The Board Members Meeting in your Brain at 3:38 am
Suzz Sandalwood | Exploring the psychology of the self, one inner monologue at a time.
Written by Suzz Sandalwood | Seeking Veritas Columnist | | Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions
“Most people don’t spend their day wondering which part of themselves just walked into the room. Except for me because emotional forensics is a weird hobby of mine.”
From a psychological perspective, the “self” is not a single, unified voice. As humans we have these “parts” or ego states of our self that each have their own perspective, ideas, and strategy for how we make sense of our inner and outer worlds. In therapy models like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and ego-state therapy, these parts are not seen as symptoms or pathology, but as adaptations: roles we learned to play to function in life. These parts are formed by way of many factors including experience, biological makeup, environment, relationships from the moment of birth and sometimes difficult, traumatic and confusing times.
Some “parts” of us strive for control. Others pop up just to manage fear. Some are time travelers from childhood who refuse to knock before barging in and occasionally, they all throw a surprise party at 3:00 a.m. when you’re just trying to Google “normal heart rate while lying down.” Most people don’t spend their day wondering which part of themselves just walked into the room. Except for me because emotional forensics is a weird hobby of mine.
To explain how the parts of ourselves show up in everyday life, imagine them as board members living inside your head. Now, here’s a dramatized reconstruction of an internal board meeting where every part has something to say.
The board meeting minutes
Virtual meeting attendees
The Perfectionist (Chair)
The Anxious Intern (Note-Taker)
Avoidance (Phoned in. Literally.)
Inner Child (Showed up whining)
The Critic (Shadow Board Member, never officially on payroll)
Zen Consultant (Muted. Again.)
The Voice of Instagram Advice Reels (Unclear who invited them)
Opening chaos (I mean remarks)
The Chair called the meeting to order with a tense throat clear and a passive-aggressive sigh as they unmuted their mic.
“Okay. We’re behind schedule on Becoming A Better Person. What happened this week?”
The Anxious Intern raised a virtual hand but didn’t wait to be called on and just unmuted and started talking.
“I’d just like to say… I don’t think we should be here. I think we should be spiraling about that weird thing we said on the phone yesterday instead. Just a thought.”
Perfectionist cut in, flipping through color-coded notes on video that they put together, even though no one asked for them.
“This is what happens when we don’t wake up at 5:30 to journal and do Pilates and manifest stable emotional regulation.”
Avoidance chimed in via a weak zoom connection, by telephone.
“Hi, sorry, just got here. I was reorganizing our bookshelf by alphabetical order to avoid doing literally anything meaningful. What did I miss?”
Inner Child started screaming so loud the others turned down their volume and requested the chair mute while Inner Child declared she wanted ice cream and also love, but mostly ice cream.
The Critic scoffed in the corner square on the screen.
“Honestly, this is amateur hour. Did anyone even read the shame spiral memo I circulated last Thursday?”
Silence (unplanned meeting break for 2 minutes)
Then, unexpectedly, The Voice of Instagram Advice Reels offered something deeply unhelpful but beautifully branded.
“Just a reminder: If they can’t handle your boundaries, they don’t deserve your frequency. Real ones know how to hold space for your messy and your glow.”
Everyone paused, unsure whether to feel empowered or deeply exhausted.
Emotional regulation (attempted)
A heated debate erupted as a result. The Anxious Intern advocated for panic. Avoidance lobbied for binge-watching six hours of mid-tier Netflix while scrolling Reddit threads on symptoms we don’t have. Perfectionist demanded we just “try harder.” The Critic accused everyone of being “lazy, inconsistent, and possibly a narcissist.”
Everyone nodded grimly.
Inner Child suggested hugging a dog.
Nobody has a dog.
Identity crisis (ongoing)
A proposal to “just be a person” was tabled due to lack of interest.
Action items
Start a new project we won’t finish
Apologize to someone who actually hurt us
Make a Google Doc about feelings instead of feeling them
Delete social media. Re-download it 3 hours later. Repeat forever
The meeting descended into a new level of chaos when Avoidance screen-shared an old photo from 2015 and everyone fell into a nostalgia pit so intense it required snacks.
Perfectionist tried to regain control with a vision board. The Anxious Intern wept quietly in her square on screen. The Critic suggested we get a grip. Zen Consultant looked serene with her background filter of the mountains but offered no solutions.
Just before adjournment, The Voice of Instagram Advice Reels closed the session with a gentle but confusing whisper:
“Healing isn’t linear. But it is highly aesthetic.”
The meeting will resume tomorrow night. Same time. Same voices. Nothing will be resolved, but that’s never really been the point.
Meeting ended.
The real conclusion
Life is about figuring out how to live with the full cast of characters in your head. The one who spirals over a group text, the one who thinks we should go back to school yet again, the one who’s suddenly deeply invested in a sourdough starter at 3 a.m. They all came from somewhere. They all mean well. But only one of them should be making major life decisions and ideally, it’s not the one who cries in the car because someone said “as per my last email.”
About the Author: Suzz Sandalwood a Therapist, an Advanced Certified Clinical Trauma and Addiction Specialist and a Certified Grief Counsellor and is a former writer for Psych Central. She has extensive professional and lived experience in first responder, addiction, and grief communities | Connect with the author: https://suzzsandalwood.com
I was laughing all the way through this post. That mirror that you held up in this article was so clean I could see myself clearly in it. It left me to wonder if I stumbled onto beginning to understand this as a teenager by sheer happy mistake. Let me explain. I had a group of "nerdy" friends who consumed sci-fi like it was ice cream on a hot summer's day. We used to get together to talk into the wee hours of the morning about Tolkien, Asimov and Herbert. In Frank Herbert's Dune the progeny of the Atreides family have the ability to take a drug and access all the memories of all their ancestors. Frank portrays this as the actual ancestors in the persons' head vying to be heard or focused on. He suggests that to prevent oneself from going insane one needed to focus on the voice on one ancestor and use that as a single medium to deal with all the others. As a teenager, it made sense to me. I had all these parts of my personality vying for ascendancy and I had no idea "what I wanted to really be." Of course I did not have the insight back then to properly understand what that meant - but fortunately that would come later.