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IFS Talks is a podcast to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems Model through conversations with lead trainers, authors and practitioners.
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The Power of Utilizing IFS in a Group Format - with Chris Burris 34:22

Chris Burris, M.Ed, LMFT, LCMHCS, is a Clinical Consultant and Senior Lead Trainer for the Center for Self Leadership.Chris has been a psychotherapist since 1989, working with diverse populations in community agencies, intensive residential centers, institutions of higher learning, and in private practice. He began training in the Internal Family Systems model in 1999 and is currently a Senior Lead Trainer for the Internal Family Systems Institute where he teaches Level 1, Level II, and Level III trainings and serves as a trainer and mentor for new IFS training staff. Recently Chris published "Creating Healing Circles", a book focused on utilizing IFS in group formats.

Trauma and Dissociation Informed IFS with Joanne Twombly 1:22:22

Joanne H. Twombly, MSW, LICSW (she/her/hers) is a psychotherapist in private practice in Arlington, MA. She has over thirty years of experience working with C-PTSD and dissociative disorders, and provides trainings and consultation. She has written on EMDR and Dissociative Disorders, EMDR and Internal Family Systems, and on working with perpetrator introjects. Her commitment to helping her clients heal and to providing quality training has resulted in her becoming an EMDR Consultant and a Trauma and Recovery Humanitarian Assistance Program Facilitator, Internal Family Systems Certified, and an American Society for Clinical Hypnosis Consultant. She is a past president of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. In recognition of her achievements and her service on committees and the Board of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) she was honored with ISSTD's Distinguished Achievement Award and is an ISSTD Fellow.

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are excited to welcome Joanne Twombly. Joanne is a psychotherapist in private practice in Arlington, Massachusetts. She has over 30 years of experience working with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders and provides training and consultation. She has written on EMDR and dissociative disorders, EMDR and Internal Family Systems and on working with perpetrator interjects. Her commitment to helping her clients heal and to providing quality training has resulted in her becoming an EMDR consultant and a trauma and recovery humanitarian assistance program facilitator, Internal Family System certified, and an American Society for Clinical Hypnosis Consultant. She is a past president of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. In recognition of her achievements and her service on committees and the board of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, she was honored with ISSTD's Distinguished Achievement Award and is an ISSTD fellow. Today we will be speaking with Joanne about her new book, Trauma and Dissociation Informed Internal Family Systems:  How to Successfully Treat Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders.

Alexia Rothman: Joanne, thank you for being here with us.

Joanne Twombly: I'm happy to.

Aníbal Henriques: So, welcome Joanne. What parts come up as you listen to your bio today?

Joanne: I don't know, maybe it's the, if you live long enough, it sounds like you have lots of accomplishments.

Aníbal: Joanne, the title of your new book, Trauma and Dissociation Informed Internal Family System suggests huge integration of IFS. It looks like you are offering IFS practitioners and therapists a body of knowledge on trauma and dissociation that you consider fundamental to integrate with IFS if we wanted to be more effective with more severely traumatized clients. So, Joanne, what exactly is this body of knowledge in trauma and why do you think it can be critical for IFS to become more effective?

Joanne: Well, I think it's critical... I mean, I started to...Well, let me just say one thing. I love shortcuts. I mean, partly I learned all these models because the people I see are in so much pain and I basically want them to be out of pain as efficiently as possible. So, you know, when I, when I did IFS training, it was like, oh no, you don't need coping skills. Everybody's got everything they need. I'm like, great. But it didn't really work with this population. And I started getting quite a few requests for consultation, people calling me up and saying, can I do IFS with you? And, I have been in IFS and it's not going well. So, and then talking to other consultants, other trauma consultants, were saying, what is it with these IFS people, you know, they don't know what I'm talking about. Their cases are a mess, what's going on? And it's primarily, I mean my, what I primarily do is work with people with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative disorders. And in that population, a lot of them have been messed up in prior treatment or they've been in a long-term treatment, not gotten any better, which is also very depressing. And, you know, getting people who are really treatable from good IFS therapists where they've been for some years, I shouldn't have to see them. And if I have to see them, then it means something's missing. And I think what's missing is an integration with the world of trauma treatment and all the knowledge base. And that's why I wrote this book. I think the only other thing that's written on dissociative disorders and IFS is the chapter I wrote a few years ago in a book edited by Martha Sweezy and Ellen Ziskind.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Joanne: So, I think it's time.

Lexi: So, going back a little bit to some of the basics. Many people who are new to the IFS model, they wonder since IFS believes that the mind is naturally multiple, and thus all of us are in some sense multiple personalities, how would you define Dissociative Identity Disorder – DID, from an IFS perspective?

Joanne: I'd say one thing is that it is confusing that they talk about us all being multiples, all having multiple personality disorders. And a lot of the people I've worked with or done consults with who have multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder, find it insulting that suddenly everybody's saying they have multiple personalities because they don't live with the pain, they don't have that kind of trauma history. And they're like, you wouldn't say we're all autistic, or everybody in the world is autistic. Why is everybody in the world suddenly have multiple personalities? But aside from that, I think what I would say about defining DID from an IFS perspective, I mean, I think that their systems are more complex, their parts are more dissociated, they're more at risk of overwhelm and destabilization and backlash. What I describe, say, when clients ask me about the difference between me having parts and them having parts, these are on the more dissociative spectrum, is that it's like there are cement walls among the parts. And if you're in a child part, someone with a dissociate disorder can get stuck in a child part. Whereas I can be playing with the kids across the street and then get a phone call and immediately there's an easy flow from being in my playing hair monster with the kids across the street to taking a professional phone call. Whereas somebody with a dissociative disorder might get stuck there and not be able to access an adult part of them. And the other thing is that it's much harder for people to get into Self.

Aníbal: Oh, of course.

Joanne: I mean, there's different clinical things about just the general way we're taught to do IFS... Oh, this concept of parts, you know, this is exciting and it's really helpful. And being a hope merchant, all of that is very, can be very dangerous for people with dissociative disorders. And I know of people who went to an IFS therapist and never went back because they were outing them. You know, for somebody with a dissociate disorder, their parts are there to hide things from themselves and hide things from the outer world. And to hear somebody say, wow, we've all got parts, it's like danger. You know, if having secret parts, dissociated parts kept you alive through your childhood, having somebody suddenly say it's great and we're gonna work with them is profoundly scary.

Aníbal: Joanne, in the introduction to your book, you also say, and I will quote you, “I found that people with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders needed coping skills to help them maintain functioning while going through the painful work of healing. Integrating IFS with wealth of knowledge from the complex PTSD and dissociation world increases its power and the potential for healing,” you say. You also say, “if your client is getting worse and worse, if your client is struggling during the week, if your client needs increasingly more support from you, the information in this book will help you by integrating dimensions that are missing in a standard IFS training and practice.” So, Joanne, what are those dimensions that we could integrate? Can you illustrate some?

Joanne: Well, I think one thing is that IFS tends to teach that teaching coping skills is unnecessary because the IFS view is that everyone has everything they need. They have all the resources they need to heal. And, I think that from the trauma world, if what we'd say is children who are brought up with dysfunctional parents who maybe have their own untreated dissociative disorders or PTSD, have attachment disorders, personality disorders, they learned what their parents teach them and they're missing a bunch of internal resources. They don't know how to self-soothe. And that's not gonna just magically come up as things get healed or it's gonna complicate the healing. So, I think it's important to teach people coping skills so that they can use their inner resources to heal. Everybody has, most everybody is born with the capacity to heal, but it's, you know, what are the building blocks to healing? And I think a lot of these clients are missing basic building blocks and it's not as simple as getting someone in Self, which pretty much is very difficult with these people early on. So, I don't think it's as simple as, oh yeah, all the resources are there.

Lexi: And I think you're really starting to touch on the next question that I had for you. So, there may be some overlap here, but IFS is traditionally described as being different from phase-oriented trauma treatments, specifically in that it has not been considered a phase-oriented treatment. And as we were saying, traditional grounding, emotion regulation and other coping strategies haven't been recommended. And back in 2013 at the IFS annual conference, I attended your talk on working with individuals with severe trauma histories, and it was the first time that I heard a different perspective on this. And so, I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on IFS and phase-oriented treatment.

Joanne: I think that, that was one of the things that inspired me writing, slugging through and writing this book was that IFS or some IFS trainers teach that phase-oriented treatment is bad and that phase-oriented treatment therapists kick out parts they don't like, which is really confusing and isn't true. I mean, anybody who kicks parts out is incompetent and, you know, doing dangerous treatment. I mean, I've worked with people who've had therapists who tried to suppress parts and you know, that doesn't work. It leads to disaster. And I'm not even sure where that particular teaching point came from because it certainly has nothing to do with the literature. And I mean phase-oriented treatment, basically phase-oriented trauma treatment is the first phase is establishing the treatment, coping and stabilization. I mean, one thought is to keep people at their highest level of functioning possible, and if they start having trouble during the week, instead of relying on me, they have some coping skills. And what I've found is managers really appreciate that. I mean, managers grow up, they learn how to manage however they're managing, not so bad to have like their management skills refined and updated. You know, I sometimes say to clients, save my smartphone. I have a smartphone. When I grew up I had a dial phone. Smartphone is really much higher tech. We can take the ways that you cope and we can make them higher tech. And you know that I have never had a manager feel insulted because I help them learn some coping skills. And that goes for firefighters. Firefighters can be more complicated, but same thing for firefighters and exiles. And then the second part of phase-oriented treatment is, and I'm talking about working with people with more complicated trauma histories, is paced uncovering of traumatic material. So, you don't want to do it all at once. IFS tends to witness all at once and rely on exiles to be able to hold the traumatic material, you know, ask exiles to hold onto the traumatic materials so the one who's witnessing, which has some Self-energy doesn't get overwhelmed. But if traumatic material's been dissociated or there's, you know, huge amounts, then exiles might want to be able, might want to be able to hold onto it, but they can’t always, So, pacing the witnessing I think is really important. And then I always think of the third stage is whatever else, you know. I mean, in the trauma world there's some people who talk about integration and there's some people who talk about integrated function. And that's, when I think of healing from an IFS point of view, I think of, you know, a system of parts who have integrated functioning and are connected with Self so that the whole system has a way of functioning that’s smooth and nothing's being lost. There are no dark holes that someone can fall into.

Lexi: That's really helpful. And for those clients that do find themselves severely dysregulated between sessions, what kind of support do you advise that therapists give between sessions? Are there special considerations for this between session support with this population to keep in mind?

Joanne: Well, I think that's why it's useful to start out by helping them. Well first of all, with somebody with a complex dissociative disorder, they may not be willing to talk parts right away. You know, they may, I don't want to hear about their trauma history. I may ask them to tell me a couple headlines, but I don't want to risk having the lids they've had on their trauma history being blasted open before they know how to handle what's underneath it. So, I started out teaching them coping skills and teach them safe space imagery, other affect regulation skills, container imagery. And it's basically upgrading the ways that they're already, it's upgrading their ability to disassociate, so they disassociate better.

Aníbal: Well done.

Joanne: I get people coming in for consultation saying they're dissociating less. I'm not. I'm like, I don't know, I don't think that's a good idea. You want them to be able to dissociate better. So generally speaking, I don't have a lot of connection with people in between sessions. I mean, there are times when I do, especially early on, particularly if I have a client who's been unraveled in previous treatment, then you know, I'll often say, you know, we're figuring out how to work together, it's more difficult to... I don't say to them that it's more difficult to establish coping skills, but it's way more difficult to have them learn coping skills if their dissociate boundaries have been, you know, disrupted. So, I'll sometimes say that, you know, we can have more contact in this early phase of treatment and then it'll be easier for you to manage some of this stuff outside of it. I also, you know, if there's some kind of emergency, I certainly am in touch with clients in between the week, but generally speaking, I don't have much contact with them.

Lexi: It sounds like what you're saying with this use of coping skills, it's almost maybe addressing the concern that some IFS clinicians have had in terms of can coping skills be exiling to the exiles that are holding this material and from listening to you, that's not what it sounds like. It might sound like, let's set up a situation that's gonna be safer so that when that material emerges, those exiles really will be welcomed into a safe, safer situation to receive their healing rather than having it open up having them flood and having it not go so well. So, the ultimate goal is to get to them. Okay.

Joanne: And I, it's not only to get to them, but it's to start having them have choices and control really as soon as possible. Because if an exile is overwhelmed or is, you know, heavy with, I think the other thing I would say is managers and firefighters are already caring burdens and exiles have the job of holding more burdens. They're not parts without jobs, they're parts that have an enormous job and they have a lot of strengths because they're holding a huge burden that, you know, it's like walking up a, a steep hill with a huge backpack on. That is a job. But I think it gives parts more choices and control. So, if an exile is really tired and is feeling really heavy, the exile can put 90% of whatever burdens they have and a container and get a rest. If somebody needs to go to a job interview, they can put traumatic material on hold. They can have parts who are freaked out about going to a job interview, be in their safe spaces and put sound and feeling proofing up or hang out at home or whatever. And then they can go to the job interview stable. I mean there are all sorts of little ways of using, I mean, I'm talking about containers in safe space imagery. I mean there are a lot of resources, but I did a consult with someone once and she had to go to court the next day and she had a little part who confessed, it was something in her childhood that she had to confess whether she had done something wrong or not. Going to court with a part hanging out with you who's going to confess? Bad idea. We did 10 minutes, 15 minutes’ worth of safe space imagery and we made a safe space imagery for that, safe space for that part, and the part said, you mean I don't have to go to court? I said, No, you could just hang out in your safe space. And then when court's done, she'll come back and tell you what happened.

Aníbal: Amazing.

Joanne: And it went so much better. And she didn't have a dissociative disorder. This was just, and she was in IFS treatment and had she not come for a consult, she would've been in court with this little part...

Aníbal: In trouble.

Joanne: Who would've confessed, or she would've been struggling more. You know, I, and that's why I think that this book I've written, you know, covers a lot of possibilities like that, which I think are helpful.

Aníbal: Joanne, you also say that this book of yours will clear up some misunderstandings between the IFS world and the complex trauma dissociative disorders world. What are those misunderstandings? Can you say more?

Joanne: I think one is that phase-oriented treatment is bad and that phase-oriented treatment therapists kick out suicidal parts and drug addicted parts. That would be one. I was so shocked to hear that. I was like, seriously? But anyway, another one would be that, that it's bad to teach coping skills because it disses managers, you know, it's not respectful. Another one is that IFS can heal everything. That the model will heal anybody. And I disagree with that. I mean I think that the model, the way it is, it's a terrific model.

Aníbal: It is.

Joanne: I use it with everybody. It's a power therapy, but it can't be used in a straightforward way with people with dissociative disorders. So, the other thing I think is a difficulty with language is that people go to other workshops outside of IFS and they don't know how to listen to them because they're looking, they're always trying to put things in categories of managers, firefighters, where is Self, you know, and that's a difficulty. I think it isolates people who are IFS therapists because it blocks them from being able to take in other kinds of trainings or think that they're necessary at all.

Aníbal: Can be useful as well. Thank you.

Joanne: I mean, I like having a number of different ways of working with people because people are complicated and they come from different places and sometimes things don't work for one that works for another and I can just shift and flow with what the person needs. So, I think it's useful to get some other treatments.

Lexi: So, one of the aspects of IFS that I appreciate most is that it is a truly consent based model of treatment. So, we're always seeking the permission of the protectors before we do anything, especially before we work with the exiles. Because if we don't get this permission and the protectors feel like we've gone into territory that they weren't comfortable with us entering, then the client can experience backlash. And we know in some systems that backlash is mild, it's easily repaired within the client's system, within the therapeutic relationship, but in systems like we're discussing today where the protectors are in very extreme roles, the backlash can be extensive, can be dangerous. And what is even more challenging in the system with dense boundaries between the parts like you're talking about, is that we may think we're getting consent from one part to do a particular piece of work and then we find out that another part that wasn't present at the time takes an issue with where we've gone, what we've done because we didn't have their consent and now the system is struggling. So, I was wondering about your thoughts on the challenges of getting consensus, getting consent in these kinds of systems.

Joanne: One thing that's for sure is if you're working with people with a higher level of trauma, then you have to be comfortable with not knowing everything. Because it can absolutely happen that you miss something and then, you know, the person gets backlash or whatever and then the next week the person comes in and says, Oh, I was, I had a horrible week. And it's like, what happened? What did we miss something? And that can be useful because that's something I want people to ask themselves. What are we missing? And I want to be able, I mean I do my best to catch everything. So, I think that you wouldn't get very far with most therapies with people with dissociative disorders or trauma histories, unless there wasn't some kind of consent base. It just wouldn't work. And you need to, I always work keeping the system in mind. Now, one thing, and I think this was one thing that you wanted to cover. So, one of the IFS trainings says therapists shouldn't keep secrets. Well it's not really a secret, but when you're working with somebody with complex layers of parts, you don't want to meet all the parts right away. You don't want to access them. You don't want to say, okay, I want everybody to hear this. I want to work with the top layer of parts. And once we've finished working with the top layer of parts, then another layer of parts will show up. It's kind of like the unconscious says, oh they've done this work. Okay, now they can deal with this other level of difficulty and a whole bunch of other parts pop out. Sometimes I've had clients come in and they've been doing really well, and they come in looking horrible. And what it is that this new layer of parts has suddenly showed up. So, I started calling that a crisis of progress. And progress doesn't always look like a smooth line, you know, it can be pretty bumpy. And since my clients, a lot of them dissociate, they may not be able to remember that right away. So, I remind them. So, in some ways I hold the memory of what's going on, hold the memory of progress. So, I said to a woman, I'm working with a woman in her eighties who had quite a bit of IFS treatment, quite a bit of EMDR treatment on and off therapy for 50 years. It's tragic that she came to me completely unraveled. Really essentially healthy person with a horrible trauma history who's never... couldn't identify needs. And yeah, it's just difficult. But I think that you don't, I mean she has... Everybody's out much easier if a lot of the parts are not out right away. Another person I work with has over 70 parts identified. He had a therapist who was identifying parts. Not helpful because they all want to go first. I'm like, look, it's like kindergarten, you know? And you have to take turns. You can't do it all at once. That's okay. It's not that we're ignoring parts or not wanting to work with parts. It's a clear understanding that we want to work with parts so it's the most efficient healing they can have. And that's sometimes not trying to do everything at once. So, I disagree with the, that's probably another difference. I think that it's not keeping secrets in an evil way, it's keeping secrets in a protective way. You know, if a part is talking to me about being gang raped or whatever and their child parts who would get freaked out about that. I want those child parts to be in a safe space with soundproofing and feeling proofing and not listening. So, they're not picking up the affect which this other part may be able to handle. And once this other part that's working on the gang rape has basically dealt with that, gotten it unburdened, then that material can be communicated to the child parts. But what they're getting is a healed information, not raw primary trauma, terror, rage-based information that's gonna knock them for a loop.

Lexi: So, really using discernment there in terms of what should be shared amongst parts and what will go in the direction that will lead to the safest and most efficient path toward healing. Okay.

Joanne: Catherine Fine who wrote an article quite a while ago about, can't remember what she called it, but basically what she talked about was protecting the parts who work and manage daily life from the trauma work. And sometimes with more complicated people I do that. I want people to keep their day job. And I had a client who came in and she'd say, Joanne, I like you, but I hate this. I just want you to know I hate working like this. I hate not knowing what's going on. Okay, let's do it. And she'd sit down, I'd have her go to her safe space, put up sound and feeling proofing and then I'd do a chunk of trauma work with the parts who were ready to work on it. And everybody else was sort of tucked away. And she's done with treatment and she has a very high-level job. And once we got her on track from the treatment, that wasn't so good, she worked continuously and didn't need any hospitalizations and she'd had quite a lot of them before. So, you know, it's not a bad thing to keep secrets in an effort to keep healing moving along in a healthy way.

Aníbal: You also say, Joanne, this book will help readers to find strategies to strengthen and support manager's ability to manage. What do you mean exactly? Can you say more about those strategies to strengthen and support managers?

Joanne: Say you have a manager who has a belief that they have to say yes to everything and that they can never say no. So that manager is managing by being compliant and they may not be ready to unburden that idea. It may feel too dangerous, like learned helplessness. If somebody's taught that, if they do anything other than comply, they're gonna get beaten. Then they learn to, you know, just do what they're told. And so, I've had managers say, oh no, I can't give up that. I can't, I have to do everything and I'm exhausted. But I have to keep doing that. And so, I might suggest that they put that belief or percentage of that belief into a container and then we try it out. Like one woman answered her phone, she never didn't answer her phone. That may not be good English, but anyway, she had to answer it. And I'm like, well, how about if you get caller ID so at least you know who's there. And she, oh my husband won't let me. He worked for a phone company. I was like, really? But what I got her to do was to not answer the phone and call back whoever it was five seconds later. And we practiced that. We practiced it with her calling me. We practiced having her put that belief in a container. Or not a hundred percent of it, but, so she knew she was supposed to help people or else, but it wasn't quite as strong. So, she could make, do some experiments, which ended up working really well. And you know, it's just little things like that. I think managers can get exhausted and sometimes, sometimes the exhaustion isn't just about managing, sometimes it's old exhaustion. I mean, I think, you know, childhood’s where you have attachment disordered parents, you're being neglected, you're parentified, you're being beaten and raped and whatever. I mean, you know, they're fundamentally exhausting. So sometimes managers who are exhausted, some of the exhaustion is because they're busy managing and some of its old exhaustion. So, a lot of times I'll say when a part has some kind of extreme feelings, tune into that feeling, what percent of that, say exhaustion, comes from your childhood or before you were 20. And then we put that percent in a container and then the manager can manage better.

Aníbal: Oh wow.

Joanne: So different things like that.

Lexi: Thank you. It seems like you're offering them some possibility too. Instead of having to immediately and reactively employ their strategy in this rigid way, all or nothing, this possibility, let us experiment with a little bit of flexibility. See if that could be okay. Imagine that could provide some relief.

Joanne: And that it's also with that belief, it's like you have this belief that you're gonna get beaten if you don't or something horrible is gonna happen. And I might ask them, what's that look like? You know, because they'll say, oh I have to, I have to do this. Okay, but what would it look like if you didn't do it? And, you know. And then what's that fear like? Or how old does it feel that you have to do it? Well? Okay, so maybe that have to also belongs to the past or some of that have to, you know, it's good to be somebody who helps people. You have to help people differentiate too. I'm a helpful kind of person, but you have to have limits on it. I tell clients, I'm like, you know, it's like a gas station. If the gas doesn't get replenished, nobody can fill their car. If you keep helping, helping, helping, you're not gonna be able to help people because you'll run empty.

Lexi: Slightly different direction here. I was wondering, you know, so for clients with DID, you were kind of alluding to this before, they don't initially have access to Self. It can take a very long time to get access to Self. So, for a long time in IFS, at least, we're using Direct Access so we're interacting directly with each part as it presents itself in sessions. So, in your experience, how does access to Self finally starts to come about in these systems? What allows that to happen? You know, any advice on facilitating that process?

Joanne: I mostly don't talk about Self right away, but when I'm sitting with someone, I'm certainly get myself in Self. But this gives me a couple more answers to your previous question of what's different about IFS. So, in preparation for sessions, I get into Self or as much Self-energy as I can connect to. And then I sit in sessions and I feel confident that if somebody's working with me that they can get better. And so, energetically I try to fill the room with a quiet confidence, not some kind of, oh I can help you because, you know, a client who's grown up with hopelessness is gonna think that's completely bogus. So, I don't say that. And how do I know I can help? And, you know, that's just, or I understand that's another line that is not a good line to use because how the heck do you understand? I say to my clients, I'm trying to understand, or I said to somebody who is like so depressed and suicidal and she said, do you understand? And I said, I'll tell you what I'm doing. I think about the day I was the most depressed. I multiply it a bunch of times and when I tune into that I feel like I get close to understanding just how awful you feel right now. And, you know, I think that I didn't grow up that way and even if I did grow up in one of those really super difficult families, they're all different. So how am I gonna be able to understand? You know, your questions are so interesting. It makes me think of all these different things. So, I'm sorry if I'm getting lost in them.

Aníbal: That's a good thing. That's a good thing to get lost.

Lexi: Yeah, Self emerging in these systems.

Joanne: So, Self pulls for Self. So, I figure if I'm in self, I'm pulling for Self of my client. And when I'm working with people, I'm always thinking about all the parts. So, I'm pulling for Self-energy in all the parts. Because parts also have Self-energy and standard working with dissociative disorder way pre-IFS is helping parts with internal communication and compassion and you know, coordinating their efforts. Not in a rigid kind of way because you get some parts who are willing to work together and other parts who are like, fuck you, I'm not gonna work with you. And that's a quote. I'm not trying to just use bad language, I'm just...

Lexi: Oh no, I've heard that.

Joanne: I did have a couple of nuns walk out of a conference once because I was quoting a teenage with parts and said fuck you. And they were offended. So...

Aníbal: It happens.

Lexi: What happens is what happens though? It's what they say.

Joanne: It's what happens. And I think, you know, I think if we're gonna sit with people like this, we have to be able to sit with what they're talking about. But in any case, I work on parts developing Self-energy and I don't think of all the attributes of Self, I think of curiosity and compassion. But even before curiosity and compassion, these would be some of my prelist of C’s would be identifying, noticing that a part is there. So, whoever is coming into therapy who's mostly a manager, I want the manager to notice that there's a child part there that they may hate and want to get rid of. But just to notice. And sometimes the first connection, say that I have come up with to use with some people who really don't want it. I mean they're parts have caused huge problems for their whole life. And then I'm like, no, you can't get rid of them. You've been trying to do that for years. Let's try it my way. You know, we have to try something different here and you can't get rid of them, so let's try to work with them. I hate that part. I'm not talking to that part. And I'd say, well tell that part that you're working with me and I'm telling you that to heal you have to get to know the parts. And so, one of my clients said, her translation of that was that fucking bitch Joanne says, I have to get to know you and have compassion about you, but I hate you and want to get rid of you. But I'm stuck working with Joanne. So, I guess we'll be doing that at some point, but not now.

Aníbal: So amazing that one.

Joanne: Hey, it's sometimes where you have to start. And that was a good starting point. That part acknowledged that there was a child part that she didn't like. That's honest. I've also had clients come in and say, I have compassion for all my parts. And I'm like, yeah. Oh god, what part is that? Yes, that's an IFS manager part. But you have to start where they are. And so that was where, you know, that message and while that woman was saying that to this child part, I'm saying to the child part, I'm not gonna forget about you either and I know you're important. And we'll be able to work with you, but we can't yet. We will.

Lexi: And so that's like you were talking about before, working safely with that first layer of parts.

Joanne: Yep.

Lexi: But holding those other ones are there and that you intend...

Joanne: Well this might be a part in that first layer. I mean just because it's the first layer doesn't mean they all want to work together. You know, most of the time in these childhoods it's like, I mean their parents really seem to be out to annihilate their kids and if they didn't have dissociative disorders, they would just be obliterated.

Aníbal: Absolutely, yes.

Joanne: Yes. So, they can't afford to know their parts sometimes and they can't afford to let anybody else know about them. They can't afford to let the perpetrators know about them; the public know about them. So, these parts have to be very walled off.

Lexi: That's in some way kind of related to what I wanted to ask you next, because I've heard Dick and others say this, and I have seen this too in my own experience with clients with very severe trauma histories, that when they finally do start to access some Self, it can actually be a scary situation for some of the protectors because when the client was younger, when they were embedded in that abusive system, when they would display characteristics of Self, you know, courage, confidence, and even compassion, it could be activating to the people who are abusing them and could result in more abuse. So, in these systems protective parts can be uncomfortable with Self starting to actually reemerge and could react strongly to it. So, I'm wondering if you've seen that to be the case and how do you handle it.

Joanne: Yeah, it can be terrifying, you know, and it depends on the abuse history, you know, say it depends also, I mean on regular abuse histories, regular bad abuse histories and sadistic abuse histories, if you're working with somebody with a sadistic abuse history, the more they feel like you know them, the more terrified they are. Because sadists get to know their victims, so they know how to hurt them more. So, if I get to know somebody with a sadistic abuse history, it's because then I have power to hurt them, even worse than they've ever been hurt. So, I mean, I think people feeling a little bit of caring, which is why you don't want to show feelings in an intense way. Oh, I'm really sorry that happened to you. No, you don't want to say that. I care about you so much. You know, that can be very scary. So, yeah. And I have plenty of things that clients have told me about, you know, things that they did. One of my clients was practicing some kind of instrument and her father came home drunk, took the instrument, smashed it against the wall and hit her. You know, she's by herself practicing her musical instrument. I mean, how bad is that? But parents can't always handle that. And you know, it can be little things and then they stop. And one of the things that I think is tricky is that children start to learn when they're born, and parents teach them these things before they have memory. And so, I have clients who say I was born bad. Well, why did they think that? They think because as soon as they were born, they started getting messages that they're bad, everybody else is good, they're bad and that's why they're being punished. Or, you know, you're a happy baby and you get slapped or you get slapped for laughing, you stop laughing. You stop. I have a client who said when she was three, she wanted to tell her mother something. She told her mother something. She never told her mother anything again. Because her mother was so angry,

Aníbal: So sad.

Joanne: So yeah, getting into Self can be really difficult and it takes some psychoed and permission. And then, okay, so I'll talk a little bit about, I think in IFS, it's called retrieval, in trauma world it's called orienting to the present.

Aníbal: Yes.

Joanne: Because parts really get stuck in the past and other parts kind of grow up and are more or less centered in the present. And I think of it simply as, I think I use this example in my book, you know, sometimes, well someone's being raped every night, how do they go to school the next day? You know, you think about how traumatic it is to be raped once it's, you know, it's horrible. But these kids have to learn how to manage that. And you manage it by having a part who handles that and a part who handles going to kindergarten and socializes and learns. And the adaptive thing is that that part whose learns grows up and then you know, at some point has enough symptoms that they go into therapy and hopefully get a therapist who can help them start to recognize that there are terribly traumatized parts there who need healing. So, I work on helping parts come into the present and on orienting them to the present. So, one thing that I might orient parts to is that their parents are dead but, or old or live in a different state and until the traumatic material is processed, they slide back into that. But it's easier to get them back into the present. You seem like you have some experience with that Lexi.

Lexi: Oh, oh my gosh, this is all resonating so much. So much. Yeah. Yes. And I was thinking in particular of one client with a very sadistic abuse history where anytime she would show any compassion toward anyone, another person, an animal, whatever the object of her compassion was would be destroyed or severely hurt. And so she, that aspect of herself when it started to finally emerge in the therapy where she started to actually feel compassion from Self toward her parts, it alarmed her protectors who wanted to stamp that out again because anyone you show that to would be destroyed. And so it took just what you're saying, like it took, you know, some psychoeducation, some updating of the parts, what is the situation now, where are the parents now, all of that, so that the part could experiment with maybe it could be okay to allow some of this compassion to emerge. Maybe it would be safe now, it wasn't safe then, but boy was that a long process and it did involve everything you're saying. So, I was just appreciating your answer there.

Joanne: Well and then you get the... one client had moved out of state and she was about 95% done and she'd come back when there was something coming up, some traumatic thing. And so, she came back, this was the last last and it was such a confusing session. I was so mixed up. And we finally figured out that her father had told her that when she was happy and was married and had pets and a really good job, then he would come and get her.

Aníbal: Oh.

Lexi: Wow.

Joanne: Oh my god, was that a confusing session? And that came out when we thought everything was done. And so yeah, there can be these lurking things that you just don't know about. I think the backlash as sort of, there's some kind of more of a mistake or something that's more evident, but things like this can be just deeply disassociated. Or the woman who thought that, you know, because there was a telephone in my office, her parents were hearing everything we said.

Aníbal: Wow. Yes.

Joanne: So, I mean those are the more complicated people. But you know, for them I'll also say, so how much fear do you feel about that? And how much of that fear comes from your childhood? Let's put that amount of fear in a container so we can just deal with what's left.

Aníbal: Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Joanne, you say your book will help readers to improve the ability to recognize and use clients innate trance abilities and to enhance the use and impact of IFS. Can you say more on these innate trance abilities and how to enhance them?

Joanne: I think that's another thing I actually just heard from someone, I'm not sure if it's true, but that Dick said there is hypnosis in IFS, but previously he had said there was no, nothing hypnotic about IFS. But people, you know, when people are being abused for one, what trance and hypnosis is the formal use of trance. So, you put someone in trance by focusing their concentration. So, pain focuses concentration, somebody who's hurting you has you in trance because you're completely focused on. One analogy is it's if you're walking through a garden and a tiger suddenly springs at you, you stop looking at the flowers, you're just focusing on the tiger that gives you the best shot at a living through it. But it's focus concentration is what trance is, and you block everything else out. So, you end up with people who have quite a, the thought is we're all born with the ability to go into trance. And that in some childhoods people lose that ability more or less. And in some childhoods it's reinforced. Unfortunately, child abuse situations tends to reinforce it. Also, dissociation’s basically a trance state. You know, it's, how else do you have dissociated parts were locked in the past?

Aníbal: You get focused.

Joanne: Yeah. And then there's normal trance states. I mean if you think about a time when you've been really like engrossed in reading a book. Like if I'm reading something that's really interesting, my husband might have to tap me on the shoulder or you know, there's a shift. So, you know, we're often in different kind of trance states as we go through our daily life. The way that I help, I identify people having, well just part switching or being stuck in one part versus another part. I mean, that's both a symptom, but it can be helpful. Like the example I gave earlier of somebody goes to a job interview, you want the child part stuck in, you know, stuck somewhere and protected by maybe a dissociative wall. So, I'm just helping them use it. Or they're sitting in my office feeling anxious and I'm like, there's really nothing here, you know, we'll agree on. There's nothing that is scary in my office. But they're feeling anxious. And I'll just say to them, you have this ability to import feelings and right now you're importing negative feelings. So, we're gonna teach you just to flip that ability that you already have so you can import positive feelings. And that's sort of a safe space imagery process. And they're already doing it. So, if they're already doing it, they have and you identify that they're already doing it, that gives them a higher level of confidence that they can do it.

Aníbal: Yeah. Amazing.

Lexi: Right.

Joanne: And that's also then how I work with witnessing. Cause I don't want to witness a hundred percent of a pool of traumatic material. I want to put 95% of it away and see how we do with 5%.

Lexi: It's really testing the waters there and then if that goes okay, the part can bring out more of the material to be witnessed.

Joanne: Well and as that 5% or 1% gets unburdened, then the person has that much more energy and they have more confidence that they can do it. I mean a lot of people don't think they can ever look at this material because it's so traumatic and they certainly don't want to. And I'm like, yeah, I don't want to either. If there were some other way of healing, we'd be all over it. But you know, just pushing things away. We're biologically wired to heal, and you can push it away. But the analogy I like, somebody else told me this, it's the pee analogy, it's like peeing, you can hold it back but only for so long then it starts trickling out, then it wooshes. You want to use coping skills, you want to be able to, you know, notice when you have to pee and go before it wooshes. Right. That's what it's like with trauma. You can put it away, but it starts to ooze out and then you can get like massive wishes of flashbacks. And there is literature that says that if somebody's managed to avoid it all until they get much older that, you know, there's a population of people with dissociative disorders in nursing homes where they don't, they can't run around and avoid the way they used to. Their friends have died off, they're alone, the traumatic material starts coming up and they look senile or they look crazy. And it's untreated dissociative and traumatic material.

Aníbal: Ok, so interesting.

Joanne: Sometimes that looks like a better life than the suffering that some of my clients have gone through.

Lexi: That's still so, so awful.

Joanne: So awful.

Lexi: I haven't seen that literature, actually. That's interesting. I have a question, kind of along a different thread here. So, we're talking about how people with DID initially don't have that access to Self. So, you're doing that work through direct access with them. So, what have you found to be the challenges in working with young parts who are then forming direct attachment relationships with you as the therapist? If there are any challenges in that when young parts attached to you directly and any tips on navigating that?

Joanne: I mostly don't want them to detach to me, I want them to detach to the person, you know, so all the work is done with an integrative I, and by integration I'm not talking about into one, I'm talking about integrated functioning. So, and I suppose that's something else, that's a difference between what I would say and what IFS, straight IFS would say parts or parts or parts. And you never get rid of parts. I'm like nobody needs 50 baby parts. You know, my client whose 50 baby parts integrated into one stronger, more confident baby part, that wasn't a bad thing. So, I think that there is some integrating, and I think that is okay. I think it's all metaphors anyway. But I like the ones that lead to healing. So if a child part comes out or I'm doing direct access with a child part, I may ask a manager or sometimes they call it what passes for Self, but it's not really Self but it's the part who's, you know, coming to therapy mostly who signed on, who maybe has the name of the body. So, I might ask them to join us. So, I might say, just follow my voice or if I'm working with you Lexi and we were somehow doing direct access with the child part, I'd say Lexi, just follow my voice and join the two of us here. So, your part, we can, the three of us can be talking and then you know, I'll say to the child part, do you know Lexi? And sometimes they'll say, I have no idea, where am I? Who are you and where am I? And I'm like, well Lexi brought you, because I work with people who had complicated childhoods and helped them feel better. You know, people with complex trauma history, trauma histories in general are more concrete. And if I'm working with someone with a lot of really young child parts, I'm not gonna use big vocabulary. I'm gonna use vocabulary that the system can understand. And I also tend to ask little parts. I say you can communicate in pictures or in words and say it's a nonverbal child part, I might say Lexi connect with that child part and let me know what she says or tell me what images she's giving. And I had a client the other day who said, I feel so anxious. And I said, check with the child part, I think that's communication. That child part is telling you how anxious she feels. She said, now I'm exhausted. Yeah, that's information. So, the communication from the child part can be an image, a feeling, a sensation, it can be words. So, I'm, as much as I can, I'm looping through the system so that I'm not just the primary person.

Lexi: That's really helpful. And it leads kind of into my next question, which you might have a similar answer for, is if you're working with these young child parts who are blended and they're presenting and they're ready to tell their trauma story and you don't have, you know, Self to do that, Self to part witnessing. So, you're doing that witnessing and unburdening phases through direct access. Would you do the same thing here, kind of looping in through the system, having maybe a manager part bringing them into witness what the child is showing about the traumatic experience or a pattern or...

Joanne: And again, it depends on the person. You know, there may be say five child parts who were involved in a specific ugly incident. So, I may ask who needs to work on this? I'd like everyone else to go to their safe spaces and put sound and feeling proofing up. And sometimes I'll get a part that helps. There will be a part who say isn't primarily involved with work or parenting. There'll be some other part that can help out and can let me know if something's not going well and can be there to remind the child part or parts that they have coping skills and that they can say we need to stop or something's going wrong. So, I'm giving them choices and control. It's a little like a driver's ed model, you know like when you learned how to drive, the guy sitting with you, it was a guy when I did it, he had the brake but he wanted me to do as much as I could and then there was a safety valve, right? So I want to be like the back to the back and a bridge, you know, I'm always bridging to the system, working well together, which may be having some of the system go to sleep for ages, you know, which is another standard hypnotic dissociative coping skill. You know, so it's not like exiling them, it's like helping everybody go better, everything go better.

Aníbal: So amazing. Joanne, you wrote an entire chapter on counter transference and the fire drill looks as you see the fire drill as a very powerful and useful exercise. Can you say more? Why does the fire drill look to you as such an important tool?

Joanne: It's that, with IFS, you want to be in Self when you're working with people, but with people who have complex trauma histories and you know, this is what I do, complex trauma dissociation, complex dissociation. So, what I'm saying may also go for other people or other goals of disorders. There's lots of dissociation in, I mean people get diagnosed with eating disorders and this and that. Lots of dissociation in those. So, IFS says you need to be in Self, you should check for Self-energy periodically during the session. And the difference I would say is that you need to be able to let yourself slide out of Self so that you can pick up nonverbal communication from the client and then feed it back to them. So, because there's a lot of nonverbal communication in this population because you know, they were told if they told anybody they'd get the crap beat out of them. Maybe they had experiences, a lot of people told teachers and then they called up the parents and then they got punished for telling. Or the parents said to them, you tell anybody anything, this is one of my clients and somebody you love will die. I didn't realize she thought I was gonna die for 10 years because she was telling me things, barely telling me things. She is very complicated, but you need to be able to be open to nonverbal communication. And I think if you're totally in Self, you're not gonna pick up on that. You need to be able to slide out of Self, pick up things like, one time I was sitting with a client feeling incompetent, like wildly incompetent. Like why didn't I, why did I say I'd see her? Why did I think I could help her? And I suddenly realized I was picking up her feelings of incompetence. And in that case, all I did was I wrote incompetent on my pad, put a circle around it and I visualized sending it back to her. I figured if I can pick up nonverbal communication, I can send it back. And she started crying and you know, that was really important. Another client, I started feeling a lot of anxiety and I said to her, I feel like there's a lot of anxiety in the room. And she said, That's your stuff Joanne. Are you giving a talk? Are you, what's going on with you? I said, I don't think so, but I'll think about it. You know, I figured these clients had to have such long antennas. Sometimes they pick up things about me before I pick them up. So, I'm like, you could be right, I'll keep an eye on it. But then five minutes later she said, you're right, there's a part who's really anxious. And so, we accessed that because you know, I felt the anxiety and then addressed it, realized that it wasn't all mine probably and addressed it. And reenactments too, I think are just really important. You know, like when something from a client's past, reenactments aren't just the client's stuff. The sense is that, you know, there's some of our stuff, how much ever much we've worked on it and the reenactment is joint. So, I mean I had a situation with the client where we were passing back and forth the victim persecutor roles and it took a while to sort out that her mother underneath some of the very abusive ways, her mother was my mother. And it was unbelievable. Once we sorted, got it all sorted out on the table. But it was really important and there was a lot of nonverbal communication flying rant. So that's why I think it's good for us to be in Self. It's good for us to notice when we're not in Self, but I think we need to be able to slide out of Self to pick up those nonverbal communications and that that's really key.

Lexi: And so, I'm wondering, so even when you're working with this population, even with good therapy, even with when necessary, some between session support, the clients may still be in situations where their exiles are overwhelming continuously. And then these protectors in extreme roles feel the need to step up and use very dangerous strategies like starvation or self-injury suicide attempts. So if a situation does reach the point where a therapist doesn't think that the client can keep themselves safe between sessions and they need a higher level of care, do you, what do you advise in terms of finding a residential program that would actually be appropriate and helpful for this population? It's a struggle I've had in the past.

Joanne: It's a struggle. There's a dissociation listserv that's accessible through ISSTD, the ISSTD International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation website. And that's a question that I will, I go on and off that listserv and that's a question that I ask because, you know, sometimes they're really good units and then, you know, they change their program, they change their staff, and they're not so good anymore. Mostly what I tell clients is that if they're in a place where they can't, they don't have an internal ability to manage their impulses, that I want them someplace where they're have some external control until they can get the internal control back. So that could be a terrible hospital that at least is keeping an eye on them. Sometimes it might be a partial program, like, you know, a program where for two weeks they're doing DBT groups or cognitive groups. You know, I have fairly low expectations about who actually is good treating people with dissociative disorders. So, you know, mostly I'm managing people. I haven't had somebody who's been hospitalized in some years and it, you know, it's all, it's all about, which is not to say that I didn't want a couple of them hospitalized, but sometimes I don't have that much control. You know, I can call the police, I can give them someone's license plate information, but that doesn't mean they're gonna find the person and, you know, pull them over. None of my clients have suicided. But I think that's more a matter of luck. You know, Courtois said in a conference, she said there are two kinds of therapists, one's who've had clients suicide and one's who will, You know, we're working with a population who are really suicidal. We see them once or twice a week. There's a lot of things that can keep on top of that that can precipitate someone killing themselves. And it's not always, you know, I feel like I need to be competent. I need to do my job. And then what happens isn't completely under my control as much as I'm a control freak and would like it to be. You know, what I learned in grad school was that, you know, it was incompetent if somebody killed themselves, shame, shame. And I think that really does a disservice to not be saying, you know, you need to be competent, but once you're competent, hello, you don't have control over the world of what happens.

Lexi: Right.

Aníbal: Joanne, in your book, you say one thing the dissociative disorder world has not accomplished and is a huge contribution from IFS is to make working with parts accessible to many therapists who are never trained in any kind of ego state therapy. So, through IFS you say, the knowledge that we all have parts has become more normalized and even popularized in a way that many therapists have learned and are learning about the power of working with parts of the mind. You say, fortunately, this is where IFS is stepped in and made a huge contribution.  Do you find this as the major contribution to the field coming from the IFS or are there others?

Joanne: Yeah, I think that a lot of people are like, I would never work with somebody with dissociative disorders. I would never, you know, I've had a lot of colleagues say, oh no, I'm not doing that part stuff. And then suddenly IFS comes around and they're all like this part, that part, the other part. And, I do think they need to take it a level deeper. That the training's a little too superficial. As far as it goes, it's terrific. When I took IFS, you know, I'm not always that open about things. I thought the concept of Self was kind of like nice, but kind of bullshit.

Aníbal: Okay.

Joanne: But I've come around to thinking that, you know, we all have a Self. I think that's a nice contribution. And my clients, you know, the more dissociative, like, okay, we start working with parts that have Self, but I think that their capacity to be in Self rose through treatment to be able to get there. And then there's more integrated functioning and more Self presence accessible. I also love the language of IFS. I mean, I may criticize the vocabulary, but that process of saying, ask that little part to look into your eyes and look back at them and let them know how old you are. You know, the, how old you are and what your strengths and resources are. You know, I love that language and focus on where you feel that feeling and ask the part to give you some space or notice what you're feeling towards that part. And you know, I mean, I have my combat IFS mode, like I'd say to one client, look, drum up some curiosity towards these parts, or we're never getting anywhere. You know, it doesn't always look like meat and clean and squeaky IFS, but it's like, you know, I say sometimes I saw a dog with his owner on a path and that dog owner was saying, get over here right now. And the dog's like coward. And I'm like, you know, that was just not gonna fly. You can't do that with your parts. You have to have some kind of curiosity or you need to be saying, I'm scared of you, I want you to go away. But Joanne says, I have to get to know you. You know, there has to be some way of connecting, but I do like the way that IFS has of connecting and of some of the language, I think is just terrific.

Lexi: Yeah.

Joanne: And it's not like it's dissimilar, but you know, every time I learn something there's things that, you know, things that I take from it. I use a lot of the training I got in IFS in different ways.

Aníbal: Yeah. Joanne, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Lexi and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Joanne: Thank you so much.

Lexi: Thank you, Joanne.

Joanne: Obrigada.

Aníbal: Amazing.

The Essence of Healing with Art Mones 01:00:40

Today we bring an episode from  Explorations in Psychotherapy, Alexia Rothman as co-host.  We welcome Dr. Arthur Mones, a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology with over three decades of experience as a therapist, teacher, and clinical supervisor. He is on the faculty of the Adelphi University Derner Institute Postgraduate Training Program in Couples Therapy. Previously, he served as Coordinator of Marriage and Family Therapy Training in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at St. John’s University, and was a faculty member of the Long Island Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psyhchotherapy. He is an Approved Supervisor of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, and is a Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist. His publications include Transforming Troubled Children, Teens, and Their Families: An Internal Family Systems Model for Healing, and the KidsWorld Psychotherapeutic Board Game along with a Therapist’s Guide to KidsWorld. He offers Workshops and Consultation Groups on The Essence of Emotional Healing.  Today, we will focus on Art's most recent book, The Essence of Healing: A Quest for a MetaModel of the Psychotherapy of Trauma, published in 2021.

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are so happy to welcome Dr. Arthur Mones. Dr. Mones is a diplomate in clinical psychology with over three decades of experience as a therapist, teacher, and clinical supervisor. He's been on the faculty of the Adelphi University at Derner Institute postgraduate training program in couples therapy. Previously, he served as coordinator of Marriage and Family Therapy training in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at St. John's University and was a faculty member of the Long Island Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He's an approved supervisor of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and is a certified Internal Family Systems therapist. His publications include Transforming Troubled Children, Teens, and Their Families and Internal Family Systems Model for Healing and the Kids' World Psychotherapeutic Board Game, along with a therapist guide to kids' world. He offers workshops and consultation groups on the essence of emotional healing. Today we will be speaking with him about his most recent book, The Essence of Healing: A Quest for a Metamodel of the Psychotherapy of Trauma, published in 2021.

 

Alexia Rothman: So, Art, thank you for being here with us.

 

Arthur Mones: Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back Art. We met for a first talk in November 2019. Back then, we focused on your IFS writings, specifically your work with children, teens, and families reflected in your 2014 book, Transforming Troubled Children, Teens, and Their Families. We also focused on your view on IFS as a meta model in psychotherapy, and today we celebrate your 2021 new book whose title is The Essence of Healing, a Quest for a Metamodel of the Psychotherapy of Trauma. So, congratulations Art, on another great IFS inspired book and the book also inspiring IFS, I would say. Art, you have been publishing in our field for more than 25 years now, and since the very beginning of your journey as a writer and a researcher, we can see a concern with couples, families and their children. In this recent title, in our perspective an amazing historical review in the field of family therapy and beyond, you start off describing your quest for the essence of psychotherapy and a reference to a paradigm shift. So, what is this paradigm shift Art?

 

Art: Well, I would say dating back to graduate school, when I first was getting involved with psychology, I didn't quite buy into that. There were separate models of psychoanalysis, CBT behavior therapy in those days and I kept bothering my professors saying, I think there's a larger view. And they said it was kind of interesting, but here's the curriculum. So, since then, which goes back to the mid-seventies and in quest, this crazy idea that there is this wider view and a meta model basically looks at the big picture. It does it, and on one theoretical approach, and in fact, if it lands on a theoretical approach, I think it gets us into trouble. Then I found Dick, I guess the first exposure was going to Networker conferences in Washington DC and Dick was presenting and I said to myself, this resonates with what I've been looking for. And I don't think Dick was presenting it, the meta model still. Wasn't really, but I see it as just covering, you know, what the elements need to be, to accomplish healing.

 

Lexi: That's actually what I was just gonna ask you about. You have this view of IFS as a metamodel, which in my understanding was that that means it's a truly comprehensive model of psychotherapy that includes all the key elements necessary for healing. So, I was wondering if you could talk to us about some of those elements.

 

Art: Sure. I think the main element is that it makes this paradigm shift, as Aníbal was describing, from a disease model that there's something not right about the client to we have a client who is trying to adapt to what they're handed in life, which always, in my opinion, includes some level of trauma from small to large. So, that's really the big shift and that shift flows into, you know, what it is and that becomes healing.

 

Aníbal: And then the acceptance as well somehow, Art, because with the depathologizing stance it will come also the acceptance that we can feel when we practice this model, right?

 

Art: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So it shifts from what really most models tend to do, I think incorrectly, from a view of pathology to a process of depathologizing, you know, that you're not ill, you're trying to adapt to life events and it's very hard for the field, I think, to fully grasp that. And it's very hard for clients who are kind of embedded in this psychopathology to grasp it and use it to lift out of this psychopathological view of what they're struggling.

 

Aníbal: That also can hurt them, right?

 

Art: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

 

Lexi: It's so honoring of the adaptive nature of their responses to the context that they're embedded in rather than the typical model, pathologizing approach. Yeah.

 

Art: Right, right. In the past few years, I decided to challenge my myself a little bit because when I give a workshop, a class, I'd say almost always it's received enthusiastically, you know, as you've experienced with IFS, people say, that's kind of neat, but there’s a small sample of that group whom I teach or supervise who don't buy into it. So, rather than just say it fails with that group, I started to interview, like call back therapists who I work with, you know, and were teaching to and ask them what's the story? What is it that leaves you cold or leaves you unsatisfied? And I'd say the basic answer that I get is around this pathologizing piece of it where IFS doesn't work immediately, you know, great model, but it doesn't work like magic. So, these therapists tend to conclude and the therapists themselves feel that, so the therapists shift back from a hopeful, depathologizing stance into what's wrong with this client, which leads back to calling a psychiatrist, medication, you know, with kids, placing them in treatment facility, you know, those kinds of things with certainly good intentions, talented therapist, but they seem to be pulled back out of it. It was very helpful for me to get those answers because it then leads us to say, well, are we or me, you know, we being true to our nature and saying, well it really works, but it doesn't work in this case, it doesn't work in this case. So, it's something very important for us to grapple with.

 

Lexi: Yeah, I love your curiosity in investigating what their kind of opposition or their struggle was with that. And we see that a lot I think, in people who are new to the IFS model, you know, if at first they don't see it working right away in the way that they imagined or, you know, they were hopeful that it would, kind of running back to the safety of the familiar and unfortunately pathologizing models and, but what you did with these individuals is just bring that curiosity to their concerns, which is what helps when we bring that curiosity to our client systems, if something doesn't seem to be working at first, and if we can help our parts that are getting scared by that or disillusioned by that to give us the space to stay curious, then whatever's happening in the client system starts to make sense and we can work with that.

 

Art: Yeah, very well put. Very well put. Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, the challenge, as I say, would be to try to figure out why is it not working? You know, what's getting in the way.

 

Aníbal: Art, you have been speaking of IFS as a meta model, you say in one of your writings, this integrative meta model combines wisdom from psychodynamic, structural, bowenian, strategic sensory motor and solution focused models with IFS therapy. It's a model, you say, a model grounded in the traditional measures of empiricism that conceptualizes mental health and therapy that use symptoms as adaptive reactions and focus on essential aspects of healing that are consistent across modalities. You also say Darwin and Freud provide the basic foundation of what are the pillars of this metamodel presented here, the notion of adaptation and survival, the existence of the powerful undertow of early memory and experience and the existence of internal parts. What else could you say about this idea of IFS as a meta model and how does that help psychotherapy or psychotherapists this idea of a meta model?

 

Art: Well, I think it's very useful to trace back, I would say that Darwin’s work on, you know, the notion of that all species adapt to their environment is very key to all of this. So, we bring that in. I would say that, you know, the book is about the model, it's also, if you noticed, a little bit of a memoir of mind. And part of that memoir is that along with all the trainings that I've done/received, I've read tremendous amount of Darwin's works that have inspired me, and I think are directly applicable to the meta model that we're looking at.

 

Lexi: You speak often in the book of first order and second order change. And so, I was wondering if you could just maybe define those concepts and speak to what kind of change is being facilitated by IFS as a metamodel of therapy?

 

Art: Yeah, so most models promote first order change. So, there's a symptom, try to relieve it or there's a symptom, try to reduce it. And it's basically, you know, these words start to sound alike, but first order of change is basically a medical model, which can be very helpful and defining for our communication as professionals, what is it that we're dealing with, otherwise, you know, we have DSM, which we could take, you know, we could challenge, but it does help us with definitions of what we are dealing with. Second order change is really what the field of family systems brought in, which is we're not looking at solving, bringing forth the removal of symptoms. We're looking at shifting the system family that is the context to which the client is trying to adapt. So, it's a very different approach and I think a very powerful way to look at therapy.

 

Lexi: So, in that sense, even what we're doing in IFS, when we're actually bringing Self and that Self-led compassion to the parts, it's like second order change internally, we're shifting the internal context that these parts are surviving within. So, between bringing Self to the parts and then also bringing the Self-led presence of the therapist to the client and how they're held in that external context.

 

Art: That's right. I would say that the ones bringing Self to client is an example, a very powerful example of second order change. First order change would be, you know, applying self-critical managers or quick fix firefighters, all things that try to get rid of or diminish the struggles that the person has. But second order change means a whole different level of love and healing for the client. Now, you know, in some of those answers why people who didn't resonate, by therapists who didn't resonate that much, they say that not all clients receive it that way, which is true. So, you know, a really important piece of all of this is why not? Why will apply and not buy into love, right? Everybody should be able to be receptive to that. But you know, there are lots of different pieces. There are pieces, whether you're doing individual therapy, as I said, dealing with someone who's overloaded with managers or someone who's overloaded with firefighters. I would say it applies to couples work where one partner will be blaming the other partner and not seeing that they need to look at their own struggles and vulnerability and similarly with kids and parents and kids don't fit the image of what their parents expecting. Parents’ exiles themselves are getting triggered. So, it's just not so easy to say the therapist's Self is there. And then I would say more than anything else is the, I guess I would put it as what happens with what we call in our medical or first order model as personality disorders. You know, why is it so hard to treat people we label as borderline or narcissistic or, you know, we don't create such magical healings or quick anyway, magic healings. And there, I believe, we're dealing with attachment injury so that if you as a therapist are offering this loving nature which should be healing, the client who struggles with attachment injury or gets flooded by issues that they're dealing with, either past or present, kind of reject the ability to receive Self-energy.

 

Aníbal: Art, in your book you have a chapter called Working with the Meta Exile Shame, this title caught my attention. You start by quoting Brené Brown on shame and guilt when she says, “the difference between shame and guilt is the difference between I am bad, and I did something bad.” After naming exiles as our vulnerability, our container of trauma that we carried for a long time, you start to focus on shame, which you say is one of the least comfortable of exiles. So, why is shame a meta exile, you call it a meta exile and how should we work with shame?

 

Art: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that if there's a meta model of exiles and exiles are our target really for the healing, shame will be basically experienced as a diminishing of the person so that, you know, low self-esteem will get generated from it and just, you know, the absorption of messages both verbal and nonverbal. So, if a child has a sibling who's great at school and, you know, that client feels badly and shame about who they are. And same thing regarding shame with parents, friends. So, we carry shame in a very burdened way that affects everything. Plus, those of us who have been further injured by, I guess what I call it, intentional shaming. You know, not just a sibling who's good and lucky and I'm not so good, which goes throughout so many areas of life. But intentional shaming would be, you know, say a sibling who taunts the child, you know, tells them that they're inadequate in one way or another. You know, that German word Schadenfreude where one person gets pleasure from the hurting or injury of the other and very often are brought about by, as I say, siblings, peer group, anyone really. But you know, if we experience that it's very, very painful. Just very, very painful.

 

Lexi: Yeah. And all that pain then that's being held by those wounded exiles, the protectors are just not okay with that flooding our system and overwhelming us. So, in those systems that are holding so much deep shame, we see so much protector activity, which takes us back to exactly what you were saying about those who technically could be, I guess, diagnosed with personality disorders.

 

Art: That's right, that's right.

 

Lexi: Protection for good reason. They've been really wounded.

 

Art: Right. So why should I believe this therapist...

 

Lexi: Who says they care about me...Yeah.

 

Art: ...I'm good. You know, that’s basically what we're trying to convey and I do believe that that's accurate, that the person is good and has love to offer the world and all that that brings, you know, I think as you say, that would feed into the attachment injury. Shame, I think, I believe, covers all the exiles.

 

Lexi: We’re talking here today about the essence of healing, key elements required for effective psychotherapy that would promote healing. So, I'm just curious, in your view, what would healing look like? So how would we as therapists know if healing is happening for our clients, what would we notice? What might our clients notice if healing is happening?

 

Art: Yeah, very important question and observation. I would say that basically you would see a lifting of constraints regarding what they carry. So, it ends up being an unburdening through that process. By definition, in IFS, it would be a lift of constraints, then more of what we do, you know, bringing out Self. So, you know, it's not the easiest question to answer to tell you the truth, but you do see, and I'm sure you've experienced this, this greater degree of freedom with clients and you feel in the relationship, you know, but it's a really great question because it's not the easiest experiential piece to describe and create, but basically it is that freeing up.

 

Lexi: Sounds, those constraints are lifted. I guess the protectors are able to maybe come down out of their extreme roles so that they're not constraining access as much to Self and that Self-energy is more available. It seems like, you know, something I was getting from different places in your book I guess is that it is just that point when the inevitable triggers happen in life that everyone will face, it's easier for that person to come back into maybe a regulated or Self-led place. You know, when their protectors are not as reactive anymore, when their exiles are not in a burdened unhealed place, it's harder to have them become dysregulated by the triggers and easier to step back into regulation, right?

 

Art: Yeah. That whole piece, which brings us back to the personality disorders, you know, at the beginning there's the dysregulation, you know, and we'll get emergency calls and we'll get, you know, all kinds of difficulties that are reported by the client. But as we move along, they will, the client themselves will provide that regulation.

 

Lexi: Exactly. Where they can show up for their own parts who are activated by something. Yeah. Thank you.

 

Art: You're welcome.

 

Aníbal: Art, in your book, another chapter called our attention, the one you called Meditation and Healing. You quote Jon Kabat-Zinn “meditation is the only intentional systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are. Wherever you go, there you are.” Then you say “the therapy experience is like acoustic music in a heavy metal world, it is quiet. You are listened to and not talked at. We are not selling anything but peace of mind.” You say, “in the metamodel, even your disturbing symptoms are seen as well-intentioned attempts at survival, the functional hypothesis,” and beyond this, “the client is invited into a state of meditation”. So, Art, what is this role of meditation in the healing process?

 

Art: Yeah, I think just that, Aníbal. You know, for my own experience this past year going through what is now, you know, a corporate medical system that, again, with very good intentions tries to heal, but the key piece is way beyond me. All you have to do is read the front page of the newspaper and listen to MSNBC on how much clamor there is in the world and how much difficult every day, you know, we're hit and I don’t know if you do this, but I certainly do it myself. I’ve had that with clients where we’ll just take a break, take a fast from the news that keep hitting us. So, I see therapy as presenting an alternative. I also talked about the book KTBB, Kiss the Boo Boo, you know, talking about it everything we're saying today, but it's, you know, our reaching the client emotionally. I think the example in the book is the kid’s running and falls and freezes and the parent will give him a kiss. He goes immediately from dysregulated to regulated, just a shift. And one helpful thing to do is to ask your clients, is your life one where you received kiss the boo boo much? And some will say yes, some will say so, so, and there have been clients who tell me never, you know, which is sad, but there's a good number that answer that way.

 

Lexi: I was thinking when you were answering the question about the value of being in this somewhat meditative space during the therapy process. I was thinking of something I heard Cece Sykes say once, as you know, is a wonderful...

 

Art: Oh, yes.

 

Lexi: And she said like enormous things happen when you just listen inside and you were talking about how, you know, we're just barraged all the time with the news and all of these stimuli constantly. And as you're answering the question I was thinking yeah he's talking about just what a gift it is, you know, for all of that to stop for a bit and for us to turn inward and actually be able to focus inside and hear from our various parts that are suffering and struggling and need that kiss the boo boo and other kinds of attention, you know? Yeah. So, I had a question. One of your major contributions to the field has been around the concept of the functional hypothesis. So, I was wondering if you could tell us what that is and why you think it's so important to effective psychotherapy?

 

Art: Yeah, well, functional hypothesis is how the therapist can help with the observation that what the client is doing is not pathological, it's adaptive and it's really where I think centerpiece of therapy lives. So, I tell people who I work with, professionals, that's where you should place yourself, to be listening and to ask questions, you know, the key question which I call the constraint question, and it was originally put forward by Doug Breunlin, was a friend of Dick's, which is brilliant, you know, to ask what would happen if this, what would happen if that, so what would happen if you gave up the manager or the firefighter or whatever it might be, you know, and it goes for relationships too, for couples and kids. And it's a very, very key question because the history of family therapy was one where we kept looking and creating what we called paradoxical interventions, but in a lot of ways that shamed clients, you know, is there something I'm doing wrong? And happens all the time in psychoanalysis where the psychoanalyst will put forward some idea, again, meaning well, but it puts forward an idea that kind of blames the client for what's wrong. So, getting back to the functional hypothesis and constrain question, it's really very, very powerful to see how the client can begin to shift the view of it. And it's great and it got around the shaming issue.

 

Lexi: That's just what I was gonna say exactly. It's so shame reducing, and IFS just seems, I was reading, you know, in your book about the functional hypothesis and thinking, oh no wonder you have such appreciation for the IFS model. It just seems like a such a wonderful way to get at that, you know, when we're interviewing and we're connected with the protectors, getting the clients connected and asking them that constraint question, what are you afraid would happen if you didn't use these protective strategies? And then we hear their fears and you had some line in your book when you were saying when Self befriends these lifelong protectors and emotionally experiences the functional hypothesis, the adaptive survival function of such parts, then healing is well underway. And that was so powerful for me because it's one thing to intellectually get, okay these protectors are doing this because, you know, they're afraid this would happen if they didn't. But when a client is in Self to part connection and it lands with them and they emotionally experience, you know, they're in connection with other person with this part who's been using this strategy because that's the best they knew to do in the context this person was embedded in to help them survive and help them adapt to their circumstances and the client gets it from Self and the protector can feel the appreciation coming from the client. So I love that you said, just that piece about emotionally experiencing the functional hypothesis that just stuck with me even as a therapist when it lands with me on a deeper level than just a cognitive understanding of okay, this is why this protector and this person is doing this. When it actually lands with me emotionally...

 

Art: It hits the target really.

 

Lexi: Yeah, it does. You know, I was just wondering, when a therapist has developed, let's say you're working in child centered family therapy and a therapist has developed functional hypothesis, do you recommend that that's actually explicitly delivered by the therapist, let's say to the parents of the child? Or how do you recommend that happen?

 

Art: Yeah, it's a good question. I think the answer is that it varies. I think it has most potency when it comes out of questions that you ask and kids are great, you know, kids figure this out and can be guided to talk to their parents about it. But I'll listen to the capacity which sometimes changes over the course of a treatment and I might say, because the great thing about constrain question is the parent will land at a place where they say, oh, the therapist is saying that my kid is good, you know, so I'll do that too. But I think, you know, as typically would be the practice, most powerful application of IFS it would come out of questions, you know, what do you think, you know, what would happen if you did your homework, what would you be worried about? You know, things like that on a kid's level and they're graded, you know, telling me my parents give me an easier time... But that they say some other things that indicate that it's not so simple.

 

Lexi: Exactly. And that’s helpful. Thank you.

 

Aníbal: So, Art. In your book we can find a chapter called Treating patients who have done bad things. You opened the chapter with a quote that says, “every time you mistreat someone, you reveal a part of you that lacks love and needs to heal”. Then you say that “some patients in therapy experiencing the safety of the treatment relationship venture cautiously to disclose the history wherein they have physical, verbal or sexual abuse of a family member or non-family member”. How challenging can it be, Art, to welcome those clients?

 

Art: Very, it's a good way to put the question, Aníbal, it's a very big challenge. I think, or I know it's helped out my own belief system that the person is basically good and that they're dealing with emotional injury that they have suffered. So, those clients, I would say, typically are long term clients, because they have to, they hopefully will learn that I'm with them, you know, I'm not here to be punitive, I'm not here to lock them up or even many years ago when the clinic that I worked at sometimes got referrals from child protective places, it's very tricky because you as a therapist are protecting other family members. But my feeling is, and it did work to just really hang in there and bring out what I knew was loving energy, you know, and then there is the other end of the spectrum where I'll deal with people who were physically or sexually abused and can actually be able to bring out their own goodness and cultivate those parts above all else, over all these years. I'm amazed, I'm always moved. I mean physically, emotionally moved to see that people can move, shift beyond the horrible things that have happened to them. But it's very difficult.

 

Aníbal: Thank you.

 

Lexi: You were saying earlier how like in part your elements of this book that are a memoir too, and I loved so many of your stories and one in particular that was kind of delightful was when you met with Milton Erickson in 1977 and you asked him why all of his clients seemed so compliant when so many of yours were resistant. And he said, you know, he said there's no such thing as a resistant client, only a therapist who has limitations on adapting him or herself to the challenges being presented. So I was thinking, you know, in IFS when we see what other models might refer to as resistance in our clients, we understand that as the activity of the protective parts and some of those parts, you know, their job is to keep the clients safe. So sometimes they're putting up roadblocks to our therapeutic work. So, I was just curious about your thoughts on resistance in therapy.

 

Art: Yeah, I mean Milton Ericsson, I believe, also changed the paradigm when it comes to, you know, understanding what resistance is. You know, he was a hypnotist but like no other hypnotist, he lived in this therapeutic world of leaving the possibilities of clients and all the things that we're talking about. He was a kind of a kooky guy, but he was very, very gifted. So, what do I think resistance is? I think it's probably closest to what IFS calls polarization, you know, where there's a clash internally, like, could be a manager with a firefighter Aníbal, you could be speaking about couples, you see it all the time with couples where there's a clash. You know, if you would only change her my life would be easy. Basically, what they're talking about, you know, she is misaligned with who I am and guess what answer he gets? She tells him, well since you're mentioning it, you could change a few things yourself. So, but I think that resistance really is the clash of these misalignments and polarizations internally and interpersonally.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. Art, in your chapter called unburdening the residue of trauma, you refer the role of Franz Alexander's corrective emotional experience, and you also refer to the recent work of Ecker, Ticic and Hulley who proposed the therapeutic process called memory consolidation that delineates the healing process. So, Art, would you say that in this unburdening process so unique to IFS and therapeutic models based on western traditions, do you see both Franz Alexander's corrective emotional experience and memory consolidation?

 

Art: Well, I think the memory consolidation process is brilliant and really distills, you know, so much of what IFS does. I think Dick is coming around to recognize that, that it's not a competing theory at all, that it's really complimentary that they both work as a team, those processes. Yeah.

 

Lexi: We were talking before about how one of the main goals in IFS is helping clients to be able to kind of release the constraints to their Self-energy and I was wondering what you see as the qualities of an effective therapist that could help clients to facilitate the constraint release process, you know, helping their protectors to be able to open space.

 

Art: Yeah, well first of all I wouldn't so much differentiate what our process is from our clients’ process. And, as you well know, IFS training is about our training, right? You know, it's not like you go to a lecture on DBT and they give you a list of what you could do with your clients. Not that that's not helpful, but this is, you know, so different, whatever it is, six weekends of training you will come to be less constrained yourself. So, I don't think that there's much of a difference, in that process. Otherwise, I would say the two of you have it, you know, you bring the, certainly IFS talks, brings curiosity, good listening and that hard to capture but very essential tone of voice, of prosody, where the way you communicate is received very lovingly. So, you get very high checks on that.

 

Aníbal: Thank you.

 

Lexi: I was somewhat interested actually in comments you made in the book about the importance of prosody because back many years ago I did a number of years of research on nonverbal communication in the lab of Dr. Stephen Nowicki at Emory University. And primarily my research was on tone of voice. And so, it was really nice seeing that in your book that acknowledgement of the importance of tone of voice in creating safety for the client system and facilitating the healing. So, I found that interesting, I'm glad you mentioned that again.

 

Aníbal: Art, another chapter in your book that caught my attention is the one you called The Psychology of Biology. You start with quoting Chris Hodge when he says, “you can't make a difference without being different”. You say, “Psychology of biology has much to do with variation and the way in which this variation is received by parents, teachers, and peers that will lead to one sense of satisfaction with the hand that they have been dealt. What was your intention with this title, Art? The Psychology of Biology.

 

Art: You know, it comes out of so many questions by people, myself included, over the years as to whether, isn't that just a physical issue? Why are we, you know, what are we trying to do with this? And I would say, getting back to babies or even newborns, you know, when you look in the neonatal unit you see kids who are, you know, very docile. You see kids who are very active. Yeah, kids who are closing their eyes, the whole range. Not to mention brown hair, blonde hair, all kinds of stuff like that. So, I began to think that it would be helpful for therapists to keep in mind the variation among us and how that variation is received. So, a parent may be very excited, or a parent may go into an exile spin, you know, if the kid is very active and that mother or father was, you know, just not receptive to it. So, I think it's important to keep in mind to ask about, to normalize and also getting back to the issue shame, you know, how is my parent regarding me if I look like this or I look like that. Now, an important piece of it is, you know, will IFS or any therapeutic model be able to change things like ADD, which you could say is biological on some level there's, you know, it's hard sometimes to differentiate it from anxiety but, you know, just like the question that we often ask, how is that trait of your child affecting you? And it becomes a systems issue. Yeah. So, it's an important piece because very often, you'll get that question from I guess more a parent who is trying to have you change the kid. And I think it's really important to try to work with that, I don't know that I'm gonna be able to stop him from being highly active, but I can, I know I could be successful in having him feel good about what he brings, and also how hard this is for you because it's a misalignment there.

 

Lexi: I think what you're saying that's hugely important. You know, when a child presents in a certain way, whether it's because of their biology or other reasons that it's activating to parts of the parents like you were saying, then the parents, when they react from those parts that can bring shame, you know, and the child not feeling fundamentally good about who they are. So, what you're saying and helping the parents do that U-turn and notice how their child's traits land with them, working with the parts involved so that they can show up from Self and just receive and even celebrate their child. That's a game changer for the child and for the parents. And if their particular parts and parents that are reactive in some healing work is done with that, then they may just not even be as reactive down the line.

 

Art: Absolutely, that's right on target. Look, when I first became a child therapist, that's how I entered the field. You know, most parents have managers coming out like crazy to the kid and to me too. How do we stop this? I would ask myself, yeah, why are they coming to a therapist? I'm not sure I could really fully accomplish this. But when I shifted to more of a systems approach, which is the second order change, it really helps. So, when I mention something to one or both parents, like it's really hard, they present issues that are very difficult for you, for the teacher. And I would regularly go into classrooms and work with the teacher. The idea would be that, you know, it's really not a matter of our changing it but of getting the relationship into a healthy place and it makes a big difference. And what I would say is how would you feel if the goal would be to have your son feel good about himself? You know, it's a question they can't refuse, you know. It works.

 

Lexi: So, you mentioned in your book that an important link to the meaningfulness of being a therapist is treating people who are less privileged in our society. So, as individual IFS, therapy can be expensive, can be difficult to access, I'm just curious if you have any suggestions for how IFS therapy can reach those who are economically disadvantaged and don't have the resources for individual work?

 

Art: It's a big question because I think the IFS community, which has been trying hard, hasn't been that successful. I don't mean in treating once the client will come in but hasn't been that successful in recruiting therapists. We have to wonder about that. I think basically, you know, economic deprivation or you know, immigrant status or questions that lead to a powerlessness for the family. So, it kind of gets back in a similar way to what we were just talking about the psychology of biology. Where am I or you going to change that societal struggle which lands, you know, a place that can empower family, will it stay stuck? And in a lot of ways it's part of the model but it remains a bit outside of the model. Because wouldn't you say that the needs of such families are such that they need case services? So, it's very hard to focus on the IFS work. Not impossible, but if the backdrop continues to be how do we get by day to day, I think there's a need, you know, it's kind of where social work started, as a clinical entity decades ago and did well. It wasn't such a therapy model, but it was a case-oriented model and we're not doing that too well. I don't think.

 

Aníbal: Thank you, Art.

 

Lexi: Thank you

 

Aníbal: Arthur, thank you so much for being here with us today. Such a lovely talk and again, congratulations on your new book, The Essence of Healing: A Quest for a metamodel of the Psychotherapy of Trauma. And we wish this title a great, great journey ahead and it was a joy to be here with you and Lexi and we hope you can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Art: I want to thank the two of you for asking great questions. You really captured or got me to try to capture what I tried to put forward in my work. And you did a great job, Aníbal and Lexi, and the IFS Talks are just, as I said at the beginning, wonderful offerings for our community.

 

Aníbal: Thank you.

Therapeutic Relationships and Addictive Processes:Help for Managers! 37:06

Cece Sykes, LCSW is a senior trainer at the Internal Family Systems Institute with over thirty-five years of clinical experience specializing in recovery from trauma and addiction. Her chapter on treating addictive processes appears in IFS: Innovations & Elaborations, 2016). She is co-author of a new book on IFS therapy with Martha Sweezy, due out in early 2023: Treating Addictive Processes with Internal Family Systems Therapy: A Compassionate and Effective Approach for Helping People Who Soothe or Distract with Substances, Food, Gambling, Pornography, and More. Cece also developed the Heart Lessons of the Journey retreat for an on-going study of therapist narratives. She lectures and consults internationally on these and other related subjects. Cece lives and works in Chicago. 

Intercultural Competence and IFS:A Conversation with Fatimah Finney 40:19

Fatimah Finney is a serial goal-setter, lover of new ideas, and imaginative thinker.

She is a certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist and maintains a private practice serving BIPOC, young adults and people navigating workplace issues. She is a certified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and is a consultant for individuals and organizations aiming to build their capacity and skills for centering diversity equity and inclusion in their workplaces.

Prior to her counseling and consulting practice, Fatimah was an in-home therapist to children and adults and served as a director of a community mental health agency. Through her clinical leadership roles, she cultivated a strong commitment to helping therapists increase their cultural competence and clinical fluency with diverse populations. Fatimah is a new Assistant Trainer at the IFS Institute and will be teaching in the upcoming Continuity Program on Intent, Impact and Intercultural Competence.

She recharges her spirit by playing with her children, taking walks with her parts, and dabbling in creative writing.

The Gifts of our Protectors and Direct Access with Paul Neustadt 01:07:15

Paul Neustadt, MSS, LICSW, is a senior IFS Co-Lead Trainer. He also co-leads a monthly seminar for level 1 graduates focused on integrating the skills learned in level 1. He has led workshops on Self Led Parenting, the Therapeutic Relationship in IFS, Direct Access: An Essential Skill of IFS, IFS and Climate Change, and The Gifts of Our Exiles.

For 17 years Paul was director of a community counseling and prevention program for children, adolescents, and their families. Paul has also worked in a college counseling center and community mental health center, and taught couples and family therapy in a family therapy institute and two graduate programs. In his private practice Paul now specializes in IFS consultation, both group and individual.

Paul lives with his wife and long time life partner, Barbara, and together they are delighting in being grandparents to a wonderful toddler. He has two grown children who have greatly expanded his consciousness in many ways. Paul feels most at home in nature, near water and close to trees. He enjoys kayaking and hiking and riding his bike.

As an IFS trainer, Paul creates a safe, accepting atmosphere, attends thoughtfully to group process, and ensures that all parts are welcome. He is known for his clear, down to earth, and open-hearted manner. Paul is grateful for the opportunity to share with others the things that have most transformed his own life.

Today on IFS Talks we're so happy to be welcoming back Paul Neustadt for a talk on protectors. Paul Neustadt is an IFS co-lead trainer, an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. He has a private practice in Arlington, Massachusetts, where he specializes in couples’ therapy, parent coaching and IFS consultation. For 17 years he was the director of a community counseling and prevention program for children, adolescents and families. He's taught couples and family therapy at a Family Therapy Institute and in two graduate programs. As an IFS trainer, Paul creates a safe and accepting atmosphere attending thoughtfully to group process and making sure that all parts are welcome. He teaches the IFS model with a clear down to earth approach and open-hearted manner.

Tisha Shull: Paul, thank you so much for being with us and speaking on this really interesting topic today.

Paul Neustadt: Well, thank you for that welcome Tisha. I'm very happy to be back here with the two of you.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Paul. We did two episodes together before. On the first one in 2019, we focused on Self-lead parenting. And then in May 2020, we focused on the gifts of our exiles. Two beautiful and very helpful episodes, I would say. Now you want to focus on our protectors, young as they usually are, that you say may need Explicit Direct Access for their gifts to be identified and celebrated. So, Paul, can we start off with some IFS basics? Could you share please your perspective on protectors, what are protectors, and do we really need them?

Paul: So, Aníbal, before I jump into that, I need to share something. As I was preparing for this podcast, I got in touch with a part of me who was having a concern about what I was going to be talking about, how I would be talking. This part had a concern about, I don’t know, how I would be coming across, what I would be saying. And initially it felt to me like a part with an old burden, this is a part that was afraid, ever afraid to ever take a stand in anything, ever commit myself to take any positions that could be challenged.

Aníbal: Okay.

Paul: A very young part. And where it came from is, I had an older brother who was very, very smart and used to argue a lot with my father and could be very critical. And I was very intimidated by this older brother. So, I was afraid, you know, to take strong stands. Because I was afraid of my father and I was afraid of my older brother and I was afraid that I could be challenged and criticized, and I wouldn't be able to defend myself. So, initially I thought, okay, so here's this part who was coming up and afraid. Like, I'm going to say things that could be challenged, but then I said, wait a minute, let me listen to this. Maybe there's something more here. Maybe there's something valuable to me to listen to this part that has this concern. And as I listened to it more closely, I realized that actually this part is a protector. This part was trying to protect me from something. I realized that this part itself had a gift for me. And the gift that I got from listening to this part was that it's really worried about the power of words, the power of people making statements and the impossible impact that those statements could have on people, particularly when they come from like an authority figure. And, you know, when they come from teachers and how people try to fit themselves into someone else's teachings and particularly when they don't feel like they really fit. So, what people really need maybe is guidance to find what fits for them rather than to have to fit themselves into somebody else's teachings.

Tisha: How did this apply for you for this protector?

Paul: I guess for me, that's been something I've needed to do in my live, right? I needed to find my own way and I guess that's what I want for other people. You know. So, what I want to communicate is that I'm going to be sharing today my way, what I found has worked for me, and I want people as they are listening, to say, okay, well, this is what worked for Paul, you know, and maybe it won't work for you. So, I guess what I want for people is when someone teaches a framework, to use that framework as guidance, but ultimately to find your own way within that guidance. So, I just want, this was just an example of listening to a protector and listening deeply, like, what's the gift here for me as I've listened deeply to this part.

Aníbal: Well illustrated. So, coming to your perspective, what is your perspective on protectors?

Paul: Well, so Dick has said that all of our parts are sacred beings, and I take that very seriously. And in fact, I see myself as a spiritual being, living in a human body. And I feel like I have a soul who has incarnated into this life and to this human life. And my soul expresses itself through my parts, through how I live my life, through my parts, all my parts. So, all of my parts have a role in how I live my life, and I need all of them. And, because of the nature of life, parts have to take on certain roles and some of them are extreme roles, right? So, what we've learned in the IFS model, which makes sense to me is that protectors had to take on protective roles. They had to protect us from the dangers of life. And so, they either had to help us survive, to help us just survive the dangers of life or to manage our life. So, protectors include firefighters or managers, right? So, they either had to, like in a crisis, to jump in and manage, you know, handle a crisis situation or manage our life ongoing, on a daily basis. But, you know, they help us, they protect us from dangers, from bad things happening and they manage us so that we can survive and live our lives. So, absolutely we could not live without these parts of ourselves.

Aníbal: Beautiful. So, we really need them.

Paul: Yeah. And, we tend to become more aware of them when they're triggered. And if they're not triggered, then maybe we're not so aware of them when they are unburdened from their more extreme roles and, you know, protectors just like exiles have a more natural role to play. And just like we want to liberate exiles from their burdens, we really want to liberate protectors from their burdens, burden of those extreme roles that they're playing and whatever other burden they're carrying and help them return to their true nature. And whether they want to continue to play a role or not, and they can just be kind of integrated into the harmony of our being. And so, when that happens, we might not be that aware of them anymore because they're just kind of naturally playing their role.

Aníbal: Paul, you say that Direct Access is an underappreciated and an underutilized way of working in IFS. You also say so many IFS therapists feel like they are failing when they can't get their clients to unblend and don't realize they have such a wonderful way to work with these clients available to them. So, what is this Direct Access, and in particular Explicit Direct Access on your perspective?

