The Mansion of the Mind: My Journey Through Internal Family Systems

I didn’t come back to therapy to grow.

I didn’t come to heal.

I came because I couldn’t sleep.

Every night, the same dream.

Hera dying. Athena just a couple of months before.

Not metaphor. Not symbol. A memory, but worse.

Because in the dream, she never made it. Not once.

In real life, Hera died in my arms.

But in the dream, I was always just too late, watching her slip away, not being able to do

anything to save her.

Over and over again.

I wasn’t seeking transformation. I just wanted it to stop.

But it didn’t stop.

The Grief That Waited in the Corners

Daylight didn’t save me from it. The grief waited everywhere. In the space between emails, in the quiet after a conversation, in the stillness before sleep. I could keep moving, keep working, keep talking, but the moment I stopped, the bottom dropped out.

It was the kind of loss that rearranges the furniture of your life. You go looking for where things used to be, and they’re gone. And you’re left staring at the empty space, wondering how to live around it.

So, I went back to therapy. At first, my goal was simple: survive the nights. Build a wall high enough to keep the flood from reaching me. But somewhere in those early sessions, my therapist asked a question that cut through my practiced explanations:

“Where do you feel it?”

I didn’t have a clean answer. Only fragments. Panic tightening my chest, anger snapping at the edges, a hollow ache deep underneath. I described it clumsily, half expecting her to change the subject.

She didn’t. She leaned in.

“That,” she said, “is where we start.”

She didn’t ask “how” I felt. She asked “where” I felt it.

Learning a New Kind of Map

She told me about Internal Family Systems - IFS. It sounded strange at first. I wasn’t a family. I was one person with one very broken mind and a crippling fear of sleeping.

But the more she explained, the more it began to make comfortable sense. IFS begins with this: you are not a single voice. You are a system.

Those moments when you think, “Part of me wants to move on, but another part can’t let go” aren’t indecision. It’s dialog. They are conversations happening inside you.

IFS calls these voices “Parts.” They’re shaped by what you’ve lived through, and they’re all trying to help in their own way, even when the help they offer causes more harm than good.

Some carry pain. Grief, shame, the fear of being abandoned again. Others are the managers, working hard to keep things under control, to prevent that pain from getting touched. And then there are the firefighters, who rush in when things get overwhelming. Numbing, distracting, escaping at any cost.

Beneath them all is something different. Not a Part, but a presence.

Self.

Self is calm, clear, compassionate, connected. When Self is leading, healing becomes possible.

Language Was Only the First Step

Naming the Parts was a relief. Suddenly, the chaos inside me wasn’t just chaos, it had names, patterns, logic. I could begin to see why, in the same hour, I could feel the urge to disappear and the urge to confront everyone who had ever hurt me.

But words alone didn’t keep the nightmares away. I needed to know more than who these voices were. I needed to know where they lived. Which doors they kept locked. Which rooms I avoided.

That’s when the mansion appeared.

The Engineer

The first door I opened revealed The Engineer.

No small talk. Just a blueprint.

“That’s inefficient,” he said. “Let’s optimize.”

Before I even knew his name, he was already at work, erecting scaffolding around the wreckage, sketching floor plans. His space became The Laboratory: ordered, precise, quietly humming with solutions and a steampunk aesthetic.

He wasn’t there to comfort me. He was there to make sure the beams would hold. And for the first time in years, they did.

The Reaper in the Library

The next room was The Library. Shelves from floor to ceiling. In the center sat the Reaper, ledger open, gaze steady.

A literal interpretation of the Grim Reaper.

“If you don’t stay sober,” he told me, “you will die.”

No threat. Just fact.

Beside him sat a boy, Abandonment, small, watchful, still three-years-old, carrying the weight of being left behind. The Reaper had been guarding him all along.

“I didn’t think we would make it,” the boy said quietly. “But we did.”

Arrogance in the War Room

For years, I had kept Arrogance locked away, convinced he was dangerous. Not because he had

hurt me, but because he refused to shrink.

“You built a system to understand yourself”, he said. “You unraveled trauma. You confronted abandonment. You mastered grief. You walked away from addiction. And you think you did all of that without me?”

He wasn’t vanity. He was presence. The force that kept me from disappearing under the need to be liked or accepted.

Now he stands in The War Room, not to overpower others, but to ensure no one must fight alone and to ensure that Self is always undeniable.

The Eviction

September 26, 2011.

That was the day we evicted the Bartender.

He wasn’t a villain. He was a firefighter. Numbing pain, blurring memory, sedating grief. His way of keeping me safe was costing me everything.

“He drowned Reflection,” the Reaper told me. “He sedated Grief. He disconnected Self.”

The Reaper had made the stakes very clear. The Engineer had built stability. Arrogance had

reminded me of my strength. Together, we showed the Bartender the door. Permanently.

Reflection

Reflection had been with me longer than I could remember. The one who lingered on questions, who needed to understand.

He lives in The Laboratory, working alongside the Engineer. One builds the frame; the other fills it with meaning.

Grief’s Room

Grief didn’t force his way in. He waited.

His room is The Room of Memories, where the mantel above the fireplace holds the ashes of Athena and Hera.

“They mattered,” he says. “They always will.”

Grief wasn’t there to be “fixed.” He was there to be sat with until the love beneath the loss returned.

Betrayal

Betrayal grew out of Abandonment’s wounds.

“I made sure you didn’t keep chasing them,” he said. “And I’ll keep making sure.”

His room is my childhood bedroom, preserved in time. Not for nostalgia, but out of vigilance. He remembers who failed us and ensures we don’t forget our worth.

The Fighter and The Steward

Not all rooms held pain.

The Fighter arrived when someone I loved needed protection. Calm, disciplined, precise. He moves only when Self leads.

The Steward came with fatherhood. Structure. Responsibility. The quiet act of showing up again and again. He’s tired but no longer burdened. He trusts the system now.

The Mansion Now

It’s no longer chaos. It’s a mapped estate.

The Hallway of Doors. The War Room. The Convergence Room where we meet. The Library. The Laboratory. The Room of Memories. Even the Interrogation Room, where the Investigator now rests, not punished, just retired.

The system isn’t just functional. It’s masterful.

Why This Matters

IFS didn’t erase the nightmares. They still come sometimes, uninvited and unannounced. But when they do, I am no longer standing alone in the dark. I know the layout now. I know the doors and the thresholds, the places where light still filters in.

When grief rises, whether in the middle of the day or in the small hours of the night, I know where to go. I can walk toward the room where that pain lives, open the door, and sit in the right chair. I can hear the voice that needs to speak, and trust that Self will hold the conversation steady. The moments that once swallowed me whole now have walls, windows, and an exit.

I don’t run from them anymore. I walk the halls. I visit each room as often  as needed, sometimes staying only a moment, sometimes long enough to hear everything that must be said. Every door I open reminds me that these parts aren’t enemies. They are the architecture of who I am.

This was never about becoming someone else. It was about learning the language of my own inner world and discovering how to lead it with intention.

Your mansion will be different from mine. The rooms, the voices, the history. They’ll be shaped by your own life. But it’s there, waiting. And once you know how to find it, you’ll see that you’ve been holding the key all along.

So go ahead. Turn the handle. Step inside.

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Rob Rogers is an Agile leader and data strategist who usually writes at the intersection of public education, civic tech, and politics. His work explores how systems shape the way we learn, lead, and govern, so Internal Family Systems was a natural fit. You can find more of his writing on Substack at electrobrogers.