When Your Emotions Are at War – Here’s How to Set Boundaries Inside Your Own Soul

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by your emotions or stuck in patterns of self-criticism, this episode offers a practical path forward rooted in both psychology and spiritual wisdom.

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In this powerful re-air of a foundational episode, Dr. Alison introduces the transformative approach behind Boundaries for Your Soul. Drawing from Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Christian faith, Alison shares how to lead your inner life with clarity, kindness, and strength.

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Instead of pushing away difficult emotions, you’ll learn how to create space for them—with healthy boundaries that bring healing and peace.

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This episode explores:

• A step-by-step framework to navigate emotional overwhelm
  
  
• The 3 internal roles we all carry—and how to listen to each one with care
  
  
• Why spiritual growth requires emotional awareness
  
  
• How Jesus modeled soul-level boundaries
• An effective way to approach anxiety, anger, or fear without shame
  
  

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Whether you're just beginning your healing journey or deep in the work of personal transformation, this episode will give you tools to understand yourself better and lead from a place of wholeness.

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📥 Get your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here

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📚 Explore Alison’s books: 

• Boundaries for Your Soul: https://a.co/d/fwOjZde
• The Best of You: https://a.co/d/fjkMhoc
• I Shouldn’t Feel This Way: https://a.co/d/5x1cgie

📥 Get the Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools mentioned in last week’s episode when you sign up for her weekly email.

For more on internal boundaries, check out:

• Episode 40: 5 Steps to Healing Painful Emotions
• Episode 41:  Boundaries With Fear And Anxiety
• Episode 42: How to Honor Sadness & Set Boundaries with Loneliness
• Episode 43: How to Tame Your Inner Critic
• Episode 44: Why Anger is a Surprising Friend

📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here

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💬 Got a question? Call 307-429-2525 and leave a message for a future episode.

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Editing by Giulia Hjort

Sound engineering by Kelly Kramarik

Music by Andy Luiten

While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

© 2025 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage or transcript without permission from the author.

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Transcript

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Best of You. Today we are re-airing a special episode. This episode was the first episode in a six week journey through the key ideas of my first book with Kimberly Miller, Boundaries for your Soul. This has been one of our most listened to episodes on the podcast, and I wanted to re-air it this summer because on the podcast, we often refer to the ideas laid out in boundaries for your soul.

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This episode is all about your inner family, what's happening beneath the surface, and how to bring peace and clarity and compassionate leadership to the different parts of your own soul. I'm bringing this episode back to you right now because I keep hearing the same questions from so many of you. Why do I keep reacting in this way to my own parents, with my own kids, to my own friend group?

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Why do I feel so divided? I wanna do certain things, but I can't, and how can I stop feeling so overwhelmed, so anxious, or so bothered by this other person? We talk about external boundaries a lot on the podcast and how important they are to the health of our relationships, but this episode is gonna focus on inner boundaries.

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The boundaries you set with the parts of your own soul, your. Inner critic, the anxious part of you, the sad part of you. Maybe your inner perfectionist, maybe the part of you that's beating you up. Because of the way you keep showing up in your relationships with other people. As I said in last week's episode, episode 165, so often boundaries start inside of you, and that's where we're gonna go.

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Today. We're gonna talk about how to create space internally. To lead the parts of your soul from within you in partnership with God's spirit. At the end of today's episode, I'm gonna give you what I think is one of the most profound insights into how we are to relate to our own souls. Rooted in how we see Jesus relating to three different types of people that he encountered when he walked on the earth.

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I love this wave of. Thinking about how Jesus interacted with other people and mapping it on to the way we are to be with the parts of our own souls. If you wanna go deeper into this internal work of setting boundaries with the parts of your own souls, check out the entire boundaries for your Souls series.

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It's episodes 40 through 44, and we'll link to those in the show notes. And to help you get started on this work, I've created three free resources that you can download today. They're at https://www.dralisoncook.com/books/boundaries-for-your-soul You'll find a beautiful map of the soul, PDF. It's a visual depiction of what we're gonna walk through together.

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In today's episode, you'll find an 11 day devotional that helps you connect this inner work with scripture. It's perfect if you're looking to pray through this material, and you'll also find a guided. Audio reflection, and this will help you practice this framework in real time, right? So whether you're more of a reader, a visual learner, or someone who learns by listening, I've created something to meet you right where you are.

