“Responsibility is a way of being that unlocks the power to create your life. You hold the key… remember to use it.” ~ Maria Mellano
How often do we look outside ourselves for answers, for change, for absolution, and blame?
“Taking responsibility” is an often misunderstood concept. It can feel like accepting blame for something that’s “not mine” and a burden. However, embraced in the healing process, taking responsibility becomes a gateway to power- not as punishment, but as possibility.
Responsibility is not a mindset but a practice as a way of being. Responsibility can be equated with guilt or shame. But seen through a healing lens, responsibility is the act of responding with ability, of coming into right relationship with what is, and choosing how we meet the realities of life we face. It's a daily practice - a way of being “in the world” that says: “I may not have caused this, but I can choose how I relate to it. I can choose what I do next.”
Meeting the Parts Within: IFS (Internal Family Systems) teaches us that we are not a single, unified personality—but a system of parts, each with its own role, emotions, and strategies for keeping us safe. Some parts may be protectors—controlling, avoiding, or judging. Others are exiles—carrying wounds of shame, fear, or rejection. And then at our core, there's the Self—calm, curious, connected, and compassionate. What I call, Integral Self.
Responsibility becomes Self-Led - that means we take the seat of conscious leadership within our internal system. Instead of letting a scared or reactive part drive our choices, we pause, witness, and respond from the Integral Self.
A practice: The You Turn
Turn inward.
Ask: “Who in me is reacting right now?”
Then: “What does this part need from me—not from someone else, but from me?”
Using the IFS Self/Part system to understand the map of the inner terrain, we can use Psychodrama to bring it all to life. Psychodrama allows us to externalize the inner world—to give voice, role, and action to our parts, our memories, and our desires. We step into surplus reality to not just talk about change, but to enact it.
On the Psychodramatic stage, we might:
- Role reverse with a critical inner voice
- Meet a wounded child part in the safety of surplus reality
- Enact a future scene where a healed self speaks her truth
These embodied experiences create somatic clarity and nervous system repair. When we move from talking about our pain to expressing, witnessing, and integrating it in action, the shift is not just cognitive—it’s visceral.
By combining the inner inquiry of IFS with the embodied expression of Psychodrama, we unlock a powerful path to personal sovereignty. Responsibility becomes not something we perform for others, but something we embody for ourselves. It looks like this:
- Listening deeply to the parts of us that sabotage or silence our needs
- Witnessing the pain of exile with compassion, rather than avoidance
- Enacting the possibility of a new future—not just imagining it
- Choosing, over and over again, to return to the Self within
You hold the Key. You are not broken. You are not your past mistakes. You are not the names you’ve been called. You are the one who gets to choose what comes next.
Through IFS and Psychodrama, you can come home to your Self. You can remember that power is not given, it’s claimed—in the gentle, courageous act of taking responsibility for your own healing. And from that place, your life is no longer just something that happens to you. It becomes something you co-create.
Reflection Questions:
- What parts of me fear responsibility? Why?
- What might shift if I saw responsibility as an act of self-love and access to real power?
- What scene in my life is asking to be rewritten and recreated?
