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Internal family systems model of healing

An Internal Family Systems Take on Addiction, Part 3

At Villa Kali Ma, we offer Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) among our many other kind, compassionate, and trauma-informed psychotherapies for women recovering from addiction, mental illness, and trauma.

In this series of posts, we explore addiction and the role of shame in women who use substances, through an Internal Family Systems lens. In the first part of this series we shared an overview of the IFS model. In the second part we explored why making an enemy out substance use is ineffective.

In this third and final post, we’ll talk about befriending, understanding, and appreciating substance-using parts for their true positive intentions.

Making Friends with Substance Using Parts

If you find it hard to imagine making friends with the part within ourselves or another person that uses substances, you’re not alone. The notion of lessening the amount of moralizing, judgment and fear we feel towards substances and the people who abuse them seems counterintuitive to many people. It may even feel threatening or upsetting.

The concerns typically center around the following questions: Are we condoning substance use if we stop calling it bad and wrong? Are we encouraging or indulging substance use if we pause our disapproval long enough to get to know it? Can we really afford to take the time, to get curious about substance using parts? Won’t substance using parts take over, causing havoc right and left, if we don’t keep them on a tight leash? If we stop pointing out the problems that come with addiction, aren’t we somehow enabling it?

According to Cece Sykes, Martha Sweezy, and Richard Schwartz, authors of the treatment manual on the use of IFS for addictions, the opposite is true. Resisting, labeling, judging, worrying and attempting to control substance use generally only makes it worse. Genuinely accepting, understanding, and befriending substance-using parts and their true motivations leads to those parts cooperating with the healing process.

Attempts to eliminate or conquer substance abuse almost always send a shaming message: You’re doing something wrong. This isn’t ok. There’s something wrong with you. We want you to be different. Be like us, don’t be like you. We know better than you do, about what you need. You don’t deserve attention, recognition, understanding.

Instead, we must find ways to get calm and curious, to truly open our hearts to substance-using parts, acknowledging them as beloved parts that are trapped in a very difficult, thankless job. We cannot permit substance-using parts to run the show, that is true (though it wouldn’t hurt to try to understand why they feel they need to run the show). And we must be able to set, hold and adjust firm, kind boundaries with them, for that reason.

Nevertheless, imprisoning and accusing substance using parts is a variation of an ancient and common psychological mistake: shooting the messenger.

Instead, we need to find a way to welcome, understand, and appreciate substance-using parts for what they are doing for the system. If they are extreme and destructive, then it is our job to find out why such extremity and destruction is necessary in the internal system.

Only once we have recognized the true benevolent intentions driving substance use do we have a chance of change. Instead of shaming substance use, we have to meet it with the opposite of shame: love.

Love not Shame for Women with Addiction

As we discussed in previous posts, shame is one of the biggest healing topics for women with addiction. Although women who have addictions and other extreme behaviors are often treated as though they don’t have enough shame (don’t they realize what they’re doing is bad?), this is a misunderstanding. It’s quite the opposite.

Women with addiction do very well realize that what they are doing is considered heavily judged. Most likely, substance-using women are keenly aware of the attitudes others have about their use. It is also highly likely that they condemn themselves even more harshly than anyone else around them would. Such women may very well believe that the use of substances is only one small piece of evidence in the giant pile of evidence that proves their badness, and low value, as people.

It is consciousness of this “fact”, of their supposed moral badness or other kind of inferiority, that, in part, drives many women with addiction to need to keep up a cycle of using. In the soothing arms of a mood-altering substance, women are temporarily free from constant reminders of their badness – and the horrible feelings and sensations that go with that belief. These women need to be loved, not scolded.

IFS adamantly insists there are No Bad Parts. There isn’t anything wrong with any of us, that can’t be understood at the end of the day as attempts to survive overwhelming pain. With this mindset, we can begin to understand where substance-using parts are coming from. Eventually, we may even come to love them, for their extreme loyalty and dedication to helping us survive.

How Substance Using Parts Help Us Deal with Shame

The key to understanding substance-using parts and what they are doing for our inner system lies in the phenomenon of shame. Many mental health conditions are closely tied to shame. For our purposes today, we will look at the connection between trauma and shame to help understand why women with trauma history often end up using substances to cope.

