In this episode, I explore a therapy modality called Internal Family Systems (IFS) and how helpful it is! EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing) is also a fantastic addition to IFS in order to resolve trauma.
In this episode, I explore a therapy modality called Internal Family Systems (IFS) and how helpful it is!
EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing) is also a fantastic addition to IFS in order to resolve trauma.
Hello everyone, so this episode is going to be about internal family systems. This is an episode that I've thought about for a long time about what I want to talk about, so I hope you enjoy it.
So to get started, internal family systems, what is it? Well, basically, internal family systems is a type of therapy that allows you to bond with and connect to your own internal parts. So it's a type of parts work, and this is not necessarily a new concept in psychotherapy, but it is growing in popularity nowadays, which is pretty cool to see.
The concept of internal family systems is that you have a core self and that you are also made of parts. And these parts are kind of like little versions of yourself that got stuck in time—maybe stuck in time from certain traumas, learned maybe different belief systems, or had different values based on some of your past experiences—and that those parts, even though they were based on those past experiences, can still affect your present-day state based on the habits that you formed surrounding them.
Internal family systems basically teaches that there's three types of parts:
You have managers (or protectors, that's the same thing).
You have firefighters.
And you have exiles.
The way that you can think of each of these is:
Managers are kind of like analyzing things, trying to create frameworks to protect you in a way, and kind of also sometimes responsible for suppressing emotions. Because a lot of times protectors will try to suppress emotions so that it won't overwhelm your whole system, because they believe that maybe your system can handle it in that moment, or some of the processing consisting of those emotions just feels too intense to be able to do in that moment. So then those protectors will kick in and suppress emotions, sometimes for a really long time, sometimes even for like a decade or even longer (I guess a decade, you might be lucky). And so a lot of times these protectors will be—well, what are they protecting? They're protecting the exile.
Exiles would be the part of you—maybe like a wounded inner child part, the part of you that's suffering from these past situations—may be replaying in your head. People who have PTSD have a lot of that because it's hard for them to stop replaying those terrifying, traumatic experiences, and so then they would have pretty deeply wounded exiles. Exiles are kind of like the younger parts usually; they're a little younger, not always, but usually they're younger parts that protectors will step in to try to maintain the innocence of, or protectors will take the brunt so to speak to prevent the exiles from feeling the pain, to be able to maintain and keep their youth or to keep an optimistic viewpoint about themselves or about the world, that kind of thing.
And so then we also have firefighters—can't forget about them! Firefighters are parts that kind of do numbing in a way, will numb you or distract you from the pain. So I don't know, you've probably seen this before: maybe you're in pain or someone else is in pain, and you're in a group setting, and one of your friends is like, "You know what you need? You need a distraction." That's how firefighter parts work usually, distractions. Firefighter parts we use can be, you know, it can be many different things, but alcohol is a really big one in our society. People will drink instead of confronting their own problems because it's too painful to confront. That's a firefighter in essence, because it's trying to numb the whole system from feeling that pain in order to prevent total emotional overwhelm, which obviously temporarily helps in the moment, but has drastic long-term effects which can harm you. There are other types of firefighters—you can have many firefighters. You can have a firefighter that hallucinates, that disconnects you from reality when reality gets too painful. You could have a firefighter part that, say, gets addicted to different things. Addiction—if anyone's addicted to anything listening to this, it's probably a firefighter part that is addicted to it, because the pain of whatever you need to prevent the system from experiencing, addiction would serve as the distraction to that pain essentially.
So those are really the three fundamental categories of different parts in IFS—which again stands for internal family systems.
And so for me, learning about IFS was pretty fundamental and pivotal. It changed so much of my understanding about myself and also gave me the opportunity to work together with a therapist who actually is licensed and has studied all of this and who knew how to help me. And it was pretty fantastic, because for a while I thought I was starting to think maybe I had some kind of a split personality disorder or something. No, it turns out everyone has parts, and that's a normal part of our human experience. Everyone, whether they deny it or not, is a different question, but everyone has parts. And it was so validating to realize this and to figure that out, that I'm not really an anomaly in that respect. And maybe I'm an anomaly in the awareness of those parts—that's a different question—but it was very validating to realize that everyone has parts and this is not just a me thing.
And so the reason I wanted to share this whole topic with you is that I think it's really valuable to recognize that people have parts, that people are multifaceted. I mean, it seems obvious, but at the same time, people tend to define themselves by different parts.