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Again, that's all at Dr. Allison cook.com/ifs bundle, and that link is in today's show notes. Now, whether you've been following me for a while or this is your. First time hearing about this approach. This episode is a great place to start. Let's dive in.

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So I wanna start off today by talking about wholeness. Wholeness is this thing we all want. We want to feel whole. We want to feel aligned. We want to feel at peace with ourselves. It's a sense of being undivided. It's integration. It's a feeling that who you are on the inside matches how you are showing up in your external relationships.

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Another word for it is authenticity. We wanna feel at peace with the decisions we're making. We wanna feel at peace. With the past, we wanna feel at peace with the people in our lives. This is a picture of wholeness that we all want. The problem is that we tend to think of this idea of wholeness as the absence of conflict, as the absence of tension, as the absence of challenges even inside our own souls.

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We tend to think of it as this magical place where we'll suddenly arrive when we are just suddenly at peace with ourselves and with. The world around us, but I want you to think about a puzzle. This is the best metaphor I can think of where there are all these pieces laying around and you have to take your time to painstakingly take each piece one after the other and put it together in its proper relationship with the other pieces.

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In order to create the beautiful whole, the beautiful picture, the pieces matter to the whole. If you lose some of those pieces or you can't figure out how to put certain pieces together, you miss out on the beauty of that. Whole, right? There's a process. There's work to be done inside our own souls to get to that picture of wholeness.

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And so this is what I wanna walk you through today. We first have to understand the pieces, the parts of our souls in order to bring these parts of our souls together. To create this beautiful wholeness, this harmony, this way of being in the world that is just a little bit lighter, a little bit more calm, a little bit more clear, a little bit more brave.

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We're really operating out of all of who we are in a way that is emotionally and spiritually. Integrated where we're showing up in the insides of our soul match how we're showing up with other people. And today I wanna give you a map of these parts, a framework, a way of understanding the different parts of your soul.

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Because in order to get to that wholeness, that harmony, that peace we all crave, we have to understand the parts. 

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And so in my work, I've developed a great respect for an evidence-based model of therapy that looks at the soul as an internal family, where every part of the family, every family member has a role to play.

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Every family member is valuable. Every family member needs to have a voice. A healthy family, no one individual is taking over the family, but also no one individual is getting shoved aside or not getting heard. 

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Now, if you've seen the Pixar movie inside Out, I would encourage you to go back and watch that film as you listen to this series. It's a great film. It's a children's movie, but it's great for adults too, and it depicts a little bit of what I mean by these. Family of parts, these different emotions where you've got fear, you've got anger, you've got joy.

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This will to be happy all the time. You've got sadness, you've got disgust, sort of the eye rolling part, all existing inside the minds of each character and each one of those emotions, each one of those parts is vying for control of that person in any given moment. And it's a great picture of what happens inside our own souls.

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Now this internal family approach that inside Out does such a great job of depicting is based on the work of psychologists. Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz came up with this model of therapy called Internal Family Systems. It's an evidence-based approach to therapy. I also view it as a spiritual practice and in my book, boundaries For Your Soul.

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With Kimberly Miller, we combine this. Approach to therapy IFS or the internal family systems model with Christian theology, faith, and practice. And so this is an approach you can use every day as a spiritual practice. It's also an approach that people can use with the help of a therapist to heal deep wounds.

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It's a way of orienting to the parts of our soul so that we can lead ourselves with clarity, with courage, with compassion, so that we can lead the parts of ourselves. Wisely. The basic premise of this approach is that we're all comprised of parts, and if you think about your day-to-day interactions, you can imagine a part of you might be tired and wants to stay home or call in sick from work today.

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Another part of you is saying you can't do that. You've gotta get yourself to work, you'll lose your job. Right there you are experiencing an inner. Tension. There's some inner conflict between two parts of you. A part of you wants to stay home, a part of you, a very dutiful, responsible part of you is trying to drag you out the door to work.

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You are in conflict with yourself. Maybe it's a little conflict. Maybe you're not even aware of it, but these are two different parts of you that have two different ideas about what you should do with your day. Maybe a part of you wants to go out with other people. This. Weekend and another part of you just feels shy and exhausted in people doubt and wants to stay home.

