You know that voice in your head that says “just do the thing” while another voice says “but what if it goes wrong” and a third voice chimes in with “why are we even talking about this when we should be sleeping”?

That’s your internal committee meeting, and you’ve been running it without an agenda.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy has a concept that sounds uncomfortably mystical at first: the idea is that you’re not one unified self, you’re a system of different “parts” that each have their own concerns, fears, and strategies. And if you can learn to facilitate dialogue between these parts instead of letting them shout over each other, you can actually get somewhere useful.

The therapeutic framework comes wrapped in language about “protectors” and “exiles” and “Self with a capital S” that can feel kind of unhinged. It originated from a guy who claims that magical guides told him about it. It’s rightfully criticized as pseudo-scientific, and I’m on the fence about whether it should really counted as a valid professional therapy training.

But strip away the packaging and you’re left with something remarkably practical: a protocol for debugging your own decision-making by treating your psyche as a distributed system rather than a single authority.

Or, in witchier terms: you’re learning to convene your inner coven. Each voice has power and purpose. The magic happens when they work together instead of hexing each other.

Take what fits here, and leave the rest.

The Multiplicity Spell: Why You’re Already Multiple

You’re already running multiple processes. Neuroscience backs this up. Different brain regions handle different functions, and they don’t always communicate smoothly. The prefrontal cortex (planning, logic, long-term thinking) literally goes offline when your amygdala (threat detection, emotional reactivity) perceives danger. They can’t both drive at the same time.

When you say “part of me wants to go to the party and part of me wants to stay home,” you’re describing an actual conflict between different neural networks that have different priorities and different access to information. The social connection network versus the energy conservation system. Both running valid programs with competing outputs.

In magical terms, you contain multitudes. Different aspects of yourself were forged in different contexts, charged with different purposes. Some parts were created to protect you when you were young and powerless. Some were built to help you achieve and perform. Some emerged to help you rest and recover. They’re all casting their own spells, and sometimes those spells interfere with each other.

IFS gives you a framework for identifying these parts, understanding what they’re trying to protect, and negotiating between them. Think of it as version control for your psyche, or zoning your inner council for a proper strategic planning session.

Mapping Your Internal Council: The Basic Architecture

IFS identifies three main categories of parts, though I’m going to translate them into language that feels less like therapy-speak and more like systems documentation.

Manager Parts (Your Proactive Defense Systems)

These are the parts that try to prevent problems before they happen. They’re your inner project managers, constantly scanning for risks and optimizing for safety.

Common manager parts:

• The Perfectionist: “If we do this flawlessly, we won’t be criticized”
• The Planner: “If we anticipate everything, nothing will go wrong”
• The Achiever: “If we’re productive enough, we’ll be valuable”
• The Critic: “If we spot our flaws first, others can’t use them against us”

In magical framing, these are your ward-builders. The parts that cast protective spells around your vulnerability. They’re trying to keep you safe by controlling outcomes.

Firefighter Parts (Your Emergency Response Protocols)

When manager parts fail and you’re overwhelmed, firefighter parts activate. They’re your emergency subroutines, designed to shut down pain as fast as possible, consequences be damned.

Common firefighter parts:

• The Numbing Agent: “Scroll social media until you can’t feel the anxiety anymore”
• The Escape Artist: “Sleep through the uncomfortable parts”
• The Saboteur: “Blow this up before it can hurt us”
• The Indulger: “Eat/drink/spend until the feeling passes”

In magical terms, these are your emergency banishment spells. Crude but effective. They get activated when your system is under active threat and needs immediate relief, even if the method creates collateral and/or long term damage.

Exile Parts (Your Quarantined Experiences)

These are the parts carrying old pain, shame, or fear that your system has locked away because it was too overwhelming to process. Manager and firefighter parts exist largely to keep these exiles from surfacing.

Common exile parts:

• The young part that learned “I’m not enough”
• The part that holds grief you haven’t had space to feel
• The part that remembers a specific trauma or failure
• The part that carries shame about who you are

Magically, these are the sealed chambers in your psyche. The parts of yourself you’ve bound and buried because confronting them felt too dangerous. But sealed doesn’t mean gone, it means consuming energy to maintain containment. (Other traditions call this shadow work or similar.)

