If our internal wounds were like a torn cuticle with onion juice in it

Humor me for a second while I write an analogy here, how trauma and hard things live inside us like old wounds that fester.

I’m making dinner and cutting onions to add to the spaghetti sauce. Onion juice gets into a torn cuticle, and it hurts like CRAZY. It stings. I didn’t even remember I had that ouchie until it was touched by the acidic liquid. I run to the sink to rinse it off, and it stops stinging. But now it throbs because it’s been re-injured, and there isn’t anything I can wash away to make it stop. I damn the onions and when I cut the rest, I am super careful to avoid the finger with the red and angry cuticle. It is sore for a few hours, and gradually I forget all about it again. It starts to feel better until I hit it on the side of my desk when I reach for a pen. There it is again! But this time, it doesn’t hurt for as long. It is irritated, not re-injured. I realize that I need to actually do something about it, instead of just hoping it’ll heal on its own. I wash my hands well, apply some vaseline to protect it, and cover with a bandaid. Band-Aids are hard for me because I have ADHD, and anything that changes my sensory experience can be challenging. But I’m incentivized to make the pain and discomfort from the torn cuticle go away, and the only way it will is if I admit it needs help, nurture it, and keep it “safe.” It only takes a day or two, and when I remove the bandaid, underneath is the soft pink of new skin. Healing. And soon, healed.

We carry wounds inside us, too, and situations, relationships, and just, well, life… can be the onion juice that reminds us they are unhealed and need some attention. The difference between internal and external wounds is that there is no vaseline or band-aid we can apply to help them heal. We have to use other tools to do that. And IFS is the most helpful one for me.

IFS is a therapeutic modality that says we all have parts inside of us that have specific roles that were created out of traumatic or hard experiences. These things that happen to us when we were younger are like my torn cuticle. Kind of ok, until something else happens.

Ok, I’m stretching a little here…but the six F’s of IFS are Find, Focus, Flesh out, Feel Towards, Befriend, and address Fears. If I place this in my onion juice story, here is what it might look like:

IFS is like the moment I realize I actually need to take care of my wound (Self-Energy). To see it as a wound, not just a nuisance, and to wash it carefully (Find, Focus on it, Flesh out), apply a salve (Feel Towards, Befriend), and wrap it in safety (Learn its fears and take the part to safety).

Inside of us are all sorts of parts with banged-up cuticles, just trying to do their best to get us through our days in the safest way possible. Instead of continuing to ignore or push them away, when we admit we need some help, get curious about what has happened to them, we can actually heal them, so the next time you cut onions, they still might make you cry, but only from whatever toxic fumes they give off, and not because you get the juice in your unhealed ouchie.