Grief Work in IFS Therapy: Not everything is a part
If you have ever experienced loss, you know grief.
This statement is both true and meaningful, and at the same time diluted, pointless and empty.
Because both loss and grief means so much that it easily loses meaning to talk about it in any general terms. We all know grief in our own way, which means that we can easily emphasize and generally understand what someone is going though and we can just as easily project what it feels like to us, and therefore not see the other person at all.
As (IFS) Psychotherapists and Practitioners it is important to know that even if we have not lost someone close to us, we still have a knowing and an inner experience of what grief is.
And it is equally important to know that even if we have lost someone very close to us, we have no idea what it’s like for this specific client in grief.
Both is true at the same time. And must be held in our awareness for us to assist our clients in their unique process.
Grief work is one of the areas of therapy where it easily becomes clear if the the Therapist or Practitioner have not been with their own internal process, because they can become unsure, rigid, stuck, fearful or opinionated about the proces the client is going though, rather than going with, allowing and trusting the process and the wisdom of the client.
Likewise, grief work is one of the many areas of therapy where it is so important for the Therapist or Practitioner to know and deeply trust that this (in this case: grief) is a healthy response, not a sickness.
Ultimately grief is love. And in that, grief is healing, grief is connection and grief is healthy movement (as opposed to stuckness).
Attachment and grief
When I say grief is love, it is important for me to name that grief work is, in its own way, attachment work and even though love at its core is deep and simple like a river underlying everything in this world, love-relationships or attachment relationships are often messy and complicated.
And so grief is both simple and messy all at the same time. We need to hold space for this without getting confused or getting in our heads about it.
I will not go into different types of loss here, because it’s an important topic on its own, but I do want to name loss in relation to attachment, because it helps us understand the layers of the grief process more deeply.
Some readers may already be familiar with Dr. Gordon Neufeld and his extensive work around attachment.
Dr. Neufeld names six layers of attachment which slowly builds throughout the secure attachment relationship children form to their caregivers.
The first and most basic layer of attachment is physical proximity: Being with the ones we are attached to through the senses in this physical world.
This first core attachment need, is the connection we truly lose when we experience love like a loved one dying.
The next layers are “Sameness” (being like the ones we are attached to) “Belonging and loyalty” (belonging to the ones we are attached to and them belonging to us), “Significance” (mattering to the ones we are attached to), “Feeling” (carrying the ones we are attached to in our hearts) and “Being known” (Being know, seen and witnessed by the ones we are attached to).
All these layers can carry wounds because no upbringing, no relationship and not attachment is simple, perfect or just good and easy.
As Dr. Neufeld named, when I met with him back in 2019, “You cannot be too attached, but you can be too insecurely attached” and this shows up in our grief process. How could it not.
But as grief is a continuation of love, the attachment relationship with the lost loved one (most clearly in losing a parent) must go through a process of change, the biggest loss here being the loss of physical proximity; of being with. Even though it is not anymore about being in the same room — in the view, smell, touch — so not acutely through the senses in this concrete way (unless it’s a small child losing a parent), but being in the same physical world.
In the weeks, months and years following a loss, sameness, belonging and loyalty, significance and the feeling of carrying the lost one in our heart, is often enhanced (this sounds simple but can be experienced as very complicated depending on the relationship before the loss).
Which bring us to Being know, the sixth layer of attachment, which matters greatly in moving forward in life after a loss. Because in losing a loved one, many will have a very real felt sense and experience of losing a life witness.
Being know, being seen is to matter in the very deep and felt meaning of being matter: being alive, being real and being concrete in the most felt and embodied way.
This is deeply woven into the attachment relationship and all of the layers that Gordon Neufeld has broken down for us, because being seen and mirrored by our caregivers from very early childhood, is how we get to know and see ourselves. What isn’t mirrored back, isn’t know inside.
Not being seen — As in: not being witnessed, not being mirrored, not being met softly, lovingly and precisely as we are. Or being misunderstood, scolded and projected onto — is the deepest separation wound underlying all the pain we carry from trauma and attachment wounding.
This is why therapeutic work at its core (no matter the modality or theory), is about being seen so that we can see ourselves.
This again is very simple and very complicated and gentle work.
So how do you work with grief in IFS Therapy?
If you see the IFS model as a rule book, the first thing you do is lay it down. It is not needed here. (The human view and understanding that the IFS model is build on can stay).
Maybe you’re trying to figure out which part is grieving and how Self can be with it. That’s not what we’re doing here.
Here’s what you need to know: Not everything is a part.
This does not mean that there isn’t parts to witness, that parts can’t hold grief or that Richard Schwartz is wrong when he says that we all have parts (or that Gabor Maté is wrong for saying we don’t, when he says it’s not parts but processes). It’s all good. It’s both true at the same time. And it does not matter. Stay with me here…
Not everything is a part: Grief is a state.
Now, what does that mean? It means that when human beings experience deep loss, we are not looking at parts holding grief but grief holding the whole system.
Envision a group of people surrounded by fog. The fog is everywhere and they all feel it and breathing it.
That’s what a state can be seen like. This is what the internal system of parts and Self is in when being in grief. It’s a collective internal experience. Self and parts.
In my view it matters greatly to see it and meet it like this, because an internal system in mourning, much like an external family system, does not need to be taken apart, but felt, met and held collectively first and foremost.
Being with what is there, without an agenda for change, is what creates the change that needs to happen. This is one of the many paradoxes of healing and it is even more important when we work with grief, that our only agenda as Therapists or Practitioners is to be there, hold the space and meet our client where they are and as they are.
