Have you ever felt internally conflicted? Has the sentence "part of me feels/wonders/thinks..." crossed your mind when feeling internally conflicted? If you answered yes to these questions, congratulations! You're already dipping your toes in and are following a core concept of IFS. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic modality that is growing in popularity in the world of therapy because of its non-pathologizing and compassionate approach, in working to identify and heal the different 'parts' of an individual. In IFS, we work from the understanding that the mind is a system full of different parts, an 'internal family,' hence the name. Each part has its own feelings, beliefs, and roles, and through IFS parts work, we are able to explore, and understand these parts feelings and motivations.
Although the concept of us having different parts within us may be understandable to those unfamiliar with IFS, how we work with the parts is likely less clear. This next chunk is written in hopes of clarifying what these different parts could be, and to clarify how we work with them. There are multiple different parts that can show up in an individual, including protectors such as firefighters and managers, the Self, and exiles.
Protectors:
Protectors consist of firefighters and managers, who play somewhat similar roles, and share a mutual goal of defending us from perceived harm. A manager works to protect us in helping us with our day to day functioning, ensuring we are prepared for whatever may come next. Managers help us to conform to societal norms, ensure we make it to work on time, and other proactive behaviors. Managers can also take a more maladaptive form such as people pleasing as a method of protecting us from losing relationships, and ensuring we remain seen in a positive light. In this example, managers will see a perceived danger of being alone or being abandoned, so the manager will not enforce boundaries, and will go above and beyond for others in the hopes of eliminating the danger and avoiding being alone. In this sense, managers are proactive and try and get ahead of the potential hurt. Firefighters are a little different in that they react based off of the perceived threat happening, and aim to help the individual cope with the hurt, and put out the 'fire' of the pain in the moment. Firefighters manifest in finding ways to soothe us, including distracting ourselves by putting on a TV show to immerse ourselves in as opposed allowing the perceived danger or threat to be in our awareness. Firefighters can also manifest in more maladaptive ways such as self harm, use of substances, and more. For example, when memories or reminders of traumatic events come up, firefighters may react by activating the behavior of drinking alcohol to cope with that painful memory.
Exiles:
Exiles are the parts of us that might feel really vulnerable and connected to past traumas, holding painful memories near. Exiles often consist of younger versions of ourselves that experienced really difficult things, including shameful, fearful, formative experiences. While we can firmly say that these exiles are absolutely valid in being a part of our minds, we can also acknowledge that allowing exiles to be the drivers of the ship or allowing the exiles to access our consciousness and awareness would mean that we would have to witness, remember, and feel difficult feelings. Because exiles bring these potential difficult and painful memories, other parts of us like managers and firefighters work to keep the exile from coming to the forefront of our conscious awareness, this process is known as exiling in IFS.
The Self:
The Self is our most authentic and core part of us, that we are able to access when we are compassionate, curious, connected, courageous, calm, creative, or confident (also known as the 8 C's). Some think of it as the absence of other parts coming forward, or an inner wisdom. For our purposes both are true, but let's focus on the absence of other parts being in the driver's seat or maintaining control at the forefront of our minds. When the Self is the main part we operate from, we are able to work with the other parts such as protectors and exiles, in order to do the healing work, and provide these parts with what they need to hear, work through, or feel. By making sure the Self is what we are operating from, we are able to witness great change in IFS work, as who we truly are can be understood as the end product of the Self working and interacting with the other parts.
How do we work with all of our parts:
There is so much significance in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, that I feel compelled to repeat it. Who we are can be understood as the end product of the Self working and interacting with other parts. If the Self can't interact with the protector parts who try to defend the exile from experiencing pain, then the protector parts never get the opportunity to hear and understand that while it is well intended, these parts don't need to protect the exile in the behaviors they are used to. Oftentimes our protectors may resort to shaming, and other extremes as noted beforehand, but what if we could talk to these protector parts and let them know there are other ways to help the exile when faced with trauma and pain? This is exactly the goal of having the Self work with the other parts. The IFS work between the Self and other parts can be extremely healing, not just in an emotionally cathartic sense, but can also heal that part to not be burdened with having to rely only on those sets of behaviors moving forward. Through IFS parts work, we can watch our parts transform to take on other roles, as maybe if the protectors see they don't need to shame us in order to get tasks done, they can shift into the roles of cheerleaders, watching us complete our tasks with more compassion.
How does this apply to couples therapy:
The simplest way to explain the relevance of IFS in couples therapy, something very focused on the inner workings of an individual, not necessarily a couple, is that I do to myself what was done to me, AND I do to others what I do to myself. If our protectors have learned to show up and take over during fearful, conflicting situations internally and in our 'inner family,' these protectors will likely show up in similar ways to our 'outer family,' being our relationships with our partners and loved ones. This is one of the most prominent ways in which IFS is beneficial in couples therapy: we learn about and bring awareness to our parts, we address our inner family and attempt to understand them and their role in efforts to decrease blame and criticism, teach these parts to lead with compassion and empathy, and through continued use we are able to expand this to our outer family. When we learn to give compassion to ourselves and understand we don't have bad parts, but that our parts are adaptive and trying to work harmoniously to survive and thrive internally, we can begin to learn to apply this to our partners and our outer dynamics, give compassion to our partners and understand their adaptive parts, rather than understanding any parts or behaviors as 'bad.'
Through IFS couples work we still work on ourselves to provide compassion to our own wounded parts and exiles, so that we can heal ourselves, and shift focus to our partners in the present. IFS helps couples to accept what is, and stop bringing in protectors like judgmental parts, and defensive parts, to see the situation through a compassionate, accepting, and not overwhelmed lens.
Here is a quick journaling exercise to help us dig our feet in further into the work of IFS for couples, to help us start doing the healing work:
Start with reflecting on yourself, what do you feel when xyz happens? What do you feel right now?
Take note of the emotions coming up and attempt to connect them to parts explained in this blog post (firefighters, managers, exiles, Self). Emotions like anger may indicate protectors present, and emotions like sadness may indicate exiles present
Observe patterns of your behaviors, triggers, and even the way you talk to yourself. More critical ways of talking to yourself might indicate the presence of a protector who perceives it better by beating everyone else to the punch of criticizing yourself so that others don't. When we notice triggers and see a reaction within ourselves, ask yourself what might this part be protecting me from by reacting in this way?