Your weekly positivity tip
Oct 27, 2025 2:30 am
How Your Inner World Influences Your Health
A few weeks ago, a friend reached out to invite me on a fun adventure—dinner and a movie. Girls’ night out! I was so excited! I was telling Kelly—because she just happened to be hanging around—how much I was looking forward to laughing and relaxing with my friends.
That’s when Kelly gave me the look.
“Tina, you've been complaining about how much work you have to do. Now you’re just going to leave? What about your those emails and that paperwork? What about your family? Have you forgotten your responsibilities?”
I could feel myself shrinking in my chair. She had a point – I did have a lot to do.
But there's something you should know about Kelly-she's not a colleague. I don’t consider her a friend. She’s not even a real person. Kelly, the Caretaker, is a voice inside my head, one of my parts I’ve been getting to know as I learn about the framework, Internal Family Systems or IFS.
So tell me—do you have your own Kelly? Do you have a perfectionist, an avoider, an inner critic, a planner, or a hyper-achiever? Because according to IFS, we all have inner parts—Maybe you’ve even said, there’s a part of me that wants to take time for fun, and there’s another part that says I have too much to do. And here’s the catch: these parts don’t just shape our mood. They shape our biology.
Chronic stress, unresolved conflict and trauma, constant self-criticism—These impact our nervous system, but also suppress our immune function, mess with our hormones, and even influence our gene expression. Our health, which we may be trying to support through nutrition, movement, sleep, and other strategies, can be undermined from the inside out by our own minds.
So what can we do? What I love is that IFS gives us a radically different way to relate to these parts. Instead of fighting them, silencing them, or letting them run the show, the first step is to see and hear them. “Oh—that’s my anxious part talking. Hello. There’s my hyperachiever speaking up. I see you."
The next step is to appreciate them!! These parts aren’t bad. They’re not trying to make our lives more difficult. They’re protectors. They often develop to help us cope with stressful events, especially when we were young. They help us navigate this human experience. But they were never meant to run our lives.
They were meant to be advisors, to bring their concerns, their fears, to a compassionate and wise leader. A leader who would listen to them with curiosity and compassion instead of judgment, and then take action from a place of calm and clarity. This wise leader is the best version of ourselves, or as IFS calls it, our True Self.
When a worried part feels appreciated, it relaxes. When an angry part feels validated, it softens, just like real people. And when our internal system feels safe and connected, our external biology reflects it. The stress cascade unwinds. Now our efforts around food and lifestyle can have a bigger impact.
When we create inner harmony, we create the conditions where real healing and disease prevention become possible.
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This is a version of a short talk I gave at this year's Metabolic Health Day Conference in Tucson, AZ. I was so honored to share my love for IFS and why I believe it can be an important part of any healing journey or health initiative.
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