Welcome to Episode #164. I'm your host, Kristi Angevine, and this podcast is your invitation to deepen your understanding of why you think, feel, and act as you do so that you can stop habits that take more than they give and replace them with ones that really serve you.

Today's episode features a simple yet robust analogy that's gonna help you really understand your inner world better. So if you've ever felt conflicting emotions, noticed self-sabotaging habits, or wondered why you sometimes don't feel like yourself, this analogy will help make sense of all of it. Let's dive in.

Welcome to Habits On Purpose, a podcast for high-achieving women who want to create lifelong habits that give more than they take. You'll get practical strategies for mindset shifts that will help you finally understand the root causes of why you think, feel, and act as you do. And now, here's your host, Physician, and Master Certified Life Coach, Kristi Angevine.

Hello, hello, everybody. I am so excited to be recording this with you here. I have had kind of the craziest last, seems like last week or two, but honestly last several months or so. But you know how you have those weeks where things kind of just escalate and there's one layer of stress, and then something else comes, and then something else comes. And you think, surely nothing else will come, and then something else comes. And it really, at least for me, sometimes feels like comic absurdity of just, like, the craziest things happening and not even things that are necessarily tragic or bad or life-changing. It's just the cumulative impact of all the things coming in that can just take its toll.

Well, that's how the last couple of weeks have been. And let me just tell you, it has really expanded my capacity to try to meet myself with patience, notice that when I am not very patient with myself and with others, the impact of that, and how I can be patient with myself even in the aftermath of not showing up exactly how I would like. And, happily, in the nicest of ways, it's been really good in that way because I'm able to see sort of, like, when things are tricky, how I can show up in ways that still feel connected to what's really important to me, to what I value, and for the most part, are me modeling for my kids how I would hope that they would be able to show up for themselves.

If you had a camera on me, nothing looks very perfect. It's not something that you would say, “Wow, look at that. That's something I would totally try to emulate.” I mean, it's just ordinary average life. Things are messy.

There are miscommunications. There are people getting a little bit irritable with one another. There are repairs that just don't go as I would hope they would go. Things that take longer than I hoped they would take. Having the best-laid plan, not A, B, C, D, but best-laid plan F, and having a wrinkle still show up there.

It's not perfect by any means, but amidst all these, like, pile-ons of stress and things going sideways, it's just been simultaneously two different things. It's been a lot. And, also, I've had the sense of gratitude that even amidst the “a lot,” the tools that I know how to use have been… they've worked like they're supposed to work.

So that's my sort of, like, slice into my life where things are, they are lots of things all at once. They are hard. They are amazing. They are more difficult than I wish they would be, and I can give myself grace for wishing they were different. They are really funny and then profoundly frustrating within maybe a five-minute period of time.

And even when it's disorienting and I feel a little bit of that, like, slipping on ball bearings feeling that comes during times like this, I've almost felt like I could still reach up and grab onto, like, a sturdy rope or some sort of firm surface as I'm sliding around.

So I don't know if anybody else is experiencing anything similar like this or going through something where you just need to know that you're not alone, but that is something that has really helped me feel a little bit more sturdy is knowing that even as I look around and there's you know, I don't have somebody right in front of me going through the same thing, I know down at a cellular level that I'm definitely not alone in this, and that is probably one of the very fundamental things that helps me feel more grounded when things in my life and when myself, when I am feeling like everything is slippery and moving and messy.

So I just shared that with you in case that's what you're going through also. And this very much relates to the topic that I want to talk with you about today. Because what I wanna talk to you about today is a way of looking at your experience, looking at your mind that explains what's going on when there's a lot going on.

And I don't know about you, but for me, as much as I really love contemplating and sort of intellectually noodling on abstract concepts, in order to make some conceptual things make the most sense, I need concrete examples, or I need analogies that really anchor the abstract concepts into something that I can relate to in real life. So I don't care if the analogy is kind of a loose analogy or it's a silly analogy. If it's an analogy that works well enough, that helps me so much.

