Field Notes from the Self - Fragments, feelings, and the quiet courage to look within.

I have been doing a lot of reading, around psychological approaches, especially body based work. My knowledge gathering hasn’t been linear. I read, I experience, I talk about it with my therapists (yes, plural. I work with three. Judge away), something shows up on social media, I pick up a word or two, then dig into that. Obviously no particular order. One of the frameworks that is becoming more and more popular is Parts Work, as detailed in the Internal Family Systems approach developed by Richard Swartz. This is the first in a series of posts on Parts Work. My aim is to explain the concept as I understand it, bring it to life through personal example, draw some helpful generalizations, and offer practical suggestions for your own exploration. The Internal Family System Here's how I understand Internal Family Systems — The way your mind works, how you react and respond, is engineered by several distinct parts that exist within you, like members within a household. However, thei...

Writing has steadied me during times of great emotional upheaval. I write to make sense of my internal world, and I have found that it usually helps. Even though I have enjoyed writing, I have had long periods of hiatus in my writing journey. And every time, I come back to it, as if to a former lover.  Every such return to writing has been a homecoming, a quiet "Welcome home". The familiarity wraps me around in a warm embrace. Building new routines in an old place brings excitement. Revisiting pieces I wrote earlier is like finding old photo albums: a kind of time travel. As with any homecoming, there is often guilt and sadness in not visiting often enough, in forgetting the love that waited. Writing, for me, is an intimate act, a window into the inner workings of the mind.  Therefore, I do experience a hesitation in opening up my writing for a wider audience. Writing for public consumption creates a compulsion to please, a pressure I do not feel ready for.  Still, I have...

  Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. This space was born from a quiet longing—to hold what doesn’t fit neatly. To notice. To name. To make space for the truths that live beneath the surface of things. I write to understand. Sometimes that takes the shape of a poem. Sometimes a story. Sometimes just a sentence that won’t leave me alone until I put it down. Field Notes from the Self is where I come to make sense of the inner landscape—the ache and the wonder, the questions that return like old friends, the parts of myself I’m still meeting for the first time. If you’ve ever felt too much, not enough, or somewhere in between… if you carry stories that don’t always get told… if you’re tracing your own map by feel—this space is for you. You won’t find tidy conclusions here. But you might find resonance. And maybe, in these field notes, something in you will feel less alone. Thanks for reading. – Vidya