In this series of posts, we’ll explore the topic of addiction, using an Internal Family Systems therapy lens.
Internal Family Systems is a non-pathologizing, evidence-based approach (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/internal-family-systems-therapy) that is changing ideas within the mental health world, about how women with addiction, mental health symptoms, and trauma can recover lives of joy, connection and capacity.
Although it is a treatment model and not a spiritual system, IFS joins the company of several longstanding spiritual traditions and holistic healing modalities, in seeking to spread a specific kind of good news. The good news that IFS wishes to spread, (and we at Villa Kali Ma do too!), is that the answer to all human pain lies within us.
At Villa Kali Ma, we are so pleased to be able to offer Internal Family Systems Therapy among our many other kind, compassionate, and trauma-informed psychotherapies for women recovering from addiction, mental illness, and trauma.
In this series of articles, we’ll explore the highly relevant issue of shame as a core topic in addiction treatment, and how this particular burden might be lifted from the hearts, minds and bodies of women.
To kick off this series, let’s start with an exploration of the basic principles of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach.
The Internal Family Systems model: We are Self, we have parts
We all have Self
There is no one alive, IFS asserts, who does not have a wellspring of powerful, capable goodness within. This is Self.
We all have Parts
There is also no one alive who does not have parts – different sides of our personality that have distinct roles within our system, reflective of the ways that family members tend to take roles in a family system. Some parts of how personality have hardworking, ambitious or provider roles, such as the parts that may show up to work or be interested in success and status. Some other parts have nurturing and emotionally connective roles, such as the parts who parent, who notice and care how others feel, and so on.
Some parts hold the feelings, some parts hold the doing. Some parts may come to us in purely somatic form, as sensations and body signals. Some parts are socially acceptable and many are not. Some have entertaining, distracting, or playful roles. And so on!
Inner critics, inner children, inner taskmasters, addicted parts, excelling parts, dissociating parts, risk-taking parts, socially anxious parts, are all examples of possible parts we may have.
Very important to understand is that while the impact of parts can be destructive, all parts have positive intentions. That’s why IFS founder Richard Schwartz insists there are No Bad Parts.
3 Kinds of Parts
The parts we have inside fall into three categories, according to the IFS way of working with parts: preventative, reactive, and vulnerable.
Managers. Of the many parts within each of us, some work preventatively and proactively. IFS calls these “manager” parts.
Manager parts think ahead and try to help us to stay out of trouble. They are concerned that if we don’t behave in particular ways, something bad will happen. Their ultimate fear is that if and when this bad thing happens, our unhealed trauma will get triggered, and we won’t be able to deal with the overwhelming pain.
An example of a manager part many of us have is an inner taskmaster, a part who reminds us what needs to get done and when it’s due. This part often works together with an Inner Critic or judgmental part.
In general, manager parts are worried about things that could happen in the future. The taskmaster part might be concerned we will lose our job if we don’t stay on top of our tasks. The inner critic may be worried we won’t perform perfectly enough.
Underlying managers’ first few fears lies the real concern: what we might feel, that they believe we will get overwhelmed by. For the taskmaster, the first fear might be that we will miss our deadline. The second fear may be that if we miss the deadline, we will lose our job. The ultimate underlying fear could be that, if we were to lose our job, we would be flooded with overwhelming shame.
Therefore, a useful way to relate to manager parts, once we have a kind loving connection with them, is to see if they would be willing to tell us what they are afraid will happen if we don’t keep behaving the way they want us to.
While manager parts tend to be the most socially acceptable of our inner family of parts, they can be harsh, judgy, rigid and tough on the rest of the parts and may rule with an iron fist.
Firefighters. Another group of parts is reactive, responding to pain that is arising in the now. These are parts that numb, distract, and soothe. They are dormant, letting managers run the show, until we get triggered and our unhealed pain rises to the surface of our awareness as thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
While their intentions are positive in nature – to prevent us from getting overwhelmed by pain – firefighters get a bad rap in society because they can be destructive and out of control.
Since their goal is stop the pain no matter what, they are not good at thinking about longer-term consequences. That’s not their purpose. A binge drinking part that takes over when we’re feeling too much intensity internally is an example of a firefighter part.
Exiles. The third type of parts are vulnerable in nature. These parts are the tender, more childlike and wounded parts within us, who carry the burdens of what we have lived through, as thoughts, feelings, sensations and beliefs.