Let's say when you were a kid, you were criticized about something, right? Let's say—this didn't happen to me, this is not a personal example, but I'm just going to pick it out of thin air here—let's say when you were a kid, someone told you you were really bad at singing. Well, you probably as a kid have internalized that, and you thought you were a terrible singer, and you started really feeling the pain of that criticism to form those personal internal beliefs about yourself based on that part.
This is kind of an example of how this part got stuck in time. Let's say you were six when that happened or seven, right? A part can get stuck in time. And what that really means is that the part—you can actually ask, if you know you have a part from listening to this, you can ask yourself, you can ask your parts, "How old do you think I am?" And the part, whatever answer it gives, will tell you at what age it formed. And then you can work with that part to bond with this part, but also help it understand that you're your current age now, you're not a seven-year-old anymore, and to understand that those emotions that that part was feeling were completely valid, completely understandable, and completely validated.
And at the same time, you can also, by bonding together with each of these parts, you can help each of these parts understand that there's alternatives: you don't have to keep living the rest of your life thinking you're a bad singer, you don't have to keep living the rest of your life thinking you're not good enough, you don't have to live the rest of your life thinking that you're forever suffering, you don't have to live the rest of your life thinking that you don't deserve nice things, you know, whatever it is, whatever your parts are.
And so a lot of people, unfortunately, when they are dealing with this kind of phenomenon, have the tendency to label these parts as "bad parts." And this is something that IFS teaches: there are no bad parts.
What is the purpose of a part? What is the goal of a part? The purpose and goal of parts obviously varies a lot, but ultimately it's to keep your entire system in harmony, to keep your system in harmony to ultimately make you feel better, make you feel happier, and that kind of thing. In other words, all of your parts all have pretty much the same goal: to keep you safe, to keep you happy, to keep you healthy, and that kind of thing. So they all have the same goal.
So it's almost confusing as to why people would demonize their parts. And I think that a lot of times they demonize because it's kind of a byproduct of what society tells us. Society says you have to be perfect to be worthy. Society says you have to be perfect to be capable. Society will form all of these—we will tell you these lies, we'll tell you so many of these lies—and if you start believing those lies, then you're left with what? A shell of a framework, and a framework of insecurity. Really, that's what you're left with if you believe what society tells you. Like in every respect, you can believe that no matter what you're inadequate. And that inadequacy is also its own part.
And so this is something I've been working with in therapy. I am a big proponent of therapy, particularly internal family systems. I've been doing internal family systems every week now for about a year, and therapy in general every week and now for about two years. And it's been the most fantastic thing I've ever experienced in my life, I would say.
I can't tell you how validating it is to literally be taught step by step how to offer love and compassion to yourself in a framework that is easily accessible to literally anyone, to be able to give yourself what you didn't have in those situations in the past, to be able to—it's almost like a form of time travel in a way. I mean that metaphorically, of course, but it's like you go back in time and you can offer support to those younger exiled parts, parts maybe that were rejected or that were misunderstood, and you can give them that love, attention, compassion, and appreciation that they always needed and wanted and didn't get. And I think that's really powerful to be able to have a framework for this. I'm very grateful to have found it. First of all, I kind of found it by an intuitive process of understanding, and then eventually through Googling and research I discovered an existing modality that already does all this, and it was fantastic.
So the biggest thing in an IFS session is therapists will ask you, "How do you feel towards this part?"
So in internal family systems there's this concept of blending. You can think of it kind of like this: let's say something happens and someone gets really, really angry. Well, in that moment of anger, they become blended with a part that feels angry because one of this part's needs is not met. And that blending process, especially with anger, happens very, very quickly, and sometimes people don't even realize that they're blended with a part. Well, they're blended with it, and that's what makes it tricky sometimes, because you can be responding from a part, not realize you're responding from a part, and then later on realize it and feel regret towards that.
And so unblending is basically recognizing that you are operating from a part's perspective, recognizing that that part does not define everything about you, and recognizing that that part isn't bad, that part is not evil.
You know, people—and this is my opinion now, I'll tell you my opinion on all this: I don't believe that people are inherently bad or that inherently human nature is one of evil. You know, maybe I'm an outlier in this belief; it's possible, I don't know. But I believe that, you know, people are usually pretty fundamentally good, that people want to do the right thing usually, even if it's hard for them to do that or hard for them to know what it is. Maybe I am overly optimistic in humanity—that's very possible—but internal family systems basically lets you explore yourself and your parts to be able to see who needs support, because you're not just one, you're many.
