Understanding IFS: How Self Leadership Works & A Yoga Nidra Practice

The introduction to IFS & the attempt to improve everyone's understanding of Self Leadership & how it can be a life-changing framework. This introduces the ideology of prioritizing self abundance and mindfulness within our daily lives. Hope you all enjoy and carry something from this recording into the weekly abundance challenges provided.

Transcript

The main modality that I use in my private practice is called IFS self-leadership,

Internal family systems self-leadership.

And more information about it can be found at the Center for Self-Leadership or the Institute for Internal Family Systems on the web.

And essentially,

I love this modality because it's a game changer.

It changed my life personally and professionally.

I think it's made a huge difference to clients that work with me over any other modality that I've used in my 30 years of discovering different modalities for psychotherapy that are about resolving trauma.

And I use it along with the Enneagram and mindfulness and non-violent communication and a little bit of chakra work and some yoga nidra.

But literally,

It is my primary modality.

And I am going to share a little bit about how this works,

Giving an example of a part of me that I'll share.

And I will use this visual that we can post on Instagram and Facebook and maybe my website as well.

And essentially,

The modality was co-created by Richard Schwartz with his clients.

And it comes out of family systems work.

And he discovered it when he was working in an eating disorder,

Inpatient hospital setting,

When he was just starting out his career as a psychologist,

Working with doctors and psychiatrists with people who had extremely severe bulimia and obesity and restricted eating.

And he started out working with these clients and using the modalities that he had learned in school and that his colleagues were training him to use,

And it wasn't working.

And he tells this incredibly moving story about working with a young woman who was a cutter and would cut on her legs or on different parts of her body that weren't so visible because the physical pain helped ground her when the emotional and psychological pain was too intense.

And that's typically what happens for cutters.

And so he was working with her and she was like at a weight that was so skinny that she had all kind of medical problems.

Her organs were starting to shut down.

And so it's kind of like a last resort kind of situation.

And he had this incredible session with her.

He tells the story and learned a lot about why she wasn't eating.

And then she went home.

And at their next session,

She came back and she had a huge gash coming down the front of her face like a lightning rod.

And so he was like,

What the,

You know,

Like this is not working.

And so he just literally,

You know,

Shared with her that he got that what he was doing wasn't working for her.

And the part of her that slashed her was like,

Yeah,

Dude,

Like this is not working.

So he just started asking questions.

Okay,

Like all my professional schooling aside,

Like all my colleagues' best efforts at trying to figure out what's going on with you aside,

Like what's going on with this part of you that led you to,

You know,

Cut yourself on your face like this and tell me that what I was doing was not working for you.

So the part responded and said,

You know,

That thank God that he was getting it finally,

That this act got his attention.

And that her,

You know,

Went on to tell about why,

You know,

He,

The part was a male,

Male,

Because our parts can have male and female genders.

And they can show up as sensations,

They can show up as visuals.

We can see them,

We can hear them.

Sometimes we just feel them in our body.

And the part started to tell Richard about why it was showing up the way it was showing up,

Why she wasn't eating,

And how he could actually be helpful to her.

And so he started listening,

And client after client,

He started hearing people say,

Well,

This part of me feels this way,

And I don't feel like myself.

It's one of the things I love about the modality.

It's totally grassroots,

Blue collar is what I like to call it.

Like,

You don't need a PhD to understand it,

You talk about it with people and just kind of like make sense,

Because it's how we talk to ourselves.

And it's a little odd.

It's not like usual talk therapy.

And so sometimes you have a little bit of a hard time making the leap,

Right?

Like,

Oh my God,

You know,

I'm gonna become Sybil.

I'm like this multiple personality person now.

But actually,

If you really think about it,

Like we're talking to ourselves all the time,

Right?

We're like,

Oh,

Part of me wants to get out of bed right now.

And part of me wants to really sleep in,

You know?

So I'll segue from that story that Richard Schwartz told me that got my attention to a little mini description about how this works.

And so we have eight,

What we call eight C's that are our self energy.

So when we're feeling ourselves,

Right,

We're just feeling calm,

Cool and collected is the short term version.

But the eight C's include compassion,

Curiosity without an agenda.

So literally just open,

Right?

Calm,

Which doesn't mean you can't have passion or spice,

But it does mean that you feel really grounded and graceful.

And then there's confidence.

When we're feeling congruent with ourselves,

Clarity.

So it's easy to make decisions.

We like kind of get things.

And let's see,

Compassion,

Curiosity,

Calm,

Confidence,

Clarity,

That's five.

And there's confidence,

Creativity,

And there's one more.

It'll come to me.

And so these are like,

And there's like five P's.

I think there's like patience,

Perseverance,

And a few others.

So but essentially,

It's just when we feel like we're ourselves,

Okay,

It's like when we're just like feeling relatively good.

And we can still have access to sadness or anger or worry,

But it's not taking over.

And then we have our protector parts.

And our protector parts are protecting us from unresolved fear and pain,

Which in this modality is called exiles.

Unresolved pain and fear.

So this is big T trauma,

Like,

You know,

Sexual assault or child abuse.

Or it can be what we call little T trauma,

Something that happens in our lives that we don't understand that was really impactful,

That we haven't resolved yet and just kind of hangs out in our system.

