Episode 13: When Your Mind Starts Writing the Ending - An IFS Approach to Anxious Anticipation
When Your Mind Starts Writing the Ending
There's a particular kind of moment most of us know well.
Nothing has gone wrong. And yet something inside has already started writing the ending.
A text goes unanswered. Someone you love seems a little distant. A conversation is coming, a decision hasn't been made, a result is still pending. And before anything has actually happened — before a single word has been spoken or a single door has closed — your body is already preparing for the worst.
The belly tightens. The chest contracts. The mind begins solving problems that haven't arrived yet.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we have a name for what's happening in those moments. We call it a protective part — a part of us that has learned, usually from real experience, that pain can arrive without warning. And so it tries to get there first.
Why This Makes Complete Sense
From one perspective, this isn't irrational at all. Our nervous systems are pattern-recognition systems. They learn. If something painful happened before — rejection, abandonment, failure, the exhaustion of being left to hold everything alone — a part of us may have decided that the safest strategy is early preparation: scan, brace, solve, plan before anything goes wrong.
That part isn't broken. It isn't overreacting. It is doing exactly what it learned to do.
The difficulty is that when this protective part becomes very active, possibility starts to feel like certainty. A feared outcome begins to feel like fact. We lose contact with the moment we're actually in — and start living instead inside an older experience, an older fear, an older map.
The territory has changed since . The map hasn't been updated.
The Discovery Call That Wasn't a Problem
This happened to me recently, in a very ordinary way.
I had a discovery call with a prospective client. She had prepared thoughtfully, asked real questions, and asked me to send over the package details before we hung up. Nothing had gone wrong. Not one thing.
And yet, after the call ended, a worried voice inside me became extremely active. What if she decides not to continue? What if the pricing structure is getting in the way? What if I lose this?
I could feel it in my body — first as a vibrating, amped-up energy in my solar plexus, then slithering lower into my belly, where it settled into what I've come to associate with anxiety and dread.
When I got quiet enough to listen beneath those questions, I found something more tender than any of them: I'll be left alone to hold everything together.
That fear wasn't about this client. It was about something much older.
A Somatic IFS Practice: Coming Back to What's True Now
This is where somatic IFS — working with parts not only through thought, but through the body — can be genuinely supportive.
Rather than reasoning with the worried voice or trying to silence it, IFS invites us to turn toward it with curiosity. To notice it in the body. To acknowledge that its fear may come from something real — and then to gently distinguish the past from the present.
Here's a simple version of that practice:
1. Ground first. Notice one or two things around you — a shape, the quality of light, something steady in your environment. Feel the support beneath you: feet on the floor, body in the chair.
2. Bring in a mild version of the moment. Not the most activating thing you're carrying. Just a small, recent moment when your mind began moving ahead of what was actually happening.
3. Notice the voice. What is it saying? This won't work. They're going to leave. I'll have to hold this alone. Where does it live in your body — your belly, your chest, your jaw, your lower back?
4. Offer an acknowledgment. You might quietly say: A worried part is here. You're not dismissing it. You're recognizing it without being taken over by it — which in IFS, we call unblending.
5. Try this distinction.This fear may come from something real. And the feared thing is not happening right now. Not forced reassurance. Not "everything is fine." Just: the past and the present are two different places.
6. Ask what is actually true now. Maybe it's: The conversation hasn't happened yet. The person hasn't left. The opportunity hasn't disappeared. I'm sitting in this room. My feet are on the floor. I'm breathing.
That spacious, witnessing awareness — the part of you that can notice the worry without becoming the worried one — is what IFS calls Self energy. It doesn't have to fight the protective part. It can include it. Be with it. Have room for it.
When Regulation Has to Come Before Possibility
One thing worth naming directly: sometimes this practice isn't available yet. If the nervous system is carrying significant activation — grief, exhaustion, real threat — the first step isn't opening to possibility. The first step is safety, rest, connection, and support.
When a house is on fire, we don't begin by remodeling the kitchen.
As the system settles, curiosity tends to return. Awareness comes back online. A little more room becomes available — not because we forced it, but because something was given permission to exhale.
The Map Is Not the Territory
Rewilding, in the Wild Wisdom sense, isn't about becoming someone new. It's about restoring access to what was already alive beneath the conditioning — our capacity for surprise, wonder, and genuine not-knowing.
The old map may still be in your hands. But it isn't the whole territory.
The next time a worried voice inside starts writing the ending, you might pause long enough to ask: What is it afraid will happen? What does my body feel? And what is actually true right now?
Something new may be possible here. And that — just that — is enough.
If this episode supported you, save it for the next time your mind begins living in a future that hasn't happened yet.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
About Shankari
Shankari is a trauma-informed Somatic IFS Practitioner, Shamanic Parts Work™ Guide, and body-oriented coach. She helps spirit-rooted women meet protective patterns with compassion, reconnect with their inner healer, and create embodied change that holds in real life through Somatic IFS, Shamanic Parts Work™, and grounded spiritual practice.
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