Trauma burdens survivors with a legacy of chronic shame – shame about what happened to us, about our inability to defend ourselves or others, what it says about us that people treated us this way, and about what we have done to cope.

Shame is defined by popular speaker and researcher Brene Brown as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

IFS pioneer Mike Elkin, offers a similar definition, stating that shame is the experience of “being witnessed in one’s badness”. Another key figure working on the topic of shame and addiction is legendary pioneer John Bradshaw, someone who has contributed enormously to the world of peer-led recovery. Byron Brown, meanwhile, explores the phenomenon of the inner critic and its connection to shame, through a spiritual lens.

However it is defined, these mental health thought-leaders and many more consider shame to be one of the most psychologically distressing schemas. Shame is often described by clients using phrases like “I want to die”, “I died” or “I want to disappear” or “I want to bury myself” – it is no exaggeration to say that shame is vibrationally close to death. To use Internal Family Systems terms, most, if not all, parts in our system have the job of protecting us from further experiences of shame.

Because shame is so extremely horrible as to be intolerable, our systems need to take on many roles and work very hard to find ways to protect us from contact with it. Shame feels so difficult to endure, that people go to great lengths to behave in ways that limit our vulnerability to it, often at great mental, emotional, and relational cost. When we inevitably encounter our legacy reservoir of shame anyway, in spite of all our attempts to be perfect, we will do almost anything to escape or numb that experience.

Addiction is a strategy used by parts whose job it is to help us tolerate the intense pain of our shame when it gets too much. Substance use blunts, distracts, and soothes us when we have a shame attack.

IFS founder Richard Schwartz has noted on several occasions in trainings and public talks, that if you ask a substance-using part what it is afraid would happen if the client stopped using substances, the answer is often that it fears the client will commit suicide. These examples illustrate that in their own extreme ways, substance-using parts are trying to save the life of the client.

Recognizing that substance using parts work to protect us from experiencing overwhelming shame and feelings of wanting to die is an important step in the direction of forgiving our substance using parts. Maybe someday we can even feel love and gratitude towards our addiction, for trying to help us survive the unsurvivable.

The Inner Shamer

IFS maintains that although substance using parts get a lot of negative attention, they are only half of the story. Equally important to befriending our substance using parts, is to get to know our inner shamers. These parts continue to tell us, over and over again, that we don’t deserve love and belonging.

Inner shamers attack our lovability and worthiness, using unfair standards and comparisons to others. They berate and condemn us, frighten and harass us. They critique and savage us, until we are so broken-spirited and hopeless, we stay safely away from the fray of life. We withdraw from the playing field of life, where, our inner shamers say, we are safer.

What IFS reveals is that the parts doing the inner attacking are doing so for a positive intention, just like substance using parts. In fact, it is very likely to be the same intention: to help us avoid getting overwhelmed by shame.

The inner critic is one such part in the inner system that uses shame, to try to prevent us from experiencing even more shame. How could shaming ourselves help avoid more shame? How could taking on the belief that we are unworthy of love and belonging help us feel less bad?

The answer to these questions is specific and personal. We can only find out by getting to know the inner shamer and asking it why it feels it needs to shame us for us to be safe. Just as with substance using parts, we won’t get anywhere by trying to fight, judge, or marginalize the inner shamer. All we can do is try to understand why the inner shamer believes that it must do what it is doing.

Although personalized answers are best given by asking one’s own inner shamer, there are some general truths that help explain why shame is sometimes believed to be necessary for our survival. As little beings, we all did whatever was required to reduce the amount of harmful inputs from the environment. We did anything that was effective to be less harmed by rage attacks, abuse, violation, withholding of love, abandonment, or whatever else may have been harming us. We also did whatever worked to increase the amount of needed inputs: we learned to perform acts that maximized love, affection, kindness, contact, and help. The more extreme the environment we grew up in was, the more extreme our parts had to be, to get us through safely.

Perhaps shaming ourselves once made us less of a target of anger, sexual violation, or envy. Maybe it helped us expect less out of life, and therefore not feel so much pain, disappointment or rejection, which would have been met with more shaming. It could be that taking on the belief that we deserved what was happening to us made abuse hurt less, helped us make sense of why harm was being done to us, or gave us a sense of greater agency in experiences of severe helplessness.