And this concept I feel like is not very well explored in the US, because there's this concept of individualism that is so strongly held that it leads people to literally suppress anything related to their parts, and even suppress the concept of having parts to begin with, which leads to a bunch of suppression of pain and built-up emotions that never get expressed, and that leads to problems.
One thing that blew my mind the other day is that my therapist mentioned that parts can be symptoms. If you have a symptom, you have a part. It's as simple as that. Because parts are trying to get your attention, they're trying to connect with you and bond, they're trying to get you to understand their viewpoint, to acknowledge them and to hear them out. The parts are trying to get you to listen, they're trying to get you to stop suppressing things, they're trying to get you to understand yourself, and they're trying to get you to be kind to yourself. These parts don't want to be stuck in thought loops of insecurity, of trauma, and of suffering.
These parts want to be led with a true leader, and that leader in internal family systems would be known as the core self.
And the core self basically is like the part of you that is—or not even the part of you, core self would be you who is observing this whole thing. So even you who is analyzing is still a part, but the—but the core self would be the observer of this whole concept, this whole phenomenon, this thing that we are doing called life: observing what you're doing, when you're doing it, how you're doing it. The observer is the root of who you are, and everything on top of that would be a part. You have a part that can use language to convey meaning, you might have a part who loves to analyze, or you might have a part who loves to be spontaneous.
And isn't it pretty cool that both of these parts can coexist?
So this is another thing I wanted to explain about internal family systems: different parts can have different values.
For example, I'll give an example in my life: I have a part that loves to socialize. She loves to talk to people, she loves to hear other people's perspectives, she loves to listen, and she's just genuinely fascinated by different cultures and the ways in which people express themselves, and just fascinated by humanity. And I'm sure maybe a lot of you can relate to this part.
And now I'll tell you about the other part: I have a part who is very pessimistic, who is sick and tired of people dealing with their own agendas and projecting constantly. This part is literally exhausted from hearing other people's projections and making assumptions about what those—from those projections. This part is jaded—I'm going to try to be nice here, but I also want to express the truth here—this part feels very jaded, feels very emotionally exhausted, and this part feels, um, very cynical and negative.
And it's—the reason I'm laughing about this is because both of these parts coexist at the same time inside me. I have two parts, they're opposites, and they both exist. And it's fantastic. And I think that this is a lot more common than people are willing to realize: that you can have parts that have completely opposite values, who have completely opposite beliefs, you can have multiple parts within you because they're based on different experiences, different memories, and different aspects of who you are, different personalities.
And I think that's something amazing. I think that's something amazing that should be celebrated and should not be suppressed. I think that's something really cool, and I think that's something that you can connect with other people on. Because if you know that you have parts, if you start exploring this idea, you're going to start seeing those parts in other people too. And then through the process of compassionate communication with yourself—aka internal family systems therapy helping you build those habits of compassion and self-love—that has a ripple effect on every person you talk to.
Because then when you're talking to someone else's protector part, you're still able to show them love, compassion, and acknowledgement. If you're talking to someone else's firefighter part, you're there to witness their suffering and to feel what they're kind of what they're going through and to know that they're not defined by it. Or if you're aware of your exiled parts, you can see the pain of what those little inner younger children went through. You see and experience it, but also you can know that it doesn't define them.
So when people act from a place of being in pain and a place of suffering, you're no longer—you're no longer bound to your previous reactions of those responses that you would have had based on your judgments about them and what it means and how they act and how it must be tied to something you're doing. Because the better you get—the better you get at recognizing your own projections, the better you get at recognizing everyone else's projections too. And you know, hopefully that doesn't turn you into someone who's completely cynical—that was just a joke for anyone who didn't understand, that was a joke, I have a funny sense of humor sometimes.
But the point is that recognition that you are not just one single thing—you know, you are a collection of parts and you're this beautiful observer of these parts, of these experiences. You're simultaneously the core self and the parts altogether in one big package or one small package, whatever. The adjectives don't even matter, but the whole concept of IFS is so powerful because for me at least it was the first time I had ever heard of parts work, that there was a structured way that I could really understand and bond with my parts who'd been traumatized in the past, or parts that had felt insecure, or parts that had felt angry.