Paul: Well, I think most people come out of a level one without much understanding of Direct Access and how to really how to do it. And that makes sense because, you know, our main focus is really on Insight and learning how to guide clients to go inside. And that takes a lot of time to learn that way of working. But Direct Access, I think is an essential skill. We just come out of level when we don't really know how to do it. And, inevitably, then people come out and they think the way that we do IFS is going inside. So, I teach a seminar for people who graduate from level one. And I also lead consultation groups. So, you know, a lot of people who come out of level one, feel like they are not doing IFS and feel like they're not being a good IFS therapist if they're not getting people to go inside. And so, they don't realize that there are clients who really need to be using Direct Access for periods of time. And that that's a wonderful tool, and they're still doing IFS if they're doing Direct Access.

Aníbal: Okay. So, this difficulty or underappreciation comes out of this overvaluing of Insight, as I'm hearing you.

Paul: Well, I don't think it's overvaluing of Insight. I think it's just not appreciating that there's this other way of working that is also valuable and important.

Aníbal: Okay. Makes sense. And also, maybe we are not enough trained using this tool, the Direct Access.

Paul: Yes. So, I think if people take the Deepening and Expanding level 2, there's more about Direct Access. Even there, I still don't think they get enough. So, I've taught a two-day workshop, two full days on Direct Access. I also did a seminar in Direct Access, which was four monthly meetings...

Aníbal: Beautiful

Paul: ...three hours each on Direct Access. So, I mean, I think it needs a lot of time because I think it's very challenging. And so, I think it needs time for people to really practice it and develop the skill. Just like, you know, maybe we give lots of time for the Insight in the protocol. We need to also give a lot of time for Direct Access.

Aníbal: Yeah. Yes.

Tisha: Paul, can you describe for our listeners what the difference is, what Direct Access is for people who might not know?

Paul: Sure. So, Direct Access is when the therapist is talking directly to the client's parts, rather than guiding the client from Self to talk to their own parts. And there are two kinds of Direct Access. So, Implicit Direct Access is when I, as the therapist, I'm talking to my client's parts, but I'm not naming that. I don't name that part. I just maintain that awareness to myself. Oh, my client seems to be in an angry part of them. And then I might notice, oh, they've shifted, that angry part seems to have calmed down. Now it seems they've shifted into a part who seems more guilty. I'm noticing some guilt coming up. It sounds like there's a guilty part that’s just taking them over. So, I'm noticing shifts. And now I realize, okay, now I'm talking to a different part of them. With Explicit Direct Access I name to the client, “Oh, it sounds like you're blended with this particular part of you. How about if we just let that part be blended and ask it to just talk directly to me.” So, it's an agreement that I make with the client to just let that happen and have a conversation directly with me. And, so, that makes it explicit that the client and I know and agree that this is what's happened.

Aníbal: Beautiful. And Paul, Direct Access can be helpful with any parts in our system, right?

Paul: Exactly.

Aníbal: So, be it an exile, a manager, or a firefighter. Would you recommend any adaptation of this technique as you work with different parts? Do different parts really require different Direct Access approaches?

Paul: Yeah. Great question, Aníbal. So, if I want to do Direct Access, let's say with a firefighter, firefighters are often polarized with managers. And so, oftentimes in order to do Direct Access with a firefighter, I probably need to get permission from a protector. And there is a technique and unfortunately, I don't remember who I’ve learned this from. I wish I could give credit to the trainer who I learned this approach from, but I just don't remember. You use three chairs, you know, you have the client in three different chairs. So, there’s this chair that they're sitting in, and then there's a chair on either side of them. And so, you have the polarized parts sitting, you know, so what you do is you take turns doing Direct Access with the two different polarized parts. So, you might have them switch to the chair on their right to be, let's say the manager, and then switch to the chair on the left to be the firefighter. And you take turns doing Explicit Direct Access with the manager and the firefighter.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Paul: You're doing a polarization Direct Access.

Aníbal: Amazing.

Paul: Yeah. That would be so valuable because you’re, as the therapist, bringing your Self, your curiosity, your compassion to these parts that get really locked in place.

Paul: Yes. Yeah. And so, you might do that when the client doesn't have enough Self-energy to do that work themselves. And so, you start that process for them, by talking with those two parts that are so polarized. And then you bring the client's Self in as part of the process. So, I might start by, you know, let's say I start with a manager and I do some explicit Direct Access with a manager and then I bring in the client's Self and see if the client's Self is able to then respond to the manager and then I'll say, “okay, now can we talk with the firefighter part?” So, then we'll bring the firefighter part in, and I'll talk to the firefighter part, then l’ll come back to the client's Self, ask “okay, now can you respond to the firefighter?” And then we'll see, can we bring both firefighter and manager back together? Can we have a three-way conversation?

Aníbal: Beautiful. And if it's an exile, if you do Direct Accessed to an exile, it’s such a different approach, right?

Paul: So, if an exile has gotten blended, I want to just start talking to the exile. And so, it depends. Sometimes I'm just going to start talking to the client, sometimes l’ll say, “okay, so this is a very young part of you, I'm just going to start talking to this young part of you.” And my goal in that case, because, at that point, my assumption is that that young part is back in the past. So, I'm talking to a young part who is in some situation in the past. They're not in the present moment. They've been suddenly transported back into the past. And so, my goal at that point is to help them overcome the sense that they're alone in the past, they're all by themselves in some horrible situation, they're all alone. And so, my goal then is to help them feel that I'm there with them and to help them feel my presence with them, to help them feel seen and understood. And, you know, “you're not alone there, I'm here, right here with you and I understand, feel me with you, let me know what you’re experiencing, what's going on?” So, I want them to feel me, you know, right there connecting with them, understanding what they're experiencing. So, once I have that connection with them, once they feel felt by me, understood by me, you know, then I will say, “I'm feeling like you're calming down a little bit.”

Aníbal: Yes.

Paul: They're calming down because there's somebody there with them. Then I’ll say, “would you like to have this connection with...” So, say I'm talking to you Aníbal... I'll say, “would you like to have this connection with Aníbal as well?”

Aníbal: Yeah. So, you bring the client’s Self as well.

Paul: Yeah. “Because I can't always be with you, but Aníbal could, would you like to be able to have this same kind of connection with Aníbal? Can we make space for Aníbal to be here...? You know, we can have your grown-up Self here with you as well. So, can we do that? Can we bring Aníbal here? Can we make space for him to be here with you? Would you like that?” And then, so I'll try then to bring you back to be with this little exile of yours.

Aníbal: Coming back to the gifts of protectors, coming back to the protectors, you say you have been helping clients identify the gifts of the protectors on the road to identifying the gifts of their exiles and finding that this is a powerful way to connect with the protectors and help them transform into allies. So, what are those gifts of the protectors and how do you help clients identify those gifts?

Paul: Yeah. So, I want to give you a few examples first. So, I guess I want to give you an example, you know, I shared one example and I want to tell you another one.

Aníbal: Thank you.

Paul: So, one of my exiles was a really young part who became really frozen in response to my father's unpredictable rages, really scary, frightening rages. And I had a really hard time accessing this part of me. He was so frozen, was really hard to access him, but, you know, with a lot of patience, I was finally getting some connection, but then something happened. One of the things that I was doing in trainings was we would do a demo in the training with my other co-lead trainer. We wanted to show people the whole unburdening process. So, one of us would be the client and, you know, one of us would be the therapist and my colleague and I were having an issue with that point. It was just not a good time for me to be the client at that point, because we were in the middle of an issue between us.

Aníbal: It happens, yes.

Paul: And I also, usually when we would do that, I would pick an exile who I had already unburdened. So, the exile had already been unburdened and so, I could ask the exile, you know, since you've already had been unburdened, would this be okay to go through it again? But this exile had not yet been fully unburdened. But it was kind of very up for me, this exile. So, I thought, some part of me thought... Because the exile is very alive in this moment, maybe this would be a good time to do it in this training. So, I went ahead and did this demo and it didn't go well.

Aníbal: In what way?

Paul: Well, I felt like the person being my therapist wasn't doing a good job of being attuned to what was happening with this exile. And I think it was because we were not in a good place with each other.

Aníbal: Yeah. It makes sense.

Paul: And so, it didn't work well because that person and I were not in a good place.

Aníbal: There was not enough Self.

Paul: [inaudible]...fear with the attunement. So, it was really bad judgment on my part. Anyway. So, later when I went back to reconnect with this exile, I met up with a protector who was furious with me. The protector would not let me near this frozen part. The protector said to me, “you know, you betrayed this young frozen part, you should never have done this.” Well, of course this protector was right. It was right. It was a totally stupid thing for me to do. It was poor judgment. And so, this protector was confronting me on my poor judgment. And it told me that I would have to repair this rupture, I would have to reconnect every day, I'd have to like every day sit with the protector and the exile consistently for a long period of time, I'd have to show up every day for a long period of time to prove that I was trustworthy in order to repair this. So, consistency had been a problem for me, like really showing up every day consistently for myself. So, this protector was doing two things. One, was forcing me to identify the part of me that had such bad judgment. The part of me that was willing to betray myself. So, I had to identify that part and work with it. And then secondly, it was pushing me to be consistent when that had been an issue for me.

Aníbal: There's the wisdom.

Tisha: Yeah.

Paul: So, wow. Two amazing things that this protector got me to do that were so important in my system.

Aníbal: So, protectors are not always wrong, right?

Paul: This was a very helpful protector.

Aníbal: Yes.

Paul: I am so grateful for that protector because he confronted me in a very helpful way.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Paul: I ended up calling that protector my clear seeing truth-teller.

Aníbal: Say it again, please.

Paul: Clear seeing... It saw things very clearly and it told me the truth.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Paul: Yeah. It was telling me the truth about myself.

Aníbal: That's the gift

Paul: And saw things clearly and got me to do work that I needed to do. It got me to repair a rupture and I was able to reconnect with that young exile.

Aníbal: So here we are when protectors are right.

Tisha: I love that too, because consistency in the relationship really is essential to build trust. And it was asking you for that.

Paul: Yeah.

Aníbal: You also say, then you recruit them, the protectors, to form an inner healing circle. What is this healing circle and how do we get there?

Paul: So that's a great question. Can I give you two more examples of gifts of protectors and then I want to talk about the healing circle.

Aníbal: Oh, wonderful.

Paul: So, I had a client who had a part that when he was working with a client would be very critical of him and tell him he was full of...” you’re bullshitting, you're not...” You know, it was a part that was really critical of him. And it was critical of the client, critical of him, the client's bullshitting you, you're bullshitting the client. It was a really critical part. And he felt really bad. You know, his initial reaction was to feel bad about himself. Like, “I'm such a bad therapist.” It was just taking to heart what this inner critic part was... Because it was, you know, just telling you're just bullshitting every... You know. So, I encouraged him to really listen to this part and take it seriously. “What does this part mean when it says you're bullshitting?” And when he listens more clearly, what he got was that this part was telling him, “you're abandoning yourself. You're not being true to yourself.” And he said, “well, it's true, I am abandoning myself. I’m not being true to myself.”

Aníbal: So much wisdom on our protectors, right?

Paul: So, another example, if you go deeper, if you listen more deeply sometimes to what a protector is saying, what's at the heart of this. Let me go deeper. What's at the root of what this protector is saying here. Sometimes there's some wisdom there, there's something important there. And so, there was a truth there in what this protector was saying that was really important for this client. Another client... These were both therapists who were coming to me for consultation. So, this is someone who had a part who was judging her pretty harshly. And then when she listened to this part really deeply again, what she found out was this part was letting her know what her learning edge was. What'd she had to be working on both with a client and in her own life. And she said she felt like the part was seeing her really accurately. So anyway, back to your question about the healing circle.

Aníbal: The healing circle.

Paul: So, in my mind, a healing circle is a group in which the members share an intention to support the healing of the members. By directing loving, healing energies, towards that purpose, towards the healing of the members. And often they take turns having one member be the focus of that healing energy.

Aníbal: Paul, when you say healing energy, you could say the Self in those parts?

Paul: Yes. So, from an IFS perspective, we could say Self-energy. So, over 20 years ago, 23 years ago, when my sister was dying of cancer, she was part of a Sufi healing circle. So, I accompanied her one day to this healing circle and I sat in the middle of the healing circle with her.

Tisha: Beautiful.

Paul: It was palpable. You could feel the energy being directed. They were directing it towards me as well.

Aníbal: So amazing.

Paul: And it was palpable, you could feel it, you could feel the energy that people were directing towards us.

Aníbal: So here you are using all the Self present in the system for healing purpose.

Paul: You know, in level one trainings, when people do a demo, we encourage people to send Self-energy to the client or the client and the therapist in the middle. You could say that's a healing circle.

Aníbal: Oh yeah.

Paul: Because, our intention is to surround everyone who’s doing that demo with Self-energy.

Tisha: It feels like that the demos are so profound in that way.

Paul: Yeah.

Aníbal: So, protectors can be present as well.

Paul: Yes. So, I remember being in the middle of one of those demos and yeah, it's a very powerful feeling to be in the middle of that energy. I take seriously that protectors also have Self-energy and they can access Self-energy. And so my goal is to not just invite them to move to the side, not just to say, can you get out of our way, but to recruit them to become an inner healing circle so that they're using their energy, they're accessing Self-energy, their Self-energy, and adding to the Self-energy internally to support the exile and support healing the exile.

Aníbal: Paul, do you think it's possible that spending time with protectors that they can start healing before you get into the exiles work?

Paul: Yeah. I believe that the protectors begin to transform. I think that's already healing. Yeah. I wonder if we could, you know, one of the best ways to learn this is to illustrate it. And so, I wonder if we could take a little time to do that.

Tisha: Yeah, let's do a little bit of a demo. I know we talked about that beforehand and I'm happy to volunteer.

Paul: Okay. So, Tisha, do you have a protective part of you in mind?

Tisha: Yeah, I do. It's a critic similar to the one you described with your therapist that you're doing consultation with. I have a critic that I've been curious about slash annoyed with lately. So, that's the one that I'm kind of bringing to this.

Paul: Okay, great. So, would you be okay with that part talking directly with me?

Tisha: Yeah. I think there's some parts that are concerned about that. This critic can be quite mean. And I think there's some parts, it feels like there's parts that are worried that people will think that I'm as mean as this critic is.

Paul: So, what do those parts need around doing this demo around that concern?

Tisha: Well, those parts sort of, they almost want a governor on the critic, but then another part's like that wouldn't be very authentic if I limited the critic's ability to say and do what it does, I guess it feels okay to speak for the parts that are worried. And yeah, we can see how it goes.

Paul: Okay. Well, I understand. I just want to say, I want to acknowledge the parts that have that concern. Yeah, it makes sense to me they would be worried about what will, you know, people hear a mean part of me, will people judge me for that meanness? Yeah. I can understand that concern.

Tisha: Yeah. The critic internally is, and this is another part talking, but it says things to me that I would never say. And that brings up sadness as I say that.

Paul: Yeah. I guess what I want to say to you, Tisha, is I'm imagining listeners who have mean critics who might be listening and be relieved to know that they're not the only ones with a mean critic.

Tisha: Yeah, no, it's true. It does feel like a universal part. Really, I know, I've seen so many critics in clients, but there are parts that always feel like, you know, mine's the worst or the most...

Paul: Yeah. Well, anything else they need in order to be okay with doing this?

Tisha: I guess just to say that it might be vulnerable, and I have other parts that have some feelings, like if I were to cry or to be sad. I have some other parts that feel like that's feeling. Yeah. There’re some parts up, but also a real willingness and curiosity to have you do some Direct Access with this critic.

Paul: It could be vulnerable. Yeah. Well, so if parts start to get concerned, I'm open to, you know, anything that they're needing to let us know at some point.

Tisha: Yeah. So, we can pace it and...

Paul: Yes. And they can interrupt you if they need to.

Tisha: Perfect.

Paul: Okay. So just check and see if they're okay to go ahead.

Tisha: Yeah. It feels all right. As I'm preparing to get in touch with the critic and let it speak, the part that's concerned is like, okay, I warned you.

Paul: Okay. So, the part that Tisha’s calling the critic, are you there? Are you willing to speak with me?

Tisha: Yeah. I’m right here.

Paul: Yeah. And would you like to talk to me?

Tisha: Sure. Yeah. I'm open to that.

Paul: I would really like to get to know you and I'd like to know anything that you would like me to hear and maybe things that... I'm wondering, maybe things that would be good for Tisha to hear out loud about you and how you're trying to help her.

Tisha: Yeah. I want you to know that I kind of take over her body, really try to heighten its sensation and intensity. I give her a bit of a, you know, like a nervous edge so that she can pay attention.

Paul: Okay. So, you're trying to get her to really pay attention.

Tisha: Oh yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Paul: Can you say more about that? How come that's so important that you're trying to get her to pay attention.

Tisha: I'm trying to heighten the details within the movements of her body and kind of what she does, mostly physically, so that she won't screw up.

Paul: Yeah. Okay.

Tisha: But she screws up anyway, especially when I'm present. She doesn't do what I want her to do.

Paul: Ok. So, in spite of your efforts, she screws up. And it sounds like you are almost saying like, as hard as I try, it sounds like she screws up even more, the harder I try, the more she screws up almost?

Tisha: Yeah. You got it. It's true. Yeah. I'm here to help her be acute and to achieve perfection and she just fails and flops and... Yeah. She's kind of a flop.

Paul: Wow. And what made you decide you had to work with her body? You know, like get her to be so... Like this nervous energy and detailed...Like, what made you decide you had to do that, do it that way?

Tisha: That's really where I come on board when she’s trying to do physical things, like dance or climb. And she's always pushing the envelope of these new physical tasks and she's trying really hard. So, I come in and assert that she does well and does better, but she's constantly not good at the thing she's trying.

Paul: Okay. So, what is it that you really want for her? What do you most want for her?

Tisha: I want her to... I was going to say be the best, but that doesn't feel right, but I want her to not suck.

Paul: Yeah. What are you concerned happens when she sucks?

Tisha: Well, she'll be judged and maybe it'll feel like she'll get in trouble. Excluded, she’ll be kicked out.

Paul: How long have you had this job for her?

Tisha: Feels like late elementary school.

Paul: Yeah. So, was there a part of her, was she getting excluded and kicked out and judged in late elementary school?

Tisha: Yeah. I can remember a scene where that was... Yeah, where I kind of came in and took over her body to make her more... I tried to protect her. I tried to push her and motivate her.

Paul: Yeah. Wow. So, you've had this job ever since then, working really hard to try to push her and motivate her. Yeah.

Tisha: And yeah, I'm not, I don't really appreciate her actually

Paul: You don’t appreciate her.

Tisha: No.

Paul: Say more.

Tisha: Yeah. She just works against me, works against herself.

Paul: Is there a particular part of her that you're concerned about that works against you and herself?

Tisha: Yeah. It's the part that gives up.

Paul: Yeah. There's a part of her who gives up.

Tisha: Yeah.

Paul: Tell me about that part of her who gives up.

Tisha: Yes. Sometimes when she's trying to, I don't know, climb a rock wall or, you know, she just reaches a point where... Or she's dancing in front of someone, this part comes in and is like, “just forget it, it's not worth it, don't try.”

Paul: And then what do you do when that part comes in?

Tisha: I usually try to take over her body, try to give her some heightened intensity. I try to kind of shame her and to keeping on going.

Paul: How does that work?

Tisha: Not great. Usually the giving up wins and yeah, she's sort of known for not completing things. Not following through. But if it were up to me, she would push and push through. Yeah.

Paul: So, I'm wondering how would it be if we could help Tisha work with that part of her, the part who gives up, would you like it if Tisha could work with that part of her?

Tisha: Oh yeah, definitely. Especially if it would just stop giving up.

Paul: Well, I don’t know if we could, you know, I don't know what would happen, but it sounds like a different part of her that we might be able to... So, one of the things I'm appreciating is you've maybe helped her already identify a different part that. That might be helpful for her to be aware of that other part. So, I'm just appreciating you for that. And it sounds like, do you feel like Tisha appreciates you at all?

Tisha: It feels like in this moment, Paul, of talking to you, there's a little bit of appreciation, understanding and space that I'm getting, but in general, no.

Paul: Yeah. So, I'm guessing you have some gifts for her, and I'm wondering what would you feel are your gifts for Tisha?

Tisha: I really bring her into her body and it's a little bit of a mental mind body where, you know, there's my voice is critiquing the body, but I do drop her in and make her aware of her feet and her fingers. And, another gift that I have is that I really don't want her to get in trouble or fail. And yeah, I really try to keep her aware of all the things that could make her feel [inaudible].

Paul: So, it sounds like you also have a sensitivity to the pain of failing, you know, like you jumped in when she was going through such a hard time, that's when you took on your job. So, I'm feeling like you have this sensitivity to those feelings.

Tisha: That feels true. Yeah.

Paul: What it might be like if you were able to help her be strong enough to bear those feelings, because that's part of life, it's part of life to have feelings like that. And you have a lot of energy and strength. I'm just aware of how strong you are. You push. All that pushing and energy you have. What if you could use all that energy and strength to help her bear some of those feelings to be strong enough to bear them now that she's grown up. So, she wouldn't have to give up. Right? Because you have the strength, you have all this strength. What if that's one of your gifts?

Tisha: Yeah. It feels hopeful. That feels hopeful.

Paul: And the part of you that you're reacting to, you know, this part of her that suffered in elementary school, how would it be if we could go back and rescue that part that did feel so terrible? How would you like that?

Tisha: Yeah, it feels like she needs it. It also feels a little scary.

Paul: Would you like to help with that?

Tisha: Yeah, if I can.

Paul: You could. Yeah, absolutely. You could help by being part of an inner healing circle, you could bring your energy to help be part of an inner healing circle and we could bring Tisha and me and you, and we could go back and rescue that young Tisha from that time and bring her into the present. Would you like to help us with that?

Tisha: Yeah. As you were saying all of that, like this scene of younger me is expanding in my mind.

Paul: Right. So how would it be if we could bring grown-up Tisha back and see if maybe she could appreciate you more for what you've been doing, would you like to have a better relationship with her?

Tisha: Of course. Yeah. It's really tiring for me to rip on her all the time and I have to come up with all these new ways and it's a lot of energy to take over her body.

Paul: Is there something you would rather be doing if you didn't have to rip on her?

Tisha: Yeah, I would rather, like you said, give her strength to just be more of herself, whether she's climbing or dancing or napping, just to allow her to just be where she is it all of it.

Paul: Okay. So, let's bring her back, stay close and I'll just invite her to come back. Okay. Tisha are you there?

Tisha: Yeah, I’m here.

Paul: So, I'm wondering, how do you feel towards having listened to this part of you?

Tisha: I have a really deep appreciation for how young it was and has been. Like, I feel like I have still a little bit of trepidation with it because we have a long history together, but it does feel that there's a little more openness in my heart towards it, and tenderness. There was a point in time where I realized that you were talking to it, like you would talk to a child. You know, you just kind of got on the parts level and the awareness of that really gave me enough space to think like, well, this critic is working really hard and it's got the tools of like a 12 year old who was really criticized herself. Yeah. So that was, that was really cool, Paul, thank you.

Paul: So, you know, if this was a real-life thing, I would keep working with you with this part. But does that feel like an okay place to...

Tisha: Yeah, absolutely. And I can see the exile as clear as day.

Paul: You want to just take a moment with this critic and just see if there's anything else that you need to say to it and it needs to say to you?

Tisha: I just want to let it know that I'm here with it and it just responded to me “I don't want to hurt you.”

Paul: So, Tisha, it did say that you have this part that gives up. Does that make sense to you?

Tisha: Oh yeah. It's like the critic brings me into the red and then the other parts, just like, Ugh.

Paul: Yeah. So, it's almost like there's maybe a polarization or there's some relationship between the two. Yeah.

Tisha: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. So, anything else you want to say about that demo?

Tisha: Yeah. I appreciate the time and space. You never know what's going to come up and it's always so helpful. Yeah. I think I have parts that are worried if it was a good enough example of Direct Access or I don't know, you know, there's other critics.

Paul: Yeah. I thought it was great. Aníbal, how about you? What was it like for you to witness?

Aníbal: It was so moving to see Tisha’s courage to address those strong and talented parts and such a beautiful illustration. I think it was, so I'm mostly grateful to both of you and moved with Tisha. So beautiful.

Tisha: It was really nice to be the recipient of your Direct Access work, Paul, thank you.

Paul: Yeah, you're welcome. Well, I enjoyed doing it and it just felt like, you know, maybe the best way for it to get across to people.

Tisha: You have a really, really good way of being with these parts.

Paul: Thank you. I'm aware of a part of me who really wants me to convey a couple things to people. One is that Explicit Direct Access can actually be sometimes the most skillful way to facilitate the unblending of a protective part of us. And I believe the reason for that is that it really communicates tremendous respect and appreciation for the protector. It helps a protective part of us really feel seen and heard and appreciated. To the point that this protective part is willing to unblend because it had it say and it really feels appreciated. And the other thing is that it accomplishes some other things, it enables the client to be in a witnessing position and the client is witnessing the therapist’s Self seeing the protector through the therapist's eyes of Self. So, it changes the client's perspective on the protector and enables the client to access Self in relation to the protector.

Aníbal: Amazing. Yeah. Makes sense.

Paul: And so, it enables the client to then begin to have more of a relationship with that protector. So, I think it enables there to be a deeper relationship between the client's Self and the protector. And if you go further and then you identify the gift of the protector, then it enables a transformation of that protector. The protector actually begins to shift its own perception of itself and access its own Self-energy and it opens up for the protector the possibility of shifting its perception of the exile.

Aníbal: Okay.

Paul: Once it changes its perception of itself, my experience is it begins to soften its attitude towards the exile.

Aníbal: So interesting.

Paul: So, the second thing that I wanted to say is that there are some parts of us that really prefer to be able to speak for themselves, out loud. Yes. Have their own voice. And so, what I guess I wanted to say is that in my own therapy, a lot of times I prefer to work with my part through Explicit Direct Access. And I just wanted to say that, you know, that if there are people out there who find that sometimes they would rather work with their parts by having their parts talk directly to their therapist, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a legitimate way for us to work with our parts sometimes.

Aníbal: And allow them to express.

Paul: Yes. Express themselves out loud directly because some of our parts really want that and need that, to talk out loud.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So, Paul, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and hopefully we will meet again soon, and we'll share more of our work and our lives. Maybe next time, Paul, we'll talk on the relationship of soul and Self and being very human, you say. Maybe...

Paul: Yeah, that would be great. I do want to just let people know I will be doing a workshop on the gifts of our exiles. And in that workshop, I do also talk about this, in the work we did today. As part of that, I do that. I'm going to be doing that with Derek Scott in Canada. That's not until February, but just to give a heads up for that.

Tisha: Is that in person?

Paul: That'll be on zoom.

Tisha: Oh good. So, people could sign up for it anywhere in the world. Thank you so much.

Paul: Thank you.

Unlocking the Light of Sexual Intimacy with Nancy Wonder and IFIO 00:00

Nancy Wonder, Ph.D. is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in Tallahassee, Florida where she offers Internal Family Systems therapy and consultation.Dr. Wonder obtained her Ph.D. from Florida State University in Counseling Psychology and remained as a field instructor for FSU for many years teaching and training doctoral students.

In 2003 she began to be fascinated by the Internal Family Systems model and later became involved in the IFS applied couple model of Intimacy From the Inside Out (IFIO). This fascination has led Nancy to establish a full-time practice that revolves around individual and couples counseling using the IFS and IFIO models. Nancy loves to teach other therapists about the two powerful, life changing models of IFS and IFIO.

Dr. Wonder has published two chapters regarding use of Internal Family Systems with a case involving pornography addiction: (Wonder, N.M. (2012) “Treating Pornography Addiction with IFS” in Internal Family Systems: New Dimensions. Eds. M. Sweezy & E. Ziskind, Routledge; NY, NY. And another on IFS and supervision:Internal Family Systems Therapy: Supervision and Consultation, Edited by Emma Redfern Making the Unconscious Conscious in IFS Consultation of Sexual Abuse, Sexual Offending, and Sexual Compulsivity Cases.

She has taught for the Institute of Internal Family Systems, PESI, and Intimacy From the inside Out with a total of 15 years-experience teaching IFS and IFIO. She also is a senior lead trainer for Intimacy From the Inside Out. Dr. Wonder teaches throughout the United States and in Europe. Her students describe her as warm, real, and an excellent clinician.

She also developed an IFS Continuity Program for treating sexual addiction and sexual victimization through the use of IFS. Dr. Winikates and Dr. Wonder created a webinar for loneliness that they offered through the Internal Family Systems Institute early in the pandemic.

In her leisurely time she enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, and 3 grandchildren. 

Today on IFS Talks we are so lucky to be speaking with Dr. Nancy Wonder. Nancy Wonder PhD, is a licensed psychologist practicing in Tallahassee, Florida. She's taught for the Institute of Internal Family Systems, PESI and Intimacy from the Inside Out for over 15 years. She's currently a senior lead trainer for Intimacy from the Inside Out and teaches in the US and internationally. Nancy's students describe her as warm, authentic, and an excellent clinician. Dr. Nancy Wonder has published two chapters regarding the use of IFS with a case involving pornography addiction and one on IFS and supervision. She developed an IFS Continuity program for treating sexual addiction and sexual victimization. Also, Dr. Wonder, along with Dr. Winikates, created a webinar for loneliness that they offered through the Internal Family Systems Institute early in the pandemic. She has a wealth of experience.

Tisha Shull: Dr. Wonder, Nancy, thank you for being here with us today on IFS Talks.

Nancy Wonder: I'm happy to be here.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Nancy, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today hearing your bio?

Nancy: Well, it sounds okay. Yeah, that all happened, you know. When you said I have a wealth of experience, Tisha, I was a little bit, that part that feels like, I don't know anything, got a little, like a little activated, like, “is that true I don't know anything or is what Tisha say is true?” So, I'm working with that polarity, but other than that, it was all good. It was accurate. Thank you.

Tisha: Nancy, will you tell us a little bit about your journey into the world of psychotherapy?

Nancy: I will. I didn't become a psychologist until my forties. I got divorced from my first husband at 40. It was his idea and I decided to get a PhD. Why not? Right? And I got a PhD in counseling psychology from Florida state here in Tallahassee, and I did a residency out of prison where I worked with sex offenders. And this is when I started working with people with sexual issues and something about it called me and I felt like I really wanted to work in this area. And so, as I established private practice, I started working with sexual offenders, both juvenile and adults, as well as sexual abuse victims. And I've been in private practice now here since 2000.

Tisha: And how did you discover Internal Family Systems therapy?

Nancy: Well, it was about 2003 or 2002. I went to a yoga workshop. I like to do Iyengar yoga and my teacher here and I drove to Lafayette, Louisiana, and there was another teacher, yoga teacher there who is outside of Atlanta. And I'm going to forget her name right now, but she handed me a brochure about Dick Schwartz coming to outside of Atlanta to this university to do an introduction to Internal Family Systems. And just the way it was so serendipitous, I thought this is really, this just seems right to me. I should get at us. So, I drove up there and it was a two-day intro workshop. I really was impressed with Dick. It really suited my background of, for example, I did my dissertation on imagination skills and youth. So, I liked Jungian psychology and really liked active imagination. And so, it just totally suited me personally, a big daydreamer in my childhood to go inside and feel my parts. And so, at the end of the workshop, I went up to Dick and said, I'd really like to try this work out as a client. And he said, nobody in Florida was doing it. And so, he gave me a list of three names, and I started working with Barb Cargill, who's one of the founder, the founder woman that worked right with Dick in Chicago. And so, I worked with her for three years. And then I, around that time, started my level one. So, I just fell in love with that. It just really spoke to me.

Aníbal: Nancy, in your career, you worked a lot with the dark side of sexuality, meaning sexual abuse, harassment, sexual offending, and sexual addiction. And you say that working with couples, you saw those things as blocking the light of sexual intimacy. So, I have two questions, maybe difficult ones. If I may, why is sexuality such a vehicle for those forms of abuse? And the second is can we heal from those dark sides of sexuality in our lives and allow our sexuality to shine in a good way?

Nancy: Well, I think that, first of all, sexual abuse is very common. In the United States, I don't know the Europeans statistics, but I think their similar though. In the United States, we believe that one in four women or, and some of us, most of us that have worked with sexual abuse think that's even higher, have been sexually abused by the time they're 18. I don't know why I can't get those statistics in my head right now, but anyway, it's very common.

Tisha: Really high numbers.

Nancy: Really high numbers. And those are the people that seek mental health treatment. So, I'm sure people that actually practice psychotherapy see that sexual abuse is even higher than we realize. Plus, there's a lot of misogyny and objectification of women in the United States, as well as Europe, I'm sure, evidenced by our last president of the United States who was obviously misogynist and treated women like objects. And, that's just very prominent in our culture. And this really affects women's sexuality as well as men’s. So, it's endemic in our culture. I think it's gotten better over the years as we've gotten more information and we do more prevention and teach kids about healthy touching, but it's still quite prevalent; sexual abuse and sexual addictive kinds of behaviors and sexual offending.

Tisha: Do you feel like it's more of an American issue than it is an issue in other countries?

Nancy: I think that's a good question. Because I know some other... Other countries are more relaxed about sexuality than we are, perhaps? We have a huge polarity in our culture. Maybe the churches, maybe the Protestant background, the messages we get even from our Supreme Court this week is that sex is bad. You know, it's dirty. It's meant to only be for procreation. And on the other hand, in America, we sell products with sexuality. Say a pair of tires have a woman with a bikini beside them. You know, we love eroticism. We use it to sell products. Pornography is prevalent on the internet. So, everybody's getting really polarized messages in our country, perhaps a little less. Like, when I was in Europe, spending some time in France, there is a more ease around sexuality. It seems like. But I really don't, I'm really not an expert in European cultures, but I do believe it's a little more relaxed. So, in America we're so uptight about sexuality, that it creates this problem of sexual compulsivity, sexual abuse... If that makes sense. It's like a giant polarity.

Aníbal: And so, can we heal from those dark sides of sexuality in our lives and allow our sexuality to shine in a good way?

Nancy: Yes, I totally believe that. And that's really been my life's work. The meaning of my career is to help people heal, both offenders and victims. I kind of work on both sides of the coin and I totally believe we can heal and prevent... Like, sometimes sexual abuse runs in generations of families. And if we can just heal the current generation, it's going to make the future generations safer.

Aníbal: Nancy, why is sexuality itself important in relationships?

Nancy: I believe it's important because it can increase pleasure and closeness. It can offer reassurance, validation. You can feel supported if you, you know, having the sexual intimacy with your partner. And it just can reinforce feelings of intimacy, feelings of desire, being desirable. And it, it doesn't mean it's going to improve about relationship, but it can help people who have some other problems in relationship when they can come together sexually and intimately in a healthy way.

Tisha: And we have almost a challenge within the couples’ therapy world and the therapy world to highlight and illuminate and talk about sex and sexuality in relationships. Do you feel like there's an underlying reason for that? Is it cultural? Is it something that therapists are afraid to bring up or talk about? And in so many reasons it's important.

Nancy: Yeah, I think it's all of those reasons, Tisha. For example, we don't get a lot of education. When I went to graduate school, I had one class in human sexuality and it was a, just a general informational class. That doesn't give you enough to really work with someone in a clinical setting. And that is true. There's been studies shown in Canada and the United States that therapists do not get enough training in graduate school. And so, we don't even bring it up. Many of us have our own parts that we haven't even looked at or been with. So, for us to bring up sexuality takes a lot of courage. So, I really encourage therapists to find out more about their own sexuality and get some CU trainings so that you can bring it up because so many people are sexually abused and so many people are impacted by sex and internet porn and et cetera, et cetera, that it's a crime in a way for us not to bring it up in a therapeutic relationship.

Tisha: Nancy, with that, what can therapists ask themselves about their own sexuality and what could they understand about their own parts around sexuality? How do we help ourselves?

Nancy: Right. I think, yeah, there's some questions they can ask themselves. So, what parts and polarizations are present when you try to talk to a client about sexuality? So, we need to get to know our own polarizations. For example, I was born in the 1950s in the United States of America in the Midwest, which the message was girls need to, you know, it was a double standard. Girls need to protect their virginity; boys can do whatever they want. So, I had a lot of polarities thinking that sex was dirty and bad, and women weren't supposed to do it. And so, to be with all my parts around that, and some, I have some sexual, I guess, sexual abuse as a child, and I needed to work with that before I could be with another person who's had sexual abuse. So, working with our own sexual hurts and pains and feeling into which one of your parts are really concerned about talking about sex? What's scary about it? And I think it can be scary if you haven't worked with your own sexual trauma or even if it's not trauma capital T, you know, most women and some men get some kind of sexual harassment in their life and get all these mixed messages about sex. And to really tune into what specific sexual topics make you uncomfortable and why do they make you uncomfortable? And should you just not work with those? Or should you get more training? For example, some people don't want to work with polyamory or some new social issues that are coming in on board.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Nancy, you also say that through tracking courageous communication and individual work in the presence of the other, we can help couples to talk about sex in a new way. So, what exactly is this tracking and courageous communication?

Nancy: Okay. So, hopefully many of you have listened to Toni Herbine-Blank’s IFS Talks podcast, but she developed a model called Intimacy from the Inside Out, which is IFS applied to couples. And this model, I find a really powerful way to work with sexual topics with clients. So, once the therapists themselves have worked with their own parts and they feel that they can be present with a couple working around sexuality, we can use this tracking protocol to examine what happens between them in their sexual life. Just like you do anything. You know, you track the protocol between doing dishes, not doing dishes, taking care of the kids, all these conflicts that people have. What we do is we track the fight or the conflict by listening for the parts. So, we don't get so involved in the content, but we're listening for the parts that get involved in this conflict with a couple. So, you can track sexuality. For example, let's say there's a man and a woman. A heterosexual couple. A woman's a lot of times doing dishes and the man loves to see her, comes home from work and is so happy to see her and so he slaps her butt while she's doing dishes at the sink. So, for him, that's like, “oh, I'm so glad to see you, and you've got a great butt and I'm just going to put my hand on it.” But for her, the context...You know, her kids are in the other room, she's doing dishes, she's had a hard day. So, for them to talk about that, she can say, you know, “I had a part that feels disrespected when you do that with the kids in the next room.” And he can say, “but I had a part that was so happy to see you.” And then they can start learning about their parts and how they protect themselves. So, you break down the sexuality, just like you would in any conflict.

Aníbal: Nancy, you also say IFIO is a model of differentiation.

Nancy: Yes.

Aníbal: The more the couple is able to differentiate the closer they come, you say.

Nancy: Yes.

Aníbal: And that this is true in the aspect of sexual relationship too. So, can we take out the blame of sexual intimacy?

Nancy: Yes. Right. The tracking protocol shows a conflict between couples as cyclical. There's no beginning or end. So, it takes away the blame. As people start to pair their protectors with their exile and same thing with sexuality. You've got to get people talking about it because they can feel like they can't be any different than their partner. So, we want to get people to do a U-turn and feel how they're different than their partner. Maybe their partner wants to look at porn, but they don't. And how can the couple be okay about that? They can be different, but still have a sexual relationship. And the way we help people differentiate is help them do a U-turn, feeling their protectors and exiles, and being able to accept their partners, you know, be more loving, self-loving, and then loving to their partners, protectors and exiles, therefore they may not get everything they want sexually from their partner, but they certainly can begin to talk about it and understand. So, this is going to increase their intimacy. The more they differentiate within themselves, the more they can connect to the differences in their partner.

Tisha: Are there common themes you could share that would illustrate this like particular exiles that come up and the protectors that, that are, I mean, everyone's an individual, but I could see, you know, if someone has an exile around sexual abuse and their partner comes up and smacks them on the butt. Yeah. That might illustrate a common theme.

Nancy: Yes. I think it does. So, there could be a part of that woman who has a hypervigilant... I don't know if you've read The Sexual Alarm System, we can put the resource. I can give you the resource later, but she talks about many women because of the prevalence of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and all these kinds of things, have a sexual alarm system. So that we, as a young woman, especially, are in a hypervigilant state much of the time because men have...And I know this is going to sound sexist, because I know it happens to men too, that men get objectified as well. But just as an example of this heterosexual couple we’re illustrating, that might feel belittling to her and objectifying to her because of stuff that happened to her, say in middle school, the boys teased her about her budding breasts. You know, we don't know, but a lot of times there's exile pain, even if it's not capital T trauma around sexuality, but it's a message that you got from your peers or school that your exiles took in, took in burdens. And so, to have somebody do something that reminds you of that, it's going to set off this trauma response and the protectors are going to get on board. And so perhaps this woman might get mad, have rage. She might, you know, just turn off to him, shut down and not want to have sex with them, period. You know, just completely withdraw from him. So those are the kinds of protectors exiles we see in sexuality.

Aníbal: Nancy, you have written this beautiful chapter on treating pornography addiction with IFS in the book, Internal Family Systems: New dimensions. There, we can read the challenge for the therapist in a case like this is to not manage the firefighter, meaning the addicted part, but instead to calm shaming managers and attend to the exile. So, what exiles, vulnerable parts do you usually find when working with these clients? Pornography addiction ones.

Nancy: Every single person I've ever treated, and Dick will agree with with this statement as well, has had some kind of trauma. So, the sexual addiction doesn't come out of nowhere. And, and yes, usually the sexual addict part is a firefighter that helps distract or sooth the client's pain from exile pain. For example, I have a client who had a lot of loneliness as a child, and he experienced quite a lot of neglect. When people experience, you know, it's very traumatizing and his father had an addiction, had Playboy magazines, for example, in the closets. So, when he was so lonely and so neglected and so criticized, he would find the Playboy magazines. And this is a typical story. How sexual pornography is passed down in generations. You know, the father never openly said, oh, by the way, I love to look up porn. But the many clients I've had have found porn hidden and the whole hiding part is kind of makes it exciting and secretive. But they are distracting or soothing exiles that have loneliness. Exiles who've maybe had physical abuse. Some, one out of four sexual offenders have been offended themselves. So, definitely the exiles are all different, and I could give you a million examples, but they've all been traumatized somehow. And in that have had deep, deep pain and somehow, they were turned on, no pun intended, to sexuality, either by pornography magazines or by pornography on the internet or with peers. And it really helped them feel better. And then it's just, pornography is highly addictive. It's as addictive as cocaine, some people say.

Aníbal: Wow.

Nancy: So, once you've used it, often enough, it becomes a habit and it's hard to break.

Aníbal: And Nancy, how different or similar can be the work with a sexual perpetrator compared to the work with a sexual victim treatment.

Nancy: Well, I have parts that identify more with a sexual victim. So, you know, I'm sort of an old feminist and women's health advocate, so I would align with the victim more. So that's one thing. And with the perpetrators or sexual addiction not so much. I find that I can be a little more judgy, I might have parts that I need to relay, you know, critical parts and judgment parts because I really think sexual abuse is not okay. Like, big time. I think it's not okay. But I'm able to have empathy for them. I don't know why, compassion, because it's all about trauma. So, there's really not that much difference. You do IFS with them. You find their protectors, you make friends with their protectors and then you go to their exiles. So, it's really the same thing. It's more maybe what happens within me.

Tisha: Was it different working with sexual offenders before you started training in IFS therapy?

Nancy: Totally, totally different. Yeah. Well, traditional sex offender treatment is caught at the behavioral and, you know, the ABC model and all that for people who know, you know, like the cognitive-behavioral model. So, we would talk about what they were thinking, what they were feeling when they did the offense. And you know, it just wasn't enough. I knew these guys were hurting. I just had a lot of compassion for them from the get-go. And I knew there was something missing in that treatment because it was all about accountability and shaming. They would have to stand up and say their offense and grope. And I didn't like that. I mean, just at my core, my intuition. So, this isn't the way to treat these men. And because most of them are men, I'm sorry. I have treated a couple of female sexual perpetrators. So, I just knew that was wrong and IFS gave me another completely different paradigm. And I think it's very effective and Dick has used it a lot with perpetrators and he would also agree that it's very, very effective.

Tisha: Yeah. There's a question I think that comes up a lot when we are talking about, you know, sort of that term from Dick's new book, like No Bad Parts and people kind of bump into this feeling around, well, wait a minute, like what about parts that really do hurt people or abuse people or cause other people harm or trauma? Like how do we frame the no bad parts mentality with, you know, actual behaviors that cause harm or intended as harm?

Nancy: That's a good question. So, I don't know if you've read Dick’s chapter about perpetration.

Aníbal: I did.

Nancy: It's in one of the books, but it's really very good. And he says that the perpetrators were perpetrated on. So, they do that because they were so humiliated and so hurt by their own parents, caregivers, somebody, that they form a part. Now, he says a perpetrator part... Probably I am not going to remember exactly, has a kind of, even a different energy than firefighters. It's even bigger than that. He kind of puts it at its own classification and Dick and I would be an advocate of limiting these people, you know, either putting in prison or a very controlled probation because those parts are very hurtful. But when you get to know the trauma underneath, then you understand why... It's just like all our protectors get formed by how we're treated by people. And that's exactly how these perpetrators are treated. So, I still think of them as parts and most of the people I work with now have sexual addiction and it's not so violent or, you know, it's not so perpetrating. And so, it's a little easier to have compassion for those parts as firefighters. But yeah, this perpetration is kind of a, something that if we could get to the trauma underneath and help the exiles unburden, that those perpetrator parts will soften.

Tisha: So, to actually go to the trauma and have it revealed to the perpetrator almost as a way of preventing further perpetration,

Nancy: That's right, that’s the core.

Tisha: You need to heal so that you're not going to hurt anyone.

Nancy: Tisha, that's exactly right. And that's what we need to do in our culture. We need to help even criminals, all these people that we want to just lock up, drug addicts, et cetera, et cetera. Let's find out the trauma.

Tisha: Yeah. My first work was in a woman's prison in a substance abuse unit and oh gosh, the traumas...the experience was heartbreaking. And IFS was, was not prevalent...

Aníbal: Nancy, can we get back to the protocol for sexual discussion?

Nancy: Sure.

Aníbal: So, you'll say you are an advocate for helping couples talk about sexuality while being held by the couple therapist. So, can you say more about the IFIO protocols that can be used for sexual discussion for couples?

Nancy: Yes. First of all, I talked about tracking, which is when we track the protective cycles and you probably are aware of... Not you, but the audience are aware of how you can feel protected around sexuality, how you can keep yourself separate from the other person and you have to keep yourself safe. So, in the tracking protocol, we can explore, you know, what parts of you get turned off in the sexual encounter? What parts of you get more excited? And, then the couple can notice each other's protectors and exiles and learn a lot about each other. Like, I've had sessions where for the first time a woman has shared her sexual abuse in high school, you know, kind of a date rape situation to her partner. He had no idea, but they were able to do that with me, holding them in a container, a safe container. And then there's, we have this protocol that Toni developed called courageous communication. And so that gives couples a chance to tell the other one what their parts are needing around their sexual life. And in courageous communication, we try to take out the blame. So, we encourage the speaker to talk about their own parts and their experience and what their parts need. So maybe, maybe like this couple, we keep referring to, the woman doing the dishes, she may need to say “because I was sexually harassed so much in middle school, I really need to fill up a safe context before you touch me in any intimate way.” So that would be an example of her courageously telling her husband how she liked to be touched and what context. And, but the thing about creative communication, which I think Toni talked about in her podcast is that we need to help the listener. So, that husband needs to be available, you know, not to feel defensive, not to feel, you know, “oh my God, she's going to cut me down. She's going to embarrass me. She thinks I'm a pervert.” So, we need to help the husband relax. And this is true for lesbian couples, gay couples, you know, that we all have protectors and we all have shame about our sexuality. So, in that protocol, we unblend the listener. So, you know, you say to the man, “so tell me, what is it like to now hear from your wife?” And he might, “oh, I think she's going to blame me. She gets so mad at me.” “It's okay. So, find the part that thinks you're going to be blamed and you help him unblend and you reassure him that you're going to be there to help them have this conversation.” So, it can be really powerful because couples have trouble talking to each other about sex.

Tisha: And to be aware of what parts of you come up and come in and block as a listener seems really valuable.

Nancy: Exactly.

Tisha: Oh, I can't listen because I'm on the defensive...  

Nancy: Right. So, I would help that person unblend from their defensiveness and get a relationship with the... Unblend, have more space. So, you're setting up the speaker and the listener to do this project.

Aníbal: Nancy, in her 2021 book Come as You Are, sex educator, Emily Nagoski describes the dual control model of sexual responses. This model involves our Sexual Excitation System or what Nagoski calls our accelerator, which scans our external external-internal environment for sex related stimuli and responds to these with increased desire and arousal. And it also includes our sexual inhibition system, which scans our internal and external environment for threats and then functions as a brake turning off sexual arousal. So, therefore, whether we are able to experience sexual arousal depends on the balance between the accelerator and the brakes. One of the main struggles for survivors of sexual trauma, she says, is that sensations, ideas, and contexts that could have been interpreted as sex-related and arousing are now perceived as threats. So, now when the accelerator system starts to be activated in the interaction with our partner, for example, their brakes are activated as well, and their desire or arousal is shut down. How can IFS help or relate with this perspective?

Nancy: I guess you anticipated that I might talk about that. Because I was thinking about that this morning when I was thinking about this talk. Larry and I talked about... Larry Rosenberg and I did an advanced workshop for IFIO level one graduates on sexuality. And we talked about that dual control model of sexual response. So, what I want to think about that are how are the brakes parts and how are the accelerator parts? So, we would change brakes and accelerators as parts. So, what kinds of things might your partner do that make you shut down sexually? So, you start helping people talk about that. And so, for example, if somebody has been sexually abused and they're working through the act of abuse, they're really working through the parts. I know in my case, I didn't want to have sexual contact with my husband for a few months. And luckily, he was really generous and easy about it. But there's many times when, if you are working with sexual abuse that you need to just have a time out from sex, but then once you know, and once you’ve healed the exiles, you know what's going to trigger them. So, it's important to be able to talk to your partner, like you're saying, Aníbal, if the partner does something similar to their perpetrator, it's going to totally shut down the sexual encounter. And so, there's a couple of things you can do. Talk to your exiles, tell them they don't need to be in the bedroom, in the adult bedroom with your lover. And secondly, know the things that might trigger them and communicate that to your partner. So, when we get partners to talk about brakes and accelerators, for example, the one we keep using the husband and wife by the sink, she might really like that when they're in the bedroom, she might like that, you know, caressing of her but, but not in the kitchen. So, people can talk about the context where they feel... context is really big for women, especially when they've been sexually abused. What is the best context that she can feel safe and comfortable? And it's true many men have been sexually abused. So, it's true for both men and women in all types of relationships. So, if you can talk to people, talk to your partner, “this turns me on, you know, when you kiss me this way, this accelerates me, but when you touch me there that feels familiar of some sexual pain for the past.” So, we like to think of those as parts and put the brakes and accelerators into a part paradigm.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Nancy: So, here are some examples of brakes. If you'd have negative feelings about your bodies, which many of us do, both men and women, you know, there's so much emphasis in our culture on attractiveness and sexiness and certain body shapes. But if you don't feel good about your body, and there's a way that your partner doesn't make help you feel good about your body, you're going to put a brake on, you're going to have a part that says “I'm not attractive enough.” So, shame and guilt are things that can put on the brakes. Other things, the anxiety of “am I any good at sex? Am I going to be able to perform well? Am I going to orgasm? How am I going...” Those kinds of worries and concerns about being good sexually. That happens for all different types of people. Also unwanted pregnancy, contraception. That is big time brake. And if people haven't talked about that and discuss that and made that a safe situation, and some of it it's just timing. You’ve got to see how your partner is. Is your partner open and available? Or are they to tizzy about some work conflict or a really stressful day? It's really important to notice how your partner is. And then sometimes brakes are put on because people don't feel accepted in their relationship. Like if you criticize, say if you criticize your lover all day about everything they do wrong, that night, the lover's not going to want anything with you, right? So, feeling used or feeling coerced, also mental health issues, can affect sexuality.

Tisha: What do you perceive as being kind of the next place to go around therapy and sexuality? Do you have a vision for how we can begin to create...

Nancy: I think talking about it and... I kind of love the younger generation, you know, the binary, the... I have trouble with that sometimes. Polyamory... I'm like, “we did that in the seventies, don’t you remember it didn't work then...” But anyway, I try to be more modern and listen to people in different generations. And I think they're bringing us more openness, more acceptance. You know, I don't want to be a traditional male. I don't want to be a traditional female. And I think that, I think that's great. I think it's wonderful. And there's just more consciousness around sexuality. And I think as psychotherapists, we need to work with our own parts around sexuality. And so, we can free up our clients. You know, people tell me they feel comfortable talking to me about it and we need more clinicians that feel comfortable talking about it because people need to talk about it. Even if they haven't ever been sexually traumatized, they still have different cultural messages and family messages that we all need to be able to work out and figure out how it impacts our own sexuality. It's a wonderful vision though, Tisha. I was wondering about writing a book on IFIO couples and sexuality today.

Aníbal: That would be wonderful.

Tisha: Yeah. You would have a broad readership.

Nancy: Probably, yeah.

Aníbal: Nancy, what is coming for you as a trainer and an author? You know, you have these new chapter coming in the new book, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Supervision, and Consultation edited by Emma Redfern.

Nancy: Yes.

Aníbal: And your chapter is called, I guess, Making the Unconscious Conscious in IFS Consultation of Sexual Abuse, Sex Offending and Sexual Compulsivity Cases. Do you want to share more about this chapter?

Nancy: Sure. It was such an honor for Emma to ask me to write a chapter. I enjoyed writing it because it was really culminating for me to just bring it together. You know, my work over the years and the things I've done and how I have supervised lots of people. And so, it was fun to pick out three cases that I could examine more closely and talk about how I, as a consultant, had to help the therapist's parts around what was coming up for them around sexuality. And so, there was a lot of education, but also feeling into their own protectors and exiles that have been impacted by sexuality and then asking them to go to individual therapy to work with any trauma.

Aníbal: So, Nancy, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you.

Nancy: I would love to. Thank you so much for having me here.

Tisha: Thank you, Nancy. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and giving us all a little bit more courage to talk about sex.

Nancy: Except that I couldn't remember how many people have been sexually abused, but then you can take that out, right?

BIPOC Leadership, Healing and IFS with Crystal Jones 35:58

Crystal Jones, LCSW is a Certified IFS Therapist and Assistant Trainer. She feels extremely grateful to have experienced and witnessed the healing benefits of the IFS model in her own life and in the lives of her clients.  She has 18 years of clinical experience and owns a private group practice, Life Source Counseling Center, Inc., in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Crystal is known for her compassion and heart-led approach to her work.  She is passionate about creating safe spaces for BIPOC women to feel connected, seen, heard, and valued as they do their healing work individually and collectively. She also enjoys providing IFS clinical consultation to therapists and practitioners learning the model and pursuing certification.  In her leisure time, Crystal enjoys traveling, being with her family and friends, reading, enjoying nature, and caring for her plant collection. She truly looks forward to sharing in the healing journeys of all inspired by this model.

Today on IFS Talks, we're happy to be speaking with Crystal Jones. Crystal Jones, LCSW is a certified IFS therapist and Assistant Trainer. She has 18 years of clinical experience and owns a private group practice Life Source Counseling Center in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She's known for her compassionate heart-led approach to her work. Crystal is passionate about creating safe spaces for BIPOC women to feel connected, seen, heard, and valued as they do their own healing work. She also enjoys providing IFS clinical consultation to therapists and practitioners learning the model and pursuing certification.

Tisha Shull: Crystal, thank you so much for being here with us today and being willing to join us on IFS Talks. We're happy to have you.

Crystal Jones: Thank you all so much for inviting me and having me here with you.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome Crystal. What parts come up today listening to your bio?

Crystal: I have parts that say, “who is that woman?” I have parts that are like in the cheerleading section saying, “go girl.” I also have parts that like totally disassociate and just don't want to hear about all the things. And parts that just kind of just want to focus on just being here with you all. Right. So, I guess you can say I have parts that are all over the place and some shy parts too.

Aníbal: All welcome.

Crystal: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

There’s also thoughts that, yeah, I was just thinking, just also have some thoughts just back to that wild part is just like, “girl, you've done a lot,” you know? And maybe not even knowing how much I've done until I listen to it and just parts that are really reflective of that work and that journey that it took to get into this space right now. Yeah.

Tisha: Crystal, could you share with us about that journey to becoming a therapist, a counselor?

Crystal: Yeah, well, you know, my mom is a social worker and she was pregnant with me when she was in her master's program. So I often say, I think some of that instruction to seek through, you know, it's interesting because I always watched her and listened to her sharing and saw the way she gave of herself so much to her family and to her clients and how she mentored people so they could be in leadership as well. And I just watched that and, you know, and she also put us in spaces and exposed us to different cultures and to traveling and that just really expanded my system. And I think that that's just what brought me on my journey to social work. When it was time to go to school, I already knew. I was like, “whatever she's doing, that's what I want to do. I want to do what my mom does.” And my mom and I are very close, but I wanted to do what she did. I wanted to impact lives. And you know, I would see people, we would be out and somebody she had worked with would come up to her and say, “miss Linda...”, or “remember me” or “your mom is amazing.” And you know, when I went to school, I said, I want to do that. I want to serve people. I want to support people. I want to care for people. So that was the start of my journey to becoming a social worker. I didn't always know that I wanted to do private practice and counseling though.

Aníbal: And Crystal, when did you come across with IFS?

Crystal: I want to say around 2013, 2014. I had a friend who was receiving IFS therapy. And at that time, we didn't even know that it was IFS therapy. I just continued to listen to her process and her journey. And I was just amazed at how deep they were going. And I had never gone that deep in therapy, you know, because I had always done talk therapy, but I would just listen, and she would just share and I'm like, “how are you all going that deep? What is that thing called?” And so, further along in her journey, she asked her therapist and her therapist wasn't an IFS trained therapist, but she was using some of the interventions and it just, it was just a transformation in my friend and she finally told her it was IFS. And so, when my friend told me it was IFS, I was like, bam. I looked things up. And by that time, I think I was already using some of the things that felt good, like parts of us. And you know, you're not all one thing, there are different parts. And so, I started using that language, but when I learned about it, I began to dive in, and I remember going to my first intro to therapy, I mean, intro to IFS therapy with Frank Anderson. And so that was a big leap for me. And I was his assistant during that training. And so, I got to meet him, and I got to learn more about IFS. And at that training, there were people there who are getting ready to go into the level one and mind you, I had never paid more than whatever a PESI training is. Right. And so, when I heard how much that level one was, I was like, I've never done that before. And that just, it just felt really expensive to me at that time. And so, but with some encouraging, I kind of just jumped in. I got a scholarship and I was able to take the level one training and I don't think I've turned back since.

Tisha: And then you went on to become an Assistant Trainer now. What has that been like? And how many parts have you encountered in that leadership role?

Crystal: As I think about the journey, I didn't know the journey was leading me here. I was just so happy to just do all of the intensive work. I've done all my parts. I've been so happy about being in community and meeting so many amazing people and being in spaces where people are doing their healing work and supporting one another. So, I just felt good doing that. And then when I became a PA, you know, I got to support others, I got to teach the model, you know, and spread my wings a little bit. Then I got tapped on the shoulder and when I was asked, “Hey, do you want to go a little bit further?” And I was in my year of yes, I was saying yes to everything because by then my parts were letting me do more and letting me be more present because I have big parts that wanted to hide. And I was like, “yeah, let's go.” And so, I got asked, invited to the Assistant Trainer Program and it was just an amazing, amazing group of folks who, you know, I think it would just help me be better, helped me be bolder, you know, helped me be more courageous. And that felt really good. And it has helped me kind of shift into this space, seeing them do their thing, people like Fatimah Finney and Kim Paulus and Natalie Gutierrez, and you know, just all these great people who have been great models for me and Tamala Floyd...

Aníbal: That came forward as well.

Crystal: Yeah. Yeah. They've all been really encouraging to me and help me to know that I can, I can do it. They pulled out my strengths and I've kind of seen that I can do it because I see other people who look like me and who have the same cultural experiences as me doing this work. And that's felt really good. So, I don't even know how I feel yet about being here. I still think I'm taking it in, but it feels scary. It feels good. Parts that are saying “you don't even know IFS.” Like there are parts that are telling me “you haven't done all you've done. You don't know anything.” I have all of these parts, but today I'm just feeling really good about this space today. I'll say that.

Aníbal: So beautiful.

Tisha: I can really resonate with those parts that sometimes, in conveying the model, that come up and just say, “you don't know anything.” Like they just won't let me access the information. And so, you know, knowing how to work with them is really cool.

Crystal: Yeah. Those parts just don't want me to mess up. They want me to get it right. And then when I can sit with that, I can just hold them with a lot of love and gratitude for them, for what their concerns are, you know.

Aníbal: You define yourself as a culturally attuned therapist specialized in creating safe spaces for BIPOC clients to feel connected, heard, seen and valued. You say you are interested in seeing more BIPOC folks in leadership and integrating BIPOC cultural experiences in this model. So, you, like Black Therapists Rock, you are helping to spread the IFS model to underrepresented communities and more specifically black communities across the United States. In your experience, how does the IFS model land in this African American community?

Crystal: Well, I’ll say this for the African American community that I've been in connection with when doing this model. First off, I feel like this model is already like ancestral wisdom. Right? I feel like it's a developed model, but I feel like, I feel like what we're learning in this model is already instinctual. Right? And sometimes we get away from what's instinctual because of distractions, because of the world, you know, because of dominant culture. But what I love about this model is it brings us back to the wisdom of our body. And I always say that it brings us back to the wisdom of our body and that feels really simple. And it feels ancestral to me, it feels like I'm coming back home. It feels like I'm coming back home. And so, I think the IFS model has landed well because it's all, we're already, this is what we're already innately supposed to be doing. Instinctually supposed to be doing. And somewhere along the way, kind of got away from it. And so, I think when people are in connection with the wisdom of their body and can just find that quiet, still place, and begin to trust it, man that can be revolutionary. It's been revolutionary for me. It's been revolutionary for the circles that I've been in. And also, it can put us back in connection with the gifts of our ancestors, as well as those things that don't belong to us. So that, and that's getting into legacy and cultural burdens, right. Or legacy and cultural heirlooms, but it can just put us in alignment with so much healing that's transcendent, that's beyond us. So that's what I, and even as I talk about it, that's what I've experienced in my system. And then to be in community and experience that, when you share the same cultural burdens or, you know, cultural...When there're similar cultural experiences, right, and we're in community working to do unburdening, I think that that experience in African American settings and in BIPOC settings has been just powerful. And when one person gets that we all get it. So, it's been really powerful.

Tisha: I'm getting the sense that you've worked with the model in groups in a way that's really powerful and healing with BIPOC and African American groups. And I'm wondering if you want to share any more about that experience.

Crystal: Yeah. Yeah. So, twice now I've been in IFS circles with Black Therapists Rock led by Deran Young and Requina Barnes, where Tim have Floyd has co-led or been Assistant Trainer with Chris Burris. And I'm just reflecting on how we come in, right. With all our internalized racism and just all our stuff. And how through the process, like we become lighter, right? It's like peeling the onion, like stuff comes off. We get to take stuff off and how we get to witness each other's healing it. Because I think in community, there's an aspect of witnessing and holding that aids in the process. So, I've been able just to be in that space. And then, I think being in community too, you just get so lost and it's like, I don't want to leave. It feels like utopia, right? It's like, I just don't want to leave. Like, I see you. I know this cultural burden you've been holding, I've held it too. And when I see you let it go, then my system shifts. Or when I see you do a cultural unburdening and you're passing that burden down the ancestral line, like, I feel like my ancestors get healed. When they're all letting that go and then when they're passing the gifts back up, I feel like I'm getting some of those gifts. My ancestors are getting some of that, some of those gifts. And so, imagine that with like 30 plus people in the room, like, I just want to do a hallelujah shout. Right. Like, it's been amazing, like to give words to it...It just doesn't feel like it does it justice, but we've done beautiful work in community.

Aníbal: So good to listen to this. Yes. Thank you, Crystal.

Crystal: Yeah. And I'm thankful because, because of the work Black Therapists Rock and Deran Young, and everyone who supports her has done, right. Like that's a big reason why we've seen, you know, so many black folks able to get into leadership, you know, more black people on staff, you know, more black people in training programs and also just hearing different voices and different perspectives. I just think is so important.

Aníbal: It is.

Crystal: And I think everybody wins, right? When we hear from different people, from different perspectives and different cultures, everybody wins, everybody learns.

Aníbal: Absolutely.
Crystal, in your website resources, you suggest social justice readings like DeGruy’s Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome, the DiAngelo’s White Fragility, Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s hands and others like Cooper's Eloquent Rage: a black feminist discovers her superpower. So, we can see how topics like slavery, racism and feminism matters to you and became central in your personal and professional life. So, Crystal, when you look at the world and to the United States in particular, what are your expectations regarding social justice?

Crystal: What are my expectations... That is a tough question. Because I think as a, as a black woman, I have parts that, that have been taught you can't have expectations. I have parts that don't trust and say it's dangerous to have expectations of a society who doesn't care about you. So, and I almost feel like those parts really lead and they want me to be safe. And they want me to be okay. So, I get that, but I think that doesn't, and at the same time, I believe that doesn't leave me powerless. And so, those parts feel like I still can play a role. And that role is really focusing on people who hold those same kinds of parts. Those parts that don't trust, those parts that are scared and rightfully so. Those parts who have experienced racial trauma. And so, I really feel like part of my role can be working with people and holding those parts in great care, loving up on those parts, witnessing those parts, being in community with those parts, so they can walk into the world in a different way. I won't say in a different way, I'll say in a more informed way, because I really think when we're knowledgeable and aware of our systems, right? We can walk in the world a different way. And that doesn't mean that the world isn't going to change, but when something in us changes, we walk with a different awareness.

Aníbal: That's so true. Yeah.

Crystal: Yeah. So, I don't know, and there are parts of me that just like, “gosh, girl, you can't have expectations in the world?” I do. But I feel like my work is to... Like when I think about my children, my work is to prepare them the best way I can for this world. By letting them know that their blackness is important. That things that, you know, they've learned culturally, and experienced culturally are important, you know, that they can hold their head up, you know, and there will be adversity. So, the way I prepare them to go into this world, like, I feel like that's my part. And that's my part with my community as well. The world is going to do what the world is going to do.

Aníbal: So inspiring, yes.

Crystal: Yeah. That makes me feel sad too. But I think that's just where I am in the moment. Do I have hopes? I have hopes and I think this part that says don't have any expectations, it's also covering up a hopeful part that's been so hurt and so let down. Because that hopeful part, she wants to change the world. I just see her like running around with an S on her chest and just wants to change the world. But she's been really like, she's just kind of watching,

Aníbal: Thank you, Crystal.

Crystal, the IFS Institute has been doing a significant effort to integrate underrepresented communities, both at participants and practitioners’ level and at staff and trainer's level. Also, through a very successful partnership with Black Therapists Rock. How do you see these efforts? Are there developments you'd like to see?

Crystal: I just want to see more, right? I'm really excited to see the direction in which the Institute is moving and see the commitment. And I just want to see more. I want to see more. And I think I just have to be honest and speak for a part that says the commitment level is high because there's a lot of catching up to do.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Crystal: And I say that they can catch up, right? But we're in, I think we were in 2020, 2021 when some of these changes have been implemented, right? But when you think about all of this time, you know, there've been different races and different cultures here forever. But I just feel like we're just starting to focus here. And I think that's what happens when more people of color are coming in saying, “what about me? How does this model reflect me and my experience?” So, more people came, there was a call to action, not only a call to action, a push for action. And I think IFS Institute has really opened the door, has really heard and opened the door. But again, this is what happens when more people are included. And I’d love to see it and I want to see more.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Crystal: Yeah. Yeah.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Crystal: And I think it starts in spaces like this too. When, you know, I think it starts with the invitation. I think there are a lot of spaces in IFS that need to hear other perspectives and see other faces that don't just look like them.

Aníbal: Well said.

Crystal: Yeah.

Tisha: It feels so good to have your presence and your voice and your energy on the show. And just, I don't remember sitting with another interviewee where both Aníbal and I are grinning ear to ear the whole time that the person we're sitting with is talking, even though you're tapping into some challenges that the community faces. Challenges with outreach and inclusivity, but you're also naming this sort of universal connection of Self-energy and the healing potential of the model. Is there any sense of like a course of action for opening the door more that you have a template for? Is there a way to create more inclusivity?

Crystal: Yeah. You know, I think in any movement, everybody plays a role. And so, I think if everybody's asking themselves that question, like, “what's one thing I can do to contribute to inclusivity, even if it's a small thing”. Like, I remember when everyone was protesting, I was like, “well, okay, I might not be marching, but what else can I do?” Like, “can you write up a sign? Can you donate financially? How can you participate?” And so, for me, I asked myself that question and my thing is, okay, I can develop programs to support folks who are coming into leadership. I can mentor. As an AT I can invite staff, you know, from different cultural backgrounds on my team. You know, I can specifically serve as an AT for, you know, for affinity groups. So, there are different things that I can do personally to create to the larger collective. And so, I encourage everyone to ask themselves that question, “what can you do? What can you do?” Because I don't think it's up to the folks who have been historically oppressed. I don't think it's all up to them to figure it out, right? And so, I think it's important for, you know, for white folks too, right? Like, it's just as important for white folks to say, “what can I do? How can, how can I contribute? how I make this space more inclusive?”

Aníbal: Thank you.

Crystal: Yeah. Because I know as a black woman, I just want to, you know, I just want to be here. I want to feel welcomed. I want to be able to say, you know, when my parts have been injured, you know, I want to be respected. Yeah.

Aníbal: Crystal, do you see yourself as a racial trauma specialist and also, do you find IFS effective to help those carrying slavery, racist and patriarchy burdens?

Crystal: You know, I don't think I see myself as a racial trauma specialist. Not in my head anyway. I really see myself as someone who has really worked hard to learn this model, to hold parts that have been impacted by racial trauma and to support to the whole in community, individually. And so, you know, some might call that a racial trauma specialist, but it just feels more like healing work to me. And so, you know, something else added into the bag, right. There's IFS, you know, I use Reiki, you know, we might do some meditation, but it's all in the bag of healing and holding and witnessing for me. And so, I don't call it a specialist, but it might be, it might be right. But I just try to use what I know to support people in their healing journeys.

Tisha: Do you incorporate Reiki with IFS at all? Do they overlap in any way in your work?

Crystal: Well, you know, to me, Reiki is energy work. And everything is energy. And so, to me, you can use Reiki before IFS or after IFS when parts just might be a little activated or when the system needs some calming and grounding, you know, just working with the person's energy to clear some blockages. Because I really think IFS, if we talk about IFS, right? What I notice is that when we're peeling back the onion, we're creating space, kind of like to me Reiki is creating space in the body. And so, when I'm doing IFS work, you'll see people yarn, you'll see people take deep breaths, you'll see people get tired, right? Because their system is really getting clear. And so, to me, Reiki might just be just something to add to that, you know, or to help with that as well. But, you know, I really believe our system has what it needs already. And so, Reiki is just the aid. It can be just an aid to that.

Aníbal: Crystal, looking to the future. What is coming to you as a trainer and as a social justice activist, are you interested or committed to becoming a lead trainer for the Institute?

Crystal: Hmm. All these big terms, my system is like Lead Trainer, social activists...Right? I think my parts... I'll just have to tell this quick story. My daughter, she had to be like five or six and we were in church and our pastor was talking to the young people and he was like, “well, what do you want to be when you grow up?” And the kids are saying, “I want to be a doctor and I want to be a fire man.” And my daughter said, “I just want to be myself.”

Aníbal: Oh, so beautiful.

Crystal: At 5 years old she said, “I just want to be myself and that feels enough.” And so, I hold that story so close to my heart because I just like, I feel like my daughter, like, I just want to be myself. I just, and wherever that takes me and however people experience me is what's needed. I just feel guided right now by... I just feel guided by spirit. And so, if you take something away from that, or if you feel something like this, I really feel that spirit permeating and radiating. So, I don't know. To answer your question. I don't know. I've never, I never like woke up and said, I want to be an AT, right? Like I just felt like spirit led me here. Right? Spirit encouraged somebody to tap me on my shoulder and say, “Hey, do you want to do this?” I was like, “okay.” So, I want to be led and guided by spirit. I don't want to, I just don't want to spend my life just chasing, chasing, chasing, you know, like the durable on the wheel. I've done that, you know, I've done that. And it leaves me feeling exhausted. I really just want to move in the essence of spirit and not force anything. And that feels...My system, when I say that my system was like, “Ooh girl, thank you. Because you know, you can move in, you know, you can have your own agenda and race towards the finish line. And we just want you to enjoy this life and not like push yourself too far.” And so, I believe, you'll see more me, but I want to take my time. I really want to take my time and just enjoy where I am. You know, like, I'll say this, you know, like one moment, it's like soon as people get married, somebody is asking somebody, right? “Do you, do you want to have a baby? Now? Wait, dude just got married.” So, I feel like that in this space, I really just want to sit and like experience this AT position and get that mentorship from the lead trainers. And I just want to build up that experience and be in that space and enjoy it. Just like I did with PAing. I felt like, “okay, girl, you're a good PA now. You don't know it all.” Right? But I felt confident and comfortable to say, “okay, I can move to something different. I want to have that same experience as an AT, before I jump to something else.” Yeah.

Tisha: You have any trainings coming up Crystal?

Crystal: Oh my gosh. So, remember I told you how my first formal training in IFS was with Frank Anderson and I was his PESI assistant at that time. Well, full circle moment. I get to be his real Assistant at his neuroscience training.

Aníbal: Congratulations.

Crystal: And so, I'm just like, to me, that's the spirit like saying full circle moment, right? Like who would have thought, right? And so, I'm really excited about that. I have a training with Gwen Hurd and Leslie. I'm doing some work with Tamala Floyd. So, there's some, a lot of great things coming down the pike. And so, I’m really, really excited about having that experience and working with all these amazing people and being mentored by them as well. Because that's been a joy for me in the IFS community, just learning from people and getting to know more people. And now I can add you, Aníbal, to the list of people I feel connected to. My parts just love connection. I really do.

Aníbal: Thank you, Crystal. Thank you so much for having us and for sharing so much wisdom. It was an enormous joy to be here with you and Tisha. May we keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Crystal: Yeah. I don't feel like I'm ready to go.

Tisha: Oh, It’s time to go? You can come back. We would be happy to have you back. It feels so good to be in your presence.

Getting Past You and Me with Terry’s new book: Us 48:58

Terrence Real is an internationally recognized family therapist, speaker, and author. He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents along with a professional training program for clinicians to learn his Relational Life Therapy methodology. He is the bestselling author of I Don't Want to Talk About ItHow Can I Get Through to You?, and The New Rules of Marriage. His book US: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship will be published by Goop Press June 7, 2022. 

Befriending Self-like Parts with Mariel Pastor 35:34

Mariel Pastor is a Lead Trainer based in Portland, Oregon who began her IFS journey back in 1998 with Richard Schwartz.  She trains across the United States and internationally and is a co-founder of the IFS Telehealth Collective, a multi-state group practice of licensed and trained IFS therapists.   Mariel recently wrote and edited the new Level 1 training manual, and has created advanced workshops designed around the Unburdened Internal System mandala.  Prior to becoming a psychotherapist she worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood.  Her love of working with artists has inspired her most recent project called Character Mapping - a psychological toolbox for actors  writers, and directors to build deeper characters and to find them selves.  In her private practice she works primarily with individual adults and provides consultation for other therapists.
Mariel is with Paul Guinter coordinator for  IFS Telehealth Collective.

Today on IFS Talks, we're welcoming back Mariel Pastor to speak with us about Self-like parts. Mariel is a lead trainer based in Portland, Oregon, who began her IFS journey back in 1998 with Richard Schwartz. She now trains students worldwide and is a co-founder of the IFS Tele-health Collective, a multi-state group practice of licensed and trained IFS Therapists. Mariel recently wrote and edited the new level one Training Manual. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, she worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Her love of working with artists has inspired her most recent project called character mapping, a psychological toolbox for actors, writers, and directors to build deeper characters and to help them find themselves.

Tisha Shull: Mariel, welcome back to IFS Talks. And thank you so much for joining us again today.

Mariel Pastor: Very happy to be with you both. Thank you for inviting me.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Mariel, and thanks much for another talk. This one focused on Self-like parts, how to distinguish them from Self-energy and how to befriend them. Mariel, in IFS literature there is not a lot written about Self-like parts and the term only in relatively recent readings appears. We can find it in more recent readings from Dick Schwartz, like a 2013 article and Pam Krause also names the role of Self-like parts as occasional obstacles to unblending in her chapter, Getting Unstuck in 2017 book Innovations. If I may, I would like to start off with a quote in this Dick's 2020 IFS second edition that goes like this: “Probably the most common phenomenon that baffles beginners is the Self-like part, a manager who can appear to be the Self and often looks like the person at his current age, but whose caretaking and kindness, nevertheless includes an agenda and keeping exiles out of mind.” So, Mariel, what is a Self-like part?

Mariel: Well, I think that is a great description of a kind of Self-like part that I've encountered. But one way I kind of define them is, as Dick's book was saying, they do have an agenda, but sometimes the roles are not only as managers and maybe we'll get into that, but I like to distinguish Self-like parts from Self-filled parts. So often, you know, all of our parts have some Self in them, as we know. You know how much I love the unburden system and when parts are feeling in their preferred roles, they have a lot of Self qualities. So, we don't get rid of parts. So, sometimes our parts are around and they're lending their Self to our lives and also to the process. And those are fine to have around. I like to say that we know that parts can help other parts cope, but parts don't help other parts deeply heal. I mean, it can be helpful and a little bit healing, but Self-like parts in therapy for the IFS therapist will be a challenge to unblend as Pam was saying, because they have an agenda and you can kind of tell when they're up, something isn't flowing, something feels off, something stops, and it's not the same as real Self-energy, that's more collaborative, that has a different kind of wisdom. I actually think there's a number of different ways that Self-like parts show up, in addition to the kind of caring Self-like part that Dick's book mentions.

Tisha: Are there ways that you have to distinguish Self-like parts from Self-filled parts? Is it more of just a felt sense of knowing your system, knowing the client's system? Or are there distinct tips for identifying to begin with?

Mariel: Yeah. Like some clues that they're there? Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned something about the body. It is a feel, you know, we talk about Self-energy and I think there's parts energy too. And then there's burdened parts energy, all those are kind of different. And the more we do this work, the more you get the feel of it. And the body's really important. So, for me, Self-like parts will maybe have a little urgency, or they might be trying, they might be efforting, working at it, maybe a little too much. Like you just get this feel of some pushing perhaps or pushing past, but then there are other ones and we're kind of getting into where I see them, not just in a manager role. I think they can also be in a firefighter or exile role and, or exiles aren't quite a role, but in that kind of position, but sometimes they can be a little numbing. So, I suppose I should confess, like everybody else, I have my own Self-like parts that I do really befriend or have befriended, but one that came to light. I actually want to refer to Loch Kelly's work. He's an IFS therapist and a meditation expert and he teaches a lot. He talks about a kind of witness state that can feel like Self-energy, but he calls it the witness protection program, which is a play on words in the United States when somebody is helping the FBI, they go into witness protection, but he means that it's a kind of witnessing energy that's still a little protective because it's still may feel a little impersonal. So, for me, if I sense that part of me in my own process, in my own inner work, it helps when I'm guided to feel into my heart more and feel more warmth, then it's less impersonal like a witness might be.

Tisha: So that witness would come up as you're being with the exile and you'd sense... Hmm. There's not that real true sense of connection, but we are seeing what the exiles experienced.

Mariel: Right. It could be that in working with an exile, but when we build a Self to part relationship, it could be with a manager or a firefighter when the Self is wanting to connect. So those different Self qualities, connection, clarity, competence, courage, et cetera, are great. And it's like Self-energy fills out, it expands, and it deepens. So, my witness may be a lot more helpful than a critic who's dealing with some other part, you know, but the personal energy or the warmth of Self-energy is more connecting in that Self to part relationship, especially with exiles. Exiles really want that warmth and that connection. Some managers are really glad to have the clarity of Self-energy or the confidence, a lot of protectors want to feel that. And I think in general, the body will feel more present and engaged when we're in Self-energy with any kind of part.

Aníbal: Mariel, Dick says that these pseudo Selves or Self-like parts are extremely difficult for us to detect. Is it really useful to identify and recognize or name Self-like parts? And if yes, why is it so important to identify them?

Mariel: Right. I think when it's important too, is when you realize something isn't flowing, and there can be other reasons for that, like other parts are objecting to the work that haven't been checked with yet. But if Self really isn't enough in the lead, like we talk about how much Self, right? Sometimes it doesn't have to be a hundred percent in Self out of Self. There needs to be enough of that presence, like, you know, grease in the gears to get it moving. But when it's not moving and everything else looks pretty good, like, huh, I'm not sure what's happening. Some of these Self-like parts can be very kind of clever and committed to controlling the process. And they will have reasons... They don't like to be called out. In fact, I think it's very important for the IFS practitioner to really not be afraid of them, not be too alarmed, but to be very curious when something feels off and to gently inquire, use curiosity, “is there a part that's maybe working a little hard or is there something else happening here that feels closed off?” If you've met from a client before a pleaser or a caretaker part, which is kind of the one that was mentioned in Dick's book, you could ask, “oh, I wonder if that caretaker might be working again right now, is it here?” And don't make it this big, horrible ordeal. It's not like, you know, everything's lost just because a Self-like part is there, but some trust might need to be built with that one, that it can be safe for it to rest, or you might need to work with it a bit and find a new way to collaborate with it so that it's not in the lead. The problem is when it's really in the lead because they can carry and hold some good information about the system. I also don't like to call them Self-like parts. I have to say.

Aníbal: The Self-filled?

Mariel: Well, I like them to name themselves. I don't like to name, call parts. I let parts name themselves, but that's sort of a handle we use in the trainings, you know, as therapists, is that we're saying that there's something other than enough genuine Self-energy in the lead here. So, and then we say they’re Self-like, it seems like it’s Self, but something's not quite right. Sometimes they are very caring. Sometimes they're smart and have a lot of clarity, but they're still not very accepting, let's say, or there's something that's still not quite as open, like beginner’s mind as Self-energy would be.

Aníbal: Yeah. Dick says it is important to remember that the agenda of a Self-like part is no less than any other manager to control other parts. Would you agree with his?

Mariel: Yeah. And then they have different ways of doing that, right? So, either by being... Sometimes there'll be... Have you ever seen this where there's an exile, a child part... You know, parts, aren't their roles, but let's say there's a tender kid who's a little distrusting as soon as they're encountered, even distrusting of Self-energy. And if the person wants to quick give this child a hug, which seems loving, what if that kid doesn't want to hug? What if that child needs more patience and time to be met? And it has to build trust? To me, that can be a Self-like part. I will ask. And there's ways to deal with it. Like, well, let's ask the kid if that's what they would like. So, they can be helpers, control, maybe mild control or really controlling. Right. So, I kind of look at these things as degrees of energy or potency.

