I’m excited to write about this topic because I love it so much and I want everyone to know about it 🙂 . I touched on it in this year’s Tu B’Av post where I gave an example of someone holding themselves back from living the life they dream of because parts of them (as opposed to their true Self) are getting into the driver’s seat.
You may have heard of Internal Family Systems (IFS) or even experienced it — a very deep and powerful psychotherapy modality. IFS is based on the concept that every person is made up of many parts or subpersonalities that each have their own history, needs, and agenda, almost like an internal family. These parts fall roughly into two categories: protectors and exiles (I will give examples of all of these things in the next paragraph). Protectors take on the task of protecting you from coming into contact with the exiles, which awaken difficult and painful feelings in you. So, protectors either act as managers who try to arrange your life so you never have to feel certain things or firefighters who jump in when those feelings are triggered and try to put a stop to those feelings by whatever means necessary. And exiles are usually very young parts within you that carry deep pain and feelings like shame and fear of abandonment and are usually banished from your conscious awareness.
A manager might be a Miss-Perfect-straight-A-student persona that aims to keep you from confronting the exile of “I’m not good enough and therefore I’m not worthy of love.” A firefighter might be an enraged outburst that aims to keep you from feeling, “Maybe I really am responsible for what went wrong here and that means I’m not good enough and therefore not worthy of love.” Exiles typically are single-digit ages, meaning they’re parts that developed at very young ages when you experienced rejection or criticism or shame or blame or the like.
In IFS we’re not only made up of these subpersonalities, though. Each one of us has a Self, a true, wise, pure identity that is who we really are. When the Self is in the center, we notice the parts and understand what they want from us (and for us) but are not ruled by them. When a part takes control, we tend to really struggle. Some parts are more extreme or cause more harm to us than others but none of them is bad; they all have a logic and all developed with the good intention of protecting us. When you do IFS work, you get to know the parts, and let them know that you accept and care about all of them, instead of trying to forcibly remove or quash any of them. Self-Therapy by Jay Earley is an amazing book on how to do IFS therapy with yourself.
The first time I heard of IFS I was skeptical about it; I thought it sounded kind of bizarre. One of my friends told me that she had resisted trying it out but once she did, she was stunned at how helpful it was. Then another friend told me all about her experience in IFS therapy and finally, after months of thinking about it, I decided to do some work with it, too. I am so, so happy I did! IFS has really helped me understand and find peace with parts of myself that strongly need/want different things and sometimes hijack the driver’s seat in order to get them. I’m very, very supportive of anyone who wants to work on things in therapy (any therapy — different people need different things and the main thing is to find someone who works well with you), but I have found that IFS in particular is very effective. If you don’t think working with a therapist is right for you now, you can always explore IFS with the Earley book mentioned above.
I hope this post is helpful. Feel free to ask questions about IFS or other therapy-related topics! Take care!
