The One Inside You Who Is Tired

There is a single phrase that changes how you can be with almost anything difficult that arises in you. Not I am tired. Not part of me is tired. The one inside me who is tired.
This talk offers that phrase stripped of jargon. No protectors, no managers, no exiles, no inner critic, no shadow, no archetypes. Just a small shift in language, and the way of attention that comes with it.
We look at why the wording matters so much, what happens internally when you stop being your feelings and start being the one in whose company they are happening, and what to do once you have named an inner one — which is, mostly, far less than you would expect. There is a short practice, and guidance on using the phrase in ordinary life, in the kitchen, in the car, in the middle of an argument.

Transcript

So welcome everyone. And thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. So I want to offer you something tonight. That might be the most useful single tool I know. And I want to be careful with the word tool because what I'm giving you is not really a technique It's more like a way of speaking to yourself. That once you have it changes. How you can be with almost anything difficult that arises in you. It is not new. The contemplative traditions have been pointing at it for centuries. And the therapy world has its own versions of it. What I want to do tonight is offer it to you stripped of any jargon. No protector, No manager, No exile, No inner critic, No inner child, No split soul, No ego, No higher self. Just a phrase. And the way of attention that comes with that. And the phrase is this. The one inside you who is tired. The one inside you who is tired. Or the one inside you who is afraid. Or the one inside you who's angry. The one inside you was ashamed. The one inside you who keeps reaching for the same thing. The one inside you who's been bracing for a long time. The one inside you who's waiting. Always the same form. Not I am tired. Not part of me is tired. Not my inner child is tired. The one inside me who is tired. Try it out for a moment, Even just in your head. Notice how it lands differently from the alternatives. There is in this small phrase a small architectural shift. And that shift I think is the whole work. So I want to walk you through what the phrase does, Why I think it works, How to use it in real life. And what changes when instead of being your feelings and your patterns, You begin slowly to be the one who notices the one inside you who is having them? Simple talk, I hope. Let me say a little about what is happening internally when you use this phrase. Because the architecture is worth understanding, Even though using it doesn't require you to understand it. When you say I'm tired. Something happens at the level of identity. The tiredness becomes who you are. And there is no space between you and the tiredness. You are the tiredness. The tiredness is you. There's nothing else in the picture. You are now stuck with being-tiredness until the tiredness leaves on its own. Now when you say, The one inside me who is tired, Something different happens. There are now in this sentence two characters. The one who is tired. And the one observing the one is tight. And suddenly there is a relationship in here. There is a space. There is someone in here who is tired and someone else in here who has noticed they are tired. The space, However small, Is where everything else becomes possible. Because in that space you can do something other than just being the tiredness. You can extend your attention to the one who is tired. You can ask what they need. You can sit with them. You can let them rest. The tiredness becomes a guest in the system rather than a totality of you. And this in plain language, The thing that all of the more elaborate frameworks are pointing at. Internal family systems call these your guest parts. Other modalities call them subpersonalities, Or selves, Or aspects, Or versions. And the clinical language adds precision, Which matters in a clinical setting. But for the work of actual living, Often the precision gets in the way. People can spend years studying their parts without ever having a single moment of actually being with one of them. Whereas the phrase, One inside you who's tired. Once you have it, You can use it immediately. In the car, In the kitchen, In the middle of an argument. There's no diagrams required here. So, Let me run you through a few examples and see if. . . If anything resonates with you. Instead of I am so anxious right now, We can say the one inside me who is anxious. Instead of I am being so needy, The one inside me who is needing something. Instead of I can't stop thinking about this, The one inside me who's still thinking about this. Instead of I'm angry at them and I shouldn't be, The one inside me who's angry. Notice what each one of these does. Notice that you become in each sentence slightly larger than the feeling. You contain it. You are not it. You are the one in whose company it is happening. And notice that the phrase doesn't tell you anything about why the inner one is tired or anxious or angry or thinking. Doesn't preload diagnosis. All it does is, It gently separates you from the state. It gently separates you from the state. And lets you be in a relationship with it rather than being it. So the interpretation can come later in its own time when you are actually with the inner one and they have a chance to tell