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Maybe a part of you is tired and another part of you will not let you start volunteering for more projects. At work, at school, at church, we are comprised of different parts. God made us this way. This is not a bad thing. We're complex. Wholeness doesn't come through. Shoving one part aside, it comes as a result of learning to attune to these different parts of you, to pay attention to them and to negotiate within yourself the best way forward.

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Now, I know some of you may be thinking, this sounds like a lot of work. It's hard enough to raise my kids, get to work, do all the things I need to do, and how. Am I gonna do this work of parenting my own soul? And sometimes I'll say that to clients. I'll say, you've gotta parent your kids. And guess what?

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You've also gotta parent the kids inside of you. It is a lot, and I get that. But this is the biggest thing that's on my heart in this work that I do, is to encourage you that creating space, just a little bit of space each day for this relationship with yourself. Is as important as all the work you put into your relationships with other people, and it's a deep, profound part of your relationship with God.

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According to Dr. Schwartz, there are three categories of parts of the soul. The first category is our manager parts. These are the parts of us that protect us by preventing bad things from happening. These are parts of us that worry and analyze over and over and over when they're not really solving the problem anymore.

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They incessantly people please, because we're terrified of what other people are going to think about us. They're the parts of us that keep working long hours. Long after we needed to take a break, they overanalyze, they overthink. They are critical primarily of ourselves. These parts of us think they're trying to help by forcing us, shoving us, criticizing us, berating us to make sure we never let anybody down or never let anyone else see our vulnerabilities or our areas of weakness.

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Then we get tired because we are not machines. We are human beings. And so this second category of part kicks in and Dr. Schwartz calls this category firefighter parts. They're called firefighters because they come in to put out the flames of pain after you start to feel overwhelmed. They are the parts of us that just wanna shut it all down.

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They. Numb. They escape. They indulge in whatever feels good in the moment just to make it through the end of the day. These parts are often operating outside of our conscious awareness. If you've ever found yourself mindlessly surfing the internet for hours on end, you can't believe it. When you look at the clock that all that time had passed, they reach for the credit card and just start buying things.

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When you don't really have the money to spend and might not even need the things, these are the parts of us that go to food or sleep or exercise or otherwise good things, but to an excessive degree, that's not healthy. I. These are the parts of us that binge television for hours on end. They can turn toward excessive daydreaming, a fantasy life.

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And these are the parts of us that can also turn toward addictions like alcohol, drugs, pills, anything to put out the flames of pain inside of us. And this is the dichotomy. We are working hard and then we're shutting it all down. Now, here's the thing, there's a third category of parts and Dr. Schwartz calls these parts exiles.

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They're called exiles because we shove these parts aside. They're the parts of us that harbor shame, fears, self-doubts, and insecurities, or hurts our wounds and our unhealed pain. They harbor feelings of being less than feeling worthless, of being unappreciated, unseen, invisible, alone. These are the parts of us that need our care and God's healing the most, but we are so busy managing or shutting it all down that we don't get these parts of ourselves the care that they need, and as a result.

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Sometimes these exiled parts ambush us. They've been left alone at the corners of our soul where they're not getting the care that they need, and then they can take you over and suddenly you can just be overwhelmed with sadness. You can be overwhelmed with pain. Sometimes we exile anger, and you might find yourself.

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Overwhelmed with anger, they come roaring out from where they've been exiled and overwhelm us with the fear, the heartaches, the self-doubt that they carry, and we begin to think of ourselves as only sad or only lonely or only broken, and we lose sight of the whole. This is just one part of our story.

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It's not the sum total of who we are. Your depression, your sorrow, your fears, your anger, your loneliness. Yes, they are real and they are not the sum total of who you are. They are not your identity. And when we get outta balance, these parts of us can start to feel like all of who we are. The truth is there are two opposite and equally unhealthy ways of relating to these parts of your souls.

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One, you can keep them too close to you, right? And you become that one part of you. And that's what we saw in the Pixar movie Inside Out when one part tries to take over. But you can also push these parts of you too far away. If you're too close, you risk being overwhelmed by them. And if they're too far, you risk being cut off from them only to be influenced by these parts of you in harmful ways.

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Our job is to learn to lead each of these parts of us wisely. Together, these three categories of parts create a whole. None of these parts of you is bad. Please hear me say that. We need the manager parts of us that get us up in the morning, that help us comb our hair, that help us clean up the house or get the chores done.

