Introduction to Internal Family Systems (IFS)

I'm trained as a family therapist.

I have a PhD in that.

It was one of these obnoxious therapists,

Family therapists,

That thought we'd found the Holy Grail.

All these other Psychodynamic therapists were wasting all this time by mucking around in their inner world when we could just reorganize these family patterns.

And free people from their symptoms.

And I decided to prove that.

And with a colleague did a outcome study.

With bulimia.

And gathered 30 beleaguered kids together and their families and we worked with the families just the way the book said to.

And uh.

.

.

A lot of these kids.

.

.

Didn't comply.

They didn't get cured.

Out of frustration I began asking why?

And they began teaching this model to me because.

.

.

They began spontaneously talking about these different parts of them.

They'd say some version of when something happens.

This critic starts to attack me inside.

And that.

Goes right to the heart of another part of me that feels all the shame that the critic is telling me.

And feels worthless and empty and alone.

And that feeling is so dreadful.

But then the binge comes to take me away from it.

And I turned into a kind of unfeeling eating machine for a day or two.

But then the critic comes back and is attacking me for having binged.

And that goes right to the heart of that.

Young,

Worthless,

Empty place.

So the bench has to come back and they'd be caught in that vicious cycle.

For days.

It sounded familiar to me as a family therapist,

Because that's what we've been studying in families,

Where these circular sequences of interaction that that would loop just around and around.

At some point I concluded what we now know,

Which is.

.

.

Not only are there no bad parts,

But they're all frozen in the past.

And they contain these extreme beliefs and emotions.

Like that perpetrator energy.

That came into your system.

During the trauma.

And attach to these parts and then drive the way they operate thereafter.

Which now we call burdens.

These parts are frozen in time and that they carry these extreme beliefs and emotions and energies.

That aren't native to them,

But came from.

Your direct experience in your life.

And again,

Drive the way they operate like a virus.

Again,

As a systems thinker,

As a family therapist.

I wasn't just interested in each part individually,

But how do they operate as a system?

And so I began looking for distinctions,

And the big distinction that leaped out immediately was between parts that before they were hurt.

You might call these delightful inner children,

The young,

Sensitive parts of us.

Before they were hurt.

Provide a lot of playfulness and joy.

Creativity and loving energy.

But because they're the most sensitive parts of us,

They're the ones who are hurt the most by these things that happen to us.

And when they get hurt.

Or when they get terrified.

Or when they get shamed and feel worthless.

They have the power to overwhelm us.

And make us feel all that all the time.

If they're around.

And pull us back into the scenes in which they're stuck.

And so we have a natural impulse to try to.

Move on from those memories.

Which is what we're taught to do in this culture with trauma.

Don't look back,

Just move on.

Not realizing that and moving on from what we think are just the.

Memories,

Maybe some emotion.

Were actually Exiling my language.

The parts of us that are most precious to us.

Simply because they got hurt.

And so we lock them in some kind of inner basement.

Try to forget about them as best we can.

And in the process of that.

.

.

We no longer have so much access to that joy or that creativity.

Or that playfulness.

And we have to expend enormous amount of energy.

Trying to keep them contained.

And keep them from being triggered again.

So these we call exons.

Anybody have some exiles?

When you have a lot of exiles.

You feel more delicate,

The world seems more dangerous.

So many things could trigger them if they get triggered.

Flames of raw emotion explode out of your gut.

And can take you out.

Make it so you can't function.

So other parts are forced out of their naturally valuable states.

To become protectors.

In one class of those parts.

We call manager protectors.

Try to manage your life.

Such that your exiles don't ever get triggered.

So they're very interested in preempting anything that might trigger them.

Controlling your relationships so no one gets close enough to hurt you like that again.

Or controlling your appearance.

So you look perfect and nobody rejects you or controlling.

And pushing you to achieve at high level so that you get accolades to counter the worthlessness or.

.

.

Taking care of everybody and not letting you take care of yourself so everyone depends on you.

So on and so on.

So there are lots of different common manager protector roles.

I just named a handful of them.

As I'm talking about this map I want to emphasize that these are not.

The essence of these parts.

And too often when people write about IFS,

They write about,

You know,

There are these kinds of parts and these kinds of parts.

No,

These are the rolls they were forced into by what happened to you.

If released from those roles,

As you'll see.

They'll become who they're designed to be,

Which is always valuable.

The analogy and partly why I call this internal family systems.

Is to a family.

Dysfunctional family,

The kids and the family are forced out of who they really are.

