Introduction to Internal Family Systems Q&A with Dr. Richard Schwartz (Creator of IFS)

hello everyone thanks so much for joining us today i'm dan pierce and i'm one of the founders of mentally fit and today we are joined by dr richard schwartz he is the founder of the ifs institute and the creator and developer of the internal family systems method you've probably heard of it you might use it and i'm really happy that he's here with us today dr schwartz thanks so much for joining us thank you dan it's an honor to be with you and uh looking forward to conversation yeah likewise so i was watching one of your videos that goes over uh ifs a little bit before we got started here and one of the core beliefs that you have with ifs is that uh one that we all have parts and that these parts are actually sub personalities can you talk to us about a brief overview of what ifs is for someone who doesn't know what it is yeah that's a good start the basic assumption is that everyone in a sense is a multiple personality not everybody has that disorder but everybody has what i call parts that other systems have called sub personalities or ego states or things like that that that the mind isn't naturally unitary but in fact what we think of as thoughts and emotions are actually emanating from these separate inner personalities and that that's a good thing that each of them has valuable qualities and resources for us to help us in our lives and that we're born that way that it's the natural state of the mind to be that way that we come into the world this with these parts uh and what you know at infancy some of them are online infant researchers talk about five discrete states that infants rotate through and then some come out uh come on board at different points in your development but they're all there either manifested or dormant and so all that sounds good so far but trauma and what are called attachment injuries that is bad parenting have the effect of forcing them from their naturally valuable states and roles into roles that can be quite uh destructive ultimately and have the also the effect of freezing them in the time of the trauma so they're sort of stuck in time and they believe for example dan that you're still five years old and still very vulnerable and they have to protect you for example and they also from the trauma take in what i'm going to call burdens which are extreme beliefs and emotions that you were feeling or came into your system from that trauma and then attached to these parts and drive the way they operate almost like the corona virus like a virus and so good parts uh forced out of their naturally valuable states into roles that might have been necessary to protect you when you were young but now are anachronistic and don't fit your current life but they don't know that because they think you are still young and vulnerable so so that's parts and uh you know it's it's been a tough sell because multiplicity has been so pathologized by these scary reports about multiple personality disorder and so on that's really interesting um so it sounds like from what you're saying that we all have these parts within us but somebody who has multiple personality disorder on one end of the spectrum and somebody who you know just feels that inner conflict of like i want to go to the gym but i also want to sit down and be lazy that's potentially the same thing but on a different range a different scale is that accurate well well said dan that's quite accurate yeah so the idea is that these parts are no less full range personalities than the ones that show up in mpd it's just that for people with that diagnosis were traumatized so much and so severely as children that their system got blown apart more and their their their parts are more polarized more disconnected from each other but their being full range personalities is no different from what i'm calling parts inside of us excellent that makes sense um so you say um and you said before in other videos that you've done that all the parts are inherently good they have natural valuable talents and resources um but maybe trauma happens or something external happens to those parts where they kind of uh react and go into some kind of potentially self-destructive mode that really is trying to help can you talk a little bit more about that and how those parts go from that natural state to a traumatized or potentially disordered state yeah so the analogy i like to use is of a family obviously internal family systems where you might have a child who's acting out and family therapy's big insight was you can't take that kid out of that family and say just cut it out you've got to understand the whole dynamics and also the history of the family and what happened to to produce the need for that role of a kid who's acting out and so i've extended that to this internal system and so yeah it does turn out that often let's say you were abused or bullied as a boy and to protect you back then when you were five there was a part of you that kind of made you dissociate and not be here and so you just didn't feel the impact of the bullying and that part like i said gets frozen in that time and still feels as you grow up like it's got to protect you that way whenever some kind of intense just you feel something intense like shame then immediately you kind of leave and that gets in your way as you uh try to do your job and go through life and you just think oh i'm i dissociate there's some illness i've got something like that but if you focus on that dissociating part and get to know it it'll show you the scene where it's stuck in the past and if you go and get it out of that time it will realize that you're not five anymore i don't know how old you are but uh you look like you're in your 30s probably yes and that uh you know things are a lot safer now it doesn't have to keep doing this job and it will then be able to release the extreme beliefs and emotions that got back there and will immediately transform into some more more appropriate and valuable role inside of you nice that makes a lot of sense um so it sounds like potentially if you had a part that experienced trauma um and then