The Inner Dialogue Protocol: How to Actually Talk to Your Parts

Here’s where IFS gets practical. Instead of trying to suppress, ignore, or override parts you don’t like, you learn to engage them in dialogue. This sounds weird, and it feels weirder the first time you try it. But it works.

The goal isn’t to eliminate parts or make them shut up. It’s to understand what they’re trying to protect and negotiate better strategies.

The basic protocol:

Step 1: Notice and Name the Part

When you catch yourself in an internal conflict or a strong emotional reaction, pause and identify which part is active.

“There’s a part of me that’s panicking about this deadline.” “There’s a part of me that wants to quit this entire project.” “There’s a part of me that’s furious at this person.”

Naming it as “a part” instead of “I am panicking/furious/wanting to quit” creates crucial distance. You’re not the panic. You’re the system experiencing panic from one of its components. This is also a common meditation technique. Notice the thoughts and feelings, but the thoughts and feelings aren’t you.

Step 2: Get Curious About Its Purpose

Ask the part: What are you trying to protect me from? What are you afraid will happen if you don’t do your job?

The perfectionist part isn’t trying to torture you with impossible standards. It’s trying to protect you from criticism or rejection. The procrastination part isn’t sabotaging you for fun, it’s protecting you from the possibility of trying hard and still failing.

Every part has a positive intent, even when its methods are counterproductive. Every spell was cast for a reason, even if the original circumstances no longer apply.

Step 3: Acknowledge the Part’s Concern

You don’t have to agree with the part’s strategy, but you do need to validate its concern.

“I hear that you’re worried if I’m not perfect at this, people will judge me. That’s a real concern.”

“I understand you’re trying to protect me from the pain of rejection by making me cancel this plan.”

This is the negotiation phase. You’re not overriding the part; you’re showing it you understand what it’s guarding.

Step 4: Negotiate a New Strategy

Once a part feels heard, you can discuss whether its current strategy is still serving you.

“I appreciate that you’re trying to protect me from criticism. But making me rewrite this email fifteen times is actually making me miss deadlines, which creates a different problem. What if we tried a new approach: one good draft, one editing pass, then send it?”

The part might resist at first. That’s normal. It’s been running this protocol for years. But if you consistently show up with curiosity instead of judgment, most parts are willing to update their methods. You’re not banishing the protective spirit, but you are renegotiating the terms of the ward. The part can keep its job, but you’re collaborating on more sustainable spellwork.

A Practical Example: The Sunday Scaries

Let’s apply this to a common scenario: Sunday evening anxiety about the week ahead.

Surface experience: Generalized dread, can’t relax, scrolling phone compulsively.

Parts at play:

Manager part (The Anticipator): “We need to mentally prepare for everything that could go wrong this week so we’re not blindsided.”

Firefighter part (The Numbing Agent): “This anxiety is too much, scroll social media until you can’t feel it.”

Exile part (The Inadequate One): “I won’t be able to handle what’s coming. I’m going to fail.”

The dialogue:

To the Manager: “I hear you’re trying to protect me by anticipating problems. What are you afraid will happen if you don’t do this?”

Manager: “If we’re not prepared, something will go wrong and we’ll be caught off guard and everyone will see that we can’t handle it.”

Acknowledging: “That’s a real fear. Being unprepared does feel vulnerable.”

Negotiating: “But making me rehearse worst-case scenarios for three hours on Sunday isn’t actually preparing me, it’s exhausting me before the week even starts. What if we did a 10-minute planning session instead? Write down the top three priorities, prep what we can, then trust ourselves to handle things as they come?”

To the Firefighter: “I notice you jump in when the Manager gets too intense. You’re trying to shut down the anxiety.”

Firefighter: “Yes, because it’s overwhelming and we need it to stop.”

Acknowledging: “You’re right that the anxiety is uncomfortable.”

