Internal Family Systems For Self-Healing
A New 6 Week Zoom Course With Lissa & Laura Schmidt, LMFT For IFS Basics Starts Today
Hi everyone-
This is a bit last minute, but I just wanted to announce that my six week IFS For Self-Healing Zoom course with IFS lead trainer Laura Schmidt, LMFT begins today at 11am PST.
Since 20-30% of the students who take my relationship courses and spiritual bypassing recovery courses are new to IFS, we decided to lead a class just for the newbies. Experienced IFS practitioners are welcome too, if you’re looking for a refresher or a way to deepen your practice on your own, at home. This is not a certification program, so you don’t have to be a therapist or physician. Anyone can take this if you’re interested in the self-healing aspects of IFS or interested in learning some basics to apply it to your coaching career or other work- and. you want to be IFS-informed.
If you sign up now, you can still join us live or get the recordings if you miss the live class, which starts in 2 hours.
Join IFS For Self-Healing now.
If you aren’t familiar with IFS, here’s a brief summary of this trauma healing, non-bypassing growth opportunity and spiritual path.
What Is IFS?
If you saw the brilliant children’s movie Inside Out, you already have a taste of what IFS is all about. Inside this little girl’s head, you see all the warring “parts” fighting to take over the control panel of the little girl’s behavior. According to the IFS model, we all have multiple personalities, or what Dick calls “parts.” You are not just one being; you (and me and all of us) are a multiplicity of “parts,” but this is not usually a problem because you also have what IFS calls the Self, the wise, mature, divine aspect of every human’s being.
Your “internal family” is populated with a whole busload of inner children, and if you’re reasonably healthy, your Self is driving the bus, at least some of the time, keeping the lovely, sometimes naughty, often unruly, scared, overprotective, and sometimes reckless, addicted, dissociative, sociopathic, or even suicidal parts from grabbing the wheel and hijacking the bus.
You already know you have lots of parts if you’ve ever made a New Years Resolution you didn’t keep. One self-improving part of you makes the resolution. Another part of you says “F this” and breaks it. And then some shaming, judgey part comes in tells you what a loser you are for not having enough discipline to keep to the self-improving plan. If you were making a Self-led resolution, you’d be talking to all the parts who want to achieve the goal and also all the parts that don’t want it- so you can negotiate with all of them make a more honest compromise that you might actually stick to.
Proactive Manager Parts
In the IFS model, parts are either “protectors” or “exiles.” Some protector parts are “managers” who try to preemptively protect you by warding off danger. They manage our bank accounts, our to do lists, the way we look, and the way we behave to keep us socially acceptable. They try to improve us, perfect us, and keep us out of trouble. Think Inner Critic part, Perfectionist part, Anxious part, Time Keeper part, Financial Manager part, Worst Case Scenario Catastrophizing part, yada yada yada.) Their main job is to be the first line of defense, protecting the vulnerable, wounded, hurting “exile” parts from getting triggered and evoking intensely painful emotions that might take you out of commission. Their biggest fear is that these exiled parts will flood you with painful emotions and you’ll get overwhelmed and fail to function the way you need to.
Reactive Firefighter Parts
The next line of defense are the “firefighter” protector parts. These firefighters come online as emergency back up if the managers fail to keep the exiles effectively locked up in exile. They grab their firefighting tools if anyone (including you) get too close to the pain the exiles are feeling when they’re locked away, usually buried in your subconscious, beyond your conscious awareness but nevertheless always influencing your behavior and experiences. The firefighters are saddled with intense roles which often don’t look like protection and are more likely to be pathologized by the medical and psychological world. When you think about firefighters, think Addict part, Rage part, Eating Disorder part, Abuser part, Binge part, Dissociative part, Psychopath part, Narcissist part, Suicidal part, Narcoleptic part, Psychotic part.” In other words . . . think pretty much everything in the psychiatric DSM-5 (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, created by the American Psychiatric Association as a way to label, diagnose, and standardize treatment for psychiatric disorders).
But firefighters do not only show up as psychiatric illnesses. They can also show up as physical illnesses—or other parts can use some physical vulnerability in your system to take you out. Think Migraine part, Back Pain part, Chronic Fatigue part, Asthma part, or even Cancer part. I’m not suggesting that these are purely psychosomatic illnesses. But according to the IFS model, your protector parts may pull out all the stops and use your physical body to try to protect you from getting too close to your traumatized exiles if they think they need to. So . . . as a physician interested in interdisciplinary cross-pollinations of healing, this is where Dick got my attention.
Protecting The Exiles
Why would parts that think they’re protecting you pull such potentially harmful stunts? Why would they use anorexia or an addiction or cutting or dissociation or even cancer to try to protect you? Because they know not what they do.
No matter how idyllic you think your childhood was, we all have vulnerable wounded parts (exiles). No one is exempt from the “burdens” these exiles carry. Our exiles might have different stories and different wounding, but they tend to have the same painful feelings—worthlessness, unlovability, “not enough-ness,” shame, terror, helplessness, hopelessness, feeling damaged or broken or thinking they are fundamentally flawed. Because your protector parts don’t like the feelings these exiled parts evoke, they unwittingly exacerbate the problems, locking these exiles in a kind of inner prison, so they’re crying and screaming and begging for your attention all the time. The more traumatic the wounding, the more the exiles will pull out all the stops to get your attention, so the more powerful the protectors must become. The managers might be able to keep things under control for a while, but over time, as the exiles get more unruly and the managers fail to keep the exiles under wraps, the firefighters might be needed to further shut down these intensely wounded parts.
All the exiles want is your love, your care, your nurturing, your understanding. They want you to listen to how much pain they experience. They want you to remember what happened to them and acknowledge it, rather than pushing it away. They want an ally, not a jailkeeper. But they can’t seem to get through to you, because the two lines of protection (managers and firefighters) do their best to keep you from even remembering, feeling, or being present with these sweet, young, tender, hurt exiles.
These exiles are crying for the love of your wise adult Self, which is the part that’s not a part, the inner healer, therapist, mentor, parent, and Beloved that has what it takes to heal these wounded parts, if only your protector parts learn to trust that your Self can care for them better than these jailkeeper protectors can.
The Solution: Unburdening The Exiles
While protecting the exiles might help to keep your internal family system safe for a while, it requires a great deal of energy to keep those exiles in prison. All the energy your protectors expend trying to keep the exiles under wraps could be used for creativity, self-healing, service, spiritual connection, playfulness, intimacy with others, and general vitality. But because that energy is getting used up by protectors, you might feel chronically tired, depleted, depressed, anxious, lacking inspiration, lonely, spiritually disconnected, or sick. It makes sense that freeing up these exiles through the IFS “unburdening process” liberates all this trapped energy and functions as a kind of energy healing, freeing up all that extra life force so the life force can work its magic in other aspects of your life.
Unburdening your exiles requires getting permission from all the protectors that will keep you (or the IFS therapist) from getting direct access to the exile. Once the protectors trust your wise Self and allow this inner healer to make contact with the exiled parts, demonstrating some curiosity, compassion, care, and other qualities of the Self that reassure the exiled part that the real YOU is here, the exile is ready to be unburdened. This is the real inner child trauma work.
If you have access to a one on one IFS therapist, that’s always the best way to practice IFS. But so many people I know can’t afford or access an IFS therapist. So we’re donig our best to bring the self-help aspects of IFS to those of you who only have the option of less expensive group work. And if you do have an IFS therapist, there’s so much of this work you can do on your own, before sessions, to speed things up and save time and money in therapy.
You don’t have to be a therapist or a therapy client to join us. Anyone with an interest in learning more and deepening your IFS practice can join us.