And it's just there.

And this can be childhood experiences when like,

You know,

Something happened,

A parent got upset,

Maybe,

And we didn't understand why.

And,

And it's just kind of like there,

Okay,

That like,

Maybe when our parent gets upset,

It's not safe.

We don't feel good about ourselves.

We don't feel like our primary caretaker is understanding us.

And it's just like a little burr,

Just kind of like there,

You know,

And,

And then it just kind of hangs out in our system.

Now we can have experiences that happen in our lives that are hard that we get,

And then it doesn't burden us.

But when we have exiles,

And unresolved pain and fear,

Whether it's like an adult divorce that didn't make sense to us,

You know,

That kind of sideswiped us,

Or the kid of a divorce that didn't make sense as we were growing up,

Why our parents didn't get along and why all of a sudden,

You know,

We're moving or didn't,

You know,

Didn't,

Love didn't work out.

And it just kind of didn't add up that that would be what we would consider a small t trauma.

And or like we got hit or something or we got assaulted,

That would be like a big,

Big t trauma.

And,

And these exiles just kind of hang out in other parts of us,

Right?

They're these experiences that we have in our lives.

And,

And,

And they are part of us,

And they're really important.

And then there's these predictor parts of us that don't want us to feel the pain and the fear that these exiles are holding these experiences in our lives.

And those are two categories.

One is managers.

And one is firefighters.

So managers are proactive.

Pirates of us and firefighters are reactive.

Now our society tends to like the managers in us more than the firefighters.

So they often get a bad rap or firefighters.

But if you think about a firefighter,

They're like,

Don't don't right,

Like when the fire alarm doesn't work,

Firefighters come in and they put the fire out,

Right?

So they get the job done.

So it's not like they're the bad guys and the managers are the good guys.

It's just that we have a society that tends to like our manager parts more like the workers in us and the ones that were super hyper responsible ones,

You know,

The,

The,

The kind of parts that are like,

Getting the job done on like,

On the forefront,

Right?

It's the one that gets us out of bed when the alarm goes off.

It's the one that like,

You know,

Keeps us in school when things get boring.

You know,

So so they have their place.

But firefighters also are important.

And,

And they balance out the work,

The worker bee in us.

They're the ones that are like,

Hey,

It's not all about being a human.

We're not human doings,

Right?

We're actually human beings.

Remember that the firefighters like us to remember that we're,

That we're,

You know,

Being as as important as doing.

And so they tend to show up when they're extreme like addictions.

Okay,

So those can be anything from your typical eating,

You know,

Comforting to,

You know,

Obviously substances,

But they can also show up as like the,

You know,

The Netflix bingeing that can happen right?

To slow us down and make us rest.

And the managers,

They,

They can also show up like addictions,

But they tend to be like your workaholism or your hypercritical kinds of parts that get overzealous in their judgment of us.

So these protective parts are really important parts of our system that a lot of traditional therapy overrides.

And this is one of the things that I learned over time and I love about working in this modality because two reasons.

One is,

Is it doesn't,

It doesn't allow us or encourage us to go straight for the exile as always.

Like the hard,

You know,

Work of rolling up your sleeves and going for like our,

You know,

The hardest things that are going on in our lives.

The pain and the fear,

Which many of us like are willing to go there and go to therapy and we're like bear our souls and we're like this is what happened to me and we tell our story and,

And that can be great.

It can also open you up then you're all vulnerable and then like it might be too much too fast and then the protectors come in and that's why sometimes you go to therapy and you feel like crap afterwards and then like if you had,

You know,

You were eating for comfort now you're like,

You know,

Eating a gallon of ice cream and you,

You know,

Eat a dozen donuts after your session.

And,

And,

And cause it can be like a backlash,

Right?

If you go too fast.

And the other reason that I really love it is it honors the role and the good intention of what our firefighters and our managers are trying to do for us.

Now they're not always,

Now sometimes they're on steroids,

They're working too hard and they're counterproductive,

But acknowledging and validating what they're trying to do for us is huge and our parts love that.

And when we do that,

They tend to build trust that more rapport is built with us and between us and between our parts when we honor what they're trying to do for us.

And so the work when you,

Someone comes to see me is about getting to know your system and there's no one that knows it better than you.

So that's the other thing that I love about this model is the therapist is not the person that's like,

Yeah,

We're,

We're the professional and we're the guide and we have a lot of knowledge,

But ultimately the client is the person that is the wisest about who they are and how they can reach their goals,

How they can understand what's not working,

How they can help us figure out what's getting in the way of us being our best selves basically.

So that's a little mini explanation,

Like a little psycho ed on what IFS is and what it looks like and why I use it primarily.

That's all for now on that front and more to come.

Reviews

Thank you 🙏

Great overview! Thank you! 💕🙏

This is a fascinating talk which includes a brief meditation and movement. Immensely valuable for those of us interested in psychotherapy but perhaps the description needs tweaking to make it clearer what it's going to be about as I came to it expecting a full half hour relaxing yoga nidra. So interesting though so thank you for sharing - it was exactly what I didn't know I needed to hear today!

💖fabulous, I am so glad I kept with this session, background sounds and all, I cannot wait for the rest of this series, thank you💖