Healing Technique: Internal Family Systems Therapy

This is a summary of the Internal Family Systems theory (IFS) in the books Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy and Internal Family Systems: Skills Training Manual by Frank Anderson, Martha Sweezy, and Richard Schwartz. IFS is a theory that harnesses the body's subconscious wisdom to heal itself. Here is a fantastic video about how this theory looks in practice.

IFS is founded on the idea that every human being is dynamic and has many different aspects, or parts, of themselves that sometimes want different things. It uses externalizing, a therapeutic technique that helps a person emotionally disengage from their emotions by making the emotions a separate entity from themself, to help their "self" speak to the parts in their body that would typically emotionally overwhelm them and release whatever the body is holding on to emotionally. The self in IFS refers to a completely whole and healed aspect of you at your core that is beneath the wounded parts.

There are three primary roles that a part (of the body) can take:

1. Exile - "The parts who have been exploited, rejected, or abandoned in external relationships, and then subjected to negative judgments from other parts of the system." The parts of ourself that we repress.

2. Manager - The parts that manage and control the exiled parts so that they don't overwhelm and destroy the system. The silencers that try to prevent oneself from falling apart by silencing the parts of oneself that would cause them to fall apart.

3. Firefighter - The parts that react to an escaped exile in an attempt to distract from or suppress the exiled part. This typically manifests as destructive tendencies like substance abuse, self harm, addiction of other sorts, dissociation, sexual risk taking, etc.

The exiles are the parts of ourself we've neglected and ignored, the parts we fear about ourselves, which just get louder and louder until we are forced to address them. The manager and firefighter are the protectors that assume we won't survive if our darkest shadows are faced and confronted. Healing comes from listening to and validating all parts of ourself, but particularly those parts of ourself that have been exiled. In order to talk to the exiled part, one must first go through the managers and firefighters.

The objective of talking to any part is to first make it feel heard and validated. Here are some examples of questions the book gives in order to understand the part and get its permission to make changes:

• Why are you saying or doing this [behavior]?

• What do you really want for [the person]?

• What are you afraid would happen if you stopped doing or saying this?

• If [the person] were able to keep [the feared consequence] from happening so you could quit this job and do anything you wanted to do, what would that be?

• Would you like to use to help you get into that new role?

The first objective is to appease all managers and firefighters, the protectors, that don't want you to talk to the exiled part by allowing them a voice and understanding them so that they are willing to step down and allow you to try and talk to the exiled part. This must be done with permission from the managers and firefighters. Any emotion that would inhibit you from addressing the exiled part is an indicator of a protector. Simply asking if there are any parts that have objections to talking to the exiled part, or externalizing any emotions that would get in the way of curiosity about the exiled part, should suffice to root out all of the protectors. Get them all to feel comfortable stepping down so that you can talk to the exile means that you've completed step 1. If many protector parts are involved, one technique the book suggests is having them all sit down at a conference table together so that all protector parts can get on the same page. Another technique the book suggests to accurately distinguish a protector part from an exile is to ask the part "who do you protect?" An exiled part does not protect any other part.

The second step is to talk to the exiled part. After understanding and validating the exiled part and getting it's permission to try having your self take charge of it's role, have the exiled part release all the emotions it's been holding on to in whatever way it sees fit. After all emotions are discharged, have the exiled part fill itself with whatever positive emotions it would like to replace the negative emotions with. Once this is all complete, the exiled part should be happy and may occupy whatever place it would like to in your mind as it's now at peace.

One interesting concept is that of legacy burdens. Legacy burdens are emotions or beliefs a person has taken on generationally that aren't from anything they've done while alive. In order to release legacy burdens, ask what percent of the belief or emotions belong to someone else and then ask to release any percent that isn't yours.

With some people who have experienced severe trauma, they do not feel safe to access their self. Check if any protectors are concerned with the person embodying their self before accessing it for this population.

IFS can also be used with medical conditions.

