As part of my trauma healing journey, I’ve been exploring Internal Family Systems (IFS), mostly through reading the book “Self-Therapy” by Jay Earley. For those unfamiliar, IFS is a non-pathologising therapeutic approach that views the mind as naturally consisting of multiple “parts.” You know how people sometimes say stuff like “a part of me feels this way, but another part of me feels that way?” That’s kinda how it works. Each part has its own feelings, beliefs, and roles. Some parts try to protect us from harm (Protectors), others carry our pain and trauma (Exiles), and at the core is our authentic Self, who is wise and has the capacity to lead the other parts with compassion and clarity.

The Sims has been my comfort game for a very long time. I had an idea one day to create and play Sims that represent different parts of myself, as a supplement to my IFS work. I figured it’d be a fun and creative way to visualise my internal system and observe how my parts interact with each other.

I had so much fun creating my Sims, building their houses, and designing their rooms to represent their personalities. Each household represents a different family of parts, and I used the various traits and life states available in The Sims 4 to capture the essence of how these parts function in my psyche.

I used the supernatural life states to represent certain parts in interesting ways. For example, I created my Intellectualiser part as a Servo (robot) to symbolise how mechanical that part feels. The two parts responsible for my selective mutism are represented as ghosts—one died by embarrassment, the other by freezing. One of my Exile Sims is an alien to represent the part of myself that feels less than human. And my authentic Self is a Spellcaster (witch)—her spells and potions symbolise her wisdom.

Werewolves are the most Autistic-coded life state in The Sims 4 to me. In the game, werewolves have a fury metre that builds up until the Sim transforms. This mechanic serves as a personal metaphor for how stress and sensory overload gradually build up in me until I’m overwhelmed and feel like exploding. I’ve made some of my Exile/Inner Child Sims werewolves because they represent the raw, primal energy that’s been suppressed but sometimes erupts.

Some of my Sims are also inspired by celebrities, fictional characters, and people in my life.

One of my favourite Sims is named Zack, whom I created to look like Zack de la Rocha. He represents my healthy masculine side. Zack is a gentle and nurturing father figure to my Exile/Inner Child Sims. In one of my gameplays, my Inner Critic Sim—whom I created to look like my primary school teacher—was being mean to one of my Inner Child Sims, and Zack immediately told the Inner Critic off. And it all happened spontaneously! I didn’t plan any of it or directly control my Sims to make that interaction happen. It felt so wild to witness Zack, who is based on my role model and biggest celebrity crush, scold my primary school teacher, who once told me—in front of the whole class—that prince charming would throw up at the sight of me. Watching that interaction play out in The Sims may have weirdly healed that particular childhood wound of mine, because that painful memory has now been replaced with Zack protecting me! It’s such a surreal image that’ll definitely stick in my head for a very long time.

Approaching the game this way made me realise I’ve always used The Sims as a safe space for self-exploration, especially during my teen years when I was figuring out my identity. It was a place where I could experiment with fashion without feeling self-conscious and play out aspects of my personality that I usually kept hidden from others. Creating my IFS parts as Sims feels like a natural evolution of this, but now with more intentionality and therapeutic purpose.

This gaming experience doesn’t replace the other deeper work I’m doing and is just one tool in my overall healing journey, but it has shown itself to be a surprisingly insightful (and not to mention fun) one!