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These parts of us are not bad, right? We need them. We need to put our best foot forward from time to time, but they become problematic when they take over. At the expense of other parts of us. Same with these firefighter parts. They're not all bad. We need healthy relief, healthy comfort, healthy distractions, healthy escape.

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Even we talked about this in this series on detoxing. The goal of a detox isn't to remove our coping tactics. It's to find healthier ones, but these firefighters, when we're not aware of them, can take us over and they're really sneaky. They can sneak in and get us to just mindlessly numb out instead of helping us get the actual relief, the actual comfort, the actual care that we need.

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And these exiled parts of us are precious. They remind us that we're tender, we're vulnerable, we're human, and that we have needs. They remind us to slow down because we might be the one who needs our attention. I wonder what this loneliness is about. I don't want to sideline it, but I also don't want it to overwhelm me, so I want to get curious about it and name it and start to talk to other people about it.

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These are the parts of us that help us identify where we have needs and where we need to learn to speak up on behalf of ourselves with safe people. They are the parts that need our compassion. Our attention, our kindness, our patience, our gentleness the most. So, how do we know when we're outta balance?

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How do we know when a part of ourself needs our attention? Well, the biggest cue is when you find yourself doing something at an extreme. You might notice, man, I just cannot stop working. I, I'm exhausted. I've worked long past my deadlines. I just can't stop myself. I wonder what else is going on inside of me.

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Or I cannot stop analyzing this situation. I'm not getting anywhere. It's not helping me, but I can't stop. I need to slow myself down and pay attention. Some part of me might be hurting or I cannot stop saying yes or pleasing other people. It's like a compulsive need meeting and I can't stop, and it's starting to hurt me.

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I wonder if there's a part of me that needs my care. How can I slow it down to discover what's really going on inside of me? Or I just checked out for hours, like I could not get myself to do something. I wonder if there's a part of me that's hurting or that needs my attention. An extreme emotion like anger, like frustration, like worry, like fear, doubt.

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A lot of things can serve as a cue to pay attention. That's like a light on that dashboard of your car, right when it goes off saying, pay attention to your car. Something isn't working quite right. These extremes are an opportunity to get curious. A part of your soul needs your care. Now, remember we talked about this in episode four on trauma.

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Do not take this journey alone. If it feels overwhelming to you, bookmark it. Say, wow, this is something I might need to pay attention to with the help of a therapist or in the safety of community.

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Now here's the good news. At the center is a place inside where the Holy Spirit comes to live, and Jesus promises this Holy Spirit, the comforter, the counselor, God's very own spirit coming to live inside of you in John 14. And so often we tend to look externally to God to solve our problems or externally to other people.

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And I talk about this in the best of you in chapters two, three, and four, but we forget that there's this internal place inside of us where the best. Of who you are comes together with all of who God is to lead these parts of you into Wise, brave Action. Henry Nowan talks about this place inside of us as a place of truth where we hold ourselves together.

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With compassion and Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend talk about it as a place inside where we become aware of our different thoughts and feelings. We can name them without shame, without judgment, without criticism. Dr. Schwartz in IFS called this the self. It's the center of the soul and in boundaries for your soul.

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We call it the spirit led self. It's the place where who you are comes together with God's spirit so that you can lead yourself well. Before we close, I wanna give you a metaphor that I really love to describe this process as well as an example from scripture. It's the metaphor of a middle school band now.

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I played in a middle school band. I played the saxophone, and it was chaos, frankly. I mean, it was a lot of fun, but it was chaos. And if you could imagine a middle school band without a conductor and the trumpets are over there just taken over, they think they're knocking it outta the park. They're in charge, but really they're just playing too loud and not really on key.

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And then you got the flutes who are playing so quietly you can't even hear them. They're such an important part of the band, but if they're not led well, you can miss them. They can get drowned out. And then we have the drums in the background, and these guys are just having a ball. They could care less about anybody else.

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They've got the power and they're just beating at whatever pace and whatever rhythm, and at whatever speed and whatever noise volume feels good to them in the moment. Right. And it's chaos. It's a cacophony. It's just a lot of noise. Then imagine a wise, capable, kind, present, strong conductor, steps up in front of the band, and slowly, methodically with wisdom, with tenacity, with tenderness begins to help each of these different parts play their role well.

