(Bridging the political divide with Internal Family Systems and understanding the nervous system and communication)

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
— Rumi

As a couples therapist, I spend much of my time witnessing what creates division between people who love each other, and what helps bridge it. Over time, I’ve noticed that the same patterns that divide couples in my office also play out on a much larger scale. Political polarization. social media shouting matches, fear and defensiveness. There is a growing inability to really listen — or to feel truly heard. And sometimes, when I sit with all this, I wonder if what we’re actually up against is not just politics or personality differences, but the deep human difficulty of staying present when we feel afraid.

It raises the question: how do we bridge the gap — not just in our closest relationships, but in our communities, our politics, and our world?

Two Frameworks That Guide Me: Internal Family Systems and Neuroscience

The first framework is Internal Family Systems (IFS) and the second is neuroscience — particularly what we’ve learned about trauma’s impact on the brain and how humans are wired to relate to others and the world.

IFS offers a way of understanding our inner world — the many “parts” of us that try to protect us from pain, and the deeper Self beneath those parts. Neuroscience explains what happens in the brain and body when we feel threatened — and why communication so often breaks down when we’re emotionally overwhelmed.

Both frameworks point to something simple but profound: we can’t truly connect with others until we learn how to connect with ourselves and understand how the past shapes our interactions.

The Protective Brain: Why We Shut Down or Lash Out

Our brains are wired to do two things: connect and protect. We are social creatures — babies cannot survive without human connection. At the same time, our nervous systems begin developing protective responses very early to keep us safe.

These automatic responses — fight, flight, freeze, fawn — aren’t bad; in fact, they’re survival strategies that our nervous system developed long before we had words for them, often in moments when we were very small and simply trying to make it through experiences that felt too big or too overwhelming to handle on our own.

IFS helps us see these responses as “parts” of us. Some parts shut down. Some attack. Some people-please. Some withdraw. These are what IFS calls protectors — parts that took on important roles early in life and developed strategies to keep us safe from pain. Just like our body quickly learns not to touch a hot stove, our emotional system learns just as quickly: conflict, difference, or even certain feelings themselves can feel reflexively unsafe.

The problem arises when we become blended with these parts — when they take over — and we lose access to what IFS calls Self energy.

Self energy is who we are at our core — calm, curious, compassionate, connected, confident — and if you pause for a moment you might notice you already know this place inside yourself, that quiet center that sometimes shows up unexpectedly in the middle of chaos, like an anchor that holds even when the waves are high.

Different traditions call it different things — Buddha nature, Christ consciousness/holyspirit, higher self, flow state, inner knowing. Even if you’ve never named it that way, you’ve likely felt it:

• That quiet place inside that observes without judgment
• The space that can hold fear while staying open
• The grounded, gentle presence that shows up even in conflict

It’s in all of us. Trauma — personal and collective — just makes it harder to access. The hopeful news? Thanks to neuroplasticity, our brains can rewire. We can find our way back to that place again. It starts with awareness.

Why Communication Fails Under Stress

When we’re emotionally flooded, the thinking part of the brain — the prefrontal cortex — can’t function properly. Logic disappears. We can’t reason, empathize, or reflect.

Instead, our defensive parts take the wheel. We argue. We shut down. We interrupt. We lash out. We can’t listen — not really — because deep down, our nervous system is screaming: I’m not safe.

This doesn’t just happen in personal relationships. It plays out online, in politics, in families split by ideology. In these moments we aren’t speaking for our parts — we’re speaking from them, and our listening narrows too; we stop listening to understand and instead listen only to defend, disprove, or retreat.

The Paradox of Change: Acceptance

Carl Rogers said it best: “When I accept myself as I am, then I can change.”

We can’t shame ourselves into growth, and we can’t shame others into seeing things differently either; if anything, shame drives us deeper into hiding, making us less available to the very change we long for, which is why compassionate curiosity — even when it feels counterintuitive — is the doorway. Because at the core of healing trauma and reflexive defensiveness, is working through shame.