So if you are somebody who likes analogies, this episode is perfect for you. Because when it comes to the complexity of our minds as seen through the lens of Internal Family Systems, one of the really helpful ways that I have found to describe how our mind works using that lens is with the analogy of comparing our mind to, drum roll please, a minivan or a bus or basically some vehicle full of people. So in this episode, I'm going to use shorthand of a van or a bus.

This analogy explains why sometimes you feel like a different person from one moment to the next, why your emotions and thoughts can be contradictory in the same 60-second period of time, why certain habits feel impossible to break, and why sometimes you act in ways that you don't fully comprehend. And when you know these things, it helps you understand how you can start working with your system instead of constantly feeling like you're fighting against yourself.

So let me flesh out and connect how the human mind is like a passenger van full of people. So I want you to imagine a van or a bus, if you will, filled with all sorts of people in every seat. And this particular vehicle, it's got tinted windows that are so dark that from the outside, you can't see in very well. The people on the inside, they can see out, but you can't see in.

The person in the driver's seat, they're the one who's in control. The passenger in the passenger seat can strongly influence the driver just like a navigator. And at any moment, anybody in that van can take over and drive. They can literally get out of their seat, push the driver out of the way, sit in the driver's seat, and drive.

Now some of the passengers in the van, these are just people that are staring out the window. Some people are asleep. Some people are chatting with one another. Some people are arguing with one another. And there are passengers of all ages, all personalities. And this particular van, it's a bit fancy.

There are partitions that the driver can deploy to keep the noise of the people way in the back of the van quiet and block them from easily getting up and moving to the front. And yet from the outside, because of the tinted windows, you can't see all these people very well. And even though the people inside this van can see out pretty well, if this van of people was to drive past another van of people, both with tinted windows, the people in both vans can't easily make out the people in the other van. They might be able to make out sort of a shadowy figure or a little bit of movement, or if the sun shines just right, they might be able to catch a glimpse, but it's definitely not easy. It's definitely not accurate.

So the van and all the people inside, that represents you. The people inside the van, those are all the different aspects of your personality, all your different parts. And when we see and treat the different parts of your psyche like we would treat people, we enrich our understanding of ourselves in a really amazing and surprising way.

Now the outside of the van, how it drives, what it looks like, that's representative of what other people see when they see you and your behaviors. Now the front of the van, that's where the parts that are the most conscious reside. So the driver, the passenger seat, the maybe the first row back, this represents your more conscious mind. The back of the van and the middle third beyond of the van, the people that are there, they're representative of more of the subconscious parts of you.

And there's one last piece. In addition to this van full of people, there's you. You are the owner-operator and the main driver of the van, but all the passengers in your van can influence or even control very important things. And all the passengers in your van, as I said, they have very different personalities. They come with different emotions, different priorities, different beliefs, different concerns, and very different ways of looking at the world.

So you might be driving the van, and at any point in time, a different part of you, different passenger in the van, might just take over the driver's seat, push you out of the way, and take over. And when that person takes over, they will influence how you see yourself, how you see other people, how you interpret the world, and what actions you take. Just like somebody who takes over a literal driver's seat will have a different style of driving, different pace, different direction they wanna go.

And another note about how the van is perceived from the outside. From the outside, other people only see the van and how it drives. They don't know who's at the wheel. They don't know what's going on inside. They don't know if the two people in the back passenger seats are arguing with one another. They don't know why you're driving a certain direction, otherwise known as acting or interacting the way that you are.

So now that you have this image of the van and the tinted windows and all the people on the inside and how they can be sequestered behind a partition or how they can pop into the driver's seat and influence things or argue with one another. Let's elaborate on some specific examples so you can see how this analogy relates to and explains your lived experience.

Now if you are new to the podcast, and when I say Internal Family Systems, you're not quite sure what I'm talking about. First of all, it's one of my favorite paradigms to incorporate into coaching. It's a model from psychotherapy that sees the human mind as a multiplicity and posits that all the different parts of us have positive intentions, even if those positive intentions are hidden underneath behaviors that we might not enjoy.

