Internal Family Systems Therapy, First Edition (The Guilford Family Therapy)

Product Information

Since our culture is patriarchal, many managers appear in gender stereotypical ways, and it would be interesting to study their appearances (male, female, or neither) according to the client’s gender identity. Women are often socialized to rely on a manager who is perfectionistic about appearance and behavior. This manager believes she must be perfect and please everyone or she will be abandoned and hurt. Many women are also socialized to rely heavily on a caretaking manager. Extreme caretaking parts push women to sacrifice their own needs continually for others, and will criticize a woman as selfish if she asserts herself. Men, on the other hand, are often socialized to rely on an entitled or competitive manager who encourages them to get whatever they want, no matter who is wronged by their actions. Other common managerial roles include the hyperaroused worrier (or sentry) who feels in constant jeopardy and is on continuous alert for danger. This manager will flash worst-case scenarios in front of a person when she contemplates risk. And then there is the dependent manager, who tells the person he is a victim and keeps him appearing helpless, injured, and passive to ensure that other people will take care of him. Managers have many behavioral options.” pg. 33 While IFS Therapy is a powerful approach for helping individuals, it can be equally successful with couples. According to Herbine-Blank (n.d.), “once the individuals in a couple have more access to Self, transformation is natural,” and they can find the space and capacity to choose a response rather than simply react to it, even if the other cannot at the time.

Thus, the better a simulation is, the more easily it can also be confused with your actual self and the actual world. If you do confuse them, then that’s because you’re a good author and have developed rich, well-drawn characters that seem real. Then there are the Firemen. This is the class of inner characters who responds to emergencies. What emergency? The Exiles escaping. Like firemen in the real world, who have license to bust down your door with an axe, go to the bed of a sleeping child, carry her out, and soak your living room couch with water, these Firemen go to extremes to keep the Exiles under wraps. In the case of the formerly obese child, every now and then she goes to a bar and sleeps with any man who will sleep with her. She’s looking for affirmation, emergency affirmation. That’s one of her Firemen doing that, so that the Exile, the shame-filled obese child, is kept under control. Experienced practitioners can use the Six Fs Internal Family Systems worksheet to successfully differentiate the protective parts from the self and form vital alliances. Understanding Our Relationship With a Part Internal Family Systems Model (IFS) is model of psychotherapy that conceptualizes human psychology as a system of “parts” that can have differing agendas, and which can compete for dominance within the psyche of an individual.

Managers are patterns of thought and behavior meant to keep exiles pushed away and under the surface. They play a *proactive protective* role. Think: career or gym addiction. The treatment offers hope to clients wishing to find balance and harmony within their mind and facilitate the self to regain control. This is a good intro and I'd want more guidance--which would likely have to come in practicums and actual application with real people to practice with. Almost like a textbook style of writing, but not too academic so that most people who aren't necessarily studying psychology or therapy can absorb the concepts. I'm still a little uncertain how to get in touch with my parts and how to label them and talk to them or have them show me who the managers, protectors, and exiles are. I have an idea of how to go about it, but it seems like I'm "doing it wrong." I think in another book there's a practice on how to find your parts. If your protector did step to the side, you probably noticed a big shift” (Schwartz, 2021, p. 130). Repeating the exercise can help clients learn about the parts that protect and how vulnerable they have previously been.

Exiles are the injured parts of us and have typically experienced trauma. Exiled by the managers, they can become increasingly extreme, ultimately overriding the managers to become who we are.like most couples, had organized their relationship from the beginning around nurturing and protecting each other’s exiles—a setup for trouble. But when exiled parts feel loved by the Self and have been reintegrated internally, protectors can stand down, partners can have ongoing access to their Selves, and recurring conflicts tend to melt away.” pg. 235 One voice, for example, continually pushed her to work, both at her job and at home. If Quinn sat still this striving part would call her lazy and remind her of many things that needed to be done. I guided Quinn to ask the striver what it was afraid would happen if it stopped running her to the point of exhaustion. That part replied that Quinn would get depressed and stay in bed. And, indeed, Quinn reported feeling depressed when she paused, which in turn caused her to stay in her apartment for days on end, withdrawing from work and friends entirely. ‘It’s like the depression catches me when I slow down,’ she said.” pg. 148 Individualism: Produced by the survival struggles of pioneers, individualism fosters contempt for vulnerability and a belief that failure is a personal fault. Notice how they react. Are they afraid? Some days, they may not want you to go. And that’s okay. You can wait for another day to continue. PART of you wants to stay up all night and drink Chardonnay, and another PART of you wants to spend all day the next day drinking Chardonnay.

Where as empathy involves feeling with another person, compassion involves feeling for another person, which motivates concern and the desire to help. While exploring compassion and empathy, neuroscientist Tania Singer made a surprising discovery. Having expected to find that these two emotions use the same neuropathway in the brain, they found instead that compassion uses reward circuitry whereas empathy (the experience of feeling with) uses pain circuitry. Although empathy can therefore overwhelm us with pain, a proportional dose enriches compassion. As a result, in IFS we don’t ask parts to stop feeling strongly, but we do ask them to separate enough so that they don’t overwhelm us with their strong feelings. When we are not able to attend to our exiles, we find it hard to tolerate the suffering of others. But when our exiles separate and communicate rather than overwhelm, the Self is present, protectors don’t get activated, and we have compassion for our own parts as well as for other people who are suffering.” pg. 53 The relationships between these characters follow the same rules and fall into the same patterns as relationships between actual people. You have some who dominate others. Some who are immature, angry, or caring. Some get really excited and over-react. Polarization is found here, just as in the US Congress; so are triangles, the love variety and otherwise. You have the same splendid complexity within as without. This gives you the same advantages that any group of people have (two heads are better than one), as well as disadvantages (sometimes all you do is go to meetings and never get anything done). A key aspect of IFS Therapy is to “find, focus on and flesh out” the client’s protective parts and help them “unblend and notice the client’s Self” (Anderson et al., 2017, p. 93). Next, the client can recognize their feelings toward and befriend the target part, explore its fears, and invite it to do something new.

Each partner is encouraged to bring compassion to their wounded inner parts and heal their past, gaining control over their present (Herbine-Blank, n.d.). Materialism: Produced in part by the economic and physical hardships suffered by immigrants to the American continent, it is no doubt made worse by the routine, threatening cycles of financial boom and bust that typify capitalist economies.” pg. 241 PART of you wants to flip-off (do you hyphenate this word?) that douche bag driver, and another PART of wishes you wouldn’t. Firefighters distract attention away from exiles if/when they do break through, and manifest in impulsive and/or inappropriate behaviors like drug use, over eating, over working, over spending and Chardonnay for breakfast. When you’re ready, thank the protector for the support it has given you and the new trust it has in you.