The Round Table Within

How a new view of my inner world revolutionized the way I live ⟶

We're not as linear as we think we are. We all contain multitudes.

We carry inside us the loyal protectors, tireless achievers, perfectionists and caretakers, critics and cheerleaders, dreamers and the doubters. We hold the ones who want to be seen and the ones who hide. We hold the soft child who still longs for safety and the wise elder who somehow knows the way.

For much of human history, we’ve been taught to see this complexity as a problem - as evidence of inconsistency or brokenness. We’ve been told to “get it together,” to “find ourselves,” to “be one thing.” But what if wholeness was never about singularity? What if it was about learning to sit at the round table of our own inner world and listen - really listen - to the voices within?

Discovering the Round Table

When I first encountered Internal Family Systems, or IFS, I was in graduate school, working to become a therapist. I understood trauma, attachment, and the way our nervous systems echo our histories. But IFS gave language to something I had sensed all along - that we are not one static "self", but an entire internal ecosystem of dynamic facets, each with its own story, strategy, and need.

It was as if someone had handed me a map to a land I had been walking my entire life. Suddenly, all the disparate pieces made sense - the part that pushed through exhaustion, the part that combusted when faced with conflict, the part that still sought permission to rest. The part that worth-earned through service.

What moved me most wasn’t the theory - it was the compassion.

IFS introduced me to the idea that every part inside of us, no matter how extreme, is trying to help. Even the inner critic is a protector. Even the self-sabotaging part carries a burden it once took on to keep me safe. This model didn’t just heal me; it revolutionized the way I understood myself.

From Division to Dialogue

In the IFS model, we learn that healing begins not by silencing our parts, but by inviting them to the table. The goal is not to eliminate the inner chaos, but to listen, negotiate and transform it into collaboration.

When I began practicing this in my own life, something extraordinary happened: shame started to dissolve. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” I began asking, “Who in me feels this way?”, or "Even though this isn't working, how is it working, even if consequential?". I learned to stop assuming that just because I was driving this bus, I knew everything about each passenger. Because I didn't.

So, I learned to get curious, to stay curious, and to befriend what was "in the way". That small shift changed everything.

It softened my inner world, creating room for curiosity instead of condemnation. I began to see that healing was less about fixing and more about witnessing. Less about striving to be good and more about learning to be kind - to myself, to every part inside me that had been doing its best with what it knew.

The Sacred Third

Over time, I began to see Internal Family Systems as more than just a clinical model. It became, for me, a sacred framework - a way of integrating the psychological and the spiritual, the scientific and the symbolic.

IFS is the sacred third of our age - the living bridge between masculine and feminine ways of knowing. It honors the structure, clarity, and accountability of modern psychology (the masculine), while also embracing the mystery, intuition, and relational depth of the sacred feminine.

In mythic language, IFS is the Hieros Gamos - the sacred marriage - where logic meets love, and analysis meets grace. It’s where the measurable meets the mystical, and it offers us something we desperately need in this time of polarization: a model of integration that is both rigorous and tender.

Like the old traditions and Indigenous ways of knowing, IFS teaches that healing doesn’t come from domination or suppression - it comes from connection. From listening, understanding, and restoring right-relationship within ourselves first, and then with each other.

A Personal Revolution

When I began to live this work - not just facilitate & teach it - my world began to reorient around a different kind of leadership. I learned to lead from what IFS calls the Self: the calm, compassionate awareness that exists foundationally, beneath all our inner parts.

From that place of Self, which each of us contains, life feels less like a battlefield and more like a council fire. Each part has a seat, each voice a role. The frightened child, the over-responsible worker, the weary idealist... they all get to be seen, heard, and understood. And when they are, something miraculous happens: they begin to trust.

The old inner hierarchies soften. The protector who used to shout now whispers. The exile who once hid now reaches for light.

This is not metaphorical. The body changes. The mind quiets. Relationships shift. Creativity blooms. Wholeness ceases to be a lofty concept and becomes an embodied way of being.

How Inner Work Shapes Creative Work

In my art practice, I often see my parts come alive in visual form. Some pieces are the voice of the dreamer; others, the healer, the caretaker, or the one who longs for beauty as a form of survival.

When I am creating cyanotypes or stitching or painting, I am often in conversation with a part that wants to express something words cannot. These creations become meeting places - altars, even - where I honor the stories my parts and psyche have been carrying.

Art, like IFS, is relational. It is a dialogue between seen and unseen, conscious and subconscious. It allows what has been hidden to emerge, not to be judged, but to be witnessed and integrated.

Just as my parts find a way of being seen and known through the creative process, they also find rest there. When they are finally witnessed, creatively, they feel seen and become less elevated. They aren't so apt to fight me for the wheel of the bus.

When I look at my finished work, I sometimes recognize the signature of a once escalated or even destructive protector who no longer needs to fight, or an inner child who has finally been allowed to rest, to feel seen, to play.

The Collective Mirror

What I love most about IFS is that it gives us a language for something universal. We are all made up of parts. We all know what it feels like to be conflicted inside - to want two things at once, to say yes and mean no, to carry love and fear in the same breath.

IFS gives us permission to see that this is not a flaw in our design - it is our design.

Multiplicity is natural. The goal isn’t to erase our complexity, but to bring it into harmony.

When we lead from Self, we become more available to others.

When we learn to hold our own pain with compassion, we stop projecting it outwardly.

When we listen to the round table within, we cultivate to harmony in our outer lives.

And this, I believe, is how personal work becomes planetary work. Healing ourselves is not narcissistic or selfish, it's for everyone. It is revolutionary. It ripples outward in quiet, immeasurable ways.

An Invitation to Begin Listening

So perhaps the next time you feel inner tension, when one part of you wants to rest and another insists on finishing the list - you might pause. You might ask, gently, “Who in me feels this way?”

And then, simply listen. Negotiate. Mediate from your higher Self so nobody's needs are discarded.

The round table is always there, waiting.

The inner council can be in session in the space & time of a few breaths.

All that’s missing is your presence at the head of it - the Self in you that can hold it all with compassion, curiosity, and calm.

Wholeness is not a distant summit. It’s the quiet work of returning, again and again, to the conversation within.

You can explore more reflections and creative works inspired by Internal Family Systems and sacred self-leadership at PerennialHeart.com.