Tisha: You mentioned using the body and different types of energy to kind of track these parts. Are there typical parts that you notice in yourself or that other therapists have when Self-like parts are present? Is there anything that kind of trips your system to ask the question? Oh, is this a Self-like part? And versus a Self-filled...

Mariel: In the body for me, I will say that, you know, in starting a session, there will be conversation. I hope the conversation is not too in our head trying to figure things out. Like, I think the word stress and strain is a good barometer for me. How much am I efforting or working? So, at the beginning of a session, you know, we might be kind of getting a sense of what we want to focus on. So, there's some conversation maybe with a manager, that's fine. They can come in with goals. They're not necessarily super stressed, but the deeper we go in the flow of the model, I feel like the more my body feels like it's literally warm, not like overheating, but I think I feel grounded, warm, very much connected to the client. And I'm not even so much aware of the thinking, but following... My parts, sort of feel like they're in the background with maybe an idea, but I'll float it out and it feels maybe gentler and at ease. There are other times if I need to lend a little more strength for clients' parts, because that's what they're wanting. I don't know. It's subtle, it's hard to describe. And I certainly can't describe it for other therapists, but that's what it's like for me.

Tisha: It feels like it came across to me. I appreciate your description. Yeah.

Aníbal: Mariel, as for distinguishing Self from Self-like parts, Dick has various suggestions. I'm quoting some. He says, “if the client does observe an image of herself interacting with other parts, this is a Self-like part.” He also asks, “are you with your parts directly or do you see yourself with them?” How do you like to comment on this?

Mariel: I love that. That's true. And that's sort of like the witnessing thing too, for me. Like, if I see myself with the part, I will say, not everybody sees their parts in the same way, or is as visual, but many people are... One thing I will say to clients around that is if they're confused by that question, like, what do you mean if I see myself there and like, oh, is that wrong? It's really possible for clients who are wanting to have a successful or a good experience, a healing experience, to feel like they're doing something wrong if we asked that, so I'll just offer, “well, it's like right now, I'm just with you. I don't see myself with you.” And then they get it. “Oh, okay. I can be there.” But that's true. What Dick's saying is like, it's a little removed and so we can be curious, “is there a part that has concerns about letting you be really present with this other one?”

Tisha: Do the Self-like parts have common fears or are they the same fears that other protectors have?

Mariel: Well, I liked that you phrased it that way because many Self-like parts are protectors. And if I may, I think I'd like to talk a little bit about some Self-like parts or when we think Self is in the lead, but it's really a part and it's a firefighter. So, have you ever had an experience where you're working with something tender, something that hasn't been allowed or has been rejected and exiled and you get close and all of a sudden everything's fine? Everything's great. I live on the west coast in the United States. So, I say it's sort of like, you know, the groovy parts, everything's hippie. Sort of like, oh, peace, love and happiness, we're all good here. To me that's like a firefighter that's doing what we call a spiritual bypass.

Tisha: Yeah. I was going to ask if that's the spiritual bypass that you defined. Yeah.

Mariel: It feels like that to me. And they will provide a really lovely feeling inside, you know, very positive, but it's out of fear that whatever is there, we can't handle it, or they'll have whatever common protector fears. Now I'm not going to put down that sort of feeling in the body. You know, it is nice to have positive thoughts and maybe even go towards spiritual energy inside. It feels good for the nervous system. And I think firefighters like to change the feeling state as quickly as possible. And in this case, they're going to something really positive and can be healthy for us, except for it's still an avoidance. It's still avoiding something else or just quickly distracting us. And in which case there's some fear underneath it. And some competence and trust needs to be built and hope that we can deal with the thing they fear and actually heal it so that they don't even have to escape it anymore.

Aníbal: Can those types of Self-like parts lead clients into a spiritual path?

Mariel: Well, sure. I think especially when there has been more healing and unburdening done, you know, it's nice to know what that feels like in the body to get into that kind of state. Yeah. And, then it'll be like, so I think sometimes firefighters, when they're unburdened, they'll remind us to take some time off, they'll remind us to pursue other pleasures or interests. And for those who really want to develop more of a spiritual path, it’s, you know, at that point, just more of their... And managers might like that too. Health oriented, goal-oriented managers might partner with some former firefighters and go yeah, let's go to a retreat. Let's forget about the world's problems for a day or for a weekend and let's go enjoy some of this. It's just that we'll come back to whatever the issues where the problems were later and more refreshed.

Aníbal: Mariel, coming back to what signs can we find that a Self-like part may be active, and I'd like to quote Dick again on this, and also the manual that you edited. Dick says, lack of progress in therapy, despite apparent Self-energy in the client can be a clue that a Self-like part is running the inner show and also exiles refusing to interact with or be comforted by the Self’s presence.

Mariel: Yeah, absolutely. So, when something's off, it's not flowing and Dick's talking about that or the exile doesn't want to build trust with Self, or I sometimes think other protectors come in and go, this isn't real. I don't buy it. And the other protectors of the exiles don't want to allow the connection. Because again, it's complicated in people. So, there's many different ways this might show up.

Aníbal: The manual that you edited, the official manual for the level one it says, when burdens come back, Self wasn't leading the process. Do you want to comment on this?

Mariel: There’re different reasons why it might seem like a burden isn't resolved. And that's one of the reasons is that, well, it wasn't actually Self-energy doing the healing. So, again, I think parts can help other parts cope or get along, but parts can't help. Can't actually heal the deeper burdens. It's not like Self-energy can, or enough Self-energy there. Other parts might support the healing, but it's not the same. I'd like to add if I can, because people are always surprised when I say, what do you mean an exile Self-like part. So, can either of you take, you know, you want to take a guess?

Tisha: An exile Self-like part?

Aníbal: Someone that pretends to be in pain?

Mariel: Yeah. So, well, I guess how I have seen it, because it's not as common. I think, again, the most common Self-like parts are the ones that are controlling the therapy or controlling other parts inside like those managers, but an exile can be mistaken as Self-energy, in my opinion, when a client gets in touch with that young open, innocent energy inside, it may not necessarily seem young, but it's open, creative, innocent energy. And is just so refreshing to have that back in the fold, to have that included again. And occasionally you'll find somebody who believes, oh, the child is who we are down deep. The child should be free, and the child should be in the lead. And this energy is so unencumbered in free child that that's who I really am inside. And so, there are some philosophies I've heard that believe that the free child, that unencumbered child energy is like our own personal imprint of our Self. It's very close to Self-energy, but it's not the same as the wise deeply intuitive Self, if that makes sense. So just because it's in us from the beginning, that child isn’t actually going to be the wisest leader of the system, but it sure is important. And it sure does have a lot of Self qualities in it.

Tisha: I was wondering if this is another example, because this has happened on more than one occasion where someone will meet with an exile and the exile will turn and start care-taking the adult.

Mariel: Yes. I mean, that's a loving quality for a child. You know, kids want to connect and attach. What's challenging is if that child is doing it because that's the only way they'll get their needs met and they have to almost earn or perform in that way. Whereas a child really should, you know, get attention simply because it exists, it's there. But I have seen that too. And, so we love that quality, but it's not the same as Self-energy.

Aníbal: Mariel, so, what are Self-like parts common fears? What are their fears? And how do we befriend them?

Mariel: Right. Well, some that I found fear that if they're not doing what they do, leading the therapy, directing things, controlling other parts or helping in that way, they don't think anything's going to happen in this process. It's like, oh, it's sort of, you know, I'll get this going. They don't necessarily trust the other parts to have their own healing rhythm, which is a way I phrase it to the Self-like parts. We say we want to let them speak for themselves, that every part has its own healing rhythm. And they'll say, oh no, they don't. I know what's good for them. So, they're usually afraid that nothing's going to happen without them there. There won't be a change. They fear that there isn't Self-energy because they've been in charge for so long and they've done helpful things for the person. Sometimes they just are so used to doing the job. Like, I remember hearing inside of me once, a part said, “this is the thanks I get for everything I've done for you? You want me to step back?” It really needed some appreciation for being so helpful. And I think that's one of the main things around befriending them is recognizing their dedication, their positive intentions, like any other part, and they can help, but they can't heal. So there really is that distinction. I think another common fear is they really don't believe the person can handle whatever it is inside. They fear other part’s taking over. And that sort of like, you know, how we use that metaphor of the orchestra in IFS where the parts are the instruments and Self is the conductor. And of course, the Self, the conductor needs the instruments to play music. But when the conductor isn't there, the first violin is in charge of running rehearsals and in charge of the music. So those Self-like parts might be like the first violins. They think “without me, there's no one else to do this,” because the Self has been really also hidden or not allowed because of circumstances.

Tisha: You've trained so many new IFS therapists and there's so much emphasis on being in Self as an IFS therapist. And I'm curious what your experience shows about that dance, that people that are new to learning the model do with Self versus Self-like parts.

Mariel: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up because I was thinking about that very thing. When we start introducing the term or as it comes up, Self-like parts in a training, I think it sets off some alarms in the therapists, like, “oh no, I'm supposed to always be in Self, a hundred percent Self all the time.” And the irony can be that then their own Self-like parts are a little bit performing. So, the fear of Self-like parts might actually bring up some of those in the therapist, even though they don't want to. In fact, a colleague of mine in Australia last week in a consultation group had said that there's a critic in her that had become the Self-like part policeman or police officer. It was on the lookout to arrest any part that was like a Self-like part. It's just starts to be this cascading effect.

Aníbal: Can be scary.

Mariel: But don't be afraid of it. That's why I like to, in my workshops, I have a little Self-like part inventory that I lead with. So, I'll just say a little bit about it here, if that's okay.

Aníbal: Please, yes.

Mariel: You know, it's really important for us to consider what comes up when we hear that term, what we've been told we should do, which is a watch out for them, what impulses come up and what we've seen, like get a sense of what do we even mean by Self-like parts and then be gentle and ask, what do I sense in myself around that? Do I have any? Because at the end of the day, all of these parts are pretty universal across people, very human. So, if we can find it in ourselves in a welcoming way, no shame, no blame, this is a shame-free zone, and get to know them and really with that reassurance, I'm not here to get rid of them, but finding it in ourselves as part of an inventory and developing that relationship so that they can be helpful, but not as quickly in the lead and feeling the energy of them in the body when they're strong, when they're moderate or when they're really relaxed

Aníbal: And Mariel, does Self has no agenda at all?

Mariel: Well, we used to say that a lot in the trainings and then it got clarified, I think by Dick, at some point and I really appreciated this, while Self doesn't have agenda, it does have a sense of purpose. And that purpose is to unify the parts, to reconnect, to bring balance and wholeness. And that means also to help heal, to help foster the transformation. So, I think Self wants to have a full house, have everybody home.

Aníbal: So Self-like parts are welcome. Are therapists allowed to have Self-like parts?

Mariel: Oh, well, yes, but it's because they're already there and you know, our managers or Self-like parts, they're not always extreme, right? So, they might be helpful. I have had times in the past where... I remember there was a time where I had a lot of grief in my life and I'd come to work and there were some clients whose Self-energy was more readily available in the process. And as their Self-energy came through more of minded because it's a relational field between two people in IFS therapy. It's, you know, a dynamic. So, who was there before with me that was helping them get to that point? Was it a manager or Self-like part? I don't know, but it wasn't interrupting. It wasn't interfering. It was still allowing the process. So, all of us have parts. That's part of our ego and our personality. It might feel balanced. It may not feel so burdened, just like there can be clouds in the sky, those are our parts, sun can still come through. It doesn't have to be a completely cloudless sky for that energy to come through.

Aníbal: So, Mariel, thank you so much for having us again. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our works and our lives. And how is your IFS Health Collective doing?

Mariel: Well like IFS. I mean, the attraction to the model is really strong. So, we're very lucky to say that we've got a great collection of therapists. We're almost at 25 clinicians in the six states where we are, and we expect to be growing this year, growing sanely to not just to meet the demand, there's so much demand right now for therapy, but specially for IFS, but it's going really well. And it's really feeling like a home for the clinicians, which is great, given how much isolation there's been. And plus, we’re spread across the country. So, it's been really helpful. I've loved having this new community to turn to.

Tisha: Thanks for sharing your wisdom again, it's always wonderful to be with you.

Mariel: Thanks to you as well.

Emotional Regulation and Dysregulation through IFS Lens 44:11

Chris Burris, LPC, LMFT is a Senior Lead Trainer for the IFS Institute. He has been an IFS Therapist since 1999 and is trained as a Marriage and Family Therapist. He uses mind/body approaches of therapy in alleviating traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety disorders. He works extensively with individuals and groups.

Since 1990 he has been very active with Men’s, Couples, Self Leadership Groups and Rites of Passage Programs. As the former Director of Counseling at The North Carolina School of the Arts, Chris has considerable experience with performance enhancement with Athletes, Artists, Actors, Filmmakers, Musicians, Writers, and Dancers. He is currently in Private Practice in Asheville, NC.

In addition to being a psychotherapist, Chris has trained in many nature based models with Animus Valley institute, School of Lost Borders, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and The Center for Conscious Eldering.

 

Today on IFS Talks we're so happy to be welcoming back Chris Burris. He's speaking with us today about IFS and Emotional Regulation. Chris Burris is an IFS senior lead trainer for the IFS Institute. He's been an IFS therapist since 1999 and he’s trained as a marriage and family therapist. Chris uses mind body approaches of therapy in alleviating traumatic stress, depression and anxiety disorders. Chris is currently in private practice in Asheville, North Carolina.

Tisha Shull: Chris, welcome to IFS Talks, and thank you so much for being here with us today.

Chris Burris: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me back. It's good to be with you again.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Chris. It's our take three for this podcast. Thanks again for your great collaboration and generosity with the Talks. It's been almost one year since we sat and discussed four types of challenging protectors. How have you been those days? Anything you'd like to share?

Chris: Good, good. Yeah, I think most of my training endeavors has been a lot with Black Therapists Rock, working on getting people of color to train. So, there's more access for people of color and people that find himself in sort of marginalized populations have access to therapists that have similar cultures or identities. So that's been a lot of my work the past year and getting some new lead trainers trained from those communities and very happy, proud we have some new lead trainers coming up. And so, that's been a lot of my work the past years, with those populations.

Aníbal: Chris, emotional regulation or emotional self-regulation is one common main goal for so many in therapy and for so many therapy modalities. Is it also a main goal for IFS? Do we want our clients emotionally self-regulated?

Chris: I think it's really important. I think it is, you know, when people come looking for help with depression or anxiety, emotionally they're overloaded and overwhelmed and are looking for help with that. So, I think it's a major part of the therapeutic process, and I think IFS adds some really great contributions and tools that are user-friendly and helpful for people.

Aníbal: Chris, regulation is not a word that you find easily in the IFS vocabulary or in Richard Swartz’ writings. In Dicks’ book, You Are The One You Have Been Waiting For, you can find many expressions for emotion, like emotion connection, emotional intelligence, emotional burdens, but never emotional regulation. Also, in its amazing 2013 article called Moving from Acceptance Towards Transformation with IFS, Dick says, and I am quoting “exiles carry the affect that clients try to regulate through strategies mentioned above like thought suppression, experiential avoidance, and emotional non-acceptance. It is the protectors’ parts that use those strategies and others to control the person's inner environment, internally keeping the person away from the exiles and to control the person's external words so that exiles are never triggered by people or events.” So, for Dick regulation comes from protectors trying to control and suppress exiles. Thus, the term regulation got a bad press once too much linked to the idea of suppression and control.

Chris: I think there's so much in our culture, even kind of the way we're raised. I just recently heard an information about how we're raised from a behavioral standpoint. And so much of the way we're raised from a behavioral standpoint is that things are allowed and not allowed and things that are not allowed get suppressed. And what we encounter in the beginnings of IFS is so much of our system is repressed. And so those other therapeutic tools that you just named, that Dick names, do add more suppression. And I think Dick's very much trying to stay away from anything that suppresses other parts or parts suppressing parts or things not being allowed to emerge and be present in the system. So, I think he's done a wonderful job really trying to steer away from therapeutic approaches that contribute to more repression.

Tisha: Chris, what's your own interest in emotional regulation in IFS? Where does it stem from?

Chris: Yeah, I think, you know, emotional regulation has been sort of a big part of my own journey around, you know, growing up kind of a white male in our society, having access to emotions and names for feeling words, and being able to say what I'm feeling has always been quite a challenge. And so, having emotional vocabulary to be able to describe what I'm feeling, it's also really important in an intimate connection with others, to be able to say how we're feeling. And so, my own journey has been kind of learning my feelings, being able to have words for my feelings, express those in moments of conflict. So that's been a very important part of my own journey and my own part of being in intimate relationships with others, is being able to name what I'm feeling other than, you know, angry or pissed off or, you know, or done, finished, so I need a bigger vocabulary to be able to describe it. You know, we are feeling beings, so not having a language for it has been a major challenge. It's not something men tend to sit around and talk about their feelings with one another very much. So, that's been part of my journey is be able to name what I'm feeling clearly, and it helps with being able to regulate my system in a non-repressive or suppressive way, but in a way of inquiring.  When people learn IFS and try to practice IFS what they tend to do, so if I have an emotion come up or have something that's activating in my system and the first thing I say to myself is “is that a part? Or do I have a part?” That can engage a mental, figuring it out dynamic, you know, where I go into figuring, trying to figure it out. The IFS process really isn't a figuring it out process, is an inquiry process where we began with curiosity and then we are informed by our parts, by our system. So, being able to enter into a curious beginning to kind of be informed by our system and I think the reason Dick does a lot around not doing grounding and not doing these other regulatory processes is because it blocks the process of being informed and having our system be able to inform us about what's occurring internally. So, the success of the model was sort of find the part, focus on it and then begin to flesh it out, which means noticing it, paying attention to it. And then notice how we feel towards it. So that inquiry process is a process of having our system inform us about what's occurring internally.

Tisha: How do we notice the difference for ourselves or, you know, when we're with our clients and we have our parts detectors up, how do we tell the difference between figuring it out parts and inquiry?

Chris: Well, I think it's a level of curiosity. I think there's kind of two ways the parts reveal themselves. One is to be able to talk out loud and talking out loud in our stories. Often, we can hear what parts are active. So, the therapist’s listening to the stories of the client, isn't analyzing, they're listening with curiosity for more of a hypothesis about what might be active. Not that we know exactly what it is. It's just a little indicator that there's something active in the system. There's a push, there's a pull, you know, there's an internal conflict between parts. So, we get this, but the parts detecting isn't a figured-out process. It's like a little indicator that says, “hey, if we focus here, we might find out more.” And is so it's a beginning process rather than a knowing process.

Aníbal: Coming back to your need of getting to know your emotions, different parts, carry different energies and different emotions, right? And it looks so important for therapists to notice and name those different energies and emotions coming from such different parts. So, as practitioners and therapists, what do we need to tune up? An emotional detector or radar, do we need emotion knowledge or an emotional wisdom?

Chris: I think we need to have vocabulary. We need to have a language, not only a language of feelings, but a language of mood. And we also need to have a language that describes sensation and a language for needs. And so, how well we're versed in the language of emotions, moods, needs and sensations, so that we can reflect back something that may resemble a little bit of what the client is feeling so that it gives them a little indicator and a little support so that they can go inside to explore more around that. You know, so for example, anxiety is a mood that has the emotion of fear and also has a quite a bit of thoughts connected to it, you know, a story about what might happen or a story about what someone may do or may not do, so the story plus the fear, the combination of that creates that mood of anxiety. So, being able to have that vocabulary is really important. So, we can begin to reflect back a little bit of where to start with the inquiry process.

Tisha: It sounds like that would come out of really spending time getting to know each part or a particular part where you really take the time to see all the different facets of it.

Chris: Yeah.

Tisha: Or feel, or sense or describe.

Chris: Yeah. I think that knowing our own system is really important. When I was studying, you know, I studied a lot of Rogerian psychotherapy and what they would have us do in the early days is we would watch soap operas, you know, and try to name, get a sense of naming their feelings. So, I was sort of sit with soap operas with my big feeling sheet trying to kind of name the feeling that was going on, but oftentimes it's like five or six different feelings all occurring all at once. You know? So, any given scenario, you may have multiple feelings going on all at once. So, I think it's impossible to name exactly what people are feeling, but we can get a little hint about it and some feeling words that begin to give language to it. If we can't name it, then it becomes very unidentified and it creates a lot of uncertainty. And uncertainty is another big thing that people tend to feel anxious about, is a fear of the unknown or fear of the uncertainty, not being able to name what I'm feeling, then crates anxiety on top of that, that feeling that's occurring.

Aníbal: Chris, I've been checking on Dick’s writings and I could see that the term self-regulation only appears in Dick's 2021 last book, No Bad Parts, and just to introduce an old concept from cybernetics. And the term affect regulation finally appears on the 2020 Internal Family Fystems Therapy Second edition when Dick and Martha say, “because any part can control the level at which it blends with the Self, we are able to work with very delicate inner systems, largely without having to use the grounding techniques and the affect regulation skills that are prevalent feature of most trauma therapies.” So, Dick and Martha are saying that the exiles can regulate themselves under certain circumstances without the oppressive work of managers or the distractive work of firefighters. Do you want to comment on this?

Chris: Yeah, I think that's a big hallmark of what Dick is trying to big communicating for quite some time. So, regulation really comes into play when parts are listened to and heard. So, coming into relationship to the part and being able to listen to it and have it feel heard and not alone, the part naturally begins to, can actually begin to regulate. So, if it doesn't feel like anyone's there, if it's stuck in a trauma scenario, if it doesn't think anyone's coming and there's no one, no way to get listened to, then obviously the part's going to get loud in some way, it could get loud somatically or even through his voice or emotion. So, coming into relationship to the part, that's the process of regulating, is coming into a relationship to the part. Once we enter into a relationship to the part, then we can reassure it that we're not here to get rid of it, or you know, that we're here to help it, that we can listen to it. And then we can ask it to engage in a way that is supportive or easier for the person to be in relationship to it. So that's a natural process of parts regulating is through coming into relationship to them. Sometimes we do that with direct access by the therapist himself coming into a relationship to the part, or we help the clients’ Self come into relationship to it. So, if we don't, if we do sort of lots of other grounding and other certain techniques, what Dick says is we block that process of coming into relationship to the part. And then we enact a form of repression all over again.

Aníbal: Still, we need to say that our clients have permission to dysregulate or be dysregulated in our consulting rooms. Right?

Chris: Well, and I think this is where the concept of blending and unblending gets confusing for folks. So, oftentimes people prescribe unblending as a form of regulation, that if a client is blended and I need to help them unblend, so they would regulate, you know. And that actually sort of becomes another form of repression. A client being blended isn't problematic, right? I say blending is a really up close and personal communication that you're getting with a client. So, I don't start my, and I think a lot of therapists take away when they take a level one training, because we do start with a meditation, that they need to start a meditation at the beginning of their session to have a client be in session. But what happens is you take that live material and you kind of repress it in a way, you know, and we want that live material. We want some anxiety to be present to work with it. So, there are times that it may be beneficial to do a little meditation or do a little inquiry or settling that can be helpful, but we don't want to lose that live material. So, blending is a very helpful process to inquiry, and we don't have to unblend in order to start an inquiry process, we actually ask them to blend to start the inquiry process.

Aníbal: Yeah, beautiful.

Tisha: I really appreciate that take. It's really important to really experience the part as it is in the moment. That's the way to get the best...

Chris: Yeah. I think the thing therapists have to ask is “Am I trying to unblend this client because them being blended is uncomfortable for me, you know, to my parts. So, oftentimes we'll... [inaudible] I need you to unblend so I can settle, you know, and that's not... We want to be able to settle as therapists, we want to be able to be in our Self’s energy and be with the person while they're blended.

Aníbal: Chris, what would you say that IFS really can add to the concept and the depth of emotional regulation?

Chris: Well, I think the inquiry, so I can serve you an example. A couple of days ago, I had an event that was kind of disturbing to my system. All I could really identify in the beginning was I felt vulnerable, I felt uncertain, you know, and I felt a little bit of alone. And so, I get to identify those feelings. And then the next thing I could identify was how was I feeling towards my feelings? You know, so I had a critic that was saying, “you shouldn't be bothered so much about this. This shouldn't bother you so much.” So that was repressing, trying to repress those feelings. So, as I sort of came into relationship more with it, and I began to listen to the parts that were having those feelings, then the system opened up and I could identify the feelings even more, the complexity of the feelings. I could then identify the needs that was also behind those emotions. And then eventually, one morning I woke up and my exiles were present like, “oh, okay, this is why it's a bothersome for you.” You know, because my exiles were also involved in the event. So that process took probably 24 hours for... But the regulation was there because I was able to be in relationship to the feelings and listening to them. But it took a while for it to inform me of the complexity about what I was experiencing, and then once I had that experience, then I could communicate it, you know, and the communication of it brought me closer to the person that I was in conflict with versus disconnecting it. So, it was an inquiry process of being with and listening to my system versus a figuring it out process. I think that can take a while, listening to our feelings, our system, what parts are involved. That can take a little while to work itself out. And I think people are quick to, I can't figure it out, which is often means I don't have language for it. You know, I think that's where this having language for emotions, language for needs, language for sensation, that kind of helps us with that process. We don't go into quite the uncertainty or unknowing quite... And we don't get overwhelmed quite so much.

Tisha: Thank you for illustrating that with that example, that feels really helpful. Does it seem to you, in your experience, that emotional regulation or dysregulation, when we're triggered, is that usually indicative of exiles that are holding burdens or tension or pain?

Chris: I ended up sort of having a list of five ways where it comes up. And so, maybe I'll just go through a few of these. One is there is an overwhelming event, you know. So, one can be... I'm just faced with an overwhelming event... And then it could be...

Tisha: Just straight up in the moment...

Chris: Straight up in the moment. Yeah.

Tisha: Life is hard.

Chris: Life is hard. There's an event that occurs. There can be emotions that occur based on a life challenge, you know. So, a challenge, may be, you know, my car breaks down, going to cost me $2,000 to fix it. You know, I've got 500 in my bank account, you know, and then I don't have next paycheck, you know, so it can be over a life event, that's challenging life event. The other one can be unresolved trauma. So, these life events or life challenges or life events can evoke over past traumas that often surface on top of that. We can also have unresolved grief that begins to surface. And there's different things that may bring that up. Sometimes people watch a movie or see a TV show or have an interaction with someone or an anniversary and grief begins to emerge kind of on its own. The other one that I think we don't talk a lot about in IFS is the emergence of needs. So, when we have needs that are unmet, we naturally have an emotional reaction to that. So that need, when the unmet need isn't met, we have an emotion, a distress that tells us that that need is not being met or that that need is there is not being listened to, you know, so I can get quite antsy if I don't play tennis at least a couple days a week, my system gets very antsy and irritable and it tells me I'm not having enough fun. You know? So, that emotion tells me there's an unmet need. The last one, which we don't talk a lot about IFS is sort of what I call a soul's desire, this feeling of wanting to make a purpose or having a contribution to the world or movement through something that breaks our heart, that we feel like we need to do something about. So, there's kind of a calling and we can have a lot of emotion around that sort of the connection of our Self-energy to something that we're supposed to be engaged with. So, there's several areas where emotion can come up and we need to be able to kind of engage in order to navigate through those different events.

Tisha: With each of these, it's really beautiful because it indicates the purposefulness of the emotion.

Chris: Right. Yeah. So, the purposes of the emotion, you know, so emotions they're not good or bad, they're not right or wrong. They just kind of are. And they're meant to... To have that part navigating the world is through being an emotional being. So, we navigate our world through not only emotions, but also thoughts, you know, so our needs help us navigate the world. So, we need both of those. If we don't have the cognition, it's hard to navigate, but if we don't have the emotional connectiveness, it's hard to navigate. So, we need both for those that navigate our lives.

Aníbal: Still, Chris, some feelings and emotions like anger and rage have a bad press and others like peace or love or joy of a better press.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I think that what anger sort of says is I'm not being loved in a way that I want to be loved, you know? So, the reason it gets a bad press is anger is a poor delivery system for other emotions. You know, so if I feel I'm unloved and I communicate that with anger, that doesn't really beget... That other person doesn't love me more often because I'm angry at them, you know. So, it doesn't really beget what we're... It's not a good delivery system for the feelings, you know, but if I'm in touch with my anger, my anger is often telling me I'm not being loved the way that I feel like I deserve to be loved. You know, I'm not being seen the way I want to be seen, or there's an outrage or injustice that's occurring to someone else, you know, and that's intolerable, that I can't tolerate. So, it's about that I love the other person or I love...You know, I'm loving in a way that is getting blocked or a boundary that's getting violated. So, it's a very helpful alarm system. Is just not a very helpful delivery system?

Tisha: You mentioned the co-regulation with the therapist of like walking through a meditation so that, you know, I, in the therapist role am less uncomfortable. Could you explain why that happens so often and, you know, talk about ways as a therapist to work with that?

Chris: I think, oftentimes, somehow IFS therapists say to themselves, this client does not have enough Self-energy. And as soon as you've said that to yourself as a therapist, you've actually just thrown up a big block to the whole process, you know. And so, somehow the therapist evaluates the client doesn't have enough Self-energy and they say that to themselves. And, then they go about, you know, I'm going to do EMDR, I'm going to do something else other than IFS because this client doesn't have enough therapy or I'm going to do resourcing because they don't have enough Self-energy. So, we don't sort of say that, we don't, you know, on a cloudy day, we don't say there's not enough sun, there's plenty of sun that is being blocked, you know. So, from an IFS standpoint, and Dick communicates this really well, people have plenty of Self-energy, they just have really strong protectors that are blocking that Self-energy and they don't mean to block it, they're just in a survival mode, you know, they're trying to survive. And so, it's a process where Self-energy emerges by parts relaxing. So, maybe getting off a little bit, but I think that's one reason people do the meditation. If someone comes in blended, they say to themselves, you don't have enough Self-energy for me to work with you. I've got to either import something by grounding, you know, oh we’ve got to do a meditation to kind of get your Self-energy present, rather than... If the person is blended, that's a perfect place to start working, you know, and it may be that we work through direct access by listening very closely and reflecting back what we're hearing and holding Self-energy, or we're beginning to enter into the process of how they're relating to what they're experiencing. So, that's why I say blending is a great opportunity. It's an up close and personal experience with a part at that very moment.

Aníbal: So, all parts are welcome can be tough on therapists as well.

Chris: Yeah. It can be tough on some of our parts. What I’ve been working a lot, I've been doing a lot of consultation, is really how many therapists parts are actually engaged in the process of trying to provide therapy. So, a lot of our young parts that learn to care for people, you know, significant others, are often in the room engaged, you know, and get overwhelmed by it. So really having, and I think this is something Dick talks a lot about, is not having your therapist parts, even kind of in the room, definitely not engaged in the therapy process is one of the growing, developmental processes for IFS therapists. The question I sort of ask when I do a lot of journaling is, who has prescribed themselves to this client or prescribed themselves to this event? You know, so the inquiry inside is which parts of me have prescribed themselves to this event or this person, you know. So, they taken it on themselves to “this is my job.” And they've often done that involuntarily. It's an unconscious process.

Aníbal: So, Chris, it looks like through IFS lens there is a variety of quite different ways of regulation. One through managers that either control or suppress exiles and firefighters, traditional seen as control and regulation by other models. Another through firefighters, and those can still be seen by traditional models as dysregulation. Another one through the exile itself, when these exiles feel the trust enough and enough connection that enables the modulation of the emotion. And another one through differentiation, so precious in our model when Self is present to the parts and differentiate itself from the parts. Would you agree with these different qualities of regulation, Chris?

Chris: Well, I think that I would prescribe it more in a suppression, you know, and being in relation too. So, I think the word regulation has become synonymous with repression and I think that's been a lot of what Dicks, you know, hesitancy about even using the word itself because it evokes actually... And helping people see that that is a repressive endeavor has been quite a challenge because so much of our system relies on that and teaches people to ground or to meditate it away, you know. But I think those are putting band-aids on it and we don't get to exiles by grounding or meditating it a way. And I think that's been Dick's campaign is for people to be comfortable getting to those vulnerable parts of themselves.

Aníbal: So, Chris, does Self regulate? We have the expression self-regulation meaning we should regulate ourselves, but does Self regulate as well, or does Self lead?

Chris: I think Self connects and comes into relationship with, and it saps the parts. So, in that process of connection and there's... You know, if I'm really, really upset and I can connect with another person that would just listen to me, you know, or sit with me, then my system will naturally become calmer. But that's a process. So, in that sense, the Self of the other person is helping my system regulate and regulation meaning, I use the word meaning sort of coming to a natural state, you know, that our system naturally wants to come into more harmonious state. Sort of a natural motivation to that, we don't have to make that happen or do that to somebody that the system naturally wants to do that, you know, but it does that through being seen and heard and valued, and that can happen either with someone else or it can happen in how we see, hear and value our own systems. So that question, how am I feeling towards my part right now is a real key to the process of the system beginning to come to a natural state of regulation.

Aníbal: Can you say a little bit about the role of shame around regulation?

Chris: You know, I think shame feels life-threatening because what goes with shame is this feeling that I'm discardable, or I'm irrelevant, or I don't belong. And those evoke really a life-threatening response, a lot of anxiety can be about the feeling of shame merging in our system or something occurring is going to evoke shame in our system. So, it's quite overwhelming. It also tends to cause us to isolate from other people. So that feeling of loneliness or being alone, in addition to that I'm unlovable or, you know, or rejectable is majorly distressing to our system. Shame is often a component of trauma. So, trauma has two components, not only the bad thing that happened, but also the feeling of being alone, as well as that somehow, I deserve this or that somehow was my fault causing this. So, our own critics, I do a lot of work with critics, run a critic camp for people who have graduated from level one trainings, but a lot of our own critics evoke that shame or keep it stoked, you know, or closely active, alive in our system. So, I think it's one of the most difficult emotions and feelings to navigate. It also is the thing that's sort of bonded to our exiles in their trauma and the burdens their caring.

Aníbal: Chris, I guess, contracting and negotiate workable goals with IFS is one of your specialties. And usually managers push clients into therapy for regulation or controlling or eliminate other parts, dysregulated ones, usually firefighters or even exiles. How do we manage contracting with those managers?

Chris: Well, the thing I teach a lot is when people come into therapy, I'm curious, how are they relating to their system? You know, so what is their way of relating to themselves? And, largely what we have is people relating in repressive ways. You know, so I don't like this part, I want to get rid of this part, I want this to go away, I want to get rid of my anxiety, I want to get rid of my anger. Those are ways people are relating to themselves and what we see, you know, is what we resist persists. So that beginning contract is, would you allow me to help you learn to relate differently to your feelings and emotions? You know, what if we related in a way that we could listen to them and hear more about what they're trying to say or what they're trying to communicate with you and what your needs are. How about if I could help you to listen to your emotions or feelings in a way that helps them feel more understood and help your system feel more understood? So, that's a workable contract, which is basically the inquiry process, you know, find, focus, feel towards and befriend. So, that relating in a bit of a compassionate or curious way is the befriending process that we're kind of helping people enter into. So, help people relating to themselves isn’t something initially people come in knowing about, that part of my anxiety is also how I'm relating to my fear. You know, if I'm relating to my fear in repressive ways, then I'm buzzing with anxiety because I'm repressing my fear.

Tisha: Chris, you've shared so much of your wisdom about emotional regulation. Are there one or two points that you'd really like to get across clearly for listeners to take away from this podcast and from all that you've learned?

Chris: Well, I think what I'd like for people to come away with is the inquiry process can take quite a bit of sitting with ourselves, and with amount of distractions and I'm guilty of playing on Facebook and video games, they’re my own distractions. We don't really have the patience to sit with ourselves for a while. You know, I've sat in meditation for a week before I really could hear what the anxiety was underneath it. So, I'd like for people, I'd like to encourage people to have patience with themselves, to listen with the parts, you know, and to ask themselves, how am I feeling towards it? And not to say that we have to do it alone, we can do it with other people as well, you know, being with, sitting with other people and trading that space. So, to normalize the... I figure if it takes me 24 hours to kind of come to some understanding with listening to my system. And that's what a lot of IFS practice, you know, a lot of IFS therapy... That's kind of a normal process is to be with and listen to. And sometimes the parts that are really, really hurting, you know, all I can do is kind of say, I'm here. I'm with you. You're not by yourself. I'm here with you. And in that sense, there's a little bit of comfort that comes, there's a little reprieve that comes or a little breath. They can breathe. People can breathe a little easier, you know. So, if we rush in to try to fix or figure it out, it just makes the system more stagnant or compounded or locked up in a way. So, I mainly just encourage people to have time to listen to themselves and, you know, to trade that for each other, be able to listen to each other and let your system kind of inform you. One of the things I teach a lot is mapping, so that we can sort of create representations of what we're noticing inside. And then that it's not so much a figuring it out process, but a process of being revealed

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Chris: Also, it helps me, I have different maps, you know, the needs inventory that nonviolent communication has is an excellent tool. I also teach the sort of the beginning inquiry around emotions. I think Brene Brown’s new book Atlas of the Heart on the research on emotions, wonderful HBO series. She just described despair, agony in a way that totally makes sense to me, I'm like, okay, I've been there before. Like, I didn't have a word for that. And so, I think those are really, really wonderful resources. A lot of what she talks about in terms of needing a language, you know, in her research on that. I think those are really great resources for folks and, you know, turns towards people with emotions. Really important things to keep in mind as we're working with our system. And we can't heal ourselves. You know, we can definitely get a lot of insight and kind of comfort ourselves, but we do need support in the healing process.

Aníbal: Yes, beautiful. Chris, thank you, thank you so much again for this amazing time together. I'm going now to take some time for myself and maybe dysregulate for a while.

Chris: Yeah. Sometimes I get on my motorcycle to dysregulate for a little while. You know, it feels kind of good. And my firefighters like it.

Aníbal: It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, your work, our work, and our lives. Thank you so much.

Chris: Great. Thanks for having me.

Tisha: Thank you, Chris. Thanks for being here.

Spirituality and Psychotherapy with Russell Siler Jones 46:48

Russell Siler Jones, ThD, LCMHCS, is a psychotherapist in Asheville, NC, Director of CareNet/Wake Forest Baptist Health’s Residency in Psychotherapy and Spirituality, and Developer of ACPE’s Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy Program. He is author of Spirit in Session: Working with Your Client’s Spirituality (and Your Own) in Psychotherapy. 

You can find more about RSJ here at Russell's website:
https://russellsilerjones.com

Today on IFS Talks we have the pleasure of speaking with Russell Jones. Dr. Russell Siler Jones is director of the residency, psychotherapy and spirituality at CareNet in North Carolina. He's also the developer for the spiritually integrated psychotherapy program for the ACPE. And he's a psychotherapist in private practice in North Carolina in Asheville. Russell is the author of Spirit in Session: Working with your Client’s Spirituality and your Own in Psychotherapy.

Tisha Shull: Russell, thank you for joining us today on IFS Talks.

Russell Jones: Thank you, Tisha, and thank you Aníbal. I'm happy to be here.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome Russell, and many congratulations on your book and work on spirituality and psychotherapy. What parts come up for you listening to your bio?

Russell: When I listened to what Tisha said, what comes up for me is a feeling of gratitude. So, a grateful part. I think about so many mentors who have sewn themselves into me, you know, through the years of my development and who continue to. And so, the opportunities to do the things I get to do to, to write, to teach and to do therapy really feel like gifts that I have received in some way through the lives of lots of wonderful other people. I'm also grateful for...Hmm. I think also just about my clients and their patience with me through the years. I'm thinking of them collectively, you know? And so, their patience with me through the years and just the ways that they've touched my heart and taught me how to talk with people in ways that ended up being helpful.

Aníbal: Russell, Russia’s war on Ukraine and all the unspeakable horror and the war crimes we are witnessing are retraumatizing us collectively again and again. Is there something you'd like to say on this sad situation?

Russell: Well, it's tragic, it's sad, it's painful, it's complicated. I've thought a few things as all this has unfolded. One is I just, I thought about a 75 or 80-year-old adult in the Ukraine now who experienced this when they were children, you know, as part of the second world war. And so, to have your life book-ended by this kind of trauma, I don't even know how to put words to that, but that has hit me a lot. Just that thought.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Russell: One of my brothers has traveled and worked in the Ukraine through the years and has many friends there. And I hear through him from some of them, just the hardship, the way families are separating to survive and deal with what's happening there. And the great courage that that is. That's just a part of everyday life there now.

Aníbal: Thank you Russell.

Russell: Yeah. Thank you for asking me.

Aníbal: Russell, you have published this book Spirit in Session: Working with your Clients, Spirituality and your Own in Psychotherapy from Templeton press in 2019. Why this topic and book on spirituality in your life?

Russell: Spirituality it's sort of, I would say, it's the most important part of my life. It's not separate from other parts of my life. You know, I'm married, I have children, I have work, I have friends, I have extended family. All of that is meaningful to me, but I see my life through a spiritual lens and on good days I live my life from some kind of spiritual sensibility. And I do this in the practice of therapy too. And I think the conversations I have in therapy, I think of them as spiritual conversations. Spirituality is not just when we are using explicitly spiritual words or talking about explicitly spiritual topics. It's integrated with every part of our lives. And it is the way I think about doing therapy. I think of it as a spiritual exchange among other things, but definitely a spiritual exchange.

Tisha: When did you first become aware that spirituality or that connection to something higher was a part of the fabric of your life?

Russell: I have a memory of being, I don't know, four or five, six years old in bed, you know, at night the lights are at...it's all dark, I'm alone in my bed and just feeling the presence of some vastness, some large energy that was around me and within me. And of course, I'm five years old, I don't know what this is. I did grow up in a religious home, a Christian home. And so that was part of my life, has been part of my life from as far back as I can remember, but in terms of my own experience of it, that's where I would date it. And then, of course, there are all these years of amnesia, you know, where an experience like that becomes lost, forgotten. But, as the years passed, I reconnected with it, but I think it goes back to very, very young for me and I would imagine it's part of my unconscious memory as well, and that I'm just telling you my conscious memory.

Aníbal: Russell, in your book, you wrote a chapter you called Working with Spiritual Resources. So, what are those spiritual resources we can work with?

Russell: Let me back up and get a running start at that. So, I think spirituality is a hot topic in the world of psychotherapy at this point, because of the groundwork laid by the positive psychology movement and the positive psychology movement really taught us to pay attention, not just to symptoms and struggles and stresses, but also to strengths and resources. And so, we've learned, in the world of spiritually integrated psychotherapy, we've learned to talk about maybe two sides of people's spirituality there, the resource side and the struggle side. So a spiritual resource, a resource is anything that helps us survive or thrive and a spiritual resource it's an internal or an external capacity, or what's a synonym for a resource that helps us stabilize when our world is rocking or it helps us over some threshold of growth whenever we've come to a blocked place or a stuck place. So, a spiritual resource could be something external to me, like a community of faith.

Aníbal: Okay.

Russell: It can be something internal to me, like a sense of peace or a sense of joy or courage.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Tisha: If you were to illuminate that resource through a parts lens, what does that look like?

Russell: So, I am an IFS therapist too. Let me get that on the record.

Tisha: Noted.

Russell: I did a level one training, I think in 2007 or 2008, and then a level two. And then I've never done a level three. I did Toni Herbine-Blank’s Intimacy from the Inside Out training, IFIO training. I was on her training staff for two or three years, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, 12 years ago. And so, I do think in an IFS, you know, in an IFS way as well. So, to your question, if I were to talk of spiritual resources from a parts... You know, in an IFS way, I'm thinking more, you know, internal resources at that point. So, I can think of parts of me that carry spiritual energies like hope or love or joy. But, when I think spiritual resources in an IFS way, I'm mostly thinking of Self-energy, you know, I'm thinking of the 8 C’s and the gazillion other words we could give to that energy, which is really deeper than words, but it's a source of compassion and wisdom, curiosity, and things of that nature. So, when I'm thinking spiritual resource from an IFS way, I'm tending to think of Self-energy. And of course, parts can absorb and be empowered by the resource of Self.

Tisha: One of the things I heard you say in one of your other podcasts was that compassion is a spiritual response? And I loved hearing that because it implies a way of being in a spiritual place in the therapy office just by accessing that feeling and that connection. And I wonder if you could just say more about acknowledging that there is a spiritual element to what we do or how people can kind of find that and grow that.

Russell: Yeah. I think people who are listening to this podcast have some experience of this, or they wouldn't even be listening. You know, if people are interested enough, if they're practitioners, IFS practitioners or clients, or they just heard enough about IFS that they're curious and interested in it, then experientially, they know what this is like, you can't be anywhere close to this work without having your heart open in a compassionate way. I think therapists who've been with people, when you've been with a client and you feel the shift in them when Self-energy gets released, when a part that they have been afraid or a part that they've been hating, when something turns in them and they began to bear witness and really understand deeply the story of this part and their whole attitude towards the part just changes. It's not a cognitive shift, it's a whole person energetic shift. And once you know, once you hear someone's story, a part’s story or another human story, it's hard not to love them. So, the energy of compassion, not everyone thinks of that as a spiritual energy. But, you know, I think you can think of it in a non-spiritual way as just a psychological... Some kind of intra-psychic energy. And I won't argue with you about that, but for me, and I think for many others, there is a sense that there's something really big and trustworthy and deeper than just me that's present when that kind of energy shift happens. And this sense of compassion for a part begins to radiate within. And then of course, if you're the therapist, maybe you're feeling that for this person as well. And, I don't know if this is a phrase that gets used a lot in IFS circles anymore, but in my training, I heard a phrase that said Self begets Self, and it references the contagious energy, the contagious nature of Self-energy. And so, when either one of us, the therapist or the client, when Self-energy begins radiating, I think we all get swept up in it.

Aníbal: Russell, you say compassion is spiritual, but you say also fear is spiritual. How is that?

Russell: Well, spiritual to me is like, let's take this... It's a word, like the word health. I can use the word health to speak of being in good health or in bad health. And, you know, I might say I'm feeling healthy and I'm suggesting that my health is good, but health exists across a spectrum from wellness to illness and spirituality and spiritual energy also exists across a spectrum from energies at one end of the spectrum, like generosity and kindness and energies at the other end of the spectrum, like greed or hatred. So, fear, I think all energies have a spiritual quality to them. And so, when I say spiritual, I don't think just of things at the, you know, the light and radiant inner end of things. But I also think of things at the dark and contracted end of things, into the spectrum as well.

Aníbal: Russell, do guides as conceptualized in IFS matter for you as a spiritual path? How do you see them, guides?

Russell: I have personally experienced guides. I have sometimes recognized them as ancestors, my ancestors, and I've now had some sense of who they were and as sometimes not. Other people have never had this sense, had an awareness of a guide being present with them. Different people are aware of different things spiritually, but I think of guides as benevolent beings who want to help us and who are... We don't create them by believing them. And we don't annihilate them by not believing in them. I think they're just present in a realm that is not visible to us, but there are times when different people will be aware that there's an energy here helping me, that's more than just me. And boy, that's an amazing experience. And it's amazing even just to hear someone talk about it and to hear how they were affected when a guide showed up or when they became aware that a guide had been there.

Tisha: Do you feel that there's some things that happen inside that need the additional support of guides for healing? I can give you an example of what that question asks if you want.

Russell: I would love to hear the example and I, yeah.

Tisha: Oh, well, I was working with a client this week who was in touch with a level of their depression, that felt as though it was bigger than them. And we didn't get to the answer of whether it was cultural or whether it was like maternal lineage, but it felt for this person's protectors, that it was really and truly to them more than this person could heal on their own. And so, there was a light that kind of came on and I don't remember if I suggested it or if the client did, but well, maybe this needs the support of a guide or another presence beyond Tisha and client.

Russell: And had this person talked of guides, is the word guide a word that was new to her? Or was this something you had talked about before?

Tisha: I don't think so. I think it's within their vocabulary, within their realm of understanding, but for these protectors, it felt like a huge relief. Like they didn't know that there was anything beyond them and there was a lot of emotion, but we didn't do a full unburdening or anything. And I was left sitting with the question, well, do parts, really need the additional support for healing or Self is enough or...

Russell: Yeah, I don't really know the actual answer to that question. The real truth about that is beyond what I know, you know, but I think there are parts that somewhere along the way have come to believe it's all up to me and I've got to do this myself. And I think when clients have an experience of Self, it begins to shift for them like, “oh, there's something more than just the...” It begins to shift for the part, “oh, there's something more here that I can count on than just me.” But I also think for parts just to call out for help, you know, and see what shows up... There’re parts, there are people and parts that really learned there's no help coming. What's the point of asking? And so, for a part to be at a place where it could even ask for help or be receptive to help, that's a powerful experience. And I love that you or she, somebody in that exchange just had this intuition that maybe something beyond us would help. I'll also say, you know, this is a staple of the 12-step tradition. You know, that whole, the healing arc in the 12-step tradition is that at some point you get to the edge of yourself, you get to the edge of what you can do for yourself and the limit of your own power. And you're going to need some...You need something more and they've done a beautiful job of not giving it a name that everybody has to bow before and say and subscribe to a certain dogma that we've got to call it this or that. But yeah, this notion that I need help, you know, I Russell do, and I, my critical part does, or I, my frightened part does, I could use a little help here. And so, for a part to get to the place where it can ask for help, that's an amazing moment. That's a transformational moment. How does that land with you? How does that speak to the experience you had?

Tisha: Oh, for me that, yeah, it brings me back to the energy of the session when that ask and the emotion about it happened and the possibility of receiving help.

Russell: What was your sense of the emotion itself? Like what was, I mean, you may not know, but do you have some sense of what the emotion was saying in that moment for her?

Tisha: Yeah. It felt like a huge relief. Like we've been doing this work of keeping the depression at bay for so long that, and it has felt bigger than us. And then with that suggestion or that insight of, well, if it does feel bigger than you, maybe there's something else that can come in. Yes. It was relief, release, sadness, acknowledgement of how hard it had been.

Russell: Yeah. You know, some of my clients that I work with are Christian and in moments like that have called in Jesus, you know, the presence of Jesus to be with them sometimes for help, but I also have had clients who've called in Jesus to come to express anger or disappointment, you know, like, “where were you when I needed you?” So, yeah. I think the entry of other beings, you know, spiritual beings that they may have a name for it, from their spiritual tradition or beings that may not have any name for, or a sense of who or what it is, but that's a spiritual - back to an earlier question - that's a spiritual resource.

Tisha: So, the system knows the guides to call in, or do the guides show up in your experience?

Russell: I have no idea. Sometimes, you know, when I'm with someone and they are wanting to ask for help from beyond themselves, but they are not religious people and that's not a request that they have any sense of how to make or to whom to address it. I'll just say, well, what if you just kind of leave a little post-it note in the mailbox and put up the flag and just see who comes to pick it up. You don't have to know who's going to come get it. Who's going to come to respond.

Tisha: I love that.

Aníbal: Russell, you may be familiar with the concept of spiritual intelligence, I guess, coined by Danah Zohar?

Russell: I am not familiar with that. But tell me more.

Aníbal: She defined 12 principles underlying spiritual intelligence, and I will give you some examples.

Russell: Okay.

Aníbal: Self-awareness - knowing what I believe and I value; Spontaneity; Holism - seeing larger patterns, relationships and connections; Compassion; Celebration of diversity. Humility; Positive use of adversity - learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks and suffering. And she keeps going for 12 principles like those. And I wonder if you'd like to comment or if you find it useful as a concept.

Russell: The label spiritual intelligence is new to me, but the capacities and qualities that you just named, I think those are definitely qualities of spiritual intelligence. I'm assuming that that phrase was coined as a playoff of the emotional intelligence phrase. And so, it's beautiful that someone is trying to articulate this dimension of human experience, this quality or gift. You know, different religious traditions have their ways of saying this. You know, in Buddhism, there's a notion of the Paramitas, and, you know, these are like spiritual virtues. And it depends on which tradition you're reading, but they're either six of them or 10 of them, but they include things like generosity and kindness. In the Christian tradition there's a list of what they call gifts of the spirit that include things like love and joy and kindness and gentleness. So that list, what I think is helpful about lists like that, whether it comes from a spiritual intelligence lineage or a Christian lineage or a Buddhist lineage or whatever, if you're a therapist what's helpful about that, to me what's helpful is it helps me to kind of know what I'm looking for in terms of strength or transformational energy.

Aníbal: Okay.

Russell: So, a client in a stuck place when I see them exhibiting any of those qualities you just read, or when I hear them telling a story in which one of those qualities is on display, I think to move towards that strength, that capacity that they are exercising, you know, what do they say? Energy follows attention, like when, as a therapist, we give attention to some virtue or gift or strength or quality of spiritual intelligence or emotional intelligence or anything you want to call it. When we give attention to that and move towards it, it's a way of helping it grow stronger in our clients. And, you know, so I think reading a list like that kind of opens, it helps open up the window of awareness for me as a therapist, what are some things I'm looking for? And of course, you don't necessarily need a list. You know, you can just listen to your heart and you can feel when energies like that are moving or stirring in someone. But I know that lists like that can be very helpful.

Aníbal: Yeah. Thank you.

Russell: Thank you for introducing me to that term. I'm going to look it up.

Aníbal: Thank you for your beautiful reflection on that. Russell, in your book you offer two definitions of spirituality, one quite long and eloquent that you say was written for academics, and then other quite simple and shorter, just one sentence that you say is for the office, for our clients, and then quoting you, “spirituality is all the ways you and God relate to each other.”

Russell: Yeah.

Aníbal: And you offer a whole chapter on God and how do you attach or resist to God. So how would you describe the relationship between spirituality and religion?

Russell: Well, religion is the easier thing to talk about. Spirituality is very difficult to talk about. Religion is a social phenomenon. It's an observable phenomenon. Religion is when a group of people get together and they share beliefs and practices and values and rituals. So, it's a group of people that have agreed on what's the nature of reality and how are we to live? And what do we do together to reinforce our connection to the deepest reality? Religion is a social group thing. Spirituality it’s so personal. Spirituality is, I would say, first of all, it's an energy. It's an energy, not a concept. And so, I've never read, and I've certainly never written a definition of spirituality that I really like, because every time you try to talk about spirituality or you having to talk about things that are just beyond the reach of language to articulate, you know, in the book, I chose to say, “spirituality is all the ways you and God relate to each other.” And you're right. I did write a whole chapter. Like, now when I say God, I'm using this term poetically, not literally, but I would chose to use the word God, because I wanted to make readers who have problems with the word God encounter a word that their clients are likely to use.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Russell: And I wanted people to kind of deal with their countertransference to the word God. So, I chose to use it that way. Spirituality is this capacity we have to connect with some kind of transcendent energy that's greater than we are. And it's all around us. And it's the deepest thing within us. And it's our, it's the degree to which we are, or are not aware of that. And responding to that. And we respond to it in all kinds of different ways. You can respond to it by having a sense of warmth in your chest in relation to that energy, you can respond to that by stopping and helping someone who needs help, and you can respond to that by turning your back on it. You know, you can just respond to it by dissociating from it. At some point in this conversation, this maybe the moment, I just, you know, when I think about spirituality and IFS, I think of spiritual capacity or our spiritual selves as one of the things that can get exiled, I think our spiritual selves can become, I think those can be exiles in the internal system. So, we can talk about that now or later. I want to stay with your question. And if there's a follow-up question, you know, please put it out here.

Aníbal: Maybe. Yes. You also present a chapter on working with harmful spirituality. When do you think spirituality can become harmful?

Russell: The spirituality becomes harmful so much and that's one of the reasons it gets exiled, but it can be harmful. I mean, just some common examples that tend to show up in my office are people who have been subjected to spiritual abuse, they grew up in a spiritual tradition in which for spiritually or religiously justified reasons they were bullied or shamed or oppressed in some way. So that's an example of harmful spirituality. Spirituality can be harmful when it is used as the rationale to keep one person under someone else's thumb. So, sometimes people will have trouble leaving an abusive relationship because they've been told it's religiously or spiritually wrong to end this marriage or religion can be harmful when someone knows that they are attracted to people of the same gender and their religious tradition has told them that this is wrong. So, another way spirituality can be harmful is what's called spiritual bypass. And this is whenever people, you're saying yes, you know this term. This is when people lean into a spiritual resource to avoid doing some deeper psychological work or relational work that needs to be done, but they go into a spiritual mode and ignore some of the inner work that needs to happen.

Tisha: There's a unique flavor that I'm interested in when someone is wounded in a spiritual context. And I'm thinking of your examples, but also the examples of someone who has a teacher who does something awful, you know, abuses someone sexually or, and it happens time and time again. And then, I think the specific spiritual wound that people can contend with is a loss of trust in your own Self to make the right decisions about who you follow and what you believe. And I wonder if you have any particular insight on ways to work with that or how to bring that into light.

Russell: You know, whenever you said that a particular client comes to mind who not only lost trust in the particular people who betrayed her in her religious community, just as you're saying, she lost trust in her capacity to discern who is trustworthy and what is trustworthy. There was another nuance then in response to that, she developed a protector that said, basically, I'm not listening to anything outside myself. I'm not going to listen to any authority. You know, I do not trust myself to relate well to authority figures that say, I have the handle on truth and goodness. And so, I've got to be very, very guarded. And so, the way I worked with that was just really to validate and support that protector. I wanted her to feel absolutely no pressure for that protector ever to stop protecting her. And so that's one thing I think just validate whatever protection comes up, I think it's important to validate it. You know, that's a helpful protector because in its absence before you got hurt. And then I think also, I remember saying a lot to her, you know, you can trust yourself, you've got a capacity in you that knows what's real, and what's true, and what's good for you and what's not. So I think just also just affirming that this capacity was latent in her and could be strengthened in her and then watching for her to use it, you know, watching for things, even out of a spiritual context, when she kind of had some sense about what was the right thing for her to do. And, again, just supporting that, mirroring that, giving energy to that, helping her notice that. That felt all of those things felt so helpful to her in her process. When you hear me say all those things, how do they hit you and what else comes to mind for you Tisha?

Tisha: Well, I love the idea of really validating the protectors. And yeah, I guess the idea of understanding that spirituality gets exiled is kind of coming up. You know, what you had said earlier and finding the pathway to that arena, I'm curious about.

Russell: Yeah, well, it was really important that I, as an authority figure, not push any sort of spiritual agenda, you know, like, I could tell that her spirituality had necessarily and understandably been exiled because of this massive injury that she sustained in a spiritual community. But, you know, you don't go drag any exiles out of where they're hiding in IFS. You know, we wait on the protective system to decide it's safe enough for her to have access to her exile again and..

Tisha: I think what's coming up for me is that there's also a lot of grief to huge loss of community and connection and connection to God that gets...

Russell: Yeah. I'm so glad you said that. Because that's true. It's a loss of this spiritual... Is the loss of her beliefs, but it was also a loss of the people that she had were her best friends. It meant loss of connection with some dear members of her family. I mean, she lost her physician. Her physician was a member of this community and stopped seeing her. So, there’re other tons of grief.

Aníbal: Russell, I have read or heard someone to say that we are spirits with a human experience and not humans wanting a spiritual experience. Would you like to comment on this?

Russell: Who did say that? I've heard that too. Yeah.

Aníbal: Maybe Jeff Brown, but I'm not quite sure.

Russell: Yeah. Maybe whoever said it originally, it's been repeated a lot. Yeah. We're not humans having a spiritual experience. We're spirits having a human experience. My comment on that was that they both sound right to me. You know, we're spirits having a human experience and humans having a spiritual experience. I don't think any of this can be separated out. We separated out to talk about it. And the meaning of that phrase we're spirits having a human experience, the value of that phrase to me is it says that our spiritual essence is probably at the center of things. And our humanness kind of is gathered perhaps around that in some way, but as a literal... So, I think it's a poetically true statement, but literally I think it's just as helpful paradoxically to say we're humans having a spiritual experience.

Tisha: Russell, you run training programs in psychotherapy and spirituality.

Russell: Yes.

Aníbal: Are there opportunities for therapists to learn more about working with spirituality in psychotherapy?

Russell: Yes, actually, there are lots of them, there are a lot of places right now where you can begin to go deeper in this if it's a point of interest or something you feel ready to do some more learning around and I'm connected with two of them. One of them is this program that I direct at CareNet. CareNet is an outpatient counseling network that exists across the state of North Carolina. Is connected with the Wake Forest Baptist Health Network. And there are counseling CareNet counseling centers in North Carolina from the coast, a place called Wilmington all the way to the west, where I live in Asheville. And our training program is for therapists who've completed their master's degrees and are associate licensed and they come to work for CareNet. But then we also teach them how to work in an ethical way with their client's spirituality. So, that's a pretty limited opportunity. Actually, we hire six people a year, so we have, and they're with us for three years typically. So, we have roughly 18 at a time that were part of that program. An opportunity that's not so limited is the one that I've helped develop through ACPE. ACPE is an organization that historically has trained chaplains and people preparing for ministry to provide effective care, to provide spiritual care for people across the spiritual spectrum, to the great diversity of people and people of no spiritual orientation as well. And in recent years, it's also begun training psychotherapists in how to integrate spirituality. So, there's a spiritually integrated psychotherapy training program for therapists offered through ACPE. It's a 30-hour continuing education hour training with optional then consultation and certification past that basic training. And it's really a wonderful program. I think that the sweet thing about the ACPE program is that it's not just a training. There's also a community of people that sticks together beyond the training. So, it's not just a continuing education and then I'm done, but there's, I think we really learn to do this work well almost by osmosis, by rubbing shoulders and spending time with other people who are doing this work. And so, the ACPE program has that opportunity as well. And if people are interested, they can, you know, as acpe.edu, if they're interested in that.

Tisha: Is it available online?

Russell: Yeah. Those trainings happen online, we were doing them all over zoom.

Tisha: What's next for you? What do you have going on?

Russell: I don't know. I'm in an in-between time, I have worked really hard the last five or six years to write this book and to help this ACPE training program launch. And I've stepped back just to let things lie fallow for a bit to see what's going to come up. I know this work helping therapists feel confident about moving towards their client's spirituality, like really feeling okay doing that, that's a very deep calling for me. And so, I know I'm going to continue in that in some capacity. I'm doing, you know, I'll do teaching and speaking and writing about that, but exactly what shape that's going to take, it's still unfolding, you know, but just day to day, I keep doing therapy with people and leading trainings through the ACPE program and at CareNet.

Aníbal: Russell, thank you so much for having us and for bringing such a beautiful and important topic in energy spirituality into psychotherapy, such a privilege to be here with you and Tisha. And we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Russell: Thank you both very much for having me. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you.

Tisha: Me too. Thanks for your time.

Working with sex and sexuality using IFS with Victoria Kirby 41:46

Victoria is an IFS and IFIO therapist working in private practice in London. She is passionate about applying the IFS model to working with sex and sexuality and is currently delivering workshops and designing resources to support other practitioners in this area of work.

Victoria previously worked in public health. She completed a master's degree in health promotion and worked as a Senior Health Improvement Specialist, specialising first in young people's sexual health and then in HIV prevention in men who have sex with men. 

Victoria then trained in psychotherapy and completed a master's programme in psychodynamic and person-centred modalities. She gained Accreditation with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and Advanced Accreditation as a Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversities Therapist with Pink Therapy.  Before moving into private practice, Victoria coordinated a specialist counselling service in a central London clinic working with clients around out of control sexual behaviours, understanding and asserting sexual needs, coming to terms with sexual health diagnosis, exploring sexual identity and difficulties having sex. 

You can find out more about the work Victoria does on her website www.victoriajanepsychotherapy.net and details of her next workshop at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sex-and-sexuality-using-an-ifs-framework-tickets-299028842317 

Full transcription soon

IFS and Neurodiversity with Yoav Bartov 00:00

Yoav Bartov was born and raised in Israel. A BA and MA in Social work from Tel-Aviv university, Yoav trained in couples and Family therapist (3 year program from Tel Aviv university), worked for the public sector in welfare department with children at risk and multi-problem families, running the special staff dealing with abuse and neglect of minors for a few years.

Yoav started his IFS journey in 2014, completing Level 1, 2 and 3. He is being a PA and Lead PA in different IFS trainings around the world for the last 5 years.   A certified IFS therapist and supervisor,  Yoav has a private practice where he consults individuals and couples,  and also offers supervision to therapists.
Yoav is married and has two sons.

A Model for IFS Supervision and Consultation with Liz Martins and Emma Redfern 36:47

Liz Martins is an experienced therapist, an IFS Institute Lead Trainer, Certified IFS Therapist and Approved IFS Clinical Supervisor/Consultant. She has a private practice in the UK and offers therapy and individual /group supervision online and in person. Prior to becoming a therapist, Liz had a career in social work with children and families, including in leadership and external consultancy roles. She is a qualified supervisor with extensive experience as an individual/group supervisor in a range of settings. Liz has a particular interest in supporting supervisors to integrate IFS into their practice and has contributed a chapter for a book on IFS supervision and consultation, due to be published next year.

Emma Redfern is a Certified IFS Therapist and Approved IFS Clinical Supervisor/Consultant, as well as an experienced PA. Working in private practice in the UK, she is a senior BACP-accredited supervisor and psychotherapist and an EMDR therapist. Emma has had a number of articles published in professional journals and she has edited a multi-author book on IFS and Supervision and Consultation, due to be published by Routledge in July 2022.

 

Today on IFS Talks, we are delighted to be meeting with two guests, Liz Martins and Emma Redfern. Liz Martins is an experienced therapist, an IFS Co-lead trainer, a certified IFS therapist and approved IFS clinical supervisor and consultant. She currently has a private practice in the UK. Emma Redfern is a certified IFS therapist and approved IFS clinical supervisor and consultant, as well as an experienced IFS Program Assistant. She is also currently working in private practice in the UK. Today we'll be speaking to Liz and Emma about their work integrating IFS into supervision and consultation.

Tisha Shull: Thank you both for being here with us today on IFS Talks. We're looking forward to the conversation.

Liz Martins: It's good to be here.

Emma Redfern: Thank you.

Aníbal: Welcome back, Liz Martins and welcome Emma Redfern. Together you have been collaborating on this topic of IFS, Supervision, and Consultation. You have developed your ideas and created some frameworks and maps that became helpful in your supervision practice. As a result of this collaboration, you started running workshops, developed the model and a book in this topic is coming in July, I guess. Many, many congratulations to both of you. You'll say this integration is a missing part of the IFS landscape that you are trying to address. I couldn't agree more. So much needed with so many people coming of trainings willing to apply the model and clearly needing supervision. So, Liz and Emma, maybe we could start off focusing on the workshops you have been running. Can you tell us more about those workshops? How do you structure them? Who is attending?

Liz: First, just to say, thanks. Thanks for inviting us. It's great to be here. Should I start, Emma?

Emma: Yes.

Liz: Okay. So, well, this all started when we got into conversation, I should think about three years ago. And then we developed this model. We developed our ideas and we started with a couple of mini workshops in the UK just to kind of test out the model really. And the feedback was positive. So, then we have gone on from there. So, we've done a couple of workshops now, one for Life Architect in Poland, and one just recently in Spain and another one coming up in Australia in April and they’re about sort of really integrating IFS with supervision. I mean, I found when I started with clients that it was quite easy to integrate IFS into my client work, but it was sort of trickier in a way with supervision. I could talk about IFS, but it took me a while to really start to integrate IFS into the process of it, I guess. So, the workshops are about how we can do that, how we can bring IFS into the process as well as the content, how we can really integrate IFS. And the workshops have been... a mix of people who've been coming, people mostly who are familiar with IFS, people who are already supervising or offering consultation and people who wanted to move towards that. And our plan is to go on and develop a longer training later this year.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Emma, would you like to add something?

Emma: I think part of my journey in this is that my system needs a lot of holding and that's what I was looking forward with supervision in IFS and maybe not finding. And so I was kind of trying to hold myself through reflection and having therapy, IFS therapy, start supervision at times, trying to find my way and me developing this model and also commissioning the book with the help of Ellen Ziskind has been about me holding myself as I do this work. And then collaborating with Liz has been about collaboratively developing this model further, and then we can hold other people as they learn to hold themselves as supervisors in the model. So, I guess there's an aspect of that that feels important to me too. So, it's not that we're saying that IFS supervision and consultation hasn't been happening for decades, it has. It's just that, listen, I've been paying particular attention to it in our practices and how it kind of might be here in the UK, which might be a little different to how it is in American culture or situations.

Aníbal: And how is the format of the workshop? The workshop is it supervision in action?

Liz: It's a mixture, really, in the same way that IFS trainings. So, we do meditations, so for example a meditation about meeting our own supervisee parts because often these are kind of more hidden in a way. So, there's meditations, there's some presentation, there's working breakout rooms, there's a sort of working with like a sort of video role-play. What might you do next? What's coming up for you, kind of idea. So, it's a mixture of experiential and teaching and discussion in different ways.

Aníbal: And who is attending? Is it always for supervisors or practitioners as well?

Liz: It's been a mix. It's been people interested in IFS and supervisions. So, some people, as I said, who are already supervising, some very experienced supervisors who may know less or more about IFS or people that are interested in becoming supervisors and moving towards that.

Emma: And we ask that everybody has a foundation of level one IFS training at least so that we've all got that kind of commonality.

Tisha: What did you notice about supervision in general that you had maybe received or participated in before and then coming into the IFS model? What did you notice needed to happen different, be established differently?

Liz: I think for me and in my own work as a supervisor, I think I was quite parts led. I had this notion of being the expert, you know, the wise one that knew. So, you know, supervisees would come, and they'd tell me about the clients and then I would have probably a few parts around, maybe caretaking parts or expert parts. So, that kind of shift for me in terms of IFS, has been about, I guess, kind of trusting Self-energy and supervision being more about unblending, accessing Self-energy in the system. So, that approach has been kind of different. It was quite a shift for me. And I think it could be quite a shift for some supervisor parts, because it's a bit like in, as a therapist, less about being the one who knows more about supporting the wisdom and the knowing and the compassion to come through. So, it's similar, I think in therapy and that shift that many of us have had to make in our therapeutic work supervision. Emma, how would you see that?

Emma: Something for me about the freedom IFS brings, either as a therapy modality, or as a supervision kind of modality, there's just more freedom and there's more specificity. You can talk to the part direct or something about that for me. My supervision training was The Seven Eyed Model, which is why we've kind of... One of the aspects of the model is...

Aníbal: To integrate it, yes.

Emma: ...which kind of takes that seven eyes into an IFS sense of systemic understanding. So, there's something about that opening up of systems at all different levels that kind of was freeing about IFS on top of the seven eyed model for me.

Liz: Yeah. And, also for me just to say that the sort of, as in IFS, that all parts are welcome. And so, the focus not just being about the client's parts and all those parts being welcome, but also the therapist parts and giving attention to those very much in supervision. And also, of course, to our own parts as supervisors and what they may be telling us as well. So that shift too.

Aníbal: Yes, I can see much more fun on that.

So, let's focus in your IFS supervision model. You say it's inspired by the F's and the P's already present in the IFS model and developed out of a U-turn intended to be a map, a framework to guide the supervisory process. And you talk of six F’s and six P´s and eight facets. So, tell us about the model.

Liz: Okay, so shall I start with the F’s and P’s and maybe, Emma, you might want to talk about the eight facets?

Emma: Yeah.

Liz: So yes, as you say, Aníbal, it came from a U-turn. So, in our conversations, we started looking and thinking about, well, what is it that it's like, what are we doing when we feel that we're really integrating IFS? And from that came inspired by, I guess, the F's that we know well in the IFS model. So, our F’s of IFS supervision or consultation, and I can say a little bit more about those in the moment. And we paired those with the P’s of Self-lead therapist, which people already know, so perspective, patience, presence, persistence, playfulness. And we added one that was partnership. We needed another one because we had six F’s and only five P’s. So, we added partnership.

Aníbal: It makes sense.

Liz: Yeah. So, these are, I guess, the F’s are more sort of doing kind of action, sort of framework. The P’s are more about the qualities that are present when there's Self-energy in the system. So, they together, they provide a way for a supervisor to kind of check in with what's present, what might be needed and some sense of the direction that we might go. So, the F's, so the first of those is follow the model and of course following the model is central to integrating IFS. So, we see this as kind of about the process. So really aligning with the IFS goals and philosophy and process. So, sort of slowing down, spacious, welcoming parts, working very collaboratively and working actively with sort of power and difference and dynamics and biases, so on. And very much attending to Self-lead boundaries in the system, offering hope and following the model. So, the partnership, which is the pair with this, is about partnering with the therapist, the supervisee, or the person we're consulting, with the model of course, and with the Self-energy in the system.

Aníbal: That’s beautiful.

Liz: So that's the first one. So, the second F is framing systemically, and that brings us perspective. So that's about being aware of, I guess, all the systems that are there. So, each of the three participants therapist, client supervisor, and their internal and external systems kind of supervisory system, the relationships between the three and the larger systems all around them. And also, I guess, holding awareness over time with legacy and different realms with unattached burdens and guides and so on. And the eight facets, which Emma can talk about in a minute is sort of a way of navigating all these different lenses.

Aníbal: So important. Yes. To see the large picture, the big picture. Yes.

Tisha: One the F’s that I'm really intrigued by, and grateful that you've included is the, probably the next one you’re going to mention, is the favor stuckness. How did you identify that as being relevant? And could you say a little bit more about how you guide your therapists to favor stuckness when so often we want to avoid it or push through it?

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of in the supervision process, it's getting really curious about noticing, prioritizing where the flow of the model might be...

Aníbal: Blocked.

Liz: Might be blocked somehow, and getting curious with the person we’re supervising around that, including who's saying that is stuck, you know, what part is there and that, you know, Dick Schwartz would say, if there's stuckness, then somebody's parts are in the way, but we don't always know who's so we'd be really focusing on, if it's not flowing. And of course, often it's the work that isn't flowing that is brought to supervision, that there is something that the therapist is feeling isn't going as well as it might. So, we would be wanting to get interested with them about maybe the protectors that were around or whether there’s maybe exile beliefs or energy kind of showing up and getting curious with them about that and what might be a way forward, which might be unblending from parts, or it might be a technical thing around IFS that needs a little bit of support with, or it might be that we can bring in something creative as a different way of approaching.

Tisha: Can I ask a question that might be a little bit of an example? I'm curious, a lot of clients will often have a kind of stuckness as a general theme, like either being stuck in a relationship or being stuck in a pattern of behavior where there's addiction and managers and a polarity. Is that the type of stuckness that you favor, or is it favoring places in the therapist's own system where the therapist feels that their parts are frustrated or stuck?

Emma: I guess, this is partly why we've got these models so that we can have choices and we can ask the supervisee what it would be best for them to focus on. Do they feel the stuckness is in their parts? Or are they missing a bit of theory because they feel the stuckness is in not understanding something? So, collaboratively we can maybe work out where we might start to explore that stuckness. And if that works great, if not, we can move to a slightly different place to explore the stuckness. And again, I guess it depends on the relationship. How long have we been working together? What are they comfortable bringing? Some people get stuck in a particular area or with a particular client. So, I guess it's quite a hard question to answer maybe.

Liz: Yeah. And sometimes the stuckness is what's kind of in the field and sometimes it's kind of exile stuckness that might be kind of showing up somehow and everybody's getting stuck, you know, the therapist is feeling it and their parts are kind of getting caught up in it as well. So, yeah.

Emma: And also, the stuckness is kind of where it's at often. I work with a lot of people learning IFS, or they're quite new to using it and stuckness is going to be there.

Aníbal: Over and over.

Emma: So, let’s play with it. So, let's welcome it. Let's not be ashamed that it's there kind of thing, I guess.

Tisha: Yeah. I really appreciate the emphasis on it because I think it's one of the things that really contributes to burnout. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Aníbal: Absolutely.

Liz: Yeah, definitely.

Emma: And also, one of the other F's is about finding our creativity. If we give something lots of space and our time, it can be remarkable how releasing that can be, and unblending that can be in all of these different ways. So, it can be very resourcing from that sense supervision, I find.

Liz: And our P that goes with the favor stuckness, that F, is actually patience. So, sometimes it's just kind of slowing down, tuning in, leaning into it and trusting, you know, it's going to take as long as it takes and let's just be with it and kind of normalize it, validate it, kind of be with it and see what comes out of that.

Aníbal: Also, patients need playfulness, right?

Liz: Not just patience, lots of it needs playfulness. Yeah. Yeah.

Aníbal: So, the fifth foster fluency, what is this about and persistence?

Liz: So that's the kind of the teaching one, I guess. So, we're fostering fluency and in the IFS protocol, in the model. So, we're trying to support the people that we supervise to be fluent in this. I kind of use a sort of skiing metaphor for this, you know, we want people to be flowing down the slope kind of in their bodies and instinctive and sort of feeling the freedom of it. So, feeling the fluency of the model. So that's one of the F’s where we... and we may be doing that in different ways through, I guess, walking the talk, you know, modeling it, giving experience of it in sessions, bringing awareness, maybe teaching a little bit of theory, maybe practicing scales, you know, so, different ways that we might support the fostering of fluency in the supervision or consultation sessions.

Aníbal: Yeah. Interesting. And then you have these eight facets of IFS supervision. You have this diagram of the whole model that shows the largest system integrating eight different layers or facets.

Liz: Can I just say, just because of the other F, a really important F, just before we move, is that freeing up Self-energy? Which of course is at the heart because that's all about parts and focusing on working with parts, therapist parts, often, sometimes supervisor parts to access more Self-energy in the system. And the P word that goes with that one is presence.

Aníbal: So important.

Liz: So that we have more presence in the supervisory system.

Aníbal: So important. So, coming back to this diagram of the eight facets, can you help us with this diagram, Emma? There is a dotted line, I noticed, linking supervisor and the client. What does it mean?

Emma: Yes. I think that's facet for the supervisory system. An aspect of that is that the therapist is presenting a client and I am somehow relating to that client, but obviously they're not in the room in an actual sense, but energetically, emotionally, psychologically, I am still making some connection to them, or I'm creating a vision of them in my head that may or may not be accurate. So that's why the dotted line, because relationally, there's a connection between me and the client or clients, but actually it's not the same as me related to the person in front of me, say the therapist.

Aníbal: Yeah. So interesting. In my experience, as a supervisor, I can see how very often my compassionate view to the client, meaning my relationship with the client's story and journey usually impacts therapists’-client relationship. And that's maybe these dotted lines that you are calling attention to and I find it so so interesting.

Liz: One of the questions we might be asking is how do I feel towards that client? We ask ourselves that.

Aníbal: Amazing. So, coming back to the eight facets...

Emma: Shall I just whiz through them a little?

Aníbal: Please.

Emma: So, saying fostering Self-energy, freeing up Self-energy. So, facet number one is Self. So, this whole diagram is contained in a circle of Self.

Aníbal: A larger one.

Emma: The larger Self in circles, life, the world, however people kind of imagine that transcendent larger Self, and then within the three participants of supervision, which are depicted by triangles. I'll ask Cece Sykes, her triangle of IFS. They have a smaller yellow circle inside to pick the Self, free up in ourselves by unblending, having parts unblend. So, Self is number one. And then the client system facet two, therapist system facet three, supervisors system facet four, with this connection to the client, then facet five is the model IFS, the Self, which is in the center of the diagram. Facet six is then the relational, the relationship between the client and the therapist. Facet seven is the relationship between the therapist and supervisor. And then eight is the broader context, like the global triangle of managers, firefighters, and exiles. So that's a very quick overview.

Aníbal: Beautiful. So interesting.

Liz: And these are kind of lenses to look through.

Emma: Yes. A way to reflect. I’m I always working in one of these facets with a particular supervisee, or do we move around a lot of them? Are there areas we never go to, like, we can't work with the therapist parts or it's a way to reflect on practice. It might be used as a decision tree by some people. So, I guess it can be used in different ways, hopefully. Yeah.

Aníbal: So inspiring. Beautiful. Well done.

Emma: Thank you. Thank us both.

Liz: I’m realizing it's probably quite for people that are listening, is probably quite a lot to take in, so...

Emma: They’re not seeing the visuals.

Liz: Yeah. Hopefully it's just a sense of, I kind of a map that can just be a guide kind of where are we, where might we go with this, what's happening here. So...

Tisha: I'm imagining that as you started collaborating and developing the map and these models and the visuals, there became many things that were inspiring about supervision for both of you. Have you discovered anything that feels important to share?

Emma: I think Aníbal mentioned something earlier, the playfulness. Supervision for me sometimes has a fair bit of playfulness, which I really enjoy. And also, my system likes variety and kind of these models and being a supervisor enables that sometimes as well. Yeah. And it's great coming alongside people, alongside the IFS model, as they struggle with it, celebrate successes, move ahead. All of these things, it’s great and challenging.

Aníbal: Challenging as well. For me it's been always so much learning out of supervision and fun, challenging, lots of fun and learnings.

Liz: For me, it's something around Self-energy and that slowing down, letting go, opening your heart. And the kind of interconnection of, you know, Dick talks about Self-energy as being contagious, the vibrational sort of energy of that and somebody on a recent workshop that we did talked in the feedback around really learning around the... they use the phrase of downstream. So, something around how in the supervision session and Self-energy there hopefully and slowing down and all of that and how that then kind of goes downstream to the therapist and clients work together. And then I guess the clients out into their life and so on. And so, something about supervision just really being so connected and, you know, the kind of the larger goals of IFS, I guess, really seeing supervision, having a place in that of more Self-energy into the world.

Aníbal: So rewarding, yes.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah.

Tisha: I love that, everyone uplifting, like you raise the water, you raise the boats. Everyone's more...

Emma: And I guess a slightly different way of saying that, for me is something about having somewhere to take the fear, because IFS is about protective fear, which blocks Self-energy. And it's like, it's a space you can take those fears and help them feel less fearful. And so, I guess that's a slightly different way of saying.

Aníbal: Yeah. Makes sense.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Robin Shohet, who's a big reference with supervision in the UK, talks about helping to uncover the fear in the system. And I guess that is what it's about, but also as an IFS we know that it's about love as well. Isn't it? And Self-energy, and so bringing that into the system to be there with the fear.

Aníbal: Well said. So, what would you like to share about the coming trainings in this supervision model?

Liz: Yeah, well, we're just, as I said, at the very early stages of planning a longer training with practice and deepening into it even more, you know, from a kind of humble place, I think, you know, not expert here, but just let's, you know, share our ideas and really welcoming other people's ideas of a supervisor and learn together about this. So, a longer kind of training. Yeah. That's our hope, that's our plan. We've just sort of just at the very beginning of that, hopefully this year, maybe into next year and the workshops continuing for as long as people are interested in coming to them, I guess. And then Emma has her book coming out. So, yeah, I think it's really exciting, and I think it's really needed this work around supervision and consultation because there are so many people... I don't know about where you are, but certainly in the UK, there are people coming off trainings who are really wanting support and guidance in developing their practice. So, we really need more supervisors who are, you know, bringing IFS to that and integrating IFS to that.

