What If Our Symptoms Were Telling Us a Story?

What If Our Symptoms Were Telling Us a Story?

Over the past year I have been exploring Internal Family Systems (IFS) and developing a practice of listening to my parts.

Beautiful protector parts of me that have worked so hard to help me survive.

Through this work I have begun to deepen my ability to recognise old patterns, understand how to interrupt them and create a new relationship with my symptoms — or in IFS language, my parts. I am trained to recognise muscular patterns, movement patterns, and system-based patterns like digestion, immunity, nervous system, hormones, energy but this is deeper.

And this is why I want to offer you a question:

What if our symptoms were not only evidence that something was wrong with us?

What if they were telling us a story?

As someone who has lived with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) for the past twelve years, I know what it feels like to view symptoms through the lens of fear, anxiety, need for control and the constant search for a fix. The screaming in my head to just MAKE IT STOP. I can see now, a need for internal safety!

And I see this pattern in many of the people I work with too.

When the flare-ups came, especially the chronic diarrhoea, my focus was always the same:

How do I stop this?

Even when I discovered more holistic approaches alongside conventional medicine like nutrition, supplements, fasting, lab tests, movement, breathwork and nervous system support. All valuable and necessary adaptations at different stages of my journey and ones I continue to implement to some degree.

And yet, underneath it all, the question remained the same.

How do I fix this? What am I doing wrong? What more do I need to learn?

My whole system would become flooded with fear. And this fear wasn't simply a thought. It was visceral. A deeply felt sensation that lived in my body and felt overwhelming. And more familiar than I realised. Feelings (parts) that I have always carried it just took a different form.

Through IFS I found a language that offered me something different. Instead of fixing, it invited listening. Instead of control, it invited curiosity, self-compassion and exploration.

It helped me begin relating to my symptoms as parts that had something to say and needed nurturing not fixing.

And slowly I am beginning to learn something that felt almost impossible at first. How to pause and notice. It is deeply written into us — the hustle, the performance, the constant doing, and so much external noise. 

Take this supplement.

Try this exercise.

Follow this protocol.

Quick fixes everywhere.

And those things can be helpful. May be needed.

But my offer is this:

Before we can know what, our body needs, we first must learn how to listen to it.

I will share a very real example of what happens for me during an IBD flare. It only takes one sensation, one stool, and my body remembers the story. The story of chronic diarrhoea and what this means for me as a woman, a mum of three, and the impact it has on family, work, relationships and daily life.

For years I would rush straight into fixing mode, trying to stop what was happening and figuring out how to make it go away. Now, when symptoms arise, I do something different.

I pause and breathe.

I notice what is present.

I help my brain and body recognise that I am here, now. I am not in the past. I am not speculating about the future. I meet my parts with gentleness and compassion. And speak to my parts. And I listen.

In return, my body learns something different. I experience less rigidity, tightness and constriction.

Does it change the symptom immediately?

Sometimes. But many times NO.

It changes ME with the symptom.

I am different. And because I am different, my body experiences the flare differently. I can notice the story that starts playing in my head. The fear, predictions, anticipation. The meaning I attach to what is happening.

And instead of getting swept away by that story, I can pause, listen and become curious.

This is something I witness repeatedly with the people I work with. We are often very quick to analyse what is happening and try to solve it. To make it stop. And so much slower to feel it. 

Yet feeling is vital to noticing what our bodies are communicating. Patterns of fixing parts of myself slowly shifted into patterns of curiosity, exploration and compassion towards those parts. And this has led to greater trust in my body. Not because it always behaves perfectly, symptom free. But because I am finally in relationship with it.

Something I have always carried deeply is the belief that healing isn't simply the absence of symptoms. Healing is about wholeness. A coming home to myself. Getting to know all the parts of me that make me who I am and developing a different relationship with them.

One built on curiosity rather than perfection and control. Compassion rather than criticism. Listening rather than fixing. I am beginning to see symptoms differently. Not as failures or as betrayals of my body. Not as something to silence or overcome.

NO.

They are INVITATIONS. Invitations to become curious and ask deeper questions. Maybe the body isn't the enemy. Maybe it is an incredible avenue to greater communication with mySELF.

Maybe healing begins not with asking:

"How do I get rid of , manage, or control?"

But with asking:

What is this experience showing me?

What part of me is asking to be seen?

What part of me needs my attention?

How does this part show up in my body?

What would it mean to come home to myself?

This does not mean every symptom has a simple emotional explanation.

Our bodies are complex, and our health deserves appropriate medical care, support and attention. Particularly in a culture where female voices and those of marginalised communities are valued less. Adequate care is a human right.

And I still offer this deeper layer worth exploring.

A Note on Internal Family Systems (IFS)

The perspective shared in this article has been deeply influenced by Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz.

IFS offers a compassionate way of understanding the different "parts" within us and how they work to protect, support and help us navigate life.

If you would like to learn more about IFS, you can visit the official Internal Family Systems Institute website: https://ifs-institute.com

Another resource is Listening When Parts Speak by Tamala Floyd, which integrates IFS and ancestral wisdom.

My reflections in this article are drawn from my own personal experience of working with this model and the insights it has offered me in my relationship with my body and my symptoms.