Guide for the IFS Client: Chapter 3: About IFS therapy
In Chapter 1, we focused on the system of parts.
In Chapter 2 on the Self; the inner parent.
In this and in the following two chapters, the focus is on IFS therapy. Here first about the therapy and the IFS view, why and how we take on burdens through childhood and how they can be expressed in our relationships and in the family.
As in the previous chapter I will point out that my descriptions of IFS has a foundation not only in my IFS training but also in my education and human view as a Danish Family Therapist with a strong foundation in attachment, bodymind and New Danish Parenting.
This view and understanding does not contradict the basic IFS teaching, but is (in my view) a foundation for it to rest upon, and therefore part of my IFS language.
The Internal Family Systems (IFS) understanding of human beings originate in IFS therapy and intuitively fits most people’s sense of themselves, just as it goes well with or even adds to many other therapies, views on life, science, spirituality, etc. because the therapy it born out of one Family Therapist (founder Richard Schwartz) putting his theories and preconceived notions aside and becoming curious about the human beings sitting in front of him.
Precisely when we dare to let go, there is space for (a little) Self-energy.
And from there, IFS was created out of the clients’ narratives from within.
I’m sure we all know the inner conflict when part of us get angry at the boss, at our partner, at the children and another part of us is quite aware that this is not the most helpful way to react and may even beat ourselves up about reacting like that.
Or when a part of us is really exited to get a chance to shine at work and another part is scared to death to speak in front of everyone.
Through our inner conflicts; our reactions, projections, symptoms, feelings, thoughts and sensations, we can begin to look inward and become curious.
For some new IFS clients it can be hard to believe that these parts exist within us. Both because parts of our inner system has learned to be skeptical and suspicious when there were people in our childhood and youth who were not to be trusted. And because it may sound very strange — to others it sounds just right — when you first hear about this way of understanding ourselves as human beings. You may need to try it out a bit for yourself before it starts to really come together.
And even then, skepticism may arise from parts of us. This is perfectly normal. It is completely alright. And it is completely welcome in the therapy room.
Whether you see the idea of the inner system as metaphors and symbols or you understand it concretely as inner parts or personalities, as many of us do, is not the most important thing, as long as you do the inner work with respect. So you can dip your toes in this understanding the way that feels right for you and do not have to take a deep dive — or leap of faith — to get something out of IFS therapy.
Am I crazy?
Depending how we have been met previously (both by parents, family members and in the medical, psychiatric or therapeutic world), there can be fear of being crazy. Som people hear, feel, see or sense their parts or different personalities quite strongly or vividly. Is that not what crazy is?
No.
We have always been told that we have one mind and that everything else is a sign of mental illness. This is not true.
Today, we know that what we previously thought of as mental illness and disease are actually healthy and normal reactions to something that is or was unhealthy, abnormal and unsafe.
And we know that we all have many minds — or many parts — that this is a natural and normal part of being human, and not a sign of pathology.
IFS therapy
One of the key differences between IFS therapy and more traditional forms of psychotherapy is that we speak with our parts instead of just speaking about them.
In IFS therapy, we see not only our patterns, problems, ego and pain as something, but as someone. And when we meet our inner system in this way, we acknowledge and respect it in a completely different way and at a much deeper level.
For example, if we see our inner children as “regressing back into something of the past” that we should have “gotten over,” we can experience a lot of shame about what happens inside of us: “We are adults now and should know better” or “The past is the past.”
But when we see that our inner children are parts of us that are actually still children, stuck in the past inside of us, it is not something we have to (or can!) get over, but parts — and a large amount of stuck energy — that are stuck in those traumatic places or relationships, and who need help getting out and releasing the pain and the beliefs (burdens) they carry.
When we just have to “get over it,” or only use therapy to understand our reactions, we leave our Exiles or inner children in the pain that created the trauma in the first place. We stay shut to those parts of ourselves and the energy stays stuck inside.