Collapsing ourselves into a shame-maintaining body posture, according to Dr. Janina Fisher, serves self-preservation in multiple ways in traumatogenic family environments. Shame, although very primitive, works to change behavior quickly even when we’re very small, because it is so painful. It is extremely common for women to have strong self-shaming parts, that they rely upon to help them feel safe in a dangerous world, that have been with them since they were very young. To find out what your inner shamer believes is necessary to keep you safe, you must first befriend that shamer until it is willing to share from the heart with you.

Healing What Lies Beneath

Addiction represents, in part, a desire to escape from the sensations, emotions, and burdensome beliefs of shame, which can be summed up with the following untruth: I am bad. I don’t deserve love. I deserve abuse. People don’t love me, protect me, or care for me, because I am bad. I may as well die. Paradoxically, the self-shaming parts are also trying to protect us from having to re-experience being burdened with a belief in our badness, by getting us to avoid behaving in ways that we associate with having been traumatically shamed before.

The ultimate cure, IFS maintains, is to eventually get in contact with the parts of us that carry the burdens of having been shamed – our exiles. We must heal the shame itself, by removing it from the shoulders of our most tender parts. Once we do free our exiles from that which they never should have had to carry, by completing the IFS unburdening process (or another process for traumatic memory reprocessing, such as EMDR), our substance using parts and our shamers will naturally relent.

Not only will they stop being destructive to us, they will be happy not to have to work so hard and in such extreme, painful ways. They will be relieved and comforted that someone safe and loving (in this case, us!) is at last taking care of us in ways that they never could.

There are vulnerable parts within all of us, and like children, vulnerable parts cannot stand to be without love. When they were told, through words or actions, that we did not deserve the love, protection, contact, belonging, nourishment, that we really needed to feel safe, to grow up, and to be ok in this world, it created a wound. That wound can be healed.

How is the wound healed? Through building a loving relationship with Self – that timeless, shining sun of compassionate, available unconditional love, that is found inside all living beings.

Thank you for reading!

If you’re interested in seeing how IFS and other compassionate approaches to healing women’s trauma, mental illness, and substance use could help you or someone you love, we invite you to check out our integrative programs for women.

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Addiction Treatment Internal family systems model of healing

An Internal Family Systems Take on Addiction, Part 2

At Villa Kali Ma, we 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 posts, we explore the highly relevant issue of shame as it pertains to addiction, and how this particular burden might be lifted from the hearts minds and bodies of women of this world – through an IFS lens.

For part one in this series on IFS for addiction, start here.

Two Parts, One Woman

There is a part within each addicted woman that genuinely, sincerely wants to stop drinking and drugging. It’s easy to see: if there wasn’t a part that wanted to stop using substances, a woman would never come to treatment. She would never swear off drugs and alcohol, or make promises she can’t keep. She would never start Dry January, throw her pills in the garbage, or hate herself for not being able to stop.

But if there wasn’t a part that thinks it’s better to keep using substances, living inside each addicted woman, then she wouldn’t need treatment. She wouldn’t break her well-intentioned promises, drop out of Dry January, and get her pills back out of the garbage. She wouldn’t deny the impacts of her behavior on her loved ones and children, lie about her use, or hide her activities from people she knows will disapprove.

What does this self-contradictory set of behaviors, thoughts and desires mean? Are women with addiction crazy in some way, as some psychiatrists has maintained for so long? Are they morally weak, as some religious institutions have claimed? Are they possessed by unhappy spirits, hungry ghosts, as some non-Western cultures believe?

The Internal Family Systems Therapy answer to this question is no, women with addicted parts are not crazy, morally bankrupt, or possessed. Rather, they are experiencing what happens when parts inside are polarized in a long-standing war about the best way to deal with pain. Inside every addicted woman, there are at least two parts, locked in conflict.

One part believes continuing to use substances is vitally necessary to survive. The other part that believes quitting substances is vitally necessary to survive.

Chronic Polarization: an Inner War

Internal Family Systems Therapy says that everyone has parts, and that all of these parts are well-intentioned, working in service of survival of the person who has those parts. IFS also explains that our parts don’t always agree on the best approach for handling life. In particular, they disagree on how to manage the overwhelming pain burdening traumatized people’s psyches.

What’s going on inside a person who has addiction? To use parts language, what’s the quality of the relationship between the part that’s using substances, and the part that wants to stop?