Aníbal: Yeah. Absolutely.

Tisha: I'm curious about whether your workshop applies to individual supervision or group supervision or both. Is there a framework for working with groups? Because I know here a lot of supervisors will meet with a group of therapists or postgraduate school therapists.

Liz: It does, the model works the same. I believe quite strongly that even if we're supervising or offering consultation to people whose model is not IFS, that we can still work with IFS, we can still integrate and work from that place ourselves, the supervisor's modality can still be IFS. So, it is for groups and it's for people supervising, non-IFS informed practitioners as well.

Aníbal: Emma, you have been editing and publishing a brand-new book, right? Could you let us know about its contents? Its purpose, invited authors and topics, the publisher or anything else you'd like to share?

Emma: Sure. This is with Routledge, hopefully coming out in the summer. And, for a few years now I've been working with over a dozen top IFS consultants and supervisors, including Liz. And they have contributed chapters on their specialist field, say, to include in this book for the IFS community. And it's very exciting and I'm getting a bit impatient, but it's not yet here. It's on its way. Dick's got an interview. I interviewed Dick for chapter one, Dan Reed and Ray Wooten talk about their model of IFS informed consultation. Pamela Krause does one specifically for working with therapists who work with children and families and adolescents. Ann does one for IFIO therapy. Tamala Floyd and Black Therapists Rock, her story of how she is instrumental in supporting and consulting to that community. Jeanne Catanzaro who’s done one about eating disorder clients. Nancy Wonder... It’s just rich and full and...

Aníbal: A table full of food, of good food for thought.

Emma: Yes.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Tisha: Thank you for your hard work in compiling and editing and conceiving of this great idea.

Emma: Well, thank you.

Aníbal: So, thank you so much, Liz and Emma, for willing to have this conversation on IFS Supervision and Consultation. We really, really enjoyed it. Such a lovely time together, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you.

Liz: Thank you so much for having us.

Tisha: Is there an easy way for our listeners to find access to your workshops? If anyone is interested and intrigued.

Liz: They can email either one of us. Is probably a good way if they’re happening in different places...

Emma: If somebody could include my website, then people can email of the website.

Aníbal: Yes, we can put both.

Liz: Thank you.

How to stay Present for Addictive Processes with Cece Sykes 51:28

Today on IFS Talks we’re so happy to be welcoming back Cece Sykes.
Cece has over 40 years of clinical experience, specializing in recovery from trauma and addictive processes.
She is currently a Senior Lead Trainer of IFS) and Cece has also developed a workshop as part of an ongoing worldwide project to explore the personal narratives of therapists and the impact on their work.

Today we’re having a conversation with Cece about how to Create Order out of the Chaos of Addictive Process: how to use IFS to find the patterns in addictive issues or any  intense or polarized system. Basically, how to stay in charge without losing our hearts, or our minds.

Today on IFS Talks we're so happy to be welcoming back Cece Sykes. Cece has over 40 years of clinical experience specializing in recovery from trauma and addictive processes. She's currently a senior lead trainer of IFS and Cece has also developed a workshop as part of an ongoing worldwide project to explore the personal narratives of therapists and the impact on their work. Today, we're having a conversation with Cece about how to create order out of the chaos of addictive processes. How do you use IFS to find the patterns and addictive issues or in any intense polarized system. Basically, how to stay in charge without losing our minds or our hearts.

Tisha Shull: Cece, thanks so much for being with us today. Welcome back.

Cece Sykes: Thanks. It's so good to be with you guys.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Cece. It's your take three for this podcast. So grateful for that. The topic you suggested to discuss today is the chaos of addictive processes. Such a complex topic. In the 2017 book Innovations and Elaborations in IFS, you published a chapter called An IFS Lens on Addiction: Compassion for Extreme Parts that illustrates how to interact compassionately with the entire client system and safely intervening with the polarizations you say are at the center of the addictive process. In that chapter, we can read that you see addiction has, and I'm quoting you, “an unremitting cyclical process characterized by a power struggle between two well intentioned teams of protective parts, each attempting to bring balance to the client's internal system.” You also say “this escalating polarized struggle between two teams of protective parts who are trying to control or medicate underlying emotional pain is foundational to what you call the addictive process.  So, it's this escalating polarized struggle responsible for the chaos you mentioned as a topic for this conversation? What is this chaos and what causes it?

Cece: That's such a good question, Aníbal. Yeah, I think it is absolutely what the chaos looks like. And one of the things I've really been thinking about is the idea of the inner world as a system. So that one of the things that helps clinicians make sense of what they're seeing in front of them is to begin to think about the patterns that their client is engaged in, into clump their behaviors, just clump them together a little bit. One of my favorite pieces of the model is a piece that I don't actually think we talk enough about and I'm trying to talk more about it, which is the word... is called internal, we get that family, we get that systems. So, family systems are, you know, Dick of course, that was his origins, he was a family systems thinker, writer, and trainer. And he brought us lots of frameworks, you know, just some big picture issues around how family systems work, analyzing lots and lots of different models. And, in the process developed his own. I was trained as a systemic thinker as well and trained in family systems. So, the idea, not just that we have parts, but that the more the manager tries to control, the more the firefighter feels desperate to create autonomy or freedom or get out from under, that the more that part tries to get out from under the more triggering it is to the managers. This power struggle creates chaos. It burdens exiles over and over again in a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, so that the piles of unprocessed trauma accumulate. And so that by the time they see a therapist, they've had lots of experiences clinically and treatment or many times, but nevertheless feel that their life is chaotic and out of control. So, that's in the field and it impacts the therapist and therapists often feel out of control or don't want to work with that and want to refer to an expert. And what I think is if you know IFS and can work with your parts and your system to be comfortable with firefighters, that you can do really beautiful things with these clients.

Tisha: What is it that generally makes therapists uncomfortable with firefighters?

Cece: Because they could cause the client to die.

Tisha: Yeah. So, the managerial role becomes really embedded.

Cece: It does, Tisha, yes. I mean there's many things that make clinicians feel uncertain and want, you know, we've all had the feeling when we were sitting in front of a client and they're going through something and thinking to ourselves, I certainly have, I assume others have as well, “oh my God, I've got to refer them to a real therapist.” You know? I mean, I feel very good about my skills, but you know, those moments when you just, “who could do this, someone else must be able to do this better than me,” you know? And because you know, the human experience is so confounding. What is scary from what I hear in consultations and all the trainings and so forth is just the fear that the client could die. And also, the confusion, like, I think the other polarity for clinicians is the polarity between wanting to be compassionate because this person is suffering, but it also triggers our parts that are like, “what is wrong with you? Why do you keep doing this to yourself? You're ruining everything.” So, the polarity... It's not the opposite of compassion, but it is definitely not compassionate. It's challenging, it's critical, it carries judgment in it. And I think that whether it's in our personal lives with a loved one or whether it's in our clinical experience, it triggers that same dilemma in the clinician, which is, should I help them or should I, you know, grab him by the collar and shake them?

Aníbal: So challenging. Cece, maybe we should start off clarifying what you mean by addictions once there are so many addictions, right? It can be screen time, overworking, late night drinking, overspending. So, those are some common ones, low risk ones, you say. So, we have firefighters, some more risky than others. Do you subdivide them in high-risk and low-risk?

Cece: Yeah, I think that's a short, that's an easy way to do it. It's high risk and low risk. So less, I think they are less different. I don't want to divide them by their behavior so much as their intensity. In other words, I think there's more similarities than differences for the clinician. Not necessarily for the client. Okay. But for the clinician, in terms of understanding and intervening for someone who's binge purging, someone who's using alcohol and drugs, then someone who picks up their phone 19 times a day to do porn or place a sports bet, right? So, how the clinician intervenes with that, they seem very, very different. Of course, each of those clients is very unique, but their process of feeling stress in using, and then trying to get back in control and then feeling out of control and alone, and then using. The cyclical nature of what they do, that there are big patterns there that are similar for anyone who's caught up in a cycle where they're trying to both relieve themselves of pain and yet the relief choice they've chosen brings them pain. When that's the case, these different issues are more similar than different for us as clinicians to enter in.

Aníbal: You'll say IFS can help us find the patterns in addictive issues or any intense or polarized system. How can we do that? Find the patterns.

Cece: Yeah. How do you start doing it?

Cece: One of the ways that I started doing that is to think about the big picture intentions of each of Dick’s three categories of parts: managers, which are self-explanatory. The managers manage life. We all have them, we all need them. They try to take care of business and they're task-oriented, but managers are also growth-oriented or improvement-oriented so that they want to push us to do better, be better. And, in a healthy way that makes us, you know, take a new class or try something new or learn how to, you know, whatever, play pickleball. But when that gets extreme, then those improvements become self-challenging, becomes self-loathing, self-contempt, massive criticism. So, what I say to my clients is, you know, looks like there's a whole bunch of parts that are really activated, that are telling you what a bad job you're doing. Rather than trying to define one part or another. Or I might say looks like there's a whole bunch of your parts. You know, you're still going to work. You came to your session today. You're, you know, you did this stuff with your kids, you're making your car payment. So, a lot of things, a lot of your managers are still on board. Although I hear your critics are kind of out of control right now. So that group has been pretty busy. And then this other side over here, it sounds like, you know, tell me more about what's happening for you with drinking this week and with your sports bets or, you know, something like that. So, all the parts that are trying to give you some kind of relief. So, the big picture of managers is to keep in control and keep improving or make sure it doesn't get worse. The big picture of firefighters is to get some kind of relief. And I know I'm not talking about exiles here. What I want to say about that is that exiles that are vulnerability and are burdens and are attachment wounds, or just even feelings of alienation, that kind of emotional pain causes us to try to protect ourselves, you know, starting from a young age. And we might protect ourselves by being very managerial and getting very involved in being good. And we might protect ourselves in other kinds of ways, by acting out in different kinds of ways and many people, most people have some variations on both.

Aníbal: Interesting.

Cece: But for when I'm working with my clients and when I'm teaching this model, I want to actually overemphasize the relationship from Self to protectors. All roads lead to Rome. They're going to take us back to the roots. And the roots are like roots. They're underground, they're under the surface, they're in the dark and we're going to go there, and we need to do that. But if my client can, when they identify their big picture ways of functioning, helps them unblend from that. And they have to have enough unblend to find those and be available to those exiles. So, finding one exile might be very good and you might do some good work, but for most people with heavy protectors, that's not going to change their functioning that much.

Aníbal: You say we need to know how to unblend polarities. So, first of all, how do we know someone is blended in a polarity?

Cece: Well, polarities are the meat and potatoes for all the vegans of the world, the beans and rice of human experience. I mean, it's universal, right? It is universal. It's not unique to our clients or to us. We all have parts of us that do things that other parts of us think we do too much or too often or spend too much time on or spend too much money on. So, finding, because that's an attempt to find balance. And so, when I do workshops and I do a visual, find a part that's doing something that other parts of you think you do too much. I've never had anyone raise their hand and say, you know, I'm not aware of that, you know, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be a good thing. I mean, maybe, you know, it's social media, whatever, but it's universal to have some kind of a polarity between doing the right thing or keeping ourselves in check or working or taking care of obligations in life. And I think there's also universal wish for rest, relaxation, pleasure, comfort, novelty, or adventure. And that's what I think... I think our firefighters can become addictive. They can engage in negative behaviors, but they don't all engage in negative behaviors and they aren't all extreme. And they have a role in our system to balance manager energy. When our system is burdened, it is even in addiction. It is not just the firefighters that are out of control. The managers are out of control. They're desperate. They crave order, peace, predictability, just as much as firefighters crave their practice or their substances, there's craving on both sides and desperation.

Tisha: I think really, really quickly back to how easily it is to get polarized as a therapist with firefighter energy, and I was thinking about it before our conversation, because like I feel like I meet with addictive people in my life and clients not necessarily from managerial energy, but from other parts that are maybe checking out more subversive, firefighter behavior, like parts of me that don't trust and parts that are like, how do I know if they're okay and wanting to kind of like put my hands up, like feeling helpless, like those kinds of... It doesn't feel like it's managerial towards the firefighters, but it feels like it's a little bit, if it feels like it gets a little more nuanced.

Cece: That is a great statement what you're saying, because yes, the person who is using has powerful, powerful polarities. Right? So, but what's happening in the therapist? We would might not necessarily be... We're smart enough and evolved enough in our process to not start wagging our fingers at our clients and telling them how messed up they are. We're much more subtle, but we’re paying attention to the parts of us that feel vigilant, that do feel should I trust this person? Do I think that they're telling me the truth? Parts that feel helpless or hopeless, there'll be our exiles. Those are very natural and inevitable responses to firefighter parts because firefighters, you know, those parts sometimes lie and defend or avoid or avoid the truth or avoid accountability. So that we naturally have parts that are vigilant. And I do advise therapists to really pay attention to their gut and to how they feel with someone. And if they feel like something's happening, that doesn't feel truthful, to pay attention to that. And so, rather than to get focused on the other person, and now they’re telling me to tell the truth or what's going on with them, I always invite clinicians to pay attention to their own parts, their own inner world, their own inner world has very important information like, this doesn't feel right, this doesn't add up, I'm feeling a little manipulated here... And so, to notice and to speak for the parts, you know, but where I will go with that is it if I had to make a statement around that, you know, or if I want to take a moment and say, something's coming up in me where I'm not totally buying everything you're saying to me. So, I'm wondering if there's a part that needs to tell me this information in this way and I'm wondering if any other part of you has a different point of view here, will be a way to go. Or I wonder if, you know, I wonder about this part is really trying to convince me that you're not using, or you didn't go there or you didn't do this. And it seems like it's really trying to convince me of that. And I hear that, and I hear the energy behind that. What would happen if you and I get to know that part a little bit and listen to it and listen to its intention, you know, and what if... So, I'll try to do an unblend so that they have Self toward that part. So, I don't have to be in control of it. My wish is always for my client to gain control over their parts so that I don't have to take that role, my role isn't to control them and be vigilant. My role is to help them find their own parts that are vigilant toward themselves. Does that make sense?

Tisha: My mind is blown. I'm like, wow, this is great. It makes sense and I think it's really helpful to hear that hopelessness about a client, which, I mean, it makes sense, but that that's self-referential like, there's my exiles poking through.

Cece: But it's in the field, Tisha.

Tisha: It’s in the field.

Cece: So, if you're feeling it, and you're feeling it strong, you know, your clients got it strong. Because it's that strongly in the field, and I would say probably it feels like manipulation or stealing or lying is the biggest block, I don't think that's the biggest block, those are just protective parts and I want to get my client to know them. I do think the biggest block to healing is hopelessness and despair. If we think this is, if we come at this thing from a place of I don't think this is going to get better, then I think that hopelessness adds a sort of, it's like, you know, a chain around the ankle, it's a drag on the system. And I think it affects the process. And it's understandable. And when my client has hopelessness toward themselves, I always say, let's be with that part because there's reasons why they're hopeless. For many clients they’re the only one in their family that's trying to get better. Everybody they know is crazy or messed up. So, what then? They sit with someone like me and they go, oh, really? Now there are parts that say, people don’t get better are, have been proven over and over and towards themselves. I've been trying and trying. So, but to say in IFS, the gift of IFS is to say, let's, you know, I know you're going to think this is crazy, but let's be actually with your hopelessness. Is actually, as big as it is, it's just a part of you. And actually, if you and I get to know it a little bit, I'm not saying you shouldn't have it and we never try to get rid of parts and IFS, but, but I'd like you to be able to unblend from it. I'd like you to have some choice. My wish for you is that we could help that happen.

Aníbal: Cece, you also say, we need to use tracking when working with addiction. So, what is tracking? What should we track and how does it help us with addictions?

Cece: That's such great questions, Anibal. Yeah, tracking is a family therapy term as I believe is where it comes from, and I'm sure family therapy pulled it from systemic therapy thinking prior to that. But anyway, it is to pay attention to sequences. What happened, A happened, and then B, and then what happened after that? And then what happened after that? It's just that simple, is paying attention to sequences. So, the sequence when you're checking a couple might be, well, when you say that, how does that impact you? And then when you respond this way, how's it impacting you? So, you're going between two people and it's sort of obvious what I say impacts you, what you say impacts me back. In IFS we're doing that internally and we're watching how one part impacts the other outside of the client's awareness before they have IFS. Right? So, they're not aware of it. They'll say things like, all of a sudden, I'm in my car again, and I'm driving over to my dealer's house. And they're not aware of what happened, so we help them track. And I might specifically say a little bit more about their day or what's going on, but over time we're going to help them track one feeling from another, there was a feeling they had, they got scared, they got lonely, their exile got triggered or their manager got exhausted. And then their exile got triggered and felt isolated and their firefighters said, “Hmm.” And that sequence is out of their awareness. But what IFS does is help people go inside and we all know that when we're inside, we learn new information and we learn how one part relates to another. What someone who's using can learn is they have a pattern. And we all do, but it's, it can make things so much clearer when I say, “oh” ...Even if we can't do a witness and unburdening that day, to just say, “oh, I was lonely, yeah, no, I'm feeling...Yeah.” And they can't maybe witness and unburden it that day. They don't have enough Self-energy to listen to all that, they don't. But a lot of times I help people just recognize that exile and notice it, send a little energy to it, kind of a one-way street sort of thing, Self to part. But then begin to notice, it's so illuminating. Oh, I didn't even realize how lonely I was, or I didn't even realize how nervous I was, how scared I was. I didn't really realize that hurt me. I didn't know, you know, those things that we all don't exactly know. But there's then a sequence of activities. We do an experiential in many level one and level two, maybe, exercises. Find that time that someone hurt you a little thing, not the biggest thing in your life. Someone just looks at you funny and then, you know, find that, and then look at the ways you coped, maybe even find something that happened in the training that was hard or challenging for you, that hit an exile. Right? I felt dumb or I felt not seen, or I felt nervous or I felt exposed. And then watch how you covered it up. How did you protectors step in. That is a sequence, and it can be a pattern. And so, that would be what tracking looks like and we don't name it maybe as specifically as we could in our teaching of it. But that's really what we're doing.

Tisha: Do you have any tricks or tips to externalize that tracking? Do you like to make maps or do you like to have clients journal about parts that they encounter?

Cece: You know, Tisha. So many therapists are more creative than me.

Tisha: Is it important just to kind of get it and go through?

Cece: It does help to get it and visualize, but absolutely to write it down, to draw it, you know, you guys know I use a triangle in my teaching. I think of the system in as... I organize it via the triangle. I do triangles with my clients or I do soft triangle, just tracking, writing them down. Sometimes with my clients I'll do stuff in the room, have them move. All right. This side of the room is all your firefighters, this side of the room’s the managers over here we get the little exiles, right? Let's come sit over here for a while. So, you know, you can use space in the room for a little bit and do some Direct Access in each of those places. And so, there's a lot that... I guess if I would externalize that's probably the biggest kind of externalizing I might do is have people use different places in the room where I might do Direct Access for a time, then maybe have them sit right here and then go to another part. But people who are good with drawing can draw their parts, mapping and people who can do homework, you know, sometimes people love to have index cards for their parts or some of the supports in the IFS store. I don't know why I don't tend toward that, but they're very, very helpful for many, many people as symbols that they can hang on to.

Aníbal: Absolutely. Cece, you have been always saying and writing it that first steps start with the managers. Why is that so important to start with the managers?

Cece: Because it's universal to be blended with her managers when faced with out of control behavior. It's like physics. If that’s fire, and someone correct me, I think it's centripetal force. But if firefighters are twirling, twirling around over here, and remember how that goes, the fascia twirls, it starts to pull in other things toward it. This is what happens to us into the loved ones. When you watch someone's self-destruct and twirl and speed up in a self-destruct or self-harming kind of way, the speed and the intensity of that draws us in closer. And it's actually harder to stay detached than to fall into that with them. And so, it's inevitable that someone has firefighters towards their own behavior and towards the behavior of others that they love, who are suffering and spinning. And if we don't, we're always looking at the firefighter from a manager perspective and it's just the thing that you're talking about Tisha. Is that there's a subtle way in which you're like “hum mm.” A subtle way in which we don't really buy in. A subtle way in which we or the client doesn't truly accept the positive intention of those firefighters. And when their positive intention isn't really understood, they are highly unlikely to trust.

Tisha: I get really curious about how that is a function of our society and culture as a whole, and how we regard firefighter behavior. And I'm just wanting to hear a little bit of your thoughts on that.

Cece: Well, that reminds you of a conversation we were having before all this started about having fun, you know, and how this idea of what, I mean, and fun can be widely defined. You know, one person's fun is, I don't want to give any examples, I’ll just say something dumb, but anyway, but fun, you know, that is my real sense of firefighters’ role in all of our lives. We universally, as humans, for me, that is my perspective, we need managers or parts to keep us functioning and help us moving forward a little bit and we need parts that help us rest, relax and enjoy pleasure and sweetness. Geneen Roth wrote a lot of books, one of them was if you're going to eat at the refrigerator, pull up a chair. You know, really welcoming parts that are comfort eating. And she presented at the IFS conference once, you know, she was very appreciative of the IFS model and took a little piece of chocolate. And I think she passed everyone around a piece of a Hershey's kisses. And she said, I think we just all need a little sweetness in life. And it went right through me as to how culturally me and our larger culture has such a polarity around pleasure, around sexual pleasure, sensual pleasure, around the pleasure of food, the pleasure of altering our consciousness. You know, I'm putting this Martha Sweezy and I are working on a manual right now, my skills manual for working with the addictive processes. And so, I was looking up the first examples of alcohol are like 6,000 BC and there were dice four sided figures, you know, at 3000 BC, you know, humans have used an ecstatic experience, they've used plants based, you know, other kinds of properties that help alter consciousness for eons. And they've been part of the human experience. They might be used for rituals and for milestones and for marking birth and deaths there. But they have been employed as a part of human experience. Ecstatic dance. So, you know, whether it's chanting, native American chanting, monks chanting, you know, so nun saying the rosary, all of these kinds of repetitive things also alter our consciousness. And some of them alter our consciousness in really large ways. So, we have, I think, a polarity about this, we're afraid of being out of control, and I'm almost afraid that the natural inclination towards pleasure will overcome us and sort of ruin us. And I think that if you take the polarity out and the judgment out that the human, that each human wants to find balance, we don't seek to be out of balance. You might seek an experience and then we seek return. So, that is not to say that I think that everything should be unregulated. I don't want to get into all of this politics around... But most of our drug laws in the United States, Portugal, you guys are different, in the United States have really been used to control and discriminate against minorities and black, our black and brown BIPOC population. There are whole books written about this and it has so little, some of it has so little to do with helping people and so much to do with institutionalized racism. So, in addition to sort of the cultural polarity around pleasure that I think we struggle with, at least in the United States, I think that we also have used a lot of control and government control and institutional control to control people, to control the progress and to control the access to opportunity and, but separate even from substances. If we also look at the institutional approach to alcohol use, to eating disorders, to any kind of behavior, it's scary because they're high risk behaviors and it's scary, but there is a tendency toward control and management as opposed to curiosity and understanding. And I'll give one example before I pause. I'm thinking about someone I was in consultation with and she's working in a treatment center. And one of the women in our treatment center who was very shut down, everyone was recovering from drugs and alcohol, very shut down. But one day she told an extremely poignant story about losing her son. And it was really, no one had heard any of this or knew her story at all. And she said it in a small group. And then the next day she found a way to bring some, you know, get some pills and ended up bringing them into the treatment center and use them and then got caught and then was asked to leave the treatment center. And I understand they were afraid. And even some of the other people in recovery were afraid. You're bringing pills to us. We can't be close to them and we don't want that near us. And which I totally understand that. And yet, it's so short-sighted because we would call that a huge breakthrough for that person and then the pain it brought up created a strong desire to medicate. And I understand that there needs to be some regulations and some policy and safe containers. And yet at the same time, I would wish for there also to be, within treatment settings, a more nuanced understanding of that people aren't just using because they want to get away with something and they're just rebels and they can't handle authority. It's maybe a little more complex than that.

Tisha: Thank you. I really appreciate hearing your voice with that answer.

Aníbal: Cece, you say we need to connect even with self-destructive distractors. Is that possible?

Cece: You're asking all the hard questions, Aníbal. It's painful, but yes, it is possible because the blocks, again, this is where IFS is such a genius model. Thank you, Dick Schwartz. When we cause something apart, it's an object it's other than us, it's separate from us, in naming it and identifying it. So, we just have to identify what parts of us are blocking us from viewing this self-destructive part from an open-minded way. You know, and I say to my clients a lot, you know, “tell those managers, those firefighter parts they're causing trouble. They're making a mess and they need help.” We stipulate to that. They're right, however, if they'll step back, those parts are much more complex than they look. And even the toughest manager, you know, kind of can hear that, because really that's known in the system. If we think about it, there's always Self behind all parts and within each part. So, the idea that there is something more than destruction and violence or chaos in a firefighter, that there's more to that part than meets the eye, I think that we can get to that place. And when we're in that place of curiosity, we can hear, you know, talking about someone who's using their pornography and just their particular types of pornography they were attracted to. And I remember somebody saying to me, I just felt like, you know, this woman, she was just looking at me in my eyes. Like she could see me, and she wanted me. And so, the idea of someone being wanted, you know, this is such a powerful desire. And we all want to be wanted, that's universal. So, when we can get to that exile, the part that's wrecking their life and making them use it, pick up their phones in the middle of their workday and wreck their, you know, risk their work and blah, blah, blah. You know, if we find what's behind what appears, what is? I always say never an excuse, always a reason. I'm not here to pass out excuses. You don't get excuses for the parts that are causing, that are hurting other people. They're hurting you. These are the risks that are going on here. I'm not trying to excuse or minimize the impact of the behavior. That's not useful, because if you do that, the managers don't trust. Feel like, okay, you people are crazy. No, we're not stepping back, no. But when you understand, when you accept without excuses, no excuses for this, it's really causing trouble. But what if there are reasons and we can get to that. And what if we can address that? That's the gift and Aníbal, it doesn't take just one session. That's the process.

Tisha: Any advice for therapists on addressing that? Like, you know, just to in general, like, is it working with your own system? Is it really tracking internally? Is it making sure that...?

Cece: There's a couple of different things? Of course working with their own parts is helpful, but in particular, if we have been impacted in our personal lives, by, you know, a parent, if we've lost relationship or connection to family members, to parents, to loved ones, to lovers, to partners, to our kids, our own experiences, our own fears, our own disillusionment, our own losses. This is powerful stuff. This is real. And so, to process our losses, I think is really important trying to be in Self toward our clients that seems to be in a losing game, you know, and we can either be triggered to want to do too much, or we can be triggered... It's just what you talked about, Tisha. We can, we don't necessarily going to start yelling at them, but we might feel, for instance, a hopelessness or we might feel an overwhelm, or we might be ruled by fear. So, to look at any losses that would relate to, you know, the client in front of us. So, any ways in which we've experienced personal loss, we don't really always have great ways to honor our losses and yet from that place, when you've worked with your parts, it can be such a gift. You know, knowing that we can recover from loss, I think is helpful with the clients that they can recover. I think the other thing, and I don't know how to create exactly, Tisha, but I... The idea of hope, the idea that there is possibility here, this is true for any kind of trauma recovery. That's a long slow process. I worked, you know, from the beginning of my work, as a therapist, I've worked with physical abuse and sexual abuse and families and survivors of sexual abuse and men and boys who had sexually abuse. And, you know, there's a lot of desperation in all that. Yet, I'm over and over again impressed by the human spirit and the ability of people to heal. So, I think to hold on to our belief that anyone can heal, and my job isn't to get them to, I don't know, some extreme place, some place far down the road, some image of healing. My job is to help them from wherever they are today, to move the ball forward, to move it forward. I might be at this little section of their recovery or of their healing or with this part I might be early in, I might be in the middle, I might be later. Whenever we meet our client, I don't know what the proper outcome for them is or what it's going to look like or what their life is going to look like. But my job is to hold out the hope and the possibility that they can heal and to take them to whatever their next step is, as opposed to some ideal, I don't mean to lower the bar but to handle it in ourselves the clarity of our mission, I'm not here to fix them. I'm here to help them get to know their own system better. And from there healing will occur.

Tisha: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Even just spending time with those extreme firefighters inside, with some amount of understanding. What a triumph.

Cece: Right, and everyone doesn't want to give up their drugs and their alcohol and their stuff. Many people feel quite relief when there, and many people, that's not their thing. That's not their goal. That's not where they are today. So, I'm not going to say, well, go away. You know, when you stop using, and you've gone to these many meetings, then come back and see me. I mean, I do actually get that. I've been that therapist in a certain way or been close to that therapist in a certain way I think in my life. I’ve been one degree of separation from them. But what I think IFS allows us to do, and I don't think every model does, IFS allows us to see those parts, to see that ambivalence or that disinterest in changing to say, okay, so these parts of you are committed to this practice. You are sitting in a therapist office, so, what is it that you are here for? Back in the day, the first rule of the ethics of social workers is client's self-determination. And I think in other words, they tell us why they're here. We don't tell them why they're here. So, what if we, you, will you tell me what you did? Well, my girlfriend left me, I want to talk about that. Hey, trust me, we're going to get to the using, we'll get there. We're going to get to the pain, you know, so I can accept wherever my client comes and see where we're going to go next. I don't have to know that.

Aníbal: Cece, do you believe IFS can play a special role approaching addictions as seems to be the case with the psychedelic assisted therapies?

Cece: Well, that's a whole other subject and not exactly about addiction, but it's about a different view of looking at different forms of medicine or medication or chemicals or drugs in a different light. And it is requiring and inviting our community, not IFS community, but our larger psychological community to look at drugs in a little more complex light and I am very fascinated by all that. Of course, I'm always careful, you know, we're not looking for the silver bullet here. There's not one drug that's going to get us over it, get us over, right. Or one experience. So, there's a lot around that. There has to be a lot of support and preparation around all of that. And other people in our community can speak to that quite directly. But I think where it both relates to my view in particular is the idea of becoming curious about the impact of any drug on our experience and the intention of that and not making an assumption.

Aníbal: Thank you. Cece, would you agree with the journalist and Ted Talk presenter, Johann Hari statement that the opposite of addiction is not about sobriety, but about connection?

Cece: I think that is a great statement. Here there is some controversy about him and so I don't want to get into controversy about him in particular. But around that statement what I would say is, yeah, that's a great way to... What we do in IFS has helped someone connect to the different kinds of parts in their own inner world in a healthy way, in an open-minded way, in a curious way, in a welcoming way. And so, there's enormous amount of connection. They’re separate from that, but from internal, which is that isolation, is a terrible... The shame of having to hide what we do creates enormous isolation and feelings of alienation from other. And that shame-based loneliness and isolation is very very painful. And so, healing and working directly with that shame, I think can make someone feel more willing and bring out the courage to connect to others.

Aníbal: Thank you. Cece, what about the new book and manual, what's the title exactly that you are working on?

Cece: We have a working title, so we'll see what the final title is, but there's two phrases that are important to me, compassion and also the phrase addictive process, rather than addiction. I, of course, use the word addiction because we all understand it. There is common understanding of it, but I'm trying to talk about nuances, to have a more nuanced view of the word addiction and of the idea of addiction and of what addiction is. And I do think that it's an internal process, not a thing. And I think I want to invite us to look at it in a more broad, nuanced, complex way. And it involves every part in the system, not just a part that uses. So, that's why I'm invested in that title. PESI and other publishing companies want titles... To be able to understand the book by looking at the title and maybe, you know, so we'll see how all that goes. But that's [inaudible] in compassion for, because I do think we're always running up against our own internalized and larger cultural judgment around anything to do really with pleasure and senses. We have some fears that we're just going to get crazy. And I say it in a light way, but I think it's a real polarity that enters the therapy room every day.

Aníbal: And when we will have the manual, Cece?

Cece: Soon, soonish.

Aníbal: Soonish.

Cece: Soonable. We actually are... The light is very much, we are closer to the light of the end of the tunnel now in terms of sending it to the publisher. And of course, there'll be a lot of back and forth around that, but I would like to see it out. I don't know how long it takes them to get things ready for distribution, but I'd like to see it by the end of this year.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Cece: It's been a labor of love and I'm so grateful to Martha Sweezy who is quite a brilliant person. And I'm very lucky to have her.

Tisha: Yeah, she is amazing. I really appreciate your desire to change the languaging too, because that's how things shift, is bringing attention to them and naming why.

Cece: Right. Thanks for saying that, Tisha. That's right. I want to jar us a little bit off our center. Look at these, this idea of addiction. I want us to be a little off center. Yeah. Thanks.

Tisha: Thank you.

Aníbal: Cece, thank you so much for sitting with us again and for such a valuable conversation on addictive processes, and congratulations on your coming manual. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you.

Cece: Thank you both. Thanks for asking such great questions.

Tisha: Thanks for giving such great answers. Thank you. It’s great to see you again.

Cece: I look forward to connecting again. Thanks guys.

Common Pitfalls in IFS language, with Mariel Pastor 00:00

Mariel Pastor is an IFS therapist, consultant, and Lead Trainer based in Portland, Oregon who began her IFS journey back in 1998 with Richard Schwartz.  
She trains across the United States and internationally and is the principal author of the manual used in Level 1 trainings. She is also co-founder of the IFS Telehealth Collective, a multi-state group practice that brings IFS therapy online to clients while supporting the clinicians who serve them. Mariel's Unburdened Internal System mandala illustrates what life can look like when we befriend and unburden our parts, and this material was recently featured as part of the IFS Institute's Continuity Program.  This year she will launch online programming for Character Mapping - a psychological toolbox for actors writers, and directors.  

 

Common Pitfalls in IFS Language, with Mariel Pastor

Today on IFS talks we're so happy to be welcoming back Mariel Pastor. Mariel Pastor is an IFS lead trainer based in Portland, Oregon. She wrote and edited the new IFS Level One Training Manual, and she's created advanced workshops designed around the Unburdened Internal System Mandala. More recently, she's the co-founder of the IFS Telehealth collective, a multi-state group practice that brings IFS therapy online to clients while supporting the clinicians who serve them. Today we're speaking with Mariel about IFS shorthand busters, exploring some of the prominent accidental habits of the IFS therapist that can be challenging for clients.

Tisha Shull: Mariel, thank you so much for joining us again today. We're really looking forward to this conversation

Mariel Pastor: As am I and thank you both. It's fun to be with you.

Aníbal Pastor: Welcome back Mariel. Two years ago, in February 2020, right before the pandemic, we sat together, and we talked. We addressed your personal journey with IFS, your beautiful diagram The Unburdened Systems Mandala. And we also analyzed the brand-new level one training manual, once you were the main writer and editor. We spent a great time together today. Today, you want to speak for some common accidental misunderstandings about IFS model that you say really confuses therapists and frustrate client’s parts. And you say these come up consistently in your consultation groups. You say you call them IFS shorthand busters and they have been a part of your Unburden System Workshops. You say some of the language we use is really just shorthand and the complete meaning is often lost. So, Mariel, do you want to share with us what are those common accidental misunderstandings that confuse therapists and clients and become prominent habits? Let's just sit with the first common misunderstandings in your list and debunk it: Self is good, and parts are bad. So, isn't it true? Self is good, parts are bad, or can parts be as good as Self?

Mariel: Well, this is a good opening for a plug for Richard Schwartz’s latest book, which there are no bad parts, right? No Bad Parts I think is the title. That kind of language good and bad, you know, just invites exceptions to the rule. And what I like to remember is the basic assumptions of the IFS model are really all we need to lean on when we want to understand it. And one of the first assumptions is that multiplicity or having any number of parts is natural and it's useful and it's human. So, we all have these different aspects of our personality, many layers inside, and we have Self-energy. So, this is just the lay of the land of being human. It's natural, it's universal. So how can it be bad to have parts? It's some of how we're built. I do want to say that I've always been a little nervous presenting some of these accidental misunderstandings because I think everybody comes to them innocently and with good intentions, you know, we, the model is complex, people are complex and this process is also somewhat intuitive and elegant. So, when you witness IFS, you see this, oh, it makes so much sense and we put language to it to summarize or put a little structure around this abstract process in a way or on the inside so that this language can be efficient and sometimes too short. The caveat is the disclaimer is everyone who might use some of these different misunderstandings as we're going to call them these shorthand busters, comes to it innocently. Nobody is really intending to confuse clients or irritate them. And I think in the trainings or in all the different IFS offerings in the world, online books, et cetera, you see this elegant process, you know, but people are complex, and the model is complex, which is why we have the trainings. So, we use these sorts of terms, as shorthand, as structure to understand this complex model. And sometimes people have heard some of these terms or sayings as I'm calling them shorthand so often that they may have not spent enough time really feeling into all of what they're about, what these terms are about it. It accidentally got lost. So, in consultation, I'm noticing these habits and I'm wanting to shed light on it. And it seems to clarify things for therapists. So that's my intention.

Aníbal: Makes sense, yes.

Tisha: Can you share with us a little bit more about how you developed these before we get into the next one? What you were noticing in consultation and how you began to iron out these habits?

Mariel: Yes, yes. One piece is that while we all know that the healing comes from Self-energy and the more acceptance and compassion and curiosity, all those great aspects of what it feels like to be listening deeply to a part, we all know that's where the deepest healing is going to go. And sometimes people are wanting to get past parts really quickly. And that if a part is blended, it seems like that's a problem. So even though we say multiplicity is natural, all parts are welcome, we're asking them to step back all the time. So, a part of me often says, if I'm welcome, exactly, when is that? Why am I being asked to step back constantly? When am I welcome and why would I be welcome? Isn't that a good thing? So, I would see it in practice when people might be asking a part to step back because they can tell it's there, they could feel its energy. And I like to say that when we talk about a parts detector in IFS...

Aníbal: So important.

Mariel: ...that's one of the, a term that we use. That's something that you get better at. I believe what we're really detecting is the burden or some edginess of a part when it's problematic, right. Burden energy. But if we ask it part to step back, sometimes we don't even know who that was or what it was really about and how it also is just as important as part of this person. So sometimes it might have been done without really understanding the value of that part or who that part actually even was. So that was one of the first places I saw it. Sometimes it sounds like, you know, like you hear people in trainings perhaps, in IFS communities, using this shorthand saying things like, oh, well that was just a part.

Aníbal: Diminishing the part, right?

Mariel: Yeah. It's accidentally minimizing or dismissive. Oh, that was just a part of somebody or that's just a part talking, what part of you is that... As if, and it's not always, when it's not just the words, it's sort of the assumption behind it.

Tisha: Right. There is almost a tone there, there's like some implicit, like you should get that part to unblend and be with me in Self.

Mariel: Right. And, good luck by the way, because I don't think we're always, we're ever going to be a hundred percent unblended unless we're perhaps in a really transcendent, deep meditative place. If I may, I know Pam Krause talked about the weaponization of Self and this fits in there with that, as well as with Cece Sykes, she has this spectrum of Self-energy that is in the manual. And the idea is that there's, you know, amounts or degrees of Self-energy. It's hard to put language to that because it's so subjective and energetic, but I just want to add another piece, I think of, comes from transpersonal psychology that talks about real Self, which might be that transcendent, non-dual, very spiritual, you know, expansive energy of Self that includes and connects everything. Okay. I'm not living in that as often as I wish I were, but also besides real Self there's actual Self, which means the Self that we are, that's acting out in the world, acting in the world, engaging. And that might be as what Pam was talking about with it, when we're Self-led and we have our parts and our parts aren't problematic, they are blended and effective, right? And influential and helping in being human. And then last piece is false Self, which might be when we're much more burdened and we're so believing that who we are is that burden or all these burdens. So, to me, it's not Self as good and parts are bad. All of it is good, but it begs the question: where's the problem? You know, why are we asking them to step back? The problem is the burdens and the polarizations.

Aníbal: Mariel, you also say another common misunderstanding is Parts are Feelings. So, are parts more than just feelings?

Mariel: Yeah. That one really can activate a part of me. And people come by this innocently because we hear the sad part, the angry part. That's what we say in IFS is a trailhead. It's the beginning of getting to know a part. So maybe I'll say a trailhead is like, when you are on a walk in a forest at a trail, you're at the beginning, when you keep walking down that trail, you see a whole big vista, you get a whole journey, a whole experience. So, when a part is angry and we say the angry part, I may not know the full story of its anger. And besides angry, it might feel, you know, sad. This part might also not need to feel sad and angry once it's really listened to. It starts to change, and it tells you its intention. So, parts have feelings. The parts are not in itself just feelings. Another example of where this can be a problem is, I think about, Aníbal and Tisha, do you have different kinds of anger and might that come from different parts of you?

Tisha: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There’re different flavors of anxiety, different flavors of anger, different flavors of sadness. For sure.

Mariel: Can you imagine a part that's in a manager role having some of these emotions?

Tisha: Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Mariel: We're all smiling and going oh yes. So how a manager who's wanting to be in control and responsible feels angry is really different from a fighter in me, who's going to advocate for injustice around injustice and is really different from an exile in me who's so angry at always being ignored.

Aníbal: Angry is not coming from managers or firefighters always.

Mariel:  But they're all angry. Yeah.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Mariel: Yeah. So, you know, a remedy to that is stay curious enough, you know, use that parts detector to know that some edge or burden energy is coming up, but be curious enough to know who's speaking in that person and what's the quality, what else is there about that side of the person, that part of that person. Parts are full person, they're three dimensional personalities. They have thoughts, they have wide variety of thoughts and feelings and sensations.

Tisha: Would this be a good time to ask you a little bit more about the burdens? Because this is, you know, in each of these, just these first two shorthand busters, there's the burdens are being acknowledged and you named initially that the parts aren't the challenges in and of themselves, but these burdens kind of pushing through. Could you say a little bit more about the nature of the burdens and how to work with that?

Mariel: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because that's also something that, you know, gets revisited a lot from, you know, IFS therapists. And I will say that because it's complex, none of these questions are ever old. They're always important. You get new angles on it. So, it's one reason I like teaching a level one and doing consulting. It's never boring for me. And I've been doing this 23 years or so. So, burdens are what constrains and keeps us from feeling let's say our most alive or free or thriving and burdens can be seen as energy that, you know, holds a part back. I mean, people often talk about, I feel like some burden was lifted when I tell my story and I feel lighter. So, in IFS, we look at burdens as negative beliefs that a part might take in from a number of sources, from family, from culture in ways that a person might remember or not, it just was felt it was in the environment, beliefs about themselves. I often say that burdens are beliefs that we act as if we're true, and then they are... So, an example is I'm worthless. I'm not okay, I'm all alone, I can't handle it, It's too much for me. Things like that. Another burden, a way a burden shows up is the emotional impact, because just a thought without the nervous system, through the emotion and the sensations being activated, isn't really a problem. You know, I can have a thought like I'm six foot 10, and it's not a problem because A it's not true. There’s no any energy around it as being a bad thing. That was maybe a lousy example. But the burdens are thoughts, beliefs, sometimes memories, images that are problematic, but often it's felt in the body, sensations and emotions. So how they get presented in the IFS model might be all of those things or just a few ways that a part says the impact of a situation landed in them. What did they believe? So, like I said, it's complex.

Tisha: So, when you are sitting with an angry part and there's some kind of burden energy to it, there might be the thought “nobody loves me” at the basis of it. And so, then the angry part has a different flavor characteristics.

Mariel: Yeah. It starts to become much more nuanced in a way. And a story unfolds, and you see the context and even the anger might then soften, and you get to some sadness perhaps, or powerlessness. And maybe that leads into some other part that really holds the worst of it all. We don't know, we stay curious and we ask the person where that's coming from, or what else is important for me to know about your anger.

Aníbal: Mariel, and what about your number three common misunderstanding Parts are their roles, can you say more on this one?

Mariel: Well, it's similar to the parts aren't their feelings, parts have feelings and they have any number of them. Parts also have roles, they aren't their roles. So sometimes people will come in and say, that was my manager. And you know, again, that's shorthand, I'll be curious, which manager. I don't know about you, but I have a number of them. So, and also some of our parts might do this role sometimes. Sometimes a protector might act as a manager or act as a firefighter. And what is sometimes forgotten is how we, or how Dick came to that understanding about the difference between managers and firefighters. And it comes from, in some ways the timing or the intention of managers is to be preventative of pain and vulnerability. They're out in front. They say never again. Right? They want to prevent problems. So often managers are kind of the parts of us that are very socialized, who we will put out there and that's not necessarily a problematic thing. Right?

Aníbal: Of course.

Mariel: But in therapy, people are wanting to look at their managers as problematic, maybe they're overworking, right? So, a part in its protective role to prevent problems might really overdo it and bring a lot of strain. And when it's relaxed or healing has happened and they don't have to be extreme, maybe they aren't in that role at all. So, if managers are preemptive and preventing problems, the firefighters are different. They react once the vulnerability comes up. So, my hardworking, let's say another part of me says, are you hardworking? Yes. Okay. Let's say a worker part of me that stays busy might do that to prevent problems and to make sure things go smoothly and under control, or it could do that because I'm nervous about something and I want to distract from feeling insecure. So, it might look really good and I'm being really busy, but it's in kind of firefighter mode. Do you experience it that way?

Tisha: I feel like it's different for every part in every context.

Mariel: It's true. My husband likes to say that some of his parts are specialists, so they consistently show up in one way. And I find that that's, you know, true for many people also, but some parts are more often managers, but so any behavior could be a manager or a firefighter. And sometimes there's a temptation to label all numbing, let's say, as a behavior, as always a firefighter. Not necessarily if somebody is living life all the time as I need to always stay numb, then that would be kind of a manager behavior manager role.

Aníbal: And what about the number four common misunderstanding you refer IFS is all about Insight or mostly Insight. Is it so common, this misunderstanding and where does it come from?

Mariel: Right. Well, yeah, so IFS equals insight is something that I like to look at and challenge in that there really are three approaches to IFS and insight is the one that is deeply personal, really powerful. And what I think IFS is most known for because when Dick was really bringing it forward to the world at that time, there wasn't as much mindfulness happening in psychotherapy like it is now. There were other parts approaches, but this deep IFS, Self to Part relationship especially was just profound. It is profound. So, you see a lot of examples of that in trainings and demos and direct access, which is what we say is a part is really invited to blend, or we just know it's blended and we haven't specifically invited it, that's also very powerful as an IFS approach and can happen as part or all of a session, even. So, insight might be the most familiar and most prevalent IFS approach, but direct access is very important and there are different reasons to use that. And then the third approach to IFS, which is also very powerful, is to externalize the inner world through art or mapping, what we call sculpts. So, using objects to represent what's happening inside externally. That's also another really useful approach to understanding the inner system and helping it heal.

Aníbal: Absolutely.

Tisha: On that note, do you have any recommendations for externalizing the system in sessions online? Because I felt like it was really great working with clients and doing parts mapping and even embodying parts. But online, I find that that step of externalizing the system gets a little bit lost or like it becomes homework.

Mariel: Yeah.

Tisha: Do you have any shorthand for that?

Mariel: Yeah. That's a really question of the moment, isn't it? As all of us now are online and in my office, I had a sand tray and I had all these art tools. Well, I'm not in my office anymore or very often. So, yes, there are some things people are using. They might have a client grab an object in their room and say, let's let that represent, you know, this part of you, maybe for a polarization and let's grab another object. And so, the client can have some things in front of them. You can set it up in advance to have the client, it depends on what the client likes, if they have artistic, you know, if they have some tools like markers or paints nearby and some paper, you can guide them through a mapping technique. So, they're actually doing it with you. I think if you're using zoom, there's something called a whiteboard.

Aníbal: Yeah. Can be helpful.

Mariel: And I believe there are some sand tray online resources that you can subscribe to. And I haven't used them, but I have heard some other clinicians that have made use of that. So, I think more will also be developed.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Mariel, what about the number five common misunderstanding Self is all you need. What do you want to stress out with this one? One, Self is not enough?

Mariel: Yes. I remember a client who I have worked with for many years, and she is very familiar with using IFS and doing inner work. And several years ago, I remember her saying something along the lines of, I know I'm supposed to be able to do this all for myself and meaning the inner work. And I don't remember all of the context, but it kind of broke my heart a little bit in that, you know, in terms of attachment and connection and attachment, being a deep human need, universally, you know, we are relational beings. We cannot survive without each other. And yes, our own Self-energy can heal and reach certain places inside us in a way that another person really can't be as directly connected, but we can, at the same time, we need other people. And there are times when, let's say in great pain, if a person is in deep grief and very, very blended with their burdens and when there's deep grief, there's nothing wrong with the person for grieving, they are feeling a very natural, universal experience. Somebody else's Self-energy is incredibly helpful and important. So often in therapy and in IFS trainings, we do talk about it. I certainly do a lot throughout the training, the container we set as facilitators with our clients, holding our own Self-energy is no small thing. Is very important for others. And then not just in therapy out in the world. So, we need community. We need other people's health. I remember hearing with PTSD that in times of trauma, when that trauma has happened, if there has been enough Self-energy around the person in their community or family and offering that to the person who was traumatized, they're less likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. They were met at the time with the resources that were healing from other people. So, this idea that we should be able to do it all ourselves sometimes is out there in the world like, oh, well, I know I need to be always with myself. Maybe a more common example is in couples work or in relational work. It's okay to ask for something from someone else. And we may, you know, demanding it might not go over really well. But when we get clear about we have needs and it's human, and there's no shame about that and we can speak for it, or we can even show our vulnerability to somebody else and ask for that. That's part of living together and being in community.

Aníbal: Absolutely. Beautiful.

Tisha: Yes. I have a personal example of that, if I could share.

Mariel: Please.  

Tisha: I got to do a demo. I got, you know, I pick the card for a demo in a level three and my young exile was witnessed by the group and it felt so good for that child to be seen by everyone. It was, you know, I'd met with that exile before with that little girl who was out in the cold and it was so beautiful for her. It was just, it was another level of healing to have the group see what she went through.

Mariel: Yeah. That just gives me chills, you know, and perhaps...I don't want to make an assumption, but, you know, coming from the American culture, maybe we have some things in common there, but yes, I can just, you know, resonate with that. The small thing being seen, being connected, connected is one of the C words of Self-energy. Right? So, to let this little girl get connected and be seen, yes. So of course we need that, that mirroring, that validation. And some of what I think around the unburden system mandala is when the therapist can remember this part is not just this burdened feeling is not just this belief and not just this role and doesn't have to be alone. When a therapist can really look and hold the faith that if I get to know this part, no matter how it appears on the outside, I know there's some value in there. There's some light in there. There's some gift. And how exciting to meet that. So, meeting that little girl, I bet just, you know... What were her qualities, if you don't mind my asking when she really was seen and unburdened, what can you...?

Tisha: Oh, she was just, she was sparky, she was fiery and yeah. Playful and really, really wanted closeness, wanted just to be held and

Mariel: Yeah.

Tisha: Yeah, she was cool. She was three. She was...

Mariel: And by the way, she's a part of you Tisha. She's in you. And what a gift to have this part blend consciously, you know, or less consciously, just naturally in your life, in settings that can receive for... That's good for the setting to have that liveliness. I've often thought, I remember thinking this on 9/11, when I was in my office, that somebody's doing their healing work is really a generous act. In spite of these giant things that are happening in the world. Every act, like what you just described, of healing and bringing these parts gifts out into the world, that's a contribution.

Tisha: It’s great to look at it like that. Thank you.

Mariel: Thank you. I got something out of you sharing that story. It landed.

Tisha: The group experience felt really important.

Mariel: Yeah. And that's when, in the trainings too, we talk about the demos are a gift for the rest of the group. You know, this resonance between people. You're healing, then gives permission to others to do the same or lights the way. It has that potential anyways.

Aníbal: Mariel, another common misunderstanding you are calling attention is: An unburdening is forever. What are you saying, Mariel? One unburden is not enough?

Mariel: Well, and I remember you and I speaking about this, Aníbal, too, and I'm not positive that this might've been from that conversation that it got added to the list. Because I agreed. You're a very skilled IFS therapist yourself. So, I do agree that, you know, sometimes people will say, you know, wait, I already unburdened this part, or I've already been there or it happened again. Or sometimes people think IFS is brief therapy. I don't know. It could be brief, but time is somewhat of an irrelevant variable and needs to be authentic and in real deep. But when we find that a burden is there again, the same burden of, let's say, I'm a piece of shame or some worthlessness or some fear, there could be different reasons for that. Some of the reasons are, maybe there's a new experience that hadn't been mentioned before that needs witnessing again, or maybe something new happened in the person's life. And it landed in that same sensitive spot. That's something I think you and I were resonating with, Aníbal, is that, you know, some of us have been doing this work a long time and there are just some sensitive spaces that something will come along and I might have like that allergic reaction to it, like, oh, something's activated again. Hopefully it's not as severe or as big. We are vulnerable as human beings. There are threats out there. You know, what do you think about that? You know, unburdenings aren't forever. Do you have another take on that?

Aníbal: Well. In a world so burdened, how can we unburden for good? Right?

Mariel: Well, and I will say sometimes there are burdens that just, they don't come back. I wonder about the interface of our mind and our spirit with our physical body, in this case, in our brain, you know, it could be that...Like I've when I used to work a lot with children, it felt like their burdens hadn't necessarily had as much time in there to be represented in their brain. Like those deep grooves in the brain. This one little girl I remember working with who had bad nightmares, we externalized her parts. This was early on in my IFS training. So, I was just really witnessing thinking “I'm trying this thing. This is what I learned to do”. We externalized, she externalized her parts with dolls and suddenly she picked a doll and that had like Self-energy and this eight-year-old girl then started working with her nightmare with these dolls. I mean, this was really at least 20 years ago. And I remember it very clearly, a lot of it clearly, and she worked out the content of her nightmare there, and it had to do with some serious sex abuse and the next week or so I remember asking her, her mother just mentioned the nightmare stopped and the nightmares didn't come back. And I worked with her maybe another six, eight months or so. So hopefully her environment remained safe and supportive. I don't know. I haven't seen her in a long time, but in that case, I hope that unburdening was forever in that part for that burden.

Aníbal: So interesting. Mariel, as we are coming to an end and before we close this amazing talk, do you want to introduce us to the IFS Telehealth collective? What is this project that Dick Schwartz endorses as two top IFS trainers, veterans, I guess, hire and provide consultation to well-trained IFS therapists. So that if you refer to this practice, you can be confident that clients will be getting the real deal.

Mariel: Yeah. You know, it's something I didn't know I'd be doing, to tell you the truth, but a colleague of mine who is on the team, the staff of a training I did in San Francisco had created a... Her name's Marcella Cox. She created a group practice online in California where she lives a few years before the Telehealth collective. And so, she had a framework for it, and she approached Paul Ginter, lead trainer Paul Ginter and myself about joining her because she thought IFS, you know, should be more available to people. It's growing. And she had a vision for offering this in a few states. So, this was right before the pandemic started. She had approached Paul. It was is almost prophetic. And, you know, I thought I needed another complex project, like a hole in my head, but I also thought it's a good idea. And as Dick and Paul and I had said, it's hard to find IFS therapists with openings. So, we created a group practice. It's only in the United States and we're in six states right now, California, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, and Oregon with plans to expand, which always makes a part of me go, oh God, we've been drawing really fast. It's been great. All of our clinicians are IFS level one trained at least. And they meet with Paula and I every week to bring their cases. And they are all across the United States and really feel like a group practice. They're becoming friends and colleagues. We are really a group, lovely people. And I see them growing and deepening. The clients come to us with all different levels of IFS awareness. We have a library of tools for the clients and the clinicians. And Paula and I really did it for the community that we thought we might build. And after all this hard work, it's a reality.

Aníbal: Such a gift.

Tisha: How can people find out about it?

Mariel: They can Google IFStherapyonline.com and that will get you to us or remember IFS Telehealth collective. And we're often hiring as we grow, but it's, thanks to Marcella Cox for really creating a solid business model. I don't know how she did it or talk to us into it. But now that we're here, it's been a really lovely group

Tisha: Before we go, I wanted to ask a quick question that's completely off the topic, but I don't know if I'll get a chance again. Behind you on the wall there's this total rock and roll t-shirt and I was looking at it and I'm like, who is that band? And it's got your name on it.

Mariel: Oh my gosh.

Tisha: Can we have this story?

Mariel: That's hilarious. Okay. So right before the pandemic, I was supposed to go to Madrid to do a level one training and it was over the course of a couple of months. And I had arranged to do unburdened system retreat in Switzerland and a workshop in Copenhagen and a workshop for you, Aníbal, in Portugal. And my husband was coming with, and he's a musician and he made a touring t-shirt for me. We were going to nine countries and it says Mariel Pastor World Tour 2020. It was a joke. It's got a monkey on it with some symbols because he says, you know, work monkey, work. It's got nine countries on the back. And my bags were packed completely. It started in New York with the training I did and then Madrid, etcetera, et cetera, bags were packed. And I didn't go because...

Tisha: 2019

Mariel: 2020. It started...

Tisha: Oh, 2020.

Mariel: 2020. It started March 11th or something, and then New York shut down right after that. So maybe it's, you know, that saying, you know, my parents went on vacation and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.

Tisha: Well, thanks for sharing.

Mariel: Thanks for asking

Aníbal: Mariel, thank you so much for having us and for bringing these interesting common misunderstandings in IFS practice and consultation. I'm sure this is of great value to all IFS psychotherapists and practitioners.

Mariel: You know, I hope it is because I often tell people, hold the model lightly, you know, just consider that you're meeting a person with all these different little people inside, sort of. Just treat parts like people. That's one of the remedies and stay curious and listen with your heart.

Tisha: Thank you so much.

Mariel: You'll get there.

Aníbal: It was, again, a great joy to sit with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing your wisdom is model our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Transcript Edition:
Carolina Abreu, certified Psychotherapist, L3 Trained,
and experienced Program Assistant for the official IFS-InstituteTrainings.

The Tyranny of Change and other Therapist Burdens with Einat Bronstein 48:05

With a Law degree at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and Masters in Clinical Social Work at Washington University in St Louis, MO, USA, Einat learnt with Dick Schwartz and practiced IFS from its early years in Chicago. She graduated from Level 1, 2 and 3 IFS trainings; an International Lead Trainer, an IFS supervisor and a Certified IFS Therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience in private practice. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Israeli Institute of IFS.  Einat taught Couples Therapy for 8 years in Tel Aviv university, she is married and has 4 kids.
More recently Einat became a grandmother: a grandson joined the family.

Today on IFS Talks we are so happy to be welcoming back Einat Bronstein. Einat is co-founder and co-director of the Israeli Institute of IFS. And she's an international lead trainer and IFS supervisor and a certified IFS therapist. Today we'll be discussing therapist burdens in the therapy room, a topic of great interest to all of us.

Tisha Shull: Thank you, Einat, for joining us again, and thanks for bringing up this important, important topic for discussion.

Einat Bronstein: Thank you for having me. Really a pleasure to be here again, feels like a natural continuation of what we talked about in our last podcast. Thank you.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Einat, and many congratulations on your newborn grandson. You became a grandparent, such a blessing and privilege. So, in our first talk, the 11th July 2020, so about 20 months ago, we discussed the importance of the therapist-client relationship for IFS. As a model that teaches how to do U-turns, IFS claims Self therapy is possible once you have learned its basic assumptions. So, we discussed how relevant the therapeutic relationship still is, the role of technique in IFS, among many other topics.

Today, you suggested we discussed the therapist burdens and dictums in the therapy room and how those burdens can make therapy harder or even stuck. So, Einat, in these pandemic times of greater demand for psychotherapists throughout the whole world, with so many exhausted or even burned out, maybe this conversation can help us in some ways. So, what are those burdens and dictums you say we take on as therapists. Can you give us examples?

Einat: Yes. Thank you. So, you know, under this topic of, you know, burdens of therapists in the therapy room, we can actually put all kinds of things. You know, there are personal burdens from our personal life stories that show up, you mentioned every relationship we have, as well as the therapeutic relationships. But today I actually wanted to talk about something that feels almost like an oppression on the therapist, something, I kind of call fondly the tyranny of the demand for change. Just feeling that we enter this relationship and we enter the therapy room with this big heavy demand hanging over our head that we have to, we must deliver change. There are many problems with this, you know, for many people at first it would be like, yeah, of course, many therapists will define themselves as change agents. People will say, I even enter this profession because I wanted to help bring change. And that's all true, and it's good. When I feel that without exploring a little further, the whole notion of change and how that expectation or demand is impacting us as therapists, without that, we’re actually, we can go lost a little bit.

Tisha: Oh, what a beautiful topic and what a beautiful angle on it, because yes, just hearing what you're saying and thinking about how we sit with clients with that backstory running, how are we going to help them get better? How do we help them get to a different place, a different way? Yeah. I'm so excited to hear what you have to say and your thoughts on this subject.

Aníbal: Many clients sit with this in mind, please change me. Right? So, like if it is a task of the therapist only. So, Einat, what makes a therapeutic relationship stressful and what are the consequences for both therapist and client of a more stressful therapeutic relationship?

Einat: Yeah. So, as I said, I think that the stress starts off many times from outside sources. As I said, when the schools that trained us told us that we are change agents and we need to deliver change and that's what therapy is about. When the institutions or the agencies that we work for, have very clear guidelines of what they expect to see, they monitor change, they try to assess change, they want to see certain things happen over time. And so, change is something that is sort of like breathing down the neck of the therapy experience from the get-go. And, of course, the client brings, you know, clients bring this expectation in one form or another and the therapist. So, as we know, so many things in the therapy room are contagious between client and therapist, you know, an inpatient part, a critical part. They sort of start to float between us. And so, the critical impatient of the client, you know, triggers a critical and impatient part of the therapist and vice versa. So, that when parts in both systems, the therapist and the client organizing around achieving change, it affects the entire joint field that organizing parts in both systems, client and therapist, we must have change raise stress in both systems, and they feed off of each other.

Tisha: You've named some of your parts or therapist’s parts that come up in that dynamic of agency or agenda for change. The part that maybe wants an outcome. What are some of the parts that you've noticed in yourself that really get involved in this process?

Einat: Multiple parts, but the most typical parts when therapists, you know, myself included, for sure, all I say is my own observations of myself for starters, and then other therapists that I work with, but the parts that seem to be most triggered in that, that change is a very responsible part, takes responsibility for everything and anything that has to do with the client. A savior, advice giving, solution seeking, directive, problem solving. These are all parts that sort of like, you feel like they pulled up their sleeves and here they go, they are going to make things happen. They're going to help bring change. They work hard. And they are many times, again, as I said, sort of trigger or connect with similar parts of the client or client comes with parts that are very action oriented, solution oriented, seeking to solve problems, seeking to have, you know, get tools and solve problems. And that creates a process that can be, first of all, quite, I would say flat or superficial, but also stressed. And the chain reaction of that is when we have these parts for us and the client that work hard, that try to problem solve, and advice, and directive, things don't happen. And then the chain reaction is we have other parts show up, disappointed, discouraged, feel like failure, judgmental of ourselves and of the client, they come exhausted, depleted. So, and it happens to both us and the client, lose faith in the process and our ability to come out of wherever we're at. So, again, talk about a stressful, demanding and depleting therapy experience for both client and therapist, that's a sure way to get there.

Aníbal: It looks like we are making a basic mistake that is to hope for change before accepting and understanding that is one of the change paradoxes, right?

Einat: Yes. So, where I go with that is, first of all, you know, I'm not saying, you know, change is not what we want. You know, people come to us because they're in distress, because there's pain and hurt and suffering in their lives. And they want that to stop. You know, that's, if we want to look for change specifically, just people want to stop hurting. They want to like be happier. So, we're looking at, you know, specifics and I want to say the first thing is, you know, when I meet a client, what is the definition of change with this client? Because the way we try to find out is we ask a client, you know, in that first intake, you know, what are your hopes? What are your expectations? What do you expect to get out of this process if it was successful? These are wonderful questions. But the more interesting thing is who is giving us the answers, which parts of the client really answer when we say what change are you seeking? So, I can have a person come in and I will say, you know, what are you looking for? What change, you know, what would be successful, successful therapy session or therapy process for you? And they would say, I want to be able to get a better job, make a career change. I want to be able to find a relationship. I want to be able to leave a relationship. Kinds of things, you know, that people come with it to us. But many times, you know, if we're even able to achieve these changes, this is not what this person really needs. Parts of them tell them, that's what you need. If you only were able to make a career change, get a promotion, get a degree, you'd be happier, and all your problems be solved. If you were just able to get a relationship, then you'd be happy. And that's not necessarily what is the, what's the real change that this person needs in order to get where they want to get in life. Stop on the way it might not even be the right thing for them. But some parts think that it is, they come to therapy wanting that change. And that doesn't necessarily, you know, that's not necessarily what's going to happen. Again, and maybe the change they are looking for is further away in other intermediate, interim changes need to happen first before they can get there. So, the whole notion of how do you conceptualize and define change for each client at each given time it's not so simple. Really requires deeper exploration.

Aníbal: Usually managers are the ones who book the sessions, right?

Einat: Many times, it's managers who book the session and have an agenda. We know that they do. That's what they're there for, have an agenda about what this person needs to change in their lives, and they want to go there, and it may not necessarily be what this person needs. They don't know that, they just try to collaborate, you know, these managers, and then we all get frustrated and depleted because either we can’t get there because the rest of the system is not on board, it's not organic for the system or we get there just to find, much to our dismay, that that didn't bring any of the joy, satisfaction, relaxation, and the good things that were supposed to come with this desire to change.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Tisha: How do you use your own parts in the room in the process as a metric of understanding that deeper change that is calling? Is it about Self-reflection? Is it about deeper connection with the client? How do you get there essentially?

Einat: So, this is a great question, because I think it kind of leads me to the next thing that I actually want to say that because I said, okay, so I just said that we can't really trust the managers who say, this is the change I want as our guides to navigate the route. Okay. So, how will we navigate here? Where are we going? And, for me, I like to just sit there very humbly. I listen, you know, when I hear clients say, this is what I want to see change and all that. Because these things are here, they're there in the field, of course, the managers and the parts that say that. But I am, you know, for me, I am really trying to be very mindful of those parts in me that won't jump on that bandwagon and say, okay, all right, good, good, that's what we got, you know, you want to go there? We're going there. Let me help you out. I'm a trained professional. I can help you go there. I'm really trying to sit quietly with my system and say, I don't know anything. I don't know anything about what this person really needs. Maybe they know what they don't know that they know or the parts that say they know, maybe they don't know what they don't know. So, I'm sitting and saying, I don't know anything and I'm just here to connect with this person to get to know them, to establish a relationship and from this relationship the wisdom will come, the knowledge will come from both of us because I feel that when we are looking to accomplish a certain change for a client, we become outcome focused and not client focused. And I think it's really big. It's a big shift when you sit with the client and you and the client are outcome focused where it's so much better, I think when we, the therapist can be client-focused, I am interested in everything about you and the entirety of your personhood, your life, your being, and from establishing relationship with that gestalt of you, all of you, things can emerge. And the main thing that I would love to see emerging is a safe, respectful, compassionate, Self-energy field relationship. From that everything can open up. So, for me, if I need to name an agenda, if you would like, because we always say, well, IFS, you know, Self has no agenda. So, this agendaless agenda is let's just be in, let's just be in a relationship. And let's just see when we create the safe space, Self-lead relationship, Self-presence, Self-energy, what can come out. Because, I can have this relationship with my client and create that space for us. Client can then create that space internally with their parts, then the Self to part relationship reveals the truth about what each part needs in terms of change, in terms of care, in terms of growth, in terms of healing. Change is a big word. A lot comes into it. Again, sometimes it's an acknowledgement, not the big change.  And a client can relate to a part that up until now was deemed bad, negative, hurtful, destructive, and a client can really from Self connect now with this part in a way that is appreciating, validating, including. That's a big change. Most people don't come to therapy naming that as a desired change, they don't even know it's possible. They don't even know that it's an essential step, making really long-term deep, sustainable changes. So, the relationship is what reveals the path, the path to change, whatever change means for each part in the system. Then for all of them together.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Einat, this tyranny of change that you are speaking for also applies to the therapist because many therapists also want to change themselves. And we are wounded healers, right? On one hand, we need awareness of our own burdens in order to become capable of understanding others' burdens, right? So, do we need unburdened therapists or what do we need?

Einat: Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, if we can be unburdened and if we can be, in our own system with more Self-energy, with more harmony, which of course is good for us and is good for our clients. I see though, I mean, when you said how, when you noted how therapists pursue change, what came to me is the incredible, I don't even know how to name that thing, but the incredible breathless race for learning. And what I see around me is that we are now, of course, in this digital age, we are bombarded with seminars, workshops, conferences.  I mean, it's, you know, what happens in my email inbox is just crazy every day. I mean, I could spend my whole life, every minute of my life, learning, online in a webinar, in a zoom teaching, I mean, reading books, listening to books, it's mind boggling. And I see how triggering it is for many therapists, because there's so much. And so, it's like walking into a huge bookstore that used to happen at a world of bookstore, feeling like, oh my gosh, I will never be able to read all these books.

Aníbal: What am I missing?

Einat: Exactly. And for therapists, it's like, it's this race to be better, you know, am I good enough? Did I take enough seminars about trauma? Do I know enough about attachment? Have I learned enough, you know, how to work with exiles? And it's constantly this breathless doubting, am I enough? Have I learned enough? And it's constant. There's so much offering. And I feel that when parts go there and there are people that, you know, we're in IFS training and they say how exhausted they are because they just finished, you know, an EMDR training or an EFT training, or they're in the middle of one, they're doing it simultaneously. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, you know, how are you taking care of yourself? How are you allowing the learning to even sink in really fully deeply when you have so much of it? So, I feel that that is one of the burdens of therapists. You know, the race to be better, to learn more, learn more, which really doesn't allow you to be in a relationship with yourself. Which again, to me, that's where the magic is. It also, it's a distraction. You constantly are in a learning posture. You're using your learning parts all the time. And that many times just removes you and distances you from you. We think, oh, now I'm better because I know more, because I've been to this workshop and been to this training, it doesn't make you a better therapist actually. What I think makes people better therapists is when they have a good relationship with as many parts inside themselves as possible. When they really know that internal terrain, they can offer something so safe, accepting, and comfortable for their clients.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Yes. Sounds like an extension of this change tyranny that you were talking. We need to know more in order to be able to change. Yes.

Einat: I need to change, you know, the body of my knowledge or the level of my expertise in order to be better and better and better. I mean, again, it's another outcome focused experience rather than person focused. In this case, the person is the therapist, ourselves, we need to care for that.

Aníbal: Einat, our profession, according to many in our field can be a burden and a privilege. Clinical psychologists look back on their lives work and when asked to reflect on their life's work, a recurring theme in the therapist's comments was that it had been a privilege, a humbling experience to come so close to other people's lives, witnessed their pain and suffering, see their remarkable ability to cope. However, many also describes the burden of feeling so much responsibility for clients and being exposed to so much suffering. They said that age and experience had made them more sensitive. And there was an accumulating effect of sorrowful things over the course of a career. Do you want to comment on this? Does it resonate with your own experience?

Einat: Yeah. Yeah. I'm tracking actually, curiously, how is the daily proximity to human suffering? How is it impacting me, and has it changed? You know, what was it like when I was in the more early years of being a therapist? How is it now? Wondering how it's going to continue to be? I find that there's so many other things that impact us just because we are full human beings and we don't just live in the therapy room. I think that when I became a mother that affected much of my sensitivity to suffering, all of a sudden I was more able to see the child in each person, their childhood experiences became real to me because I had real children in my house that I was caring for. I now have elderly parents who thank God are doing well, but they are, they are forced to grapple with all the issues of old age, a lot of loss, a lot of fear, fragility, powerlessness. And so, I am, I find myself being more sensitive to those aspects, you know, to aging people, to that fragility, physical fragility and vulnerability. So, I find that our sensitivities are very much kind of impacted by where we're at in our lives. You know, when I became an empty nester and I was kind of more focused, you know, more sensitive to those issues. But I think that the biggest change that I see for me and it ties into what I said earlier. I know now that I am not responsible for my clients journey. I join them, and I try to bring into whatever space we share, all the qualities that can be beneficial for them. Again, qualities of Self, compassion, curiosity, courage, care, connectedness, calm clarity. I also love the P words. You know, perspective, one of my favorites, and patience, so important. So, I join their journey and I try to bring all these things to our joint space. I am not responsible for their success, whatever success means for them. I am not responsible for their journey to end up being good, successful one. I so rejoice when these good things happen. I marvel and I celebrate, and I feel so deeply and humbly grateful when people feel that they came to a good place in their lives, thanks to therapy, but thanks to other things as well, I'm happy for them, happy for us, but it's not my doing, so it's not my responsibility. It's when we feel responsible for our client's happiness and success, we forget how powerful they are, they have Self inside themselves, they have other resources. There are healing powers in the world for all of us. We, you know, maybe I can channel some, but it's not all up to me. So, when I stopped taking responsibility for everything that went on like that, it made it much easier for me to be really present for the suffering. I think that in the early years, it was hard for me to be present with the suffering because immediately I had parts that say, do something, the person is suffering. They came to you, they sit in your office, you must do something, you must stop it, you must make it better. And I became breathless inside of me. And all these parts that we named need earlier, just rushed into like take responsibility, give some advice, try this, try that. You know, and when I no longer believe that I can and need to change their lives, I can be so much more present with them where they're at. And then together, we find the path, whatever the path is, wherever it goes, that is the path of this person. Sometimes the path takes us a little bit to even a darker place, so we can be together, but then find a track like, you know, that leads us to a lighter place, but just to be with them and walk this path with them, as the path unfold, is the biggest gift we can give people. And it's very empowering when we are not trying to take over, which is or indicates subtext I know better, you don't know enough, you can't do it by yourself. I'm here to save you, help you, tell you. When we don't do that, it's very empowering. It's kind of like saying, you know, Hey, you and I, we’re in this together. And you know what you need to know, and you're going to guide, I'm here with you and we're kind of guiding together in different ways. It's a joining that makes it so it's not all my job. And because it's not all my responsibility I can be present for the suffering in a much more compassionate, open and... I think then helpful...

Aníbal:  Sounds like a wonderful relief.

Tisha: I appreciate that so much, especially what you said about when our responsible parts are able to step back, we empower our clients by realizing how much Self they have, how much power they have. I'm curious about some of the systems, some of the underlying systems that made us as a field, so outcome oriented, you know, I think about insurance companies, I think about our graduate school programs. I think about everything that predicated how the world of psychology is shifting a little bit more towards this open IFS model, but, you know, CBT is really about change. Do you perceive any systemic ways of addressing how much outcome focus there is in our field, in our trainings, and in our graduate school?

Einat: This is such a big notion because I think the Western world is all about outcome. Now, how we define success and failure, you know, how people chart the course of their lives, you know, they want to achieve this and then this, and then that. So, it's, you know, I think that systems, the education systems that are involved with therapy and psychology aren't different in that way. They are just kind of reflecting the spirit of our society or Western world. I think IFS, IFS took a long time before it was as known and as welcomed as it is today, because I think it that’s exactly what is was going against, that it wasn't outcome oriented in this way. I mean, obviously I don't want it to sound like we don't care about our clients feeling better. Of course, we do. That's, why we're there. We're there to help reduce suffering and bring more, you know, wellbeing to our clients, but the route to get there and how you define change is so limiting and again, as I said, oppressive, unless you leave this real open exploration with the client, each session. And that also, you know, I know that when I was a beginner therapist, it was important to my parts that the client will leave the session, each session feeling a little better than they walked in. You know, how they would walk in really cloudy or sad or depressed or worried or angry. And it was so gratifying for my parts when they left and they would say, you know, with the hand on the door handle, I feel so much better. This was so helpful. I feel better, or I feel even a little better. I was like, oh, good, you feel better. I helped them. And truly, I mean, it's lovely. It's great. But truly in the big picture, do they feel better because we did something that is tangible that we can say, oh, we solved the problem. We found the way we cracked, you know, the enigma or because I was just there with them in a human way and they felt really seen, sensed, heard, felt. They were given safe space to explore themselves with, again, compassion, curiosity, rather than judgment or fear. What made them feel better? And, more interestingly, when they don't feel better, is it bad? Where have we gone? You know, why don't they feel better? Is it again because I failed to be there or because we actually went to some very meaningful places where you don't necessarily feel better, but you are so on your way to where you need to go. You're on your way to an exile that has been waiting for decades for you to come and heal. And you don't feel better because you already sense the pain that is in that place. But once you get there, you can heal that exile and you can be in such a different place inside yourself. So, is it good or bad that you don't feel better at the end of the session? Maybe is really good because we are really going somewhere so important. So, it's so hard to be outcome oriented, you know, in this field with this concept. I would love people, more and more people to have IFS available to them in their teaching, just to allow the focus on relationship, which is not an outcome. It's a process. It's an experience rather than, you know, necessarily achieve this, achieve that and anything else.

Also, I want to share that I'm now involved in this project of, we call it like IFS in everyday life, which I'm doing with people who do IFS in Korea. And it just to allow people again, everyday people, not therapists, to start looking at their lives at their relationships, careers, everything, not through the lens of the outcome that they need to achieve, but through their experience in the process and the joining. That is a huge shift for people, that is a huge change, you know. Here I'm using the word change in a way that is soft, just to allow people to shift from being so outcome focused and outcome oriented, to being much more process, joining, and relationship oriented.

Tisha: I just have a brief example to share about earlier this week. I have a client who I worked with for many years, wonderful with the IFS model, but they, they just, they had a conversation with their anxiety part that they had never, they'd never gotten to that conversation before with the depth and just kind of the truth and authenticity that happened this week. And it was, it was just beautiful to witness. Here's my connection to this part of me that, that I otherwise would have wanted to get rid of. It's important as I can somehow live with it and be with it now, knowing it better. You know, it's just a simple example, but it makes, makes life more acceptable to say, oh, I can have this part that feels so uncomfortable sometimes.

Einat: Yes. And it's, so these things are really transformational. That's before you go into exile, unburdening and trauma resolution, it's just, just, you know, creating this relationship. I want to also maybe name another pitfall of people who are new to IFS maybe. And I see it a lot in the level one trainings, and I speak about it a lot. How the, again, the outcome-oriented tendencies go into the IFS model, because what I see happen many times is, you know, people learn, you know, in level one, people learn about parts and Self and they realize just how magnificent Self is and we want Self to be the leader and all that. Then starts, I call it the race for Self. People start to be constantly worried about am I in Self? Is this Self? Is this Self like? Is this enough Self? Is this not enough Self? Are you in Self? Am I more in Self? Am I less in Self? So, Self becomes an outcome. You know, achieving Self becomes, you know, an outcome that we start to, you know, try to reach for. And the pursuit of Self is done by parts. The more you pursue Self, the more parts are engaged in the race for Self. The more it becomes an outcome, something to achieve, to arrive at. The more is that, the less Self it is because the pursuit of Self is done by parts. And if Self is an outcome that you think you need to achieve, you are not there. It's really a sense of, you know, it's there for you, just be with your parts, just be your parts, be with your parts. If you can be with your parts, you know, again, with curiosity, compassion, acceptance, you know, you are in Self here, you have achieved it. You don't have to work at it. But it's really something to constantly remind people. Don't worry about Self. It's not a goal. It's not an assignment. It's not something to accomplish. It's just be with your parts, Self Is there.

Aníbal: Einat, Mariel Pastor created an unburden Mandala for us. Could we also create an unburdened therapist map helping us to become more balanced and accepting then outcome oriented?

Einat: Oh, wouldn't that be great? All right. I'm going to think of it.

Aníbal: What are your recommendations, Einat, for a balanced, accepting, non-outcome-oriented therapist?

Einat: Okay. The first thing that came to my mind is really to recommend for all therapists to be in therapy. It's just, just because I think we too need this relationship, this therapeutic relationship. It really is a relationship focused on the relationship, the relationship being, being the thing, rather than a certain outcome in mind. If we can be with another therapist in this kind of a relationship, then we are continuing to get to know ourselves and to establish this magical Self to part relationship with many parts in our system as possible. When we can do that, then we can offer a similar thing to our clients. So, when we do that, when we do our work and, again, some people do it, you know, with a therapist, but of course, you know, some people do it with peers that they exchange, you know, just work with each other in a way that is wonderful and very productive. So, I think as long as we have a way of doing it, just continuing to work with our systems and always paying attention to the parts that kind of get triggered with in therapy, like wanting to save and problem solve and provide change. And, you know, and it's an ongoing thing. I mean, I am not, of course in any way, shape or form beyond that, you know. When clients sit in our office and says, I've been here for six months and nothing's happening for me, nothing is changing. I don't see any change. I feel stuck. That's very triggering for us. That's difficult for us. This is when I would really try to not get triggered and activated into defending, apologizing, explaining, doing, yes, but yes. Just to really try to connect and understand the parts who say that because it's never true. I found it to be never true. If someone is in therapy for six months and they have a relationship, building a relationship with a therapist, it's not true that nothing happened and everything’s stuck, some parts that had certain agendas and they already thought that in six months I would have been, you know, already enrolled in school on my way to get my degree and outside of my parents' home and renting my own place. And they had a whole plan. Those parts may think, oh, well, I'm not there, but if you look in other realms in other dimension of this person being, you will see the changes that have occurred during these six months. So, I'm always curious, what are the parts that say, nothing has happened? I'm stuck, we're stuck. And what were they wanting to see? What aren't they seeing and then to try and look at the relationship that have been or created. So, I think if we can maintain our curiosity, and as I said, we do our own work and we constantly bring to supervision or to therapy the clients that trigger us, the parts of clients that pull us into this this way. And again, our parts are constantly on board with this. You know, when you ask, I do a lot of supervision for therapists, so, when I listen to them and I hear the clients that trigger them, you know, clients [inaudible] in many different ways, but one of the most common things is the clients who trigger us are clients who don't show change, they don't get better. We love the clients that we can totally see the impact of our therapy on them. The clients that tell us, oh my gosh, so much in my life has changed and improved since I'm with you. We love those clients. We don't often bring those too...

Aníbal: We also feel powerful.

Einat: Exactly. Powerful, impactful. It gives us a sense of meaning, success. You know, this is what we came to this career for. We wanted to have that impact on others and in the world. And because we so want that we have many parts that are busy at work to achieve that. And these are the parts that I am, you know, the change focus parts that I'm talking about. So just for us to constantly have our hand on our pulse is to constantly be working with our own systems is so very, very important. And also, to kind of try and go into the place of humility because we really, we have no power. We don't have the power that we think we have or that we think we ought to have, or that our clients think we have. We don't have that really. Life is so much more powerful. So many other things happen. You know, for years I've observed this. I used to work with single people who were really looking for relationships and we work with all kinds of things and questions and anxieties, and then they would fall in love and they would fall in love and everything would magically be different. And I'm thinking, you know, a year of therapy, couldn't do what, like a week of really good dates, you know, do for people, you know, like a month of falling in love what it does for people, it's better than, you know, so I'm humbled by life. Life is, you know, and again, we can do wonderful work and then something terrible happens to them and everything breaks because we're just fragile like this. And so, for me to keep, you know, my humility helps me not think that I need to take this responsibility that I can. And many, many times the path to this kind of humility goes through more spiritual practice of sorts, just to take on that understanding that there are bigger powers than us, so much bigger, we're so small, we're small and we're just small. And we can just be small together with our clients. We don’t have to be big and grand and mighty change agents, we can just be humans, two humans in a human experience.

