IFS – Cultivating Self Compassion By Taking Your ‘PULSE’
The beauty of IFS work is that we can learn to step back from those “out of control” circumstances when one emotion, thought, or inner part of us “takes over”. One powerful tool of IFS is the PULSE exercise, where we learn to work compassionately with that emotion, thought, or part for the greater good of our lives.
(P) Pay attention:
Turn your attention inward, and allow into your awareness a difficult emotion, thought, or part within you that has been a common companion in your inner world. Without suppressing it, becoming carried away by it, or judging yourself for experiencing it, cultivate a non-reactive, non-judgmental awareness that this emotion is simply present within you.
It may be helpful to:
- refer to the emotion in the third person: ‘Anger is within me,’ as opposed to ‘I am angry.’
- locate the emotion in your body: ‘I am aware of fear tightening my chest.’
- imagine the emotion as held in your hand some distance away from you.
- greet the emotion with an accepting attitude: ‘Welcome anxiety, I accept your presence within me; I trust you are here for a reason.’
(U) Understand empathically:
Trusting that this emotion is present for a reason, empathically connect with the suffering hidden within its cry.
Sense from within the emotion:
What is the deep fear underneath it?
What is its deepest longing?
What ache, or buried wound might it carry?
What gift does it offer that may be stifled and obstructed?
Allow its cry to unfold until you feel a sense of deep understanding for the root reasons that it strains to get your attention in the way that it does. As you do this, it may be helpful to invite the emotion to materialize in your imagination as a child or figure, a symbol, a memory, a gesture, or a sound that captures its experience.
(L) Love with connection:
As you open in your understanding, extend a warm loving regard toward the emotion and tend to it in any way that helps it feel heard, honored, and cared for.
Allow the emotion to receive the care you offer to it. Soak in this compassionate connection for as long as it feels right.
(S) Sense the sacred:
If it feels right, invite a compassionate sacred presence to be with this emotion or its image.
Allow the sacred presence to tend to this emotion in any way that feels healing and restoring. This sacred presence may appear in a variety of forms: a radiant light or the sun’s warmth; a healing energy; an image like cradling hands or an embracing blanket; a divine figure (i.e. Jesus of Nazareth), or an ancestor like a kind-hearted grandmother; a soothing sound or encouraging voice.
(E) Embrace new life:
Before you surface from this contemplative space, notice any gift you are receiving from this practice.
Allow this gift to soak into you, seeping into every tissue of your body, and into every part of your inner world.
This grace may be a sense of healing; a gift budding within you; a quality of wholeness or goodness; a power being kindled; or even a deepened awareness of a longing that aches to be satisfied.
Adapted by the Wise Brain Bulletin from Cradled in the Arms of Compassion: A Spiritual Journey from Trauma to Recovery © 2023 by Frank Rogers, PhD. Reprinted with permission from Lake Drive Books. All rights reserved.
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