There are episodes that talk about some of the fundamentals of Internal Family Systems that we will link to the show notes, and you can go to the show notes. It's at habitsonpurpose.com/podcast and in those show notes, you'll be able to see the other episodes where I talk about this model so you can get some familiarity with it. But you don't have to have the familiarity in order to see this analogy and how it relates to you. So you can go back and listen later if you'd like.

Now the first aspect of this that I wanna discuss is the part where whoever is driving is the part of you that controls how you see the world, how you see yourself, as well as what you feel, and basically how you drive the van and where you go.

So let's say that you are on your way to a social event. Either you're walking there or you're driving there, and suddenly, in the van in your psyche, an anxious, socially avoidant part pushes you aside and jumps into the driver's seat. Now with this part at the wheel, this part sees the world through the eyes of a nervous, self-conscious windshield. This part worries about being evaluated, questions everything, thinks things like, what if I say something dumb? Who am I gonna talk to? What if I have nothing interesting to add? This outfit was so stupid.

To this part, the social event is a terrible idea. This part wants to change the plan. And this part, if it's driving the van, would start to position the van to turn it around to make a U-turn to get you home. This is your fretting, second-guessing, dread-bringing, contemplating bailing part, driving.

But then from the middle row of your van, a guilt-driven part perks up, jumps into the front seat, gets the wheel back, and thinks, no way. We promised we'd go. People are expecting us. We have to go. Besides, what are they gonna think if we just bail?

So now the anxious part of you is still in the van, maybe, like, sideways and disheveled sitting in the passenger seat, but the guilt part is driving. And this is why as you make your way to this gathering you're going to, you feel torn. A part of you wants to bail. A part of you feels like you can't. So inside, it's a bit of a ping pong. You're torn between two conflicting perspectives, two conflicting people trying to drive the bus, drive the van, at the same time.

Then as you're about to go into this gathering, in your van, another person who's kind of built like a really strong, tough, Navy SEAL military person. I'm just trying to build up some, like, really robust image in my mind. This person, who nobody would dare mess with, from the middle row mutters to themselves, okay. Fine. But if it's miserable, I'm taking over this van. And we're gonna have a drink, and we're gonna take the edge off, and we're gonna make sure that this isn't awful.

So once you, in reality, arrive to your social event feeling anxious yet obliged, and you look around and you don't see anybody you know, and let's just say nobody turns and says, "Hey. How are you doing? Come on over. I wanna introduce you to..." You don't have any sort of people reaching out to you. And in that moment, you kinda feel like you don't belong.

Well, in your van, what is going on is from the very back, a part has clambered up to the wheel, and this part is the middle school version of you who feels intensely awkward, like you don't belong, like you are the odd person out. You shouldn't be here. And this part's impulse, when it's at the wheel, is to slam on the brakes, turn off the engine, turn off all the lights, and hide.

So when this part's there, what happens to you is you feel extra self-conscious. Your words feel like they are coming out through cement. You don't know what to say. You want to flee. You feel stuck. And that big Navy SEAL part in the middle row that was muttering swoops up, pushes anxiety, guilt, and the middle school you back to the middle of the van, grabs the wheel, and before you even realize what's happening, that part has made a beeline to the free food and the wine.

And before you know it, you're stuffing your face with free cheese and food that you weren't hungry for, and you're having wine that doesn't even taste good faster than you would normally drink it. And then we fast forward to the next day, and all these parts that surfaced before and during the social event, they are asleep in the back of the van, and you wake up feeling bloated and dehydrated and just wonder, what the heck happened?

So have you ever wondered why on earth you did something? Have you ever wondered, like, why you keep doing the same old thing? Well, this explains why. Different parts of your psyche, different parts of you take turns driving based on what's happening around you, and based on what other people in your van get involved, otherwise known as, what other parts of your psyche get activated?