When it comes to loss, there’s often a lot of understanding from the outside the first few weeks after the death or the funeral of a loved one, but many people, even children who have lost a parent, experience the loneliness of being forgotten soon after.
It’s like the world just expects them to move on and they stop checking in and asking. Or they start avoiding the topic or even the child, young person or adult who is grieving.
In therapy we must never make this error. We must allow, check in and connect. We must trust that the process is taking the time and the space that it needs. And if something feels stuck, we check in with that as well, from an open, loving, Self-led space.
Grief doesn’t have an end date because grief is love and at a deeper level love simply is. But grief moves and changes if it is allowed to show up as it is. It is our job to hold space for it.
What about parts?
Not everything is a part, but there are parts reacting to everything we go through.
So in the fog of grief, if we want to keep that image, there are parts holding their own internal grief, sadness, anger, confusion, longing, hopelessness, fear, love... And they carry stories that may need connection and witnessing in therapy when it feels right to the internal system.
A year ago my mother died. She had cancer and died way too young.
When it was time to say goodbye to her children and grandchildren, my mother knew, and we all gathered there on her last day of consciousness.
The following days my siblings and I watched over her and stayed close. It was a time of peace and calm. Sometimes we talked, my brothers and I, and sometimes we just were.
Time is a strange experience up close and when all the hustle and bustle of life fell away, days passed in such a different way than I have ever experienced before. Like time and space was more compact somehow and I was just right there, just being and it’s not possible to be bored or hungry or to focus on other things. You’re just there.
When my mom died a few days later, I was right next to her, with my hand on her arm, talking quietly with my brothers. She simply stopped breathing.
Then my tears came. The feeling of this impossible thing happening and at the same time I knew it was the right thing to happen. We don’t fear death in my family. It’s simply the first step on a new chapter. But the loss is very real.
I remember driving home that night in January. The starts were so bright on the winter sky. It was a long drive and I noticed parts coming and fading like an ocean of waves in movement.
The young ones cried out with disbelieve that this could actually be happening, feeling so strongly that they could not go on living without my mother. I remember how true it felt to those parts, the tears streaming down my face, while at the same time feeling clearly the young energy of the hurt.
Acknowledging and feeling the initial grief of the young parts while knowing very well that I was quite capable of going on living, but without that knowing having to take away from or discredit the pain and the hurt.
This is one of the gifts of IFS. All parts and feelings are welcome and deserving of our love and connection.
When we lose a parent and the relationship was complicated, the grief process often becomes complicated as well and can get stuck. This is again were I believe IFS can be a great gift to the process, because it gives us the understanding and the trust, to go with the system and allow the many conflicting, difficult and complicated feelings and reactions. They can all be witnessed and met (as the clients system allows for this) without having to fit into the same picture or story, because in human relationships there is never just one picture or one storyline that will tell all the nuances of the human experience inside, outside and in-between.
And Self?
Asking if Self can grieve feels too much like a head-without-heart-question.
Questions like this one, you don’t need to ask, but to feel. You know the answers to questions like these when you feel into them.
I have written about Self before and we can give Self many names and descriptions, but the clearest answer for me, is that Self is love.
And since grief ultimately is love, it does not make sense to ask if Self feels grief.
If this is a confusing statement and you feel a need to separate grief from Self, since of course it is not accurate to state that grief is Self, the word you’re looking for is already in the equation: The word is separating. Grief is love in felt separation. Grief is the continuation of love after loss.
Dr. Gordon Neufeld says: “We don’t fear death, we fear separation.” This goes deeply into our attachment needs, our attachment wounds and thereby our felt sense of safety, meaning and connection in this world.
In the fog of grief, Self and parts are there. They are in the same system and grief is an internal state.
Like a fog it can feel dense and stagnant, like it’s never going to change, but is ever-moving and will be thinker at times and thinner at others.
When you connect with your clients in their grief, parts will speak and you can often hear when there is more Self-energy present, because when parts speak there may be longing, there may be sadness, hopelessness, aloneness, heaviness, there may be laughter, memories and smiles, and the more Self is present the more connection rather than longing there is, because in Self-connected grief there is connection to love inside and out.
In the fog, it is almost impossible to see the sun and even though Self is always there, (parts of) clients will at times feel really lost and alone.
Here your Self-led presence is such an important lighthouse to help them trust the process and that shifts do happen when we trust and allow what is present to be seen and felt.
Grief work in your practice
Everybody’s different and unique. Every person and every part.
This is so important to know deeply and to always remember when stating anything about human beings. Even though we have so many things in common as humans, we are also deeply unique individuals and anything stated here (or anywhere else on the internet or in books or opinions and theories) only applies to you and your unique clients if it feels right to you and your unique clients.
Something that does not feel true or right (either because my wording doesn’t quite fit or because the inner experience is different), you always go with what feels true and right. And if en doubt, you follow the stories and experiences to see if what feels like truth is rooted in trauma or in inner truth.
It’s all frameworks that are meant to help you listen and be with the unique experience and expression of your unique clients and their unique parts. If it does the opposite, it’s not helpful. If it does nothing, it’s just words.
And everyone will need something distinct depending on the many different circumstances inside and outside of therapy.
In every moment our agenda must be to meet our clients where they are and as they are.
Some will have space for mourning in their personal lives, relationships to be held in, places they feel safe and an inner world that trusts the process. Others will feel quite isolated and hold it all in, only to connected with it, in their unique way, in the safe enough space of the therapeutic relationship.
Trust the deeper knowing of your client, of yourSelf and of the process.
And from there hold space and welcome every grief process as it is.
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