlier, which is the core belief in Internal Family Systems and parts-work that there are no bad parts. All of the parts of you are there for a reason, and there are ways to work with them to feel safe and back to your Self again soon. 

Acknowledgment 

One way to start the process of cooperating with your tricky parts is to acknowledge them. Eventually, IFS Therapy can help you to express gratitude for all the ways your grieving part has honoured what you’ve lost, or how your impulsive part has helped you feel less overwhelmed, but if gratitude feels like too much of a stretch when the way that part is showing up is complicating your holiday experience, starting with noticing them and acknowledging what they are looking for or the feeling they are bringing up for you is also powerful.

Remember Your “Self”

Most of our protector or exile parts were formed while we were growing up, usually in challenging moments or patterns from our childhoods. This can mean that those parts are still functioning the same way they did when we were children, without much control, influence, or choice over our situation. Something helpful about working with your parts as an adult is that you do have more choice, control, and autonomy over where and how your Self part takes the lead again. 

Spend a few minutes tapping into what we refer to in IFS as “Self energy”, asking yourself how you feel when you are your most calm, curious, courageous, and confident self. Could your Self step in and help you “parent” your “childlike” parts that need to be soothed, reassured, and taken care of? If you could take on more of that Self energy, how could you help your other parts get what they need in a different way? 

Find a Trained IFS Therapist

Parts work is work. If you are intrigued by the idea, but a little overwhelmed at the process or if you’ve tried some of the strategies mentioned here on your own and still feel like more intentional support would be helpful, don’t hesitate to find a trained Internal Family Systems therapist in your area. The team at SoulSoothe want you to have everything you need to better understand and work with the things you need, so you can enjoy this holiday season without the stress and frustration.

Conclusion

When the hustle and bustle of the holidays gets loud and your internal world follows suit, remember that you don’t have to power through, shift into autopilot, or keep pretending that you’re fine. With IFS and the right support, you can slow the whole thing down, reconnect with the version of you that’s steady and clear, and give all the parts of you what they’ve been trying to find. It won’t make the holidays perfect, but it will make you far less likely to lose yourself in the chaos and far more able to come out the other side grounded, present, and actually able to enjoy the parts of this season that matter to you.