So let's just pause and take all this in for a moment. First off, can you relate to having a situation like this where you have all these conflicting emotions, and then you wonder what to do and how to behave, and you look back and wonder what happened? In situations like this, I want you to think about what different people hopped into the driver's seat of your mind. And does it make sense to you that the particular sequence of different passengers that turned into drivers would happen?

Now let's take this idea one step further. In this van, some parts, they mostly stay in the back seat, but the parts in the back seat, they still affect you. So how does this work? Have you ever driven a car with people arguing around you or, like, kids who are squabbling or a baby that's crying, or your in-laws that are making comments that make you cringe? Have you ever wished that you had one of those limousine partitions that you just pressed a button so you could sequester yourself away from those other people? Well, if you can relate to this, then you know you can have people who are not driving the vehicle who are affecting the driver in some way.

So in your van, way in the back, you might have some very quiet parts that you don't think about much. Maybe you've got a part that is deeply sad and disappointed. Maybe you've got a person that's angry or resentful. Maybe you have a passenger who feels really inadequate. Maybe you've got another one who feels vulnerable, and like they don't belong. Imagine these are the people who are sitting way, way, way, way, way in the back of the van, And you don't let them drive, at least not on purpose, just like you wouldn't let maybe a seven-year-old just take over and drive a couple hours of the trip.

Maybe as you drive along, you don't even acknowledge these people in the back of the van. Maybe they're generally so quiet that amongst the din of talking from the other people and given that your attention is on driving and moving forward, you might not even realize they're there.

And if someone were to ask you, the driver, about them, you might say, “Who? I don't really know. I don't know those those people that are back there.” And the way this looks in real life is you can have experiences, emotions, parts of you that are just like those back of the bus people. They stay quiet, unacknowledged, and generally not a problem. But just because they are quiet doesn't mean they're not present. Like, if we took your van and put it on one of those big truck highway vehicle scales, the scale would detect their weight.

So you might have a part of you that's really good at getting things done, and you love it when this part's in the driver's seat because this part can push through anything, keep you going at work, keep you caffeinated, checking things off the list, efficiently, productive, and busy. This part is a controlled enthusiast, forges ahead, and this part really I mean, it does so much work. It is your high-achieving sort of go, go, go part. And when it's at the wheel, there is zero impetus to slow down, much less stop and investigate any sort of dormant sadness or vulnerability or anger in the back.

But these quiet but present parts can insidiously take a toll in a few main ways. So first off, just by the existence of these people in the back of the van, kind of like being around depressing background music, their mere presence is what can make you feel sort of surprisingly drained or irritable or emotional or detached or agitated without fully knowing why. Just like being around background music that you don't really like kind of eventually takes its toll.

Now even if there's a partition up and a soundproof barrier so that your ambitious go, go, go driver doesn't have to hear these parts in the back of the van, these parts sometimes might behave like children who just want you to acknowledge that they asked you a question. These back of the bus folks, sometimes they climb over the seats, and they bang on the partition, or maybe they rock the van back and forth and back and forth to get your attention. And as the driver, you feel the vehicle sway. It's harder to drive. There might be noise that's irritating. The whole experience is frustrating. It's distracting.

And this is the equivalent of suppressed emotions, inconvenient emotions taking their toll even when you're not paying attention to them. So if you hit an unexpected pothole and you happen to bump that partition button and the partition comes down, these parts from the back of the bus that are hungry for your attention, they now jump into the front seat, and out of nowhere, you're crying or yelling or having a really big emotion that seems bigger than the situation would call for.

Can you relate to this, a surprise feeling out of proportion to the circumstances? Well, this is why that happens. Emotions in the backseat of your psyche that you ignore and don't pay attention to can sometimes get activated without your conscious awareness, and then you hit one little bump. One tiny thing sends them straight out.

