Celeste has quickly become one of my favourite platform games of all time. In case you don’t know, “platformers” are games, like Super Mario, where you’re on a 2D plane, generally doing lots of jumping and falling. Celeste has a lot of that, actually, since the premise is that you, Madeline, are determined to climb a mountain—Mount Celeste. Sure, it might not be as fantastical as stomping on mushrooms and beating up turtles, but it’s a great game. I’d even argue a better game… Because the story and gameplay of Celeste touch on what has become one of my favourite therapeutic models that I, personally, have found helpful, and which I try to keep in mind when dealing with other people: Internal Family Systems theory.

Internal Family Systems isn’t as domestic as it may sound: it’s actually about how there’s a kind of “family” within you. The idea was developed by a gentleman named Richard Schwartz, who wrote a popular book about it called No Bad Parts. Take your average person: Schwartz would say that they are, in fact, not simply “one” person but kind of a multitude of people jumbled together to form one person.

That is, individuals are made up of different, smaller individuals: the part of them that got married, that works a certain job, that attends a certain church, that was traumatised when they were 7, that had a weird experience at 30, etc. These are all different “people” that can exist within one person; and like external families, this internal one doesn’t always get along. The person who goes to a certain church, for example, might conflict with the person who works X job, or who married Y person. Their identities and actions are at odds. IFS therapy, then, consists in making peace in this little internal family. That is the basic idea.

It does get more radical, though, because while it might be typical of one to want to get rid of, say, the “part” that reacts strongly because such-and-such happened when they were 9, Schwartz would say that there are no bad parts. Each part reacts in a way that is to be expected from its experience, and this explains why, for instance, a grown man might have the emotional reaction of a child to something. There is a “part” of them that is that child, and has learned to cope with that kind of thing in that kind of way. Maybe not the best way, but the best way a child could do. Of course, he would not be a child, and each of us has a responsibility to work on our emotions, but this gives us an effective starting place for therapy.

Now, back to video games. Early on in the game, we are introduced to the fact that Madeline has panic attacks and struggles with anxiety. Thus, being a video game, we are soon introduced to a part of Madeline, named Badeline (hehe), who embodies these attitudes. Where exactly she comes from is anyone’s guess, but the cool thing is that we get to see this conflict play out in the game.

In the level where we meet Badeline, Badeline follows us and (kills?) us as we jump around the screen. This caught me by surprise the first time I played, and I just assumed Badeline was moving super fast. But I soon realised that she was actually mimicking my movements, only a couple of seconds behind. So, generally speaking, if I kept moving and didn’t cross over my tracks, Badeline wouldn’t get me. And this is something, I think, a lot of us do: we keep moving and ignore the parts of ourselves that require emotional attention, even if that means ignoring where we’ve come from.

Having been ignored, Badeline comes back not long after, and not only impacts Madeline but those around her. This time, Badeline isn’t just a nightmare but actually acts through Madeline, saying some pretty means things to Mr. Oshiro, who then lashes out in an epic boss fight. Here, more than anywhere else I think, we get to see how the two are tangibly in conflict with one another, not only in Madeline’s head but in her physical, social world.

Eventually, Madeline and Badeline make up. Badeline isn’t an easy person to hang out with but, in an act of empathy, Madeline reaches out in a way that doesn’t provoke but which makes healing possible, going so far as to understand a role that Badeline has occupied in her life. So, in the end, you actually get to play as her. The two work together to get to the summit, and find a way to cooperate with each other. Madeline realises that she “doesn’t need to be afraid of her.” This culminates in a beautiful scene of reconciliation between the two, where they rediscover their determination, coupled with a long-awaited peace with each other. For us, this raises the question, what are some of the parts of ourselves that we treat poorly? How do these dysfunctional internal families affect our own lives and relationships with others? You can’t get rid of your parts, nor can you ignore them, but you can learn to live with them.

I think Celeste does a wonderful job of embodying this philosophy because it’s not only in the story, but in the gameplay. This game is so hard that, at the time of writing, I’ve probably died some 500 times and I’m only on level 3. Seriously. But you know what, rather than get angry or frustrated, I’ve learned to just laugh about it. The game has all sorts of little “tips” on the loading screen that offer encouragement, telling you that your death count is something you should be proud of, and that “assist mode” is there if you need it. There’s just so much baked into the game from a mental health point of view that I couldn’t cover it all here, much less coherently. I mean, even the lead dev, Maddy, is trans, and has said that Madeline (in the game) is, too. There’s a lot of angles here—something for everyone. So, I’d encourage you to go check it out, and embrace the process, slow-and-steady. And I’ll see you at the summit!