In IFS, we practice turning toward our parts with curiosity. For example, asking them:

What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t do your job?

What are you protecting me from?
What do you need?

From a brain-based perspective, change happens through new experiences: moments where we feel safe, connected, and seen in the very places we once felt threatened or alone. That’s how trust is rebuilt. That’s how neural pathways rewire.

That’s how couples shift out of stuck arguments, from us against to eachother. To us against the problem.  That’s how polarization softens.

Differentiation: Listening Without Losing Yourself

So what happens when we deeply disagree — about politics, religion, values? We practice differentiation:

• Holding onto your own sense of self and values
• While staying curious about the other person’s experience
• Without needing to convince or change them

It means listening not to argue, but to understand; reflecting what you hear, even if you don’t agree; staying open rather than reactive. And while that may sound simple, in practice it is anything but — because people don’t open up when they feel attacked. They open when they feel seen, heard, and safe.

How Media Exploits Our Wiring

Here’s the hard truth: our beautiful, adaptive drive to connect and protect is often exploited by media and social platforms. Fear sells. Outrage spreads. Algorithms feed us content that confirms our existing beliefs — narrowing our worldview, stoking fear, and deepening the illusion that those who disagree with us are dangerous.

The more we marinate in these fear-based narratives, the more our nervous systems stay stuck in survival mode. And survival mode doesn’t leave room for nuance, dialogue, or humanity. It creates Us vs. Them. It fuels war, violence, and dehumanization.

History is full of examples where belonging — a sacred human need — has been weaponized. Religion, too, can be used to connect or to control. And when I really sit with that, it strikes me how fragile the line can be between using connection to heal and using it to harm, and how much responsibility we carry, each of us, in choosing which side of that line we walk on.

The deeper question is: Are we operating from fear or from Self? From nervous system reactivity, or from calm openness?

So Where Do We Begin?

Change doesn’t start on the debate stage. It starts in relationship. With our partners. With our communities. With ourselves.

“People can only meet you as deeply as they have met themselves” Matt Kahn

Some reflection questions:

• How do I relate to the parts of myself that feel scared, ashamed, or reactive?
• How do I speak to others when those parts are activated?
• How is media shaping my fears and my sense of belonging?
• How am I contributing — even in small ways — to shame, blame, or othering?

A Personal Example

I sometimes notice this in myself, too: when I scroll through social media and read posts that stoke outrage, my body tightens and I slip into an us-versus-them mindset. That’s my nervous system trying to protect me. If I’m not mindful, my “social justice” protector part wants to convince someone at all costs, even if it means shouting or shaming.

The fear beneath it? A younger part of me that felt misunderstood and unseen, believing that if I protect others from injustices I’ve experienced, I won’t feel that aloneness again. When I breathe and bring my “higher self” into the moment, I can stay present with that fear without being consumed by it. I can also hold space for the other person’s vulnerability, which opens the doorway to compassion — and, paradoxically, real change.

In relational IFS therapy, we call connecting to and  speaking for vulnerable parts, rather than from them, a “U-turn.”

We all fall into these traps. But we can also repair. We can own our impact. We can apologize. That’s what healthy relationships are built on — not perfection, but repair.

The Invitation

Violence — emotional, verbal, physical — doesn’t start with weapons. It starts with fear. With disconnection. With forgetting the humanity of the other.

But we can choose connection. Again and again. In how we speak. In how we listen. In how we treat ourselves. In what we share. In what we consume. In what we vote for.

When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of love as a force for social change, I believe this is what he meant. Not a passive love, but a courageous, grounded, clear-eyed love. A love that begins from the inside and radiates out.

And from that place, we can meet each other — not as enemies or ideologies — but as human beings. Parts and all.

* In coming blog posts, I’ll explore some of these concepts in more depth: differentiation, the nervous system, Internal Family Systems, communication techniques,  rupture and repair. Stay tuned. ✨