An IFS Perspective on New Year Resolutions

The year rolls over. Opportunity looms. Pleasures and discontents come to mind. Time to change costly habits? It's a thought. Eating sweets after a meal? Drinking too much when you socialize? Yelling at your partner (or kids) when you feel tense? Watching TV instead of working out? Staying up too late? Eating when you're not hungry? Isolating? Overworking? This is the time of year when behavioral health and neuroscience experts weigh in about how to operationalize New Year's resolutions.

My expertise is internal family systems (IFS) therapy, and for those who find that willpower and the desire to change aren't enough, I have some advice. Though it may seem counterintuitive. Don't fight with yourself; don't assume you do it now because you did it then; don't be bamboozled by the word habit; and, most of all, don't work on changing yourself.

Instead, try thinking this way. The mind is an ecosystem populated by actors who each have a rationale for their behavior, which, if no longer rational in today's world, was rational once upon a time for some situation in the past. Accordingly, your subpersonalities (a.k.a. parts) do what they do for a reason. Undesirable repetitive behaviors are the self-care tactics of protective parts. When they work quickly and efficiently, they become habitual.

However, when they cause damage over time, other parts object. They are right to object. But the part who enacts the problematic behavior is also right. It developed the behavior of managing a problem and fears the problem will return if it stops now. When we keep doing something we simultaneously want to stop doing, we can assume that at least two (protective) parts are heading in different directions, each with a good reason.

For example, someone humiliates me, and I feel shameful (a vulnerable part). I try to become a more acceptable person by shaming myself (a proactive, inhibiting protector). But this self-shaming aggravates my feeling of shamefulness, so I drink (a reactive, disinhibiting protector). Then I shame myself for drinking (the proactive, inhibiting protector), so I feel bad (the vulnerable part) and drink some more (the reactive, disinhibiting protector).

In this scenario, an original problem (where insult became identity) generates a management strategy that works well but causes an increasing array of problems down the line (drinking makes me feel sick, be sick, lose friends, lose my job, crash my car).

Accumulating consequences aggravates my original problem (I feel worthless and unlovable). Hence, the shaming protector doubles down on trying to improve me by shaming me some more, which causes the drinking protector to return to its fast-acting management strategy (have a drink), and the cycle repeats. The vulnerable part feels bad (really, really bad), and the protective parts are motivated to manage that feeling.

To help them with their bad habits, we need to get curious about why they do what they do, listen to their fears about stopping, offer respect, earn some influence, and, ultimately, help solve that underlying problem (I feel unlovable). Step one is to ask questions. Here's an example.

Person: (to the part who wants to stop drinking alcohol) What do you do for me?

Disapproving part: I try to save you from yourself.

Person: You mean save me from the part who drinks?

Disapproving part: Yes. You drink too much. You're ruining your relationships and making yourself sick.

Person: I know what you're talking about, but that's not me. I'm not a part—I'm the one who is noticing you and the drinking part. Who, by the way, is another part. Would you be willing to listen to it while I ask some questions?

Disapproving part: Be my guest.

Person: Thanks. I want to talk with the drinking part. Are you around?

Drinking part: What do you want?

Person: Can I ask you some questions?

Drinking part: (warily) What do you want?

Person: I want to know what would happen if you stopped drinking.

Drinking part: No one would like you. You'd embarrass yourself all the time.

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Person: How?

Drinking part: By being you.

Person: I know who you're talking about. The part who believes it's unlovable.

Drinking part: It is.

Step two is to offer a credible alternative to self-criticism and drinking.

Person: No, it isn't.

Drinking part: Yes, it is.

Person: No, it isn't. I see the two of you share a concern about that part, even though you handle it differently. Can I show you that the part who feels unlovable is wrong?

Drinking part: You're going to stop that one from criticizing me?

Disapproving part: You're going to stop the drinking?

Person: No. That's up to you two. But if you (speaking to the disapproving part) would dial it down for a while, then I'm betting you (speaking to the drinking part) could lay off for a while. And then I could help the part you protect—the one who feels unlovable. Are you willing?

Do they agree? Maybe not right off the bat. But if you want your parts to try something new, you have to pursue their willingness—and parts who disagree won't become more agreeable just because one of them tries to impose a New Year's resolution on the other. Plug any costly habit into this formula (parts disagree about something, and you feel stuck) and find out what's going on. Polarized parts need a third party—you—who doesn't take sides but gets curious.