In IFS therapy, we will instead be with the parts that carry burdens from the past, help them heal by releasing their burdens (when they are ready) and bring them to the present from the place in the past where they are stuck.
When that happens, the stuck energy is released as well and we will often have more energy to spend elsewhere in our lives.
We will notice a shift in our deep feelings of loneliness, wrongfulness, shame and worth (depending on what part and burden we work with and how exactly our system is organised) and we will begin to feel a deeper grounding and more flexibility in ourselves, in our relationships and in our lives.
Another way IFS therapy differs from many other therapeutic modalities is that we do not work to get rid of your alcohol abuse, your eating disorder, your OCD, your anxiety and so on. Instead, in therapy, we help the parts that carry this solution, to not needing it anymore because we help heal the underlying burden.
We include, respect, accept (and even love) the part that holds the addiction, the eating disorder, etc. and spend as much time with it as it needs, instead of excluding and shaming it in any way. This shift, when it comes from Self, in and of itself, can change a lot inside of us.
We know from the IFS ‘understanding of the human system that all of our parts have a good intentions and are meaningful; that all parts try to help and have once helped us — often to survive.
And we know that we will only join — and intensify — the inner polarization and conflict that is already present in the inner system if we begin to take sides and approach parts from an agenda-driven part of ourselves.
IFS therapy is about (re)creating the safe attachment and connection within ourselves that in many ways — and to varying degrees — was not made available to us in childhood.
For some, it will feel difficult and wrong to “speak negatively” about childhood. We all have some form of bond of love and loyalty to our parents regardless of our childhood experiences. It can feel like blaming our parents and being ungrateful for all the good our parents (most often) have done for us too.
Therefore, it is important to know that psychotherapy is never about blaming our parents for what they failed to do. They did the best they could with the resources and knowledge they had available. So did their parents before them and their parents before them.
And: Some of it was not good enough. Sometimes we were not met and seen as we needed to be. And sometimes our boundaries were crossed.
It is the child who was not met at the time — not what the parents could not manage — we work with in therapy. Because the energy from then is still stuck inside of us and the experiences and relationships of the past has been a big part of shaping our personalities, reactions, behaviors, symptoms and so on.
This is what therapy can help change, so that we can create even more openness and connection inside, meet ourselves in the places we were not met in childhood, and become even more of ourselves.
Many known and unknown traumas (and heirlooms) run through all families. These are the traumas and unsafe situations and relationships our ancestors were exposed to — directly or indirectly — that have never been healed and that in one form or another runs through the generations and become intergenerational traumas or what we in IFS therapy call Legacy Burdens — traumas that are inherited.
Pain not healed, is passed on.
Then there are the societal traumas — each society will have their own traumas and heirlooms just like each family does — that have a great impact on all the people who grow up in them. The visible and invisible norms of society becomes part of the family life and the upbringing of our children, and thus part of the inner family system of each individual.
Racism is one of the extreme examples of trauma than impact every one of us and the structures and norms of our different societies.
Slave trade, White Supremacy and the trauma, shame and inequality that came before and was (and is!) passed on — which you can read much more about in Reesma Menakem’s book “My Grandmothers Hands” (that I highly recommend) — is something that lives in all sorts of different visible and invisible ways in all of us and which we cannot change just by making more rules and laws, but by diving into our own inner systems and heal the (often unconscious) burdens and beliefs created simply by breathing the air we have grown up in.
Therapy is never about giving blame (to ourselves or others). It’s about taking responsibility.
Shame and blame shuts us down. Responsibility is possible when we open up.
As adults, we are responsible for ourselves and the patterns and beliefs our parts carry. This does NOT mean that we are to blame for them, that we should deal with our pain alone or that we shouldn’t lean on others. It means that we must look inward to heal and create change.
Only you can heal you AND you cannot (and should not) do it alone.
The deeper we heal and the more aware we become of our own inner system, the less we pass on to our children of what was not good for us.
And: we cannot help but pass on some of it. It’s a part of life.