That was a big one, you know? I feel like in the US there's a lot of suppression of anger. People are taught that it's not okay to express their anger, so they either suppress it or they distract themselves with it, usually through things like alcohol or smoking or other things like that, or just by not ever talking about it, not ever feeling it, and then finding other activities to try to express it by proxy, which only half works. And I—and I think that's harmful. I think it would be way more effective to recognize, "Yeah, we have parts. We have parts," and and those parts are amazing.
The concept that there's no bad parts doesn't mean that there aren't parts that could have better roles; it means that all the parts have the same shared goal, which is harmony for you, harmony for your whole system. And that shared goal is not something that you have to be at odds with others about.
So IFS transforms not only your own inner state, but also your outer state too, because you start to realize that you don't have to respond in the same way you did before or react the same ways to things in the same way you did before. It literally allows you to build new habits around different situations, because instead of, "Oh, this person did something that made me angry"—no, that's placing the responsibility of the anger on them—no, this person did something, that thing that they did then triggered you. What part did it trigger? Did it trigger a protector part that wants to, you know, protect you in some way? Did it—did it trigger an exile who remembers the pain of that in the past? Or did it trigger a firefighter who—who is scared that this pain is going to overwhelm you and who wants to distract you? Which part did it trigger?
And then you can actually talk to these parts. It's not something external, it's not something outside of you. You can literally within yourself—you can say, "Okay, hey"—like I'll give an example, I have a part that loves, loves music. Like love is an understatement, this part will play music every second of every single day. It could be 3:00 a.m. in the morning and this part will still be playing music, and it will be playing it on repeat. Sometimes I'll have songs stuck in my head for like four straight months, and sometimes I just get overwhelmed from it because it's like constant music.
So if you have like that constant music part, try this experiment with me: say, "Hey part, I can see that you're here playing music. Can you do me a favor and can you step back for the next two or three minutes?" And it's amazing, because in that moment, that—if that part feels like it can trust your core self, and if that part agrees to be self-led, then it's way easier to live your life in harmony, to be yourself in harmony without fear of anything really, because you're able to lead the system from the core self instead of from a series of memory-based habits that weren't serving you.
And so that kind of realization and that kind of trust is invaluable. You no longer have the same reactions to things that would have seriously hurt you in the past. It's like your worst memory suddenly feels like you read it out of a book somewhere.
And by the way, I highly recommend combining internal family systems with something called EMDR. EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization—oh, wait, what does the R stand for? Oh, I don't remember what the R stands for. Uh, what was it? What was the R? It was eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, yes! The R stands for reprocessing therapy.
And so what that means is you're talking about your trauma memories, and you're looking at usually a dot on a screen, listening with headphones to the sound of the dot going back and forth, and the act of moving your eyes back and forth will basically trigger activity in different brain areas that it doesn't normally trigger. So multiple brain areas are lighting up at once—neurons that fire together, wire together.
So when you're remembering this in the state of EMDR with a trained therapist, the therapist can help guide you into creating these new neural connections for yourself to literally help you free yourself from traumas. So you can think of the worst thing that's ever happened to you, and all of a sudden you're at peace with it. I can't even begin to explain the level of freedom that comes with this, because you're no longer fixating on the same things over and over again, you're no longer stuck in these loops of suffering, fruitless suffering, wondering if you could have done something different, wondering how you could have changed yourself to prevent it. It literally frees you from suffering, because you're able to see the situation, see yourself in that, and your parts in that situation without feeling emotionally overwhelmed by it.
And that combination of EMDR and internal family systems is fantastic and very powerful. Because if you accept the premise that you have parts and a core self, and then you also accept the premise that you're not bound by any of the habits that these parts have—that they're changeable habits, that you're not just stuck in the same dysfunctions that you've been stuck in for a really long time—then you've gotten your power back, your power to be yourself, your authenticity. Then you're able to be a true leader within your own body, within your own mind, within your own soul. You're able to walk around and observe and be at peace, with nothing triggering you. And it's like pretty, pretty amazing. It's like the whole world lights up to celebrate.