Our exiled parts are stuck in a difficult moment (or series of moments) of our past. They often believe very negative, extreme, black-and-white things about themselves and the world, such as that they don’t deserve any love at all, people always let you down, or another “rule” of life that is painful to believe. Exiles live, in general, in a painful set of conditions, generally the ones we grew up in or were originally hurt by.
Exiles are the wounded ones within, and though the rest of the system (managers and firefighters) work very hard to keep these parts of us from rising up in our awareness and flooding our system with their pain and unmet yearnings, no amount of self-protection keeps these feelings at bay permanently.
In fact, these wounds are destined, unavoidably, to rise up within us when the time is right – once we are big and strong enough to meet them with the love they have always needed.
Once our wounded, vulnerable parts are healed (through a process which IFS calls “unburdening”), they are able to revert to their original and natural state, which tends to be childlike, loving, and playful. In their original form, these parts of us are lovely and delightful. Exiles often are deeply related to our ability to love, express ourselves freely, and experience joy.
Parts may want different things
Since each part has a role they fulfill, with priorities and concerns related to that purpose, parts of us may want opposite things. For example, you might realize one part of you wants to go on a whitewater rafting trip, and another part wants to stay safe at home and not have to endure any unknowns. These disagreements among parts can make us feel crazy, if we haven’t yet understood that everyone has many parts inside, each with differing and equally valid perspectives, and that they don’t always get along.
All of this is completely normal – inside the psyche, there is not a single personality with fixed qualities, but rather a fluid, changing, shifting, dynamic “inner family” of several different parts with different qualities, personalities and purposes.
In general, systems that carry more wounds, just like families that carry more wounds, have more conflict and what might be broadly called “dysfunction”, although it’s important not to judge or pathologize what inner systems, or indeed outer systems, do in their desperate attempts to manage overwhelming pain.
According to IFS, there’s no moral meaning to any of this. It’s all just about how much unresolved pain a person might be carrying. The more extreme, polarized, rigid, conflict-ridden or self-contradictory a person seems to be, the more overwhelming pain they must be dealing with at some level or another.
We are Self, we have parts
Although we have many, many parts inside, no single part is the totality of who we are. Rather, through walking gentle paths of relating to our parts, we discover that underneath and transcending the inner community of parts, there lies an indwelling, untarnished force, that “I” which IFS calls Self.
Self is a compassionate, calm, courageous living presence, pure aliveness, the seat of our purest consciousness. This is who we actually are in our nature – we have parts, but we are this loving presence.
This presence we are loves our parts unconditionally and is available to help them with the thing they need most: love, acceptance, belonging and inclusion. Getting to know this life energy, this kind presence, who can be found inside all of us and who can restore love to all parts in the inner family, is the key to recovery.
Self-led
Once Self is restored to a sufficient degree, we become Self-led. Being Self-led means that we live life from the center, from the core of who we really are, with calm compassion, curiosity, and a strong penchant for connection.
Becoming Self-led is a gradual and fluid process. Once Self is sufficiently present in a consistent enough way internally, parts feel safe and settle down quite a lot. Extreme parts that once were entrenched in difficult conflicts are willing to soften, as they realize that their protective functions are not quite as necessary as they used to be, now that a loving, wise presence is in charge.
It is core to IFS that only once our protectors really see and trust that enough Self is here, taking care of us and tending to the needs of the vulnerables, can we expect them to stop doing their extreme behaviors.
All it takes to get to know Self is to relate to parts
All we have to do to get in contact with Self, IFS teaches us, is to go through a process of realizing we’re not actually one and the same as the parts that arise in our consciousness. This recognition is called unblending in IFS – when we perceive the truth that a part is only part of us, not all of us, there is a natural kind of differentiation and separating, which is helpful for founding a loving relationship with that part.
When we separate ourselves enough psychologically to have a relationship with the part, instead of thinking we are the part, and we do not conflate ourselves or identify with parts as being “all of us” – they are roles, activities, energies, personalities, but not the totality of our life essence – we gradually realize that though there are many different parts of us, there is only one core, true Self. An “I” who can never be harmed, traumatized, burdened, or disturbed.
In the next post in this series on Internal Family Systems and addiction, we’ll get deeper into what is going on inside women who use substances, and how they might heal from the pain driving that substance use.
Thanks for reading! If you’re curious to find out how IFS and other trauma healing modalities could help you recover your birthright to live freely and wholly, we warmly invite you to check out our many programs for women recovering from mental illness, addiction, and trauma.
