What is Internal Family Systems? (17 Mins)

[Music] said that can you tell us what parts are within the IFS system parts turned out to be little personalities inside full range personalities so if for example you got angry and I asked you to focus on your anger I'd ask you where you find it in your body around your body but you could locate maybe between your chest and then I asked you how you felt toward it to the point where you've got curious about it and you asked some questions you would learn if you waited for the answer and not think away what it was saying that it's much more than just a bundle of anger that it has some fear maybe it has desires for you but it's trying to protect other parts of you would have a lot to tell you about itself so and I just stumbled onto that discovery when I was very hung maybe 32 you know my clients started talking about these parts and I got scared at first because multiplicity has been pepper dives in her culture and after I got over that I got intrigued and did find that as they they started to talk to them these parts that hold a lot to tell us they're not just single emotions they're not just a voice that's saying the same thing over and over they actually have actually a strong desire to help us and there aren't any bad ones it turns out you can say the difference between apart and maybe just a voice in my head so if I have a voice that says shoot you forgot the milk today or you're right or don't forget this is there any way for me to help identify if that thought is apart or if every voice in my head is some expression of every voice that you heard is an expression of a part and the voice is just one manifestation of it for other people it might be a five other people it might be an emotion or sensation even but if you start with the voice and you just focus on it and ask it some questions it'll tell you things you didn't know often and it'll tell you about itself and why it's in there and how struggle to try and keep up with all the things you have to remember and how much it's tired what's the rest and you know I don't expect people to believe this because I'm saying it's true I wouldn't have believed that if I was watching this video and somebody was talking about it so maybe later we can actually help people with an experience of it a taste of it but that's what I discovered and because I am changing the family therapists I had stayed away from any understanding of the intrapsychic process so when I had clients start to talk about these things I didn't have any presumptions and I was forced to actually listen to what they were saying about themselves so the model is pretty experienced friendly that way most people once they get past the oh my god am i a multiple they start to actually yeah that sounds right to me can you say what self is within the IFS model yeah so self is is now become the centerpiece of the model and that's I just stumbled on to that there there are a lot of models to talk about subpersonalities actually but because of my family therapy background when I would try to have dialogues between my client and these parts I started to notice that other parts would interfere and as I got them to separate because I when you're wearing to the family you want to have just two people talk to each other and if a third starts to interfere you ask them to step out so I thought maybe the same operation in the center fifth family and I would ask them to get these other parts these interfering wants to give us some space and what I would do that it was like a new person would pop out of nowhere and would be calm and confident and would be curious about the part that they were talking to and the part would sort of disarm would be much more willing to talk about itself and to be vulnerable actually and when I would ask people about who is that they would say I'd say what part is that they'd say that's not a part like these others that's me that's myself so we came to call that the capital s self to distinguish it from the common usage of the word self which means the whole person and as I tried it with other clients it was like the same person would pop out and always undamaged kind of essence that in addition to being curious confident and calm often would have compassion just immediately for the part they were working with for the person that we're talking to would have a lot of courage so we have what we call the eight C words that characterize so carrot courage creativity clarity the part would change its image and see it much more for what it is actually and connectedness there's a kind of innate desire in self to connect to self in parts and people and a sense of being much more connected than isolated so that was remarkable when I started to see that in a couple clients that I thought well they must have had really good parenting because how else could they have this kind of ego stirring and i would comb their histories to find the person that they got it from because i was trained in attachment theory to believe that to have any of that you had to have gotten it from a another person from the outside relationship and many of these clients and there was no person in their life they possibly could have gotten that from so i really started to have to shift at some point to believe that this is just inherent in us that it's sort of our birthright and that in addition to those qualities there's a kind of wisdom about how to heal internally and externally so self heals is a bumper sticker sometime to print because it it's really true so often as we help clients access that stay and then begin to relate to these parts they sort of take over the session and I just get out of the way because they really do know how to heal themselves and that's a tough sell both the idea that we're multiple and the idea that this is in there undamaged and knows how to heal isn't satanic with our culture at all so it's been a kind of uphill battle to convince people okay and what is what is healing looked like within the IRA okay that's another good question so so parts as I say come with us into the world either dormant or manifest and so but they are forced out of the naturally valuable States by traumas and attachment injuries and they take on extreme beliefs of emotions from those experiences that they kind of take to heart so healing one one way to describe healing is the release of these burdens these extreme leaps of emotions like I'm worthless or the world is really dangerous or you know I need to lash out at somebody or I need to withdraw all the time the release of those which then almost like a curse is lifted the parts immediately transform into the naturally valuable states so that at one level is healing another level is we'll call restoring the parts trust in the leadership of self because often when bad things happen to us the parts feel like they have to protect the cell and they have to stand in front of the bullet and take it and then they lose trust in self leadership and they there have to become