you just kind of go through your life re-experiencing um the reaction of that part to the trauma by disassociating or whatever your reaction is you kind of perpetuate that and there's sort of that feedback loop of um having the experience and then having the reaction and it kind of just goes around and around you mentioned that there's a way to stop that and to get into uh the memory to resolve it what's the process like for that is that something that happens in psychotherapy can you do that on your own what do you typically recommend yeah some people can do it on their own but a lot of people need at least another person there maybe it doesn't have to be a therapist but they need somebody to to help them when they go into these you know these dangerous inner neighborhoods at least they think they're dangerous um yeah so the process is well let's take a different part let's say that in certain contexts like you see a certain kind of person you have a kind of panic attack and again you just think what's wrong with me you know i'm a grown man why do i have so much fear about being with someone like that and you start to criticize yourself for the having the panic attack like why am i such a wimp and so on especially men do that but if i if you brought that to me i would have you focus on that feeling and find it in your body around your body and i would have i would ask once you found it how do you dan feel toward that scared part of you that gets so panicked and you would say i hate it because it's you know it's ridiculous and it it blocks me from doing things i want to do i would say i can understand why you feel that way but let's just see if we could get the parts of you that that have been relating to it that way to give us a break and relax in there so we can just get to know the scary mind and much of the time you'd be able most people can do that much and i would do that until you felt kind of curious about it and then i would have you ask about its fear and as you did you would learn more about why it's so scared and and where it is stuck in the past and then you would start to have not really curiosity for it but compassion for that younger boy who got stuck back there and you i would help you form a trusted relationship with that part of you so and sometimes it takes a while because you've been so hard on them in the past but once that's in place i would ask that scared part to show you what happened in the past where it's stuck and you would see the scenes that to produce that terror and i could even have you once the part felt fully what we call witnessed like you really get what happened and how bad it was i would say dan now i'd like you to go into that time period and be with that boy and the way he needed somebody and you would say okay i am there and then i'd say ask him what he needs you to do back there and sometimes that can be quite elaborate he might need you to to fight with the bully or to to tell your parents or to tell the teacher or do something that actually changes what happens in your inner world it literally changes the past in a way and then at some point when that part felt ready i would have you take him out of that scene to a safe comfortable place which could be in the present with you or it could be a fantasy place at which point most of these parts are willing to give up the burdens i call it burdens extreme beliefs and emotions that they got from those times and so we'll send that out to light maybe or fire or wind and once the part lets go of that now this boy feels much lighter and wants to play and then we can bring in all the parts that hated him to see he's you know he's not scared anymore and they don't have to protect him or terrorize him anymore and then we help them into new roles too so so that's how it works and uh you know who knew when i started this journey but it actually does work yeah that's amazing um i think you touched on a very important point there and that's the element of compassion um you know i think a lot of times i'm sure a lot of people can relate to this when we have those inner conflicts it can be uh it can be a conflict you know our parts can be fully at war with each other at times and i can feel like you've got you know very opinionated voices going back and forth in your head your own voice but just thoughts going back and forth so i think that element of compassion is very important yeah and it's hard to have compassion for just random thoughts or emotions but once you get to know these as inner beings sacred inner beings then your heart opens up naturally yeah that's really great so i imagine a lot of people who struggle with trauma would benefit from this kind of thing but i'm sure it can be very triggering for them to get into those memories is there anything you recommend from a trauma informed side of things as far as how people can enter those traumatic memories start resolving those burdens of the parts without going too far or feeling like they can't handle it yeah again if it's uh chronic and severe trauma it's it's tough to do without a therapist so i'm not necessarily recommending that people even try but uh if it isn't that bad i don't know bad is the right word but if it isn't that extensive then what we learned the hard way was the importance of working with protectors i don't think i've explained the whole map yet have i um no not yet would love to yeah let me just to clarify this let me do that a little bit so as i was doing all this exploring and i'm a systems guy i come from the family therapy world i was trying to look for patterns of how these parts related to each other and the big distinction that came up right away was between parts of us that have been called the inner children that before they were hurt gave us all kinds of wonderful qualities like curiosity and and creativity and love and joy and awe and so on but they're also the most sensitive parts so when they do get hurt they take in these burdens of intense worthlessness and shame or terror or emotional pain and once they get hurt like that we don't want anything to do with them anymore and everybody around us because in the united states this is a