What is Internal Family Systems Therapy
DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT BEEN TRAINED BY THE IFS INSTITUTE. I have focused most of the continuing education on learning the IFS model and have taken courses with Self Capacities, PESI, and meet with an IFS Institute Level 3 Practitioner for Supervision. I am currently on the waiting list to enter the IFS Institute training program to become a Level 1 IFS Practitioner.
Internal Family Systems, IFS, aka Parts work, is a framework for therapy that believes the following to be true: Everyone is born with a unique core, authentic self (soul or spirit) and throughout life, we experience meaningful events that shape the way we view the world and how we behave. When we are children or young adults, we develop coping mechanisms to comfort ourselves when we get hurt that may or may not make sense or be healthy coping strategies. We can develop maladaptive thoughts/behaviors to cope with the pain of the event we experienced. These maladaptive thoughts/behaviors continue on into adulthood because they have become automatic responses to things that trigger us in the present moment. If we look at and address these reactions as separate parts of us, adapted to protect us from feeling pain, we can start the process of healing.
When we are emotionally hurt, we create an Exile, a hurt/pained part of our authentic self, who is so pained that we try to exile, hide, or block that part of us from our consciousness. In our efforts to hide the Exile, we develop patterns of behaviors that become sub-personalities of our self. These behaviors can cause us to behave in helpful ways but can also cause displeasure or outright harm. There are two types of protectors: Managers who are proactive and Firefighters who are reactive.
In our work to heal and change negative thinking or behaviors, we have to get to know the Protectors, understand their role in our lives and see what they are trying to protect us from. The best way to communicate with our protectors is to un-blend/separate from it by visualizing the part as separate from core self and ask it questions to get to know it better, like meeting a new person. When we interact with our Protector parts in this way, the Protectors can see there is a mature/wise self who can develop helpful coping mechanisms to deal with pain of the exile.
We then ask the Protector permission to engage with the Exile. If the Protector resists, we respect it, we continue to build trust with the Protector and then it will allow us to speak to the Exile, we have subconsciously trying to push away. Once we are allowed to speak to the Exile, we ask the Exile questions exploring how it came to be and work to heal it using visualizations of your wise core giving your exile the love, attention, validation, the Exile needed. This exercise provides space for the Exile to heal. Once we heal the Exile, the Protector can stop working so hard in our lives and leave space for us to be led by our authentic selves. The Protector will start to trust us once it has the opportunity to communicate its role in your life and once it receives gratitude for how it protected you. Once the Protector trusts your authentic Self, they will give you access to the Exile, then we can get to know the Exile. Once we get to know the Exiles and the Protectors we can provide the healing they need to recover and allow your authentic Self to govern your thoughts and behaviors.
Details about your Authentic Self, your Protectors and your Exiles:
1. The Self: Your true authentic, core Self is your spiritual center, seat of consciousness, soul or spirit; Self is who we are when we are not activated by a part. The Self can work with each of our parts in a healing way. The Self leads our internal system, making choices, and acting in the world in a healthy way. When you are Self led, you are making decisions from a place of confidence, compassion, curiosity, connection, courage, clarity, calm, and creativity. This is who the conductor of your life is ideally. When we allow Protectors to by the conductor of our lives, they lead from a place of fears. When we are led by the Self, we lead from a place of confidence, clear thinking, peace and openness, free of judgment.
2. The Exiles: Parts of us that carry unresolved pain, the vulnerable part, our wounded inner children:
i. Carry all the difficult and overwhelming feelings we just don’t want to feel such as pain, shame, sadness, anxiety, unworthiness, guilt, feeling unloved.
ii. We exile them, put them away.
iii. Frozen in time of their original wounding moments.
iv. Carry memories, sensations and emotions of trauma (or painful experiences you may not consider traumatic but caused pain nonetheless.)
v. We get messages to move on and “get over it.” Instead IFS we have to understand these wounded PARTS of WHOLE person…they don’t heal if we ignore these parts, they feel worse.
vi. Intention of locking exiles in a system is a protective intention to prevent them from being re-wounded. However they don’t heal when they are in exile.
vii. Long for connection but also fearful of connections.
3. Protectors: Manage our interactions with the world. These parts keep the Exiles hidden because they are trying to keep wounded parts of us from being more injured. There are two types of Protectors: Managers and Firefighters.
a. Managers: Parts that help us manage our daily lives.
i. Intention to create stability, functioning, improvement, to control environment. Managers are proactive because they prevent the exile’s activation and by staying in control and they live by the motto “never again.”
ii. Managers include parts of us that are controlling, driving (taskmaster), evaluating, caretaking, organizing, obsessing, pessimism, seeking approval, people pleaser, and perfectionism. They are exhausted in their roles, but they don’t feel like they can stop working because if they stop, the Exile will be open and vulnerable.
b. Firefighters: These parts take action when exiles are activated in an effort to stifle, numb, or distract us from the triggered feelings. They get the fire out, and aren’t concerned with collateral damage. They rush in and, by any means necessary, extinguish the exile’s pain. They are reactive, they react to exile parts. In their preferred roles they would want to seek balance in the system. They would like to bring rest, soothing, novelty, pleasure or fun.
i. Drug/alcohol, any addictions, self harm, binge eating, starvation, any type of impulsive behaviors…these are actions they take to manage the exiled feelings.
ii. They are impulsive, not concerned with consequences: you are not feeling the overwhelming anxiety you were feeling.
iii. Highly burdened, they are working very hard to protect us, but they are villain-ized because their actions have problematic consequences.
iv. Can feel rejected, shamed, lonely, isolated, they take the most undesirable roles in a system.
The goal of our work together will be to heal all the pained parts of you, so that you may release the burdens you carry and can be led by your authentic core spirit, governed by curiosity, creativity, compassion, courage, confidence, clarity, connection, and calm.
Thanks for reading this LONG blog! Also feel free to check out the many Youtube videos on IFS.
