Bob Morton was in a pickle. He had seen the profile on a dating app of someone that looked great, but he was hesitating. He explains, “My brain was spinning. It was going over all the variables involved, and its verdict was that I should pass. The process was causing a lot of stress.”

He soon ran into an article recommending that people talk to their parts to reduce their stress. Its headline read: “Ever felt so stressed you didn’t know what to do next? Try talking to your ‘parts'” So he talked to his heart first. He explains, “My heart wanted a relationship with this person, because it was longing for companionship. Where my brain voted ‘no’, my heart voted ‘yes’. It was a tie, however.”

So he decided to talk to another part, his junk. “My junk was like, ‘Sex???? Hell yes!!!!’ So at this point I had two votes for the relationship, and one against. My brain had been overruled.”

Morton went ahead with the relationship. It turns out that his brain was right. He told us, “Yep! Lesson learned. This relationship was a complete disaster. My heart and my junk are bad judges. I should have listened to my brain, even if it was in the minority.”

Morton concluded, “I probably should have read more than the headline of the article. It turns out it is about Internal Family Systems and not body parts.”

The article that inspired this story:

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/25/nx-s1-5055753/parts-work-therapy-internal-family-systems-anxiety