rugged individualist culture tells us to just leave that in the dust you know just move on don't look back and so we wind up pushing away those parts and locking them in inner basements or business and trying our best to stay one step ahead of them and not realizing that we're locking away many of our most precious qualities just because they got hurt thinking we're just moving on from the memory sensations emotions and beliefs so these would call exiles and when you get a lot of exiles you feel a lot more vulnerable and the world is a lot more dangerous because there's so many things that could trigger them and if the exile gets triggered it can overwhelm you and make you feel like you're five years old in the middle of that big trauma and make it hard to function in your your adult life so people with a lot of trauma walk around with a lot of fear of triggering their exiles and they have parts that are forced out of their naturally valuable states into protector roles and some of the protectors are trying to control the world control your relationships and no one gets close enough to trigger an exile control your appearance so you never get rejected control your performance so you get a lot of accolades to counter the worthlessness these we call managers they're trying to manage everything about your the external world and also about you so that you don't get triggered and they're often the critics they're off you know get such a bad name of these inner critics but they're just like in family therapy we call them parentified children they're just like kids who got had had to take over and run the system and they're not equipped and they don't know what to do but yell at you to get you to behave and then there are managers who try to kick take care of everybody and don't let you take care of yourself and so it's a lot of different common manager roles and so we all have a bunch of managers that got us this far in terms of career and so on they keep us on our heads so we don't feel too much but the world has a way of breaking through those defenses and triggering the exiles and when that happens it's a big emergency because there's the danger that you are going to be overwhelmed and and feel all that again and not be able to function so we all have parts who to get us away from that are like that dissociative part i talked about earlier that react immediately to this crisis and try to get you higher than the flames of emotion or douse them with some substance or distract you somehow until it burns itself out so it's a simple map protectors and exiles and then two kinds of protectors managers and firefighters so all of that to say that we tend to work with protectors before we go to exiles to get permission because they have a right to not let that happen and they have to be convinced that it's safe to let the exiles to let you have access to your exiles and some people can do that on their own and a lot of people need somebody like me to help uh just go over all the fears of the protector and talk about how we can handle each of those excellent that makes sense it sounds like what's being developed is a very a clearer and clearer model of the internal world that we all experience would you say that the types of protectors and the types of different roles and characters that people have are relatively consistent or does that change from person to person the types of protectors you have as an individual stay pretty consistent through your life uh across people there are wide wide varieties of protectors they general of the protected roles they generally fit into those three categories or those two categories of protectors in the sense that protectors are either trying to preempt anything that might trigger the exiles or they're reacting after the fact after the exile has been triggered so all kinds of roles fit into one of those two categories but across people and you know the i could take what's called a dsm diagnosis from uh psychiatry and give you an alternative way of understanding that diagnosis based on the protectors that dominate that person that's very non-pathologized as opposed to the very pathologized diagnosis that somebody gets from from being diagnosed that's really interesting um yeah we've heard a lot recently about how the dsm was not originally intended to be used the way that it's being used and sometimes it is stigmatizing and pathologizing could you give us an example of maybe an alternative way to describe a diagnosis say for example borderline personality disorder what is an ifs way to describe that yeah well so traditionally a lot of the complaints about people with that diagnosis are that they can be explosively angry and they also can be very very needy and demanding of therapists or other people and they also then have scary symptoms like they get suicidal or they can have panic attacks where um they can like i said be enraged at the drop of a hat and so they get a really bad name in the psychotherapy world and in my because i worked with that population for 20 years probably and as i started to get to know their parts and saw what happened virtually all of them had been severely abused most of them sexually abused as children and so they had all these exiles and they didn't know what the hell to do with the exiles and so they had a protector whose job it was to recruit some other person to take care of those exiles because they didn't know what to do with them and that recruiting protector was really really talented often and sucking somebody in like a therapist to sort of be their parent and but as soon as that therapist got close enough to do any damage to the exile there was this sort of bouncer rage part that would jump in out of the blue make a therapist's head spin but if you understood it the way i just described it was totally predictable because you got close enough to do damage and so so then the rage comes in and pushes the person away and then the recruiting part comes back to try and pull them back in and throughout all this especially if the therapist gets triggered and starts to distance then these other scary firefighter activities start to kick in like suicide or