I’m Tired of Being the Strong One: Using IFS to Understand the Performer and Caretaker Parts in BIPOC Healing

Aug 28

You’re the one everyone leans on. The one who has it together. The reliable one, the high achiever, peacemaker, and fixer. Maybe they don’t see it, but you are tired. Bone-deep tired.

If you’re a BIPOC adult carrying this “strong one” identity, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a compassionate lens to understand why this role formed, how it protected you, and what healing might look like.

Strength wasn’t a choice for you. It was a survival strategy.

In many BIPOC communities, including first-generation immigrants, strength isn’t admired. It’s expected. There’s a part of us that believes if we’re not strong enough, everything will fall apart. These parts, what IFS calls “performers” or “caretakers,” often show up early in life. By organizing, leading, soothing, and succeeding, we are kept safe or valued in environments that didn’t always leave room for vulnerability or struggle.

Meet your Performer and Caretaker parts.

The Performer

This part keeps you striving. It pushes you to be excellent, polished, put-together. It helped you navigate racism in school, and to prove your worth in white-dominated workplaces. It says, “if I overachieve, I’ll be safe.”

The Caretaker

This part keeps you tuned in to other’s needs, even at the expense of your own. It may have developed in a family where emotion needs were unmet, where you were the “mature one,” or where love was earned through helping. It says, “if I take care of everyone else, I’ll be loved an safe.”

IFS doesn’t treat these parts of you as flaws. It helps you get curious about them, and identify them as one aspect of you rather than your core identity. In therapy, we might explore:

Why and when did these parts show up?
What are these parts afraid would happen if they stepped back?
What do these parts need?
What other parts of you have been deprioritized as a result?

Healing isn’t about getting rid of the strong one. It’s about letting that part rest, because your value isn’t tied to your ability to carry everyone else.

You don’t have to be the strong one forever. You deserve more than survival. MINDplexcity specializes in working with BIPOC clients who are ready to explore the parts of themselves that have worked too hard for too long.