What If Backrooms Was Really About the Rooms We Build Inside Ourselves?

Disclaimer: This isn't me saying this is what the filmmakers intended. It's simply the lens I found myself watching the movie through as a trauma therapist trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS). One of the things I love about stories is that they often invite us to see ourselves in them.

Watching Backrooms through an Internal Family Systems (IFS) lens completely changed the movie for me.

Hear me out...

Maybe we weren't exploring a building.

Maybe we were exploring Clark's internal world.

Notice his profession.

He's an architect.

Architects design structures. Rooms. Hallways. Compartments.

His mind looks exactly like that.

An endless maze of rooms connected by hallways that seem to go on forever.

Compartment after compartment.

Then notice something else.

Originally...

Nobody lives there.

Clark says he's alone... but not lonely.

Then he says maybe being around people only hurts them anyway.

That didn't sound like a fact to me.

It sounded like a protector.

IFS teaches that protectors develop for a reason.

They're not trying to ruin our lives.

They're trying to prevent us from experiencing pain they've decided is too dangerous to feel again.

So I found myself wondering...

What happened that made this strategy necessary?

Because no one is born believing they're dangerous to the people they love.

Some part had to learn that.

Then watch what happens when Clark begins inviting people into his internal world.

His employees enter...

And they get hurt.

It reminded me of something we see every day in relationships.

People rarely intend to hurt the people they love.

But the wounds we never process have a way of showing up in our relationships.

Not because we're bad people.

Because our protectors are still doing the jobs they were hired to do years ago.

It brought me back to a phrase I often think about:

We can't heal what we don't reveal.

Then notice the people we meet inside the Backrooms.

None of them feel entirely real.

They're distorted.

That stood out to me.

IFS reminds us that we don't always relate to people as they actually are.

Sometimes we relate to our internal experience of them.

The impressions they left.

The meanings we've attached to them.

The unfinished conversations we've continued having long after they were gone.

The man in the blue shirt.

The woman in the red suit.

Who are they?

Maybe that's not even the right question.

Maybe the better question is...

Who are they inside Clark?

Because that's the version we're meeting.

Then there's the kitchen.

Where do we feed ourselves?

In the kitchen.

But psychologically, I couldn't help wondering if Clark was feeding something much deeper.

His fears.

His shame.

His belief that isolation is safer than connection.

Because whatever we continue feeding...

Grows.

Then there's the pirate.

Most people watch him and see a monster.

Watching it through an IFS lens...

I couldn't help but see a protector.

But here's what fascinated me most.

Notice when the pirate appears.

Not when Clark is alone.

But when he begins letting people into his world.

His employees.

His therapist.

The closer people get...

The louder the protector becomes.

That feels incredibly familiar.

The closer someone gets to an exile carrying unbearable pain...

The harder protectors often work to make sure no one reaches it.

Then notice something else.

When the pirate enters...

The woman in the red suit runs.

I couldn't help but wonder if she represented his wife...

Or maybe Clark's internal experience of her.

Either way, the symbolism struck me.

Connection leaves.

Then something else happens.

Even the therapist runs.

That was the moment that stayed with me.

Watching it through an IFS lens, I found myself wondering whether her own unresolved grief made it difficult for her to remain grounded enough to hold space for Clark's protector.

Instead of becoming curious about the part standing guard...

She became pulled into her own internal experience.

As therapists, that struck me.

Our own parts will inevitably get activated.

Countertransference is real.

But our responsibility is to recognize when our own parts have entered the room so they don't begin leading the session.

Clients don't need us to defeat their protectors.

They need us to stay.

To remain grounded enough to become curious.

To ask,

"What are you protecting?"

And then something fascinating happens.

Eventually, the therapist herself becomes distorted within Clark's internal world.

Just like the man in the blue shirt.

Just like the woman in the red suit.

She is no longer experienced as who she actually is.

She becomes another distorted representation inside his mind.

That really made me stop.

People don't bring tidy, organized parts into relationships...

Or into therapy.

Sometimes they bring pirates.

Sometimes they bring protectors that are angry.

Avoidant.

Hypervigilant.

Controlling.

Or completely shut down.

The protector isn't the problem.

The protector is the solution the nervous system came up with when it didn't have a better option.

I also couldn't stop thinking about the endless hallways.

Clark spends the entire movie wandering.

Turning corners.

Opening doors.

Looking for an exit.

Rarely stopping.

Isn't that what so many of us do?

We stay busy.

We overthink.

We analyze.

We fix.

We distract ourselves.

We keep moving.

Anything except opening the one door we've spent years trying not to enter.

Then another thought hit me.

What if the Backrooms themselves aren't the problem?

What if they're the protector?

What if the endless maze is the structure Clark's mind built to keep everyone, including himself, from getting too close to the pain waiting at the center?

If that's true...

Then maybe the goal was never to escape the Backrooms.

Maybe it was to understand why they were built.

That idea stayed with me long after the credits rolled.

Because maybe that's true for us too.

Maybe healing isn't about defeating our protectors.

Maybe it's about becoming curious enough to understand them.

To recognize that every protector, no matter how loud, angry, controlling, avoidant, or terrifying, was created for a reason.

And maybe...

We can't heal what we don't reveal.

Natalie 🦋