substance abuse and that then scares the therapist even more who gets even more protective and you're in this special vicious cycle and so many people with that diagnosis wind up deteriorating from therapy because the therapist got scared and the fear is mainly because the diagnosis is so scary but if you thought of it all this way then when the rage comes you don't get triggered you just expect it you know it's not personal it's like the mafia it's business it's not personal whoever was in my chair would be getting nailed by that part just for getting close so you hold this perspective that allows you to stay for you to stay calm and what i call in-self even in the face of a lot of these scary things happening nice that makes a lot of sense um and great example thank you so um i want to ask everybody who's watching right now does everything so far makes sense that's pretty great right um everything that dr schwartz has shared with us but let me know let us know comment in the chat and let us know that you've been enjoying it and whether you're watching live or on the replay drop your questions in the comments and we will get them answered by dr schwartz so i'm going to let some people ask some questions go ahead and comment if you have questions we have some questions from the facebook live that we can take unless you have anything else you'd like to cover before we do uh q a dr schwartz well the only other thing i don't think i've talked about which really is the centerpiece of the model is what i call the south i haven't talked about that yet right no not yet we can definitely go over it yeah so as i was doing this work and again as a family therapist i was trying to help my client change the dialogue they were having with their parts and say i was trying to have a client talk to their critic in a new way and try to be curious about it rather than fight with it and as i was doing that they got angry at the critic and it reminded me of family sessions where maybe i'm trying to have two people talk to each other and a third person jumps in who's angry at one of the other and it just makes it all go downhill so i began asking clients could you find the one who's angry at the critic could you get it to just relax or step back in there and to my amazement clients could do that and when they would do it they would shift in the direction of in a very positive direction in terms of their relationship with the target part in this case the critic and so instead of being angry at it seconds earlier suddenly they say i'm just kind of curious about why it's calling me names all day and from that curious and calm and confident place the critic would respond well and would tell some of its secret history about why it was in the role it was in and and uh what had happened to to push it in that role and as that happened clyde would have compassion for it could extend the compassion to it and so as i did this with other clients and found that just by getting a couple parts to open space and relax it's like this other person popped out and knew how to relate to the parts in a healing way and when i would ask and it was like the same person you know it was the same qualities calm curious confident compassion and also courageous and clear and creative and connected so that's what we call the eight c's of self-leadership that person would start to relate in a very healing way and people started to just take over sessions and heal themselves when i would access that and when i asked clients now what part of you is that they'd say you know that's not a part that's more me that's myself so i came to call that the self the capital s and now 40 years later thousands of people doing this all over the world we can safely say that that self that essence isn't everybody can't be damaged and is just beneath the surface of these parts so that when they open space it comes out spontaneously and starts to lead the client's life wow i love that um and i especially love the concept of self leadership sort of taking that leadership role um and and i think we can all see like what is what are the qualities of the good leaders uh and those eight c's you mentioned are all great qualities and a leader like you don't get somebody to do something by saying hey you you know idiot go to the gym and all these things we often tell ourselves like oh you're being lazy and very critical um you don't often get people to act that way there's so many better ways to be a leader so i like that that part of the model as well great very cool um holland who's watching um wanted to know more about firefighters can you tell us about the firefighter role and how that plays into this model yeah yeah so i talked already about the managers who are trying to control everything managers are often the parts that are trying to please everybody and then manage both your inner and outer life and the firefighters are the ones i mentioned where when that doesn't work when an exile gets triggered they go into action immediately impulsively damn the torpedoes i've got to get you away from that feeling right now from that exile feeling no matter what it takes i don't care about the collateral damage to your body to your relationships i just gotta get you out of there and so we came to call those firefighters because they're fighting the flames of emotion of the exiles and most all of us have a bunch of firefighters um most of us have a kind of hierarchy of them so the first one doesn't work you go to the next one if that doesn't work the next one and at the top of the hierarchy for most people is suicide actually it's very comforting to know you can escape if it comes to it excellent that makes sense um if there's any questions or follow-up questions about firefighters let us know in the chat and we can get them answered i think that was a great um example and um avneat wants to know would you say that bpd clients use firefighters more than managers that's a good question yeah um yeah that's why they get that diagnosis because their exiles are so raw and close to the surface they're very difficult to manage and so and they're and being so raw they're very easily triggered so to