Holding the Tension: Why Integration Doesn’t Mean Erasing Your Inner Parts

We often come to therapy or healing work with a quiet hope:

“I want this part of me to go away.”

Maybe it’s the inner critic, the one who shuts you down. Or the rebel who derails your plans. Or the tired child who just wants to hide under the covers.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we don’t try to get rid of these parts. Instead, we come into relationship with them.

What does it really mean to “integrate” a part?

Contrary to popular belief, integration doesn’t mean blending all parts into one harmonious whole or erasing the ones we don’t like. It means expanding your inner container—your Self—with enough spaciousness, compassion, and curiosity to allow multiple truths to coexist.This is firstly demonstrated by your therapist, or myself in this case. I use my own SELF energy and perspective and series of inquiries to provide a psychic ground for curiosity and compassion at the same time, allowing your nervous system to have the experience of experiencing the part without overwhelm or shutdown. What liberation! To experience a piece of us, just as that, just  a piece, like a leaf floating down the river. 

Just like Taoist philosophy teaches the dynamic dance of yin and yang, we begin to see our parts not as problems, but as necessary polarities: 

Action and rest.

Fire and water.

Control and surrender.

These polarized parts of the grist for the mill for a life well lived,

and a mystery unfolding in our psyche.

We are not here to psychologize away your inner revolution, to diagnose your decomposition and rediscovery to cope through self silencing, or keeping the status quo, we are here for the full bodied, "YES" "HOME" revolution that is true liberation,

and to be honest, many times this is originally felt as chaos. 

Rather than forcing resolution, healing means learning to hold the tension between opposites. Carl Jung called this the transcendent function—the capacity to sit with paradox long enough for something new to emerge. IFS mirrors this by inviting us to unblend from our polarized parts and listen to each one’s story. Often, they’ve been protecting us in opposite ways for years.

Healing happens when we stop choosing sides and start listening.

Becoming the Conductor

Think of your inner world like an orchestra.

Each part is an instrument—playing its own song, in its own tone, for its own reason.

Some are loud. Some are dissonant. Some are barely whispering.

Your job is not to silence them. Not to merge them. Not to force them to play the same note.

Your job is to become the conductor.

To attune to each voice with respect. To set the rhythm. To hold the whole. To make space for all of it—without letting any one part take over the stage.

True integration isn’t about erasing parts of you. It’s about expanding your Self with compassion, curiosity, and a capacity to be with the full range of your experience.

Holding the Tension as a Therapist

As a therapist, people often come to me hoping I can help them solve a problem. And while there’s sometimes a little problem-solving involved, that’s not really my role.

My role is to compassionately hold the tension with them.

• To sit in the complexity—without rushing toward resolution.

• To offer tools for self-regulation so they can stay present with discomfort.

• To witness and reflect, rather than fix and advise.

Integration, especially after plant medicine, isn’t about finding the answer right away. It’s about learning to live with the questions.

That might look like:

– A grounded spiritual practice – A new philosophical framework – Deepening self-awareness through parts work – Trusting the long arc of personal development

And this is essential to understand.

In a world that pushes us toward speed, clarity, and control… true healing often asks the opposite.

Being withness & Slowing Down

To deepen this trust in the unanswered—especially in urgent times—I’m drawn to the words of Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, a Nigerian-born Yoruba philosopher, psychologist, and poet. He’s known for his work in postactivism, decoloniality, and sacred slowness. As the founder of the Emergence Network, his voice is a powerful reminder that the way forward may not be faster—but slower, more attentive, more relational.

“The times are urgent; let us slow down.”

He reminds us that urgency does not mean speeding up. It means choosing rest, presence, and deeper awareness—especially when everything around us demands action.

Slowing down, in his view, is not simply doing things more slowly—but cultivating true with-ness: Presence. Attunement to body, land, community, and ancestors. Moving at the pace of trust, not performance.

Integration is allowing

Integration isn’t a single moment of clarity. It’s not a fix. It’s a stance—a commitment to meet yourself again and again, with honesty and care.

The capacity to be with complexity;

The willingness to hold paradox;

The devotion to let your Self—not your fear—lead the way;

You don’t need to fix yourself.

 You need to meet yourself—

 Fully. First perhaps the first time, freshly, and here and now. In all your fullness in all your rationality denying divinity. We are here not to be rational beings, we are here to relate in all of live's relative expressions.

So let us feel the limitation of this material realm, the dimensions of this personality

and love it all the more.