Another way that these back of the van people, which sounds kinda funny when I say it like that, the people in the back of your van. The other way that the people in the back of the van have an impact is like this. You're just driving along, and the person who's in the back, let's say they are primed to perceive criticism in the tiniest of things. Well, they're gazing out the window, and they think they see somebody in the back of another van sticking their tongue out at them and maybe holding up a handmade paper sign that says, you suck.

So remember, both vans have tinted windows, but this part that is primed to perceive criticism is 100% sure an attack has just happened. So this part jumps out of the back seat, past all the other passengers, takes the wheel. And when this part's at the wheel, all you see is how the other van, otherwise known as the other person, is mean, awful, terrible, and how you have just been severely criticized, attacked, judged.

Meanwhile, what's actually happened is in the other van, there was just a little kid, and they held their hand up, they waved, and maybe they held up a book that they were reading. And so what this type of thing looks like in reality is you're in a meeting, somebody says something that's, in hindsight, kind of an innocent-sounding comment, but in the moment, the way it lands in your system is like a knife to the heart.

It feels literally like a personal indictment of you in public, masquerading as a benign no-big-deal comment, but in that moment, you know better, and you are instantly seething. You hate that person more than you've ever hated anyone. You want to disappear. You just feel terrible. But instead of running from the room or yelling at the person who just said what they said, another person in your van who values peace and harmony and senses that conflict is dangerous, this peacekeeper part acts really fast, shoves the angry hurt part aside, gets to the wheel, and what happens is you plaster a half smile on your face and say, “Oh, yeah. That sounds great. I would love to take that extra shift. And you know what? I'm sure I can make it work, anything for the team.”

And this goody-goody peacemaker gets a solid scowl from the angry one sitting in the passenger seat. And what you experience in real life is that you are left feeling like you kept the peace, but you are consumed with resent, and hur,t and anger. Because this part lets you drive. But, basically, the part that was hurt and angry is now sitting in the passenger seat, turning up the volume on your least favorite radio station with a look like, “So there. That's what you get.”

Now in contrast to this, where there's a misperception of something as a threat when it perhaps really wasn't, the last way that people that are in the back of the van or the middle row of the van can show up for you is you could have a person who detects a real threat, and this part in the back of the van really does detect something that is genuinely a threat, and they jump in the front of the van. They're driving. They take over. No other parts object. And it's actually exactly what you want to have happen.

So this would be, you're walking down the street. Everything is beautiful. You're just enjoying the view. You're enjoying the smells. You're thinking and reflecting about things. And out of the blue, a few people jump out. And these people, they intend to cause you harm. They want to mug you. They want to hit you. And the peaceful, mellow part that was driving gets pushed aside with zero objections.

And the part of you that can kick and yell and fight for your life and is really strong and scrappy takes over the wheel and keeps you alive and keeps you with your wallet. And this is amazing news. This is a part that you don't really pay attention too much, can activate right when you need it. And in those moments, you don't necessarily have other parts that are trying to yank the wheel back.

So let me just ask, have you had things like this happen, where you have surprise big emotions? Or insidiously draining feelings that you can't explain? Or large activations that are thinly veiled so that you feel really confused about what to actually do? Or maybe an advantageous part of you shows up right when you need it and keeps you safe?

These things can happen not because you have contradictions inside you that make no sense or that there's something overly complicated about you as a person. This happens because different aspects of you get called forth at different times, and the people in the back of your van either influence the ease of the drive, they take over the drive, they squabble amongst themselves. And if you don't think about your psyche as having this type of rich complexity, it will leave you feeling disoriented and like, who the heck is in charge here?

So let's just summarize what we have so far with this van analogy. You and your mind and your emotions. You are like a van full of people. Whoever drives your van, whichever person or part is at the wheel, that's the one who dictates how you feel, what you think, how you see the world, how you see yourself, and what you do.

The people in the front seat, they are easier to notice. These are your emotions, your thoughts, your parts, your beliefs, that you are much more easily, consciously aware of. The people in the back seat, you might not notice them until they are loud or until they rush to the front of the seat. But just because you don't notice them doesn't mean that they're not having an effect on the van, on you.