deal with that you're going to have all these impulsive parts and some of the some of their impulses are quite scary and that's partly why that diagnosis gets such a bad name because uh they're you know they're hard to contain yeah that makes sense um definitely understand that um if you have any follow-up questions or if anyone has follow-up questions on that topic uh related to firefighters or bpd or other diagnoses let us know let's see the next question we have here is how effective is internal family systems is it evidence-based and what conditions is ifs best suited to treat yeah it is evidence-based we have several outcome studies one interestingly enough with uh rheumatoid arthritis actually um 30 ra patients got six months of ifs as compared to 30 that got a control condition and at the end uh very significant difference not only in the the pain and the number of joints in pain and so on but also in levels of depression and anxiety and and all that with the follow-up so we've got some good some good data and uh it is indeed evidence-based um yeah is that the whole question i can't remember yeah you answered the question um is it evidence-based uh i think you have some links on your website as well to specific research studies so anyone that wants to learn more about the evidence behind ifs check out their website ifs dash institute dot com it's dot com right yeah ifs institute dot com i'll include a link to that in the show notes so anyone who's interested can take a deeper dive but that's very interesting what do you make of that why do you think that there's a mental connection um that can be relieved to something like arthritis yeah so i'll give you a a portrait of the the sort of common arthritis patient in that study was a uh irish catholic mother this was done in boston at brigham and women's hospital who had this massive caretaking part and spent her life taking care of everybody else and and not taking care of herself and so when i had clients focus on the pain and get curious about the pain and the parts using the pain started to answer and would talk about how much they hated the caretaking part because they wanted more out of life they wanted the client to enjoy things and assert herself and they because she would never listen to them they had no choice but to give her this pain and as we work that out between these polarized parts the symptoms went away in a big way and to some degree to some of them went into full remission wow that's amazing um you know i've heard anecdotal stories stories and seen some studies in the past um about how many different um bodily issues we face uh can have their roots or at least part of their root in our mental health how common do you think that is like how much of our our physical ailments are related to our mind and uh vice versa yeah i don't think all of them are i think we we all have genetic predispositions for certain kinds of conditions like i have one for migraine headaches and for asthma and if i'm in a dusty room i'll i'll start to have an asthma attack and it'll have nothing to do with my parts but if a part wants to take me out for some reason it can give me a migraine and i won't be able to function and i don't get them anymore because i i started asking why are you doing this to me and worked it out with my parts so i'm not i'm not trying to say that all medical conditions are the product of parts but you know if parts can't get through to you directly they don't have that many alternatives they can uh invade your dreams they can you know but they can affect your body they know where the where the buttons are so that's really interesting so it's definitely something to consider as part of a holistic method of going after whatever the root source of that pain is exactly that's great so we have a question here uh easy question from bola are there any books you recommend related to ifs or otherwise what's on your reading list these days oh okay um i am currently reading a book called evil geniuses by a guy named um oh boy what's what's his name i highly recommend it it's a bestseller about how our capitalist system got to be so extreme and uh all the conspiracies behind that over the years and his name is kurt anderson yeah you know the book uh i just looked it up oh yeah kurt anderson evil is the unmaking of america that's very interesting yeah because i i'm trying to look also at what's happened in our culture that makes all these parts extreme and how all these what we call legacy burdens float around in our culture like racism but also like materialism and individualism and uh and patriarchy that infect all of us and then drive the way that we operate so i lately i've been doing a lot of that more larger system reading but in terms of learning more about ifs or trying to do it on your own i happen to have a book coming out in july with sounds true called no bad parts um with a subtitle that i have to get into and also there are books on the website that are written for the public one's called an introduction to internal family systems and another called you're the one you've been waiting for and there's also from sounds to uh audio series called greater than the sum of the parts it has a lot of exercises that people seem to like a lot so and for therapists the sort of bible is called internal family systems therapy second edition which is put out by guilford excellent thank you we'll make sure to include links to those in the show notes and when your new book comes out definitely let us know so we can let people know that sounds really great um let's see we've got some more questions here so we'll keep it rolling um how do you distinguish self-energy from protectors who may appear self-like for example yeah they say for example i've gathered that some patients start to learn the mechanics of ifs and when i'm looking for self energy sometimes it almost seems like a protector who wants to give the right answer how can the therapist distinguish self from an elusive protector parts that's that's a really good question and it comes up uh not all really commonly but with some clients you need what we call a really sensitive parts detector to tell