Tisha: Bravo. Oh, thank you.

Aníbal: Einat, as we are running out of time, is there something you'd like to say as a closing?

Einat: Yes. I have this little bitty poem that I absolutely love, and I feel that it's, it captures everything I said. And it's also kind of an inspiration for me. So, with your permission, I will read it. It's called A Medicine Woman's Prayer. It’s by Sheree Bliss Tilsley:

I will not rescue you, for you are not powerless.
I will not fix you, for you are not broken.
I will not heal you for I see you in your wholeness.
I will walk with you through the darkness
as you remember your light.

Tisha: Lovely. Yeah, really beautiful.

Aníbal: So, Einat, thank you so much for this amazing conversation. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Einat: Thank you so much to both of you. Really appreciate.

Tisha: Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

 

Transcript Edition:
Carolina Abreu, certified Psychotherapist, L3 Trained,
and experienced Program Assistant for the official IFS-InstituteTrainings.


 

Cultural competency with LGBTQ+: a Talk with Derek Scott 42:19

Derek Scott is the founder of IFSCA, a Canadian organisation dedicated to promoting the work of Dick Schwartz, originator of the IFS model. Though IFSCA Derek offers many programs and trainings such as the Stepping Stone course and the affordable online monthly masterclass workshops featuring experts in the IFS field such as Dick Schwartz, Kay Gardner, Susan McConnell and many others.

Derek has been working with and teaching the model for 20 years. Along with his daughter Maya he presented as part of the plenary on diversity and inclusivity at the IFS conference in 2016 and volunteered as consultant to the IFS Institute as part of the diversity and inclusivity advisory committee.

His first job as a counsellor was in the early 80’s when he began working on the frontlines of the AIDS pandemic, developing anti-oppression workshops as clients and loved ones were dying. He has been championing queer rights ever since.

You can find Derek's IFSCA website at  https://ifsca.ca/

Today on IFS Talks, we have the pleasure of welcoming back Derek Scott. Derek Scott is the founder of IFS CA, a Canadian organization dedicated to promoting the work of Dick Schwartz, originator of the IFS model. Derek has been working with and teaching the Internal Family Systems model for 20 years. Along with his daughter Maya, he presented as part of the plenary on diversity and inclusivity at the IFS conference in 2016 and has volunteered as consultant to the IFS Institute as part of the diversity and inclusivity advisory committee. Derek's first job as a counselor was in the early eighties when he began working on the front lines of the AIDS pandemic, developing anti-oppression workshops as clients and loved ones were dying. He has been championing queer rights ever since.

 

Tisha Shull: Derek, welcome back to IFS Talks. And thank you so much for being here with us again today.

 

Derek Scott: Well, thank you for having me, Tisha.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Derek, welcome back. We have met twice in 2020. Together, we did a talk on grieving and another on spirituality, amazing conversations. And that was right before this pandemic collective trauma. How have you been throughout these pandemic days?

 

Derek: Oh, that's a good question. Well, I started off very panicked and very frightened parts and I had managers that just went into overdrive. So, right at the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking, they were predicting a 4 to 5% death rate. And when I looked at the numbers here in Canada and the rapidity of infection, if it had been a 5% death rate, we would have been utterly overwhelmed with death and with grief. So, I moved into, I got 60 volunteers that developed an entire program, a volunteer-based program on offering counseling to the bereaved, the COVID bereaved, set up an entire program. And thankfully, thankfully, thankfully it wasn't required because the death rate was not that high, but I kicked into high gear professionally. And then personally, I think I made 300 different packets of soup and put them in the freezer because I didn't want to go to the supermarket again, ever. So that was my initial response to the pandemic.

 

Aníbal: An anxious one, yes, everyone was quite scared back then.

 

Tisha: What's happened with those panicky parts now?

 

Derek: You know, it's interesting, Tisha, they've settled down in terms of the immediacy of the panic, which a lot of which was to do with the unknown. And when I was reflecting with them, it was very reminiscent of the AIDS pandemic in my community where we didn't know. We just did not know. We knew that that many of us were dying, but there was no information about transmission. So, just like in the early pandemic with COVID, we were wiping down surfaces. We didn't know if we could kiss. We didn't know if we could have sex. We didn't know if we could hug. So, those parts were triggered as well. Those parts back from when I was a much younger man. And now, because I have a specialty in grief, I've been invited to various places to present on a post-COVID and how to respond from a grief framework. But as I look at it, I don't believe we're post-COVID. And I don't believe we're post catastrophe. When I look at climate change or global warming and the research, and interestingly the research with therapists, the older the therapist, the less concerned they are and the more likely they are to say that young people's anxiety is disproportionate. The younger the person, the more likely they are to respond to the belief that we are doomed. 56% of young people, this was a study from the University of Bath, of 10,000 young people. 16,56% believe that humanity is doomed. They agreed with that statement. So that's where I'm focusing now, not from the place of panic, but from the place of this is the zeitgeist now and what can we as therapists and IFS therapist, how can we move, work with our own parts that go into denial and disbelief, which is the most common grief protectors, so that we can not get overwhelmed, take in that information and then better serve clients. So, I know that's not the focus for today, but since you asked, that's where my system's going.

 

Aníbal: Thank you, thank you. Well said.

 

Tisha: Does it feel like that anxiety is different than growing up in the nuclear era or the cold war era? That sense of doom is it... does it have a different flavor?

 

Derek: It does for me. Yeah, yeah. They always felt very abstract to me, not to my parents, but to me as a child, but there's nothing abstract about... Think about the nuclear era, the cold war was, well, they could push the button or not, right? Whereas with climate collapse, it was like the button's been pushed. There's no way to unpush this button. So, we need to adapt.

 

Aníbal: Absolutely. Derek, you have been doing a great job teaching IFS now for 20 years. Your skills as an IFS teacher and consultant are internationally renowned. And one of your expertise is working with LGBTQ+ minorities. In your website, you offer many different resources in many different categories for IFS interested therapists and practitioners. Among those categories, you include some on gender and transgender. Very interesting stuff. Derek, becoming gay or lesbian or any other LGBTQ+ minority continuous being too challenging and even traumatic for so many children, adolescents and adults around the world, right?

 

Derek: Yes.

 

Aníbal: Gender biases and bigotry has remained so alive in our world. And in many places and countries, not only your freedom, but even your life can be at risk, right?

 

Derek: Yes, yes.

 

Aníbal: So, the world is quite far from being a friendly place for anyone feeling the drive to authenticity. In your website, Derek, you offer an interesting resource, a video called The Drive for Authenticity: Understanding Inner Sexual Orientation and Gender diversity. Why this video and how can it be helpful?

 

Derek: Well, one of the reasons I made that video is I wanted people to get clarity that the messages of shame, of not being okay, of being a freak, of there being something wrong with you, is informed by the broader culture and the broader culture is informed by certain values that we can describe as heteronormative. So, it's better to be heterosexual, cisgender preferred, right? So, is better to be cisgender. Patriarchal. So, it's better to be male. White is better than nonwhite, you know. And all of these beliefs, which you can track back, they've been passed down for centuries by those in power, informs the zeitgeist, they inform the ideology, which permeates every structure in the culture, including the family structure, the family system. And so, the reason I made that video is I wanted people to become aware of a number of things. One is these are the values that we grow up in and our parts internalize them. And that's the source of shame for LGBTQ + people. It's not inherent, there's nothing inherently wrong with us by any means, but our parts that are looking to the culture for, you know, how are we in the world and are we valuable and are we nurtured, answers no. So those parts take on those burdens, which we then see, and, you know, the disproportionate suicidality risk for queer youth, for trans youth, which is the result of those internalized values. So, both wanting to make that clear, so, that people have a way of recognizing that and then, thankfully to IFS, unburdening that, clearing those false teachings. And also, to normalize internal gender diversity and internal sexual orientation diversity. So, as you know, I'm sure, for the work you've done with yourself or others, when you go into the system, quite often, a part will present with a pronoun that doesn't match the biological sex of the person. And that's how it is. So, clearly internally we've got definitely gender parts. And if you go back to the Kinsey research, although was dated and highly criticized, it did acknowledge that there's a variety of sexual attractions. And I believe that different parts therefore have different sexual and affectional attractions, which then may result in a particular identity or more commonly now gender fluidity, I think gender fluidity depends which parts are up at which particular time.

 

Aníbal: Amazing.

 

Derek, coming out can be a very, very difficult process, takes years and decades for many, I believe. And some even choose never do it or never dare doing it. In the United States you have a national coming out day.

 

Derek: They do. And we do in Canada as well, yes.

 

Aníbal: Yes. Beautiful. Are there developmental stages for the coming out process that you'd like to name or maybe useful for us to know?

 

Derek: Sure. As you're asking me, I'm remembering a card I saw in a queer bookstore a few years ago and it described the coming out process. And it said, first everybody else knows, then you know, and then your parents know, right. It was a humorous card of course, right. But there's some grain of truth in that. When one becomes aware of either same sex attraction or that this body doesn't feel like the right body for me, if there's a trans awakening, because of the pejorative responses to that, which are internalized, the system may not want to acknowledge that, might want to find ways to lessen that, you know, let that not be true. And there's the internal struggle. And then, in terms of coming out to oneself, there's also the perceived loss, the fear of loss. Will, my family reject me? Will my friends reject me because I've been presumed heterosexual or presumed cisgender to date?

 

Aníbal: Can be scary.

 

Derek: And then there's the very real loss of heterosexual privilege, which you don't know you have until you lose it.

 

Aníbal: Oh, absolutely.

 

Derek: I remember my first job as a counselor at the AIDS committee of Toronto. In my interview, they said, we want you to think about, if you get this job, this will be on your resume and you will probably be identified as a gay man, and do you want that? And many of the other gay men I know, and lesbians, they have a queer resume and a straight resume. So, if they're applying for a job and many of their volunteer services have been in queer community, they won't mention those because you're applying for a job to someone who's going to look at your resume that you have not met, who could well be homophobic and why risk it?

 

Aníbal: Oh my Gosh. Can be so stressful.

 

Derek: That was coming out to Self. And there's often the assumption with coming out that, you know, “oh, you've come out, that's great.” But coming out is an ongoing process because of the presumed heterosexuality or the presumed cisgender. So, to my surprise, when my daughter was seven, she was at a cooperative school. So, I would go into the school as a parent helper sometimes. And it was usually me and the female teacher on school trips. So, of course, I would be asked to escort the little boys to the toilet. Well, there was a part of me that was very worried because I was presumed to be heterosexual because her mother's lesbian and we looked like a straight couple. That's what people would assume. So I had to come out to my daughter's grade two parents as a gay man, because I was legitimately worried if somebody was homophobic and they realized that I'd been taking that little boy to the toilet and they confused homosexuality with pedophilia, which is not uncommon, I could be in trouble. Right. So, I came out much to my surprise, to a bunch of seven-year-olds parents and was met with various, you know, patronizing responses like, “oh, I don't mind.” I didn't ask if you minded, I'm not asking for permission to be who I am in the world, or, “oh, my cousin's a lesbian.” That's nice. Why are you telling me this? But nonetheless, there's another example of coming out yet again, because to stay within the presumed closet would not have been safe for me.

 

Aníbal: Thank you for sharing that. Beautiful.

 

So, Derek, do you find IFS a model with enough tools to help LGBTQ+ people or would you recommend any other adjunctive tools or other specific approaches to work with these minorities?

 

Derek: I mean, as you know, I love the IFS model because it's the only way I know that could actually permanently clear the shame from the system that gets taken in. So, I'll give you a brief example of that from my own experience, but then I want to talk a little more broadly about it. So, I did some work with a 12-year-old part of me. So, this boy... Now just imagine this for yourself, right? 12 years old, noticing that you're attracted to the same sex, right? Not really sure what that means. This is in the 1970’s in a small town in England. So, nowhere to go for information. But what that 12-year-old had been warned about was, you know, if there's a man that tries to pick you up from school or invite you into his car or give you sweets, don't get into his car. I remember thinking why would somebody offer me sweets? Why would I get into his car? But I could also sense there's something there about, you know, there's a dangerous kind of man, right? That as a boy child I was being told about. And so, this 12-year-old part of me is in the local town’s Bookstore, takes down a medical dictionary, he can’t look up his dictionary at home because he's too worried that the page might look thumbed. So, he goes into the bookstore, takes down a medical dictionary and looks up homosexuality. And what it says is a deviant form of sexuality associated with pedophilia. So, he looked up deviance and he looked at pedophilia and was convinced that there was something wrong with him. He was convinced that he was disgusting. He was convinced that he would grow up to be a child molester. And that was the burden that that 12-year-old boy took on. Just hideous. But looking to the authorities for help, and that's what the authorities in the form of his medical dictionary told him. So when I was finally able to visit him by IFS, of course, and hear all the things he believed about himself, I was able to help him release all of that, all of that and take in what's true, which is this lovely, lovely, lovely boy, approaching adolescence, loves people actually, but particularly loves other boys and men in a particular way, in a very affectionate way. And prior to that, my assistant had been very vulnerable to homophobic comments because any homophobic comments that came my way would trigger this 12-year-old. Right. Trying to get my attention. So, oh yeah, we don't deserve that. I'm disgusting, blah, blah, blah. Now, when homophobic comments come my way, I'm aware that they're about the other person. It's like, oh, you're a homophobic. Isn't that interesting. Or you have homophobic parts, isn't that interesting or not, but it doesn't trigger anything in my system other than that. So, the gift of the IFS model is to be able to clear the shame which has been put on by that broader culture in the first place. But that said, I think what's often missed in the IFS model is the therapeutic alliance, right? The role of the therapist and particularly in terms of, you know, affinity or in terms of getting it. So, the model itself, great, but also there's the practitioner, right? And the practitioner needs to have what I think of as cultural competence with queer community in order for it to be able to work with us.

 

Aníbal: So, do you believe someone in the coming out process for authenticity should get the help and support of an LGBT therapist instead of a straight heterosexual one? In other words, are LGBT therapists better equipped to this specific support?

 

Derek: Well, I think it depends. I think the response to that is complex, right? So, if you are a heterosexually identified cisgender therapist and in your heart circle, you've got friends, family members who are LGBTQ, you probably have a good sense of the community, right? So, you're probably at ease. But if that's not the case, if you don't have anyone in your friendship network or your family that you have a good relationship with who's queer, just to use a shorthand term. Then the only information you're going to have about us is from mainstream culture, which is biased and stereotyped. So, you're not likely to have cultural competence with this, and you're not likely to be able to provide a good service to us. You know, a few years ago, I presented at the IFS conference with Kate Lingren, who's a lesbian IFS therapist. We co presented on gender and sexual orientation. At the end of it, Aníbal, one of the participants came up to me, IFS therapist, and she said, “oh, thank you, I enjoyed that very much. I don't have any problems really. I think, you know, I'm okay to work with folks, but it was interesting. So, the only thing is, when I think of two men kissing...brrr...” And she showed me physically that she felt disgusted. And I thought a couple of things. One, why are you thinking about gay men kissing? How bizarre is that? And two, what makes you think it's okay to show me your disgust about that? And three, you're dangerous. If you're seeing queer clients, you're dangerous to them. Because you have a part of that you've done no work with that experiences that as disgusting and that is not okay. So that's one of the reasons why LGBTQ therapists are, I would say, better positioned to work with LGBTQ clients. But even within that, Aníbal, if you look at LGBTQ+, there's an assumption there that that's a community and we all have things in common. But what we have in common is being rejected and vilified by mainstream culture.

 

Aníbal: That’s a trauma.

 

Derek: But as a gay man, I don't have a great deal in common with a trans person who's heterosexually identified, right? Most trans women and trans men are straight. And I have much more in common with other gay men than I do with trans folks. Right. I have more in common with lesbians, right? Although lesbians also have the double oppression, right. Of being marginalized around misogyny and sexual orientation. Right? So, there's limitations there in terms of what we have in common, but in terms of a community, lesbians and gay men have a sense of community that goes way back. And in the 1980s, when AIDS hit, those communities came together. Right? And we had lesbians who knew how to advocate to get funding because they'd been working in women's services for years, rape crisis, et cetera, sexual assault. And we had gay men who were white and privileged and knew how to get access. So, when those two communities came together, we were able to support each other. And I have a huge debt to the lesbian sisters that helped us when we were dying. So, there's a bond and community there, but don't assume the LGBTQ necessarily means that we all have a lot in common. We don't necessarily.

 

Tisha: Derek, I'm curious about how to support clients too... I don't know if this is the right term, but it's almost like to endure external family systems where there's judgment and a lack of safety. When clients have come out and worked with their own burdens to unburden their exiles but, you know, required on holidays or required in life to be within families that are judgmental, that aren't accepting. This is something that comes up a lot. And it seems as though it's really something to bear through, but it brings up a lot of shame and family discord. And yeah, I'm wondering how to best support clients.

 

Derek: So often, you know, when coming out to oneself feels good and clear, and this is who I am in the world and the burdens have been released, there's often a sense of enthusiasm, but I want to come out to the broader family. There's also, prior to that, there's a sense of, I'm not sure if I'm okay. So, I'll tell people who are close to me and judge by their reactions, if I'm okay or not. So, if it's the latter, then you want to help someone come to the place where they do feel okay, in terms of their inner world and coming out, because they are going to receive responses to that. And those responses will often be those of grief. And there'll be informed again by stereotypes. So, you may have parents, particularly if they've grown up in a heteronormative world that grieve the heterosexual child they believed they had, that may believe they're not going to have grandchildren. So, they'll move into a loss response, right. Or the cisgender child that they believe they have. And now they have to grieve that son in order to say hello to their daughter. I don't think that's a negative thing. I think that's a process, but it's one to be prepared for because even parents that are positive may struggle with a sense of loss because they've lost a lot of the assumptions they had about their kid, in order to be able to say hello to the kid they've got. So, preparing someone for that process and others, because that's a process that they've been in internally, they've moved through that process, but this may be brand new information to loved ones who are now going to go into a process. So, just to be aware that the immediacy of the support may not be there and then to be prepared to find ways to deal with that. They've also, you know, we all, I would say all, maybe, have parts that know how to pass, right? So, I'm out pretty much wherever I go. But if I'm in a hostile environment, I can pass as straight, right? So, those passing parts have probably passed for the family for a while now. And they still know how to do that. So, you can call on those protectors if needed for a bit, until there's a sense of I’m solid on who I am and how I am. And then also getting support from within the community and within friendship networks is really helpful because other queers get you in a way that straights may never, you know, one of the things that we have to do as queer is we have to journey through all that internalized opression to come through it and to release it. But then it also informs us of the limitations of mainstream culture. Mainstream culture is profoundly limited in terms of its understanding of gender fluidity and sexuality. And that's why we've got things like, you know, the missionary position and heteronormativity. One of the things that's considered normal and preferable is monogamy. Why? It's a social construct. You know, if you go back in terms of the social construction of monogamy, it's about marrying well to a good family via the females so that you could increase your land. I mean, that's how it is. But if you have an analysis of it and you have an awareness of your own sexuality, why would you choose monogamy? And so, you know, many gay men, for example, married, you know, primary relationship for 20 years, both males may play away from home when they feel like it, they may introduce another into their sex play when they feel like it. And they're married and that's very much normalized within queer community. They're straight relatives, however, you know, upon discovering that one of them plays away from home. They have all sorts of reactions. I thought you were married, right? And so, straight therapists may be surprised by that. You don't really want to have to be educating a therapist or looking at your therapist surprise or, and in terms of our sex play as well, much more exploratory than traditional.

 

Aníbal: Absolutely, yes.

 

Derek: So, one of my clients recently was talking to me, he was playing with one of his boys. And this boy he was playing with was concerned, or my client was concerned because this boy was into fisting. And my client was worried that if he's fisting this other guy, he might do some damage internally to his partner. So of course, I said, well, let's look at your anxious part. So, he had an anxious part that was up around that. And he had a part that he called his porn star part, right. That loved to play. So, I said, well, listen to both of them and then see what needs to happen. And the conclusion he came to was his porn star couldn't really play with the ease and the delight with which he likes to play because of this anxious part around fisting and what might happen to the other person. So, he decided he was no longer going to be fisting with this guy. Now, all of which, of course I get. And he said to me at one point, “thank God, you're gay. Because if I had to describe fisting to my therapist, this would be a much more difficult conversation.” And I said, “well, I hear that. And I'm glad you've reached that decision for yourself because you also don't want to lose your watch. Now, that's a really nice watch.” And they both start laughing because that's funny, but it's easy and funny between two gay men, right? Not likely to be quite as easy or not likely to be put forward from a straight therapist necessarily. So that's one of the places where, you know, if you can work with someone who gets or is in, or part of your community, you know, even though I'm not trans, and even though most trans folks are straight identified, I'm familiar with trans people. I have trans people in my social networks. I have intersex people in my social networks, and I've had trans clients. So, I have some familiarity with trans issues. And then some I have none with, like some of the complexities of medications, of taking T blockers of the whole process one has to go through.That's not something I have great familiarity with. So, if someone's in that stage of their transitioning, whatever that transitioning looks like, I would look for a trans therapist to be available for them because I think that'd be better served.

 

Aníbal: Absolutely. Derek, looks as Superman is coming out. It's good news. Right? So, this sit comics made the announcement on the United States national coming out day. So, this week 11th October, that it's latest Superman, John Kent will be bisexual. We can read that in its next comic book, due to release in November, John will be pictured in a same-sex relationship with his friend Jay Nakamura. So, I'd like you to comment Derek on this detail, it says once DC comics said the pair will become romantically involved in the upcoming fifth issue after John mentally and physically burns out from trying to save everyone that he can. So, do you want to comment on these DC comics note mentally and physically burns out from trying to save everyone that he can?

 

Derek: I think DC comics are in the business of selling DC comics and I think they'll do whatever they can. I mean, look, what's happened right, in making that primary character bisexual, they've been internationally notice, including in Portugal, you know, so I think, you know, using a queer identity as a way to sell comics, well, I'm not surprised, it's marketing.

 

Aníbal: Derek, coming back to IFS for gay men and queer women. You just said a lot around how much work therapists should do with themselves to be prepared and familiar with these groups of clients. So, it requires specific therapist personal work and tools or a specific focus. What would you recommend to be the main focus or to me to be minded of when working with LGBT+ people?

 

Derek: Well, like I said earlier, you know, if you don't have queer folks in your immediate social environment, you're probably better off referring to therapists that do because it's cultural competency. And it's very hard to teach. I mean, first you've got to become aware of your own cultural limitations, which we all have, then be open to other cultures ways of being, and then also to recognize those and normalize those as equally valid. And that's a reach for a lot of people. That's a reach, right? Whether it's about LGBTQ plus people or whether it's about, you know, Muslims, if you're a Christian or, you know, people of color, if you're white. And then again, you know, we positioned people of color as if all people of color are the same. And as if all white people are the same, right? So, even that positioning like, you know, Nigerian folks are way different from Jamaican folks, you know, so there's a sense in which that positioning is necessary, but it's also very limiting and it doesn't speak to intersectionality, right. So, you know, if my client is Muslim and lesbian, then that's going to bring out some particular challenges internally for her, right. So, which are different from Christian lesbian challenges. And so, again, you know, the more we can open and learn about some of those intersectional pieces, the better positioned we are. But if you've never sat with a... if you've never hung out with queers and had that kind of fun, frankly, you might want to think twice about whether or not you're the best person for your client. Now that said, if you're working with someone and they're beginning to come out, you don't want to refer them on because they may feel like somehow, they're not okay. So, you know, do the reading, do the research. There's a ton of information out there. So, find out what you need to find out, be aware that you know nothing about this process, you know, nothing about what it feels like on the inside. And that's fine, do what you can to get informed about it so that you are positioned well to serve your client.

 

Aníbal: You are running a four-week IFS course for gay men, male professionals, you call it Stepping out comprehensive IFS course for gay men, male professionals. Can you share more the structure and the goals of this course?

 

Derek: Sure. I'd love to, it's actually a full month program. So, I have this program called steppingstone, which it's an online program. It's four months, it's three hours a week. And people that take it feel well prepared at the end of it to bring IFS into their private practice, which is great. And then within that, I teach a cohort which is exclusively for gay male mental health professionals, because that's where I identify, that's my affinity group and the safety of that group, Aníbal, means that men can go deeper into what they need to go into. And the commonalities. Right? We all hit in high school. We all developed very creative ways of hiding in high school. If we could, if we could pass. Those of us that are more femme had to deal with other kinds of bullying in high school, if we could not always pass. Right. But we have that in common. We have internalized homophobia in common. We often have stories of being gay boys that like to dress up in common. Most of us had girls as friends in school. We have that in common. So, there's so much commonality and there's so much safety with all of that just being known, you know, and within the mainstream IFS courses. In my courses at the IFS Institute, I was the only queer most of the time and didn't necessarily feel safe. So, they didn't feel safe enough to really, you know, present how I would present in the queer culture. And then also had to experience, you know, heteronormative teaching and then, you know, respond to it. Because I won't just sit and collude with it, but here's an example. I was taking my level two couples, a weekend and the trainers said, so imagine that you've got a couple in your office and he is very assertive, and she just defers to everything he says. So that was the introduction to this couple. Now, do you see what's problematic about that introduction?

 

Aníbal: There's some cultural bias there?

 

Derek: There's something there Tisha, what you pick it up from that?

 

Tisha: Well, it seems very stereotypical heteronormative couple with a dominant male and submissive female. And it's, yeah. It's maybe a non-inclusive example.

 

Derek: Yes. How do you see it as a non-inclusive example?

 

Tisha: It's based on the assumption that the couple in your office is going to be straight.

 

Derek: Absolutely. So that's, they need to back up from whether or not it's talking about stereotypes, the positioning in the first place, right. You've got a couple and he, the moment that is stated, there's the assumption that the couple is male and female. Otherwise you wouldn't say he, right. So, you know, as a gay man, I'm sitting there and I'm hearing, you know, if you've got a couple in your office and he, in the moment they hear that, I feel excluded.

 

Aníbal: Excluded, yes.

 

Derek: And my community is excluded, right. The moment that... So, then I've got a choice. Do I say something? Or do I wait and see if people who call themselves allies that are straight identified are going to comment or even notice? Nobody does. So, I raised my hand and I pointed out. And that's uncomfortable and that's risky. And if I do it more than once, oh, there's that gay man again, going on about, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's not always well-received. But I will say that particular instance, the trainer was Mike Elkin and he stopped. And he started to share with the class, because he became aware of it, the very first time he became aware of his homophobic parts. And I have never heard a straight man talk about his homophobic parts. And I was moved to tears by his willingness to do that. It was just love. But yeah, Mike is, you know, he's on, right. And he was willing to completely own what was going on for him. And another example of his internalized homophobia. So appreciated that.

 

Aníbal: Yeah, beautiful. Well said.

 

Derek: But those sorts of instances are what make it unsafe for us. And they're there. I mean, there's many that make it unsafe for us to be, so to be running a cohort for gay mental health professionals, where they don't have to be concerned about that. I can't tell you, and the comments from the men on, oh, this feels so right. And I hadn't realized how much I'd been holding in other trainings where that is impossible. And so similarly, my colleague, Mel Galbraith, she's a queer identified woman. She's running a cohort for queer identified women who are mental health professionals, because it's the same thing. And I'm not going to run that because I'm not a queer identified woman. And I'll put out here with you guys, if anyone is listening to this, I would love to be able to support a trans inclusive training led by trans trainers. So, if there's anyone who's trans and has teaching parts and would be interested in that, I'd be happy to let them have the whole training packages all ready to go so that they could teach within their own community, because similarly, that sense of safety and that sense of people getting it just helps the learning environment. So, that's why I've initiated those programs.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful.

 

Tisha: And I imagine there’s continuity with the cohorts beyond the four months.

 

Derek: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a couple of ways. Many of them want to come back and assist because there is supervised practice groups, as part of the training, and then many of them just form really good connections because as you probably know, once you know you've got parts, it's really nice to hang out with other people that know they've got parts.

 

Aníbal: Derek, this journey towards inclusion and diversity looks as a long, long journey. We have come a long way, but a long way to go as well.

 

Tisha: Yeah. What is in future for you? I know there's some retreats on the horizon potentially. What else do you envision? It seems like you've got a lot of creative ideas.

 

Derek: I do. Sometimes too many, so I need to rein them in. I have a file for my creative part. Is called my good ideas file and I write them down and put them in there. Because we might get around with [inaudible].

 

Aníbal: I like that.

 

Derek: At the moment I'm really enjoying being able to teach online. You know, it's a mixed blessing, right. But one of the things that COVID has brought us is in my teaching groups, I have people from Singapore and Australia and Brazil and they're really, you know, international. And, currently of course, it's very difficult to get into a level one with the IFS Institute. So, I have openings for the January programs, and I've been working with the Adler Institute in Toronto. So, the Adler professional graduate school is offering a certificate program in applied IFS therapy. And my course is seen as equivalent to that foundation course. So, you could take the steppingstone course and then move on to their broader clinical applications course. So, I'm thrilled for that and thrilled that people have access to both my programs and then programs lead to certification and the applied aspects of the model. I'm going to keep promoting within marginalized communities. I would really like to be able to offer this training package, especially to communities that are impoverished, right? So, the indigenous communities in Canada and north America, if they want to take this model and teach within their community, that's great. I was able to offer it to a group of Iranian psychotherapists in Iran. So yeah, with simultaneous translation, I was able to teach the model to 50 Iranian therapists, which felt great because, you know, their economy is in the toilet, but I was able to do it at vastly reduced costs. Which was great. So, that's where I see myself going, I think is continuing to teach and then facilitating that offering within diverse and marginalized communities. I think that's where it needs to go.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. Derek, thank you so much for having us and for all you are doing with IFS. And it was again a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, your work and our lives.

 

Derek: Yeah. You too. It's so nice to hang out with you two. And I hope, Aníbal, I was, as you know, I booked to come to Portugal when that gathering was going to be there, right when COVID hit. So, I do hope to meet you one day in Portugal, and you can show me around your beautiful country. So that's my hope.

 

Aníbal: Portugal is open now.

 

Derek: I've heard that. That's great.

 

Tisha: Thank you, Derek. It's always inspiring to speak with you.

Working with suspicious, stubborn, and dangerous parts: A Talk with Mike Elkin 48:22

Mike Elkin is an IFS senior Lead trainer who has been involved with the model since 1995. He has been a popular presenter, conducting scores of trainings and workshops throughout the US and Europe and has taught level one trainings in Boston every year since 2003. He was a pioneer in applying hypnotic and strategic approaches to addiction treatment and has integrated those tools into IFS treatment. He is the author of, “Families Under the Influence” and several articles.

Michael has a private practice in marriage, family, and individual psychotherapy, and he is very focused on training therapists in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy model, which Michael believe is the most flexible, powerful, and humane tool for healing available. It enables people to use their spiritual resources without getting into religeon or metaphysics.

Today on IFS Talks we are so happy to be welcoming back Mike Elkin. Mike Elkin is an IFS senior lead trainer who's been involved with the model since 1995. He has been a popular presenter, conducting scores of trainings and workshops throughout the US and Europe. And he's taught level one trainings in Boston since 2003. Mike was a pioneer in applying hypnotic and strategic approaches to addiction treatment and he's integrated those tools into IFS treatment. Recently, he's been co-leading an IFS level two on Depression, Anxiety, and Shame with Ann Sinko. Mike also has a private practice in marriage, family, individual psychotherapy, and he's focused on training therapists in the Internal Family Systems model. He also specializes in high conflict couples, phobias, somatic issues, aftermath of trauma, addiction, eating disorders, and cynicism, and probably so much more knowing Mike.

Tisha Shull: Welcome back to IFS Talks. We're so happy to have you here today, Mike.

Mike Elkin: It’s a pleasure to be here. I do want to make one correction, which is I no longer accept therapy clients and I've focused my practice on consultation and supervision and teaching.

Aníbal Henriques: So, welcome back, Mike. It's now 16 months since we sat together for a Talk. In that first wonderful Talk, you could introduce yourself and share many amazing stories on your personal and professional journey. It was such a great talk and you also could present some of your ideas on how IFS sees anxiety, depression, and shame. It was a great episode with so much to learn from you and your huge experience and wisdom. How have you been those days? How active have you been?

Mike: Yeah, I've been busier than I've been in 30 years because you know, I was sort of drifting into a pattern where I was spending a lot of time in a pool room playing three-cushion billiards. And when COVID showed up and I discovered I was not addicted to three-cushion billiards because if I were, I would have kept going to the blue room with all these anti-vaxxers and Trumpsters, and I would have gotten sick and died. And instead I was home and I had a lot of time on my hands. So, I started taking more clients and started also getting very interested again in IFS. And that was facilitated by the fact that my youngest son took the training. I did a training in Austin and my youngest son, who's a musician and found that he can't make a living making records anymore because he had two records but didn't make any money from them because they were all free. You can get them, you know... Decided he has to get trained. And I trained him and he's becoming incredibly involved in IFS and he's very talented. And so, mentoring him really got me going again...

Aníbal: Wow, lucky you.

Mike:  And I am way into teaching IFS and thinking about it.

Tisha: Is he using the model as a therapist now?

Mike: He is, he's not a therapist because he has a high school equivalency and two years of Berkeley College of Music. So, he calls himself a spiritual advisor and he's got a full practice and I can't get him to take anybody anymore. He's full up, so...

Aníbal: Beautiful, lucky you.

Mike, you have suggested five topics for our Talk today. Sounds like today we will have a full plate of interesting and relevant topics, I would say. Mostly advanced ones, advanced stuff. You have suggested to talk about befriending suspicious and stubborn parts, contracting parts that interfere with relationship, disarming dangerous parts and boundaries and self-defense. So, looks as we will have a full plate of various relevant topics for our community of IFS practitioners. So, let's start off with the first ones, the suspicious and stubborn parts. What are suspicious parts and how do they present?

Mike: Well, generally, you know, you run into it most dramatically with people who've experienced complex trauma, which means their experience was they grew up without a safe adult in their life. And therefore, their protective parts developed very precociously because usually, you know, you could expect parents to set reasonable boundaries around you and communicate reasonable expectations. And if you don't have adults to do that, very young parts need to do that. And they need to do that much younger than they can be expected to be competent at it. So, they're constantly feeling ineffective because they are and they're constantly exposed to shame, which makes them more active. And so, they are going to very much distort the perceptions of these people and then when they come to you, they're going to see you as a threat and they have no confidence that you're going to be acting in their best interest because that isn’t their experience of authority figures, their experience of authority figures and grownups is that they basically have no interest in your needs or feelings.

Tisha: What's an example of a common stubborn part that someone with complex trauma shows up with?

Mike: Well, like you say, you know, “is that part willing to have a conversation with you?” And the person would say, “that's crazy, what do you mean a part? What are you...? You know, I don't like to think about parts. I'm not on anything like that.” I mean, we all get a little of that with people of less extreme backgrounds, but the more extreme the background is, the more energized those parts are going to be and the less able they're going to be to listen. So, one of the strategies I've used, because I have a background in hypnosis, is to try to confuse them a little bit and not give them the answer they're expecting. Because if they're a little confused, that means they get a little curious and curiosity is the most accessible of Self qualities. So, because, you know, if you learn hypnosis or at least learn hypnosis from an Ericksonian sort of tradition, which I did, you're actively taught techniques for confusing people. And, you know, I've sort of let go of my tricky parts, but the technology is still there. And so, what I try to do is not react basically from parts, not react defensively, but react with curiosity. And the more I do that, the more likely it is that I'll be able to get into a useful conversation with some of these parts and try to help them understand what I'm up to. Because what I'm trying to do is get them to hire me as their therapist, just like, you know, if you're working with somebody who is called out in the world DID, which is they have parts that don't subscribe to a general identity when they show up, they try to get them to hire you as their therapist. So, you know, what I do is I understand that the way these parts are reacting to me doesn't have much to do with me. And so, if I can keep the parts of me that take anything personally back and I can remain curious, I can almost always make friends with these guys after a while, because they're doing an impossible job and they're doing it to the best of their ability and nothing they are doing is working. I don't tell them that, they already know that, but I do offer them the option that I think I can help them be more effective and I can help them feel safer and it is my job to address their concerns to their satisfaction. And all I would want from them is that they do their best to make their concerns clear to me so that I can address them.

Aníbal: So, that's how you befriend them.

Mike: That’s how I befriend them.

Aníbal: Are those parts in any way useful somehow for these systems?

Mike: Well, they are doing their best. The problem with protectors is they never protect and there's good reasons for that, but they never protect. What they do in fact is, invariably, energize and attract that which they protect against. That's what they do. That's what protective parts do. That's what they do on a macro level. That's what they do at a micro level. Like, our defense department does not protect us. You know, they see, they perceived a rock for instance, as a threat to us, so we sent over all these protectors and when that didn't work, we sent over more, we had a surge, and so now a rock, of course, is not a threat and totally consistent with our wellbeing as is Afghanistan, which we also sent protectors to. That’s how it works at a macro level. At a micro level, you know, if I say, I have a protector, so I look at Tish and I notice that she has a suspicious look on her face. And I say to her, “look, Tisha, I need you to respect me more. I need more respect from you.” Now, do you respect me more or less than you did 10 seconds ago? And this part that, you know, its worried with Tisha really thought it was protecting me. It saw a threat and it acted to neutralize that threat by controlling you and telling you that you had to be different. And my guess is what Tisha's part thought was “what an asshole.” And so, we're off to a bad start.

Aníbal: Mike, those suspicious and stubborn parts can be so triggering for us as therapists?

Mike: Yeah, well, they don't think we're going to help, and they think we're bad. And they question our intentions because we don't make moral judgments on what people do. We make moral judgments on why we think they did it. And that's why it's so important to, you know, when you're talking to firefighters to help them understand we know you're trying to help, we know you're not trying to cause harm. We know you can't help doing what you're doing. Because, the thing we cannot stand is moral judgment. And if you feel I'm judging you morally, you have to make me wrong and stop me because you have no choice. We can't stand that. And so, the main thing I try to teach people and the main thing I try to do is convey to every part I run into that I know it's positively intended, and I know it's trying to help and I know it's not trying to cause harm because otherwise that part will experience me as judging it. And then I'm an enemy.

Tisha: Is there some sort of macro function for the system to attract what these protectors are trying to repel?

Mike: I don't know how to answer that. I mean, it feels...

Tisha: We repeat relationship patterns, right? Like unhealthy relationship patterns. And...

Mike: Yes, we do. As a matter of fact, my friend Anne Hallward has suggested that we have a series of conversations about essentially repetition. What'd they call, you know, repetition disorder, whatever, when people keep sticking their face into the same fan over and over again, and how that actually works. And, you know, there are psychoanalytic understandings of that, which is, you know, that people have parts that haven't learned how to relate to people and therefore keep basically making the same mistake and getting the same result and protecting themselves from shame by blaming whoever it is they're getting that same result from. And that's an understanding, but Anne is one of these people who really has to understand things. So, she's goading me to really think about this and we're having a series of conversations about it. But the problem is that a lot of these behaviors essentially got some level, generated some level of relief, like, you know, parts that try and fail and try and fail and try and fail. And at some point, the discovery happens that every time they try and fail to the pain they're already experiencing, they're adding the pain of the shame of failure and the pain of disappointment. And if they stop trying, if they give up, then they experience relief, which is they don't get that shame of failure and pain or disappointment anymore and they experience a sense of relief. And then they associate despair with relief and see despair essentially or giving up or helplessness as a resource rather than... And they see hope as the threat.

Aníbal: So interesting.

Mike: And the problem is that these decisions tend to get made, you know, before people are old enough to go to school. They don't have any idea that they may have some more resources someday. And they also have no idea that the price of this relief they're getting is infinite. They're essentially sacrificing possibility. And they don't know that. So, you know, if you explain that to them and offer them the chance of letting go of that burden, often they'll take it. And then, you know... But that's one way of befriending say, an extreme protector, is helping them understand that they made a perfectly reasonable response to what was facing them. And they didn't have the resources to understand all the implications of that because they were three or four years old at the time. And here they are, they get another chance.

Aníbal: Mike, you say those parts can interfere with the relationship, with the therapeutic relationship, I understood. Are there other parts? Like those ones, suspicious...

Mike: Yeah. Well, that's where I really focus because it's my understanding that the quality of our relationships is a quality of our life. People who have good relationships tend to be happy, productive people, and people who don't have good relationships, no matter what else is going on in their lives tend to be miserable. And there was a time when I was fashionable in the eighties where I was getting clients who were getting their pictures on the covers or magazines, and they were, you know, the movers and the shakers and the captains of industry. And they were all, they were some of the most miserable beings I've ever been in the presence of because nobody liked them, and they didn't like anybody. Their experiences were all people trying to either suck up to them and get something out of them or destroy them in some way or both. And so, they were lonely and miserable and hated everybody and used their considerable power and influence to cause pain. And so, what I tried to do is get to know the parts of them that felt they had to do that because, you know, what I focus on is relationship, particularly the central relationship, because if you've been in a couple, you know that the quality of the space between you and your partner will determine the quality of your life more than any other single factor.

Aníbal: Absolutely.

Mike: And so, I'm really interested in the parts that make that difficult, that make that space feel unsafe and threatening and difficult and see your partner not as a resource, but as, you know, a problem you have to deal with. So I'm really interested in those parts and making friends with them and, you know, helping them find a way to feel safer with the partner, because what happens is that once protectors get very active in a couple, then constantly the couple is in the struggle to prove to the other one that there's a better person. That's what couples fight about is who's a better person. And the more seriously they take that struggle, the more miserable they're going to be. So, I try to help them get out of that fight. And the way I help them try to get out of that fight is by helping them become less and less affected by the sense that they're being judged. So, parts of them that are very reactive to their understanding of other people's opinions.

Tisha: What techniques or skills do you use to support people in being less reactive to the judgments of others?

Mike: Yeah. We all have parts that know we're bad. And when something happens out there that stimulates these parts and triggers them, and they become noticeable to firefighters, firefighters feel extreme shame and then they do - we were talking about that last time - so, and then they do something that they associate with relief, and the problem is that whatever they do usually causes trouble. And then, of course, that generates more shame, which needs more relief, which, and then you get into what Dick calls the... Basically a negative spiral, and it just keeps going and going and going. And so, my firefighters do something and what they usually do is they hit your tender parts because, you know, the shame I feel I have to put out there at seeing you. So, you’re the narcissistic selfish, mean...right. And I need to convince you of that, so you'll be better and change. And so, I hit your tender parts, which trigger your firefighters, and then your firefighters come back and help me understand that I'm, in fact, a narcissistic, selfish, clueless one, which hits my tender parts, and off we go. So, what we try to do is go to those tender parts and witness them and provide corrective experiences and help them unburden, and then they're less tender. And so, they're much less likely to get triggered with some, you know, implication... I see a look on Anibal’s face, which I associate with something and experience it as an attack and then I go after him and we start that vicious circle and an example I often use, you know, they talk about Velcro and Teflon when you're trying to do is help, you know, hurtful things bounce off rather than stick. And an example I use is if I say like, “I think you're being very selfish here.” Even though, you know, I was using that as an example, my guess is a part of you reacted anyway, you just hear the word selfish and you, and it's going to trigger something, probably not that much in this case. But, if I say, you know, “I think you're a communist”, which used to be an extremely provocative and triggering word, but it's sort of become unfashionable as an insult, you know, it's much more likely, you'll say, “God, what an odd thing to say. I wonder why Mike said something like that.” In other words, curiosity and compassion. That's more likely to happen. So, you're trying to shove things in that direction. You're trying to help basically parts that feel unsafe and judged, feel less judged and less unsafe and the safer this space is between people, well, more likely that the interactions they have are going to be pleasurable and positive because... You know, one thing I say which, you know, I like to provoke people although I don't agree with almost everything our former president said, I do agree, when that riot happened, and I think it was Virginia city, he said there were a lot of good people on both sides. And I agree with that. Because I think the concept of a bad person or a bad part as Dick has just published in a book...

Aníbal:  No bad parts.

Mike: No Bad Parts. If you think of someone as a bad person, or you think of a part as a bad part, you lose any possibility of interacting productively with that person or that part. So, I need to always work on the assumption that I'm dealing with a good person, that I'm dealing with a good person who has been essentially colonized by frightened protectors and therefore their capacity for empathy and connection is being blocked and disabled. And I try to be as curious as possible as to how I can establish communication and connection with that person or that part. But if I dismiss it as negative or selfish or narcissistic, or, you know, any of these labels that we use, I lose my power to be useful or I lose my power to connect. And what we need to do is connect. And the more connected we feel, the happier we feel and the less connected... you know, that gets back to relationships. So, you know, I'm constantly trying to make my parts feel safe and help your parts feel safe. And the safer they feel, the more cooperative they will be and the easier our project of healing will be for us to succeed.

Aníbal: Mike, you also wanted to talk about disarming dangerous parts. What are those dangerous parts?

Mike: Well, dangerous parts, you know, I mean the most obvious ones are suicidal parts or self-harming parts or parts... You know, I just had a case presented to me where this young woman has been sexually assaulted three times in the last two months, because she has parts that put her in harm's way and essentially get her to trust untrustworthy people or people with untrustworthy parts or people who have parts that basically want to use her as a toy, and don't see her as a person. And so, the problem with that and the person who presented is a very sophisticated therapist, so she knew what she needed from me was support in helping her managers who were going to try to get this woman to stop doing this, to relax and stop trying to make these parts wrong, because that just makes them more shamed and defiant, and make friends with these parts and be curious about what they need from these men that makes them blind to the concern. So that was a dangerous part. Parts that essentially put this person in harm’s way and keep her from setting appropriate boundaries to keep her safe. So, you know, I try to make friends with these parts, obviously, especially suicidal parts. And, you know, there are two kinds of suicidal parts. There are the ones that are relievers. They say, you know, well, if you're in so much pain, here's your ticket out. And then there're the punishing parts that say your staying on this earth needs to be removed. And they have to be approached differently, but they're both trying to help, and with these, you know, the punisher parts, what I will very often do with them is I’ll listen to them for a little while and then I'll say... If I was working with Tisha, “does Tisha have any idea how much you care about her?” And they go, that's a confusion again, “what?” And then I say, “well, you know, you basically are using her body. And if you kill her, you're going to be killing yourself. And you seem to be willing to die to essentially make Tisha more benign and keep her from being disruptive. So, I can't imagine, you know, if you're willing to die for somebody who's virtue, I can't imagine caring about...” And they get a little confused and then I make a proposal of maybe another way we could go about that, where this part could stay alive and yet Tisha’s bad things can be fixed, and I know how to fix them. And I have this resource, I call Self-energy, which I can introduce you to. And the other ones, you know, you just will help them understand that I know a way we can get her out of pain without her having to die. And so, instead of having to die, we'll get her out of pain, and she can have fun instead. And they're relieved to hear that and they can be suspicious but what you're trying to do is get any part you run into to become part of the therapeutic project.

Tisha: It sounds like you're really good with these dangerous parts. You're really good at contracting with them.

Mike: Contracting it’s the whole thing...

Tisha: Yeah. It's making me appreciate what a skill that is and the amount of confidence they really need in order to make these contracts. And does it feel as though when you're contracting with dangerous protectors and I know dangerous is relative, but that's what we're talking about today, does it feel as though they need to experience some of that healing of the exiles soon, if you make the contracts with them?

Mike: Obviously, the sooner the better, but usually when you're dealing with extreme protectors, it's going to take a while to get to the exiles. It's going to be a while before they, maybe are willing to admit there are such things as exiles. But, you know, the reason protectors are so ineffective is that they are not looking out there. In other words, they're not dealing with you. They're dealing with the parts of me that are affected by you, that are reacting to you. So, they don't see you at all. And so, they don't get feedback from your reactions, because what they're focused on are my tender parts that are getting upset, and they're trying to calm them down. They're not trying to deal with you, which is one reason they don't deal with you very usefully. And what you're trying to do is help them understand that. In fact, these exiles can be soothed, that there is a way to develop a relationship with them and there's a resource that can help these protectors essentially feel much less frightened and much less desperate. And because they see this constant fear, this ineffectiveness as meaning that they're worthless and unlovable, you know, because they keep trying to convince you that you're the trouble and you won't be convinced, and they try harder and you get even more (...). And so, yeah, we're trying to get them out of that fight because I've never won a fight and I've never met anybody who's won a fight. I've never met anybody who's won an argument. Have you?

Aníbal: I have really not.

Mike: Just checking. Right. So, I try to stay out of fights, and I try to help parts understand that, you know, you can't win them. And it doesn't mean anything about you that you can't win them.

Aníbal: Mike, coming back to boundaries and self-defense, what kind of boundaries do you have in mind?

Mike: Okay, well, I have a rule of relationship which goes as follows. If you can't keep someone out of where they don't belong, you can't let them in at all. So, one thing that's necessary for people to feel safe is that people don't go in where they don't belong. And you get to decide where you don't belong. In other words, if I said, “Anibal, can I stick my finger up your nose?” And you say, “no, you know, I prefer you don’t,” And then I do it. I'm unsafe. And the problem is that if I do that, the minute you see me from a distance of a hundred yards, my finger is already up your nose, because you know that you can't protect that boundary. So, and you can't win a fight. So, the art of self-defense, and I studied martial arts for a number of years. And it did help me be more flexible and strong and keep myself at doing things I didn’t like, but it didn't help me with self-defense at all. Because, you know, very seldom did people come at me with a knife, but very often they came at me with judgment and with assumptions and with entitlement and I had no idea what to do with that, you know. I knew how to take away their knife if they came at me with a knife, but they just wouldn't do that. They just assumed that I would do things that I didn't want to do and manipulated me into doing that or whatever... They got in where they didn’t belong. And so, one is you have to, you know, communicate with the parts that feel invaded, and then you have to be able to speak for them effectively without making the person who's getting in where they don't belong bad, because if you make them bad, it's not going to go well.

For instance, I had a client who was very successful in the corporate world and she was divorced from her husband and she had a complex trauma history. She was divorced from her husband, but she constantly took texts from her husband, or ex-husband, that were insulting to her, but not reacting to them. And it took me a while to help her basically block his number and not take any texts. That's self-defense, okay. And when she did that, and also, I got her to stop negotiating with him and to have her lawyer do that. Now that's very directive. And because I have a background in hypnosis, I'm not afraid of being directive, but I have to make a contract with people in order for them to not feel either disrespected or pushed around by my directive parts. So, what I do is first of all, get curious about the parts that are letting people in where they don't belong and ask them if they want help keeping them out of there and they do, and then I can be directive. And I can say, you know, how would it feel to call your lawyer and say, I'm not going to be talking to my husband at all, I'm going to refer every concern he has to you, and see how that feels, see what parts don't feel comfortable with that. And then we go to them and find out what their concerns are until they do feel comfortable with doing what needs to be done, in this case, to keep this guy out of where he doesn't belong. You know, or kids who think that you're supposed to be their valet and cook, and how to help them understand that those days are gone forever, or, you know, anybody who gets in where they don't belong.

Tisha: I'm thinking about this, this is bringing up this idea like it's really clear when things are direct and explicit, but being a therapist, sometimes, you know, I have a lot of clients who are therapists or myself, there's almost like this energetic exchange that happens where you feel drained, or you feel someone else's pain and, or there's just like this kind of thing that sticks on you. And so, it's like a little less clear, but we feel people stuff. How do you work with that?

Mike: Well, first of all, you get to know the parts that are feeling it. In other words, these are parts that are letting things in where they don't belong. In other words, you know, empathy, you know... “oh, you have such empathy, you'd be a great therapist.” No, you won't. Not until you learn how to keep that empathetic part back, because otherwise it's like somebody is down in the well, and you jump down into the well, and if you're both down there, you know... And so you got to get to know the parts that are feeling uncomfortable and find out what their concerns are, and also why they can't, what prevents them from doing something to help them be more comfortable and without giving that moral meaning, in other words, without saying, oh, you know, you're weak or ineffective. But just be curious and find out what they're afraid would happen if they said, “could you please get off my face? It's very uncomfortable with you sitting there.” And, you know, “if you don't get off my face I’ afraid I'm going to have to call for help. Because, you know, I don't want to get into a fight with you, but...” You know, but just the insistence on your boundaries and deal with the parts that are uncomfortable doing that. Because of course, especially with people who grew up in complex trauma, is they just, that's not a language they speak, and they never learned it. So, they don't know how to do it. And especially people who grew up in what I call alcoholic families, alcoholic belief systems, where it's considered to be week and rude to set boundaries. And, you know, so that's a burden that those parts have to be relieved of so that they can step out, because until you can, you can't have relationships because constantly people are in where they don't belong and their fingers are up your nose. And, you know, you're dealing with that all the time and that's no fun. So, yeah. And obviously because therapists are people who need 30 hours of therapy a week, I need to learn self-defense. You know, I grew up feeling very unsafe and I learned how to fight. And of course, learning how to fight those and help you be safe because you can't win fights. So, you know, eventually deal with... You know, when I was dealing with violent men all the time, I mean, I worked in an alcoholism agency and, you know, 6/4, and I know karate, who are they going to send to me? All these violent men. That's what I got. And they were here to teach me that you can't win fights. So, you know, I taught them so that I could learn. Therapists are people who learn by teaching. And so, I had to become an expert on boundaries.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Mike, according to the official IFS level one manual establishing a contract is one of IFS’ natural first steps.

Mike: It’s the first step.

Aníbal: You Mike, are presenting a workshop at the conference called Negotiating a Therapeutic Contract with Your Client and Their Protectors. On the flyer we can read this workshop will address what Michael Elkin considers to be the most important element of therapy, negotiating a clear contract. What would you like to tell us about this workshop and the importance of contracting?

Mike: Well, the thing that I keep running... Because I do consultation, is what I do now and, you know, forming more and more consultation groups and I'm trying to help the IFS community see me as a resource for consultation. And what I find most of the trouble is that we have two problems. There are the parts of us that get triggered by parts of our clients and we have to deal with that, we know that, and the other is what's the contract. What is this? What I constantly ask is what is this person hoping they can get from talking to you? And very often pretty experienced therapists don't have a clear idea of that. And if you don't have a clear idea of that, then basically it's very hard to evaluate whether any process is useful or not. Because if you don't know where you're going, then one direction's as good as another. And the clearer you are where you're going, the more easy it is to know whether you want to say “would that part, please see if it'll give you some space or do you think that it'd be useful to have that part join the conversation...” And you can make that distinction much more easily if you know what you're trying to accomplish and what parts you're trying to befriend and open up new possibilities for. And the contract can change 12 times in a session.

Aníbal: Yes.

Mike: And the more you recognize, “okay, we're working on something new here,” the more effective you're going to be. So, what I'm trying to do in two hours is help people become interested in putting a lot more interest and focus on that question “what are we trying to accomplish here together?” You know, and when people are going on and on about, you know, injustice that have happened, the question I constantly ask is “how can I be useful about that?” Because, you know, I could be easily replaced by a bartender and for the price of a beer you can get the same thing or a Coca-Cola if you're not into alcohol. So, what I'm constantly interested in is “how can I be useful? What are you hoping we could do together about this?” And the clearer answer I can get to that, the more useful I'm going to be. And when I can't get a clear answer to that, I get very curious about the parts that make it difficult to give me a clear answer to that.

Aníbal: Mike, in your flyer for this workshop, we can read that you will teach how to negotiate a workable therapeutic contract and how to enroll skeptical hypervigilant and hostile protectors, to be resources in your project.

Mike: Well, that's pretty much what we've been talking about the last hour. So yeah, in a way I've sort of given that workshop here, but because, you know, what I'm trying to do is communicate what... I've been doing therapy for 45 years, more than 45 years. And so, I'm trying to communicate some of the stuff that I've learned, just because I've had a chance to make an awful lot of mistakes. And then, you know, as I often say, you know, I am lazy, and I just do the same old shit. And then when it doesn't work and I think, oh my God, what do I do? And then I do something. And if that doesn't work, I do something else. And if it works, that becomes a technique. And then I try it again when something happens. And if that doesn't work, I have to think of something else.

Aníbal: Mike, such interesting conversation and topics. So again, thank you so much for having us and for bringing such interesting tools to help us in everyday clinical work. And it was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Mike: Thank you, Aníbal and Tisha. It's so nice to see you again.

No Bad Parts: Individual and Collective Healing with Dick Schwartz 01:00:40

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are speaking with Dr. Richard Schwartz.  Dr. Schwartz is the developer of the Internal Family Systems Model of psychotherapy, known as IFS. He has authored many books and over 50 articles on IFS and has trained thousands of therapists and practitioners in this transformative model over the last four decades.  Today, we will be speaking with him primarily about his latest book, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model, published this summer by Sounds True.  

 

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy we are speaking with Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz is the developer of the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy, known as IFS. He has authored many books and over 50 articles on IFS and has trained thousands of therapists and practitioners in this transformative model over the last four decades. Today we will be speaking with him primarily about his latest book No Bad Parts, Healing Trauma, and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model published this summer by Sounds True.

Alexia Rothman: Dick, thank you so much for joining us today.

Richard Schwartz: It’s great to see you both. I’ve always enjoyed the two of you.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back Dick.

Dick: Thank you Anibal.

Aníbal: Dick, your new book is a delight to read. You clarify and refresh the main concepts and fundamentals of the model. It's full of powerful meditations that we know can be fundamental unblending practices and amazing case illustrations. And as we read the book, we have the feeling that you are not totally introducing and offering a model of mind to the general public, a model that can help us navigate our troubled minds and lives, but that you are also offering a dream as Luther King or Nelson Mandela did. The dream that this model can connect us all collectively and globally and heal not only ourselves and our relationships, but also heal us globally. So, Dick, why this book?

Dick: Yeah, boy, that's very astute Aníbal. I did have that intention and I'm glad at least one person got it. Yeah. The why of this book is both to bring more of IFS to the general public, but also to clarify the vision, the larger vision you just described, which I don't think I had really put into words in other places other than some talks. So yeah, the longer I stayed with it, the more clear it became that it has enormous potential as a way of understanding the mind and a way of bringing more of what we call Self and Self-energy to this planet. And that, just like an individual, when you get what we call a critical mass of Self-energy, things can change very quickly, heal and improve very quickly. And I believe that that's true also in countries and organizations and also globally. And so, I wanted to try to articulate that and other aspects of the spirituality of the model, because it's grown to be a kind of spiritual, sacred journey for me.

Lexi: We're actually hoping that over the course of our conversation today, we'll be able to flesh out kind of each of those areas as we go. So I'm glad that you sort of gave an overview that way of everything that the book involves and...So, starting maybe with something that is basic and fundamental to IFS, you talk in the book about the fact that the dominant view of the mind in westernized cultures has been more the monomind view. So, the idea that the mind is one unitary entity and that all of our thoughts and our emotions flow from this one unified mind, but IFS holds that the natural state of the mind is actually multiple, so that it's natural for us to have these different parts or these sub-personalities. So, we're wondering if you could tell us a bit about the concept of multiplicity and how this way of understanding the mind may not only be more accurate, but actually beneficial for people

Dick: It's been a tough sell on this culture because there is a kind of stigma about multiplicity that's come from various sources. Probably the most powerful source has been from the multiple personality disorder diagnosis, or also from hearing voices in schizophrenia and psychosis. And so, the idea of there being these little entities inside of you that you can hear from and interact with has been pathologized in our culture and at best seen as the sort of fragmenting of the unitary mind, the monomind, by trauma. So, they're seen as shards of the broken vase, which is better than seeing them as just pieces of craziness. So, it's been an uphill battle to say that having parts and listening to them and having them interact with each other could be a good thing. But, you know, I consider myself to be a good scientist. I didn't come into the work with clients believing any of that. I was a big monomind person. In fact, I remember very early on, I think I might've told this story sometime before, but there was a woman in the Chicago area named Sandra Watanabe, who had put together something called The Internal Cast of Characters. And so, she was working with parts in a similar way. And I went to, after I got interested in the phenomenon because of my clients, I went to hear her present and she was talking about them as if they were real. And I thought “oh, how naïve.” At the end of the thing, I went up to her, I said “you don't really, these are metaphors, right? You don't really believe in the reality of them.” She said “no, they're quite real.” So, I came into it, exploring it with that kind of attitude that it's creations of the mind and it's a way the mind can get to know itself, but these are not real inner characters. So, it was a tough sell for me so that I understand how tough it is for other people to accept. But it's very relieving. It's very, once you get that it's just a part of you that has these racist beliefs and says these things inside, or it's just a part of you that hates your mother and wants to kill her or whatever it is, it's much, much easier to accept yourself and to have compassion than if you believe that you're a racist or that you're a hateful person or...So, there's, I mean, minimally there's that value in the multiplicity perspective. But what also happens is as you really get that they are real inner beings who need a leader and they need love and compassion from you, then it becomes a kind of a life practice. You know, it becomes something that I do on a daily basis, which has a big impact on how I run my life. And, so that's the real value of it.

Lexi: That's really helpful. And you actually started to get into what I wanted to ask you next, which is a lot of times when I'll introduce the IFS model to clinicians, they start to understand the idea of the multiplicity of the mind, and then they become interested in what is the nature of these parts? You know, you talked a little bit about how others viewed them, how you first viewed them. How would IFS describe the nature of parts?

Dick: You know, for me, and it's evolved over time, but for me now there, I think in the book I call them sacred inner beings. And that's really the way I see them, they’re little inner sort of, not just personalities, but people in a sense, for lack of a better word, who are sacred and deserve to be honored and acknowledged and listened to and witnessed as much as external human beings too. And external children, because most of them are quite young. And yeah, so that's how I see them. And again, it's a tough sell.

Lexi: It is a tough sell. And one thing that I'll sometimes say to people is because, you know, you've said this before that you don't expect anyone to believe something just because you say it. You're so open to having people just do their own experimentation and then just learn what they learn. And then I'll, you know, say something like really, regardless of whatever you believe them to be or not be the truth is it turns out that if you do treat them as whole beings, you get the best results. So, whatever you believe about them just you're absolutely right. That they operate as whole people do. So, if you're approaching them with respect and appreciation and honoring them, you absolutely can more effectively engage with them.

Dick: That's right. That's all I ask. I mean, people can be as pragmatic as they want about it. And what you said is true. Whether or not you believe they're real inner beings, treating them that way is very effective.

Aníbal: Dick, the title of your book is No Bad Parts. You speak right at the introduction of an inherent goodness. And you also quoted Jimmy Carter when he says, “what is needed now more than ever is leadership that steers us away from fear and fosters greater confidence in the inherent goodness and ingenuity of humanity”. And then you go saying “our leaders can do that with the way we currently understand the mind because it highlights the darkness in humanity”. So, do you believe there is no badness at all in our human systems?

Dick: I, you know, I can say there are no bad parts and I can say that Self is totally good. There are little bundles of negative energy that we'll run into too that don't seem to have any particular desire other than to cause damage. But those are not inherent to human being’s state. They are what we call unattached burdens that enter our systems from in various, various ways. So, but inherent to human beings, there's nothing negative.

Lexi: And I really appreciate actually, how IFS has that understanding that, you know, regardless of the impact of whatever the parts are doing, you know, the impact of the methods that they're using really the underlying intention is so good. They're trying to help in whatever way they know how. And I think that the fact that IFS recognizes that there are no bad parts it actually lets us effectively as therapists work with parts that we couldn't work with otherwise. You were mentioning like racist parts, for example, or homophobic parts or parts that have abused other people. If all we know how to do is judge them and exile them and shame them, you know, punish them, then there's really no hope for positive change at all.

Dick: Yeah. And for me it's all parallels. So, if you can, if you believe that there are bad parts and you lock them up or go to war against them, then you're going to believe the same about people in the outside world. And you'll have the same impulse in terms of how you treat them, and you'll get the same results. So, when you exile or attack parts inside, at some point, they'll get revenge in a way. They'll screw up your life or they'll, I mean, mental symptoms or physical symptoms. So, yeah, and it took me a long time to come to that conclusion because, you know, I would start out working with inner critics for example. And they would, if we got curious and kept asking questions, would ultimately reveal their positive intention. And I thought “that's pretty cool, but what about these parts?” you know. And it wasn't until I was a consultant, which I did for seven years to a residential treatment center for sex offenders that I thought, okay, let's really test this out and let's start working with these parts that had raped people, or, you know, molested little kids. And I also did  some work in prison with people that have murdered other people. And, you know, if these parts turn out to be the same, then that's pretty interesting. That's a big discovery. And indeed, each time I would try it and the part would share it secret history of how it got into its role and how it picked up these extreme beliefs and emotions that drove it to do what it did and how much it hated itself for doing those things. And then, you know, at some point I started to see that, okay, maybe this is the thing, maybe there aren't any bad parts. Isn't that amazing? You know, that just changes everything sort of.

Lexi: It does. It really does. And this way that IFS has of really knowing that they're not what they seem on the surface. They're not their methods, their role doesn't define them. That they're more than that. Like we were saying before, it gives us this possibility. So, when you, when you do this healing work with them and with whomever they're protecting, they have this chance in the end to, to do something different. They don't have to stay locked in that role. But the way that that comes about is they get to choose what they might want to do differently. It's not that we've rejected them, told them they're bad or wrong because then you're absolutely right. All we'll see is what we would see in a person, then they'd rebel, then they'd resist, you know, but they get to choose. So, in terms of another fundamental concept in IFS, so at the heart of the IFS model is the concept of the Self. And it's what we understand to be this essence of calm and clarity, compassion, connectedness, that's in all of us. And when I was first exposed to the IFS model many years ago, was that your introductory workshop at the trauma conference. And one of the things that just struck me so powerfully was you're absolutely confident assertion that number one, the Self is present in everyone, but also that it is undamaged, no matter how much trauma we've experienced, how much pain and wounding, how many parts of us may be in extreme roles in our system. And the reason that that claim had such a profound impact on me was that that is what I had seen to be the case in my clinical practice, working with survivors of extremely severe and extensive childhood trauma, you know, thousands and thousands of incidents from infancy through young adulthood. And yet, even in these systems, when the protective parts would relax back, even a fraction, this same presence would emerge, this same healing energy and wisdom and compassion as in the clients without trauma history. So, it really struck me as true. So, for listeners who may be a bit newer to the IFS model, if you could tell us a bit about the concept of the Self and this idea that it remains undamaged regardless of trauma history.

Dick: Yeah. And that that's a tough sell in the trauma field because a lot of other trauma models are based on the idea that people are severely damaged by trauma, and they need years of learning new skills and building up the muscle of compassion and so on. And I've had, maybe you were there for them, I've had debates, my friend Bessel van der Kolk on this very topic and probably will again at the conference, where he'll hold up slides of a severe trauma survivor, complex trauma survivor brain. And you can see that the prefrontal cortex is basically kind of blank. And he'll say, this is what we're dealing with people with horrible, horrible childhoods. And I would say, that's what we're dealing with when a part has taken over and it's blanked out that our prefrontal cortex like a dissociative part, but when that part steps back it'll light up because Self is right there and he's, you know, he said, “well, prove it”. So, we've still been working on getting enough money to do some brain scan studies to prove it. But I'm certain that we can because of what you just said. And that's how I came to that conclusion because I was working that same population for about 20 years. And it was amazing when enough parts would separate, it was the same Self that would show up in less traumatized people. And so, yeah, it's a... that’s what led me to spirituality. Because again, I came into the study of this with basically an atheist or maybe an agnostic. But when you run into that phenomenon enough times, in spite of the fact that people have had such horrible experiences, at some point you have to look for other, other examples or other explanations for it, than the ones that are scientific. And one of the things I really like about the coming psychedelic revolution is that people like Bessel are seeing the Self. When people take plant medicine, it somehow it disarms protectors and immediately people are in this state of Self, even people with horrible trauma histories. So, it becomes harder for people like him to deny that it's there. So anyway, yeah, I'm not sure I answered your question.

Lexi: Yes, you did. You just reminded me of a conversation we had had years ago where I asked you about why people weren't finding it and you said, “because they don't believe it's there”. So, they're not going to go, like, we have this quality of persistence as IFS therapists, this very gentle persistence. And we can have that persistence because we have that knowing it's there. You know, we keep working with the protectors, we keep helping them trust that it might be okay to experiment a little bit. And then there it is.

Dick: Yeah. And it's a tough sell to the protectors a lot of the time, because some of them are actually convinced that it's not there. Some of them are pretending that they think it's not there. They know it's there, but they think it's dangerous for the clients to bring it in.

Lexi: Because it has been at some point.

Dick: So, that's why the persistence is important.

Aníbal: Dick, you have this paragraph you called What the Self is and What the Self isn't. You quote ecologist Daniel Christian Wahl, author of Designing Regenerative Cultures who states that “humanity is coming of age and needs a new story that is powerful and meaningful enough to galvanize global collaboration and guide the collective response to the converging crisis we are facing. And I'm quoting you”. And you say, “when you experience Self, you naturally feel more connected to humanity in general and also to something larger and more encompassing, the earth, the universe, the big Self. And you will also discover other qualities rising up in you like joy, equanimity, forgiveness, perspective, and playfulness”. So, equanimity, it's a quality of the Self that you are somehow redefining or pointing to.

 

Dick: Yeah. It's one quality for sure. Yeah. For me, and this this took a long time to conclude also, that Self isn't just in one individual person that it's kind of a field or yeah...Field is probably the best word that...I've always loved the discovery from quantum physics that photons are both particle and wave. So, for me there's a wave state of Self that isn't tied to individuals at all. And, with certain psychedelics or meditations, you can leave your body and you can sense being a part of this big, big wave of Self, and there's a blissful aspect of that. And there's a lot of equanimity to that too. There's a deep-seated sense that everything's okay at that level. And, that's partly why, you know, certain psychedelics are used with the end of life, because it really gives people who are facing death the sense that there's so much more and that this is just a transition. And so, as you come back from the meditation or the psychedelic and you reenter your body, you watch, I might say, your particle eyes. You, it's the same Self, but it's in this different form, embodied form, and it has boundaries whereas you didn't have boundaries in the wave state or the field state, and you sense your separateness from other people like these bodies getting our way in a lot of ways, because we lose this knowledge that we're connected when we come back. And, you know, I also believe that we're here to learn lessons, and one of the lessons is that, that despite the fact we're all separated by these bodies, we're not really separate, we're really interconnected. We see where connectedness is at this other level. And so, what's good for me it's sort of like COVID is teaching us this, that, you know, we can't just take care of our country because we could get to whatever 70% vaccinated, but if other countries aren't doing the same, then these variants are going to keep coming. So, we have to take care of us as a global humanity. Well, it's the same as true with all kinds of things. So, that's part of the message that I wanted to bring in the book and try to live more in my life that way.

Lexi: Along this line of IFS is kind of having morphed, as you say in the book, kind of morphed over time from being exclusively about psychotherapy, to now also being kind of a spiritual practice, I've been really fascinated to observe kind of in my clinical practice and also through my own personal IFS work that when we have more access to Self in this spaciousness and openness that accompanies it, it doesn't just allow increased connectedness to our own parts or to all of humanity, but also to something beyond us. So, for some people, you know, maybe that's nature or some it's a higher power or even ancestors or guides or the force, whatever it is for an individual. And that's been also very helpful for clients who initially had parts that felt funny about the model, because maybe they came from very traditional religious backgrounds and they feared, you know, this emphasis on Self as this sort of going to disconnect us from God and, surprisingly for them, it has actually opened almost the channel to connect more easily and more fully with whatever they want to connect with. So, it's been really interesting. You mentioned in the book, how IFS can be thought of as attachment theory taken inside. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit. A bit of a different topic.

Dick: Yeah. You know, I love attachment theory in the sense that it really has brought to the field and to the culture the impact of early childhood stuff, both traumas and parenting and how that stays with us through our lives and organizes our lives. And in my language, in the form of these burdens that these young parts of us carry thereafter. But there was one aspect of attachment theory that never felt right to me. And as I did this work with clients became more and more clear that it wasn't right. And that is that to have any of what we're calling Self, you had to have had a good, at least good enough parenting at a young age, because it had to come into you in a sense through that loving relationship. And I was working with clients who not only didn't have good enough parents but had horrible parents. And I would, you know, based on attachment theory, I would sift through their histories, looking for one person, maybe a friend or an uncle or somebody who they might've got this from unsuccessfully. And, at some point I had to conclude that yes, attachment theory had it wrong, that piece of it, that it's inherent in us. It isn't something we have to get from somebody. And when I kind of got that, that I started thinking because, as I would help people access Self and then get out of the way, I would see how Self just knew how to be a good parent without any teaching or training or anything. Self just knows how to relate in a loving way and accepting, and yeah, all the things that we know about good parenting Self just does to these parts. And so, I started thinking, yeah, this is attachment theory taken inside in the sense that Self is becoming the good attachment figure to these insecurely or avoidantly attached parts, and that's a big deal. The fact that you don't necessarily need that to come from a therapist or some kind of healing experience with your parents or from your spouse, you can do that for yourself. And so many of us come out of our families thinking we can't do that for ourselves and we've got to find that good attachment figure. And unfortunately, we put that on our partners a lot of the time to be that for us. And that creates all kinds of havoc in relationships.

Lexi: Absolutely. What you're saying is just so true and the power of it, honestly, after thousands of IFS sessions, it never ceases to amaze me that you're absolutely right, regardless of what people have received or not received in their history is when enough space is open inside and the Self-energy is flowing, the way they can show up is exactly what the part needs. And it's also in, so attuned a way, what's interesting to me is how much that takes the burden off therapists, because we don't have to, in those moments when the client is with their most vulnerable and wounded exiles and witnessing the worst things that have ever happened to them, we don't have to sit there with a part of us worried about how we need to guide them through healing this part, because frankly, we might not even get it right. So, even if we were to try, so we might, from some part of us that knows what our exiles would need, we might suggest, “oh, go and hug the part”, you know, and in that person's system, what might be right is not touching that part at all, sitting six feet away, not even looking at the part, but being a comforting presence. So, I love that we can just, as you say so many times in different places, trust the healing energy of the Self. Trust, the Self, just, you know, because our job is just to help the clients access Self, and then they can do what needs to be done.

Aníbal: So, Dick, you say, “when you can love all your parts, you can love all people. When your parts feel loved they allow you to lead your life from Self and you feel connected to the earth and you want to save it from the exploitative parts of others. You will expand the field of Self on the planet and that will contribute to healing it, the planet. You will also feel connected to the bigger field of Self”. So, what is this bigger field of Self?

Dick: You know, for me, it's what other systems call God, if they don't have to personify God. Maybe the closest is Hinduism that talks about Atman, which is what I call Self in a person. And then Brahman, which is much more of a field idea that Atmanis the personification of Brahman. So, and many spiritual traditions have a similar conceptualization that there is a field that is transpersonal, that you can access. And that a lot of wisdom comes from...I've just been reading a book called The Immortality Key, which makes a very strong, strongly documented case that the ancients were very active in using psychedelics, sometimes inadvertently because what they called beer would have this ergot which has a psychedelic effect just from the lack of kind of brewing that we have now. And that a lot of, most of the world's religious traditions were based on this opening that happened when people would do this. And there was a place in Greece, I think, where people would come from all over called The Eleusis, I think, and they would be given this mysterious potion and would have all these experiences that they kept quite secret. But anyway, the point being that, however you access it, whether it's through what the Buddha did, which was to meditate or taking some plant medicine, or that there is this much larger field of wisdom that can enter and instruct us about how to operate in this route. And that's been the source of a lot of the guidance that humans have gotten from prophets and religious leaders, which I find to be a very interesting thing. So, for me, that's what that field is.

Aníbal: Dick, it might be helpful to quote some of your book highlights that speak for these new global or spiritual Self, with the capital letters that it seems you want to underline. So, quoting you, you say “we have lost our ability to feel the earth viscerally, and we need system thinking leaders who can remind everyone that we are all in this together. And when people sense how connected they are to humanity, they feel more curious about others and they have more courage to help them”. And finally, “it's not compassionate to passively watch suffering beings parade by.” Am I getting it right?

Dick: Yeah. Yeah, those are great. And that last one is part of my critique of some traditional spiritualities because, mindfulness in particular is for me, is a good first step, but you're asked to separate from and observe your thoughts and emotions, and to do that in an accepting way, but not to interact with them. And that's fine if you believe that these are just ephemeral thoughts and emotions that come and go, or that they're the ego, which many spiritual traditions tend to be irritated by, or even demonize that it makes sense to separate and just notice it without trying to do anything. But if you think of these, the way we've described earlier as inner entities, many of whom are suffering, then it isn't compassionate to just passively watch them. And one of the things, again, I hate to keep referring back to the psychedelic revolution, but you know, the people studying MDMA and PTSD are quite amazed at how often, spontaneously, without any guidance from the therapist, the subject starts to do IFS because the MDMA disarms these protectors, you immediately access a huge amount of Self. Your heart is wide open, and that's a big invitation to your exiles to come forward. And they do. And people do start just working with them spontaneously because as you were saying earlier, Lexi, it's amazing to watch Self just knows what to do. All of that was very, has been very validating to me that I just stumbled on to something that we all know how to do as human beings to heal ourselves. That that's in there.

Lexi: It's really interesting what you were saying a moment ago about, kind of your critique of some traditional forms of let's say mindfulness practice, that it's a really great start and really important, but that we might need to go a step further and engage. I was talking with a client last night who has been using just some mindfulness practice and meditation. And he said, “okay, when I'm doing it, I feel calm. I feel better,” he said. “But why does the distress return, you know, as soon as I stopped doing it?” And so, it's trying to draw the parallel for him because we know the internal world function so much like the external world, like external children do in our real world. And I said, “well, can you imagine if my son was really upset, he had things that were actually bothering him, legitimate reasons for being distressed, he needed help and care and I said to him, okay, you just go sit over there. I'm just going to breathe for a while and kind of calm myself down and all that. And then I walked away.” You know, what would be compassionate, what he needs is to say, “oh, you're suffering. Let me come be with you. And let me listen to you and see, you know, how can I connect with you? What can we do to help and all of that.” So, I said, “you have parts that are actually really suffering in there. They need you, they need connection with you, they need help. And so, maybe a good start, you know, to get yourself in a place where you feel more able to be open to them and be present with them, get some of the protectors to give you a little space for that. But then we've got to continue”. You know, so anyway, pivoting a little bit here. IFS is a model that is extremely respectful and extremely honoring of the protective parts of our systems and we recognize that these protectors are in the roles that they're in for good reason. And they usually will have a really hard time shifting out of those roles until what their...the vulnerable and wounded parts that they're protecting are healed. But so, we're of course, very conscious, as IFS therapists, of not violating the pace of these protectors. We seek their permission before we work with deep vulnerability. But a question I get a lot when talking to clinicians about this model is...Okay, sometimes though we find ourselves in a position where something that a protector is doing it's just not safe for the client to continue doing, until we have time to heal the underlying vulnerability, so, they could be severely restricting food intake to the point where they're medically compromised, for example. So, how does IFS balance honoring and respecting protectors with sometimes having no choice, but to make sure that they can't use their methods of choice?

Dick: Yeah. So, the example you gave is probably, is very apt because when I developed IFS, I was working with the eating disorder population and there were clients who were starving themselves to the point where we had to do something, not only because they were, you know, facing death, but also because they really couldn't think very well when they were so malnourished. So, doing, even trying to do IFS with them in that state, wasn't getting us anywhere. And so, I would have to take a stand with these, these anorexic parts. And, but even then, when we had to rehydrate and hospitalize, I’d take the position with the part that we're doing it so that we can heal everything. We're not doing it because it's a bad part that's trying to kill her. We get that it's trying to save her life at things, but we have to do something so that we can show it, that it doesn't have to do this job anymore. And we honor the part and we value it. And we're going to take this step that it's going to hate, and it's going to fight. So, if you can do it from Self that way with compassion for the part and honoring of it, it isn't nearly the setback it is if you do it from a much more coercive place that most people do it from.

Lexi: Absolutely. I think one of the things that does make IFS so beautiful for working with things like eating disorders or addictions, is that we do honor these parts for what they're trying to do and how they're trying to help and how in fact, maybe sometimes their methods were necessary or even lifesaving. And we bring them on board as a collaborator in the healing process, instead of further polarizing, either our manager parts of us polarized with them or within the client further in the polarization. And it's just, I appreciate what you just shared because it is that tricky step sometimes when we have to do something that actually sometimes the part feels as a betrayal, you know, like I thought that you accepted me for who I am. I thought you didn't want to change me. And now you're telling me you have to change. And it's like, oh my goodness. But yeah. So, maintaining the relationship as best we can and repairing as we have to, but doing what needs to be done for the safety of the system. So, IFS is a therapeutic model that can bring about transformative change and very deep healing for clients, even for those who've suffered very severe and extensive trauma. So, I'm curious, how would you define healing through an IFS lens? What does that entail?

Dick: Well, there are several aspects to it. You know, certainly the unburdening, the release of these extreme beliefs and emotions that these parts have carried for so long, it's like a curse has been lifted and leads to immediate transformation, but to get there, you have to get them out of where they're stuck in the past, usually. So that's an element. And to get there, you have to start by forming a trusting relationship with the part. So, all of those elements are involved in healing a part, which then liberates it from the role that's been forced into. But there are, there are four goals of IFS. All of which I think are related to healing. One is that, the liberation of these parts, so they can be who they're designed to be, but then also the restoration of trust in them for the Self as a leader. And so, healing also involves having healthy leadership and luckily Self is right there and do that. And then third aspect of healing is called, similar to what other systems call, integration, where the parts start to depolarize and get to know each other and begin to relate harmoniously with each other. And as a result, you feel integrated, you feel far less like there are all these parts hanging out and doing extreme things. Instead, they're working as a unit and you don't even notice them a lot of the time because they're so harmonious. And then the fourth is that you begin to lead your life from Self, which creates what much more healing and harmony in your external world.

Lexi: I appreciate what you're saying about integration. It brought to mind something that was in your book. I think Dan Siegel was talking about health and integration, and he talked about IFS being a great way to achieve this and as integration being more like a fruit salad than a smoothie, though. I think with some other models that may be like, oh, we blend all back together and become that one unified mind again. And we're saying, no, no, the parts can maintain their autonomy, their special resources, their special qualities, their contributions, their uniqueness, and just be included in this whole but, because like you said, they're functioning more harmoniously together you may not notice them as much. Things are peaceful and seamless inside. And, speaking of the idea of healing, Alanis Morrissette wrote a really nice foreword for the book. And she said, “when I started to work with IFS, I was buoyed by the idea of returning to our birthright of wholeness, through offering attention and care to each part of myself.” And I love just those words, that idea of returning to the birthright of wholeness, because it does seem to be that that happens as we, as we heal.

