Max Littman, LCSW
March 6, 2025
Bob Falconer’s concept of the “porous mind” in The Others Within Us (2023) offers a compelling framework for understanding how certain systems, especially those affected by schizophrenia, struggle with the boundaries between internal and external energies. From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective, a well-functioning system maintains a balance where parts are protected from overwhelming external influences. However, when this natural boundary is compromised, as it appears to be in schizophrenia and related disorders, the system becomes vulnerable to an influx of energies that it cannot metabolize.
Ancestral Protection and the Buffer Against External Energies
Throughout human history, our ancestors have served as an energetic and genetic buffer, passing down protective mechanisms that help us navigate an often chaotic world. These protections manifest in multiple ways: through spiritual lineage, biological resilience, and even inherited psychological defenses that guard against external intrusions.
In many traditions, ancestors are believed to watch over and protect the living, ensuring they are not overwhelmed by forces beyond their control. From an IFS lens, we might see these ancestral influences as internalized protector parts, shaped over generations, reinforcing the system’s boundaries against external burdens. This inheritance can be both conscious (through teachings, rituals, and traditions that offer protection) and unconscious (through genetic and epigenetic influences that shape how our nervous systems filter stimuli).
When these ancestral protections are weak, absent, or compromised, whether due to trauma, genetic vulnerability, or disrupted connection to lineage, a person’s system may become highly permeable, struggling to differentiate between their own parts and external influences. This can manifest as intrusive thoughts, voices, or energies that feel alien or overpowering.
Schizophrenia, Non-Ordinary States, and Permeability: When Protection Is Insufficient
Schizophrenia and related disorders offer a particularly vivid example of what happens when a system lacks sufficient internal protection. However, permeability is also relevant to non-ordinary states, whether induced by spiritual experiences, psychedelic substances, or trauma. In these states, the system may temporarily lose its ability to filter external energies, leading to experiences that range from transcendent to overwhelming.
- Positive Symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, delusions): Parts may attempt to make sense of overwhelming stimuli by creating symbolic or fragmented narratives. In cases of auditory hallucinations, parts may externalize internal burdens or energies, amplifying their voices as though they are coming from outside the system.
- Negative Symptoms (e.g., reduced emotional expression, social withdrawal): Managers may withdraw in an attempt to minimize further disruption, leaving the system in a muted, detached state. This withdrawal can leave exiles exposed, carrying burdens of disconnection and isolation.
- Disorganized Symptoms (e.g., incoherent speech, erratic behavior): The system’s permeability allows external energies to infiltrate, resulting in confusion, chaotic thinking, and fragmentation among parts.
Falconer’s concept of the porous mind provides an important lens through which to understand these experiences, not merely as biochemical disturbances, but as evidence of a system lacking sufficient protective boundaries. From an IFS perspective, parts struggling with overwhelming input may be seeking protection that is either absent or ineffective.
Non-Ordinary States, Spiritual Experiences, and Psychotic Episodes
Many cultures have long recognized non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as mystical experiences, shamanic journeys, or deep meditative states, as meaningful and transformative. However, in the modern clinical paradigm, these states are often categorized alongside psychotic episodes, despite key differences in how they are experienced and integrated.
From an IFS perspective, non-ordinary states might represent moments when parts temporarily step back, allowing the system to access expansive, transcendent, or even ancestral energies. When held within a container of support, such as ritual, guidance from experienced practitioners, or structured spiritual traditions, these experiences can be grounding and insightful. However, without sufficient protection, they can become overwhelming, leading to confusion, fear, or even prolonged destabilization.
A key distinction between non-ordinary states and psychotic episodes lies in integration and containment. Those who undergo spiritual awakenings or psychedelic experiences often have access to protectors who help process and make sense of the experience. In contrast, those experiencing psychosis often lack these protective mechanisms, leading to an unfiltered influx of external energies without a coherent framework for understanding them.
Rather than pathologizing these experiences, IFS invites us to explore how parts respond to them. Are protector parts present to help integrate the experience? Are there ancestral influences that might offer guidance or containment? Is the system already overburdened, making it more susceptible to external energies? By shifting from a reductionistic to a systemic and relational view, we can better support individuals navigating these states, helping them find meaning and protection rather than fear and fragmentation.
Ancestral Influence on the Nervous System
Beyond energetic protection, our ancestors also pass down genetic and epigenetic traits that shape how we process and filter the world. Research on intergenerational trauma suggests that stress responses, nervous system regulation, and even susceptibility to certain mental health conditions can be influenced by the experiences of previous generations. If our ancestors endured extreme hardship without the ability to fully process and resolve their trauma, we may inherit a system primed for hypervigilance, dissociation, or porous boundaries.
From an IFS perspective, this means that some individuals may be born with systems that are naturally more permeable, requiring additional protective resources, whether that be through relationships, therapeutic work, or connection to ancestral wisdom, to restore balance.
Healing and Rebuilding Protection
If schizophrenia, non-ordinary states, and related disorders can be understood as conditions where protection is insufficient, how might healing take place?
- Rebuilding Internal Boundaries: Through therapeutic work, including IFS, individuals can begin to develop protective parts that act as filters, helping the system discern between internal and external influences.
- Connecting with Ancestral Wisdom: Whether through cultural practices, guided ancestral work, or even exploring family history, reconnecting with ancestral protection can offer a sense of grounding and containment.
- Strengthening the Nervous System: Somatic practices, nervous system regulation techniques, and trauma-informed therapy can help individuals increase their resilience and reduce permeability to overwhelming stimuli.
- Unburdening Parts That Carry Permeability: Some parts may carry inherited burdens of openness that were once adaptive but are now overwhelming. Through IFS, these parts can be acknowledged, honored, and gently guided toward a new, more balanced role.
Conclusion
The porous mind is both a gift and a vulnerability. For some, it allows for deep sensitivity, intuition, and connection to energies beyond the localized self. But when the system lacks sufficient protection, this openness can become a source of suffering, as seen in schizophrenia, non-ordinary states, and related disorders. Through IFS, ancestral connection, and somatic healing, we can work toward restoring the balance between permeability and protection, allowing for a system that is both open and safely contained.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide private practice mentorship, consultation, and therapist/practitioner part intensives.
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References
- Falconer, R. (2023). The others within us: Internal family systems, porous mind, and spirit possession. Great Mystery Press.
- Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2019). Internal family systems therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
- Yehuda, R., et al. (2014). Transgenerational epigenetic effects of trauma in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 17(1), 89-94. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3594