and one way uh is like when i'm in self if i want to check and see if i'm really in self like as i'm doing this talk with you dad if i go inside i'll ask do i have a big agenda right now am i really trying to push something or or force something if i am that means i'm not in self that's that's a part that's a protector um i and there are several other sort of markers to tell and so if i'm working with a client and they're saying the right words and they you know they're mimicking those eight c's but they do seem to have some kind of agenda uh then i'll say is there a part trying to do this for you and most the time yes there is and we'll it's a manager and we'll get it to step back it's very good imitating a lot of the time and knows what to say but it's still trying to protect something try to keep the client away from certain things so that would be one way there's there's a handful of others but um that's you know that's more of the the uh level two kind of level three stuff detecting self-life partners excellent so it sounds like um it comes down to what the intention of the part is if they're presenting all those the right things so to speak but they're trying to protect their image or protect themselves from a memory that is sort of what tells you that it's still a manager or a part that's not the cell yeah or if uh if dan i was to say to you now i want you to go into that time period and be with that little boy and you said okay they're there i would say what do you mean they you see yourself with that boy oh then that's not yourself that's the part trying to do it for you let's get him to step out so you're there with the boy you don't see yourself right you just see the boy and you're there with him because self is your seat of consciousness so if you see yourself that's not yourself by definition so they're a bunch of those kind of subtle ways of detecting these parts that makes sense thank you the next question is can the protective parts themselves present themselves as shapes emotions or they do they typically present as images of younger parts of self no they can present anyway uh yeah we don't prejudge anything so uh [Music] you know we just focus on the emotion and just see what comes to you don't think just wait and there are a number of people i'd say a small percentage of people who are like me and don't see anything when they're in there i don't see a thing it's like i'm doing it all in dark i hear their voice i sense their presence but i don't get images and it used to frustrate me i feel like how ironic that i'm the one that came up with this i'm the only one who can't do it but it turns out we just do it differently and the same is true for people that don't see the stereotypic images it's just whatever the part wants wants to start out being seen as nice that makes a lot of sense um yeah there's so many different ways that we can have our internal worlds and i think that's a good thing to point out that it's not always the same but we can effectively do the same things just differently yeah um holland wants to know can you give some examples of what you might say to the parts after they've become curious of the exiles but are still afraid to move into compassion for the exiles yeah so if i was working with a part like that in you dan i would say ask this one what is afraid would happen if it let you open your heart to the exile and there are common answers to that they're common fears parts have of you know you'll be overwhelmed is the most common one but also there are protectors that think you have to be tough with these inner kids because the world is dangerous and if you coddle them you know it's the same thing that lots of parents feel um and so there are some common fears so we don't ever you know pressure protectors to let us go to exiles we just listen to their fears and over the years we've come up with ways to address each of those fears there are the fears are very common there's like nine common protective fears about letting us go to exiles let's open our hearts to exiles and over the years we've come up with ways to address each of those fears and we would say okay this is how we'll handle that one to the protector what do you think and also we're saying to the protector if you let us do this you're going to be liberated you won't have to do this labor-intensive job anymore and you can do something entirely different whatever you would like to do and that's a very seductive pitch because most of these protectors hate their jobs they just think they're necessary um that's a really good point um thank you along those lines another question is and it might be the same answer but just to check how would you handle the client who is resistant to going inside yeah similarly so i would say dan can you find the part that doesn't want to do that and where do you find that in your body and sometimes with those parts it helps to do what we call direct access so i might say dan i'd just like you to speak from that part and i'll ask you questions and i'd say something like okay dan so so you're the part that resists letting dan focus inside is that right and you'd say yeah you want a role play for a second sure yeah yes okay so you're the part that really doesn't want dan to do this work to focus inside is that right yes and what are you afraid would happen if you let dan do it it might be uh too overwhelming yeah so i get that and what i can tell you is we know how to handle that we know how to keep dan from being totally overwhelmed and if at any point he felt like he was starting to get overwhelmed you could let me know and we would pull back and we would you'll have a voice as we do this in other words so how does that sound yeah that sounds great um i actually you know could feel that sort of sense of safety and security that there's a process for how it's going to go and that you're there to help guide it and pull out the of the going in internally if needed so that's yeah can see that being effective yeah excellent um so definitely if anyone has any follow-up questions on that let us know hopefully that was helpful we've got tons of more questions coming in so if you have any