These people that are in the back, they represent your dormant emotions, dormant parts that can take you by surprise when they do surface. And these are the ones that show up with a misinterpretation, or they can show up when it makes perfect sense for them to show up.

The different people in the van, they all have different priorities. So sometimes they will squabble, just like we saw in the social event where one just wants you to feel comfortable, one wants you to show up no matter how you feel, and one wants you to go home, even if it will have consequences.

Now there are many more aspects to this analogy that can help you understand some of the things that you repetitively do in your habits and in your personal interactions with other people, and we're gonna dig into those in a future episode. But for now, I'm curious, how does this land for you? Can you relate to this type of complexity?

Here's what I want you to consider for this week. What's it like for you when different parts of you are at the wheel of your van? Who drives your van most of the time? Who likes to be up front navigating? Who likes to DJ, but maybe not to drive?

What's it like for you when one part takes over the wheel from another part? Can you feel the shift? Do you notice when a cameo driver pops up just briefly and retreats rapidly? This would be where you have a flash of emotion that shows up and then goes away.

What's it like when your parts come and go? How does that feel for you?

So this week, what I want you to do is practice paying attention to who is in the driver's seat for you and what these transitions feel like when different people, different parts take the wheel.

And in the future, we're gonna take this, whether you think it's silly or lovely, we're gonna take this really robust analogy even deeper so you can understand not only some of your patterns as they relate to your habits, but some of your patterns as they relate to how you relate to yourself and how you relate to and interact with other people.

So until next week, I hope you are well, and I cannot wait to see you either in real life, in one of the upcoming workshops, one of the upcoming webinars, or simply in the next episode.

Are you a woman physician interested in being more intentional in your life, being more deliberate with your habits? Maybe you're feeling a bit frayed on the edges with all the pressures of work and life, and you may have a tendency to overthink, people please, second guess, or feel so much guilt when you do something for yourself.

Perhaps your charting takes forever, you bring work home, and you're just not as present as you would like to be. Maybe you scroll, or shop, or emotionally eat, or you use a drink to wind down more often than you'd like.

If you can relate to this and you just want to feel less reactionary and more in the driver's seat of your life, you need to understand the root causes of your habits. Habits like perfectionism, a harsh inner critic, people pleasing, numbing, ruminating, overcomplicating, procrastinating, and so on.

And that's exactly what you can work on in the next round of small group coaching called Habits on Purpose for Physicians. Habits on Purpose for Physicians, or HOPP for short, comes with CME and is a small group of women physicians who meet weekly for six months.

And in HOPP, you get practical, deep dive coaching and teaching from me. And I come at this from a perspective of cognitive, somatic, and Internal Family Systems informed approaches in a way that is not only accessible, but applicable to real life.

And you get a ready-made structure that you don't have to create on your own, and you get probably one of the best parts is a community where you can connect with other physicians doing the same work.

Enrollment information and the link to join the waitlist can be found at https://habitsonpurpose.com/hopp. And when you go there, get on the waitlist, because when you're on the waitlist, you'll get access to early enrollment and some bonuses only available to those who sign up early. And the reason why this is important is spots are limited. So signing up sooner as opposed to later is really smart so you can ensure that you get a spot before they're full.

Also, if you are interested and you want to join but you find the price is a barrier, there are scholarship options so don't hesitate to fill out the easy application for either a partial or a full scholarship that will ultimately be linked on the main sign-up page when we open up enrollment.

In the Habits on Purpose for Physicians group, you will unpack and unlearn old habits so that you can create new ones that are sustainable. So I hope you'll consider joining. The signup page with all the details will come out closer to enrollment for the next round, but go to https://habitsonpurpose.com/hopp to get on the waitlist. I can't wait to see you there.

Thanks for listening to Habits On Purpose. If you want more information on Kristi Angevine or the resources from the podcast, visit HabitsOnPurpose.com. Tune in next week for another episode.