Breaking Up the Internal Log Jam
Why You Might Feel Stuck Even When You’re Trying Hard
Sometimes feeling stuck isn’t a motivation problem. It’s an internal log jam.
Different parts of you may be pushing in different directions, each trying to protect you based on past experiences. When those priorities clash, energy gets consumed internally and progress slows or stops.
In Internal Family Systems–informed coaching, we don’t try to force change or “blow up” the conflict. Instead, we slow down, identify the parts involved, and understand what each one is trying to protect.
As parts feel heard and supported, they can let go of extreme roles and re-orient to the present moment. From there, clarity, calm, and confidence become available again, and forward movement resumes in a more sustainable way.
Log Jams in Business
Years ago, I read The 12 Week Year by Michael Lennington and Brian Moran. It’s a business productivity book that I used extensively in my coaching before I learned about the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model.
One of the concepts described in the book uses the metaphor of a log jam. For nearly a thousand years, loggers floated timber downstream to lumber mills. Along the way, log jams would sometimes form. In the late nineteenth century, loggers began using dynamite to break up the more stubborn jams. It was dangerous work, but it was effective in getting the logs moving again.
Lennington and Moran suggested that in business, too many goals create log jams. I applied this idea directly to my coaching and still encourage clients to focus on one project at a time while we work together.
The Internal Log Jam
Since adding the IFS model to my coaching toolbox, I’ve come to see that what we often call feeling stuck or conflicted is actually an internal log jam.
Internally, the “logs” are competing priorities and protective strategies, each trying to move the system in a different direction at the same time.
In IFS language, one part pushes a priority while another part resists it. Other parts jump in to manage the conflict, and the result is that we feel all jammed up inside. In an effort to keep moving forward, energy gets consumed internally, but forward movement slows or stops.
Blowing Up the Log Jam
Our parts want to help us. When clashing priorities activate pain that feels overwhelming or unmanageable, some parts step in to stop the pain and restore a sense of control as quickly as possible.
In the IFS model, these protectors are referred to as firefighters. Their job is to do whatever it takes to feel better and regain control in the moment.
Like dynamite, firefighters often make a big mess. They influence us to make rash decisions or act in extreme ways that disrupt the internal block. The explosion can be destructive, but it is often effective in breaking up the stuckness and getting life moving again, even if the movement is now focused on managing the crisis the dynamite created.
Left unattended, our parts tend to operate in cycles, repeating patterns that are as predictable as they are frustrating.
The Cycle of Internal Conflict
Instead of breaking the cycle, firefighter interventions usually reset it. The underlying pain that made the conflict intolerable in the first place remains unresolved, so our parts reorganize themselves around preventing and defending against that pain.
Whatever has been left unresolved from the past is managed at an unconscious level by our parts. Managers work hard to prevent what went unresolved from happening again. For example, manager parts might step in to avoid feeling the embarrassment you felt when being laughed at earlier in life. To do so, managers might criticize you to get you to stop taking risks that could invite criticism from others.
Using the same example, managers often cause the very thing they are trying to avoid. The internal critic triggers the pain of an exiled part, in this case the part that felt the embarrassment of being laughed at. And when that pain is activated, firefighter parts step in to shut it down. For example, if your partner asks you to do something you don’t feel confident doing, a firefighter might help you forget to do it altogether in order to avoid doing it wrong and inviting criticism.
At the center of this cycle is an exile that carries the original pain that has gone unresolved. Until that pain is healed, it will continue to need protection, both prevention and defense.
A Different Way of Understanding the Log Jam
By distinguishing cycles like this, we can identify the parts that keep them going. By building relationships with the parts involved, we can help the internal system restore functional movement.
When enough of the protectors that have organized themselves around past pain feel seen, known, heard, understood, and appreciated, they begin to relax. They recognize that, in the present moment, there is access to the qualities of Self—clarity, calm, confidence, and curiosity—that were unavailable when they were oriented toward protecting unresolved pain from the past.
An internal log jam can be resolved permanently when, using the IFS model, protectors and exiles gain access to inner resources that are only available in the present moment.