Supposed to be.

Into rolls which have labels in the psychotherapy world like lost child and scapegoat and you know what I'm talking about.

That's not who the kid is.

That's the role they had to take on to protect themselves or to protect the family somehow.

It's the same thing in this inner system.

These,

What I'm calling managers are.

Just little helpers.

Who are designed to help you get through life and maybe be advisors.

Sometimes cheerleaders and so on.

But they get forced to become these very rigid critics or.

.

.

A lot of these managers.

When you don't listen to them directly.

Become these inner critics.

They don't know what else to do but to shame you into trying to behave.

And then we hate the critics and try to get rid of them.

And every psychotherapy gets you to fight with them.

But they're just trying their best.

They just don't know what else to do,

Because they're young too.

These protectors are just a little older generally.

Than the exiles I'm talking about.

They're like in family therapy,

We call them.

Parentified children.

Their kids who because The parents couldn't take care of the family.

Had to take over and run things,

And they're not equipped.

And just like a parentified child in a family,

They become very.

.

.

Rigid and very Critical.

Does that make sense?

Grrrr!

So lots and lots of different common manager.

Roles that Other systems would call this the ego,

This cluster of these managers or the defenses,

Right?

But they're much more than that.

They're really.

.

.

Lovely little inner beings who are forced to take on these roles that they're not equipped for.

So,

But despite their best effort.

The world has a way of still triggering your exiles.

And when that happens.

.

.

It's a big emergency.

These flames of raw emotion are going to consume you.

Another set of parts who are on standby waiting for that emergency.

To take you out,

To get you higher than the flames,

Douse them with some substance,

Distract you until they burn themselves out.

So we call those firefighters.

And we all have a bunch of firefighters.

So let me ask you When one of your exiles gets triggered,

What's your first impulse to get away from it?

Let's call it out.

Peter?

Drink what hide run away and hide What?

Blame somebody else.

Bye-bye.

Clean,

That's not one of mine.

We need that.

All the others that you mentioned are,

But.

Social media scrolling,

I'm working on it,

But it's one of mine,

Yeah?

Distraction.

Distraction,

Yeah,

What kind?

Reading,

Video games.

Okay,

Just something to get your mind away,

Right?

Getting angry or sniffy is a really great way of getting people to back off.

Yeah,

Just back off,

Get away,

Yeah.

Alcoholism.

Workaholism.

That's one of mine.

Yeah,

So you get the idea.

Now,

Those that you mentioned don't work.

We have heavier duty ones.

So there's a kind of hierarchy of them.

So if the first one doesn't work,

You go to the next one.

Which might include.

Drinking.

Suicidal ideation.

Associating.

Self-harm,

Right?

Gambling.

And if those don't work?

At the top of that hierarchy for most of us.

Is suicide.

It's very comforting to know if things get so hot,

You can't stand it.

There's this exit strategy.

And here we come along as well-meaning therapists and say,

I want you to sign this contract saying you're not going to kill yourself.

You wonder why your clients go crazy.

You're taking away their safety net.

So we don't,

We go to suicidal parts.

What do you pray would happen if you didn't kill her?

She'd continue to be in pain.

I can't stand how much pain she's in.

If we could get her out of a pain in a different way,

Would you have to kill her?

No,

But I don't think you can do that.

Very different approach to all this stuff.

These we call firefighter parts.

In contrast to the managers.

They're impulsive,

Reactive.

They don't care about the collateral damage to your body,

To your relationships.

They just care about getting you the hell out of here.

Because they think you're going to die if they don't.

And sometimes they're right,

Sometimes because suicide is that next one.

So they're heroes too.

They deserve a lot of appreciation as well.

And in our culture we vilify them and we we try to get rid of them.

I get most of you know IFS,

But this is just a radically different way of understanding all this and working with that.

Those are firefighters.

So two classes of protector,

Firefighter,

Manager.

Both,

Same goal,

Contain exiles,

Keep them from being triggered.

Radically different approaches.

Big on control,

Pleasing people.

The other takes you out of control,

Pisses off everybody.

Except for some firefighter activities like.

Workaholism and so on.

That'll piss off your family,

But you get accolades anyway.

So they're polarized often,

Managers and firefighters.

So far,

Part of their criticism of managers.

Is directed toward the firefighter.

Does that make sense?

And the firefighter reacts to that.

It's the way I was talking earlier.

About that triangle with the.

.

.

The exile and the binging part.

That becomes a vicious cycle.