What we can do is take responsibility. When we come to act in extreme ways from our parts, we can apologize and take responsibility afterwards. Children don’t need parents who are perfect, they need parents who take responsibility.
We human beings are made by relationship, we are made in relationship and we are made for relationship.
The fact that you as an adult are responsible does not mean that you are alone. You need other people — and co-regulation — we all do. Everyone needs healthy and safe relationships — a safe environment — that can help facilitate connection, attachment and healing.
In terms of therapy, it is important to find the right therapist for you. Not just the most professionally skilled therapist or necessarily an IFS therapist, but a therapist who has the right chemistry with you and your system, so that you (eventually) feel safe and calm enough for your inner system to dare to let go a little and start its movement towards healing.
Finding the right psychotherapist can be quite a jungle. I have written a bit about it here and I will get a bit into it more specifically for IFS in part 4 of this guide.
Most people get an adequate or good enough attachment through childhood. Our parents were there enough or in a good enough way, for us to develop relatively healthily and to be able to (later) deal with the pain and traumas we did experience.
Secure and insecure attachment is not either-or and therefore we will all have some degree of secure attachment and some degree of insecure attachment. In IFS, we say that some of our parts are securely attached, while others are attached more insecurely. IFS lead trainer Frank Anderson writes a bit about this way of understanding attachment in his book “Transending Trauma.”
The securely attached parts will be able to lean into our Self — the inner parent — that I wrote about in Chapter 2. And, depending on our traumas or feelings of safety, the insecurely attached parts will try to lean out into other people, to get the reassurance and felt safety they needed but did not received from mom and dad.
This especially happens in our romantic relationships and in relation to our children.
In our romantic relationships, we often start as each other’s savior and end up as each other’s tormentor, because we can not save each other. Therefore, we often repeat patterns from childhood again and again until we turn the attention inward and help the parts that come into play — in relation to our partner, to our children and to people more generally — to heal our wounds and create a secure attachment inward from our parts to Self.
When our parts can lean in, we can lean out into our partner from a completely different space within ourselves.
In the same way, our burdened parts will be expressed in our parenting when our children’s natural open and free behavior trigger the parts of us that were not allowed to be themselves, the parts that were shut down, were not met or respected in our own childhood. — And the protective parts that have kept them hidden.
When we are not conscious of the dynamics that are going on inside us, we tend to play them out in different ways in relation to our children, which is the more direct way burdens can run through the family generations.
As a Family Therapist, the majority of my clients are mothers, many of whom have shut off to their anger in childhood to fit in and to survive— that is, sent the parts carrying anger into exile — and not felt much anger (directly) since, but who suddenly feel a strong anger or even rage in the interactions with their young children.
This subsequently brings shame and critical protective parts up, trying to make the anger disappear into exile again.
Anger is an important boundary that is often shut down in childhood and many of us go through life without the important and safe boundaries that are needed in relationships with other people. As you can imagine — or might know from your own experience (I know I do!) — this makes a lot of things difficult and far more energy consuming than they wound otherwise be.
In therapy, we welcome the anger and shame and listen to their important stories.
This is how we can meet ourselves in what is. And in this way we can become more conscious of what we want to pass on to our children and be with them from a more Self-led space in ourselves.
I am currently creating the first episode of a podcast for parents — “Parenting from the Inside” — that will go into this in much greater detail about these dynamics. When it is ready, I will link to it here and on my Instagram page.
In IFS therapy, we connect with the parts of our inner system from a loving and accepting space within ourselves. A space we all have within us even if it does not seem likely or possible right now.
We do not try to change our parts, but instead listen to their narratives (which often have not been part of our conscious memory before therapy) and help them with the inner dynamics and with the burdens that they carry.
We create inner connection, relationship and balance.
IFS therapy is thus about (re)creating a secure attachment inwards, so that we can go out into the world from a more balanced Self-led space within ourselves, where our parts (and patterns) do not take over in same degree, but helps us on our journey through life.
In the next chapter, we look at the IFS therapy session.