Aníbal: So, Dick, I like what you say at your closing thoughts in your book. You say, “if you don't take your part seriously, you won't become an effective inner leader or parent. Various forms or psychotherapy can help you connect with the deep-seated emotions of your exiles. And that can be healing to some degree, but if you think of that process through the lens of expressing a repressed emotion you won’t follow up and following up is crucial.” So, what is this follow up you talk about and how is it practiced individually or collectively?

Dick: Yeah, well, that's related to the four goals I just mentioned. So, if you take them seriously as an inner family, internal family, then you're not going to just do the, one-off big cathartic healing session. You're going to use that as a starting point to form a new relationship with each of these parts. And you're going to check in with them every day and you're going to notice when they come up and need your attention and you'll respond to them from Self. And so that's what I mean by follow up, like I said earlier, it becomes a life practice. So, you start to take them as seriously as you take external kids, except that they don't need nearly as much as external kids. Most of the time, they just need a little second of your attention to get a message through. And, so often we try to kill the messenger rather than listen to the message, that for me, western medicine is all about that. Many, many physical symptoms are the products of parts you can't get through to you otherwise, trying to, desperately trying to get your attention. So, yeah, so follow up is crucial. And as I said in the book, unless you really believe these are real inner beings, it doesn't make a lot of sense to follow up with your thoughts, or emotions otherwise.

Aníbal: You also say, “if you understand that you have exiles who really need to trust you, you will be more likely to visit them for as long as it takes. Working with them like that is often what's needed to reach permanent unburdening. And that's what it takes to learn your lessons, lessons, like everything deserves love.” So, what is this permanent unburdening you mention here, and again, how is it practiced?

Dick: Well, we can have a session where we do an unburdening and it seems very dramatic and the person feels much better, but I've found that the burdens can come back. And I got very discouraged when I first noticed that and thought, all this doesn't really work, it’s a sham. But, as I got curious and started asking why did they come back, I learned there are four or five common reasons why they come back. One of which is what we just talked about, that the client didn't follow up and the part felt abandoned and went back to what was familiar. So, for there to be permanent unburdening, not always, I mean, there are parts that will unburden one time and it just stays, but many parts need that kind of follow up to trust that it's safe to not take this stuff back into their body.

Lexi: Dick, you include a very powerful quote at the beginning of the book, by Gus Speth, where he says, “I used to think the top environmental problems where biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that 30 years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy. And to deal with those, we need a cultural and spiritual transformation and we scientists don't know how to do that”. So, I feel like you've been giving us pieces of this all day, but from your perspective, you know, how can IFS contribute to that type of cultural and spiritual transformation that we need?

Dick: Yeah, well, that I hope is one of the main messages of the book, that simply bringing more Self to this planet will have that impact. I really believe that. And so, every time an IFS therapist, does an unburdening and they're in their office, that allows for more Self to come in. And as you know, I've been experimenting, I did recently a workshop for Israeli Jews and Palestinians to work with their legacy burdens. And we found that we could do that collectively. We could help people unburden as a group and I, you know, I would love to try to scale that so that we could have large groups of people collectively releasing these legacy burdens that are really what's at the heart of so many conflicts around the world that are being fought about traumas that happened centuries earlier. So, it's that, it’s that kind of bringing more and more Self is just really the key.

Lexi: That would be incredible. I really hope we can be doing those larger scale unburdenings. And I just love this section going along with all of this, just love the section in the book where you talk about the work that you're doing with training social activists to lead from Self, and you just give a transcript of a wonderful session that you did with someone that really kind of resulted in a vastly improved ability for him to advocate for what he believed and from a place of curiosity and connectedness rather than from protective hearts. Another piece.

Dick: Yeah. That is the other thing. The more Self we bring in the more we see that people, even people that do terrible things, they have their own, their own histories as to why they’re in those roles. And our goal is to stay...We might have to stop them like we were talking about with the anorexic part, but we can do it from an open heart and stay curious and try to help them heal to.

Aníbal: Dick, I also loved the way you finish your book. If I may quote you again, you say “in the process I've found, and worked with several parts of myself, the one who uses my father's voice to hector me about how unscientific all this is, the one who worries that I'm being too grandiose with all of these major pronouncements about the world and how it could be, and the one  who still doubts the reality of the inner world, despite decades of evidence.” Are these your empiricist or scientist parts talking, and do you feel towards them, Dick?

Dick: I love those parts. I think part of the reason that, I don't know, I was chosen to bring this, is because of those parts, because they give me more credibility and they actually made me test everything. You know, not believe it just because it happened one time. But so, even though they still can get in the way at times, I still value them and wouldn't want to change them too much.

Lexi: I love how you say, I guess maybe this is from your father, but to follow the data, even when it takes you outside your paradigm. And you've really done that.

Aníbal: That’s it, yes.

Dick: Yeah. I think that's what I'm proudest of because there were lots of parts that didn't want to go here at all.

Aníbal: Dick, The IFS Annual Conferences is back coming this October fully online. So, the first ever virtual IFS annual conference, the conference is called Restoring Wholeness Through Collective Transformation. So, this title draws from the vision and purpose of IFS as described in your new book No Bad Parts. You say “healing in IFS means wholeness and reconnection. As we transform individually, we help to bring collective healing”. So, is this purpose of the collective healing being accomplished in the conference program this year?

Dick: You know, I would like to think we're taking a step in that direction. What I'm proudest of is how many people from all over the world and from very different ethnic groups will be not only participating, but also presenting. And it's just very heartwarming to me to see that starting to take place more and more. And yeah, it's become much more of a global phenomenon that we have in many, many countries and many countries that exists in oppressive systems as well, and, you know, Self, sort of automatically fights oppression. And again, we just want to bring the critical mass. So, anyway, I think the conference will be very exciting and I appreciate you bringing it up.

Aníbal: Thank you, Dick, so much for another great conversation. It was a joy to be here with you and Lexi, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, wonderful model, our work and our lives.

Lexi: Dick, thank you.

Dick: Well, thanks again. I agree. It's been a wonderful conversation and I am so grateful for you guys to bring this to the community. So, I want to support you as much as I can.


 

Transcript Edition:
Carolina Abreu, certified Psychotherapist, L3 Trained,
and experienced Program Assistant for the official IFS-InstituteTrainings.

 

When “Self” becomes an emotional bypass - with Pam Krause 37:38

Today We are interviewing and welcoming back Pam Krause.

Pam Krause is a Senior Lead Trainer for the Center for Self-leadership and has been leading Level 1, 2 and 3 trainings since 2005.

Pam adapted the IFS model for use with children and adolescents and has created both onsite and online trainings on the topic. Ana Gomez and Pam co-authored the chapter EMDR Therapy and the Use of Internal Family Systems Strategies with Children in EMDR Therapy and Adjunct Approaches with Children;

Pam authored a chapter on IFS with Children & Adolescents in Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensions, and also co-authored a chapter called Getting Unstuck  in the 2017 book “innovations and elaborations in IFS” - addressing occasional ruptures and impasses in our work in IFS.
She also has a private practice in Mechanicsburg, PA.

 

Today on IFS Talks, we are interviewing and welcoming back Pam Krause. Pam Krause is a senior lead trainer for the IFS Institute and has been leading levels one, two and three IFS trainings since 2005. Pam adapted the IFS model for use with children and adolescents and has created both onsite and online trainings on the topic. Pam is in private practice in Mechanicsburg, PA, and today we are speaking with her on the topic of the weaponization of Self.

Tisha Shull: Pam, thank you so much for joining us once again and being here with us today.

Pam Krause: Well, thank you, Tisha. It's great to be with both of you.

Aníbal Henriques: So, welcome back, Pam. It's been almost two years now, since we recorded your first episode on IFS with children, adolescents and parents. So much going on since then, the world changed so much, right? How have you been those days?

Pam: Wow. I'm thinking back to that because an awful lot has happened in two years. I've been good, trying to survive the pandemic the same way everyone else is, you know, busy with IFS because, you know, the IFS Institute is really focusing on broadening the lens through which the model views the world. And I've been a part of that project. I'm not exactly sure how I've been in the last two years, honestly, to tell you the truth, so much has happened, so much has happened with the pandemic. In fact, Aníbal, I was with you right at the beginning of it while I was doing a level one with you...

Aníbal: Yeah. Right at the beginning.

Pam: In Portugal. And on my way back, I had to certify that I had not been to China in the two weeks prior to flying. So, that was really just the beginning of it. So, a lot has changed taking IFS trainings online, finding that it works pretty well. You know, it works pretty well to do them in person and online, and just been involved with a lot of other projects with the Institute because IFS is becoming such a...there's so much demand for learning the model that the Institute’s working hard to get people up to speed, to be lead trainers. So, I've been working on a project to help speed up that process and also a project to help with diversity, equity and inclusion and expanding the IFS model beyond the traditional white lens that we've always viewed it through into a more multicultural multi-racial lens on the world.

Aníbal: So needed, yeah.

Pam: So, it's been an exciting time, actually.

Aníbal: Pam, the central and core medicine in IFS is for both therapist and client to find and stay in Self with a capital S. We all look for that magic energy capable of deep love, acceptance and transformation. That means to stay in a loving, open and accepting state of calmness, compassion, confidence, curiosity, connectedness, creativity, and clarity and courage as well. Also recommended that we therapists stay in a state of playfulness to keep perspective, patience, persistence, perseverance.

So, you say we sometimes weaponize Self, meaning you say how in IFS, especially in the trainings, but not solely there, we use the concept of being in Self to try to force any emotion away. What do you mean by that? What emotions are we forcing away and why do we force them?

Pam: Yeah. So, let me first start by saying that I want to acknowledge this term, the weaponization of Self. I got that from a young woman whose name is Natalie Gutierrez. Who's an IFS practitioner. And she used that term and it really, really got me thinking about something in a different way. And that is this concept of what does it mean to be in Self? And what does it mean to be Self-lead, right. So, what I mean by that is when we talk about all those things that you read Aníbal, it's like that's in Self, right? And there's a certain...well to my system it feels like there's a certain rigidity around that. Like I'm either in Self or I'm not in Self and I'm bad if I'm not in Self and I'm good if I'm in Self, right. And the truth is for most of us, I'll speak, especially for myself here, is I'm not ever really in Self if I'm engaging in the external world. And that, really what we're looking for in this model is to be Self-lead, meaning the Self is there in relationship with the parts. So, we're not trying to exile parts or force them away. The goal of the therapy is really to develop this natural flowing relationship between the parts and the Self, which is when we, which is when we really thrive, right. The Self without parts is not good because we're in a... I don't know, have either of you ever like experienced being what you would call in Self? I'd be really curious to know what that's like. Because that doesn't really happen for me.

Tisha: I find that really at the trainings and in certain, maybe spiritual context, there is like this energetic shift that makes...it's almost like a subtle vibration and it feels really good. I haven't found that really outside of the trainings.

Pam: Yeah. Yeah.

Tisha: That's maybe the closest that I could tap into.

Pam: Aníbal, do you...

Aníbal: For me, you know, I'm always striving with these therapist parts that want to help and fix my clients. And so, always balancing among being a full acceptant Self or being in parts that want really to change something. That's my, that's the trouble sometimes. It's tricky, so...for me.

Pam: Yeah. And so, you know, and Tisha, when you say that, I think like sometimes...I don't meditate a lot, but sometimes when I do, I can get in that state, but as soon as I need to interact with someone it's gone, right. Because it is...for me anyway, and this is what's really hard about this you all, is that it's so hard to talk about the Self because to apply linear language to something that's so multi-dimensional is really difficult. So, I'm saying all this from my own internal perspective and anybody, you know, I really invite anybody who's listening just to be curious about their experience of this. But to engage I need some of my parts around, right?

Aníbal: And also, in Portuguese, there is no direct translation for Self. It's another trouble.

Pam: Right, right. So, that's why this, for a long time, I've been thinking about this notion about when we tell people, you know, we want to be in Self when we're, I don't know, especially when we're doing therapy, right. But also, in regular life, you know, it's much better if I'm not totally blended with some part of me that would like to strangle my husband when he does something minor, you know. It’s much better if that one's not totally blended with me when he does some little minor offense but...

Aníbal: You shouldn’t.

Pam: Can you relate...Yeah. So, and just the amount of, well, think about it, if you think about being in Self versus being in parts, right. Either in Self or blended. I'm in Self or I'm blended, right. That's a polarization, right. That's a duality, that's not a concept that would resonate with the Self. That's only a concept that would resonate with parts, right. Only parts see things as either or, right. And so, for me, it's always been much more helpful to think about unblending as not an all or nothing thing, but the parts can be anywhere from a 100% percent blended to 0% blended, right? And mostly there's somewhere in between. We just want them unblended enough so that we have some access to our Self-energy. But so, our parts are there as a resource for us, right. Does that make sense?

Aníbal: Yeah. So, Pam, I'm hearing that for you, it looks like there is much value and good in being Self-led instead of just be in Self?

Pam: Yes.

Aníbal: And so, you are also saying that we should be aware that parts don't just unblend from 0 to 100%. What do you mean and how can that help us with the process?

Pam: Well, you know, Aníbal, I'm thinking about what you just said about your therapist parts that really want to help, you know, sometimes you have, right? So, there's a lot of value and a lot of wisdom and a lot of knowledge in those parts, right. And so, if they're in the driver's seat, if they're totally blended, that's not so good, right. Because I mean, it may not be bad, but it's different, right? It's not IFS. If they're blended, who's ever blended is doing the therapy, but if they're at least somewhat unblended so that we can feel connected to them, then we can take advantage of their wisdom. You know, you have some parts that know an awful lot of stuff about therapy and about helping people. And I always feel like it's, if they're whispering in my ear and saying, have you thought about this, or what about that? Or I'm noticing this, or remember this intervention that we learn, blah, blah. You know, you, it's very different if they're whispering in our ears and we are leading the interaction, we're free to say, “no, I don't want to do that right now”, or “that's a really good idea” and speak for that to our clients. That's a much richer therapeutic experience, both for us as the therapist and also for our clients.

Aníbal: Ok. So, you are saying it's not black and white, either in parts or in Self. So, Pam, being in parts it's not always to avoid or always a bad thing.

Pam: No, I always, well, how do I want to say it? The more we know our parts, the more we can call on them when I, when we need them, right? Like if I'm walking down a dark alley and someone is trying to rob me, right. I want whatever part I have, that's going to fight back to totally take over and be in charge and make me safe. Right. So, there are times there's some young childlike parts that I love to have blend with me when I'm playing with little kids. Right. They're silly and goofy and fun. So, you know, this notion that being blended is a bad thing is not always true, right. It's the awareness, it's really, as we unburden our parts, we really have a choice about how much we want them to blend and how much we'd like them to unblend. Right. Is that, I don't know if that's making any sense, but...

Tisha: Yes, so there's some consciousness. It's about like being conscious and allowing with kind of some consent. Pam, I am wondering the term weaponization of Self. I haven't heard it before and it's got some weight to it. And so, I'm wondering about if there's like an explicit danger around the weaponization of Self that we need to kind of be aware of and cognizant of.

Pam: Yeah. Yeah. And, again, I want to thank Natalie for that term. And, I am just, I've really only been thinking about this for a couple of months. This is one thing I love about our model, right? It's a living breathing model that just changes. And I've been doing this for 23 years now. And all of a sudden, this whole new concept has popped into my mind about this. And I'm like super busy with it, but, you know, it's, I see this happening some in trainings, but I also see this happening with folks who are really familiar with IFS as they're interacting with each other, right. And this, and it is this belief that I'm...it comes from this, like when I'm in Self, that means I won't react to anything. I'm very like “Om”, you know, I don't have any feelings, not, there's no intensity behind anything that I say. And, that's not true because we can be Self-led, right. If you think about this whole percentage of blending, like 0 to a 100% blended, right. I can be speaking for a part and it can be 50% blended, right. Like it's blended with me and I'm feeling some of its intensity, but I'm speaking for it. Right. That person who's hearing me might feel some of that intensity. And that's when we fall into this sort of weaponization of the Self where people react and say, “get that part to unblend, get that part to step back”, right. Because they don't like the intensity of the feeling. And so, we want to push feeling away so that we engage in these sort of...it feels to me sometimes sterile.

Aníbal: Ok.

Pam: Yeah. And so, I've really just been thinking about that a lot. And especially like, if we're speaking for parts that hold some anger, you know, even if they're just a little bit blended, maybe 10% blended, and we're speaking for them, the other person may be feeling some of that anger. And then there can be shaming while “you're, you're just blended and you need to unblend before you, before we can have this conversation”.

Aníbal: So, you are saying in Self implies we should feel nothing, and nothing should bother us. So, Pam, I couldn't agree more with you that this Self that feels nothing can really be boring, but you suggest it can be bothering. Could you say more on this bothering?

Pam: So let me say, people often believe that we, when we say we're in Self, or when we unburden our parts, that people should be able, no matter how people react toward us, no matter what they say, no matter what they do, it shouldn't upset us. We should be able to take anything that they throw at us. Right. And, I would also say, that's not true, right. That, and this is where the courage of the Self comes in. So, that I'm trying to think of a personal example of what that means. And I think the best example that I can come up with is...actually I have a difficult relationship with one of my sisters. And there's often, when we're together, there are parts of her that just come after me. I mean, just really blame me for a lot of stuff that happened when we were kids. And so, I often feel really attacked by that. And for a long time, I tried to not feel anything when she did that. Right. I'm like, oh, I should be able to take anything. It should be okay. You know, she did have a much harder time than I did.

Aníbal: Kind of getting Zen.

Pam: Exactly. Exactly. And then, as I got more into this, I started realizing, and here's, you know, just listening, listening to my parts and knowing that it's really, it was really not okay that she was treating me that way. And I knew that, in this instance, I tried to have some conversations with her about it, and they were just not going anywhere. Right. Because she was just not able, able to hear what I was saying and deepen our relationship beyond where it was. And so, I made a choice to limit my interactions with her. Right. Because, you know, so this is where I say, you know, we can set these Self-lead boundaries. Doesn't mean we have to take everything. We can make choices about how we interact with people and the ways in which we engage them. So, you know, if I keep my interactions with her short and limited, we never really get to the place where she gets on a roll and starts attacking me. And it seems to work out. I can be connected enough with her, but not to the point where I'm being dumped on.

Aníbal: So, it’s a way of building connection as well.

Pam: Right.

Tisha: Do you know the term spiritual bypass?

Pam: Yes.

Tisha: Anibal’s getting Zen made me think about it. But it's always, it's been sort of a hard concept for me to understand, but I think you just made it really clear how you could just ignore your parts, maybe numb out a little bit, be in, being quote unquote, Self and get through it. But it actually, it reminds me of like being a good parent, you set boundaries that are hard in order to maintain safety.

Pam: Yeah. Yeah

Tisha: It feels really better. Especially if someone's coming at you, a family member with some five-year old, two-year-old parts.

Pam: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, I really love the way you just said that. Because that, that is, it is a spiritual, you know, it can be the spiritual bypass. And, there's something, look, there's something very loving about that too. Right. Like, you know, like I want to be able to stay connected and, how much do we think about this? Like, how much damage do we do to our own parts when we're trying to take care of someone else's parts like that, but that's a whole another talk, so.

Aníbal: Yeah. It could be. So, you say to be in Self can be used to shame parts and feelings. And how can that statement of being in Self be used to shame parts and feelings?

Pam: Well, that's the piece, you know, when like, and I especially see this in, I've seen this in our trainings or as IFS practitioners interact. So, if someone has some intense, even a little intensity about their reaction, or, I'm trying to think of an example. Okay so, here's an example. So, I'm going to speak to it from my experience, because as a lead trainer in these trainings, lots of times people get blended and they sort of, they're blended with their parts and they talk directly to me from these blended parts. So, I, as these things land on me and I feel this intensity, the way I can shame people with this is I can shame them...It's like this sense that we're all supposed to be in Self, we’re never supposed to be in parts and you're in parts right now. Right. And so, I can shame them by saying something as simple as, which is not simple at all, really, “could you take a minute and get that part to unblend?”. So, imagine that you have like some intensity around something you're feeling activated or upset about something that's happening in the training and you're directing that to me it some amount of passion and I say, “I'm not going to listen to that until you unblend”, right. That's very shaming. So, that's the way we can use this thing. Like, “I'm only going to listen if you're in Self”, right. “I'm not going to listen to anything else”.

Aníbal: Yes, makes sense.

Tisha: What's the right of the, quote unquote, right way or what's a more Self-led way to respond to that?

Pam: So, I want to answer that by saying it depends, because it does depend on the situation. Right? Of course, it depends on if you're in a relationship with someone with equal power to you, right. There's all this, you know, and as a therapist too, you know, I think about this often we have a power over our clients. There's a great book by, I'm going to plug Cedar Barstow here, it's called The Right Use of Power. Cedar Barstow's a Hakomi trainer and a therapist, and she's written these books. She has this whole thing about using power and the power that we have as therapists. So, it's different if you're in an up or down power position with someone, but if you're, if you're in an equal power position with someone and someone's coming at you, right. Like, I'm thinking about, I'll think about like my relationship with my husband. The other day he was like being really, here's what my part said, being really snotty about something. And he was just not being very nice. And so, and he knows, but the way I reacted to that was to say, “you know, it doesn't feel good to me when you talk to me like this. I want to hear what you have to say, but it doesn't feel good to me. And I'm getting sorted to the brink of where I want to yell back, and I don't want to do that. So, how can we have this conversation?” Sometimes he may not be able to. The other person may not be able to and want to still yell. Right. And then comes your choice. Do you stay engaged or not in that moment? If we're in a position though, like as a therapist and our client is coming at us with a part like that, I think one of the better ways to deal with that, and this is what can be difficult is to use Implicit Direct Access, meaning that this client has a part that's blended with them that is mad at us. And so, to stay engaged with that part. “Tell me what is bothering you. Tell me what I did that upset you so much, because it was not my intention to do that.” And, because if you can engage the part, it will all intimately unblend. But it's a much more connecting experience then if you engage the part.

Aníbal: Yeah. Instead of just asking to do his own job and do his own self-regulation, inner self-regulation.

Pam: Right, right. Yes, yes. Because when a part's coming at you like that, it wants connection. It wants some kind of connection. And if we say, “oh, focus on that part and how do you feel toward it or see if it can unblend...” Oh, you know...

Tisha: It makes me think of all the trainings that I've been in, or in situations where I have a judgmental part that says, “oh, they're not in Self.” And I know that judgmental part is just creating distance, but it's almost, it's reflexive. So, I'm so grateful that you are sort of illuminating this topic

Aníbal: Pam, maybe for didactic proposes, let me come back to this same topic. You are saying that we can be Self-led and still speak with emotion. So, how can we be Self-lead and still be with emotion and how can that be of some use or benefit for us and our trainings?

Pam: Well, first of all, I'm thinking about what you said earlier, Aníbal, which is, it certainly feels much more alive, doesn't it? Rather than this sort of flat...

Aníbal: Sometimes boring thing.

Pam: Yeah. Wow. That's a such an interesting question. You know, I never really thought about it in terms of how it could benefit us in that precise way. But I guess what I would say is I feel like as we, as I said earlier, this is a living breathing model and it changes and changes and changes. And I feel like we're continuing to refine the ways we teach it to people. And, Tisha, when you were saying a minute ago about having parts that are, have judgment because somebody is not in Self. I think there are ways in which we imply that as we teach the model, right, there have been ways that that is definitely implied. And, so this is really a way of refining the teaching even more, that that is not what we want. Right. What we want, what feels so alive and real to me is this goal of our therapy to not, we don't want to be parts-led, right? We want to be Self-lead, which means welcoming, welcoming, welcoming all our parts, not just in that sort of perfunctory way that we say at all, we will need to welcome all our parts, but to really, it feels to me like it's a flow with them, right? Like it feels like this infinity loop that what goes out to our parts then comes back to our Self and we're connected through this energy flow with them. Right. And if I get stuck in believing that I should be in Self, it excludes and exiles all my humanities from who I am as a person. So, I guess the benefit, Aníbal, is really, I live a fuller life, I live a richer life. We can share with each other...

Aníbal: Yeah. I fully agree with that.

Pam: ...Our joys, our sorrows. Yeah, exactly. So, I think that would be the benefit for me

Tisha: That is so beautifully said. Incredible.

Pam: Oh, thanks. It felt very inarticulate to me, but thank you.

Aníbal: I was also thinking that some parts are really difficult to welcome. Shaming parts, perpetrator parts, bigotry ones. They are never allowed in trainings, I would say. And that means something, right?

Pam: And you know, even anger.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Pam: I've noticed, I've noticed a lot. I mean, that's even not allowed in our trainings much. Right. And, that's always been really sad for me. You know, I have tried to, when I first started teaching, I did most of the trainings in New York city. And I actually got the training started there, and oh man, back in those days, you know, we had...there was not a ton of interest in IFS. And we often got people who came in feeling really prickly about it. Like they got dragged in by someone else and they weren't sure they really wanted to be there. So, there were often like, this is the thing I love about New Yorkers is they just like, let it all out. Mostly, you know, there's nobody's trying to be nice. They're just letting it all out. So, very early in my teaching career, I got very good at welcoming angry parts into trainings and not exiling them. And it was a real gift to me and super scary because sometimes when these parts, you know, I mean, even think about sitting in your therapy practice when some client is just letting you have it, not an easy place to be. And if you can get connected with parts like that, it allows relationships to deepen. That's a thing, right. If we don't welcome all this stuff, how do we really deepen and grow? So that's another benefit I think of it, yeah.

Aníbal: Beautifully said. Pam, you are now a coordinator for, I mean, you high responsibilities in the Institute policies regarding the future trainers. You want to share something about that and how does that can impact the way IFS it's been taught nowadays?

Pam: Yeah. Well, there's two training programs are happening inside the Institute right now. One's called the Leadership Training Program, which is folks who are currently Assistant Trainers. That's one Tony Herbine-Blank and I are doing together to try to get folks into co-lead trainer positions more quickly. There's also a program that Tony and I and Tamala Floyd are doing, that's called The Accelerated Training Program. And this was a group of 15 folks who show, who were identified as having leadership potential. And, two thirds of this group is made up of folks from the global majority. And so, the purpose of this training, which has changed completely since we started it was, you know, this was to also accelerate these folks into leadership positions in the organization. Because, again, it's a wonderful and exciting and expanding the model into a much broader lens it's really exciting. So, Tony and Tamela and I have been meeting with that group of folks since January. And that's really where, and Natalie is a part of that group. And this is really a concept that's been highlighted for me as coming out of that group and their experience of speaking in trainings and the kind of reactions that they're sometimes getting, you know, when they're speaking, especially in trainings that are white majority. And so, I am incredibly grateful to be a part of that group and how much I feel...I tell them this all the time, but I feel like there's ways in which I'm learning so much more from them than they may be learning from us. But that's really where I started thinking more about this, like the way we shape space, especially people who aren't from the same culture as us, right. Or there's a lot of cultural impact about shaming people for having emotions or, you know, being a little more intense.

Aníbal: Pam, any other words and wishes for the IFS future, model and trainings?

Pam: I just, here's what I would say. I think we have an amazing model and I think it is a framework that can allow and support so much change in the world. I really, really believe that.

Aníbal: Absolutely.

Pam: And I also believe that we're really at a time where...it's an exciting time and a time where the model is growing and expanding in ways it hasn't for a long time. And so, I have a lot of hope about that and a lot of excitement about that, and some fear about it, you know, change is always scary. There are some parts of me, either afraid and, mostly exhilarated and excited, excited to share what I know about the model and to learn from others as are coming in about ways we can change the model. So, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Aníbal: Dear Pam, such a privilege to talk and listen to you. And it was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Pam: Always, just so wonderful to be with you all. And thanks. Thanks for inviting me again.

Tisha: Thank you so much, Pam, for taking the time with us today and expanding our knowledge on this topic and for all that you do.

 

Transcript Edition:
Carolina Abreu, certified Psychotherapist, L3 Trained,
and experienced Program Assistant for the official IFS-InstituteTrainings.

 


Reshaping the Nervous System and Integration with IFS - Deb Dana 01:17:05

Deb is a clinician and consultant who specializes in treating complex traumatic stress.  She is a consultant to the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.  She lectures internationally on the ways Polyvagal Theory informs clinical interactions with trauma survivors, and she works with organizations wanting to bring a polyvagal-informed approach to working with clients.  Deb is the developer of the Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series.  She is trained in Internal Family Systems and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and has completed the certificate program in Traumatic Stress Studies at the Trauma Center.  Deb is the author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy and co-editor with Stephen Porges of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory.  Today, we will be speaking with her primarily about her newest book, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection.  Deb, thank you so much for joining us today.

Explicit Direct Access with Protectors and Exiles - Fran Booth 46:28

Fran Booth, a social worker,  is a certified IFS therapist, consultant, and trainer. A clinician for more than 40 years, her practice specialties include trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, cancer/ and other medical concerns, binge eating, and attachment injuries. She graduated from Cornell University (with honors) and Simmons School for Social Work. Early in her career, Fran supervised social work interns and medical students for the Smith College School for Social Work, Tufts Medical School, and the William James College.
 
Immersed in IFS since 2005, Fran served as a therapist in the seminal research study on IFS and Rheumatoid arthritis.
She recently penned a chapter titled: IFS Consultation: Fostering the Self-Led Therapist for an upcoming book on IFS and Supervision.
She has offered over 75 workshops, for a variety of training organizations, spreading the word on parts work and IFS to the global community. She was recently promoted to Co-lead trainer for the IFS Institute.

 

Today on IFS Talks, we're very excited to speak with Fran Booth. Fran Booth is a social worker and certified IFS therapist, consultant and trainer. She's been a clinician for more than 40 years. Her practice specializes in trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, cancer, and other medical concerns, binge eating and attachment injuries. Fran graduated from Cornell University and Simmons School for Social Work. She's been immersed in IFS since 2005. And Fran served as a therapist in a seminar research study on IFS and rheumatoid arthritis. Recently, she's penned a chapter titled IFS Consultation, fostering the Self-lead Therapist for an upcoming book on IFS and Supervision. She has offered over 75 workshops for a variety of training organizations, spreading the word on parts work and IFS to the global community. Recently, she's been promoted to Co-lead trainer for the IFS Institute.

Tisha Shull: Welcome Fran, and thank you so much for speaking with us today.

Fran Booth: I'm so glad to be with both of you, Aníbal and Tisha. Thank you for inviting me.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome Fran. Thanks much for joining us and many congratulations on your recent promotion to Co-lead trainer.

Fran: Thank you.

Aníbal: So, hearing your bio, Fran, what parts come up for you today?

Fran: Well, it's a lot to take in, to be honest. I'm very excited about what's happening right now. Having a chapter come out, being promoted to Co-lead. These are big new steps and platforms for me. So, there are parts that are just genuinely excited. There are parts that feel a little, “wow, I did that?” Like, I can sense a young one, sort of feeling a young energy in that one, “wow, really?” Yeah. But also, I want to say proud. And of course, I also want to say that's been a journey to give myself permission to do that because I had a lot of messages growing up about sort of not... It wasn't okay to be proud almost. There were parts that had confusion about that. So yeah, I feel proud about what's come together in this moment.

Tisha: Would you share a little bit about what your journey has been like through becoming a social worker and discovering IFS.

Fran: Oh yes. I'd be delighted to, but I want to circle back, if I might, to add a little bit more to the bio, because I did want to name or sort of talk about kind of evolution in bios, that's happening in the larger IFS community. And one of the things that I've been doing more regularly now is adding to sort of that more formal academic bio, the following, which is that I'm cisgender heterosexual woman of Irish Catholic, and then German descent, largely influenced by the Irish Catholic side, which my mom's both parents were immigrants. So, my mom was first generation, I was secondary generation. And both parents had significant trauma histories that were really unprocessed in their lifetime. And, you know, I now I'm introducing myself that way in trainings. And it is part of a larger shift, I think, in the field in general, to be more open, self-disclosing, more acknowledging of my own privilege, where it shows up, more acknowledging explicitly that we are shaped by our cultural influences in our family of origin and that may color our work in the office and that we're holding awareness of that. And there is an implicit invitation, if it's getting in the way in any way, let me know. So, the whole bio thing, and I know that you'll often say, what parts do you notice, and it has been a journey internally to also name all of those parts of me, to name, you know, that there's a trauma history in my family. It bumps right up against messages, this now ties into your question, Tisha, about a lot of my own journey. You know, the Irish Catholic influence for messages around “don't air your dirty laundry” was the expression, right? “Don't tell the family secrets.” And so, even just naming trauma in the family would have challenged my parents’ sort of way of being, some of their own parts. So, I had to do some internal work just to get comfortable and clear to even to add those pieces to my bio, which I do embrace now as part of who I am.

Aníbal: Very welcome.

Tisha: I really appreciate that, Fran, because it acknowledges that we carry so much legacy with us, especially, you know, as you enter those trainings and those teaching experiences that you have. Yeah. So, thank you for sharing that. And I'm glad that that's being included. Everyone can access their own history by you naming what you bring forward in your bio.

Fran: That's the hope and the wish that it's an invitation. And it reminds me of the other pieces, just acknowledging that I'm speaking to you today, on the land that was originally Narragansett and some other native indigenous people, I'm here in Rhode Island.

Aníbal: Yeah. Well, and when and how did you, Fran, became involved or came across with the IFS Model?

Fran: Oh, that's always a fun story and a great question. And, you know, lots of people come alive when you ask that question because like many people, when it finally was there, there was like this big yes inside of me, but of course that was... the preamble is important. So, I was very psychodynamically trained here in the greater Boston area, went to school here and I was immersed in really, I want to say sort of a rich training and ongoing clinical supervision for years as I was in my own solo private practice in the eighties. But there was like, like every tradition, there were heirlooms and burdens, right? So, the heirlooms were, you know, how to listen. And that meant how to listen to what was being said and to what was not being said, what was not available, but was present, but also how to pay attention to the moment-to-moment unfolding. And, you know, but the downside, those are some of the heirlooms, but the downside was there could be that kind of hierarchical sense or a sense of judgment and a pathologizing. And what I love about IFS is that we've really sort of let that go. But during that whole journey and living as a more psychodynamically influenced clinician, I was always interested in learning and exposing to new things. So, I was involved, in the eighties, I was running groups for folks living with AIDS. Later, in the late eighties, I was involved with Joan Borysenko at the original sort of mind-body clinic. Joan Borysenko wrote the book that came out in 87, Minding the body mending the mind. Yeah. And it was really the precursor to the ACE study. I mean, it was a seminal research. Herbert Benson was on the staff of the Harvard medical school and looking at, oh, isn't this interesting, these cardiac patients, if you actually help them release what he then coined the term relaxation response, they actually had better outcomes, they lived longer. So, you know, the interface of the mind and the body really exploded there. And then, of course now the ACE study has that large longitudinal study looking at the role and the interface between trauma in childhood and the onset of medical disease over the course of your life. So, I was fortunate enough to be the staff assistant to their groups and, you know, was working with Joan Borysenko and running there like six, eight-week groups in downtown Boston. So that was, you know, I was already leaving in that moment... It was like in the very beginning of that, it was sort of like, do I tell anybody that I'm leaving this very psychodynamic approach, very cognitive approach and I'm actually interested in all of this other stuff. And there was this feeling like, it was kind of a secret in the beginning and of course that's all changed. But so, I was doing that and I was also, in the nineties, began exploring. I did an immersion training in something that was called at that time wave work. It no longer exists. And it was a mindfulness focused, body focused practice. And it was a three-year training. I was going out to the center, which is a large holistic training center in Western Mass. And immersing in this protocol, which now with IFS, I understand it was this beautiful way of bringing a mindfulness body focused practice. So, you would lie fully cloths on a massage table and just presence the body, just bring compassion and attention and awareness to the body. And it had a minimal, we were minimizing cognitive processing. It would then, naturally we would say in IFS, it would naturally unblend storytellers or parts that thought they knew what was happening. Sort of knew what this was about, you know, parts that were kind of going ahead of things to explain. Thinking parts that figure things, need to figure things out and be in control. All of those parts that my system was heavily dominated by and had been both trained to also use those parts, right. The analyzing, thinking, figuring it out, like that was, you know, figure it out and try to have the best insight, right. And just drop into the body, presence what's ever happening in the body. And if you do that, there's a sort of gentle unfolding. Your attention will just go to what needs attention. And in the beginning it might just be a tight muscle and your body will soften and then you go somewhere else and the body will soften, but ultimately then you're going to end up presencing body held trauma, which we would know, the woman who did this training, her name was Daya Schottky, she had trained a lot with Peter Levine. So, a lot of that work where, you know, stored energies are needing the space, just wanting to release. And if you create the space, that energy is going to move. And it was also like, similar to IFS, it was a coach model. IE, you're coaching someone as they're working with their system. So, that sense of being whispering in their ear as they are in their own process was very parallel. And essentially, you're working with parts and you're working in finding the path towards wisdom. And then, you would drop into this very powerful embodied state of Self-energy, which would feel like this, you know, vibrations or just aliveness. And so, I was blown away. My cognitive parts were blown away by this experience and didn't really have language for it. Just knew I loved it. Right. And I loved it to experience it and I love facilitating it. But then, that was sort of the late, you know, early two thousands and was sort of like around that time, I actually joined the staff of a cancer center, which was a complimentary care cancer center. We had massage and acupuncture and I was running meditation circles and workshops and running groups with people living with cancer. And I got to do this practice because we had massage tables there and I could bring this practice there. So, it was bringing this practice there, but I wasn't bringing it into my psychotherapy practice. And I was like, how am I going to do this? And then one day, it was in 2004. One of my consultees came to me and handed me Dick’s Psychotherapy Networker article, The Larger Self. And she says to me, this seems like you, and like, oh yeah, who is, what is this, the largest Self? And, you know, I immediately, figured it out, got on the online, who is this guy? And where is he and how do I, how do I go to a training? And the next thing you know, I'm at a one-day and the next thing I know I'm on the Cape. And the next thing I know, I'm in a level one. And I feel that IFS really does... It's this comprehensive paradigm. So, that so much of what I learned and studied and was practicing can fit under this large umbrella and be held, and that you can bring this understanding of listening, “oh, is that a part, is that a protector? Is that an exile? Oh, how might Self show up?” Even if it's in the body, even if it's subtle, just noticing this simple, but profound frame of parts, protectors, and exiles and Self-energy and being able to see it, however it shows up.

Tisha: Was there something in you or in your life experience that opened you up more or predisposed you to working with the body, to doing that wave work training at Kripalu?

Fran: You know, probably the most honest answer to that is my own seeking, my own wanting, my own personal growth needs, wanting to find some other ways to heal and exploring, you know, I was doing traditional talk therapy, but also then exploring this other, you know, looking to explore other ways to heal and came into this experience and then delve into that for both personal healing and then as well as trying to offer it. So yes, you know, I spoke to it. It's really knowing, I've had such strong cognitive managers and what happened when we... I didn't know that's what... we were relaxing them or just dropping out of them. Or finding a way to drop out of them. But now I know that's what it was. And I do have parts that want to say if I hadn't done that, you know, I think I would have found IFS still harder to believe or trust because those cognitive parts were so, are so strong.

Aníbal: Yeah. Makes sense. Fran, we understood you have currently different areas of clinical interest, like Direct Access with tough protectors, Direct Access with exiles. Also, a continued interest in bringing the body into the work, the importance of attunement, rupture and repair and also the role of the therapist. Where should we start today? Should we dive into Direct Access today?

Fran: I mean, that's a great place to start. You know, I've been assisting at the trauma training, both with, initially it was with both Frank and Dick, and then now with Frank for many years. And that's a big focus in that training, getting comfortable doing Direct Access and the training focuses on it with tough protectors because that is where you're starting when you're sitting with someone with a lot of trauma history. You're going to be meeting those really tough protectors. So, we do a lot of emphasizing of it. I'll say a couple of things about that, but then I really want to say a few more things about also working with the exiles, because one of the things I want to say that doesn't always get explicitly said in the trauma training, which is when we say you got to work with those tough protectors, what we really mean is like multiple sessions, maybe many times in Explicit Direct Access. Like, it's not a one-shot deal with many of those protectors. And sometimes I think the trainings can... people can walk away thinking it's supposed to be fast or quick and then “what am I doing wrong?” So, I like to say that because you're not doing anything wrong and these protectors will really, really need a lot of attention and Explicit Direct Access, meaning the therapist drops into totally appreciating them and believes it. It has to be authentic, like really wanting to understand why they do what they do and understanding that they may not want to shift and giving them the control. Okay, if you don't want to shift, I totally get it and let's keep talking so that you're staying in the relationship because the relationship starts to matter. Protectors feel the Self-energy, you know, they feel the sense that you care and respect them. And then that's going to be what gives them a little bit of a, “alright, I'll give it a shot, I'll just relax a little bit.” So, I think what I've watched and you know what you do with the training, but then you're also doing consultation and you're doing your own therapy work and you're watching what happens. So, what, you know, you've, you've set up an internal Self-to-Part connection. The client is working with maybe their tough protectors, but of course, what happens in the office is that all of a sudden that's changed and that part is now fully blended and that's when you want to be able to just comfortably just step in, oh, that's just what happened. Oh, that protector’s fully here. Let me just jump right now as the clinician, I've got my IFS hat on, let me just jump into Direct Access with this protector. But of course, the same thing happens with the exiles, right? You're doing, you might be either facilitating an internal piece of work and the client is with their either protector or maybe even with their exile, but all of a sudden, the exile, what happens in the next moment in the office, I just want to sit in your lap. Right. So, what's just happened. So that exile’s just got blended and it just said, I just want to sit in your lap, and what's the next move? Oh, you're here. The little one's here. Sounds like she or he is here fully, or they is here fully. Well, you’re welcome. I want you to know you're welcome. Of course, you want to sit in my lap. That makes so much sense. Tell me more about why you want to sit in my lap. So, in that moment, you just comfortably easily move into Direct Access with the exile. So, we want to do what we do with protect. We want to validate. So, use, of course, you're here. Of course, you want to sit in my lap, tell me more. Now, the therapist has got to work with their parts. Like a ton has to... to be able to do that fluidly, comfortably and staying in Self, IE, my parts aren't getting activated. Can I say to that little one, genuinely of course you want to sit on my lap, tell me more and not, and know that I'm not fostering dependence in a way that's unhealthy, which would have been like, you know, that lens, you've got to know what you're doing, but because what you're doing is validating the longing for that. So, you're going to try to have the parts say, I want that, that's what I needed. You're going to, because that's what they needed back then. And you're going to be able to validate, you did need that back then. Of course, you needed more of that back then. And of course, it makes you feel like you need it right now. I really get that. So, you can be addressing the longing underneath and the unmet need underneath without shaming or distancing. And then at some point we're working on this. We're gonna help you with that. Would you be willing to pull your energy in and off and let Tisha be with you again or Aníbal be with you again so that they can let you know how important that wish or that need is inside of you. Right? So, you're gonna, you know, move to somewhat quickly sort of return to the internal Self-part connection, but you're going to meet the moment fully with embodied Self-energy, understanding the moment, what's happening here.

Tisha: So, it sounds like there's a really attuned tracking when you're working with Direct Access with the challenging protectors. The exile comes through and you are you're there with the exile as you would be with your own exile, from Self-energy. But then there is a softness in transitioning the Self-to-exile relationship back to the client.

Fran: Yeah. The model’s still right, you know. The ultimate healing is that internal connection with those little ones. And it's the moment to moment shifting that can feel unexpected, that can throw people off, what just happened. And that's just what happened, that little exile broke through and said, I want to sit in your lap. And now you want to just like help facilitate the return to the internal Self-to-exile connection, but to do it in a way that's honoring and welcoming of that moment, rather than getting, you know, managerial, I guess about it.

Tisha: Hmm. Does Direct Access with exiles, does it ever get tricky in a way that might be helpful for listeners to be aware of?

Fran: I mean, I think that you were speaking to what could be tricky, like to hold the awareness that you want to be naming that the energy of wanting to be held is actually from the injury of not being held enough. And so, you're not validating that they... and you're not saying sit in my lap. You're not saying, sit on my lap. You're saying, I understand inside the wanting to be held and that you actually did need more of that when you were little. So, it is important to name the root. I would say where the root injury is. And the system just receives that because that is sort of one of those truths that we know like that it's that injury that's showing up in this way right now. So, we want to name that injury. You did need more holding back then. Of course, that's what you're feeling. You needed more, and you did need more. Because the exile is lost in the history, lost in the past and it's activated. I need more holding right now. That's what I need. Right. So, yeah. So, it's important to understand what's happening. So, there is a clinical frame, but once we understand that and we get that and we've relaxed our parts, I'm not saying it's okay to sit in my lap and I'm not saying sit in my lap. If we were in the office, you know, I'm not saying you can sit in my lap, we're not doing that and I'm not going to do that, but I can totally validate the longing and wishing and wanting that.

Aníbal: Okay. So why in your opinion is Explicit Direct Access usually so scary for many trainees.

Fran: You know, that's a really great question. I've thought some about that. It's probably complex and it is probably there's personal parts for each person. What that might be, what I think that's probably the best answer, but it is a return to how do I use myself? How is the therapist showing up directly? Because what, you know, Dick brought with the IFS model is this internal connection. And there was that and there is some initial relief about, oh, thank goodness. I don't have to have all the insights. I don't have to be... So, you know, figure it all out. I can trust a client system and there's beauty in that, but I think there can be parts in each of us as therapists that might feel, might be more comfortable staying distant. Right. So maybe our own healing around, about really being close, it might touch into what still needs attention in the therapist around, is it okay for me to be needed? Is it okay? What comes up for me to be this intimate or to be this close? What parts of me still may need attention that either want that long for it or, you know, shy away from that? Does that make sense?

Aníbal: Yes. Absolutely. So, it’s about therapist parts, right?

Fran: Yes, I think ultimately.

Aníbal: And, would you say there are major differences in doing Direct Access with tough protectors versus our exiles?

Fran: Maybe just understanding what's driving the behavior. Yes.

Aníbal: And when should we invite the part to an Explicit Direct Access?

Fran: When it shows up. Well, or when the inside work is either not possible, right? So you can't even get in. Now you know you're talking to a protector because you know, you can't... and then when the insight IE the client's internal Self-energy has been working internally, and then all of a sudden it stops, then you're in that moment, something has shifted and there's either a confusion or some kind of a block that has terminated the insight process. And now you're in Direct Access. Oh, what just happened? Something just happened, oh, let me see who's here now. Can I speak to what part just might've shut you off or took you out or said no more. Yeah. Stop that internal process. So, either in the beginning, when you're just setting up clients, you're talking to protectors, are they willing and able to go... a client to set up that internal Self-to-Part connection? Or then when that's been happening for a little while in the process gets stopped, those are two big ones. It's probably more.

Aníbal: Yeah, absolutely.

Tisha: Do you ever find that protectors react or come in after you've been doing Direct Access with exiles and how do you work with that?

Fran: That's interesting. You know, that would be about somebody's internal systems. So, when that little exile inside sort of broke through the protectors, and maybe there's a team of protectors you've been helping your client get to know, there might definitely be one that hates that exile and hates whenever it shows up. Those that in trauma system that would be common to have, parts that hate any vulnerability.

Tisha: And there you've engaged with it and seen it.

Fran: And then now that one might show up and either be yelling inside the client, or, yeah... So, either yelling or maybe might say something out loud to me, but that's, you know, I actually haven't had that happen as much as it sounds. It seems like it might, but typically you're trying to have identified what is the cluster of parts that don't want to allow access and the client would have had maybe some beginning getting to know that kind of a tough protective that would really object to that.

Aníbal: Fran, do you believe that this tool Direct Access is a good tool to work with those parts that play a role in ruptures in the alliance during the work?

Fran: I have to think a little bit more about that, Aníbal. You know, the ruptures, when I'm thinking about rupture or even, you know, I've been trying to find a word that doesn't make it even that big, like misattunements, like part of what I am thinking about is how to normalize and depathologize ruptures and, you know, deshame, because I think that what IFS has brought is that whole, we all have parts, we do our darnedest to get our own parts to soften and relax, so that we can show up with the best amount of Self-energy possible in the office, but we have parts and our parts can show up. So, when I'm thinking about rupture and repair, I'm mostly thinking about, or been thinking about it from that lens. Are my parts interfering in some way in the therapeutic relationship? And then how do I own that? So, what amount of self-disclosure is appropriate? How to do it and the importance of doing it and what I feel like I'm almost now on a little kick around looking for even small moments to build the, or to give the message I want you to be telling me if I say a word, or if I'm seem to be emphasizing something that doesn't feel quite right or does it feel like where the emphasis belongs, like really inviting the client to be sort of correcting me, sort of making the attunement really accurate. Really, sometimes I'll say exquisite attunement. So that, if you keep inviting the client to be letting you know, you know that word wasn't right and you said this and that wasn't quite it... Then you're doing so many things I think are so important, which is making the relationship more collaborative, acknowledging that I have parts and that I might not be hearing it in just the right way. You're wanting out, so to speak, parts in the client that might want to please me, or be tentative about correcting me. That's when I'm thinking about attunement, misattunement repair. How do I, own parts of mine got in the way? Yeah. So, I haven't thought about it so much from the Direct Access lens, more around the relationship and the importance of paying attention to my parts. Are they relaxed? How did they showed up? You know, for example, this is maybe a clearer example. Like, sometimes when you're not having access in a system and the client seems to not be able to build or stay and having their own Self-energy, building a connection with their own parts internally. So, you’re kind of getting stuck, and sometimes it's really because you haven't met all of the major players sometimes. Some big protector parts might still be more hidden. And then when they, you know, so you can ask that question, which is a lovely, is there anybody who's really important that we actually haven't met? And then sometimes when that happens, you know, what I can say... You know what, we didn't listen for you and we didn't invite you and you might've sensed it in me, parts that were maybe pushing or, you know, even other protectors that are really tough and don't want to relax. Like, sometimes just using... You might've sensed in me some parts that were kind of pushing past you too quickly, or didn't really recognize how important you really are. And I want to really acknowledge and own those parts because, and then when I say that, I can feel like even just in this little moment, a tiny bit, but when I'm doing that live in the office, I can feel my whole system actually drop into a genuine, I am really sorry about that. You are important and we missed it and we were rushing past you. So, I'm so glad you're here and I want to be with you. So, in that way I'm using Direct Access, but it's to that part, it's to that traumatized system. It's an apology. Yeah. So, all of those pieces come together in that kind of a moment.

Tisha: I'm just appreciating you and appreciating the nuance of self-awareness and connection with clients. And there's a curiosity in me to understand your psychodynamic training and how that plays into this self-attunement and connection, if at all.

Fran: Well, I appreciate your reflection. Thank you. And I think some pieces of me, one is a high value, which is knowing your own... We have the high value in IFS, knowing one's own system and the worthwhile exploration of attending to knowing one's parts really well. And that is both from the psychodynamic world, as well as the IFS world, that the importance of this piece, my own, what I bring, who I am, my parts and my Self-energy, understanding them, my own capacity to be with them and to soften them, and then being willing, there is a kind of being courageous and showing up and being connected, being willing to be that connected. So, I would say it's both early psychodynamic and also IFS that has allowed me that comfort with then seeing the moment to moment movement and shift and showing up in each new moment. Who's here in me and who's here in the client and what's happening now. Like, is my part talking to this new moment? How do I relax that? And what's happening in the client. We just shifted. And now their exiles here, and now their protectors are here.

Aníbal: Fran, another topic of your clinical interest is the role of the therapist. Do you want to speak for this topic? How do you find the role of therapist relevant?

Fran: I think that's what I'm, you know, what we're addressing that, who I am, how I show up, what are my parts? What's my comfort with my parts and my loving, you know, loving my protectors, loving my exiles so deeply and embodying that. I think is part of what I bring and what I feel passionate about is important as clinicians, that flavors and colors the work with our clients. But it also flavors and colors how quickly we can unblend.

Tisha: You have moved into this new promotion position of Co-lead. How has that been? What's that like to co-lead trainings now?

Fran: Well, my first one will be this fall. In fact, that's all administratively just getting set up. So, I haven't had my first gig as we would say, but I'm excited. And I've done a lot of teaching, you know, one-day seminars on IFS in a wide variety of settings. And so, I feel like all of that has, I've definitely grown in confidence and skill and comfort. I enjoy thinking about how to teach it creatively. So, I actually have a part that sort of, you know, I use video and just video off of YouTube, as well as sessions clips and how can we teach some of these concepts creatively. I enjoy, sort of engage in the Q&A, like, where are you wrestling with something and let's wrestle and figure this out. So, all of that. I enjoy leading the guided meditation. So those skills I've really been doing in a lot of different in the one-day seminars. And I'm looking forward to bringing all of that in the ongoing trainings.

Tisha: And this training you're starting, is it online or are you in person yet?

Fran: Yeah. So, this one will be fully online. All of the ones that they're still going to be scheduling for the end of this calendar year will be online. And then I think in 2022, they're going to start with some hybrid. Some will stay all online. And then I think they're going to have some in-person. So, those new trainings are getting planned right now on the backend administratively, and they're going to be enrolled over the next month. It's exciting.

Aníbal: So, Fran, what's coming for you in the future? You have just spoke for this new journey of yours as a Co-Lead Trainer. And also, recently you have been writing a chapter titled IFS consultation, fostering the Self-led therapist for the coming book on IFS and supervision. It's exciting.

Fran: Yeah, it is. Thank you. Yes. The book is due out next calendar year. There are still, you know, it's after you've finished your chapter, there's still plenty more that has to happen on the backside. So, I think the chapter, let me try to say some of what I've been sharing with you that I feel is important, sort of the importance of understanding our own parts and a lot of consultation often is helping a therapist unblend from their own parts so that they can then show up in the office differently. So, that's some of what I do in consultation. Some of the other consultation things that I'm doing that are really fun right now, or like serving as a... I mean, basically sort of doing short-term consultations where people come with... There's a therapy that's sort of in a crunch place. Paul Russell was a very well-known psychodynamic teacher here in the greater Boston area. He wrote a paper called The Theory of the Crunch. So, when there's a kind of a moment, it's sort of the moment in the therapy and what's going on there, how to understand the crisis in a therapy as an opportunity. And I have had the pleasure and the privilege of being in a few cases where that exploration, where it feels like the therapy might be in a crisis and to then have a chance... because basically what IFS brings to all of that is just, okay, let's unpack this. Okay, it's just basically a bunch of parts that are getting activated both inside the therapist and inside the client and let's see whether we can open it up and maybe this crisis might actually have a resolution towards repair. So, I love that IFS has, you know, gives us that frame so that rather than have a, because often what the crisis is, is the moment, is the opportunity rather than the rupture, which can end a therapy. So, I've got that from my psychodynamic training that seeing a crunch. In fact, I worked for a while in an inpatient psych unit in the early days when actually inpatient psych might've been, there were six weeks days and we would often see a crunch in an ongoing long-term therapy. And the unit had a little specialty around offering consultation to therapies that were in a crunch. So, the idea that we can solve those crises and that's something, you know, there's somethings being reenacted in some way, something's coming alive. If we can just sort out all the parts, it could shift towards growth. So, that's been a fun little something I'm excited about. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, doing more of the teaching and trainings I'm excited about. And, you know, I do feel like some of the things, you know, the opportunity to write a chapter just came to me. I hadn't gone looking for it. So, there might be other opportunities that just come that are, that I can say yes to. So being open to what was unknown, but might still come, is exciting for me as well.

Aníbal: So, Fran, such a journey yours and such a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for sitting with us and focusing such relevant clinical topics. Thank you for all the sharing and wisdom. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Fran: Thank you. Really lovely to be with both of you, thank you for this opportunity. And I really actually do so appreciate what you're also bringing to the larger world in this format. So, thank you to both of you.

Tisha: Thank you, Fran. It's been wonderful to speak with you today.

Fran: As well.

Tisha: Looking forward to more conversations.

IFS Principles Applied to Group Psychotherapy with Sue Richmond 40:30

Sue Richmond is a L3 IFS trained, Certified IFS therapist and IFS Assistant Trainer.
Sue came to the IFS world around 2001 as a result of her going back into therapy at a time where she was feeling disconnected and experienced an existential crisis.
Unbeknownst to Sue, she walked into the office of a therapist who quickly announced, “I’ve just been trained in this model called Internal Family Sytems Therapy, and it’s the only model I’m using with clients now, and I hope that’s ok with you”.
Well, the rest is history.

Sue lives in central CT with her wife and their dog Milo Thomas. Sue has an individual psychotherapy practice, an IFS consultation practice, and has expanded the use of the model by bringing IFS-informed practice into her work with psychotherapy groups. Sue is currently working on a book about bringing IFS-informed practice to groups and will be presenting a module about her work with groups to the 2021 IFS Continuity Program series.

Sue received her BA in English from Keene State College, and her MSW from the University of Connecticut. During her time in graduate school, Sue was also a member of the United States Naval Reserve and served in the Reserves for 5 years. She has presented many workshops, and has a special fondness for the Intro to IFS workshop that she presented to the United States Navy Chaplain Corps, in Hampton, VA.

She has a love for teaching, and taught social work to undergraduates as an Adjunct at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, CT.

Personally, Sue’s spiritual life has been a great influence in her own personal journey of healing, and she brings that healing into her practice with her clients.

 

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Turning Disconnection into Intimacy, with Mona Barbera 31:09

Mona Barbera, Ph.D is a psychologist with over 35 years experience, specializing in couples therapy, couples workshops, and training psychotherapists. She has been quoted in Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan,and Mens Fitness and has appeared on Fox25 news in , NBC in New York, News8 in Washington, D.C., Peachtree TV in Atlanta, and KARE11 in Minneapolis.  Her book for couples, “Bring Yourself to Love: How Couples Can Turn Disconnection into Intimacy” is the winner of the prestigious 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award in psychology/self-help, the Bronze medalist in the 2008 IPPY awards in Relationships and Sexuality, and a finalist in the 2009 Eric Hoffer Awards.Mona has written for the academic journals “The Journal of Imago Relationship Therapy” and “The Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy,” and she has a chapter in “Imago Relationship Therapy: Perspectives on Theory,” by Luquet, Hannah and Hunt. She is past chair of the program committee and past board member of the New England Society for the Study and Treatment of Trauma and Dissociative Disorders. She is an Assistant Trainer for Internal Family Systems, a system of psychotherapy developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband. She has private practices in Providence, RI and Middletown, RI.
To know more about Mona Barbera please go to http://www.monabarbera.com

 

 

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How Ancestral Medicine informs IFS Legacy Burdens work - with Daphne Fatter 32:52

Daphne Fatter, Ph.D. (Dallas, TX, USA) is a mid-career licensed psychologist, certified IFS therapist and approved clinical IFS consultant. She has a private practice specializing in trauma and addressing legacy burdens including the impact of oppression, marginalized identities, racism, and collective trauma. She also teaches on trauma treatment and on white race socialization in the US. She is an Ancestral Medicine Practitioner and integrates working ancestral guides with IFS. She is a student of animism and has also studied with teachers of Taoist and Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist meditation practices. She has also published professionally on mindfulness.Her ancestors are from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and Scandanvia. She lives on the traditional lands of the Cherokee, Comanche, Wichita and Caddo peoples. For more information see https://www.daphnefatterphd.com

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Four Types of Challenging Protectors with Chris Burris 46:23

Chris Burris, LPC, LMFT is a Senior Lead Trainer for the IFS Institute. He has been an IFS Therapist since 1999 and is trained as a Marriage and Family Therapist. He uses mind/body approaches of therapy in alleviating traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety disorders. He works extensively with individuals and groups.

Since 1990 he has been very active with Men’s, Couples, Self Leadership Groups and Rites of Passage Programs. As the former Director of Counseling at The North Carolina School of the Arts, Chris has considerable experience with performance enhancement with Athletes, Artists, Actors, Filmmakers, Musicians, Writers, and Dancers. He is currently in Private Practice in Asheville, NC.

In addition to being a psychotherapist, Chris has trained in many nature based models with Animus Valley institute, School of Lost Borders, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and The Center for Conscious Eldering.

Today on IFS Talks we're welcoming back Chris Burris. Chris Burris is a senior lead trainer for the IFS Institute. He’s been an IFS therapist since 1999 and is trained as a marriage and family therapist. Chris uses mind body approaches of therapy in alleviating traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety disorders. He works extensively with individuals and groups. Since 1990, Chris has been very active with men's, couples, self-leadership groups and rites of passage program. As the former director of counseling at the North Carolina school of arts Chris has considerable experience with performance enhancement. He is currently in private practice in Asheville, North Carolina. In addition to being a psychotherapist and lead trainer Chris has trained in many nature-based models with the Animas Valley Institute, School of loss borders, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and The Center for Conscious Eldering.

Tisha Shull:  Chris, welcome back and thank you so much for joining us again on IFS Talks.

Chris Burris: Great. Thank you very much, Tisha. Glad to be back with you.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back Chris. How have you been those days, any developments or transitions in your personal or professional life you'd like to share?

Chris: It's been a busy spring. We've had quite a number of Level 1 trainings. We just finished two pilots with a fairly large group of participants, and we're finished the second black therapist rock training, primarily focused with people of color. So, so yeah, it's been a very busy but exciting spring, lots of new therapists and IFS trained therapists that are now in the field

Aníbal: Chris, as clinicians and counselors, we used to sit and spend most of our time with clients that experienced severe relational trauma. These client systems are usually loaded with really bad relational memories and experiences. And consequently, are very often run by challenging, strong protectors. As IFS practitioners, we have learned that we need to spend time naming, respecting and validating these protectors before they gave you permission to attend to vulnerable traumatized parts. Now, we know that many clinicians end up spending months, if not years with some of these challenging protectors, feeling hijacked by them with no permission to go to exiles and feeling like going nowhere. We also know that bypassing those strong protectors will get us in trouble. So, who are these strong, challenging protectors and how should we address them?

Chris: Yeah, I've been very interested in these protective parts and as you indicated, they work very hard to protect us from vulnerability, from feelings of shame, worthlessness, and not only do they operate in our internal system, they operate in our interpersonal relationships as well as you've indicated. And I think human beings want to feel connected. They want to feel like they belong. Some of these protective ways, you know, do interfere with that process. Not only the feeling of belonging internally, but also the feeling of connected belonging in our relationships.

So, began to kind of highlight maybe four types of protectors that I've gotten interested in. One is Self-like protectors that do have some of the qualities of Self-leadership but carry an agenda. The second is kind of harsh managers. And last time I met with you, we talked a lot about critics and critics kind of fall in this category with harsh protectors, but you know, there's many ways that we have managers that are harsh, they manage other people, or we can even parent from a harsh protector harsh manager. Then, my third is kind of my favorite kind of called these, these runaway firefighters. So, they operate involuntarily and kind of run their own agenda. And a lot of times the managers are trying to kind of get these parts back in under wraps. And so, that's kind of why I call them runaway firefighters. And then we have sort of these involuntary protectors that even a hint of danger takeover, and these are parts that are like numbing parts, disassociation, even sleepy part. So, they operate kind of under the radar, they become, they become very active and reactive to the hint of danger. So those are kind of the four categories that I've kind of gotten interested in lately.

Aníbal: Beautiful. So, how should we address them? How should we address Self-like part protectors, for instance?

Chris: Self-like parts are kind of hard to, hard for us as individuals to recognize. Often, they're very close to our identity and they do carry an agenda. Often the best way to recognize Self-like parts is a feedback that we get from others. So, it's hard to recognize these sometimes, but we can see the way people interact with us. People reflect back that, you know, something in an interaction doesn't feel quite so good. And, you know, and if we can, we can listen to that feedback and get curious about what was the motivation, what was the energy behind that? What was the impact? So, one way of getting to know these Self-like parts. So, as a therapist, we're listening to parts that have an agenda for other parts, and there's a difference between kind of a motivation towards healing and wholeness and agenda, which tends to be more fear-based.

Aníbal: So, you wouldn't say that, for instance, a thinking part or a figuring out part is not a Self-like part?

Chris:  Yeah. I think those are, you know, many times these parts are really helpful and it's not that it's bad. Oftentimes we do, when people discover that this is a Self-like part, somehow that triggers shame, these parts are very helpful. The thinking parts have done a really good job of helping us get perspective. So, the way that we want to interact with them as a clinician is to really welcome them and value them and have them be in more of an aid or a consultant than the primary operator in the healing process.

Tisha: What makes a protector more or less challenging for you as a therapist?

Chris: Well, the longer parts have been in these roles, the more inflexible they become and the more determined they are that if they shift or change something really bad is going to happen and it, and all these parts make sense at the time in which they were formed. So, that the inflexibility and the really stacked up fear makes it challenging to really reassure these parts that if we work with the vulnerability or the burdens that actually the whole system's not going to fall apart. Is going to function much more fluidly and in cooperation. So, I think the immobility of the parts make it challenging for clinicians.

Tisha: So, you see that with people living out like relational cycles over and over, the harsh protectors come in, those critics come in, the managers come in and they get really locked in and it's hard to change that cycle.

Chris: Yeah, I think it, you know, if we get hurt in some way or not seen or not valued, it really feels like we have to defend ourselves and that we, so those, so reality seems like this is the thing to do, and that the impact of that actually we get defensiveness back, so those parts feel like they really are in jeopardy and sometimes we may become in jeopardy, but usually we're less in jeopardy than we imagine we are, but those parts are really determined to save our life and protect us.

Aníbal: Chris, could you give us more examples of harsh managers like critics? Do you see perfectionist parts or obsessive parts as included in those harsh managers?

Chris: Yeah, I think the harsh managers can be perfectionistic parts. They can be parts that have a rigid schedule, that have a determination that if they don't drive us with fear that somehow we're going to be lazy or incompetent, unsuccessful, but, you know, so I think what makes it harsh managers, there's not a lot of trust in Self, and there's not a lot of trust in our own natural motivation that we have a natural motivation for connection, for inspiration, for expression. And so, these harsh managers use fear to motivate us because they haven't learned to trust our own natural inspiration

Aníbal: And how should we address them?

Chris: Well, the way, you know, obviously addressing whom from our Self-energy. So, the first tip is to really appreciate that their intention is to protect. And I usually say our protectors make sense in the context in which they were formed. So, they, if we, and we may not fully understand the context as working with them, but they make sense in that context. So, being able to see that at some point in this person's life, that protector made sense. And often people don't experience having mentors that are encouraging or inspiring. They maybe were parented in a harsh way and went to school with teachers that corrected children in a harsh way. So, they don't have a lot of reference for inspiration and motivation.

Tisha: Do you have from your own work and your base of knowledge around working with extreme protectors, do you have any examples you could share with us of transition points of you working with a client where it gets revealed that that protector has been doing what it's been doing for a long time?

Chris: Well, I mean, in my own system, I need some of my own managers of, you know, like one of my managers operated like some instrumental people in my life. So, and being able to help that part see that inspiration, that that actually respond better to inspiration. Those tend to be really pivotal points. So, not only them stepping back, but also seeing the circular nature that there's actually something inside of me that responds to this different way of interacting, much more efficiently and effectively than this harshness. So, parts don’t often see the impact, you know, so I think some of the...so reoccurring bringing back to that part, you know, how much better I respond to encouragement than I do to fear within my own system is I think that those are monumental changes that the parts don't see that, they don't know that there's another way. So, I think the change happens when they began to see that, that the system might super respond better to encouragement or validation or cooperation than fear, judgment, or shame.

Aníbal: Chris, could we deepen a little bit on firefighters and runaway firefighters? Can you give us some examples? And again, hoe should we address them?

Chris: I think some of the runaway firefighters, food tends to be one of those items that the firefighters tend to focus on, maybe alcohol or drugs, relationships, so that, so they tend to operate on involuntarily, you know, for some reason, Aníbal, 10 o'clock at night, you know, ice cream becomes the thing that I'm fixated on, you know, and there's a bit of a runaway firefighter there that, you know, that, you know, that's kind of ice cream time. And sometimes it's hard for me to feel like I have charge over that part. So, that's kind of that runaway part that has its own agenda and it, they have somehow ways of getting executive control, you know, so they may have a craving, they may have a preoccupation and they may have access to some memory of some feeling of satisfaction or excitement, you know, so that, so they have very complex tools to motivate the system to being able to get in that driver's seat. And so, that's a little bit why I refer to them as kind of runaway cause they tend to, you know, they tend to be like the teenager that's, you know, stolen the family car, you know, so it's very interesting to me to see how we tend to have these and often how little control the rest of the system feels like they have over there.

Tisha: Well, I feel like what I think about as you're describing these protectors is how like myself as a therapist sits with them in the room. And I, you know, I think about all the therapist parts that come up with challenging protectors and there's a number of them, but yeah. What sort of advice or input do you have for therapists working with clients with these protectors that are locked in?

Chris: I think it's a really great question because these are the parts that tend to activate our own managers. And sometimes these parts do have very devastating impacts on the system, you know, and they activate our own fears of what might happen to this person if we don't somehow contain this part. So, the first thing we have to do is track our own system. As we know, managers, firefighters tend to polarize with managers. So, if we get into a managerial state with these parts, we actually create more extreme reactions from them. So, we have to be able to track our own reactivity to that. The first thing we have to do is acknowledge that they're somehow protecting the system. So, it's not about the impact of the part, but it's the intent of the part. So, we have to validate the intent of the part is to bring something, you know, beneficial, that often suicidal parts, the intent behind those parts are to be able to escape the pain that the person's living. The pain of living is so much that they don't have another way. They don't believe there's another way to escape that pain. So, validating that that part is trying to help the system, the intent is to help in some way, and that they don't have other tools to alleviate the pain of living. So, us being able to hold that perspective with the part begins the process of other parts of the system to see that part in a different way, that it's a part with a really difficult job. Doesn’t mean to cause us trouble, but that has limited tools of how it could benefit and help the system.

Tisha: Do you feel that IFS therapists get to a point where you can be with the suicidal part without also having a part in the background that's worried and concerned and...I feel like for myself, like there's always just that, you know, that part that's been trained, you know, outside of the IFS model where it's like, oh, suicide, it's pretty scary. And what, yeah. What sort of like, it's a manager, it's a worried manager, but it seems like it's a long slide as much self-energy is as can be there.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I think that part is always going to be there. I think it's human nature for those parts to be there with other people. The question we have is how much of that part is influencing the dynamic with our clients, you know, so we can own that, yeah, I have a part that's afraid for you, that's scared for you. And I have a part that wants to try to manage you, you know, and, you know, and I can have that part give us space so that we can get to know this part of you and see if we can help it. So, we can acknowledge that we have those parts is and often acknowledging that we have those parts really puts it on the table, so that can be, you know, something we can talk about with the client. So, it's not about getting rid of our parts, it's being able to see how much, you know, how much executive control do they have. And, you know, and there are times that we may have to, you know, have someone involuntarily committed or that we may have to do something that, you know, gets them to a safe place. A lot of times we can do a lot of negotiating with parts to get an agreement, to see if we can reduce the pain of living. So that, so that those other measures of safety, you know, don't have to be in place, but in place,

Tisha: How does that negotiation go?

Chris: Well, we want to negotiate specifically with a part, with a firefighter, with a suicidal part. So that negotiation looks, usually goes something like, so if we could help the pain of living, so it wasn't so overwhelming or that there was other resources to reduce that, then would you be willing to give us time and space to try to do that? Would you be willing not to take the person out to see if we can reduce the pain of living? And I really get that you don't feel like there's any hope for that, but, you know, if you would give us time and space to work with that, I think that we can reduce that pain of living in ways that maybe makes it so that you don't feel like you need to take the person down. Now, often these parts, it's not that they want to die. It's that, that this pain of living is just so overwhelming that they don't believe there's another way.

Tisha: Yeah. So beautiful. Chris, thank you.

Aníbal: Chris, we now all sessions begin with direct assess, the implicit way. How do you see the role of Direct Access when it comes to deal with strong, challenging protectors?

Chris: That skill, direct access is a really valuable skill for protectors. Protectors need to feel seen, heard, and valued, you know, so being able to reflect back in a direct way to them, that we understand them or that we can listen to them, you know, or that we see that their intent is to do something protective, for them to feel like, to feel seen by us and understood by the practitioner and have some empathy and compassion for them. And that's the first step in them being willing to open the door a little bit and consider that there may be help for them. So direct access, so that's what we're reflecting to them in direct access. And because parts seem to be so polarized, especially with some of these extreme parts that we may have to hold that space, so the polarization relaxes a bit for more Self-energy to emerge. So sometimes it's what, you know, Dr. Schwartz says, is lending Self-energy, you know, that we're lending that to soften that polarization actually create space for there to be more Self-energy.

Aníbal: And what about the group that you call the involuntary protectors, dissociation, numbness, sleepiness, destructiveness, any recommendations, how should we address them?

Chris: Yeah, sort of what I found with those parts and it's something Dr. Schwartz said, I heard him say one time is, sometimes we have to do a little preemptive work with some managers. And that kind of got me curious, because I would notice some clients that would come in, maybe they have a sleepy part and they would come into session and soon as we moved, even hinted towards moving towards something vulnerable, the sleepy part would take over and their body would shut down and it seemed to take like a 20 minutes to kind of wake them up, you know, to do work. And so, what I began to do is try to work with those parts before they caused that shutdown because it seemed to be easier to preempt that than actually try to raise the energy level back up. So, preempting those parts and getting them into a collaborative relationship with us so they don't take over. And these parts are kind of like an overactive fire alarm, you know, so we may have a fire alarm in my house that tends to go off just when we, you know, make toast, you know, it can be the tiniest hint of a smoke, then this fire alarm goes off. And that's kind of what we see with these parts is they learn just the hint of vulnerability or the hint of a feeling or the hint of going anywhere towards that traumatic material will cause them to come in and take over. So, working with those, preempting those parts kind of before we move towards that vulnerable material, asking them not to do that. And, oftentimes if we say to the client, do you feel like you can handle this feeling? Do you feel like you can handle this material that you're getting ready to work with? And if the client says, yes, I feel like I can handle it, then we connect that confidence with that preemptive protector so that it knows that the Self, the person's Self-energy feels confident of working with that and it doesn't have to take over. So, and then at different times we have to check back with it. So, we're trying to kind of help the person stay in, you know, an alert state, not in a disassociative state or shut down state while we're working with this material. So, every so often I'll go back and check with that sleepy part or that numbing part, how's it doing so far? You know, it's a little bit, you know, like my dentist would ask me, you know, I had my dentist yesterday, you know, how's it going so far? Are you okay so far, you know, it's sort of checking in with me, you know, so we weren't checking in with that part in that way.

Tisha: If the dissociative part just comes in or the sleepy part comes in, regardless of the preemptive work that you do with it, what's your strategy with that?

Chris: Some parts start like between the car and the office. So, you know, I have had the experience of sort of meeting a client, you know, at their car, you know, and beginning to sort of talk about beginning therapy with that part as we're walking to the office. So, we may have to preempt that really early cause they're so reactive, they kind of know what's coming and they may operate even before that. So, we have to sort of determine when we have to preempt it. It's hard to work with one of these parts when the body's shut down. So, you know, while you're sleepy, it's hard to work with sleepiness, you know, cause there's not an alertness there to work with it. So that's why we have to kind of preempt it before it really takes over the system.

Tisha: Chris, have you ever had the experience of a client system putting you to sleep or activating a really sleepy part in you?

Chris: That’s fascinating, isn’t it? I would, you know, I would sort of start a session, you know, I worked with a client remotely and I think he was a good 2000 miles away and I, you know, I'd be alert, and we'd sit down and start a little bit, I'd just start getting the sleepiness. And I would, it gets really interesting. I think we're such relational people that there's kind of an attunement, you know, that kind of happens with that. I think it's good to kind of know your system and know your own alertness. You know, if I get sleepy at one o'clock every day, I don't want to schedule that client, you know, at that time, you know, so I want to schedule that client at a time that I'm alert and you know, I don't usually get sleepy between eight and one o'clock maybe or three o'clock, you know, so to know that I'm being influenced by that, you know, and it's not just me, you know, so sometimes naming it in our system, naming that this sleepiness isn't mine, that I'm attuning to this other person and I don't have to do that. So if I can name it as not mine, that helps me, you know, I have asked people parts, if they could sort of pull back their influence a little bit, that they're influencing the person so much, that I'm actually feeling that influence. So, could they kind of pull that back a bit and not be so strong with it, you know, and then as we get more and more able to come preempt those parts, we don't come in a resonance with it that way, but it is fascinating.

Tisha: So, it feels like it's the empathic connection between you and the client, rather than it activating a protector in you that's protecting your own vulnerability.

Chris: I think it’s more of, you know, to me, it's, it could be a protector of me, but I think a little bit more, it's kind of...we tend to kind of be in a resonant field, you know, or an energetic field, or however you want to think about it or just in a proximity, you know, that we tend to attune to each other a little bit, you know? So, I think that we kind of get in that resonant place and we're influenced by it.

Aníbal: So, we have a dilemma, how can we work with those extreme protectors that are so contagious, right? And you say it's hard to work with dissociation because it causes dissociation with sleepiness because it causes sleepiness. So, can we prevent this from happening and reduce this contagiousness?

Chris: Yeah. I think that's where this preempting the part before it causes the body to shut down or causes that. Because it has a really way of affecting the nervous system, you know, and it's harder to sort of rise the nervous system than to lower the nervous system. So, we want to get it before it causes, you know, that shut down in the system, that's a preempting it. And in our own system, how well we're kind of able to hold our own space, hold our own bubble if we're kind of overly empathic, meaning that we're feeling the other client's feelings, then we're susceptible to the influence of that even more. So, as you said before, Tisha a little bit, sometimes we do have parts that operate in that, that have learned that I need to feel the other person's feelings in order to be compassionate and helping those parts not do that. We only kind of get need about three or 4% in order to be empathetic. You know, we don't need to feel a hundred percent of the person's feelings, just three or 4% tells us, okay, this is shame, or this is fear, or this is worthlessness, so we don't have to. So, we confuse, sometimes we confuse compassion with commiserating, that actually feeling the other person's feelings is more commiserating, compassion as a loving or open-hearted kindness.

Aníbal: Chris, where should we put a perpetrator part regarding these four types you speak for the challenging strong protectors?

Chris: It’s a really great question. I could probably add that to the list, you know, at times I think about perpetrator parts as parts that have been hurt and that are hurting other people as a way of trying to discharge that or parts that have over-identified with, you know, maybe their own perpetrators, you know, and believe that somehow this is enabling strength. So, you know, kind of hurt people, hurt people. Parts that make sense in the context, you know, in which they were formed. So, often being able to kind of get to those parts and see and help them see the impact they’re having begins to have the motivation towards changing that.

Aníbal: Chris, and what about unburdening protectors? Is it possible to unburden protectors before unburdening exiles?

Chris: Yeah. I Think often you find even sometimes perpetrator parts, they can be young parts that are acting out their own injuries on to other people. So those parts carry burdens. So, these protectors are often aren't that much older than the parts they're protecting. So, in that sense, they're young themselves. The role that they're carrying is a burden, often the beliefs and experiences they’re carrying are burdens. So, we can unburden these protectors alleviating the role that they're in, is sort of another form of unburdening that occurs for them. But they also may carry beliefs and emotions and feelings in their bodies that, you know, much like the exiles parts.

Aníbal: So, there is no big difference in the way you do this work with protectors or exiles.

Chris: I think the major differences that we have to be able to hold a perspective  that the intent of these parts are not the same as the impact, you know, and we have to be able to see them, that the intent may be to overcome worthlessness or helplessness or inadequacies. And so...but the impact is they actually cause the thing that they're trying to avoid. So, I think it's the perspective that we hold with these parts that are a little bit different. One of my teachers, David Calof would say, it's, you know, it's easy to kind of snuggle up to these young, vulnerable parts. You know, it's much more challenging to find compassion for parts that harm other people and to find curiosity with those parts to find out, you know, how do they come about being in this way? It doesn't mean that we naively are subjected to those parts so that we validate the impact. We're, you know, we're very much holding the space at the impact really, you know, isn't tolerable, but we get curious about the intent. What is this? How is this trying to protect you? How's it trying to help you? Or did you get this way of interacting internally or externally?

Tisha: Has there been a time when someone's protector has really surprised you or even your own?

Chris: Yes, there has, absolutely. The extent to which sometimes protectors will go has been quite surprising. I've worked with musicians that had, you know, maybe a crack addiction and would be, you know, in a crack house for four or five days, you know, so the extent to some of these protectors will go to and how far out of character it is with the rest of the system, that's all about why I refer to them as runaway protectors as somehow they have hijacked the system and they're not within the way the person really experiences himself and the way that they feel in integrity with the rest of their system

Tisha: With that, what do you recommend for therapists working with those kinds of protectors? I know you've been over it a few times, but, you know, accessing the compassion for a part that takes someone to a crack house.

Chris: Yeah. I think getting really curious about this system. This client, what we found was for the most of part time, this part didn't, wasn't really a runaway protector. It tended to, it was a bartender and, you know, and every now and then he would get a bit lonely. And when he got lonely, he would kind of drink with some of the, you know, patreons after his shift was over. And as that, as alcohol hit his system, you know, the other parts that kind of kept that intact, you know, the game offline, and then this craving would take over, you know, and the craving for the endorphins that are released by this type of drug is, you know, it can be very overwhelming, you know, to the system. So, being able to kind of work in sequence, you know, what are the sequences in place that causes us this runaway behavior. And so, you know, if you felt pretty bad and lonely, the craving for an endorphin, it can be really, really high, you know? And so, the part's not meaning to cause us trouble, it's looking for that endorphin that's kind of missing into the system.

Tisha: So, you don't feel the loneliness, don’t feel the pain.

Chris: So, you don't feel the loneliness, the pain.

Tisha: Yeah. Great, great advice.

Chris: So, what we see a lot, I think we could probably, you know, look at most of the DSM four as a book of, you know, kind of loneliness and disconnection.

Aníbal: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: I guess, five now, right.

Aníbal: Chris, you have recently presented a workshop on using IFS with groups.

Chris: Yeah.

Aníbal: And also, you have been working on a book on this topic to be published soon. Can you say more about those groups? Is it a to be discovered and deepening horizon for IFS?