please comment them and we'll get them answered moving right along the next question is uh is ifs culturally applicable and are there mulch multicultural nuances to practicing ifs yeah uh so it we have uh training programs throughout the world uh not just in the u.s and asia i mean not just in the u.s and europe but in several countries in asia and uh australia and um starting to to go into latin america um in russia so so we've made some adaptations going into different cultures because different cultures are different largely because they've promoted different parts so whereas in the u.s as i was talking about with that book we we lead with these aggressive parts that want to uh get what we need and and be more selfish whereas in japan for example people lead with those caretaking parts that loyalty to the family is the primary motive so it's just which parts could come to be dominant in different cultures and we'll adapt our teaching to accommodate to those differences but it holds up the model itself holds up it's just different configurations of parts that's really interesting how different cultures would place emphasis on different parts um very cool so yeah i mean sounds like that it applies to people all over the world you're already working with people across cultures so safe to say uh it's culturally applicable no matter what but definitely sounds like um being trained in a specific culture would be helpful to navigating the system the parts system for those people in those areas exactly you know as the last decade or so we've been uh doing a lot more outreach to diversify our our trainees in the us and has there's an organization called black therapist rock for example that we have been partnering with and as we bring it to the african-american population you know they're taking it and challenging certain things and uh um and it's been fascinating it's really been cool nice i'm gonna drop a link to black therapist rock here in the comments that sounds super cool um yeah i think it would be great for more people across um many different you know cultures and areas to get involved with this kind of work because it seems like um you know along with that with what that book you're reading is sort of saying that if we put all the parts of us individually together we can kind of find cohesion amongst different cultures things like that so that's really cool yeah and self is in everybody so itself that state of self feels connected automatically regardless of culture yeah absolutely um so have you seen a change in the parts since the covid um pandemic and you know it's brought a lot of different people into therapy are you seeing different things as far as the parts go or has has it been relatively consistent you know uh for many many people covet has been really hard because it it's triggered their exiles you know the the part that's afraid you're not going gonna survive or if you lost your job or or parts that if you're isolated too much begin to feel like you're a loser and and feel worthless or feel trapped feel like you can't get away bring you back to times when you were trapped in the past so so lots and lots of exiles are getting triggered all the time and then of course all kinds of firefighters and other kinds of protective and managers are in sequence getting triggered and so people's symptoms will escalate and yeah it's been i mean i don't know any therapists anymore who aren't totally full because there's such a need any any you know ifs therapists that is yeah definitely um something i'm sure we can all relate to is you know the pandemic affected our mental health in some way there's no denying it and i'm sure you know i definitely experienced parts coming out um reactions so i think that's that's very interesting i'm glad that that was brought up so very good we also add dan that yes anything that triggers you in a big way not only is really unpleasant but then can be a big learning process it's what we call a tormenting activity with a hyphen between the torah and the mentor so by tormenting you it's mentoring you about what you need to heal so when these when these exiles get triggered then now you can notice that part and you can start to work with it if your protectors are okay with it whereas you might not have even been aware of it before kobe that's a really great point um yeah so in a way they're kind of like alarm bells going off uh saying there's a fire over here and you can you know address the fire hopefully or ignore it and it'll come out in other ways but that's a really great point it's there's lessons to be learned there for sure a question someone had asked a little while back was can people have multiple families with multiple parts within those families by families do they mean internal families i believe so yes um but if anyone the person is watching go ahead and comment and let us know but i'm pretty sure they mean internal things yeah yeah um you know there are clusters of parts that uh often are surrounding the same trauma and aren't even aware of or related to other clusters that are that that are tied to some other trauma psychotherapy has often been compared to a vegetable which is the onion where you peel away the layers and you get to this core high fast it's a different vegetable it's a bulb of garlic where each clove of the garlic is a separate internal family in a sense and you go in and you heal that you clean out all that and that's great you feel better in a lot of ways but you didn't touch all these others that are still hurting in there so sometimes it takes a while before you get to all that's really interesting i love the analogy garlic and onions neither of those will make your breath smell good but but they're they're good analogies um so chelsea hopefully that answers your question definitely let us know if you have any follow-ups on that um the next question is what if there is no core self as in uh dissociative identity disorder that occurs through very infantile um csa and continues through adolescence so that so that the self is not established yeah well having worked with a lot of clients with that diagnosis who had those kinds of traumas in