1. See if a part is attached to the symptom.

2. If not, ask if any part within yourself has information about the symptom.

3. Check for parts that fear or hate the symptom and address them.

4. Ask to talk to parts that know how to heal the body.

Additional Information Based on Experience With IFS

There are a couple things I would add based on experience which I think are worth noting.

One common thing that people do that impedes the process is trying to use the conscious mind to answer for the subconscious mind. Always ask the subconscious the questions, don't try to do anything on a conscious level. If you use the conscious mind to come to conclusions or answers, this method will most likely not work. The whole point is to access subconscious information, if your conscious knowledge was enough then you wouldn't need to be doing this process in the first place.

Here is a basic summary of the steps and questions I use:

1. Identify what you want to work through and check for physical responses in the body. The body's physical response is the subconscious temperature gauge for what needs to be worked on.

2. Ask the subconscious to make the strongest physical sensation into an image that you can talk to. This image can take any form that the subconscious wants. Most people experience metaphorical images (most don't make a ton of sense), an image of a younger self, or the body part itself. Doesn't matter what it is, what matters is that you can have something (anything) to talk to as a medium to access the subconscious.

   1. If no metaphorical image comes to mind, that's okay. Just talk to the body part itself and use the body's reaction as answers. A decrease in symptoms I would take as a subconscious yes whereas an increase in stress/ tension I would take as a subconscious no.

3. Ask what age the image is (or body part).

   1. This is done for multiple reasons:

      1. There is the possibility of a fused self meaning that a fragmented/ wounded part of yourself feels that it's part of your "self" and doesn't know that it's separate. If it doesn't know that it's separate, ask it to separate from your self.

      2. For possible conscious understanding of where a problem stems from.

      3. If the age is higher than 12, there is a good likelihood that this is a protector part unless something emotionally intense happened later in life.

4. Ask if it's protecting any other part.

   1. Simply ask "are you protecting any other part?" Asking at this point avoids unnecessary wastes of time.

   2. If it's a protector part get it on board with allowing you to talk to the wounded part. Most of the time the protector part is readily willing to allow you to talk to the wounded part but that's not always that case.

5. If it is protecting another part:

   1. Ask the protecting part if it's willing to allow you to talk to the part it's protecting. If yes, proceed to ask that part to come forward so that you can talk to it.

   2. If it says no:

      1. Ask what would help it feel more comfortable in this moment to allow you to talk to the hurt part. Do whatever it asks metaphorically in your mind.

      2. Ask the part if it would rather do something else other than it's current job. If yes (which it basically always says yes), ask it if it's willing to take part in an experiment to see if you can't help it do what it wants and if the experiment doesn't work, it can go right back to doing its job.

6. Once all protector parts are on board with you talking to the hurt part, repeat steps 2 and 3 and then ask the hurt part how it's trying to protect you. If you were already talking to the hurt part, just ask how it's trying to protect you and continue.

   1. You don't necessarily need an answer to this but it's useful information.

7. Ask if it's willing to transfer the responsibility of how the wounded part is trying to protect you over to you (your current self) or ask if it's willing to release what it's holding on to.

   1. If yes, continue to the next step.

   2. If it isn't willing you can do a couple different things:

      1. Ask what you can do in this moment to help it feel comfortable transferring the responsibility and do so metaphorically in your head.

      2. If there is a strong emotional block you can ask that emotion, or part, to separate metaphorically so that you can talk to that part on it's own. Get its cooperation and continue.

      3. Ask the part if it would rather do something else other than it's current job. If yes (which it basically always says yes), ask it if it's willing to take part in an experiment to see if you can't help it do what it wants and if the experiment doesn't work, it can go right back to doing its job.

8. Ask the part to release all negative emotions that it's holding on to.

9. Ask the part to replace all negative emotions with positive emotions, whatever the part wants.

The other thing that I've seen is what I'd consider a fourth option of the self (in addition to the exile, manager, and firefighter), something that I call a guide part. This is a part of the self that is there to support you or help you heal that is not there in any other capacity. If this happens then base your questions around how it can help you heal and invite it to do so.