Chris: Yeah. I think that for some reason, I'm not quite sure, but group therapy seems to become much less of a modality, you know, over the past 10 or 15 or 20 years. And, there's less training in that. It's became interested in me we decided to train people on IFS in a group setting. So we go through all the stages of group development of, you know, the forming norming and storming performing, we go through all of those stages, you know, and we train people to learn about their internal system and to work with their internal system in a group setting. And Dr. Schwartz founded that that was actually the preferred way to learn the model. So, it got me really curious around, well, maybe groups is actually the preferred way to actually do the therapy and in my own process of offering groups and doing groups really, really beautiful, meaningful, deep work can happen in group settings. So, I’ve been in groups since I was 24. I think my first men's group was, I was about 24 years old. And so, I've been in some type of group for, you know, most of my life, you know, and so I think it's a really great place to do the work. There are a lot of things you can do in groups, such as sculpting and psychodrama, role plays, you know, having someone, you know, direct access, having people witness your work, seeing other people's work. So, all of these modalities that we use to train are available to people as part of their therapy. And if in... lot of times it's going inside, it's insight process can feel kind of vague and obtuse, you know, cause we're trying to work, you know, with our own system and it’s highly covered up. So, being able to see someone else's parts acting or in a psychodrama helps us get to know our own parts in a more direct way. So, I'm very, very excited about the implications and applications to IFS and groups. We're also finding that the IFS therapists seem to be in high demand and a lot of the certified or level one, or level two psychotherapists are full. People can't get access to IFS therapists. So, the more that we get, especially people of color and people from marginalized populations find someone that comes from your same culture, you know, maybe really challenging. So, if we can have more groups available, then we can also serve a wider, you know, better populations with that

Tisha: I remember getting to do a demo in one of my IFS trainings. And it felt like for my exile, it was really important for her to be seen by the group. It was wounded in a group. You know, it seemed like a really important part of the healing process that might not have happened in the individual setting.

Chris: Yeah. I think, you know, I think it's Alfed Adler that said that all problems are relational problems, you know, so yeah, so we're hurt or injured in relationships. So, to heal in relationship, I think really goes to a much deeper healing and more potential. We also do find that these demos, as you're referring to go much more deeper and have much greater potential just from having other people hold that space with us and witness us in that space.

Aníbal: So, Chris, do you see IFS with groups to be more powerful even for the work with challenging protectors?

Chris: It could be. It depends. You know, it's hard to kind of say, I mean, I think we'd have to have some type of empirical study of outcomes around that, you know, but being able to kind of role play what we did, my colleague and I, Kevin Davis, a close friend of mine, we ran couples groups and we primarily ran couples groups with these protectors. So, we looked at these interactions between protectors of couples and the couples being able to see the exact same pattern played out by someone else, you know, gave them a deeper recognition of when they themselves get into those patterns. And so, it's really interesting that these couples found like this infinity of patterning of interacting between there, you know, the defend defend, or the defend attack or attack defend that other, this theme seems to be a universal dynamic, that cause couples trouble. So being able to see those protectors played out by another couple or actually being in that roleplay with them, seem to go and help them get a much bigger, quicker grasp of that. We tend to...this pattern, we tend to learn it and forget it, learn it and forget it and learn it, forget it mainly because of how triggered we get and maybe our significant relationships. But yeah, I think that groups have a lot of potential to really be able to see that protector and see it in action and then know it when it gets into action in our own life.

Tisha: Are there some trainings that you have coming down the pipeline that we can participate in?

Chris: Yeah. I think we're working on that. Sue Richmond, one of our trainers is going to do an online circle, talking about groups. We're talking about trying to have some plenary about it at IFS conference. We just got through doing intro last week on IFS groups. So, you know, I think there's a lot of interest. We had a lot of folks sign up for that intro. So, I think there's a lot of interest. I think the Cambridge health Alliance is running some research on groups, Nancy Sowell did a research study on groups. So, I think it's, you know, it's going to get more accessible for folks.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Chris, can you share a bit about your coming book that we would like to address with you soon on another talk?

Chris: Well, it's been a long process. I have pretty severe dyslexia, so writing is quite arduous for me. So, it's been quite a long process, so I have two more chapters to finish and then sort of need to get it, you know, to an editor. So, you know, I have lots of runaway firefighters that will do anything but write. You know, so it's kind of like ABD, anything but dissertations, so anything but writing. So, I have to create space. I have to work a little bit with my firefighters to not, you know, take me off to all the other interesting things that I would much rather do than write.

Tisha: So, when you are able to write, it sounds like we have a great book to look forward to.

Chris: I hope so, so I'm hoping it's beneficial. I think it's got some formats to it. It's got some facilitator skills looking at applications for different culture populations. So, I think it...I'm hoping that it has at least a groundwork that people can have, and then can creatively spin off of that. And, you know, all kinds of different ways of doing groups. There’re many ways of doing it and you know, and we're doing a group work with lawyers, trial lawyers. And so, there's some really amazing creative ways of helping them be more effective. So, there's a lot of applications for it.

Aníbal: Chris, thanks again, for this amazing time together, we have been learning so much from you and I’m confident many will learn from this conversation today. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and it's my hope, our hope that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Chris: Thanks a lot. Thanks for all your work, getting these really valuable resources out to the public.

Meditations and Ceremonies for Healing - with Monique Lang 42:36

Monique Lang, LCSW, author of Healing From Post-Traumatic Stress and coauthor of Journey to Wholeness: Healing From the Trauma of Rape, has more than 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of trauma. A psychotherapist in private practice since 1980, she has been staff counselor at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies since 1998. She also has been a student of meditation for the past 20 years.
In addition to providing psychotherapy to individuals and couples, she is a certified Reiki practitioner and leads yearly vision quests and wilderness retreats. She offers a variety of workshops, and teaches clinicians how to use a multi-modal approach in their practices.
Lang is on the executive committee of the Trauma Studies Program of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and teaches their group process module. In addition, she has served on the faculties of Columbia University School of Social Work, the State University of New York at Stony Brook’s Department of Child Welfare, and Mercy College Department of Psychology.
Now a New Yorker, Monique Lang was born in France, grew up in Central America, and has lived in many different states and countries. “Although moving around was difficult at the time,” she says, “it allowed me to experience different cultures, ethnic backgrounds, and spiritual orientations. This understanding is helpful in my work with my clients as it enables me to understand and put into context each person’s particular background and way of viewing the world.”
Today we will be discussing her latest book, Meditations and Ceremonies for Healing: Handbook for Personal Growth and Wellness, published in 2019.   To know more about Monique consulting or training and teaching activities please go to https://moniquelanglcsw.com

 

Transcription soon

All experiences welcome: IFS and non-ordinary states with Stephanie Mitchell 48:38

Stephanie Mitchell is a psychotherapist, trainer and group therapist . She specialises in working with complex trauma and experiences which often get labelled as 'mental illness'. Stephanie is interested in how healing and change occur in the human to human relationship, within spaces of safety and acceptance and outside the constructs of diagnostic labels.Stephanie's primary focus for all therapeutic work is on creating a safe space where all parts of a person are welcomed and valued, and the pace of therapeutic exploration is set by the client. Stephanie works from a deeply compassionate place that believes that all patterns of behaviour, thought or feeling come with important and valuable, hidden meanings, and that as the client and therapist work together to listen to the parts who hold these important and previously unknown meanings and offer them a space to be heard, witnessed and deeply understood, that deep change and inner transformation is stirred up. Stephanie’s initial training included 3 years of advanced studies in Transactional Analysis and she has since trained in Open Dialogue, Family Systems Therapy and Person Centred Therapy before moving over to working almost exclusively with Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS). Stephanie is trained to Level 3 in the IFS Model and has undertaken extensive supervision and personal work within the model.Believing that a therapist can only take a client as far as they themselves have travelled Stephanie has undertaken her own long journey of healing from significant childhood trauma over many years of psychotherapy and human loving.She states: “My healing work with an Internal Family Systems Therapy Practitioner has offered me a profoundly life changing experience - something that years of work with other therapy models has not offered me”. 

Stephanie is also a passionate advocate and activist for social and systems change towards non-pathologising and compassionate approaches to mental distress and is involved at national and international levels around mental health reform.

Here some references Stephanie asked us to share:
John Reed et al, (2014) The traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis revisited. Neuropsychiatry Journal
 
Giulia Pavon & Jeroen Vaes (2017) Bio-genetic vs. psycho-environmental conceptions of schizophrenia and their role in perceiving patients in human terms, Psychosis, 9:3, 245-253, DOI: 10.1080/17522439.2017.1311359
Bio-genetic vs. psycho-environmental conceptions of schizophrenia and their role in perceiving patients in human terms: Psychosis: Vol 9, No 3 (tandfonline.com)
 
Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians’ empathy
Matthew S. Lebowitz and Woo-kyoung Ahn
Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians’ empathy | PNAS
 
Book: *Toward a theory of schizophrenia (1956): Bateson, Jackson, Haley and Weakland
 
Double bind theory slide share link:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/5267472/
Andrew Moskowitz, 2015
 

Dreams Work and IFS with Heloisa Garman 29:04

We can find many theories about dreams. Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.”  Jung believed dreams were a gateway to the “collective unconscious”.  Indigenous cultures believe dreams are a way to communicate with spirits and other beings that do not live on this earth plane.  For neuroscientists dreams are mostly a way for the brain to integrate experiences and reconsolidate memory. Other cultures believe there is different types of dreams: teaching dreams, in which we are taught something useful in our waking life; prediction dreams that let us know ahead of time what will happen.

Heloisa Garman is a licensed clinical psychologist, educated at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and have been in private practice for over thirty years. Heloisa was trained in family therapy at the Juvenile Research Program at the University of Illinois. Also received training in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model . As a Brazilian American, she  specialized in cross-cultural psychology. Heloisa’s doctoral dissertation was on the impact of migration on the family structure of those coming from impoverished areas seeking work in the city. Her masters thesis took place in an Indian reservation in Brazil. Heloisa has extensive experience with families, couples and individuals experiencing grief, loss, depression and anxiety. Treated families with children who suffered severe early traumas, and conducted evaluations for the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Previously affiliated with the Family Institute at Northwestern University, taught and supervised family therapy at two major universities in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Heloisa utilize dream work and mindfulness training with clients,  published articles and presented workshops on dreams in conferences at the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD).

Today Heloisa walks us through the 4 steps she practices when applying IFS to Dream work.
Hope you enjoy the episode.

Full Transcription soon

The IFS Couples Therapy Skills Manual with Martha Sweezy 34:55

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are joined by Dr. Martha Sweezy.  Dr. Sweezy is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, a program consultant and supervisor at Cambridge Health Alliance, and the former assistant director and director of training for the dialectical behavior therapy program at the Cambridge Health Alliance. She is a co-author of multiple books, including Internal Family Systems Therapy; The IFS Skills Training Manual; and Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy.  She is also an author and the co-editor for Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy and Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensions. She has written articles on IFS for the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration and the American Journal of Psychotherapy. Most recently she has co-authored, along with Toni Herbine-Blank, the Internal Family Systems Couple Therapy Skills Manual: Healing Relationships with Intimacy from the Inside Out.  She has a therapy and consultation practice in Northampton, Massachusetts. 

INTRO/ LEXI: Today, on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are joined by Dr. Martha Sweezy. Dr. Sweezy is an assistant professor, part-time, at Harvard Medical School, a program consultant and supervisor at Cambridge Health Alliance, and the former assistant director and director of training for the dialectical behavior therapy program at the Cambridge Health Alliance.

She has co-authored several books on IFS, including:

1.    the Internal Family Systems Couple Therapy Skills Manual: Healing Relationships with Intimacy from the Inside Outwith Toni Herbine-Blank

2.    the 2nd Edition of the book Internal Family Systems Therapy with Richard Schwartz

3.    the IFS Skills Training Manual with Frank Anderson and Richard Schwartz

4.    the book Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy with Toni Herbine-Blank and Donna Kerpelman

Additionally, she co-authored and co-edited two chapter books on various applications of IFS with Ellen Ziskind:

a.    Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy

b.    Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensions

She has published articles on IFS in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration and the American Journal of Psychotherapy.

She has a therapy and consultation practice in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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The Development of a Therapist with Lou Cozolino 59:29

Dr. Lou Cozolino practices psychotherapy and consulting psychology in Beverly Hills, California. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA and an M.T.S. from Harvard University. He has been a professor at Pepperdine since 1986 and lectures around the world on psychotherapy, neuroscience, trauma, and attachment. 

With more than 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist and coach, Lou works with adults, adolescents and families as they face a wide variety of life’s challenges. 

Lou’s primary method as a therapist is one of connection, attunement, and interaction. Working primarily from a psychodynamic model of treatment, he also employs strategies and techniques from the other forms of therapy he has studied including CBT, family systems, and humanistic/existential.

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are welcoming Dr. Louis Cozolino. Dr. Cozolino has been a writer, professor, and practicing psychologist in Los Angeles since 1986. He is the Series Editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, and he has authored numerous books, including The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, The Pocket Guide to Neuroscience for Clinicians, Why Therapy Works and many more. Today we will be speaking with him about his latest book, The Development of a Therapist: Healing Others Healing Self, published in 2021.


Alexia Rothman: Louis, thank you so much for joining us today.

Louis Cozolino: My pleasure.

Anibal Henriques: Dr. Cozolino such an honor to sit with you. You have been an inspiration for many psychotherapists around the world, helping them to apply neuroscience in their clinical practices, even to become neuro fluent. You have been helping us to understand our social and executive brains, how they relate, and also how therapy can both positively affect the brain and be guided by brain functioning. Your dedication and attention to the training and career of psychotherapists is also admirable, showing so much care for both the profession and for the clients we care for.


Anibal Henriques: So again, thanks so much for all you have been doing an offering to the field of psychotherapy. Lou how do you differentiate your precious 2004 first book, The Making of a Therapist: A Practical Guide For The Inner Journey, and this new one, The Development of a Therapist: Healing Others, Healing Self ? Did you feel there was a need and good reasons for an update?

Louis Cozolino: Well, it's, let's see, it's not really an update. What it is, it's sort of a continuation of The Making of the Therapist, was a book that I wrote based on about 25 years of teaching on master's level and doctoral level students, the basics of psychotherapy. So that book really is what guided me in that in writing that book, was thinking about all the things I wish someone had told me when I was beginning to be a therapist. And also, I think that the core of that book is to give people permission to be confused and frightened and not know what they're doing because they don't know, none of us know what we're doing, when we start. We're sort of faking it until we make it, but also, it's a real, we really do feel, most of us anyway, we should feel a responsibility, first of all to do no harm. And second of all, to figure out some way we can help the people we're seeing, even if we aren't new and the feeling of being everyone has to start somewhere. And so that book really was sort of a, almost like a, I felt almost like I was, I wanted to sit behind the new therapist with my hand on their shoulder, trying to comfort them and soothe them and be there with them through that process. You know, a supervisor is very in their quality, their availability, their personalities, and many people aren't really lucky enough to get a good supervisor who, who cares for them as a person and also is very dedicated to their learning. So, my hope for that make for The Making of a Therapist was really to be supportive, to be getting therapist. And there were a lot of things in writing that book that I put sort of to the side, because I felt that they were deeper, more complex and not the types of issues that beginning therapist should occupy their minds with. And so, I thought, you know, after a year of practicing or so, after you feel confident and comfortable in the room, most of us after we get through that phase, realize again, that we don't know what we're doing. And so, then there's that question. Well, now what? Now we're working with people and were stuck with this one in one way and another client in another way. And so, what, what are the real, you know, what sorts of things can we remind ourselves over? Can we learn a new in order to make progress? When were, you know, when we're going forward? And so that's really what the impetus for the development of the therapist was as well as I wanted to inject a little bit of neuroscience that I think is really important. And I'm also the issue of, and it wasn't as much of an issue when I wrote the book about internet addiction. And now after the pandemic, we're all addicted to the internet. And so, the issue is that we're sort of exceptions in that articulated in this book are now sort of a rule for all of us because therapist and clients', everyone's addicted to, to where the internet and it's having an effect on all of our psyches on brains are, you know, social relationships. And so, I guess it was a very timely, although I wish I would have had a little bit more of a chance to write about the effects of the pandemic, but maybe that'll be another book.

Alexia Rothman: So, it seems that from what you're saying, and in reading the work as well the primary focus of this new book is on helping therapist to really deepen their understanding of how to use their minds, their brains, and their bodies to become more effective in their clinical work. And this brought to mind for me, the fact that unlike in some other professions where workers have physical tools or technologies to help them do their jobs for therapists, our own minds, our own brains, our own bodies truly are the instruments of our profession. So, your book seeks to help us make a deeper use of all that we are to be maximally effective with our clients. And I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit?

Louis Cozolino: No, I mean, I completely agree with you. I do think, having had, having spent some time with Carl Rogers many years ago, I was very impressed with, I mean, he really was the person who impressed upon me, how our own hearts and our spirits and our bodies, or the instrument of our work, what I've noticed over the decades, I think, as counseling and therapy have become a more and more deep professionalized, what you see is therapy, much of therapy, i would maybe even venture to guess the majority of therapy that I see is very formulaic and driven by workbooks and brief therapy models. And what I hear for my students, especially beginning students and even some very experienced ones is that they don't think of therapy as something you do with a client, they think of it as something you do to them. So, it’s sort of a reversion to the medical model and the hierarchical structure in a way from intersubjectivity and the interpersonal aspects of it. And so, in some of, you know, some days I feel like I'm, you know, sort of crying into the, into the darkness, with this where I am, but I've been very heartened to find the response really from all over the world of people holding on like they haven't in a sense been, I don't know, a capitalism hasn't sort of a completely absorbed their thinking about the conveyor belt notions of therapy. And so, I'm getting, I think a lot more interest now in Asia and in Europe, South America, just about everywhere in the world, I'm getting, you know, people contact me, and they're interested in, I just got a memo today of a person who translated Why Therapy Works, which is one of my books into Farsi. And so even in Iran, there is a, you know, there's an attempt to try to understand and work with these things and weave it into the culture. So, I feel more like a cultural warrior now and you know, sort of for, for the human connection than I am specifically for a psychotherapy.

Anibal Henriques: Beautiful. Lou in your clinical work, you say your primary methods as a therapist is one of connection, attunement and interaction. You working primarily from a psychodynamic model of treatment. And you also employ strategies and techniques from other forms of therapy you studied, including CBT, Family Systems and humanistic existential ones. How familiar are you with the IFS (Internal Family Systems) model or do you identify yourself or feel closer to any specific family of therapies or a particular model?

Louis Cozolino: Well, I mean, I guess if … it's really difficult because I really do feel like an alloy of all of these different works. I mean, I feel, I feel Rogerian in my body, in my connection, certainly sort of the, the theoretical richness of object relations therapy and intersubjectivity are also in front of mind and, you know, given my interest in neuroscience, in evolution, I'm thinking, I always think in terms of Family Systems, which are both external and internal, right? And I'm thinking about the multigenerational effects of, you know, shaping behavior and epigenetics, all of those things that a, you know, because for many clients their problems really can't be understood within themselves, within the organism, and they also can't even be understood within the generation that you're talking in that, that they're in. You have to think a, you know, go back to three, four, maybe more generations, because everyone needs to be placed into historical context. We have all been influenced by our culture and the struggles and the tragedies and triumphs of the people that we send from. And I think it's everywhere from the unit within us, from the molecular to the spiritual levels. And so, a lot of things go through my mind and I think that's how I stay so interested in doing therapy because my mind is a constant, it’s sort of a carnival of ideas and I'm always also trying to match the metaphors and the language of my clients because I think a narrative and storytelling are so important, it connects to the person's core, to their culture, to their fantasies and dreams. And so, yeah, you know, I think the thing that I, that I kind of sort of a push back against is anyone form of therapy that sold as a panacea.

Alexia Rothman: You had talked earlier about one of your aims for this new book was maybe to integrate a little bit of the neuroscience. And so, it seems like what we know is that for clients to be able to truly benefit from therapy, to really be able to learn and to experience change, it's important for therapists to be able to facilitate them reaching a less aroused, more regulated state in their nervous systems. And something I loved about your book was your discussion of the therapist role as an amygdala whisperer. So, I was wondering if you could help us understand what you mean by that concept and how therapist can learn to function well in that role.

Louis Cozolino: I guess it's all, it's all predicated on this, on the idea, and … it's all predicated on a sort of a neuroscientific apart conception, which is that we have at least three executive systems and the primitive executive system that’s centered in our amygdala actually has the ability to down-regulate and even inhibit our other executive systems or cortical, you know, problem solving, abstract reasoning system or in which, and also know that, which we use to navigate through space and also the system that's responsible for our sense of Self, our imagination and our ability to connect with other people. And so, for me, I think with the sort of rule one of therapy is to figure out how to calm someone's arousal. If the, in fact they are hyper aroused, so that the other executive systems in their brain can be active and engaged and they can be integrated. Okay. So, I think probably the reason why the psychotherapy outcome research over, I mean, I think over and over again, it shows that the key component is the relationship like with, with the therapist, a key component of change. And I have to believe that it has to do with the fact that a safe relationship is something that creates a state of mind and brain and the client that allows them to think, to reflect, to feel as fully as they can because their brain isn't being impaired with inhibition, you know, anxiety related inhibition.

Alexia Rothman: And I think what you're saying there, it brings to mind the way we work with protective parts and IFS Therapy. So, when we focus on those parts of the clients that can be associated with states of hyperarousal or hypoarousal, and we help those protectors be able to step back, the client then accesses that optimally aroused state we referred to that as Self. And then they can take full advantage of neuroplasticity for healing, for new learning in that state.

Louis Cozolino: Okay. So, for you, if you are using Self on the term, sort of the, with a capital S like they do, you know, in Buddhism… the Self requires, all of these different brain systems that are involved in or, you know, cognitive and emotional capacities as human beings. I think it's what Freud talked about, you know, I think that's the Ego strength is related to, from a dynamic perspective on. Freud talked about, you know, when he defined trauma, he said that it's a surpassing of the stimulus barrier and there wasn't much neuroscience back then, but you know, what I think that the translation of that is, is that, that the amygdala becomes so activated or our autonomic nervous system becomes so activated that these other systems that regulate, filter, modulate our reaction to things in the environment become inhibited to the point where it just washes over us and we're victimized by it. So what it got to do is …holds us. And there's no way internally for us to be able to process it in a way that allows us to regulate what we're experiencing. So, I think that's also, I think the core of the definition of trauma as well.

Alexia Rothman: So, for optimal functioning, then these individual systems have to be integrated and functioning in a harmonious balance.

Louis Cozolino: Yeah, Dan Siegel uses the word complexity. I think that's a good word, although I don't tend to use it because I don't like to invoke complexity theory, because then what I think that does for most people is it lets their intellectual defenses takeover, and they start asking questions about quantum mechanics and all of these things. So, I tend to focus just basically on the fact that all of these systems have to develop and communicate with each other. And, when we feel we're really ourselves and when we were as smart as we can be and doing as well as we can navigating problems in navigating space and time that works, what we're experiencing really is a modulation and appropriate modulation of our autonomic nervous system and the participation of the parietal and frontal system, as well as the default mode network.

Anibal Henriques: Lou, in this new book, you suggest five survival tips for therapist starting their careers. And I love them all. And I'm going to name them if I may. One, think of a training as a lifelong process; Two, seek out colleagues and supervisors dedicated to expanding their knowledge and skills; Three, continue to learn from experts, but avoid becoming a devotee; Four, find the best therapist you can and stay with them; and Five, be aware of smoking your own banana. What do you like to comment on any tip in particular?

Louis Cozolino: Well, it's funny smoking your own banana has become, it is a term… It was a term that, that I remember from my high school days, because the backend in the sixties with a hippie culture, we were looking for anything we could to smoke to get us high. And there was someone who actually started a rumor that smoking banana peels would be, would actually get people high. And of course, the interesting thing is if you smoked banana peels, you will get high or you will get something it's not clear what you get, but the placebo effect is so strong that people would get high from smoking bananas. And so, you know, the term is still in use, now, in fact, I hadn't thought about it for years, but I work with some people like Google and other tech firms. And so, it started to come back as a term that's being used again. And that just means that you kind of, that you sort of, and I say, you make up some fantasy that, that you think is true, and then you believe, so, smoking your own banana is believing the lies that you tell yourself. I mean, Donald Trump will be a good example of someone who smokes his own banana.

Anibal Henriques: Thank you.

Alexia Rothman: So, you talk about the fact that therapists need to be able to move the focus of their awareness back and forth. So vertically between their own minds and bodies and also horizontally from their own systems to that of their client throughout session. So, I was wondering if you could describe this process that you referred to a shuttling and how it's beneficial in therapy.

Louis Cozolino: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that are especially when we're, when are anxious, but I think most of us in the west think of our consciousness as an existing in our skulls, right? It's like somehow magically our brains admit this consciousness and it's only in our, in our, between our ears, but, you know, identity and consciousness really are imaginary processes. And so, what I found is very helpful, you know, from experiences and meditation and other, other sorts of self-help processes, different types of practices that I've been engaged and is that you really can move your consciousness from your, from your mind and think of it as moving down into your body, and as you do that, you are able to be more aware of your somatic state of often have your emotions are a variety of different things. And so, I encourage my students to, you know, to sort of relax enough, like we have a lot of my students do, and this might just be because they're students, is that they're so afraid of missing something. I think they want to pay attention to every word. So that's one thing. And the other thing is, they really feel like they've got to be smart. And so, while they're listening to every word, they have to somehow simultaneously come up with something very clever to say or make an interpretation. And so, they, in a sense, get stuck in their heads and therapy becomes a source of intellectual word game. Right? So, what I try to encourage them to do is to, to shuttle up and down. And in other words, to certainly be thinking and be speaking, with also taking a break from that and seeing how it feels and what kind of messages, you know. I often use the metaphor is I think of your body as a kind of a satellite dish and that there was this broad bandwidth of, of social information that's conscious and unconscious coming from your client, and you may not be aware that it even entered your body but go down and use what you are feeling as clues to something that you may be picking up from your client. You never know, you could have, you know, you might have indigestion and that might be you right, but so, you shuttle back and forth. And then you, you know, also to imagine, you know, what it would be like to be your client in sitting in the room and try to try to move your consciousness, of course, in imagination over to them and use whatever you feel or think, or impressions or associations use a mass potential hypothesis to, you know, to test with a client, to see whether you're picking up on anything that's about them and not you.

Alexia Rothman: That's beautiful, what you're suggesting, just getting out of our thinking lines in more in connection with our body, it allows us to really sense aspects of our client's unconscious processes. And then we're actually able to bring those up. Like I said, maybe it's about us, maybe it's about them, but we can explore that in a collaborative way.

Anibal Henriques: Lou you also say that the ability to be simultaneously thoughtful and emotional, to mix the poetry of human connection with a scientific mind is the essence of a youth psychotherapist. Can you say more on these?

Louis Cozolino: I mean, if I think of psychotherapy, psychotherapy is a relatively recent sort of professionalization of human connection, right? I think that what we're trying to do is we're striving for wisdom. And the difference between information and wisdom is information are facts and wisdom is information in a sense that is tailored to an individual to help them grow. So, you might call a good interpretation, might be wisdom, if it hits home and if it helps someone to expand their awareness. And this is something that's existed, I'm sure, you know, for tens of thousands of years in human communities and human tribal life. And I think that as we've become more professionalized, as we, you know. I see this in my students, worry, they're worried about the, there are the DSM diagnosis. They’re simultaneously worrying about ethics and morals and legal issues, and they don't want to get sued. And they're worried about, you know, a hundred other variables related to their what's going on with the client. And I think that many people lose, they… they no longer are a human being in the, in the relationship. They're kind of a human doing. They're doing things, they’re kind of like a clerk. And you see this now too with physicians, when my son's pediatrician, when we were going to him, he had his laptop out the whole time. And as you're talking to him, he's typing the entire time because he is, he has got to, he's got to record all this information, just because to cover his butt. The legal issues, right? And so, how does a child experience a doctor who was just typing, right? And if that's your experience with doctors, and I think, you know, most people before they ever come to a therapist, see lots of doctors. So, when they come in to see us very often, they want to just want to lay down and have us fix them to this sort of a passive model where you are, you’ve got the technical knowledge and you're just doing it to them. And so, you know, we're in a position then because of the lack of the appreciation of healing in Medicine, we're many of us are in the position of having to educate clients. So, this whole model of, you know, of collaborative of the journey of psychotherapy. And I think, you know, going back to the, to the basis of your question is that, you know, psychotherapy is not, is not a science. You know, we can, we can use science, but it's not really a science evidence-based treatment. The evidence, the evidence really is not good. People hold on to this notion of evidence as this as if the evidence matters, but having been, you know, at Harvard and UCLA for, you know, for 10 years and being inside of research groups all the time, I see that, you know, research groups find what they are looking for. And you can train clients in therapy to respond to certain measures that you keep giving them. And then of course they get better at taking your measures. And of course, if you don't look at response biases in all of those things, yeah, it looks like those are evidence-based treatments as opposed to treatments where no one's collecting that data. But I've got to say, I just, I just don't believe it. Right? And the problem is people get into the field who were more who really look like to me, they should be engineers. And they take that engineering that left hemisphere, doing it to the client and healing the client through words, or having them fill out forms and do exercises and homework. They take that much to seriously and they don't look at other evidence and they don't follow up very, very long after their treatment. And I think another thing is that they're looking, they're looking at someone's verbal responses to measures as opposed to their lived lives. And so, again, I guess as far as evidence-based treatment is concerned, I don't think I believe most of the evidence.

Alexia Rothman: I can't even tell you how deeply I appreciate everything that you just said. These are things that have been on my mind for literally decades now, in the way you just captured all of that speaks to so many concerns I've had. Thank you for laying that out that way. I also really appreciated in this newest book, you're a discussion of resistance. And part of what I appreciated is that I could really see from the way that you laid at the topic, that you have a deep appreciation for the fact that whatever seems like resistance now actually served survival at some point in the client's past and coming to understand what underlies the resistance is really essential to making progress in therapy. So, you said in the book, resistance isn't a hindrance to therapy, it is the heart of therapy. So, I was interested in hearing you talk a little bit about your views on resistance and how to understand it and work with it.

(27m 52s):
Louis Cozolino: All right. I think, you know, there are two pathways in my mind, to my perspective, the first was the, the rift between Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich and Reich was, you know, for the listeners who aren't aware of him, he was one of the four disciples and he wrote a book called Character Analysis. And the first 100 pages, 120 pages of that book, is probably one of the most influential pieces that I've ever read in my lifetime. And what, you know, what Freud… Freud had an idea of discovering, you know, thinking of the talking cure and trying to get to those traumas and those crises that someone experienced and doing everything he could to get to those things as quickly as he could, but what he didn't really articulate well, I think, was the fact that, the defenses for the vast majority of people are actually the aftereffects of defenses that were necessary earlier in life in order to survive. And so, I think what… Reich took a step in the direction of saying, okay, these defenses are a part of the character armor, they’re part of a personality and they exist, not only in there in their physiology and their musculature, their posture, their gestures, it also exists in their manner and their bearing and their attitude towards the therapist. Right? So, he really, I think moved Freud's notion in the direction of not only because, you know, rolfing and somatic therapy is really they owe  their origins to Reich. What also this notion of that, the real focus on transfer is in the analysis of transfers and that the transference is the embodiment of this sort of what, what I think the psychodynamic folks would  and say, you know, this is, this is really a part of attachment schema that attachment researchers don't look at, right? Is for some people intimacy and connection is associated with terror or is associated with, with hatred or with, with distance or, you know, all of those things. And so, I think, you know, that's a big piece of it. And another big piece of it is that if you study brain both evolution and development, what you see is not the vast majority of, you know, a sensory motor system develop a very early in life, way before we develop episodic memory for our lives. And so, we come into conscious awareness when we're five, seven, nine, however old we are having already learned all of these different things about the world, about the, the safety and danger of relationships, on the environment, of sociality and really the foundation of our identity. And I think we really saw that, you know, he really saw that. And then I think if you, if you fast forward a little bit to Alice Miller's object relations work in the 1960s and 70s, you see sort of a manifestation of that therapy in her view as kind of like, as an archeologist, or more sort of an anthropologists of the history of that year. And it is a partnership with your clients where you try to help them get back into touch with their perspective on not of their childhood from an adult, but like what it was like to be a child as a child, you know, and she talked about double amnesia. You know, the fact that many of us have to forget who we are as children. And then we have to forget that we've forgotten. So, the process of psychotherapy really is first knowing that there's something there to find or having as an intuition or an inkling about that. And then going through the process of discovering that little girl, a little boy, that we have to leave behind an order to survive. So, it's those concepts from multiple perspectives that inform that belief, set of beliefs of mine.

Alexia Rothman: Yeah, absolutely. And you also talked about how, if we do manage to work effectively with what we might call resistance or an IFS protection, that sometimes bringing those methods up into the conscious awareness of the clients might make the methods may be less effective. And so, we have to be prepared to sort of deal what comes up when they get back in touch with what it felt like to be that child, for example. Yeah, it was wonderful to see how you had an appreciation for resistance as adaptive as a form of protection and as what can happen when we're able to help the clients become aware of it. And it does start to step back.

Anibal Henriques: Lou you have coined the terms, social synapse and sociostasis. Those concepts are psychotherapists to understand how their work can change and help power struggling brains. Could you say more on how these theories and concepts can guide or inspire our work as therapist?

Louis Cozolino: Well, I think if, from studying… from studying, even just briefly, how neurons develop and grow and survive and if you look at the fact that there were no individual neurons, they just die, if they’re isolated. I think that having this concept of, of the fact that evolution has conserved this strategy for taking simple structures and forming more complex structures, and in our case, it would be the simple structures it would be us. And the complex structures would be our families, our relationships, our families, or communities. And that, even though, we are… communication with each other now, as human beings is … is not so much, how can I say, it's much, it's much less chemical and electrical, and it's more symbolic, it's more gestures, and you know, we developed these brain systems to process all of these different ways we communicate with each other. I think that this notion of the social synapse and sociostasis, which by the way, is a word I learned from one of my professors, I didn't make that up, one of my teachers, Hans Miller used to use that term, and he was a physiologist as well as a clinician, by the way. So, it's interesting, he bridged those things as well, but there's just this notion that when I'm, you know, when I'm interacting with, with YouTube, for example, what's happening in my brain is being affected by what you're saying, the expressions on your faces, your emotions, the interests that you have. That's having an active and biochemical effect, you know, a neuronal effect on me and vice versa, right? And so, we come together and we're creating this organism, which we're calling this tree, you know, a threesome that we have this morning. And I think that in the therapy session, when you think of getting connected with your client in that way, it makes, it makes me more aware of the fact that my posture, my gestures, the things I’m saying and not saying, are all coming to bear, there are all having an effect. And, you know, and I'm thinking too, it's like, there's this other track in my mind, there's a simultaneous track of, you know, what sorts of things, what memories, what emotions are being conjured from my own life, by what my clients are saying? And so, there's another track of awareness, which is, well, how much of my reaction to my client is a function of my history and how much of it is a function of their experience and where I need to be now. So, I think what it does is, it keeps reminding me that I'm connected, but that the connection has so much information and I can never really be a hundred percent sure that what I'm thinking or feeling has to do with my client. And so, everything is a hypothesis. And when I do demonstrations in front of my students, they are always surprised as to how uncertain I appear, because they imagined that someone whose been doing therapy as long as I have, must know exactly what I'm doing, I must be able to read my client's minds. And so, I just said, you know, we don't know, it's just, that's not what's happening. I mean, I think I've gotten better, I probably have a higher hit rate than you will because I had been doing it for 30 or 40 years, or you're just starting. Right? But over time, you're hit where it will increase as long as you learn to keep quiet and listen. I mean, I certainly know, I certainly know therapist that are my age, who don't seem to be able to listen to anyone or understand anything going on around them. They might as well be politicians. And so, but that usually doesn't happen, but I'm just saying, you know, I can't remember who said this, but maybe was probably like Socrates or someone like that. They're there saying, you know, age and wisdom often come together. What sometimes age shows up all by itself.

Alexia Rothman: I saw that quote in your book, I loved it. I've used it like 20 times since reading it…

Louis Cozolino: Its yours. If you bought the book you own the quote now.

Alexia Rothman: Yes, it's on page 17 or something, but, and you know what you were just saying, brought in to mind another idea that you talked about in your book, which is it's estimated that 90% of the brain is involved with processing information. That's already contained within the brain such that, you know, only about 10% of our experience involves what's coming from the outside. So, you were just speaking to all of that right now. And it made me curious about how specifically you work with the idea transference and countertransference with your supervisees.

Louis Cozolino: Well, I find that I can't go very far with it because the training, the training is not that good. In other words, they… students are no longer required to be in their own therapy. And so, you know, again, you've get, you probably get three-quarters of the student's in a class and maybe more who haven't been in their own therapy. So even the, even teaching the concept of transference and countertransference, it's easier for them to understand countertransference because it's something that the patient is doing, but the fact that they're, who they are and their being and their awareness distorts, what they're hearing from the world, it's kind of like trying to teach people like, it's like the, one of the problems in the black lives matter movement is like trying to teach white people that they're privileged because they don't feel privileged. Right? And they don't experience the contrast between how they live their lives in how people who are targeted all the time for being black lived their lives. And so, it's similar, I think in some way, to try and to teach students about countertransference, it's almost like an assault or an affront to them that they're misunderstanding something or not getting it. And also, I think another piece of it is that too, the degree to which we're distorting, what we're hearing to, the more severe distortions are tied to our own pain in our own survival, right? Like for me, when I started doing therapy, I was fortunate to have really good supervision and sort of hour-to-hour supervision. Every hour I was seeing the client, I had someone watching me or listening to a tape and  can't imagine that happens much anywhere anymore, you know, but … the initial feedback back I got was you're, why are you joking so much with your clients? It seems like when they get, when they are going towards some negative feeling, you know, you're joking, you're trying to distract them from it. And that was very hard. That felt like a criticism to me. I know that I'm a good therapist, even though I didn't know what I was doing, right? And the problem was, is in order for me to see the fact that I was trying to cheer them up, what was the fact that I had a lot of trauma related to my mother's depression and I spent my childhood trying to cheer her up. And so, it wasn't just learning sort of a fact. It really was a part of me having to face something that was very painful for me. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's a, it’s so difficult to work with students who haven't had any experience as clients, because you really can't do that work in a group in a classroom, you know, and expect, expect to make progress. You know, it's a lot easier to work with senior therapist who have already gone through that who have had 20 years of trial and error and failure, to where are they going to be? Oh, that's right. I am, I am a jerk. That's right. And now I know, and I can accept it. So, when you're having the conversation about the fact that we're all jerks, they're not defensive they are more curious. I missed that way, that I was a jerk tell how, you know, tell me.

Anibal Henriques: Lou, in your book, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, you synthesize the field of psychotherapy with findings, from Neurology, Neuroscience and Neurochemistry to provide a model for the underlying mechanisms of action in the therapeutic process. You describe four key principles for enhancing neuroplasticity in the human brain and mind the complex secure relationships allow to a moderate level of physiological arousal, a balance of emotional and cognitive processing and the construction of coherent narratives about the self-relationships in the world. This is a beautiful map and metatheory for any kind of psychotherapy journey, I would say. Can you elaborate on the last one, the construction of coherent narratives about the Self, why this one is also so important?

Louis Cozolino: It's based again on a neuroscientific and evolutionary belief in that is that our, brains, our social brains, that contemporary human brain co-evolved with narratives and the, and that narratives actually serve a neurological function, which is to integrate physicality. Well, I should say integrate space-time, the experience of space-time, our emotions, and our abstract reasoning. So, as we, just to put a little more meat on that bone, as our brain became more and more complex, and you had a user of all elaborately complex systems related to all of these different specialty areas. The role of keeping them integrated became a bigger and a bigger challenge. Right? And so, I think one of the, one of the mechanisms that evolution was able to, to leverage was sociality and storytelling. Because if you look at a story, right, it was a narrative is a, it's a, it combines, it combines space with time. It has a beginning, middle and end ramp. It combines thinking with feeling, and it has some social relevance, like other people can relate to what we're saying. And so, with that, those things, it's not really a narrative. It's usually liked some boring story our uncles telling us that it has no point, right? What the narratives reflect, I think the primary needs of our brains to have a, an intersection between all of these different structures or the structures that are necessary to create a coherent narrative. We have to have, we have to use our parietal and frontal areas in order to create a sequencing in time and space. So, we paint a picture of them will tell him the story. Stories without emotions don't really matter to people. And so, we have it, it forces us to integrate and to communicate with our left and right hemispheres to mix, you know, these are concepts along with our feelings. It activates our bodies, when we're talking, especially Italians, we can't talk if we can't move our hands. And so, we have gestures as part of that. So, my suspicion is that the existence of narratives is one of the things that's allowed our brains to develop the way they have. And if you take this people's stories away, you strip them of their culture. And in a sense, they, and in that sense of identity and the sense that are lost, and there've been many, many authors and philosophers, and the people who have talked about this related to, you know, cultural appropriation or, or imperialism, where you go in and you take us a culture story away, and a very easy to tame them because they have no organization or direction. Right? And so, that's really why I think the narratives are so important. Now, having said that there are situations like with children who are, who are pre-verbal, or maybe not particularly verbal, the narratives don't necessarily have to be in words. They can also be symbolically played out in stories and sand trays and the drawings and all sorts of other things, but human beings really have evolved to use words for the most part. And so again, I think the reason why our brains are, are so complex is because we have stories. And I think the reason why we're so vulnerable to dissociation whenever we're, we, we have a higher sustained level of stress, is that we lose integration between these different networks, our experience becomes fragmented along with our narratives, and we don't have the narrative then to serve as a, sort of a, an integrating process and also kind of a map to go forward. And, and I think, you know, Mary Main in her work with a, you know, what the adult attachment interview, really just beautifully when she looked in and she didn't analyze the content, she analyzed the coherence of the narrative and creating a coherent narrative reflects on brain functioning on the executive functioning and on executive functioning integration. So, her work is just brilliant.

Alexia Rothman: Speaking of executive functioning and executive functioning integration. I really enjoyed what we were talking about earlier today about that. And in your book to how you talk about, despite the fact that there's this bias in western psychology towards understanding executive functioning, as a purely cognitive top-down function, it is actually a very intertwined with emotion with self-awareness and empathy. So emotional functioning really plays just as large a role in executive functioning as cognitive abilities do. And I know you mentioned earlier that you included a small section, hopefully, maybe another book soon, but a small section in this book on how the development and functioning of the three executive systems that you talked about earlier could be negatively impacted by internet over use or addiction. I didn't know if you wanted to say, this is a little bit about that here.

Louis Cozolino: Yeah. I think the, you know, the development and integration of the three executive systems depends, I mean, our brains are social, that's how they've evolved. And the… in developing the narratives, you have to have the right, the emotional regulatory functions going, and it's much more difficult, I think, especially for younger people to gain that kind of socio static regulation on the internet. And I think what I've learned, I mean, sort of like this last year of being forced to be on the internet for teaching, for therapy, for all sorts of things, I’ve realized how important it is for me to be able to really connect and focus and almost like dive into the eyes on the face of the person that I'm with, I'm interacting with to get that sense of an intimate connection. What I'm seeing from my… I first, sort of like, was alerted to this with a client of mine who was a, I think he was a 15 year old high school student. And, and he came in, he said, you know, I think I've got, I, I either have attention deficit disorder or I'm psychotic, or I have some brain damage. And I said, well, what makes you think of that? And he said, well, my teacher gives me an assignment that she says is an hour assignment, but it takes me eight or nine hours to do it. And so, I asked him, well, you know, show me, you know, bring your computer next time and bring your assignment and let me just sit next to you, right doing it and what would he, and I should do it exactly the way you do it at home. And what he showed me was that he has about five or six windows open while he's doing his homework, he's returning text, he's watching the video, he is playing a video game, scanning for information, and I looked at him, I said, well, I don't think I have brain damage and it will take me nine hours to do that assignment as well. And so, I think that along with the internet, the Internet's a tool. The problem is that the, you know, the social engineers that construct them, drive the internet, don't want it to be a tool. They want it to be our whole lives because every time we click or a swipe or do something, the cash register rings, you know, from one of these companies and they compete with each other, right? For our attention, and they compete with sleep for our attention, and they compete with face-to-face relationships for our attention. And they're very clever in, there are lots of psychologist, there are lots of social engineers, they call themselves in Silicon Valley that, that focus on these things. And so, in a sense, we've been kind of taken over, you know, even the people that haven't been taken over by QAnon have been taken over by Google and Facebook and TikTok and everything else. And so, I think, you know, it's… we're not going to get rid of these things, these things are here to stay, but I think we're kind of, we're not yet aware of how powerfully they're impacting us. We're noticing now that the uptick in anxiety and depression and suicidality in younger and younger people, we know, if you have a maybe someday, if there is a mass shooting every day of the year, people will think, maybe there's something wrong with us, as opposed to just habituating to it. There are lots of, you know… I don't know how long it takes for people to wake up to it, but hopefully that'll happen soon.

Anibal Henriques: Lou in your book Why Therapy Works?, you propose the theory of social status schema that relates to shame, so present in our lives and clinical work. Could you please tell us how this theory can help us psychotherapists?

Louis Cozolino: Well, I think the, you know, the… the thumbnail version of it is that, before we had language and organized thinking about how we interacted with each other, evolutions challenge with, with all the critters, but especially social animals, like, you know, elephants, dolphins, human beings, how do you… how do you get when you bring individual organisms together to form groups, then you have another layer of evolutionary selection. There is a just individual selection, there's a group selection, right? And so, the question is which group is going to survive? And probably over time would happen, this is my evolutionary fantasy, you know, this is… evolution is like a roar shock. So, we have to kind of come up with theories that make sense and see, and, and test them if we can. But I think what happened in evolution is that one of the ways in which mammals were organized were through social status hierarchies, right? And so, in elephants, you have the oldest female being the alpha and her existence and her interactions serve socio status purposes with the biochemistry of all the members in the group, and it's the same thing I think with the, with primates, if you look at all primate groups, they have different manifestations of this. But all primate groups have alphas, betas, omegas, is just the way things are organized. So, I think what we have is this… into our deep history, is this hierarchical organization based on social status as a way to organize groups. And there's plenty of plenty of evidence that this is still going on in humans, right? The problem though, with, with so many of these things that have been conserved in evolution is that with the development of a very large mind, or a very large brain and self-identity and imagination, these things get manifested in ways that were never intended to happen early on. You know, when we were, when we were chimps and primates and bonobos. And so now not only do we have a physical hierarchy, but now we have an, like a, a Self… a self-identity hierarchy. So, most of us spend time worrying whether we are thin enough, whether we look good enough, whether we fit in, on whether we've got the right clothes, you know, all like comparing ourselves with the neighbors, especially acutely in high school and with young kids. And so, shame is kind of a manifestation, and I'm not talking about shame, appropriate social shame for doing something bad to someone, I’m talking about shame about who and what we are. And this is a kind of a holdover from our evolution. It's like our tailbone, it's a vestigial organ. So, I think one of the ways that… one of the ways I think is helpful and the way I've used it is educating my client's and the people that I work with and all different walks of life to say that shame about yourself really is not about you. It's a historical artifact based on how we use to organize society. And so, you've got to begin in a sense, exercising and, and, you know, like freeing yourself of those particular concepts. They're not going to go away because we are hardwired to believe those things, but you have to realize they're not true. So, it's like any, it's like a, it's like a delusion. You have to figure out how to say, okay, this solution keeps popping up. I have to figure out ways to counterbalance it, but not worry, you know, not worry about the 10,000 things that the Kardashians may want us to worry about so that we look more like them.

Anibal Henriques: Thank you.

Alexia Rothman: Lou, I noticed that you and I actually attended the same doctoral program in clinical psychology at UCLA, and just reading your work, I was reflecting that while I was there seeing my first clients, I was completely convinced that all I had to offer was curiosity and compassion in my own humanity and that what would actually make me a truly effective clinician was learning more tools and techniques and theories, and it's funny that, you know, 23 years now, after starting that program, I'm back to where I started, and that I've learned that when I'm actually at my most effective, I'm deeply attuned to my own system, to my client's system. And I just felt your work really spoke to this in so many different ways, including in giving us the neuroscientific perspective on it. There are commonalities across modalities that various techniques and theories can absolutely be helpful, but that at core, we're going to be attuned, integrated and connected both internally with our systems and externally with our clients’ systems is really what helps us be maximally effective. So, I just want to thank you for all your brilliant work really. That has helped me so much over so many years and others as well.

Louis Cozolino: You’re very welcome and thank you for saying that. I had to survive UCLA more than enjoy it. And so, I had G.I. symptoms whenever I would drive up Westwood boulevard towards the campus for about five years after I would start getting my stomach would start rumbling and I have to make sure I had some tums close by.

Alexia Rothman: It's a super, super intense program. I was lucky, my sister was there with me. We were probably the only siblings that ever attended that program. She's a neuropsychologist. She was at the NPI.

Anibal Henriques: What's coming for you Lou for the coming months and times? What are your future projects?

Louis Cozolino: Let's see… no future projects right now, I’m gonna read novels for a while and spend time at the beach. I'm going to see, and maybe that will evolve into retirement. I don't know. I was going to write a book on trauma and I did the proposal and it got accepted, and then I started thinking about it, I'm not sure I'm going to do that. I think I like just to relax for a while. We'll see what happens.

Anibal Henriques: Thank you so much for your time and for having us and for such a lovely and inspiring conversation, wishing you all the best for the coming times.

Louis Cozolino: Well, thanks so much for having me guys. This was fun. I hope it was helpful to your listeners.

Alexia Rothman: Thank you so much.

Louis Cozolino: Thanks so much. Good to meet both of you.

 

Experiential Psychotherapies and Memory Reconsolidation with Niall Geoghegan 35:47

Dr. Geoghegan is a Clinical Psychologist and Certified Advanced Practitioner of Coherence Therapy.   He collaborated closely with Bruce Ecker on creating the Coherence Psychology Institute’s Training and Certification Program prior to 2015.  He was a contributing author to the groundbreaking book “Unlocking the Emotional Brain” on Coherence Therapy and Memory Reconsolidation.  In recent years Dr. Geoghegan has headed the development of the Experiential Psychotherapy Institute.  Its mission is to educate practitioners on the theory and techniques of a whole family of related experiential therapies. 
To visit the Experiential Psychotherapy Institute please go to https://www.experiential-psychotherapies.com

Transcending Relational Trauma - Frank Anderson’s New Book 00:00

Frank Anderson began his professional journey as a chemistry major at the University of Illinois in the pre-pharmacy program. He quickly developed a fascination with the workings of the human body and switched into a pre-medicine program. He happily entered Rush University Medical College, initially wanting to become a pediatrician due to his love of children, but switched into psychiatry after a close family member developed significant mental health symptoms. He was deeply touched by this experience and also keenly aware of the impact it had on others. During his residency program in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, he noticed that many of the clients struggling with major mental illness had also experienced significant trauma in their lives.

The pain he witnessed in others activated something deep within himself and compelled him to enter into therapy, which quickly connected him to his own trauma history. Becoming a psychiatrist at the Trauma Center in Boston under the direction of Bessel van der Kolk was a natural fit for him, where he learned more about trauma while simultaneously continuing his quest of helping others heal. He was fortunate enough to meet Dick Schwartz at a conference during this time, and his career focus instantly came into full alignment as he was able to integrate his knowledge of neuroscience and trauma treatment with Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.

Dr. Anderson is the former chair and executive director of the Foundation for Self Leadership, an organization focusing on IFS research and the expansion of the IFS model beyond psychotherapy. He authored the chapter “Who’s Taking What? Connecting Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Internal Family Systems for Trauma” and coauthored the chapter “What IFS Brings to the Treatment of Trauma.” He also coauthored the book Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual.

He is a lead trainer and program consultant for the IFS Institute, is an advisor to the International Association of Trauma Professionals (IATP), and maintains a private practice. He is passionate about teaching and enjoys providing psychotherapy consultations, as well as teaching IFS-related workshops throughout the world. To learn more, please go towww.FrankAndersonMD.com.

Transcription

Healing Ancestral Lineages with Daniel Foor 55:05

Daniel is a teacher and practitioner of practical animism who specializes in ancestral and family healing and in helping folks learn to relate well with the rest of life. His recent ancestors are settler-colonialists to Pennsylvania and Ohio from England, Germany, and Ireland. He is a doctor of psychology, marriage and family therapist, amateur naturalist, life-long student of earth-honoring traditions, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Since 2005 Daniel has guided ancestor-focused trainings, community rituals, and personal sessions throughout North America. Training as a therapist, living in other cultures, and immersion in different lineages of ritual all inform his kind and non-dogmatic approach to ancestor and earth reverence. He lives with his wife and daughter in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. For more information on Daniel's trainings to come please visit his website here

 

 

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are welcoming. Dr. Daniel Foor. Dr. Foor is a teacher and practitioner of practical animism who specializes in ancestral and family healing and in helping people learn to relate well with the rest of life. He is a Doctor of Psychology, marriage and family therapist, amateur naturalist, lifelong student of earth honoring traditions and the author of Ancestral Medicine Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Since 2005, he has guided ancestor focused trainings, community rituals, and personal sessions throughout North America. His recent ancestors are settler colonialists to Pennsylvania and Ohio from England, Germany, and Ireland. He lives with his wife and daughters in the blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, traditional Homeland of Cherokee peoples.

 

Lexi Rothman: Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today.

 

Daniel Foor: It's great to be here. Thank you.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Daniel, thank you so much for having us. Your book is such a nice challenge to our traditional Eurocentric, positivist and empiricist models of mind used to disconnect from everything, not so real as the visible and touchable present or our physical bodies and their needs. So, many congratulations for putting up such as a spiritual and epistemological challenge and solution in such difficult times as we are living now globally. How do you find your book and its spiritual suggestions are being welcomed by the public?

 

Daniel: Good, I think. I'm busy. There's a lot of interest in the Ancestral Healing work. And I think there are a lot of factors to that. I think a big one is that folks who have, for whatever reasons, ended up down lineage from cultural disconnection or a disconnection from frameworks that situate humans in a larger web of kinship with the ancestors, the plants, the animals, the land, the spirits, the deities, when we're born into a condition like that, where we don't have a framework for those other kinds of relationships, I think it's a natural instinct to want to come back into connection, especially when we observe that some others are enjoying those relationships. And we see that ecologically and culturally, a lot of the ways that we're moving in the world, aren't working that well. And it is natural also to wonder, how did things get off track? What, in my own Ancestral Lineages lead to this severing or break from a more relational way of moving in the world into a more reductionistic way. And in that sense, there is a lot of interest in reclaiming our ability to relate with the ancestors and with which, when I'm speaking to them, I mean fairly specifically the human dead and the ones who were previously incarnate, but who are not right now or the extended body or a consciousness of our species as it exists in the present. So, the souls or the spirits, or the consciousness of the larger species of which we're embedded, which is one, it's not the only entry point, but it's one great entry point to come back into relationship with the rest of life. And there is a lot of folks who are already doing that, who weren't born into it, better have learned it and are reclaiming that, nonetheless. And there is a much larger demographic of people who are really curiously fetishizing that outside the window of the restaurant, they're looking in and they're like, that looks interesting. I think I want that. I intellectually like it, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to officially openly participate in it. But I see a lot of people walking in and out of the restaurant and I'm hungry and I'm not sure what to do. Yeah.

 

Lexi: Well, given that the majority of our listeners are therapists, and you're a Doctor of Psychology as well as a marriage and family therapist, would you share your view on how taking an animist approach to the understanding of an alleviation of human suffering would differ from the approach that has been taken by traditional largely Eurocentric models of psychology?

 

Daniel: Sure. I think for one, there's two differently, legitimate ways to use the word psychology. One is to refer to the field per se, that grows out of a Eurocentric background, but it's not inherently limited to that forever. And is increasingly diversifying in having to confront international realities and trying to articulate their understandings that are not inherently Eurocentric, et cetera. And then there's the more general use which must recognize the Eurocentric Psychology is but one regional psychology and that there are traditional African psychologies and Aboriginal psychologies and Chinese psychologies and indigenous Indian cosmologies and psychologies. And so, if we use it in, which is ultimately a more humble use of the word psychology, and say there are already many different psychologies we can be curious, what are the features of Eurocentric psychology when placed alongside or in a collegial conversation with these other often older pre-existing psychologies, which continue to change and be dynamic in their own right. And when we do that, we notice that personhood, which is where we think of relational intimacy...If I say to your listeners, who are your most important relationships, the most people tend to reach for other living humans, or maybe humans who have passed in some way, but there's not an automatic assumption that that includes mountains, spirits, the dead, certain deities, et cetera. Yet, for most of the earth and most of human history, the way that humans conceptualize their own existence is in a relational web or a network of others that are not limited to just other living humans. So, we include the ones I mentioned, the dead and et cetera. And, in so far as psychology has interested in sort of our inner life, but also the psychodynamics or the, just the dynamics between us and others, the relational field that we live in. Those mountains have their own psychology. Rivers and ancestors and deities have their own psychology. And there are different, the interesting psychodynamics between humans and the plants and the animals, spirits, et cetera. And so, in that way, Euro, euro American, let's say, you know, white people, relatively recent psychology has created and unconsciously replicated anthropocentric, a human centric, a human supremacist assumption that only humans have full personhood. And that reinforces loneliness and isolation for one. And the correct of the antidote is to say that psychology at its essence is not limited to humans, that the birds and the trees and the stones have their own psychology that is in conversation with us.

 

Lexi: So, the traditional, maybe Eurocentric models, aren't even taking into account that perhaps there are influences on our suffering or even help for our healing to come from the other than humans or the land.

 

Daniel: Oh, for sure. And so, in that way, it to say it in a generous way, the model of reality is fundamentally incomplete. What is good about psychology and the psychology I trained in a marriage and family therapy, even progressive models like IFS, Psychosynthesis, voice dialogue, parts models. There is a tremendously important wisdom about how living humans relate with other living humans and with themselves that's critically important. And it's just incomplete. And what's interesting about it as the insights that come from that depth inquiry often apply to the dynamics between humans and other than humans when I, or other than incarnate humans. When I guide people through ancestral reconnection with their own ancestors, if someone has a lot of really insecure signs of codependent, “Am I okay? Are you okay?” Like anxious underlying energy, they'll tend to bring that same baseline way of relating to their relationship with their ancient ancestors or with the land or whatever. And so that, you know, it's a exporting of our suffering to other meaningful relationships, but it also means that there are new opportunities for having an emotionally corrective experience or a different kind of thing happen in a different kind of attachment or secure bond that may not easily be possible with other living humans.

 

Lexi: That's really interesting what you just said, because several times over the course of starting to get familiar with your work, I feel like my eyes have been open to something that I was unaware of, and it just dawned on me that I don't think I have considered that possibility that we carry some of the ways that we relate to other humans, to the ways that we relate to the land or to our ancestors. I'm feeling like that's a new piece for me

 

Daniel: In English, the language that I've encountered. And I, there's a debt of gratitude to Graham Harvey, who was a British pagan scholar. And, then the people he in turn has learned from like Irvin Hollowell and Ojibwe people, but the is the language of personhood, and it might be different in Portuguese or Russian or any other language trying to articulate animism in a common way. But in English, at least, we tend to contrast people and objects. And when I say interpersonal relationships, I'm saying that not all people are human. And so, if you're relating with an ancient Greek goddess or with the plants that grow in your home, those are plant people, they are deity people. And in that way, there are fraught relationships. So, the ones that can include projection and all kinds of, you know, tangled up things, but they can also include relational intimacy that translates into our everyday life and into other relationships

 

Lexi: On this relational piece, I had noticed in studying your work that very interesting parallel between IFS therapy and your description of both ancestor work and animism in the sense that they're all highly relational, which is all what you're talking about now. You were saying that, you know, essentially what matters is not just thinking about the trees, for example, in IFS thinking about the parts of our internal systems, but actually coming into direct connection in relationships with them, asking questions, actually waiting to hear the answer from them instead of imposing our views and these respectful intimate connections build trust and facilitate healing. So, I appreciate you having spoken to the idea of the relational nature of the work that you do.

 

Daniel: There's no center of an ecosystem and there's no fundamental center to us, as I see it. We could say I'm coming into relationships with these parts of me. But what you're also saying is the I, that speaking has hijacked the center in that moment, where is positioning itself as the normative objective Self, whereas from the perspective of every other Self it's also the center. And so, in that way, we're asked in honest therapy or animist ethics to have ability to shift perspectives and to ideally empathically understand the perspective of many different voices or community members. So, yeah.

 

Aníbal: Daniel, for didactic reasons, can you tell us what is this ancestor reverence that your book and your work is trying to repair and also what is ancestral connection and ancestral healing?

 

Daniel: Yeah, of course. So, many, but not all cultures on earth give some consideration to the ongoing relationship between the living and the dead and of those who do in some form or another, which is most cultures, there are a lot of common elements. And the common elements that I have observed that I hold as cross-cultural enough to build a methodology upon are there are five, one, is that something continues after the death of the body or some things plural. There is some of that consciousness is not only the physical body and that the dead are not all equally well or healed in the spirit. Just being, not incarnate, doesn't make you wise and kind and loving. It just means you're not incarnate anymore. So, in that way, the condition of the dead reflects that of the living. Some living folks are quite troubled, and others are quite loving and integrated, and the dead can change. So, even if they're not at peace that can shift just like with the living and we can communicate with them, that can be solicited, intentional communication, or it could be a spontaneous communication that they initiate through dreams, or you might be a devout atheist and suddenly you have like dead people communicating to you, which is terribly inconvenient and ego-dystonic and unpleasant for your worldview. And so, you have to figure out what to do with it. You can push it away or try to make sense of it. But communication is normal between the living and the dead. It happens. And then, inside inherently helpful any more than communication between the living. And then finally, the level of impact between us and the ancestors is really substantial. And we can bring that conscious, and in that way, work with it, and it's not inherently helpful or harmful. And it's, as I say it, at least it's not optional, it's structural. And just because it's not conscious, again, doesn't mean it's harmful. Some people enjoy a lot of blessing and support in their life from the ancestors. They don't frame it in that way and that's fine. Their life just is working. And so those are some underlying principles, but then in practice, I try to keep the methodology or the how to go about it, pretty sparse so that people can find their own style within that. But one principle when focusing on healing work with blood lineage ancestors, which is a much more narrow focus within the larger terrain of relating between the living in the dead. When we go with that focus, which is a lot of what I'm teaching is the lineage-based healing work with blood lineage ancestors. One of the core principles is that we call on those who are already healed and well and whole in spirit and we ask them to bring about the healing. So, I'm not in any instance asking others, nor am I personally seeking to relate directly with those among the dead who are still troubled and those who are still working things through. We are asking the elders of the lineage, those who are already in a vibrant, loving condition, even if it means they're much older before remembered names and before what we associate with our recent ancestors, we ask those ones as a collective force to step in and shift things and heal them up.

 

Lexi: I love the idea of that collective aspect to healing. Sometimes we spend so much time as individuals efforting so hard on a personal level to try to make big changes and healing in relationship and connection.

 

Daniel: It's true. The way I've worked and encourage people to work in realms of ritual are just coming back into relationship is not through primarily through personal effort, but through making a connection with the powers that will bring the healing or the quality that are needed. Yeah.

 

Lexi: And there is a parallel there, I think to IFS for so many times, we have hardworking manager, parts of us that are trying to figure things out, solve things, make things work. And when those parts are able to step back and open space, it seems that something much greater happens and...

 

Daniel:  Yeah, like that.

 

Lexi: There are parallels here. And how might, how have you seen that, working in a healing way, with those in our blood and family lineages who are no longer incarnate, how can that help us? How can that help our clients?

 

Daniel: Well, there are layers to that. On a most immediate level, if the dead who are troubled are a source of interference or an intrusive problematic energy in our lives, then helping them to get the peace that they need to kind of bring immediate relief to anything from a physical ailment, to a mental, emotional distress, to a misfortune in your life. So, if the dead who are troubled are up in your space, it's functionally anywhere from a deep possession to energetic clearing or a lifting of a cloud of turbulence around your space. Beyond that, having healing with the ancestors tends to bring more clarity about life purpose and our gifts. We see that a lot of the challenges, but also blessings that were down lineages from our connected to our destiny and our path. So, we can get more clear about what we're here to do, the ability to actually carry that out, the guidance, the protection, the usable energy in backing can be increased by relating with them. A sense of belonging can be enhanced. A lot of folks who don't have a real sense of rooting and anchoring here on the earth in a specific way that respects their cultural origins and all of the complexities of that. So, it was good for a sense of belonging. When we're born into systems of oppression in one way or another, whether we're down lineage for more of the trouble or more of the enacting of trouble, being identified with and in relationship with blood lineage ancestors positions us to participate more effectively in the repairs, as we can say, yeah, I understand I’m part of this group, there is a obligation to participate and some kind of structural change and repair because of that. So, belonging comes with responsibilities, and with that there's a chipping away at the extreme individualism that a lot of people, at least in the United States, and I think that applies in other places, are conditioned into. It’s isolating, it's confusing, it's psychologically unhealthy and relating with the ancestors is a corrective for that. Yeah.

 

Aníbal: Daniel, you just said you use the term ancestor more narrowly to refer to those souls who are well in spirit. In that usage ancestor is a kind of compliment. It refers to an inherited or acquired status and contrasts with ghosts, the trouble dead, or those who are not yet ancestors. So how do we differentiate between an ancestor and a ghost?

 

Daniel: Yeah, that’s a great question. And it's, I can respond to, and it's important in responding that when we're describing someone in status of not yet ancestor, which in English the word ghost can capture that valence. It can have an edge of judgmentalness to it, and it's not the spirit of it. So, the most generous way that I know to refer to the dead who have not yet arrived at the status of ancestor is just the, not yet ancestors, as it holds out the vision of them arriving there. But think of the death of the body as a kind of rite of passage that doesn't really complete until the one who has passed has been received into or accepted by the larger collective body or wisdom of the dead. And in that way, the ghosts they’re are still dying, they’re still in process, even if it's been years, like they are still, they haven't arrived to their new condition yet. And some attributes of ancestors as distinct from those who are not yet arrived at that, are that the dead who are healed and well, and generally safe to relate with, although they might be intense, tend to function more as a group consciousness or a group energy, they tend to be more in touch with the spectrum of qualities as love and wisdom and kindness and humor and levity. That there's a sense of just radiance and goodness about them. And the ones who are still troubled often, we recognize that energy, this is characterized in say Christian mythologies of the post-death experience of how purgatory heaven, aside from the heavily moralistic aspects of that. If we think of them as different states, there are many flavors of suffering in hell or in purgatory. And in that way, the dead who are still confronting the choices of their life, or who are just in a state of confusion, we can sense it. Like we can sense it from the living.  When someone's really in touch with love and kindness and is an ethical person, there is a kind of quality of energy to that. And when it's something other than that, then, well, something often feels a bit off. And I don't share that with judgment. It's just an important function of engaging in any kind of relationship to have discernment and just dying doesn't automatically generate wisdom.

 

Lexi: You mentioned this a bit earlier today, but I just wanted to follow up with it a little more that all of us humans are descended from people who are at one point were earth honoring and in conscious respectful relationships with the other than humans on our planet. But you were saying at some point in history, different times for different Lineages, there was a break and we began to inflict a tremendous amount of harm on this planet that sustains us. And we're seeing a lot of the consequences of this with many more to come, unfortunately, but how would you describe the connection between the ancestral work and the healing of our planet?

 

Daniel: Well, I tend to be hard on the histories of European colonialism because my own ancestors participated in the occupation and genocidal harms toward indigenous peoples in the Americas and enslaved African peoples, and I mean not so super directly in my own lineages, but nonetheless, I mean, European settler colonialists are implicated, and that said, bad behavior toward others and empire and enslavement of people and occupation of land is not limited to some Europeans who enacted that, that's a behavior that has been played out by a lot of human groups, toward other human groups, all over the earth for a lot of history. And at this point, it is imperative of course, that as many people as possible to start shifting the systems that are so harmful toward the earth and toward other humans, and those systems are upheld in a lot of ways by the ghosts, by the troubled dead, by the ancestral difficulties that haven't been metabolized. Those are the ones who drained up the systems in a lot of ways, whether it's white supremacy or patriarchal sexist systems, or, you know, et cetera, we could detail the kinds of cultural troubles. And once a person chooses to engage in service up and or transform those systems, and I think it's very important to keep a focus on the systems and on the structures and not just on arriving at the correct view, that's fine. But if the systems don't change, then you don't really get the structural changes we need. So, when we endeavor that you come to see that the systems have their own guardian spirits, they have their own homeostasis, they have their own kind of sentients or spirit. There are people in a way, and anyone who's actually tried to protest oppression directly, or has it been bitten by those systems directly knows that. And the people, while we're speaking all over the earth who are being imprisoned or poisoned or killed directly by standing up to oppression, are...they are trying to impose the very real spirits energy, is people that are those troubled systems. And is it likely to go a bit better when we have ancestral backing and guidance? I think so, there's not, there's no magical antidote. I'm not suggesting to people who are being beaten down by police or being shot at protests are not spiritual enough. Certainly not saying that, but the troubles are deep and the, the need to address them is urgent. Yeah.

 

Lexi: Troubles are deep and... something I appreciated that, I hope I'm interpreting correctly from what I know of your work is, you know, there's so much out there there's so much work to be done, it can be overwhelming for people. Sometimes they can shut down and do nothing, but there's a piece of this working with the ancestors and I think in good psychotherapy too, that helps us really connect to who we are. What do we have to offer in our unique ways, and then engaging in doing that and in some way contributing, but it was definitely a new perspective for me, even though I think I, I live in it, but I don't think it was in my conscious awareness that these gifts passed down from the ancestors are part of why we each can do what we each can do. That's special here...

 

Daniel: I see it that way. Yeah, it is overwhelming. If we try to just take on all of it, because it's not, it’s not effective for one, and if we want to be effective, we need to really, just very specifically be ourselves and to, to do our specific self very well, and to hold that piece very, very passionately and effectively and sustainably if possible. And if we're not clear what that is, then trying to get clear about it is a good focus. Alright, we'll have more sort of a spiritual backing, I guess you could say, if we're doing specifically what we're here to do, and we might like what that is. If we happen on the ego level to feel good about what that is, bonus, but you might find what you're here to do is quite unpleasant. And in that way, there needs to be a gradual surrendering or a, almost like a breaking of the ego to, entrain to the demands of the soul. And that's harder, but you feel better after you're dead if you do it that way, but it's a, hopefully when we make the investigation, we find that we actually enjoy our destiny, but either way...

 

Lexi: And we can really feel like we've lived with some purpose and meaning.

 

Daniel: Yeah.

 

Aníbal: Daniel, your book strongly asserts four assumptions. One - consciousness continues after death. Two - not all of the dead are equally well, three – the living and the death can communicate, four - the living and to the death can strongly affect one another. So, those are strong assertions. Can you elaborate more on one of those, for instance, the first one consciousness continues after death.

 

Daniel: Yeah, for sure. And I, you know, I alluded to them further earlier, I sometimes add the fifth - the dead change. And I see it as a correlate of the not all of the dead are equally well, and also they change, but the first that something continues after the death to the body, what I would add first is that any system that I've found real nourishment from whether it's a Yoruba traditions or  (..) cosmology, or (…)  traditions from my own ancestry, a little bit of involvement in Lakota traditions or Jewish mysticism, like many traditions, different traditions around the world recognize that the soul is a convergence of more than one thing, there's more than one essential aspect or a part of the soul and the multiple soul framework, and there's not just one of them, of course, allow us for the possibility that some aspect of what we are returns as a reborn or as reincarnates and some other aspects of what we are don't do that, or they settled into the earth or whatever it might be. And some aspects of what we are that return might follow the bloodlines and others might not. And they might be the source of what people report as past life memory from other times and places. And so, there are more than one storyline happening at once, which I find very congruent with parts models like IFS. And additionally, the way that time has conceived of in a linear fashion, and a lot of, at least modern Western cultures, is not necessarily how it is spoken up in a lot of traditional cultures. And so, when we say something continues after the death of the body, we could also say that we're made of patterns or stories, which recreate in different forms or octaves or expressions throughout many lifetimes. And these underlying patterns or stories or narratives are well for one they're tenacious. They can include both troubles and blessings. And when we try to resolve intergenerational troubles, it is part of why we reached for the intergenerational blessings or antidotes to those troubles. But the story is, they do a strange thing to, in our experience at a time when we see that a story from 150 or 1500 or more years ago is suddenly recreating in our lives. And is this kind of the same moment in time, I'm in the same pattern. What do I do with this pattern now? How do I shift the pattern? Because we can transition out of it, but if it is still there, it's still going to germinate next lifetime or in a lifetime of my great grandchildren and have I really done the deep healing. So, consciousness is multiple, time isn't linear and the idea that we're this individual self is really suspicious, where made of a lot of different ingredients. Yeah.

 

Lexi: That's great. That you were saying kind of brings to mind that in IFS we work with what we call legacy burdens. So, these include these constraining negative feelings, beliefs, patterns that are passed down through a generational lines in our cultures. And we find for us, for our clients, when we're able to release these burdens from our systems, clients can experience real shifts in how they perceive the world, how they navigate it thereafter, it seems very congruent with what you're talking about in one, we do talk about the gifts or the heirlooms that we also have from our lineages, our culture. But I've never heard it expressed the way you just did in terms of that these gifts, these blessings are the antidotes to the burdens

 

Daniel: Sometimes in therapy. And I have a ton of respect for therapists of all sorts, even though I also give them a hard time as a part of having done my time to get my licenses and get a PhD that I can give other psychology people a hard time. And one of the things that people unknowingly do sometimes is that clients who will come up with a lot of real earnest desire to transform what are clearly intergenerational troubles or toxins, whether it's a legacy of sexual abuse or addiction or a disconnection or whatever it might be. And the therapist sometimes would be like, great, let us proceed to transform those collective level of troubles with a personal level skills and tools. I mean, it might not be said so outright, but the disadvantage of that as someone who's also ritualist or primarily ritualist, is that you're setting someone up for failure. You're asking them to transform the momentum, which proceeds them without having a similarly strong antidote or a momentum. So, we need a collective level of blessings and we need to understand, to access that there needs to be a sense of belonging or participation or seeing ourselves as part of a bigger system. And if the harms have come from one's ancestry, recent family, let's say, it’s often the case, it is important to not just abandon the structure that is family, but to go older and bigger than just the recent ones. So, the, the healed already whole well energies that are also part of that bigger ancestral system can contain and surround and transmute the toxins that the individual client experienced. If you don't do that, then the abandoning of the structure of family, it's kind of like, Oh, there's love over here, but family is a mess. I mean, great take in the love wherever you can get it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but if you don't somehow reclaim family from the harm that has defined it, understandably, then there'll be a lack of belonging that goes unaddressed. And so, working with blood lineage ancestors in particular has the potential to reclaim one's place in lineages and in family in a way that is, makes the harms that someone experienced, even if they are intergenerational, there's still bracketed, there is still contained, there is still not allowed to define all of one's lineages through all times and space

 

Lexi: Makes a lot of sense. I'm just sitting here. My brain is processing so fast, but I'm seeing so many parallels with how we work with the internal world in IFS to what you just said. Kind of alluding to what I was saying earlier about sometimes we have these parts that feel like they are alone, that there are independent entities trying to effort and make things okay and fix things and cope with trauma and all of that. And when we go in experientially and we allow them to notice, you know, what else is there? The whole of the system, the Self-energy, what's beyond that, because when they stepp back, we often have so much more access to what's beyond us, and we feel an interconnection with everything around us and how helpful that is for the parts to know you are not alone in this. And while some therapists, I imagine may be really open to this idea that clients can engage in ancestral healing work, where they can connect with benevolent guides or be impacted by negative energies or hazardous forces. Obviously, this is not part of the worldview of every therapist, but I think what's interesting about being a therapist is kind of doesn't matter, regardless of what we may believe personally, there's tremendous diversity among our clients. So sometimes therapists will be faced, I think, especially when we're working with experiential models, rather than more cognitively based models, we will be faced with a client who suddenly finds themselves in connection with something who is not them, you know, a guide, an ancestor, a negative energy. So, I was wondering if you can give us a sense of how, if this happens in our sessions, how might we be present with this in a helpful way while also clearly acknowledging our limitations?

 

Daniel: Well, yeah, that's a, it's a big set of questions, really. There's no substitute for training in how to guide ritual process or relating with the dead. It's as involved as relating with the living. And, and so it is important to recognize one's limitations in general, aligning with what is healed and whole, and, you know, just instinctual alignment with what is fundamentally good, will help us to help a person without the training to navigate through a lot of tricky situations. But there are hazardous spirits and powers and forces and everything happening in the physical observable world and in the news has a subtle, energetic, or unseen compliment to it. And so, the torture and the abuse and the really predatory behavior that humans are enacting toward one another also has a so-called spiritual or unseen compliment. I think that psychology in general as a field has unfortunately internalized, to a large degree, the desire to be accepted along criterias of empirical science. And as a so-called soft science sometimes feels like it's trying to prove itself relative to things like chemistry and physics and biology. And so, the need to seek acceptance in that way will sometimes the people to feel afraid to do what really serves a client in the moment, or to legitimize their experience of relating with the spirit, something like that. But, you know, I have a license from the state of California to work with a human psyche, if people get licensed as a mental health professional, they have some permission to work with mental, emotional, and to a degree, because it's not compartmentalized spiritual health. And so, in that, I just, I encourage a very pragmatic approach that people would be open to whatever works. If you're trying to indoctrinate your client's with a certain materialistic ideology, we'll check that, that's inappropriate and it's your job as a healer to care for someone's soul and their whole being, and to activate the capacities within them that are self-corrective, and that know how to do that already. And in that way, you do whatever works. And, one other thing I saw this when doing my doctoral research is on the use of shamanic healing methods in a clinical mental health setting. And at least at the time, the American Psychological Association was fine with the idea of referring a client who's a native American to a traditional healer. Okay. A good start. But what if the native American traditional healer is also a clinician? What then? Or what if someone is not a native American but relates with the spirits in the ancestors or whatever? What if they're a person who just talks to the dead? Is that okay? Or are we fetishizing an animist view, a world where there are spirits and things like that onto native peoples? So, if we're doing that, then that's a subtle problematic kind of racism.

 

Aníbal: Yeah.

 

Daniel, you say modern psychology tends to be skeptical about or even pathologize individuals who claim to talk with the spirits of the dead, you just said it. This is unfortunate as most contact with the ancestors, whether real or imagined, doesn't have nothing to do with psychosis. So how do we distinguish talking with spirits from psychosis?

 

Daniel: Yeah. A lot of times it's pretty straight, is pretty obvious in the sense that you can notice how that's functioning in a person's life. Is it causing distress? Is that causing upset? Does it seem ungrounded? Is it functioning...is it causing clinically significant distress? You know, it's not that simplistic because sometimes someone could actually be having a psychotic process and it's not yet causing distress, but it's sort of a strange behavior. And, to be clear, not all traditionalist or people in the, or whatever, automatically accept on face value, the claims of individuals who are relating with the gods or the spirits or whatever, there needs to be a track record that shows that a person is actually sort of getting results or that there's a grounded, functional reality to it. That one's life gets better because of it or the, you know, the test is in the results in some ways. And being actually in an active psychotic process, having a psychotic break, something like that usually is accompanied by all kinds of other symptoms of distress or are not functioning well in one's life. And that does happen. It does happen where people make claims that they’re relating with the dead or whatever. And, it's part of some other process, which is not, not healthy and not serving them and would benefit from even medication or whatever it might be. But in a lot of ways, it is a test of whether or not it’s working for the person and their life. And if someone is having, occasionally, someone may have a legitimate contact from the dead or some other power, a deity, whatever it might be, and it's very incongruent with their sense of self, and that gap is what's causing the distress, and so, it's a, it's a worldview distress, rather than some other kind of problem with it. And in that way, normalizing it and helping them to have a framework can lower the level of distress. And it also matters what, who they're in contact with, If someone is in touch with their really loving, supportive, nurturing ancestral grandmothers, that is very different than being in touch with the troubled ghosts who are massacred in the land, were you and your family live. So, it depends who a person is reporting, being in contact with. Yeah.

 

Lexi: Slightly similar, but one question that can arise for those who do believe that consciousness continues in some form after death, that we can continue to relate is the question of, you know, what is me and what is not me. So, especially for those of us who have subscribed to a model like IFS that appreciates the natural multiplicity of the mind and all of these diverse ways that our parts can manifest, is there some helpful way for people to differentiate between a part of them, let's say that carries the energy and the behavioral tendencies of a deceased parent versus actually being in connection with that deceased person in real time?

 

Daniel: Yeah, I understand, the me, not me question is one that has a very deep, fundamental, mystical roots. There is no a quick way to navigate through the, just the contemplation on self and other and the others or not you in many ways are the grounding when you get into inflated or super expanded spiritual states and it's like, okay, great, and what about these others? What about the suffering? This is also your body. You're also the one doing it. Why are you doing that? Come back. And so, there's that. Often people benefit from opening up a bit more and recognizing the aspects of themselves that are like the animals, the plants, the elements, the other than humans, et cetera. And so, I think there tends to be a bit of a sort of this iterative back and forth process of strengthening your sense of self for integrating new things, and then coming into people, human or otherwise who challenge those assumptions, and then breaking down your sense of what you are having to flex or learn new things, and then getting more integrated again, and then having a challenge again. And so that is good to normalize that process. And yeah, we need a healthy sense of self to navigate the world. And there needs to be a sense of being flexible about it and recognizing the most horrific things we can conceive of live in the space of our own heart. That's the only safe place to put evil is like within our own heart and psyche

 

Aníbal: Daniel, how active are you becoming now offering these perspectives to the psychotherapy field or beyond?

 

Daniel: Yeah, I did a thing last fall that I really enjoyed for the first time in probably a decade because I worked with a therapist and all of that, but mostly I've been teaching about ritual arts and in a more broad way, but I finished my PhD in 2009, but then last fall I started an online course and, you know, begins again in the spring, called animus psychology, where I tried to succinctly and somewhat experientially transmit what I've been learning about the intersections of psychotherapy, psychology and animus to values and ethics, including with ritual, but not only with ritual. And it was great, was well received, and if I had more time, you know, I'm a dad, I have two daughters, and busy with teaching, try to not work all the time, I would be happy to dive even further into that intersection, but I hold out hope for the field of psychology to gradually incorporate the respect for the personhood of the other than humans and to recognize in that way that the psyche is not only human, culture is not only human, culture arises also from the earth and if we want to articulate a more sustainable and like perennial and intelligible to indigenous peoples sense of what we are, and a sense of self, psychologies of the self, then we need to include not just the existence of, but the voices and the wisdom of the other than humans in our very sense, fundamentally of what we are. And like, if I were to say, hey, it's problematic to act like white people are better than non-white people. That's not a super controversial thing to say these days, I would hope. And, yet I'm saying that supremacy in another form, which is to say that humans are more people than the animals, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, that same kind of human supremacy. It's the same pattern really. And I'm saying it's as problematic. And the people who have always been living from that stance are like, “hmm mm, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of what we'd been saying in for a long time”. But yeah, I recognize that human supremacy leads to the massive extinction of other beings and climate change and all of the things, the catastrophe that we're inflicting upon ourselves. And yet psychology relegates that to religion or spirituality or a superstition, that's colonialist, racist, arrogance. And that's the part of psychology that needs pro-actively challenged and uprooted. So, in that way, I have a fierce condemnation of the perpetuation of that kind of arrogance. It's ecologically and psychologically destructive and the field of psychology perpetuates it.