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Suddenly the trumpets are in key and they're playing at the right volume. The flutes come in and sound so beautiful. They add a gentleness, a serenity to the melody and the drums are doing their job well. They're keeping everybody on beat on tempo, and they bring some life, some joy suddenly. You have a beautiful harmony, and that Wise conductor has helped each of those parts play their role.

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Well, the truth is we all have access to that wise inner conductor, and that's our job is to learn how to show up for these parts of ourselves with gentleness, with honesty, with Holy Spirit, led. Wisdom. And as you consider these different parts of your soul, I want you to think about the way that Jesus interacted with three different kinds of people in the gospels.

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And I love this because it maps onto these characters inside our own souls. Number one, we see Jesus interacting with the sanctimonious, the stubborn, the self-sufficient religious leaders who thought they could do it all on their own. Like those trumpets, they thought they had it down pat. They didn't really need Jesus.

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They were just gonna get it done on their own strength. And how did Jesus respond to these folks? He often asked them to take a step. Back. He accused them of shining it up on the outside when the inside remained empty. And then we see Jesus also engaging with those who were straying the sinners, the ones who were cheating, who were stealing, who were lying, who were engaged in adultery and all sorts of numbing, pleasure seeking behaviors.

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They were marching to the beat of their own drum. And how did Jesus engage with these folks? He did not shame them. He didn't. He named what was happening and he invited them in to a different role. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, and then your faith has saved you go in peace. He did not shame them.

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He gave them a new role. And then finally we see Jesus engaging the suffering. Those who were sick. Whether mentally, emotionally, or physically, the wounded, the hurt. By no fault of their own, they had been marginalized by society, kicked out, tossed aside, exiled, and yet Jesus stopped. Invited them to draw closer.

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He slowed down and he attuned to each one of them with compassion. He welcomed them in and gave them purpose. Get up, pick up your mat and walk. You have value here. You matter. I see your pain and I'm going to bring purpose from it. You are no longer invisible. You have a seat at the table and suddenly we see a glimpse of the whole.

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You see, we all have a little bit of each of these types of people inside our own souls. We have the sanctimonious, stubborn, sometimes self-critical manager, parts of us that just think we can muscle our way through and get it done on our own. And we all have parts of us that are tempted to stray, to cut corners, to avoid hard things, to just drown it out in whatever way we can.

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And guess what? We all have the suffering parts of our soul that have been wounded. That have been silenced, that have been shoved aside. And Jesus comes in as that wise inner conductor and he helps us reorient our own soul to create a beautiful whole. And we start to shift how we relate to ourselves.

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It's okay. Inner critic, I see you, you've done your work, you've been telling me all the things I've done wrong today. Could you take a step back? You're not really helping me in this way and I see you. That part of me that just wants to grab that bag of cookies, that credit card, that numbing device, and drown it all out.

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Could I take a deep breath and consider a better way of soothing myself in this moment? And there you are. Sadness or loneliness or weariness or self-doubt, it's okay. You can be here. I don't want you to take me over, but you can have a seat at the table. You're valuable. You have important information for me.

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I'm gonna get to know you better, but I want you to stay within these healthy boundaries. And suddenly it's like our inner lives become this grand boardroom where all these parts have a seat at the table. Our inner critic, our fear, our worry, our sorrow, even our inner perfectionist. We start to honor the value in each one and the good intentions behind their actions, the ways they've learned to survive so often from long ago.

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And we also start to give them new boundary lines. We start to lead them from this place inside. Where the Holy Spirit dwells. This is the work of becoming whole. It's the work of patiently taking every part of your soul and bringing it into the light of God's presence where you can begin to lead yourself well with confidence, with courage, with conviction, even with some playfulness, you start to delight in parts of you that can sometimes drive you crazy.

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And you're no longer shaming yourself for the parts of you that simply need your God-given care and attention, you are delighting in the intricacies, in the beauty of how you were made. This is the beauty, the spaciousness of healthy boundaries inside your own soul.

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Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts and click the plus or follow button that will ensure you don't miss an episode and it helps. Get the word out to others while you're there.

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I'd love it if you leave your five star review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday. And remember, as you become the best of who you are, you honor God. You heal others and you stay true to your God given self.

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