In short, it’s all out war. The war is between a part that thinks ahead and foresees consequences, who judges, shames, berates and moralizes, on the one hand. The substance-using part, on the other side, continues to use drugs and alcohol, as a way to tamp down the rising flood of overwhelming distress.

Typically, the critical part is merciless, yelling at the woman to stop. But like a fireman in the midst of an out-of-control, blazing conflagration, the substance-using part can’t afford to think about later, about right and wrong, or collateral damages. The goal of this part is to put the flames out, now. Both parts are trying to help the woman survive, but in different ways, with different top priorities.

The Trouble with Confrontation

According to IFS and addictions pioneer Cece Sykes, the last thing that women with addiction need is someone to point out or remind them (even lovingly) that what they are doing is a problem.

The strategy of “tough love” is relatively common amongst friends, family, and even some treatment providers. It is intended, very often, as an act of kindness – indeed it takes quite a lot of care and courage for someone to confront a person’s self-destruction. And though the worry can come out wrong (as attempts at control, expressions of anger, or guilt trips), the concern is real and well-meaning most of the time.

The problem with confrontation is that, the belief that what addicts need is to be made aware of the “reality” of their behaviors is misinformed. This strategy is based on the idea that people who are using substances don’t fully realize, or care, that what they’re doing is a problem. But that’s not so.

Women with addicted parts could write the book on what’s wrong with using. It’s not a question of not seeing themselves and the consequences of what they are doing, though they may not show you that they know. In sober moments, in private self-encounters, they do feel all the guilt, shame, and self-recrimination you think they should feel, or which you think they need to feel, in order to have the motivation to get better.

Trouble is, self-hatred, self-judgment, and guilt, rather than inspiring change, tend to drive the next using cycle. Adding shame to an addicted woman’s system doesn’t work, for the simple reason that women who are use substances, are using in part because of experiencing too much shame to begin with. That overabundant, preexisting shame is a hallmark legacy of traumatization, and a strong indicator of having grown up in a dysfunctional family system.

The Shame Cycle

Where there is addiction, Sykes insists, you may rest assured that you will find a staunch set of protective manager parts who use shame regularly and without mercy, locked in a feud with the parts that reactively seek numbing substances to deal with the pain of that very same shame.

The shaming parts flood the woman with feeling like a bad person: guilt, fear, and inferiority, whenever they can. The purpose of generating all these bad thoughts, feelings, and sensations, is to try to get the woman to stop using substances (and many other “shoulds” and “oughts”).

The parts that use addiction to deal with shame in the first place, will, like clockwork, turn to the same coping tool all over again. The more inner judgment coming from inner critics and protectors, the more the body is flooded with overwhelming feelings and sensations of shame, in turn activating the firefighter, reactive protector parts that use substances.

Siding with Manager Parts Amplifies Substance-Using Parts

Confronting, or siding with the part that wants to stop is not the right answer, according to IFS. Trying to get someone to stop, without understanding the part that believes survival depends on using, only makes this polarization worse. The addict part will dig in its heels, feeling itself to be under siege not only by the inner critic and concerned parts inside, but also by friends, family, and therapists.

This onslaught of pressure to stop using isolates the using part of the psyche, marginalizing it and making an enemy out of it.

When people who have addicted parts are confronted with consequences, the amount of shame that floods the system is geologic in scale. If the woman we’re confronting were to let in even the tiniest truth of what we are saying, she fears, the fragile dam of her defenses would go crashing down. This loss of any defense against a picture of herself as unworthy, damaged, or inferior, is a reality she dreads to her core.

So when we meet a part in someone else that uses denial to cope, a part that says “It’s not a big deal” or “I’m not really addicted”, this part doesn’t represent the whole woman. It is a defensive part who is trying to keep the woman away from catastrophic floods of shame, which this part believes the woman would not be able to survive.

The Cure in Curiosity

Rather than attempting to strengthen the parts that criticize, berate and shame, by giving voice to parts within us that also criticize a substance-using woman’s choices, it would be far more helpful, IFS says, to get curious.

Genuine, non-attached curiosity can open up many forms of friendly, exploratory dialogue. It may lead to the asking of such questions:

What does the substance using part need everyone to understand about what it’s doing and why, what burdens it carries?

Why and how does addiction help this woman?

What problem are these substances solving?