infancy i can say that that just isn't true i know that the the literature believes that uh i've had these debates with a lot of uh did therapists but when i worked when i worked with those clients initially you don't have access to any saw because they're so dominated by their parts and their parts don't trust anybody and they're not they don't want to let anybody close but as you work with their parts and their you earn a lot of trust and sometimes this takes months at some point i'll start to ask for those parts to open space inside and there's a lot of resistance and there and they will say there's nobody like that inside of me it's just me i'm the person but if i persist and really and they actually do it's the same part the same self that pops out as in all of healthier people and start and starts to help all these parts too so having done that many times with uh with those clients and now many therapists doing it i that's partly where i can safely say that self is in everybody it can't be destroyed excellent thank you um hopefully that answers your question please let us know if you have any follow ups on that answer any other questions or answers that have been uh discussed you can leave us a comment whether you're watching now live or on the replay and we will get it answered michelle jacobs a member of our therapist toolbox community says i am taking dr schwartz's ifs course at this time i love this approach so i think that's a good lead into the next question which is uh what are the best resources for therapists who want to get trained in ifs where can they go for ifs training yeah i'm glad michelle got in uh i've got the the good problem that especially in the last five years or so interest in ifs has exploded to the point where um we have massive waiting lists for all of our trainings so we you know set up a lottery system and trying to make it equitable but uh and we're also training a lot of trainers so we can offer more and try to meet the demand but in the in the meantime yeah go ahead and and uh and apply but also if you go onto our website we have what's called the uh online circle program which uh is obviously online and it's a year membership program where you get every month a lecture like this for me and a lot of videos and a lot of live q and a from me and and some of our lead trainers and uh people love that program and uh and then following that you can get onto another online program so that's what i'd recommend in the meantime and also there are lots and lots of books for therapists which most of which are on our website and uh videos and so on excellent i just dropped a link to the online programs on your website in the comments so definitely recommend everyone check those out that sounds like a great way to get started you know if you can't take the training right now but it sounds like more training opportunities are going to be opening up in the near future yeah excellent um so since we are the mentally fit community we always like to ask what does it mean to you to be mentally fit so we have four goals in ifs one is the liberation of these parts from the extreme roles they're stuck in so they can be who they're designed to be so a mentally fit person would be would have parts in the roles they're designed for and then second is that their parts not only have been liberated that way but they also have come to trust the leadership of what i'm calling the self inside so restoring the trust of the parts and the self's leadership is also a quality of a mentally fit person the parts listen to the self's ideas and let the self lead both in the inner world and also in the outer world and then the third is bringing harmony to the parts so that they not only are liberated but now they start to work together and get to know each other differently and when that happens you feel integrated you feel like you don't even have parts because they're all in harmony you hardly notice them but they're still there it's just that they're in their naturally valuable roles and they're getting along and they trust the leadership itself and then the fourth is to bring that self-leadership to the outside world in in some active way so that for me would be our mentally fit person beautiful well said i love that answer thank you um do you have anything else that you would like to make sure we talk about or anything you want to get the word out about we talked a little bit about your books the website the trainings is there anything else before we wrap things up that you want to say to everybody uh i know there are things but i'm a terrible promoter and they aren't at the top of my mind right now so we'll have you back hopefully um we'd love to do this again sometime and continue to explore all the parts this has been has been super interesting uh i can speak for myself for sure and definitely for the people watching i see a lot of comments so um yeah just super grateful for all of your time and for you sharing your knowledge with us and sharing space with us today well thank you dan i've actually really enjoyed it i don't always enjoy these things but you've made it easy so i appreciate it excellent i'm glad to hear that well um hopefully we'll we'll definitely see you again soon i'll send you an invite to all of our communities so you can join us there as well and we'd love to have you back in some time to share more about your method talk about your new book when that comes out and yeah we'll definitely be in touch sounds good excellent well thank you so much for everyone who joined us today uh everyone's saying thank you in the chat to dr schwartz and yeah really appreciate everyone who came out to learn about internal family systems definitely check out the website check out the books um and the trainings i'll include links to all of those in the show notes when i repost this video and until next time i'm dan pierce this has been mentally fit and i appreciate all of you coming out we'll see you later alright

Channel: Mentally Fit Pro

Views: 47,986

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Id: BiCGcVcmzzg

Length: 64min 17sec (3857 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021