Understand Your Inner Critic or People Pleaser
Do you ever feel like you have a different voice that takes charge over your decisions, especially when you're under stress? You might snap at a loved one, then immediately regret it, or agree to a commitment you secretly dread. Or berate yourself after an interaction with a colleague that caused a rush of anxiety.
These experiences are common and often stem from what are called "parts" – sub-personalities that develop to protect us, but which can unintentionally cause distress. We all have these sub-personalities, and this does not mean you are disordered or is the same as having multiple personalities.
By giving these common parts a name and a profile, we can begin to identify them in action and understand their true intentions. Having awareness of how they show up at work, in relationships, and with friends and family is the first step toward reclaiming your authentic self.
If you want to know more about the basics of IFS parts, read my introductory article here.
The Manager Parts
These parts are proactive, working overtime to try and control our external environment or how we arrive or show up. They try to manage life, people, and situations to keep you safe and avoid bad outcomes before they even happen.
Here are a couple of common ways our manager parts show up for us.
The People-Pleasing Manager
Core Goal: To prevent rejection, conflict, and abandonment.
Motto: "If everyone likes me, I am safe."
How it tries to help you…
Work: Saying "yes" to every project, staying late unnecessarily, or struggling to negotiate a fair salary because you fear confrontation or disappointing your boss.
Relationships: Being overly compliant, hiding your true feelings or opinions, or constantly anticipating a partner's needs to ensure they never get upset.
The Cost: This part leads to deep-seated resentment, emotional exhaustion, and an acute loss of self, as your own needs are perpetually ignored.
Related Wound: Often, this type of part shows up when we have the wound of prioritisation, where we’ve been deprioritised by the people we are meant to be most important to.
The Critical Manager (The Inner Critic)
Core Goal: To protect you from being hurt, disappointed, or failing publicly by anticipating and fixing flaws first.
Motto: "If I criticise myself before anyone else can, the pain won't be as bad, and I can fix the flaw before it becomes a problem."
How it tries to help you…
Work: Perfectionism, fear of submitting work (or submitting too late), and constantly second-guessing your competence despite evidence to the contrary.
Relationships: Fearing intimacy because the closer someone gets, the more they might notice your "flaws." It often projects its criticism outward, leading to judgment of others.
The Cost: This part is powerful. Its constant attack keeps you playing small and destroys self-esteem.
Related Wound: This is usually related to the wound of worthiness, where we’ve learnt that to be vulnerable and ourselves is not acceptable.
The Firefighter Parts
These parts are reactive. When a painful emotion or a vulnerable memory is triggered, they rush in to "put out the fire" by distracting you or numbing the pain immediately, or by flinging that hot potato at someone else. It is this part that usually comes up when we are in conflict with a close partner or loved one.
The Distancing Firefighter
Core Goal: To create physical or emotional space when pain, hurt, or potential conflict is sensed, preventing you from being overwhelmed.
Motto: "If I pull away, the feeling stops and I can reset."
How it tries to help you…
Work: When a difficult conversation or feedback arises, you might emotionally withdraw, go silent in meetings, or suddenly get "overly busy" with trivial tasks to avoid the core issue or uncomfortable feelings bubbling up inside of you.
Relationships: When hurt by a partner, this part responds with silence, emotional withdrawal, or the 'silent treatment,' preventing repair and leaving the other person feeling abandoned.
The Cost: This part often triggers a cascade of negative reactions in others, creating the very rejection or abandonment it sought to prevent.
Related Wound: This part can be related to the wound of belonging, where you didn’t feel you were cherished and honoured.
The Anxious/Clingy Part
Core Goal: To prevent feared abandonment by maintaining constant connection and seeking reassurance.
Motto: "If I know where they are and how they feel, I am safe."
How it tries to help you…
Work: Extreme anxiety about work relationships, constantly seeking validation from a boss, or becoming very anxious about a minor delay in communication.
Relationships: Overwhelming a partner, friend, or family member with constant texts, needing instant replies, or feeling panicked when they are unavailable. This is often an attempt to manage the vulnerability of the Exile part that feels inherently unlovable.
The Cost: The frantic energy of this part can push people away and confirms the very abandonment fears it is desperately trying to alleviate.
Related Wound: This part is often at play when we’ve lacked a sense of trust in our caregivers. They did not feel reliable and dependable which left us feeling unloveable and unloved.
Reclaiming Your Life
These parts are not who you are; they are survival strategies you adopted when you were very young. They still believe you are the age you were when they first appeared, and operate on outdated information and in a reactive way based upon the brain and responses available to a child or adolescent. Yet, without awareness that they exist and how they try to help you, they hold significant sway over your adult life.
The key is to shift from being unaware of them to compassionately understanding them and the wounds they are hiding.
Which of these parts sounds most familiar to you?
Getting to know them is the first step towards offering them compassion and helping them relax and soften. Think of them as a misunderstood child or a wounded animal. If we took the tantrum of an overwhelmed child or the bite of a scared animal at face value, we may conclude they are unsafe to be around and judge accordingly.
But if we took a moment to understand that the child is overstimulated and exhausted from masking, or the animal is injured and afraid, then we would approach them with curiosity, compassion, and support. We would look to making that child or animal feel safe, first.
Here are some of my favourite journaling prompts to get to know your parts better:
"When was the first time I remember needing this part? What was it protecting me from?" (For example, The People-Pleaser might recall a time when conflict led to punishment or rejection.)
"What does this part believe will happen if it stops doing its job?" (For example, The Critical Manager might believe you will be humiliated and fail spectacularly.)
"If this part had a name, what would it be? And what is one loving thing I can say to it right now?" Bringing a bit of humour to our parts can be relieving. It also helps create some distance when they do get triggered - ‘Ah, it’s Anxious Amy here again, I wonder why she’s coming up now?’ and ‘It’s okay, Anxious Amy, we’ve got this, I’ve got you.’ Imagine the power of someone having said this to you as a child as you battled with anxiety instead of telling you off for crying?
If you’re interested in finding out more about your parts and how they show up in your life in service of you, book a free consultation with me using the button below.