Negotiating: “But numbing out on the phone isn’t making the anxiety go away, it’s just delaying it. What if instead of scrolling, we do something that actually discharges the energy? A walk, a workout, cooking something?”

To the Exile: “You’re the one who’s really scared, aren’t you? The one carrying the belief that we’re not enough.”

Exile: “I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to mess it up.”

Acknowledging: “I hear you. That fear is old and deep.”

Reassuring: “You learned that fear when you were younger and had less capacity. But we’re not in that situation anymore. We’ve handled hard things before. You don’t have to carry that alone.”

This isn’t about “fixing” the anxiety. It’s about understanding the system producing it and working with it instead of against it.

The Parts Mapping Exercise (Your Grimoire Entry)

Here’s a practical exercise to map your own internal council. Grab paper or open a doc.

Step 1: Identify a recurring internal conflict Pick something that comes up regularly. “I want to exercise but I never do.” “I know I should set boundaries but I always say yes.” “I want to create but I just scroll instead.”

Step 2: Map the voices in this conflict For each position in the conflict, identify the part and its concern:

SITUATION: [Describe the conflict]

PART 1: [Name it]
- What it's saying: [The voice/thought]
- What it's trying to protect me from: [The underlying fear]
- How long it's been doing this job: [When did this pattern start?]

PART 2: [Name it]
- What it's saying:
- What it's trying to protect me from:
- How long it's been doing this job:

PART 3 (if applicable): [Name it]
- What it's saying:
- What it's trying to protect me from:
- How long it's been doing this job:

Step 3: Identify the exile What old pain or fear is this entire system trying to manage? What’s the part that’s been locked away that these protector parts are guarding?

Step 4: Negotiate For each protector part, write:

• “I appreciate that you’re trying to protect me from [fear].”
• “The strategy of [current behavior] made sense when [original context].”
• “Now that [current reality], what if we tried [new approach]?”

When Parts Work Feels Too Weird: Alternative Framings

If talking to your “parts” feels too strange, you can use other language that points to the same mechanism:

Engineering framing: “Different processes in my system have competing priorities. I need to debug the conflict and reallocate resources.”

Neuroscience framing: “Different neural networks are activated in different contexts. I’m noticing which networks are firing and why.”

Strategic framing: “I’m convening my internal stakeholders to hear all concerns before making a decision.”

The language doesn’t matter. The practice does. You’re learning to treat yourself as a complex system with multiple valid perspectives instead of a single entity that should have one clear answer.

The Limits of Self-Facilitation

Here’s the thing IFS therapists know that self-help books often skip: some parts are too activated, too protective, or too deeply wounded to work with on your own. If you find yourself stuck in loops, if parts won’t negotiate, or if you keep hitting walls of panic or shutdown when you try to engage certain material, that’s information. And that’s a big reason that the framework has stuck around despite its dubious utility in the professional world.

This framework can be useful for everyday conflicts and decision-making. It’s not a replacement for therapy when you’re dealing with significant trauma or deeply entrenched patterns. Sometimes you need a more experienced practitioner to help untangle complex spellwork.

Your Psyche Is a Distributed System

The core insight of IFS is this: you’re not broken when you experience internal conflict. You’re a complex adaptive system running multiple protective protocols that sometimes produce contradictory outputs.

The solution isn’t to force unity or suppress dissent, it’s to get better at facilitating your internal council. Learn what each part is protecting. Acknowledge its concerns. Negotiate strategies that serve your whole system, not just the loudest part.

In engineering terms: debug the conflicts, optimize for the whole system, not individual processes.

In magical terms: convene your inner coven. Learn each member’s gifts and fears. Cast collective spells instead of letting parts hex each other.

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Related posts:

• 5 Cognitive Reframes for Daily Annoyances
• How to Design Personal Rituals Without Religion

Want more like this? I’ll be creating a Parts Mapping Worksheet to walk you through this process with more detailed prompts and examples. This is part of the Spicy Psychology & Cognitive Tools pillar, making therapeutic frameworks accessible and useful for skeptics.