you what's going on. Or just as often. The interpretation never needs to come at all. The simple separation by itself is sometimes the whole intervention. So, I want to dwell on language for a moment. Because I think most people who do this work underestimate how much specific words matter. You could say there is a part of me that is tired and that works. It does most of the same work. But the word part. Depending on your background, Can sound clinical or mechanical. Or like something out of a self-help book you found unconvincing? Part suggests assembly, Part suggests fragments. Part, In a strange way, Is a slightly cold word for a slightly warm thing. The one is warmer. The one is a who, Not a what. The One suggests a being who deserves attention. The one is also, Importantly, What contemplative traditions have been using for centuries. Now Buddhist teachings talk about the one who suffers. Christian mystics write to the soul. Sufi poetry addressed the beloved within. The one has good company and the company is older than therapy. So when you use the language of the One, You're not making something up. You're stepping into a register that humans have used for thousands of years to address the parts of themselves that are not the whole of themselves. So the register is reverent without being religious. It is, I think, Exactly the right register for inner work. And it is also very flexible. You can speak about the one. You can speak to the one. You can ask them questions. You can listen to what they say back. You can sit with them in silence. The grammar of the language allows for every kind of inner relationship to be enacted in it. Which makes it, In my view, The most useful single phrase for inner work. And once you have made this small linguistic shift. The question becomes, Now what? And here I want to be honest. The honest answer is not very glamorous. The honest answer is mostly just, Just be with them. So the wireless internet has trained us to expect that once we have identified an inner difficulty, We should do something about it. There should be a technique, A reframe, A release, A processing exercise. Something that gets done so the difficulty goes away. So what I'm going to suggest is the opposite. Once you have named and acknowledged the one inside you who is tired, Don't try to fix them. Don't try to talk them out of being tired. Don't try to perform your techniques on them. Just leave it then. Bring your attention to where in the body they seem to live. Place a hand there if it helps. And just stay there. And what happens when you do this is the opposite of what most of us expect. The inner one, Having been ignored, Dismissed, Lectured, Criticized, Or rushed past for most of their existence, Suddenly finds that someone has in fact turned towards them with no agenda. And the experience is often very unfamiliar. They may not know what to do with it. They may not even respond at your first attempt. They may not respond on the 15th attempt. But the experience of being attended to is registered in the body every single time. And over time with repetition, The inner one begins to soften. Because they have finally found a kind of attention they had been waiting for. And this is again what almost every modality is pointing at. Not a technique, The kind of attention. The techniques are just different ways of arriving at the same kind of attention. And once you can get there directly, The techniques are then optional. Now I want to be lightly dry for a moment about Wellness Marketplace because I think it is worth naming what this language is gently. The marketplace tends increasingly to elaborate frameworks. 5 drama responses, 7 inner critics, 12 archetypes, 40 different parts each with its own role and its own color-coded diagram. And the elaborate frameworks have their uses. They give people language. They give people a sense of being seen by a system that explains them. But they can also have a very strange effect. Which is that they can turn inner work into a sort of a cataloging project. People can become very good at identifying which of their parts is doing what, And which archetype is activated, Which trauma response is online. And the cataloging can subtly, In a subtle way, Substitute for the actual work, Which is much simpler and much harder business of just being met with whatever is there. And I have nothing against elaborate frameworks. I have studied almost all of them. They are useful in their place. But for daily life, In moments when you actually need this kind of work. The simpler the frame, The more available it is to you. You don't have to remember which type of protector is online. You just have to remember the phrase, The one inside me who is tired, The one inside me who is afraid. The naming, The acknowledging on its own opens the door and everything else follows from the naming in its own time, In its own way. And there is also very frankly a relief in not needing the full clinical vocabulary to do this work. You don't need to read a book. You don't even need to have a therapist. Some people can't afford long-term therapy. That's the truth. You don't need to know what type your inner child is. You just need a phrase and the willingness to use it. And the phrase is free and the work is yours. I want to spend just a few seconds on the fact that once you start using this phrase, You discover something quite remarkable. There is the one in you who is tired. There is the one