IFS & Addiction - Richard Schwartz, Cece Sykes, and Marc Lewis

[Music] thank you so as I was listening to my clients again from a systems perspective I did try to map out the distinctions and and the sequences and the big distinction that leaped out immediately was between parts that ordinarily you you would love because they're these inner children who give you all kinds of joy and playfulness and creativity and when they're not hurt but when they get hurt or terrified or shamed they're the most sensitive parts or when you get that when that happens to you in your life there are parts that take on those those super burdens of worthlessness and Terror and emotional pain and then they have the power to overwhelm you with that if they ever get triggered and they can make it so you can't function or you won't get out of bed for a week so most of us have an Impulse to lock them away and and just move on and don't think about where they're stuck in the past and and I'll let it all go which is what our culture tends to do and everybody in our culture tells us to do with charm and so we wound up we wound up exiling the most precious Parts simply because they got hurt or scared or ashamed and when you have a lot of exiles you feel more delicate the world seems more dangerous so many things could trigger them so other parts are forced out of their naturally valuable States to become protectors and some of them protect the Exiles from the World by managing the World by managing your relationships managing your parents managing your performance often they become critical these critics because they're just don't know what to do but yell at you to get you to behave so that you don't get hurt or anything there's a lot of different common manager roles but all they all have in common desire to preempt anything that might upset your exams world has a way of doing that anyway when it happens when an exile gets triggered it's a big emergency because these flames of raw emotion come exploding out and threatened to consume you and so there's another set of Parts who stand by and go into action immediately whenever any of those feelings start to get too big in a way to try and either distract you from them or douse them with some substance or get you higher than the flames until they burn themselves out and so those we call firefighter protectors and contrast to the manager protectors I described earlier so that became the map which has held up really well over these 40 years and again just to reiterate these these roles are not the parts they're the roles the part was forced into once released from those roles you can't even predict how the part's going to be but it's going to return to its naturally valuable state brilliant and I just want to um sort of go over a couple of things here so with the managers their role is to prevent excise being triggered and then firefighters whenever they are triggered it's to put out the flames and you sort of soothe the pain almost you know something that really jumped out at me there was basically the more the more trauma somebody has experienced particularly young age the more excise they're going to be carrying and because they've got more exercise they need more protector Parts just to function in life so people that are highly like highly managerial highly perfectionistic Etc they've probably experienced a lot of trauma and that is maybe explains a lot of a lot of behavior that's what I find yeah people with those big big manager diagnoses like OCD or even Tourette's or uh yeah depression um and really covering up a lot of trauma the way my own definition of what an addictive process is to me um to what is the process an internalized process of a managers trying to get it right and look right and be right in their drive and in battle with firefighters who say I have to get the edge off I have to feel better I have to get out I have to escape um I need soothing that self-medication and the drive to um and both of them are driven and the more to protect the system the person from any kind of too much vulnerability flooding their system if someone's been raised in a neglectful or exploitative situation or just has attachment wounds you know they lost a dad they don't get along with their siblings there's been a lot of pain and messed up relationships you know we all have a certain amount of pain some people have been exposed to so much more emotional pain than others either way are managers and firefighters are trying to protect us and manage to try to protect us by doing the right thing and firefighters protect us by having some Escape or some soothing and that that conflict between do I soothe or do I do it writer do I work or do I play do I um indulge myself or do I and reward myself or do I work harder those Central polarizations get very extreme is it because they're each driven to relieve burdens that in these young parts that came beliefs about themselves that I'm bad I'm not enough I'm not lovable if they really knew me you know so when we're holding those beliefs about ourselves we have we develop these protective parts and those are the ones we send out out in the world for people to look at so that we don't look too vulnerable there are parts that that a lot of the parts are what they call protectors and all that means is that they're let's say they came they arose within your personality at different stages of your life when things were rough and they try to help you in different ways some of those parts they call managers because they're very uh kind of business-like future oriented you better not do this you better not do that you better you know follow the rules you better watch what you say and watch what you do very much like a manager okay that's one kind of self uh um shall we say protection uh and and you can find those parts and you can talk to them and they certainly talk to you and then the other class of protectors they call Firefighters which is a funny kind of a term but they call it that because these parts are extremely impulsive and it's like they want to put out the fire and they don't care about making a mess so that's that's where the name came from so I can imagine the fire brigade comes out and sprays down the place and breaks it all up and puts out the fire then they leave right and they don't they don't give a about it about leaving a mess well in addiction it's pretty obvious that the impulsive part is that kind of has that kind of psychology so to speak it it cares the fire that it's putting out is negative emotion it's it's normally anxiety that's that's the fire that's what you you want to put out by by with drugs or drink or whatever it is um and this impulsive part says yeah let's do it let's get high come on let's say time we know this is going to work let's just do it get rid of the anxiety right now come on and you do it and it's like oh now what you know that's the next morning again you're three hours late for work or whatever it is and it's like you're kind of up here uh and so the idea that these parts do have some kind of psychological [Music] Independence that they actually have little personalities of their own starts to come into focus and it's quite fascinating I mean I've now gone through this kind of therapy myself so I know what it's like on both ends uh and it's powerful stuff like like you find a set of like wishes or ways of doing things or agendas that uh have a very distinct character to them like when I when I used to do drugs it was very clear that I it wasn't I was taking huge risks huge chances and really kind of almost wrecking my chances for any kind of future and it didn't matter to me it wasn't in my awareness at all that aspect so could really see how uh yeah so that's all that's that's basically it that's those are the two kinds of parts that and then of course an addiction one of the big problems and ifs covers this beautifully as well is that you go out and you drink too much or you get high and do whatever you do and then the manager comes out and says you know you jerk you creep you idiot you did it again how could you and you know there's a lot of Eternal anger and blame and shame and all that stuff which raises the anxiety in fact that becomes the main source of anxiety and so those you get a feedback cycle there's more anxiety and the more you sort of feel the anxiety the more you feel like doing it the more you feel like doing it the more anxiety there is and then you really feel like doing it and then you do it so it's a very neat psychological system I was going to say metaphor but I don't even think it's a metaphor I think it's really just the way things work for understanding addiction and treating it if you're interested in seeing the full session and 34 others like it you might want to check out the holistic recovery Summit this is a revolutionary free online conference which brings together 35 award-leading clinical psychologists researchers and practitioners we will share with you their best practices for mind body social and spiritual approaches to addiction treatment enabling you to be the Forefront of evidence-b's care with a lineup including Steven porges Janina Fisher Eva Gilchrist pot Ogden Anna Lemke Stephen Hayes Richard Schwartz and 28 others this really is a once in a lifetime learning opportunity the best bit is it's 100 free to attend life and you can do so from the comfort of home you'll also be able to upgrade to your recordings and certification pass after registration although this is entirely optional for more information please check out the sign up link in the description [Music]

Channel: The Weekend University

Views: 1,896

Keywords: the weekend university, psychology lectures, psychology talks, psychology lecture

Id: 3ZNmQMrngnQ

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023