And even when it doesn't celebrate, even when there's painful situations, even when something really sad happens, you're able to be there with that sadness. You're able to sit next to that sad part and hold that sad part's hand and say, "Hey, it's okay to cry." You're—you're able to be there with that angry part and say, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with being angry. Express it. Express it all you need to. Don't try to suppress the pain, feel the pain and let it happen, don't try to run away from it, just—and just experience it." I almost said "enjoy it" there, which is kind of funny, but it is actually possible to enjoy anger, or to enjoy sadness, or to really enjoy any emotion—that's a totally different episode though, um, but the point is that internal family systems allows you to validate yourself, validate each part of yourself.
To validate each part also means to learn more about these parts' values and to let these parts select new roles. Sometimes, if you've bonded with a part very deeply, this part will decide, "Oh, I don't need to do the role that I've been doing for 15 years. I don't need to play the role of hypervigilance. I can let your shoulders relax finally. I don't need to play that role anymore because I know that you're safe and I trust that you're going to lead yourself into safe situations."
And so you see how transformative something like that is. As soon as a part trusts the core self, as soon as a part trusts you—the real you, not the part-you, but the real you—then this part selects a new role. And this new role can be something incredibly fulfilling or incredible in your life.
And not only that, but this part no longer needs to try to get your attention through various symptoms or various dysfunctions or various pain, because it's heard, it's acknowledged, it's listened to. Like, how different would—how different would your life have been if when you were a kid in some of your worst situations, if your caretakers or parents or whoever when you were really upset or dysregulated had said something like, "It seems like a part of you is really suffering right now, or really sad right now, or really angry right now. How do you feel about this part? Do you know that it's okay for this part to express what this part is feeling, that this part is valid, this part is valid in its experience and how it feels? This part, even if other people don't understand it, even if everyone in the entire world doesn't understand it, this part is still allowed to feel that way"?
That kind of permission to be able to feel—can't be—can't be un—can't be... I can't even state how powerful that is, because it's a way that you're able to connect to who you are at a deeper level, because you're no longer stuck in these toxic cycles of rumination or distractions, and it becomes very easy to be focused in your life and to see things for what they are instead of being triggered by everything.
And as someone who's kind of gone full circle from the deepest suffering you can possibly imagine—I'd say psychosis, yeah, or maybe some other things, I don't know, it's hard for me to say it's the deepest, because I guess everyone always only has one, their their worst painful moment to compare with, but psychosis is pretty damn painful, I'll tell you that—but at this at the same time, it did lead me to realize I had parts, a combination of that and some other things. And that realization has been the best thing for me to realize in my life, because now instead of going with what everyone else is saying, I can give my own self whatever—whatever she needs. I can give each part whatever they need.
If you have—if you're listening to this and you have kids, think about the ways that you approach it when your kids are in pain, and that approach will tell you volumes about the way you approach your own younger exiled parts. And then you can kind of think about it from the perspective of, "Is this how I want to treat these younger parts? Is there a better way? Do these parts just want me to hear what they're saying, or are there other better ways that I can support them?" These kinds of questions will lead you down the path of the validation of whatever your parts need.
That's why I'm such a big proponent of internal family systems, because at its core it's based around the idea of parts having core needs, and your goal as a core self is to help parts fulfill those needs, which also requires helping parts identifying those needs. And so at its core it's one of the most compassionate things you can do for yourself, because instead of—instead of telling these parts within you that they don't matter, instead of telling these parts that they don't deserve to speak, instead of telling these parts all these mean and horrible things that society tells you to tell yourself, you're freed from all that. You're freed from it. You can be who you are without hesitation and without wavering, without fear that other people are going to judge you for it, because guess what? You're not going to fear anyone else's judgment if your parts trust your core self. That's just the truth of it. If your parts trust your entire self to lead, then there's nothing to fear anymore, and it's amazing.
So I hope that this episode has highlighted for you what internal family systems is. I also wanted to say, anyone listening to this, if you have questions about this, if you feel like I didn't explain anything that—or anything that I've said doesn't make sense, feel free to reach out to me. I would love to hear from you. I would absolutely love to hear from anyone listening about what you thought about this episode, about how your parts felt—maybe some of your parts felt triggered by what I was saying in a few places, or maybe your parts resonated with what I was saying in a few places. And you know, either way I think that's pretty awesome, because it means you're recognizing you have parts.
And yeah, I would love to hear your feedback, so please feel free to reach out. And I hope that everyone is having a great day, and I hope that everyone experiences that level of validation, because it's life-changing. Thank you.