in you who is afraid. There is the one in you who is angry. There is the one in you who has been waiting. There is the one in you who is grieving. And sometimes several of them are present at once. The one who is angry and the one who is afraid. The one who wants to leave and the one who wants to stay. The one who is hopeful and the one who is bracing for disappointment. So this is normal. This is in fact what is always happening in the human integer. Where we are not single, We are populated. So once you can name the ones who are present, The inner experiences become much more workable. Instead of being confused with a mess of contradictory feelings, You become a kind of inner host. And the chaos becomes a community on its own. The one who notices the ones is you. Not above them, Not separate from them. You are just the larger you who contains them. The one who notices the ones is you. You are just the larger one, The larger you who contains them. The one inside you who in some real sense the home for all others. This is what contemplative traditions talk about when they talk about awareness, Witness, Or the Self with a capital S. Many languages and one reality. You are the room in which the many ones are. Gathering. Now. Just to demonstrate this phrase in action. Just receive my words for the next few seconds. Let's do a practice. Now? Just bring your attention to your body. Nothing has to stop, Nothing has to change, Nothing has to go anywhere. Just bring your attention to your body, As best as you can. You can't get this wrong. Now without trying to fix anything, Just notice. Is there an inner one who is asking for your attention right now? Anxious Restless Grieving hopeful, Angry, Embracing. Whoever is the loudest, Whoever is the most present. And whoever is currently in the room. Name them now internally in the phrase. The one inside me who is and fill this with something which is true for you in this moment. The one inside me who is. And if your mind goes immediately to several at once, Just pick the loudest one. Whatever comes to your mind first. Without doing anything else. Just turn your attention towards them. As if there were a person sitting next to you. Who have been waiting for you. Who you've been ignoring for too long, And you finally turn to look at them now. You don't have to say anything to them. You don't have to do anything for them. Just look at them. Or gently turn your attention towards them. Just notice what happens. Maybe a small softening. Maybe a wave of feeling. Maybe nothing happens at all. The inner one has in this moment been seen. And that alone repeated over time changes the inner architecture more than any technique that I know. Now very, Very briefly. I want to talk about how this works. So the phrase is most useful. In actual moments of life. You're about to send a text and you notice yourself drafting it three times. Maybe try internally. The one inside me who's afraid of being misunderstood. You're getting irritated at someone for no obvious reason. Try the one inside me who's feeling something they haven't named yet. Or you're about to eat something you weren't planning on eating. The one inside me who is reaching for soothing. And then notice that you don't need to stop and meditate. The phrase is portable. It takes one second. You can use it while you're doing what you're doing. The naming itself begins the work. The naming itself begins the work. And over time, A kind of running internal conversation will happen. You go through your day in the company of various inner ones who are present. The one who is tired by the third meeting, The one who is hopeful at the start of the run, The one who is suddenly sad on the train for no reason. The one who is irritated at the slow person on the escalator and is almost certainly irritated about something else entirely. So the texture of your life changes when this becomes a habit. You are no longer at the mercy of your feelings, In the way you were when you were the feelings. You are now in a relationship with them. You are now in some sense the one with whom they are happening. And the difference between being your feelings and being in a relationship with them is the difference between being run by your life and beginning to slowly inhabit it. Naming is just the beginning, Not the whole thing. Some ones in our bodies, Like the one who is grieving, The one who is hurt long ago, The one who is ashamed, The one who had something happen to them, These ones often need more attention. They often need the kind of skill witness that maybe a good therapist, A good facilitator can provide. So the work of being with the deep inner pain is work that benefits from the presence of another regulated nervous system who knows what they are doing. If this talk has given you a phrase you can use. That is more than enough. You don't have to do anything dramatic with it. Just notice it over the next few days. When the One of the Inner Ones make their presence felt. And try the phrase. You don't need to learn about elaborate frameworks. You don't need to remember which technique to apply when. You just need to remember in the actual moment that what is happening is happening to one of the inner ones and you are the one in whose company they are having that experience. So just be gentle for the rest of the day. Something has stirred in you, Let it stir. Process, Integrate. Mind yourself. Thank you for listening. Take gentle care and Namaste.