like piranhas fight children and a family in fact all these parts that's why I call it internal family systems it's sort of like in families especially where there's been trauma kids get forced into kind of rigid walls and there are different schools of therapy have different names for those roles and then good family therapists can come in and make things safe for them to step out of those roles and to do they actually are for me that's the same as these parts they're really stuck in these roles by these burdens by the belief they have to they have to protect the system by the fact the system is now much more vulnerable and by the fact that many of them are frozen in the scene in which they got burdened so they're frozen in time in these different trauma scenes so as I explored it became clear that the idea that people can just change these things that are causing their symptoms causing them to act out causing them to explode in range or to withdraw all the time or by willpower is it just creates a lot of polarization inside of people either they succeed in which case they're sitting on all this stuff and they feel delicate because it could split all the time or they don't succeed and they feel totally like failures because they should be able to everyone says why can't you stop so it turns out these parts generally can't change until what they protect have been healed and and the system isn't so vulnerable and until they've unloaded these extreme beliefs and looking emotions they've been caring and what is the process of unloading look like look like okay so when I was exploring all this and we would run into this parts would actually say I carry this fireball on my diet and it's driving me to do these things or this weight on my shoulders we started having them just take it off and see how it feels and they'd feel better but it would be back the next session so over time I learned that first of all they need to feel like the self not the therapist but the self needs to really get what happened when they picked up these burnings in the past so you become a compassionate witness to your own history not only the video of the history but also the emotions the part fell to the sensations and different parts need different things to feel witnessed but yeah if you can do that to the point where the parts of now I feel like you finally get it then that's a huge relief to most of these parts and there's still frozen in time so another step is to have you yourself go into the scene and take the part to a safe place and which point they're usually ready to us to let go of these emotions and beliefs they've been carrying sometimes 30 40 years and they like a curse is lifted it will transform so so that's what it seems to take this is a gun through years of trial and error and it all sounds kind of new Lulu kind of new agey at first but it actually does work what would you say it's the heart or the quartet of ifs that kind of fuels everything if I was to know one thing about it you're the only one thing what would that be I would say that we aren't who we think we are because we tend to identify with these parts and their burdens and down deep inside believe basically I'm really not very valuable or I'm really dangerous or whatever the part is that's often becomes our identity and actually what most spiritual traditions call enlightenment is simply that shift in identity sift shift in your center of inner gravity from these parts and their beliefs to knowing that this self I've been describing is who you really are and that is is quite liberating and in addition to knowing that that's who you are that that self can need both internally and extra in a much better way than these parts can and will create harmony at both levels so I guess it's answer the question that's what I would say and how does ifs differ from some of the other forms of therapy that people might be introduced to what it what is how does ifs maybe differ take a different approach to the internal system yeah well most other forms of therapy are based on this mono Mind idea that we just have one mind which I believe is a myth and when you think of it that way then there's only a limited range you have for having people relate to their emotions in their their thoughts and their urges and their impulses and all that because if that's what you think of them as random impulses then you know you're gonna try to control them you're gonna try if you think of as the irrational five you're gonna try and correct that if you think of it as out of control impulse you're gonna try and you know just use your willpower to control it and I did that in the beginning finding that it just made them more extreme and it isn't until you actually consider their personhood that you'll have compassion for them and you'll relate to them in a different way the way you would to a suffering being in the outside I had a conversation once with the Dalai Lama and while they live was you ask people to go with your external enemies with compassion why don't you do that with your internal enemies because he talks about there are these afflictive emotions that we have to control and so on so heat and anger yeah yeah those things so turns out the greed and anger are just parts that are trying their best and they need compassion and the more you attack them or the more you ignore them the stronger they get and the more they try to take over so most therapies are based on that there are a few that actually take this multiplicity seriously and find pretty similar it's results or at least similar view of what these parts are as you kind of get to know them but but the way I judge of therapeutics system is how it teaches you to relate to these to your thoughts and emotions which are coming out of these different parts and not that many have a real compassion to take on it mindfulness has been a big step forward in my mind because rather than what we're talking about judging them or stifling them or you just separate and you observe them and you kind of accept them so I Fest could be seen as a next step so separating noticing them is great because that is a way to access so and people do feel some of these C word qualities I've been talking about when they are practicing mindfulness but it isn't necessarily compassionate to watch suffering beings parade by just passively observing them so people generally have an impulse to actually go to them and want to hold them and hug them and care for them and so that's what we do so that's the next step is to actually begin interacting with them like a good leader a good parent getting to know them honoring them for their service learning about what they protect negotiating permission to go to what they protect all of that from a kind of mindful place and so mindfulness practices very complimentary [Music]

Channel: Internal Family Systems - IFS Institute

Views: 161,641

Keywords: Internal Family Systems, IFS, selfleadership

Id: Ym8o762U7uc

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018