When did using substances become a coping strategy, and why?

Which parts are protected by the substance using part?

What do the substance-using parts fear would happen, if using substances were no longer an option?

Finally, if there were an effective, valid alternative to using substances – a credible way to heal the underlying pain the substance is managing – would the substance-using part be willing to consider stopping?

The only way to get answers to such questions, IFS says, is to make friends with the substance using part.

For more on how to befriend the parts that use drugs and alcohol, look out for the next post in this series, next month!

Lots of love, your friends at Villa Kali Ma

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Addiction Treatment Internal family systems model of healing

An Internal Family Systems Take on Addiction: Part 1

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.

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Internal family systems model of healing

Unburdening: Parts Work and the Internal Family Systems Model of Healing

Internal Family Systems Therapy, also called Parts Work and IFS for short, is gaining widespread popularity in addictions and mental health treatment.

IFS is on the rise, not only because it has earned a spot on the list of the so-called “evidence-based” approaches favored by regulators, which always gives a healing modality a boost in visibility, but because it’s intuitively appealing and even, sometimes, fun.

Especially in combination with the arts and somatic therapies, Parts Work is a revolutionary treatment for trauma and addiction. I like to think it’s making progress towards healing the world of all manner of soul sickness.

How Does Working With Your Inner Parts Heal You?

According to the IFS model, healing takes place through the process of unburdening.

Unburdening takes place when a misunderstood Part of your own Self reveals itself to you, and you are able to recognize it in a positive light. When you are willing to understand, rather than condemn, you will become aware of your misunderstood Part’s burden.

A Part’s burden is related to its primary life-enhancing purpose, and the needs that it has to be able to do its positive job well for you.

Prodigal Return

Once a Part has told you its story fully, you will be stunned with compassion. You will feel a greater respect for all you have endured, and what it took to survive what you have survived.

With forgiveness for yourself and your Part, you will be moved naturally to reclaim it as a long-lost member of your inner family. You then recognize your Part as an important, valued side of your own vital life force.

Through this reclamation, the Part is integrated. This means the Part is brought back into harmony with the rest of you, through a restoration of relationship with the rest of your psyche.

Making amends with this Part, understanding her true intentions, and seeing her side of the story, you decide consciously that you no longer need to keep her banished away like a criminal.


Banishment

As Romeo ardently expresses in Shakespeare’s poetic voice, banishment is the worst kind of punishment: “Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say ‘death;’ For exile hath more terror in his look”. And yet self-banishment of Parts of our own nature is the most common strategy we humans use at this stage of our evolution, for fitting into this anti-human world and its requirements of us.

Banishment itself is the source of a lot of our own pain. The pain of a Part’s banishment is part of its burden. The burden a Part carries, and the pain the Part feels in being rejected, marginalized, and forsaken by you, is largely responsible for the problematic, disruptive behaviors generated by this part.

Taking a Part out of inner solitary confinement is the beginning of healing and getting to the bottom of where all the trouble started.


Rehabilitating the Wild Ones Within

With time, patience, and a sincere willingness to heal, even the most difficult Parts will eventually respond to our attention. Once they trust us, they turn from wild beasts threatening to rip our lives to shreds, into devoted loyal guard dogs wagging their tails when we come into the room. It is love that accomplishes this.

IFS teaches us a radical practice of allowing any and all sides of us back into the protective circle of our own Self-love. An IFS therapist holds space for this process for another, sometimes serving as an example. But each woman’s Parts will only ever be cured by her own fierce love.

Interview With a Part

Here are some questions that help Parts tell you their story. Try them out as a journaling exercise next time you’re aware of a problematic side of you. Examples of Parts recognized by pop psychology include the Inner Child, the Inner Critic, and the Addict, but there are many others.

  1. Who are you? What name I can call you?
  2. What is your original, highest, most benevolent purpose in my life? What is your job within my Psyche?
  3. What would happen to me if one day you couldn’t do your job (if you called in sick)?
  4. What is your special burden? What’s hard about being you? What don’t I see or understand about you?
  5. What or who inside gets in the way of you performing this function and purpose easily?
  6. What or who inside assists you in performing this job/benevolent purpose? Who are your allies?
  7. How could I help you? What would help you perform your job better?
  8. What would it take for you to feel completely relaxed and ok that this job is getting taken care of?

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