 

Aníbal: Exactly. Such an inspiring conversation. Thank you so much for all of that you gave us today.

 

Daniel: Yeah, for sure. It's a, it's a delight and I know I am and ending out a little bit of a fierce note there, but I would just underscore that coming back into relationship with the others is also a delightful and accessible and learnable for anybody, yeah.

 

Lexi: It’s something actually that I'm so glad you actually got that fierce about it because I wanted to actually express some personal gratitude to you. I, in reading your work just over the last week and a half, I feel like so many seeds have been planted in me. Some of them have begun to germinate and I noticed something, it brought me some grief yesterday, but I'm sitting with it. I went to pet one of my cats and I realize as I was reaching out, because I felt like petting them, that I had never had a conscious intentional practice of seeking consent from this other than a human being in my life. Do they want to be scooped up and cuddle? Do they not? I know it may sound small to some people, but the grief in me was I clearly unconsciously had bought into that idea that humans are in some ways superior. So, if I wanted to pet my cat, I could pet my cat and I stopped myself. And the words of Maya Angelou came to me, just, you know, do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better do better. And I felt a lot of gratitude for you because I feel like you've helped me to know better and now it's my responsibility to do better. So, I thank you for that.

 

Daniel: You’re welcome, that’s beautiful.

 

Aníbal: Daniel, it was a joy to be here with you and Lexi, and I hope we can keep meeting and share our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Daniel: Thank you so much.

 

Lexi: Thank you, Daniel.



Recorded the 13th April 2021
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

From EFT to IFIO with Liz Phillips 36:10

Liz wound her way into therapy after a circuitous route through a few degrees: English, Fine Art and Education; and after a career in Communications writing. Her passion for couples work led her to a training in couples therapy two years before she was even accepted into a formal therapy school. While Liz was studying to be a therapist, she simultaneously trained in Levels one and two of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples. But it wasn’t until she bumped into IFS and IFIO that Liz felt she found her therapy home. She has completed her Level 1 in IFS and Level 2 in IFIO and has run two of her own IFIO-informed workshops to introduce the model to her Canadian community. Currently based in Toronto, Liz is a self proclaimed coffee snob and loves long winter runs along the waterfront. You can find more about Liz at her website: https://www.lizphillipstherapy.ca

Full transcription soon

Compassionate Practices and the Peer Collective with Tim Desmond 01:00:03

Tim Desmond is a psychotherapist, author, Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Antioch University New England, and student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Founder of Peer Collective, and co-founder of Morning Sun Mindfulness Center, he lives in Alstead, NH, and teaches mindfulness and self-compassion practices audiences around the world. His publications include Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy (W.W.Norton, 2015), The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook (W.W.Norton, 2017), and How to Stay Human in a Fucked Up World (HarperOne, 2019). You can find Peer Colective Project at https://peercollective.com

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The Role of IFS before and after Ketamine Assisted Treatment - with Robert Grant 46:38

Dr. Robert M. Grant is a physician specialized in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, and HIV medicine. He has more than 30 years of experience with research and clinical practice in sexual health and pulmonary medicine.  He pioneered the concept of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, for HIV prevention by leading the iPrEx trials that led to FDA approvals and transformed clinical practice globally - an achievement for which he was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012.

After a deep personal loss in 2014, he pivoted to face the challenges of human connection more directly through psychotherapy.  He completed a certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2016, and trained in ketamine assisted psychotherapy at the KRIYA Institute in 2017.  He is a a board member of the American Society of Ketamine Physicians.  

He has trained in psychotherapy modalities including Internal Family Systems (as a fully certified IFS Therapist) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. He has provided ketamine assisted psychotherapy in San Francisco since late 2017. He serves as an investigator for an FDA-approved MDMA trial at UCSF and has assisted for FDA-approved psilocybin trials for people living with HIV.

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Multiplicity in Psychotherapy and Beyond, with Robert Falconer 33:20

Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are welcoming IFS counselor, teacher, and author, Mr. Robert Falconer. Robert earned his undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology, with a focus on the history of religions. In the early 1980s, he pursued his Master’s degree in psychology. In his career as a therapist, Robert spent considerable time at the Esalen Institute and decades involved in Gestalt therapy. For 15 years, he was the executive director of the Institute for Trauma-Oriented Psychotherapy. Over the course of his career, Robert has been extensively trained in multiple therapeutic modalities, but he has completely devoted himself to the Internal Family Systems model for the past 10 years, as he has found it to be the most compassionate and potent way to work with severe trauma. At this point in his career, he is increasingly focused on the spiritual dimensions of healing. He has published 6 books, co-edited four, and most recently co-authored a book with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the developer of the IFS model, entitled "Many Minds, One Self: Evidence for a Radical Shift in Paradigm". Today, we will be speaking with Bob about this wonderful book. Robert is teaching a lot now. If you want to study with him go to Bob's website at https://robertfalconer.us 

Trigger warning: this episode may contain trauma events descriptions that may be triggering for many.
Please be aware of that possibility so that you can choose not to listen to the episode. Thanks.

Full Transcription

Alexia Rothman: Today on Explorations in Psychotherapy, we are welcoming IFS counselor, teacher and author Mr. Robert Falconer. Robert earned his undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology with a focus on the history of religions. In the early 1980s, he pursued his master's degree in psychology. In his career as a therapist, Robert spent considerable time at the Esalen Institute and decades involved in Gestalt therapy. For 15 years, he was the executive director of the Institute for Trauma Oriented Psychotherapy. Robert has been extensively trained in multiple therapeutic modalities, but he has completely devoted himself to the Internal Family Systems model for the past 10 years, as he has found it to be the most compassionate and potent way to work with severe trauma. At this point in his career, he has increasingly focused on the spiritual dimensions of healing. He has published six books, co-edited four and most recently co-authored a book with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the developer of the IFS model, entitled Many Minds, One Self: Evidence for a Radical Shift in Paradigm.
Today, we will be speaking with him about this wonderful book.  Bob, thank you so much for joining us.

Robert Falconer: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Anibal Henriques: Bob thank you so much for having us. It's an honor to start off this podcast series with such an interesting and foundational reading. This title you have authored with Dick Schwartz in 2018 is a beautiful and extensive work that helps us understand the origins and development of our multiple minds. You walk us through multiplicity in the general culture, in science and in psychotherapy. You cover so many different fields of knowledge as archeology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, psychotherapy, spiritual traditions and more.
So, thank you so much to you and Dick Schwartz for these work that shows in an evidence-based way, the ubiquity within the scientific community of the awareness that the mind is not unitary. As it shows the continuing resistance to this idea of multiplicity throughout time. So, Bob, how and when did the idea of this book came up to your mind? What was your main goal in writing this book?

RF: Well, I was assisting Dick at a training and I had just been re-reading some Nietzsche, and I said Dick, you know Nietzsche had a multiple model of mind? and he went “no, what?!” And then I said, well you know, Plato had a multiple model of mind and he's going, he'd never heard of it, he had no idea. And so, he got really excited and said, well could you, could you send me some notes on this? So, I sent him some notes and I said there's so much more Dick, and the first thing I suggested is let's organize a big interdisciplinary academic conference and get all the experts from all these fields who can talk about multiplicity in Plato's philosophy, multiplicity in Islam, you know, and I laid out a bunch of the fields and he said, well that sounds like sort of a drag. And then I said, well let's do a book then. I thought it would actually be easier if we organize the conference and then publish a book of all of their papers, but I love doing research and the idea of working with Dick was really fun so, I jumped on it.

AR: The subtitle of your book references this radical shift in paradigm. So, can you tell us about this paradigm shift?

RF: Yeah, there's several that have occurred in the social sciences and psychology since, most of what I was taught as an undergraduate it's now known to be completely wrong. A big one was the standard model, when I came up was that, as you’re born the mind is a blank slate and everything that's it's in your mind was first in your senses. Now everybody knows that's just wrong, you know, that's gone, that's over and I think there's another very much like that now, is this idea that my mind is unitary. I mean, it's still held onto, but it's more, it's almost a religious belief. The wonderful anthropologist, Tanya Luhrmann talks about how in the West we do worse with psychosis than they do, like in Africa and Southern India in all these other places. And she says or she suggests, one of the reasons for this is we have this model of mind, where the mind is like this citadel and everything inside it is us and it's one thing. And if any, like voices or something come in there, it's a devastating experience. And in these other cultures that have a looser model of mind it's very, very different... So anyway, multiplicity is a big part of this vaster looser model of mind. It's just demonstrated everywhere now, but you know, people claim to this citadel model of mind because it gives them sort of a false sense of security, I think, but it's very, very fragile.

AR: So, this false sense of security, like this idea that we have some control in some way.

RF: Yeah, for this citadel where this fortress of mind, and we control what comes in and goes out and, you know, we're all one part, you know, it's like most protectors as we know in IFS, it tends to elicit what it fears the most. And it's, it's brittle, it's not strong. You know, even though it appears strong.

AR: In terms of the… in the world of Psychotherapy, how do you see these mono minds view as having been damaging to people? He started alluding to it, and I think with Luhrmann's work.

RF: Okay. What was it Franz Kohut? His first name, right? Heinz, Heinz. He thought that the biggest fear that humans had was psychic fragmentation. And he thought even the fear of death is actually a version of this fear of psychic fragmentation. So, if a client of his started hearing a voice or hearing from a part, he fended that off like the devil, you know. He would not encourage him into action with that and forming a relationship with a part that was, he thought that was collusion with mental illness and, you know, absolutely horrible.

AR: I'm actually really glad you brought that up, that idea about the fear of fragmentation, because any time I introduced the IFS model to people who have not heard of it before to clinicians, they ask this question: would encouraging people to interact with their parts lead to fragmentation? What's the IFS perspective on that?

RF: That actually, the path to healing is forming these two-way relationships between the Self and the parts. That is the way we heal, not something that therapist brings to the interaction or, you know, it's the real healer his within the client. And it's that relationship with these voices, fragments, aspects, whatever you want to call them.

AR: And I can appreciate how Kohut and others could have had the idea that there was this fundamental fear of fragmentation, because we hear that from the protectors. Sometimes they say “we're going to fall apart”, “we're going to become a mess”, “we're going to be overwhelmed”. So, if we don't have this way, that the way that you were just talking about, if we don't have this safe way to create these relationships, you can get overwhelmed when you go to a traumatic material.

RF: In IFS language, this is managers, you know. Managers have this fear and those other therapies, and a lot of CBT still is, it strengthened in the manager's, you know, whereas with Dick with an addiction, you'd befriend the part that's indulging in the addiction. You don't join with the manager and clamp down, even harder on it. You'd befriend it and get to know what's going on with him and dialogue with it, form a relationship, it’s 180 degrees from what went before.

AH: So, Bob, how would therapists and non-therapists benefit from reading your book?

RF: It's aimed at a wider audience than just therapist, because I think it's important for many many fields to loosen up this idea of the mind as this citadel, this unified thing that's impervious, you know. That model leaves us with a very limited view of the world, and it leaves us in a very fragile position. And I think this book, it pulled together a great deal of the evidence for many many many fields and many different cultural traditions that the mind it's made up of parts and it has to be. Oh, I want to say this. You know, Dick threw out close to a half of the research I brought him. He said, this was way too much, nobody will read this much stuff. And there’s one part he really didn't want a lot in, and that's the mathematics.  There's this called the mathematics of complex systems. And it shows that any system of a certain degree of complexity has to have this structure of relatively encapsulated parts that are relatively sparsely interlinked. And artificial intelligence shows this. At MIT they tried to build this little machine, that its job was to take a bunch of colored boxes, that were stacked up over here, restack them over here in the same order. They could not do that with one central processor, not possible. They had to make all these encapsulated submodules that are sparsely interlinked. And now, only within the past 10 years are less, they've developed on a mathematics that can describe how systems like this operate. The mathematics that describes the behavior of a… the stock market after a crash, it's the same mathematics that describes the aftershocks of an earthquake. And this guy who was a geotechnical earthquake engineer realized this, and he was really good at the math for describing aftershocks of earthquakes, and he went and made a fortune on wall street.

AR: That's an investment strategy.

RF: Yeah. So that math really works. And this math says any system have a certain kind of complexity, has to be parts sparsely interlinked. So, I think there's kind of… it's systems theory. You know, I think it's really, really important in many, many fields.

AR: So much more broadly applicable than to just the field of psychotherapy and mental health.

RF: Yeah, and you can understand why people would find it difficult at first, but I think it's really important because it frees up so much.

AR: Anibal, actually, I like your question about how can therapists and non-therapists, Rob was addressing, how everyone can benefit from this book, but I'll say it as a therapist reading this book, I've benefited in a really specific way, because in doing IFS, of course I'm seeing evidence of multiplicity every day in sessions, I'm seeing it on my own system, but I know humans have this tendency to notice what appears to confirm our own biases. So am I seeing multiplicity because I believe it's there, or because I'm doing something to elicit that kind of language from my clients, or because it's really there? So, what I loved about this book is how you and Dick take us on this whole interdisciplinary journey. And now I'm learning that you even had way more research than is even in here and there are fields you didn't even touch on. But, you know, like Anibal was saying earlier, evolutionary in cognitive psychology are covered in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, complexity theory, all kinds of religious and spiritual traditions. And so, it was really comforting to that sort of empirically oriented part of me to see that people from many disciplines with many approaches, and diverse methodologies are all coming to the same types of conclusions about this multiplicity phenomenon. So, I love the book in part for just that.

RF: As a clinician, I don't give this book to clients unless they're like academic types and really need all the intellectual background. But those that do, I think it's a pretty overwhelming amount of evidence. And I want to say, this is not a new idea either, this is the way Plato thought, it's the way Socrates thought, there's one, one of the Plato's dialogues, Socrates and one of the students are talking and they just, you know, they say “all minds multiple”, and they say, yeah, it's obvious, you know, we can have two sides of an argument go on in our head, yeah minds multiple, and they just go on, like everybody would know this. So, at one, one classicist  actually says that Plato's Republic where he describes the three classes and how all these things interrelate, actually it was an elaborate metaphor for the human mind. So, this is not new it's been repressed, I think primarily since the enlightenment, only in the past few hundred years in the upper crust of European intellectuals.

AH: Rob, among the contemporary therapies that embrace multiplicity, you name, voice dialogue, schema therapy from Jeffrey Young, contemporary psychoanalysis, focusing, and many others. So, multiplicity is out there, in so many approaches and models, but not always shining or even fully named, right? Why is that and how damaging it can be?

RF: Well, I think there's an arrogance to the Western mindset that likes to think, you know, our mind is a citadel. We know all this stuff, we’re in charge. There’s a couple… there’s a neuro side, and I always get these things back backwards. This neuroscientist said, we are like a stowaway in a lifeboat on an ocean liner thinking we're running the ship. And this cognitive scientist said, we're like the guy who sells newspapers in the lobby of the empire state building thinking he controls the building…

AH: And it feels good…

RF: Yeah, and I think it's like that. And multiplicity gives you a model that can explain this and that's awfully hard on people. You know, at first.

AR: I found it interesting in kind of reading through this historical overview that you presented with Dick about, this concept in Psychotherapy. How you talk about some theorists within Psychotherapy actually initially had some insights into this way of understanding the mind has multiple and then they either sort of backed off from it or  completely rejected it. So, you know, I was just curious about, about that, just that the reactions to this concept that we're starting to, we're touching on a little here.

RF: Well, hopefully now there is such a weight of evidence that it won't get reburied again, it has come up repeatedly and been reburied. Hermann Hesse’s book Steppenwolf. The big thing was, this skully guy who has got this other part, that's a wild wolf of the steppes. And he goes to this place, the magic theater where, and they give him this thing, treat on the Steppenwolf. And they say, Oh, you're not two, your many, many, many, many. And in that part of the book Hesse described in great detail why the Western world won't tolerate this idea and all of the ways it's been repressed. So this is not, this is not new or original with Dick and me.

AR: You mentioned this paradigm that you and Dick are presenting in the book. One piece of it, of course, is this element of the multiplicity of the mind and then the other piece, is that we all have at our core, this essence, that undamaged essence, that we refer to as Self in the IFS model, but it has been referred to as many different ways. So I, I really love how you detail in the third section of the book, how this concept of Self is at the heart of virtually every spiritual tradition. I was hoping you might elaborate on that a little bit.

RF: What I'll say is not really what we've got in the book, but it's, I think it's what I, the way I'm thinking about this more and more now is that the concept of Self is like in quantum mechanics, the idea that light is a particle and a wave. And within us, it's a particle, you know, and, but there is this vast sense of Self that you can tap into, that's like a field or a wave. And one of the things we say in IFS, is a little strange is that even the parts of us have Self. So, when you have this particle and wave view, that that all makes sense, and it was relatively comprehensible. That is, that is both of these, you know, and it's only, it depends on the observer, which one you see.

AR: And you mentioned too, that, this essential Self is actually much easier to access, then most spiritual traditions have actually believed, and we certainly see this is true in IFS, but I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.

RF: Well, this is a whole section of the book that Dick threw out. I love big words and Dick does not like big words. The big words for this are Kenosis and Apophaticism. In the history of religions, they talk about these as being characteristics of almost every religious tradition, but basically what they mean is the way to the spiritual is you just get stuff out of the way, you just remove things. Constraint release is the phrase Dick uses all the time. That's who we are. It's absolutely undamaged. It’s like the sun after a storm, even if the storm mudslides ruined your house, everything in the sun is absolutely undamaged.
Now that’s very, very different from every other kind of Psychotherapy I’ve read into. And I come from a big trauma background, and this is such an important message for people with severe trauma, who they really are is undamaged. It is not even dirtied by all the horrible things that happened to them. That message in and of itself can be lifesaving for people who are, you know, basically they've been told, you know, too bad, you've had a bad childhood, take a lot of meds, don't expect to have a good life and this is fixed messages but is the exact opposite: you are undamaged. So, Kenosis and Apophaticism. Kenosis means you get to the divine by getting rid of all your ideas about the divine, basically. And the last biggest obstacle to the divine, to God, is your idea of God. So, you have to get rid of all that, and that's what Dick is talking about. So, he is the heir of a multi-thousand years spiritual tradition, and Apophaticism is the idea that the only way you can talk about the divine or the big Self’s field is by saying what it is not, there is no positive descriptor, that's big enough. So, I see IFS in this particular part of it as being heir to a multi thousand-year spiritual traditions that occurs in Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, it's pretty much all over the place.

AR: When I actually saw what you were saying, resonating with a curiosity that I had, because, you say, you talk about it in the book, whether you believe that the wholesome factors of the mind are in here and merely you have to be uncovered or, or whether you believe that they're constructed through this intense and discipline practice, whatever view you have really informs your whole approach to spirituality and psychotherapy. So, I'm curious, you know, within Psychotherapy, how you've seen that play out, whether we believe its constraint releases as we do in IFS versus building it up like a muscle or, you know…

RF: Yeah, constraint release gives hope to the most severely damaged people. Number one.  The building it up is a muscle, encourages what in IFS we call manager kind of energies, discipline and it also can re-exile the tender hurt parts of us that are not functioning so well, because we just crushed them in our attempt to get to do our spiritual life. And you know, so many people do the spiritual bypass thing where they start to have a tender vulnerable feeling and they go, “Oh let me meditate or a few minutes and it will go away”,  you know. This relates, I think to the idea of counteractive change, you know, that certain levels of change are counteractive. You know, like the CBT thing of you have this negative message that you go, you have to say a positive message over it all the time. Well, that sort of works, but it leaves you with this terrible counteractive struggle.

AR: It's like you are always having to build up that new message, and there still all of the old stuff in there without having been changed at all.

AH: Bob, it looks as if there is a tendency in us to resist multiplicity and come back to this unity or mono mind feeling. So why is it so difficult for many of us to go with multiplicity? Is it about also economics in our bodies and brains or do we also need this unity perception kind of feeling?

RF: I think it's the little guy in the lifeboat, on the ocean liner, not wanting to admit that he's not the captain. That's hard, you know, humility really difficult, to let go of that. And it's actually immensely freeing, it reminds me of, you know, in IFS we have this idea that the real healer is the client, and the client's Self, not the therapist or the therapist's Self. And at first, it was hard for me to let go of. I've been trained for decades on how to have these wonderful insightful interpretations to offer. And at first giving up that position, you know, that was hard, but then it was this immense relief. Oh, I don't have to do all that junk anymore, I can listen and ask and enjoy my client and know they're the real healer. To me, accepting multiplicity is very much like that. At first, it's like, “Oh really?”, I'm just in the lifeboat over here, and then it's this big relief, “No, I'm not trying to drive the ocean liner, I'm not piloting the 747”.

AR: Remember you saying something in the book about where this multiplicity paradigm was most kind of thought with historically. At times, when there was a really rational perspective dominating, and so it's almost like there is, I think you used the word that there was a dethronement of a part, when we have to look at it this way. And that's who you're talking about. That little guy on the lifeboat. No, you are not in charge. You don't have to control all of this, is at first scary, unknown, uncertain would it then when it, who am I, if I'm not this and what's going to happen, if I'm not in control and then what a relief I don't have to do all of this, can lean into something greater. Something that you and Dick mentioned in the book is that this paradigm shift, and not only toward multiplicity, but also toward recognizing the essential Self, it gives us this way of understanding ourselves in relating to others that has this enormous potential benefit for humanity. So, wondering, you know, given our highly polarized world, how do you see this paradigm is potentially helpful at the level of larger systems, more than just the individual’s Internal system?

RF: Well, it gives us a flexibility and a resilience that we didn't have. And I also think it makes it possible to be compassionate for behaviors and people, we could not be compassionate for before. Knowing that when somebody acts in a truly horrible way, it's just a part of them. That Self is still in there undamaged and they can give us a lot more tolerance, compassion, flexibility. I think those are the big ones.

AR: Absolutely, and I know that an area of interest of yours that is not mentioned in the book is the idea that not only is the mind multiple, but that is also porous, and I'm just curious on your perspective of that.

RF: Well, that's, that's the next book I'm working on, and this one, I mean, if you stop and think about it for a little bit, I think it's undeniable and obvious. Every living cell is surrounded by a semi-permeable membrane. It has to be or it's dead, right? Every human being is permeable. You take in food, you excrete wastes, you take in information, you know, we are not these like rock, like citadels, like this myth of the mono mind, is what Dick would call it, but we're also permeable, you know. And I think one thing that clearly shows this is, I think it's Siegel of interpersonal neurobiology, he talks about our number one way of regulating our own internal states is through relationship with other people. Our emotional mind is very, very permeable. So, I think if you put this together with this idea of multiplicity and Self, it takes this paradigm shift to a whole another level.

AH: Bob, as a Portuguese fellow, and like to leave this lovely conversation with a quote picked from Antonio Damasio, referring the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa that says and goes, “my soul is like a hidden orchestra, I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, kettledrums and drums. I can only recognize myself as a symphony”. So, even for the poets, the need to see myself as an integrated coherent symphony, co-exists with the aknowledgement of multiplicity?

RF: Yeah, beautiful, beautiful Anibal. And he, he wrote under heteronyms, I believe. He had all these different identities that would write different sets of poetry.

AR: I found that is so interesting. You mention that in the book, various writers would do that, It's not synonyms, but these names where they would actually right from different parts of themselves. I had no idea.

AH: Bob, what is coming for you? Are there more writings coming?

RF: Yeah, this book I'm doing on a permeable mind and I'm teaching a lot now. And I'm getting a very interest in IFS in the third world. I mean, the Western model of one-on-one Psychotherapy is just too expensive and too slow. For countries where are the average annual income is $10,000 or something. So, China has a really interesting program, inner peace coaching of Dr. Hailan Guo, that's reaching many, many, many people. I just led a training in Pakistan where we are trying to develop something like that for Pakistan. This wonderful woman there, Dr. Yasmeen Khan, she got a bunch of those, sealand containers, you know, those big metal boxes, they have in the back of the freighter ships. He took them, cleaned them up, put them in the worst slums of Karachi and they are walk-in mental health clinics. We’re helping train her staff, and the goal is to get people who live in those neighborhoods, who don't have any education, basically some kind of basic training and then hierarchy of supervision above that, so that we can reach very large numbers of people and relieve human suffering on a much faster scale than one-on-one Psychotherapy could do. So that's, that's one thing that I’m very into.

AR: That's incredible.

AH: Bob thank you again for having us and for this amazing work you and Dick Schwartz have done, tracking the unity multiplicity pendulation throughout times. It's always a joy to talk with you and learn from you, so much wisdom and love you share. So, my hope and Lexi’s hope is that we can keep meeting and sharing our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Recorded the 10th March 2021
Transcript Edition: Sara Costa

Toni Herbine-Blank on IFIO and the new IFS Couple Therapy Skills Manual 47:31

Toni Herbine-Blank, MS, RN, C-SP, is a Clinical Specialist Psychotherapist and Senior Trainer for the IFS Institute.

Toni was trained in Family Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania where she earned both her RN and advanced practice degree in Psychiatric Nursing. She began training students in Internal Family Systems Therapy in 2004 and since has been instrumental in designing programs and writing curricula for Levels 1 and 2 IFS training programs.

Toni has been in private practice since 1996 specializing in the treatment of couples and individuals. In 2009, after designing a training for IFS therapists to apply the model to couples therapy, Toni offered the first Intimacy from the Inside Out© Training Program in Boston, Massachusetts. Since then the program has been received with great enthusiasm across the United States.

Toni has authored, with Martha Sweezy, a brand new manual on couple therapy called "Internal Family Systems Couple Therapy Skills Manual: Healing Relationships with Intimacy from the Inside Out" (Pesi-2021). She also co-authored "Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy  (Routledge-2015) with Donna Kerperlman and Martha Sweezy.

Toni's passion is in guiding therapists to become courageous, clear and confident. She has a reputation for being a creative, lively, and fiercely compassionate trainer. Toni currently lives in Durango, Colorado with her husband Jordan. They enjoy the magnificent outdoors whenever possible accompanied by their horses and dogs.

If you want to learn more about IFIO trainings here IFIO website.

Today on IFS Talks we are honored to be welcoming Toni Herbine-Blank. Toni is a clinical specialist, psychotherapist and senior trainer for the IFS Institute. She was trained in family therapy at the university of Pennsylvania, where she earned both her RN and advanced practice degree in psychiatric nursing. Toni began training students in Internal Family Systems therapy in 2004, and since has been instrumental in designing programs and writing curricula for Levels 1 and 2 IFS training programs. Toni has been in private practice since 1996, specializing in the treatment of couples and individuals.

 

In 2009, after designing a training for IFS therapists to apply the model to couples’ therapy, Toni offered the first Intimacy from the Inside Out training program. Toni is the author along with Martha Sweezy and Donna Kerpelmanof Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couples Therapy and of a new book co-authored with Martha Sweezy called Internal Family Systems Couples Therapy Skills Manual: Healing Relationships with Intimacy from the Inside Out. Toni currently lives in Durango, Colorado with her husband, Jordan. They enjoy the magnificent outdoors whenever possible, accompanied by their horses and dogs.

Tisha Shull: Toni, welcome to IFS talks. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Toni Herbine-Blank: Thank you so much for having me.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Toni, for taking the time to speak with us. It's such an honor to have you in the show. How is it for you, Toni, to hear this bio, what parts come up?

Toni: You know, I always have a little, some nervous parts when I am being interviewed and I always, I have a part that thinks I'm going to have a brain freeze even after all these years of teaching IFS and teaching IFIO. So, but just talking to the two of you before we get started, I feel those parts have relaxed, I feel pretty good and I'm actually grateful, grateful you invited me. And I know it's taken me awhile to say yes, but here I am so...and great to be talking about IFIO and my journey with IFS.

Aníbal: You're welcome.

Tisha: Will you share with us a little bit about what oriented you to couples work?

Toni: May have something to do with my childhood. You know, that's an interesting question because I'm not really sure about that. My husband and I signed up for Imago therapy couples’ workshop before we were even married, so probably 30 years ago. And I had just earned my advanced practice degree and I really loved that model and it gave us a lot of insight into ourselves. And I think that was the beginning of that. My older sister and her husband are also couple therapists and I think I was very influenced by them as well. And I, soon after my husband and I took that workshop, I signed up to be trained as an Imago therapist. And so, it all just started to steamroll at that time.

Tisha: Was there anything in your childhood that oriented you more than others towards couples’ work?

Toni: Well, my sister and I laugh about this, that both of us ended up being couples therapists and that there was most likely something going on in our family system that, or our awareness of our parents relationship that's motivated that. I sometimes joke when I'm teaching students that my couple therapy practice began when I was four years old. I started tracking my parents' relationship and deciding as a young child that I actually could coach them on how their relationship could improve. So, I just started, I started noticing a lot at a very young age about their relationship and the relationships in the rest of the family. So...

Aníbal: And Toni, when and how did you get across IFS? How did you come to be involved in the model?

Toni: I was living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an east coast city. At some point, I'm trying to even think of the year of that, but I can't bring it up. And I was in an Imago relationship supervision group and there was somebody in that group named Chris Mathna who had just taken the IFS training. She was also an Imago relationship therapist and she would come into that supervision groups so excited about IFS, and none of us could figure out what she was talking about. So, she encouraged me to take the training and I put her off because I didn't really understand. I bought the IFS book, but I still didn't. It wasn't catching me. And then, a year later she was really, she was really adamant. You really need to come and find out about this. So, I signed up out of peer pressure and I went to Connecticut to take the IFS Level 1 in, I think it was either 1999, end of 1999 or beginning of 2000. And Dick was our trainer. And a lot of people whose names you know, Mike Elkin, Pamela Krouse, Ralph Cohen were our assistant trainers and people like Ann Sinko and Mona Barbera and Paul Neustad were in the training with me. So, it was at one of the early trainings and some of the current trainers came out of that training. And so that's how it all started for me. And I always like to say, because this is not people's usual experience, I didn't like it much. I had a lot of issues with it. I, you know, I've had a lot of resistance to it, to the model and the two things that really changed my mind were when I started watching Dick work and it really peaked my interest, how safe he could make it for people to do such deep work in such a short amount of time. And so that peaked my interest. And then my trainer along with Dick was somebody called Michi Rose. I don't know if you've heard of Michi but Michi is the one that I started to learn from and where things began to really start to make sense what we were up to in this model. So, you know, it took me a little while, but obviously, eventually, I did take to it.

Tisha: So, do you recall what the resistance was about? Cause I'm sure a lot of people meet the model with that.

Toni: Well, first of all, I was a psychodynamic therapist. So, the relationship is very key in that, you know, when you're working dynamically with people and Dick's big message to us was “Get out of the way, get out of the way, get out of the way.” And it wasn't until much later when we started having conversations with Dick around, yes, we need to get out of the way, but the therapeutic relationship is critical to this work where he had to succumb to that. And he actually wrote a chapter in the book about it. So, my resistance first was, you know, the sort of the dismissing of the therapeutic relationship with that, which I hold with great value. And then there was something about the spiritual aspect that was difficult for me. I had spent some years in a yoga ashram living in a yoga ashram. And so, there was just a little bit of, I don't know, a part sort of talking to me about, be careful here because you know, we're not going to just walk blindly into this concept without being discerning, without trying it on without paying attention to what my gut was telling me, because for years I just dismissed those things. So those were probably the two big red flags in the beginning for me. And we had a really wonderful staff in that Level 1 training. And they were really available for people's freak outs about what was going on. And so, I just remember having lots of conversations with lots of different people and getting lots of different perspectives and being given a lot of permission, which I think is one of the strengths in this model, a lot of permission to just don't take it, just don't do it because we say it's great, you know, have some discernment, ask your questions, be thoughtful, challenge us, you know, challenge the model, challenge the theory. And so, it was helpful in that way. I didn't feel like I had to fight, you know, nobody was going to fight me on any of my parts with resistance. So that was a lovely thing.

Aníbal: Toni, when did you start leading IFS trainings and finally designing a brand-new couples therapy model?

Toni: I was an assistant trainer. If I'm remembering correctly. I had my first assistant trainership in 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts, and I actually did two of them simultaneously. Back then, there weren't a lot of trainers and there weren't a lot of assistant trainers. So, and as IFS was growing, there was a greater need. So, I believe I did two in one year being an assistant trainer in 2004. And even before I was an assistant trainer, you know, back in the day in a Level 1 training weekend 4, Dick or whoever the trainer was, introduced the idea of working with couples and I had already been a pretty seasoned couple therapist by that time. And when I, when they taught us, because Dick had three protocols that he developed, that he used with couples and when he taught those to us, they made a lot of sense to me, but I was a very, very seasoned couples therapist, so I could translate it quite quickly. I could translate this to that, this to that, that to this. And I remember saying to him “You know, this could be very powerful”. This was even way back, you know, before I was a trainer, this could be powerful if we helped, you know, therapists really apply this to their work with couples. So, the conversation started early. And then, then I had the experience of not wanting to work with couples anymore and just work with individuals because it was such a beautiful process and took less energy and was easier to access Self-energy. So, I stopped seeing couples for a while and then somewhere along the line, I thought, yeah, you know, this has been a passion of mine for so many years, maybe I don't have to toss it. Maybe I don't have to just throw it all away. And so, I started thinking about going back to seeing couples, adding some IFS perspective to my couples’ work, and then started thinking more and more, how could we translate this? Because it's, you know, IFS itself is very, very nuanced. So how can we take the nuances of individual therapy and start to develop a program where IFS therapists could start learning how to apply this in their couple work. And it just kind of took off. And in 2010, I believe the first training was a pilot. And, you know, I've changed the curriculum honestly for probably nine years until we, I feel like we finally got it right. You know, and we'll always be going back and thinking about how to make it deeper, richer program.

Tisha: I'm really appreciating what you brought to couples’ work. And I'm curious what that was like for you to see this process unfolding with the actual couples you are working with. What was, what did you see happening and what was it like to kind of take that in and make adjustments?

Toni: One of the things that I love love about IFS is this idea of unblending, which is to me inherently affect regulating. And when I was, you know, as I was just getting into IFS and working with couples, I was in a situation where I was being referred a lot of couples who the therapists that worked around me were saying nobody can help these people. So, I was really faced with a lot of challenges and I was an Imago relationship therapist, since I started to add some of IFS, I saw that the Imago process worked way better if people could understand the concept of unblending. So that was a first thing that I saw is how do we create, you know, this unblending is a way to create more safety. The other thing that unblending offered me was a way for people to, in IFIO and IFS now we call it a U-turn. But what I noticed is that in order for people to do these attachment behaviors that we're asking them to do, to listen, to tune in, to meet each other's needs, to listen skillfully, to speak, you know, to speak honestly without wounding, they really had to have some kind of a sense of inner connection in order to do that well. And that's another thing that unblending offers couples is I can be with myself first, so I can get regulated, I can listen to myself, I can hold on to myself, maybe someday love myself. And in doing this, my relationship with my partner is going to become less reactive. And that's another thing I saw, a big shift is, and a lot of help from me, a lot of help from the therapist in order to do that. That's not easy when your protectors are really activated. You know, when our protectors in relationship are focused on getting something or hurting the other person, it's very hard to ask them to go this way, to ask them to go inside. But once we do, my experience is it really shifts the dynamic. And once people understand that vulnerability is what drives these protectors, exiles is what drives, you know, the needs and the wounds of exiles, is what drives these protectors, it changes their thinking, you know, and even just mentioning to people that this feeling that you have is just one part of yourself, it's not all of who you are, that changes, that's a game changer in relationship as well.

Aníbal: So, Toni, what is IFIO and how do you differentiate IFS from Intimacy from the Inside Out? How do they differentiate?

Toni: Well, Intimacy from the Inside Out is the application of IFS to couples’ therapy. So, I just, I want to say that, that there is a differentiation, but it is the model. You know, it is the model. And also, Dick Schwartz had these three protocols that he taught us in our Level 1 training. And so, the basic protocols are born out of those. So, the model is all about parts and Self. And what differentiates it from individual work with IFS is that the system is larger. You know, we're working with a bigger system, more parts, more parts, more legacies, more cultural differences, more cultural burdens, you know, that everything is just bigger and more dramatic...

Aníbal: Eventually fun as well.

Toni: And more therapist parts, right? So, the bigger the system, the bigger the system. So, you know, in the IFIO trainings, as with the IFS trainings, we are continually asking the therapists to check in, check in, check in, check in with what's happening for them.

Tisha: Are there sort of normative therapist parts that come up working with couples that you've identified, you know, like the top five or...

Toni: The top one that I observed and I'd be interested too in what my other trainers - I have 10 trainers at this point - would say, but is the exiles that get caught in the triangle of a couple therapy, because if you're sitting in front of a dyad that reminds you of an early dyad, then your system is going to start to respond. If you're not aware of it, your system will start to respond as you did in your, in where, you know, in your, you know, I don't want to say family because not everybody grows up in a family, but where your early childhood experiences took place, you're going to, you're going to begin to respond that way. Your parts are going to be, going to respond that way. Does that make sense? What I'm saying?

Tisha: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's not something that I considered. But of course, right? Yeah. So that's a big pitfall to be aware of.

Toni: So, in the beginning of a training, we talk about triangles and how a therapist has to create a safe triangle and actually not get triggered into childhood. Because once you're triggered into a child part, then you're no longer in Self anymore. So that's a big one. I would say another one is, and it probably all leads back to the same vulnerable exiles, you know, from childhood, but parts that can get annoyed because the parts in the clients aren't being compliant or...not being compliant, but you'll be working with an issue and everything's going well and then all of a sudden a protector comes up just like out of nowhere and triggers the, it can trigger the therapist. So, I think that's another pretty significant one. People come into these trainings and they take the training anyway, but they're scared to death of doing couples therapy because it's conflictual often, you know? So that's another part that comes up, the parts that want to avoid conflict. And they're usually young also, like this is scary, you know, what am I going to do, I don't know how to do this, what am I going to do parts, that's another one that comes up, anxiety comes up. So, these are some of the top ones.

Aníbal: And could you say, what are the main goals of IFIO?

Toni: I can. It’s funny that you asked that question, because, you know, as I've been working on this curriculum over the years, I've also been doing international trainings and in international trainings you are often being translated or interpreted. And so, you have a long, you have long spaces in between the questions, you know, or between what you're saying, you know, you say something and then the interpreter speaks and then you answer questions or whatever. And a couple of years ago when I was in France and I was talking about the goals, there were so many goals, it felt so cumbersome. You know, we have so many goals and I thought, you know, I have to, I have to get a little more concise here. Which I did, and one big goal is to help people decrease, you know, to, and I want to say, love their protectors into less reactivity, like less reactivity of the protectors will lead to more space in the inner system. And when there's more space in the inner system, people have more choices in how they want to respond. So, one of the big goals is to help people lessen the reactivity between them. And we could also say to help them get to a place of affect regulation so they can think and feel and pay attention to their parts and pay attention to how they want to respond to their partner. So, you know, all of that lessening, reactivity opening up more space inside, softening, you know, softening those protectors so that they're not on such high alert in the nervous system. So that's a big goal because I do believe that when people are blended, reactive, dysregulated, nothing really can happen between them that's going to lead to a more open-hearted loving connection. So that's another, another goal is how can we help people connect, reconnect? And that, you know, we haven't talked about what happens right in the beginning of therapy, but one of the things that happens right in the beginning of therapy is we ask the couple what they want. So, we're going to be, we're going to be with them on their journey that they have decided they want. And I hear so often we want to stop being reactive, we want to feel connected again, and we want to be able to communicate better. So, I listened to that, you know, I listen to people what they want and that's how we, you know, that's how we develop the goals with an individual couple. Another goal of IFIO, if the couple is interested in this, is changing how they communicate. And I am a huge proponent of helping people change their conversation. Not all couple therapy models have a dialogue process folded into their model. And I was in an Imago relationship therapist and that's a dialogic model. So, I took some of the beautiful things from that model and incorporated IFS into them. I believe that all couples, all couples should, if they want to be able to have any conversation, no matter how difficult. And I think this concept of speaking for parts and listening from Self is really, really powerful, you know, because when we're having difficult conversations, what we're doing is we're inviting ourselves to listen to the impact that we have had on our partner. And that's a tall order to ask people to listen to impact. So, we invite listeners to be aware that their feedback to us, that they're, you know, what they're sharing with us is not necessarily the truth about us, but more their experience of us. Am I making any sense here?

Tisha: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That's fascinating.

Toni: Yeah. So, we do a lot of working. We do a lot of work with the listener, you know, how to unblend and prepare yourself to be open enough, to hear something that your protectors might not like. So, you know, we spend a lot of time there and I think, you know, what I've found over the years is that there's a lot of appreciation for how much time we actually do stay with the person who's listening. You know, we do a body scan, we check for protectors. We want to make sure that all of the concerns of all the protectors that are listening, we address them before we ask them to listen. So, and in the beginning, we don't dialogue, we, you know, we invite people to experiment with unblending, speaking and listening differently. So anyway, that was a long answer to your, to your goals. And I think one more goal that I'll say is that people can envision or revision their relationship and also learn how to heal from betrayals big and small, you know, the betrayals of everyday life. When I snap at my partner, because I've had a hard day or, you know, bigger betrayals that can occur throughout the lifetime of an intimate relationship.

Tisha: Do you find that exiles benefit from being witnessed by someone's partner? Like, is that something that happens and is needed? I know Self to exile witnessing is really important, but does something else happened when a partner witnesses your exile?

Toni: We call that, when it's done well, we call that a relational unburdening. It's very different than an individual unburdening process. So, something that occurs in couple therapy in IFS couple therapy, IFIO, is when we do individual work with one person, we want to really make sure that the witnessing, that their partner is really available for that witnessing. And that means they're unblended, they're regulated, their heart is soft, Their protectors are stepped back or relaxed or softened because in my mind, we don't want to set up a situation where the exile gets rebounded by a partner who's starting to get blended with a defensive reactive part. So, we're careful when we do this, you know, we're careful about this. And when a partner, I believe, when a partner can really witness the other person doing a deep piece of work, which where they are also witnessing their exile, that exile is being bathed in Self-energy...

Tisha: So sweet.

Toni: I know, isn’t it? And then the therapist is also holding with all this Self-energy. So, in my mind, there is no way that that exile isn't letting go of something. So the process, you know, even if the person doing the work doesn't even get to a complete unburdening, I believe wholeheartedly that that exile that is being bathed and all of this love and care is letting go and having a corrective experience, which is what we do when we're witnessing exiles internally. So, there is a corrective experience happening, and that exile also has the opportunity to see that the partner is also there for it. So, it's just a very beautiful relational experience of, you know, open-heartedness, love, letting go and holding for the exile. And I believe that's brain changing as well, you know, heart opening and brain changing. An exile being witnessed that way is powerful. Thank you for asking that question. I might've forgotten to...

Tisha: I’ve been curious about that, yes.

Aníbal: Toni, you, I guess you also coined this term courageous communication. What is this about?

Toni: What is this about? So, you know, I believe that asking partners to slow down to unblend, to listen skillfully, to speak with language that is not wounding, to self-disclose in a responsible way is an incredibly courageous act, because it's not intuitive. When parts, when exiles are wounded and protectors are energized, they want to, they want to speak for themselves, right? You know, they want the permission to attack, withdraw, shame, blame, because that feels in the moment like it's going to take care of whatever the wounding is. And so what we're asking, we're asking couples to please trust us that if they can do this this way, this is what's going to bring relief, not the attack, which is the impulse, you know, the impulse to attack or withdraw, that is not ultimately going to be bring relief and it's not ultimately going to reconnect you with this person who, you know, who you want to reconnect with, if that's the goal to reconnect with them. So, that's why I use that word courage, because I think it takes a lot of courage for the protectors to step back, for the exiles to feel safe enough to allow the conversation to go on.

Aníbal: Thank you, beautiful.

Tisha: Toni, in your bio, I named that you have a new book coming out, and I wonder if you would be willing to share about your process a little bit and about what the book offers?

Toni: Sure. First, I want to say that I do have a co-author and her name is Martha Sweezy and I want to just make sure that everybody knows that because this is a project that would never have been completed without her. So, Martha and I wrote the first book together, and I'm trying to remember how this all unfolded because I swore, I would never write a book again. So somehow somebody invited me into this. It might have been PESI itself. Who's the...

Aníbal: Publisher.

Toni: Yeah. So, I went back to Martha and I think, would you be willing to do this with me? And of course, we couldn't write the same book because it's a different publisher and we decided, or actually PESI wanted us to write a manual. They didn't want a book. They wanted a manual, which is a little bit different. And Martha is already the coauthor with Dick Schwartz and Frank Anderson on the trauma manual and they wanted the exact same format there. And over the years, since the first book I've been changing my thinking on several fronts and also wanted to start adding a section on neurobiology in couples therapy and some of the thinking about the power, more on the power of unblending, more on where I think we're going with unblending and just more on shame and more on this and more on that. So, we just decided that we would do it, and it would be really much more of a how to, so less theory, more cases, more roadmaps, more exercises for couples and, you know, so we just embarked on it. And, you know, because I already had the model, the basis basics of the model, it wasn't, we took the basics of the models. So, in some ways it's a reflection of the first book, but it's a little bit more of a how to, you know, where couple therapists can really, therapists can really, can read it and see, okay, now you do this, now you do this, Now you do...

Aníbal: So, Toni, this is the manual for therapists. This is not the manual for couples.

Toni: Right. Right. And, you know, I do have a part that says never again, you know, it's always saying never again. I'm never writing another book. I'm not a writer. It doesn't come easily to me. I go through all kinds of pain and suffering, writing, always have.

Tisha: So, it's been a challenge.

Toni: Yeah. So, maybe someday there'll be a book for couples, you know, IFIO manual for couples. Because we have tons of exercises. I mean, my trainers make up exercises. We're making up exercises all the time. So, it would make sense to get it into a manual at some point.

Aníbal: Toni, what are most couples asking for when they look for you or for us for help? What are their needs? What are they asking for?

Toni: So interesting, because there was the before COVID, and now there's the during COVID, you know, I think we talked about that earlier that couples are really struggling right now. I think domestic violence is on the rise it's, it's, it's really challenging. So, you know, in my experience, people come to get help because, well, there's the presenting parts and then there's the underneath thing. You know, people come, and they're so determined that their partner is a big problem and that's what needs to get fixed. You know, if I think I have some beliefs about human beings, all human beings, you know, I have a nervous system long to feel safe. And that couples long to feel connected in ways that they did early in their relationship. And you know, over many years of discord or disconnection or miscommunication or pain and hurt, you know, the protectors take over. And so, they've, they're missing the vulnerability and they're missing the heartfelt connection. And I think, and but what they say is, you know, we've had a terrible breach, we've had a terrible betrayal, we have to figure this out, we don't know if we're staying together, we don't communicate anymore, since we had children, we don't have sex anymore. You know, so those are the presenting parts, but I think underneath it, all people want to feel loved and they want to feel connected and they want to feel safe. And, even getting to that sometimes takes a while with people, you know, but I think, I think ultimately that's what, what people are asking for, but I listened very closely. You know, the other thing that I hear actually, which is what I start my trainings with, I believe that not only do all people want to feel connected, all people want to feel, or I'm not going to say all, many people want to feel that they can be themselves and be loved by the other person. Does that make sense? So, IFIO is a model of differentiation, which says, we want to help you create a relationship where both of your individualities are welcome and that you can be yourself and also be connected because I will hear often comments like I can't be myself with you when you do this, you'll give me hell, or, you know, there's a lot of conversations around. I just can't be. I don't feel like I can be myself, so I have to succumb to you, which is never what we want people to feel. Either people feel I have to succumb to you, or I have to get away from you. And one of our invitations is what if you could have yourself and the other person at the same time, especially, especially during conflict so that you didn't have to disconnect during conflict, but actually you could hold onto yourself and feel like you were a full person with a full Self and a whole set of parts that are valid and welcome. And, you know, that's a new one, that’s when you (inaudible) people, really, you know, that we could offer a trajectory, or we could offer a path where people could feel solid inside themselves and also connected to their partner, even when times are difficult. So, first there's curiosity there. And sometimes it takes a long time to get there.

Aníbal: Toni, in your website, you offer different modalities to get familiar with IFIO. You say you provide trainings, workshops, and retreats for therapists and people everywhere, seeking a liveliness, hope and meaningful change in their relationships.

Toni: That's our mission, right?

Aníbal: That’s our mission. So how do you differentiate those modalities you offer. How different they are?

Toni: So, the trainings are the trainings and that's a Level 2 training and IFS Level 2 training. So, it's under the umbrella of IFSI. And that is a 72. The basic training is a 72-hour training for IFS therapists who want to learn the basics of IFIO. And then following that, we have advanced trainings and post advanced trainings that are for people who want the nuances of the model, who really, really like it, love it, and want to dig in and learn how to use it in their offices. So that's the training track right there. And then before COVID, we, I have a little team and we offered IFIO couples retreats once a year in a beautiful place where couples could come in a safe environment, we have, you know, I have staff with me learn about communication, learn about the exile protector relationship, learn about how they can start to think about parts and Self in relationships. So, it's highly experiential. We have yoga teachers. We have, we always go somewhere. You know, we've been going to Mexico the last few years, but that's on hold for right now. So that's a highly experiential retreat, open to couples. And then, Aníbal, like the introductory workshop that you took, we offer those on occasion, you know, to, you know, honestly, between you and me, right after COVID started and everything got shut down, IFIO, it felt like we hit an iceberg actually. And I didn't know, I'm pretty small little operation. I have me and one assistant or two assistants and then these 10 trainers, and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. This was before all of a sudden everything went online. It shook me up a little bit. And my, at that time assistance said, why don't you offer a workshop and see what happens? And it was, so it was welcomed in such an overwhelming way that then we did another one. And I think you were in the second one. So, we'd never done that. I never done a workshop like that online before. So that's something we might do. You know, again, I don't, I don't really know, but the other thing is that we'll be invited to do all different kinds of introductory workshops here or there. Two of my staff just did an introductory sexuality workshop online. We're going to do some things on the brain and IFIO. And, you know, sometimes somebody will write to us and say, would you come and do a workshop for this group of people or that group of people? So, so that's, those are the workshops and those workshops are not, they don't, they don't give you, they don't give you any credit toward your, you know, your Level ones or your Level two IFS trainings. But we do always, even in the retreats, offer IFS CES. So, anything, anytime anybody does anything with us, you can use that toward your certification or your recertification.

Aníbal: Toni, I was going to ask you regarding the future for the IFIO model, what are your wishes and wonderings?

Toni: That's a question that I am in process with right now, currently. You know, I've been doing this for a long time, and I have polarized parts, you know, on one hand, I want to slow down and have a little bit less complicated, more peaceful life. On the other hand, as IFS is exploding worldwide, IFIO is right behind it. And so how I'm going to, honestly, how I'm going to deal with that, I don't know. I don't know right now. I'm in the process of, we are, my team, we're in the process of doing some anti-racism training and thinking about how the model can be taught in ways that is more inviting for black indigenous people of color, different cultures, you know, we're coming to you Aníbal. We were just in, you know, we just did a training for the Spanish. We're going to be training the French ongoingly. So, I'm really thinking about how can we really open this up and expand our thinking on one hand. So, I'm really at a crossroads. I really am. I literally right in the middle of, should I go straight? Should I go, right? Should I go left? Should I start peddling backwards as fast as I can.

Aníbal: And the world is changing as well.

Toni: The world is changing. Everything is changing. So, and you know, now that we're online, people from all over the world that could never get to these trainings are now able to get to these trainings. So, I'm just in a state of wonder about it. I have to admit.

Aníbal: Thank you.

Tisha: Yeah, thanks for that honest answer. Hopefully clarity will come your way with that.

Aníbal: Toni, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, your model, our work and our lives.

Toni: Well, thank you both. Nice to meet you both, finally.

Tisha: Yes, thank you, Toni. Thanks for your time today and all your wisdom and all the work that you've done. All your contributions.

 

Recorded 3rd March 2021
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Alexia Rothman on The Therapeutic Dose of Empathy in IFS 48:45

Dr. Alexia Rothman is a licensed psychologist and Certified IFS therapist in private practice in Atlanta, GA.  She is a United States Presidential Scholar who completed her doctoral work in Clinical Psychology in 2003 at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.  She has formerly held adjunct professor positions in the Psychology Departments of Emory University and Agnes Scott College.  Dr. Rothman was drawn to the IFS model through her therapeutic work with trauma survivors, and she began her formal training in the IFS model in 2011.  Over the past 11 years, Dr. Rothman has served as a Program Assistant for many Level 1, 2, and 3 experiential IFS trainings.  In 2016, Dr. Rothman combined her passion for psychotherapy and her love of teaching and began offering full-day workshops to introduce the IFS model to clinicians.  She now regularly teaches both introductory and more advanced IFS workshops throughout the United States and abroad, and she serves as an IFS consultant, helping clinicians to deepen their knowledge of the IFS model while working with their own systems to facilitate maximal access to Self-energy in their professional and personal lives.  Dr. Rothman is married to an IFS therapist and is the mother of two human children and three Tonkinese cats.
You can find more about Dr. Alexia here at her website

 

Today on IFS talks we're speaking with Dr. Alexia Rothman, Lexi. Lexi is a licensed psychologist and certified IFS therapist in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She has her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Lexi has held a junk professor position in the psychology department of Emory university and Agnes Scott College. She was drawn to the IFS model through her therapeutic work with trauma survivors, and she began her formal training in IFS in 2011.

Over the past 11 years, Dr. Rothman has served as a Program Assistant for many IFS trainings. She's combined her passion for psychotherapy and her love of teaching, and she's begun offering full day workshops to introduce the IFS model to clinicians. She now regularly teaches both introductory and advanced IFS workshops and serves as an IFS consultant, helping clinicians to deepen their knowledge of the IFS model. Lexi, welcome to IFS Talks, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Alexia Rothman: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here, a little nervous and excited.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Lexi, for joining us. What parts come up today hearing your bio?

Lexi: What I was noticing as I was listening to the bio is a really deep sense of gratitude, and this comes up for me, actually, anytime I think back over my professional journey, just gratitude that I have gotten for so many decades now to spend my time doing what I really love doing and what I'm interested in and what I feel comes really naturally to me. So, being a therapist, teaching IFS, it doesn't feel so much like a profession as much as it feels like me just being me in the world. And, as I'm saying that, I'm feeling this joy coming up within me and right next to that, I'm aware of a part that is acknowledging that this is not the, this is not the story for everyone. You know, that things like your interest and your curiosity and being yourself can always be the guiding forces in your professional life. So, I have an acknowledgement that it is a great privilege, that that's been the case for me. And really also I have a sense of a desire to share whatever has been helpful for me along the way in my journey with others and I have gotten to do that as a therapist. I think for all of us, the more that we learn and grow, the more that we can really offer to our clients. But in recent years, I've found that I can do that on an even larger scale by teaching the IFS model to clinicians.

Tisha: Can you tell us about your journey as a psychotherapist? Was there something that was predeterminant in you becoming a therapist?

Lexi: Yeah. When I've thought back over my life, I think there are really two main starting points for my professional journey. So, my journey as a therapist started in high school. When I was 14, my mother and I were trained to work on a crisis hotline six hours a week. So, I was only 14. They were not putting me on the calls with the people in crisis because I was too young, but I was actually allowed to attend all of the trainings and the supervision sessions and assist the counselors. So that's when I really started to first learn some of the skills that are involved with being present with someone who is in acute emotional distress. And by a few years after that, actually at my university, I actually had become the head of the crisis hotline at the university. So, I was able to put some of those skills into practice. So that's my training as a therapist, I guess it informally started at 14, but my journey as a psychologist, I think as a student of human behavior and of the human mind and that desire to engage with people with interest with curiosity started much younger than 14. And I really attribute this to my mother because her story, she grew up very poor, she lived in a housing project in New York city near the Queensboro bridge and didn't really have money, so, she didn't really have toys to play with, so, people were her entertainment. She's always had a fascination with how people think, how they behave, their habits, their verbal and nonverbal communication styles, their impact of their cultural background on their life experience. And she transferred this curiosity to me. And I actually remember distinctly, I was five or six years old. This is the earliest memory I have of her kind of transferring this curiosity about people to me. I was coming back from school on the bus and I saw a boy on the bus bullying another child and I wasn't in tremendous distress about this. So, I didn't really need anything very much emotionally, but I had some confusion about it. So, I came home, and I told my mother, this is what I saw. And I didn't really think much about the nature of her reaction at the time. But when I became an IFS therapist, it became really interesting to me how she had chosen to react because her response was one of pure curiosity. So, she said “I wonder what's going on in his life that's making him act out that way.” And then she turned the question on me “What do you think some of the reasons might be that he's bullying this other child?” And we talked together, we thought about the different things we knew about his life and possible stressors and the function that the bullying behavior might be playing for him, what it might be doing to help him. And I remember the next day, because I was only probably six, I actually proceeded to tell this boy all of the different reasons why he could have been bullying the other child. And I don't think it went over very well, but he didn't do it again. But what was important, I think, for me about the fact that she had this interest in people and this curiosity about what made them tick was it gave me the sense that human behavior really does have a logic to it. It makes sense in some way, even if it's confusing at first, that it really does make sense, even when it's awful. So that really supported my natural curiosity, I think.

Tisha: I hear so much compassion in that too.

Lexi: Yeah.

Tisha: Right? She didn't jump to being in a judgmental manager, which I think would be so easy, you know, and then it kind of brought out your compassion to have that enlightened perspective.

Lexi: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that because that is how it felt to me. And I'm grateful for that because she could have put different perspectives in my head that would have been about her and her parts. And she didn't, there was openness, there was interest, there was compassion. I guess those were the more informal beginnings of my journey. And then when I was a teenager, my mother actually went to back to graduate school. She earned degrees in Social Work and Marriage and Family Therapy. And so, she was trained in family systems therapy and gestalt therapy. So, then her perspective in our discussion started to be flavored by these approaches. And when it was time for me to start my formal studies, I moved from New York. That's where I had grown up. I moved down to Atlanta, to Emory University and I'm still actually sitting across the street from that university right now in my private practice office. And I had a wonderful mentor for my undergraduate studies, Dr. Stephen Nowicki, who is clinical psychologist, master professor, wonderful public speaker, researcher, author, all of this. And I still have a close relationship with him to this day. And we did a lot of research together on nonverbal communication. And that still, I think, informs my clinical work, but of all the things he did for me, and there were many, what stayed with me the most is something he would repeat to me over and over again which is, he'd say “Lexi, remember relationships are everything.” And it was excellent advice. But I used to only think about it in terms of external relationships. So my relationships with my family or colleagues or mentors, my clients, and once I started learning IFS, it just took on such a deeper meaning for me, because almost everything that we're trying to do as IFS therapists is to facilitate the development of these internal relationships between the Self of our clients and the various, you know, individuals that make up their internal systems. So, the importance of that is a big theme for me.

Aníbal: So, it looks like your graduation in psychology started home. But how did you become involved with the IFS model?

Lexi: I finished up my doctoral training. I was out in the University of California, Los Angeles for about five years. I came back to Atlanta. I opened a practice in 2004 and I was using at the time a very integrative approach to therapy. So, I had been trained in CBT a little bit of DBT, some psychodynamic approaches, interpersonal therapy. I was kind of blending everything together and I really felt strongly if I was ever going to work primarily from one theoretical orientation, it needed to be one that I guess included or integrated all of the elements that I had found really useful or helpful about the other models I had learned. And around 2010, I was working with three different clients that I started learning where survivors have much more severe and extensive childhood trauma than I had actually realized before. And part of why, even though we had worked together for a couple of years at this point, part of why I hadn't realized the full extent of their trauma was because a lot of the traumatic material was actually walled off within their own psyches for protection, which makes sense. So, we had spent a couple of years working on other material, other traumas that they had access to. And as the work progressed, they started to reveal more about what had happened to them early in life. It became more accessible to them. They started to talk about it. And unfortunately, and I know many other clinicians have been in this position too, as this happened, as they got more access to the traumatic material that had been buried, their suicidality increased, their self-injury increased, addictive behaviors, dissociation, all of this. And I, two of them actually also had full blown DID, so we'd be in sessions and they might switch and suddenly become four years old and not have any idea who I was. And that felt new to me. I felt really out of my depth, I guess. So, I went up to the international trauma conference in Boston that Bessel van der Kolk hosts, and I met Dick and I went to his introductory workshop on IFS and I really fell in love with the model because IFS did integrate everything I had loved about the models I had used before. So, there's this list that I made for myself about five years ago when I started teaching IFS about all the things that I felt that IFS included about the models I had used before. And so, I'd love to just say that list for you because it matters to me, it was one of the reasons that drew me to this model. But what I say is that I feel like IFS included the mindfulness component and the emotion focus, the cognitive behavioral elements, the attention to the body and what is held there, the importance of the therapeutic relationship and specifically the presence that the therapist can hold to facilitate healing; the merits of attachment theory, both externally and also taken internally between the clients’ Self and the parts of their own systems, the wisdom of systems thinking, the power of the hypnotic trance state, or a similar type of state for healing and connection, reprocessing of traumatic memories, techniques for emotion regulation, effective ways of working with transference and countertransference, spiritual elements, if desired. So, I have this whole list of things that I felt that IFS did. And what I loved about the model was not only that it was so comprehensive that it has all of that, but that it manages to wrap it in this package that looks so simple on the surface.

Aníbal: Yeah. We can find it all.

Lexi: And so, it's important. It's felt important to me when I'm introducing this model to clinicians to tell them about how much is actually there, because it's really surprising how much power is in this model when you really can fully start to get it and start to apply it from some degree of Self. So, I guess I ended up doing the different levels of training, and I was really fortunate that Dick offered me a spot in his personal monthly supervision group. So I was with in that for over three years, and it was great because not only did I get to learn more directly from him, but he also, primarily what he did with us was actually have us work with our own systems, with the parts of us that come up when we're working with our clients to do some healing work and so that we could have more access to Self-energy as therapists. So that was important for me.

Aníbal: So, you started with the master.

Lexi: Yeah. And I really started off with him because he was one of my lead trainers, even for my Level 1. He and the amazing Paul Ginter, they shared the weekends, it was a wonderful way to be introduced to the model. So, then yeah, I did a lot of PAing and still do. But about five years ago, I realized that nobody in my home state of Georgia, five people maybe had ever been trained in the IFS model, and two of them were myself and my husband. And so, I decided to start offering full day, continuing education workshops, introducing IFS to clinicians and Dick had given me permission to do that. And at this point there've been over a thousand clinicians just in Georgia that have been to one of these workshops. So, IFS is really spreading here. And then Dick actually asked me if I'd like to teach more broadly. So, he arranged for me to work with PESI, which is a large continuing education organization. And I started traveling all over the United States, you know, three to six cities per month doing these full day IFS workshops and got the chance to do this in the UK as well through PESI UK. And of course, we've been virtual now for over a year, unfortunately, but I'm looking forward to returning to teaching live at some point.

Tisha:  I can really hear how much passion you have for the model and I'm curious to know how you're enjoying teaching and what that brings up and what it's like for you to teach IFS.

Lexi: It's really, even hard for me to actually put it into words how important it feels to me, how much I love it to be teaching this model, how much joy there is for me in doing this. Before the pandemic one of the things that I really loved when I was in live workshops was being able to look out, you know, into the faces of the participants and see different things, I guess, in their facial expressions that were so touching to me as they were first introduced to this model. So, you can see that moment when a piece of the material would really land with them and it made sense, and they started to make all these connections in their minds to things they had observed over decades of clinical practice and suddenly it was making sense in this whole new way. And, and I would imagine that that's what they were feeling, but they would come up to me on the breaks and tell me that that's what was actually happening for them, just like fireworks in the brain.

Aníbal: So rewarding.

Lexi: Really, really rewarding. And another thing that I guess, personally, that's meaningful for me about teaching IFS it’s teaching is an activity that really connects me to my father. My father is a college professor, actually in New York. He's been an educator for many decades now. And he is the most Self-lead teacher that I can imagine. There's a palpable Self-energy surrounding him when he's doing what he loves. So, he loves his students, he loves the material and more than anything, he has a tremendous respect for the role that he gets to be in. As a teacher, as a professor, he grew up, these are his words. He describes himself as a peasant boy. He grew up on the little Island of Lemnos in Greece and he was the son of the village shoemaker. And his father eventually became the village priest, but he, they had no electricity. They had a one room schoolhouse. So, the eight children in their school would share one school book, 30 minutes each, each evening and they had to study fast because once the sun went down, that was it for their studying. So, learning time was so precious. And he came to this country when he was 26, no knowledge of the language, no money, nothing. So, he started by cleaning the bathrooms in the church and singing in the church. And he slowly learned the language and he worked harder than anyone I've ever known. At one point in my childhood, he literally had 15 jobs, my siblings and I wrote them out for him because I don't think he realized how much he was doing, but he eventually got two master's degrees and a doctorate in political science from NYU, from New York university, which blows my mind. It was hard enough to get a PhD in my native language, I don't understand how he did what he did, but so being a professor to him, it just means something so deep. I mean, and you can tell that it's just deeply meaningful for him to be doing this. And I can understand that because even though my journey to becoming a teacher is so different, when I'm doing it, it feels so meaningful to me, my parts give me so much space to be there in a way that's really engaged, really connected, playful, I enjoy it. I love connecting with the participants in the workshops. So, I feel a connection to him and to how much he loves being in this role and offering whatever he has.

Tisha: So, there's really a legacy heirloom that comes up. Yeah, that's really...

Lexi: Yeah, definitely.

Tisha: A beautiful illustration of how that can happen.

Aníbal: Lexi, IFS is also an experiential model, and I'm curious if you, when you teach the model, you also go experiential?

Lexi: That's been actually very tricky for me because when I'm doing these large workshops, I mean, I can have up to 300 people in them. So, it feels very much like a risk for me to do too much of the experiential work in that format in case somebody gets activated. So we'll do a brief, like a 15 minute internal exercise that's designed to help them notice when a part gets activated and what it would be like to notice that and to try to have some interaction with a part, but I keep it pretty light. So, what I do love to do in terms of the experiential, because I think you're absolutely right, there's something so different about cognitively grasping concepts versus experiencing, learning through experience. So, I work individually actually with clinicians and in small groups to help them learn the model through having it done, you know, within their own system.

Aníbal: Is there a particular IFS related topic that is of special interest to you that you'd like to expand on a bit for us today?

Lexi: Actually, yes. I'd love to. One of my favorite topics to teach about is actually the presence of the therapist in IFS therapy. So those of us who practice IFS, we know that the presence that the therapist holds in each session can either really facilitate the client's ability to access their own Self-energy and connect in a healing way with their parts or it can actually interfere with that ability by maybe activating, causing more activation in some of their parts. So, as I talk about this, I do want to make clear that in no way do I want to put all the responsibility on us as clinicians for how much our clients are able to access Self because I think there are a lot of factors and some of them have nothing to do with us that play into whether or not a client can access Self-energy in their sessions. But with all other things being equal, I do think that the presence of the therapist has a significant impact. So, just to be more specific about the piece of this that I'd like to share here, there's something, there's an aspect of our therapeutic presence that I personally like to call the therapeutic dose of empathy. And so, before I give a couple of my ideas on this, I just think it would be best if it's okay with you if I give a little bit of background, just to make sure that everyone who's hearing it can start on the same page.

Aníbal: Yeah, please do that.

Lexi: Just having been trained as an academic, it's very important for me to give credit where credit is due. So, this background that I'm saying comes primarily from two sources. So, the research of Dr. Tania, who's a psychologist and a neuroscientist who studies compassion and empathy. And also, the brilliant mind of Dr. Frank Anderson, you know, most of us know he's a psychiatrist, a senior lead trainer for IFS, and he teaches about, among other things, IFS and neuroscience. So, Frank was actually the first person that I heard start to translate neuroscientific concepts into IFS terms several years ago. And I heard him talking back then about the way that he understands empathy and compassion through an IFS lens, and I found it so helpful. So, to paraphrase Frank here, he says “We can understand empathy in IFS terms as a blended state.” So, when we're feeling empathy for someone else, our parts that hold feelings or hold burdens that are similar to theirs, they're feeling with them in that moment. So, for example, if we're sitting with a client, who's talking about the grief that they're experiencing around losing a parent, and if a part of us holds that same type of unhealed grief, it may get activated such that we are feeling the grief held by our part while the client is feeling the grief held by their parts. So, then we're empathizing. So, Frank sums this up kind of in a funny way, but he says empathy is, you know, I'm feeling mine while you're feeling yours. So, we're feeling with the person, but we're feeling our own material when we're empathizing. And where Tania singer's research comes into play here is, she found that, neurobiologically speaking, empathy and compassion are not only not the same thing, but they actually involve different neurocircuitry. So, when we're empathizing or feeling with someone or in IFS terms, when we are blended with our own parts, that can resonate with the distress of others, there's circuitry involved in feeling pain and negative effect that's actually activated inside of us. So, we're actually suffering to some extent when we're empathizing with someone. So, it's a state that could drain us, it could lead to burnout. But compassion on the other hand is what we can understand in IFS terms as more of the unblended state of Self, it's one of the characteristics of that unblended state. And in that state, you know, we certainly care about our clients and we're engaged with them, and we have that motivation to help them, but we're not in a state of distress or pain as we're sitting with them. And Tanya singer found that in fact, neurocircuitry related to reward is activated. So, there is an aspect of being compassionately present with someone, even when they're in distress, that's rewarding to us on a biological level, which I thought was amazing. So, I have this part, you know, who hears things like this, and it likes to translate everything I hear into IFS terms and figure out, you know, how might this research and the way that Frank translated empathy and compassion into IFS language, how can this help us in practical ways as IFS therapists? So, I'll give you a few of my thoughts on that. So, first, people might be thinking “Well, okay, based on what you just said is empathy a bad thing then? Do I not want to experience empathy when I'm with my clients?” And actually, that's not the case because some degree of empathy has a lot of therapeutic value. It can actually be necessary in therapy. So, in fact, the right dose of empathy seems to enhance the process, you know, in the sense that it can help client parts feel felt and feel deeply understood. So, this applies externally, you know, how much empathy do we as therapists want to have going on and want to be conveying to our clients. But it also applies internally in the sense that when our client is with one of their parts, you know, we know that some degree of separation is necessary in order to form that Self to part relationship, but some degree of blending or empathy is actually really helpful so the part feels felt, and really connected to, and really met in their experience. So here I'm, in the interest of time, I'm just going to talk about the external, the therapist and how much empathy is going on for us and how much we're conveying it. And how do we know, you know, how much empathy would be ideal? Is there some secret ratio of empathy to compassion that would make us maximally effective as therapists?

Aníbal: Yeah. We need both.

Lexi: We need both. Absolutely. We need both. And the question to me is what is the therapeutic dose of empathy? How much do we need? And, you know, I've got a manager that loves to know all these things exactly, you know, and would love to have an answer like, well, it's 80% compassionate and 20% empathy, and then you're at your best. But, you know, this is where we're really talking about the art of psychotherapy, you know, and not, not one size fits all answers or protocol type answers because the level of nuance like with anything else clinically is incredible here. So, I've found that the ideal mix of empathy and compassion since we do need both, but the ideal ratio not only varies from client to client, but also within each client, depending on the part of them we're working with. And also, over the arc of working with that part, it can vary. But since Dick tells us, you know, and it's true that our parts are capable of adjusting the amount that they blend with us in any given moment, we do have the ability to sort of play with that ratio in real time, you know, how much empathizing we're doing internally, how much empathy are we conveying, you know, through our nonverbal and verbal behaviors to our clients. So, that's why in my mind, I was thinking about this concept of the therapeutic dose of empathy, because I believe that in any given therapeutic situation or moment, there's a range of empathy that would facilitate the process and going outside of that on either direction can hinder it. So, I have this series of considerations that I take into account. I have somewhere in the back of my mind when I'm sitting with someone about this, and I do realize that because I'm laying out these considerations, you know, for you in like a list form, kind of a cognitive process, that it can make this sound like a very managerial thing, but that's not actually how it unfolds in the moment. So, fortunately for us, when our parts allow us enough space to be present with our clients from at least a critical mass of Self, we have access to something that is far more powerful than managerial decision-making, which is our intuition, you know, our capacity to be deeply attuned to the person we're with and to all of these subtle energetic shifts and these signals that they're giving off. And we can flow with this in a very fluid way. So, when I'm actually with clients, I'm not often consciously thinking about how to manually adjust my empathy to compassion ratio, it just sort of flows up and down, but it can, I've found, and especially teaching IFS to beginning clinicians, sometimes it can be helpful to break down this concept and have just a few key considerations in the back of our mind in case we actually need in a given moment based on what we're picking up from our client, that's something about our mix isn’t working, in case we need to do a manual adjustment in the moment, which really means to unblend. So, I'm just going to, you know in IFS unblend means get more space if we need to.

So, for me, I've got there about maybe six or so client level considerations that I think about. And one of them that's very significant, I think, is if I'm doing it insight work with a client, they're inside, they're connecting with a part of them. You know, the client has enough access to Self, so that the part they're working with feels really met in their experience, feels really felt by the client's Self, then too much empathy on my part, too much of me feeling and conveying what I'm feeling can actually pull them out of connection. You know, so as Dick says, you know, if our clients are in a tuned connection with their parts and their parts are getting everything they need from them, we need to get out of the way. So, that is one indication to me to unblend a bit just to ask my parts to allow me to stay quiet and just hold Self-energy from them as they do their work. Second consideration is something that Frank offers and he says, think about, is the client physiologically hyper aroused in this moment? Are they panicked or rageful, very keyed up? And if so, we actually want to dial back on the empathy. So, they don't need us to add any of our energy to the mix, either our anxious energy or be overly warm and overly nurturing, because it can actually cause increased activation in their system. So, with these hyper aroused clients, we pull back on the empathy, we ask our parts to give us a little more space so we can be calm and clear and confident, hallmarks of Self. You know, so compassion is there. The third one is also from Frank and it's about clients who are physiologically hypo aroused. So, do they have very low energy, maybe a bit disconnected from their experience? And if so, sometimes it could be helpful to allow a little bit more empathy in, adding a little bit of our energy to the room. Our parts energy can be helpful sometimes here because there's so little of their own energy available. So, it's nice to feel a little resonance with us. For me, the fourth consideration is really important, and it involves working with clients with highly developed caregiver parts. And I work mostly with therapists, nearly all of my clients have these hardworking, really skilled, highly developed caregivers. So, these caregivers are very used to being out front and scanning everyone else to make sure that they're all okay, because if everyone externally is okay, that means their system will be safe. So, since these parts are out front all the time, they may not even know that a greater power exists within the client. So if you finally get one of these caregiver parts to relax back a bit, your client accesses some Self-energy, they're inside, you know, they're working with an exile and you're empathizing too much or in too obvious way where the caregiver starts to sense that something's going on with you, you know, that you're resonating with their system's pain, such that now you're actually in a little bit of distress, they'll pop right out of connection to make sure you're okay because that's how they make sure the system is safe and they're not going to be able to step back and allow the client to take care of their own system in that moment, because now that no longer feel safe to do right now. So especially if I'm with clients who either have highly developed caregiver parts, or other types of hypervigilant protectors who are always scanning and seeing if everything's safe, I want to actually ask for a lot more space in my system to be present more from a compassionate place, more from Self, rather than having that flavoring from my own parts or conveying that too much. And I realize I'm laying these things out as though I'm some sort of expert, but the reason I, the reason I know some about this is because I've learned the hard way a lot of times, you know, where some, some blending on my part or a bit too much empathy on my part has caused reactivity, you know, in protectors, or has broken the connection between the Self and the parts. And I've had to, and I continue to do, you know, a lot of personal work around that. You know, when that happens for me. So, the fifth client level consideration for me involves the issue of systems where too high a dose of empathy on my part might, in some way, unintentionally bypass their protectors and violate the pace of the system in terms of allowing premature access to exiles, meaning access without permission. So, sometimes we only know if this is going to happen through trial and error because I've seen it happen both ways. Sometimes when we offer very heavily protected systems, a dose of empathy, sometimes for the first time, it actually helps them connect with some of the feelings of their exiles in a way that opens the door for future healing. But as I've also seen the opposite to be true. So I've learned to watch for this, for example, some of my clients who have had protectors who keep a very tight lid on their exiles, when I've shown higher dose of empathy, as I'm listening to a protector narrate something in a very disconnected way, when they can see in my eyes or in my body language, that I'm really resonating a bit with what they're saying, and they feel a lot of warm, sometimes the exiles have just stormed the gate. It's trickled all the way down past the protectors, the exiles are getting a sense that someone's here who's really, really connecting with, with what they're feeling. And then it's like the exiles are trying to get past the protectors to me and they want to share their story and they want to attach to me, and the protectors get very upset by this. And the person says things like, I just want to run out of the room, or I don't know if I want to come back for the next session because so much got stirred up within them. And so, from having some things like this happen for me, with clients where maybe, I don't know at first, which way is going to go, and then I see which way it went, and it went this way, I tend to air now on the side of really asking my parts for space across the board when I'm working with systems where the protectors are really, really, really concerned about access to the exiles and flooding, so that I'm coming very much from a lot of whole lot of Self. And I guess the final client-related consideration that I'll say something about is that sometimes where I found it could be helpful to offer a little more empathy is when you're doing Direct Access. So, this is because, by definition, if you're doing Direct Access, the client doesn't have access to Self in that moment. So, the part is blended with them and is not feeling met or feeling felt by their Self. So, since their Self is not available to connect with the part, and you're the Self in the room in that moment, it can really help if the part sees that you don't just understand what they're saying intellectually, but that you actually feel it to some degree as well. You can appreciate it on a visceral level. So, some of your parts energy here can help the part feel met and feel felt by you since their Self isn't available to do it right in that moment.

So, in terms of therapists’ level considerations for, okay, when what might we unblend a bit, when might be we adjust this ratio, it boils down to two questions I think for me. So, one is that I ask myself, right, “Is my level of blending here helping or hindering my ability to facilitate something therapeutic happening in this session?” So if my level of blending is so great that it's obscuring my clarity or my access to my intuition, my ability to be attuned and present with my client, then it is too much, no matter what the client may prefer, it's too much because I'm not helpful. So, I ask for some space there. So that's more relevant to our effectiveness as therapists in the moment. And then there's the other question of, “Is the level of empathy that I'm experiencing so significant that it's negatively impacting me as the therapist, you know, do I feel drained after sessions? Am I dreading sessions because more gets stirred up in me than feels, okay?” So, those are all indications for us as therapists to try unblending. And thinking, you know, there all these considerations, but if we had to go with a general rule, fortunately we have one in IFS, which is that if you're in doubt at all, if you're not sure, unblend, because I can't say that I've ever gone wrong with too much Self onboard or too much compassion, but I absolutely have gone wrong with too much empathy. And so, if, you know, if I'm in a good place and I've got access to my intuition and I'm really attuned to my clients, then that ratio is going to go up and down as needed. I don't need to do much, but if I'm not in that space, as much as I'd like to be, I may have to actually do a manual adjustment and ask for more space from my parts until I can get back in that rhythm.

Anibal: Beautiful.

Tisha: I really appreciate your ability to illustrate the nuances here in the art of being an IFS therapist. I find this incredibly helpful and really appreciate also your enthusiasm about it. A unique topic.

Lexi: Thank you.

Tisha: I'm curious about your, you know, what's going on currently for you with IFS and a little bit about your plans for the future. How would you like things to unfold?

Lexi: That's interesting question, because most of the time I don't really think about how I'd like things to unfold, they seem to just start unfolding and I catch up, but I guess over the past five years what's been happening it's been a natural transition and it's been lovely for me is that my private practice has transitioned to the point where about 80% of my clientele is now made up of clinicians who are interested in what Aníbal was talking about before learning the model experientially through working with their own systems. So, I'm really loving that work and looking forward to continuing that. And at the moment I'm doing that individually, I have some small groups of IFS clinicians who do this sort of experiential consultation, but I have had requests for more consultation groups. So that's something that if I can make the time in my schedule, I would like to do, so I'm going to make that effort, and if those offerings become available, I can post them on my website if someone's interested. I'm continuing to teach my IFS workshops, introductory, and more advanced. I've got some more in progress that have started to form in my mind, so, hopefully by June, I'm going to have the next one out. And then I'm finally, actually in about two weeks Aníbal and I are launching a new podcast called Explorations in Psychotherapy. So, we're going to be exploring all kinds of topics that are relevant to psychotherapy, including IFS, not limited to IFS though. And through interviewing authors of books of articles and engaging in discussions with therapists who are reading really valuable material and integrating it into their clinical practice, into their IFS practice. And that's an entirely new venture for me, one of those examples where I didn't plan it or go looking for it, but it's here, I'm terrified...

Aníbal: Me too.

Lexi: But also, very excited. So, it will be a giant learning curve for me and I'm looking forward to really learning alongside everyone from the people that come to speak with us.

Aníbal: Lexi, I understood you are married to an IFS therapist?

Lexi: Yes.

Aníbal: How is it being married with someone belonging to this community where you can use parts language? And I am asking this from a part feeling some envy...

Lexi:  Oh, I'm telling you it is such a blessing to be able to have someone who does speak the same language, to be able to have someone who can, both of us, we do this for each other, where we can look at whatever's going on for the other person through this non pathologizing lens and through this lens of the natural multiplicity of the mind. So, if one of us is sort of in a part in some way, there is that underlying certainty that their Self is still in there and that it will reemerge as that part unblends and that if we can bring Self to the interaction, that it will facilitate the unblending and we get our partner back faster, and it's been a godsend for being a parent, I've got a 13 year old, almost 14 year old daughter and an almost 11 year old son and being able to view their systems that way it has been incredible. And I know I'm a better parent because of having this perspective and some of the skills that go along with it. So, I'm incredibly grateful.

Aníbal: So, you can use this parts language with your kids as well?

Lexi: I can, I can actually, and sometimes I don't always use it explicitly in terms of referring to parts, but the perspective is underneath everything I'm saying, I don't really know how to explain that much better, but it's whether or not I'm specifically talking about parts with them about them, it's how I'm viewing them and how I'm interacting with them from that place. But I will use parts language with me so that I'm modeling, that so that, you know, when I'm talking about something I'm doing, like they knew I was coming on here today to talk to you and they were asking me about it in the car last night, we were driving home from my office where they do their homeschool, and I was able to talk about, you know, parts of me that were really excited to be here and parts of me that were really scared, because I haven't ever been a guest on a podcast before, you know, and sort of the blend. And they can hear that, and it helps them, I've noticed, think about their own systems that way. So, they can talk about things from reflecting their own natural multiplicity, rather than getting blended with one thing and overwhelmed.

Aníbal: Exactly. Such a gift.

Tisha: It reminds me of your story that you shared with your own mom looking at the bully from a lens of multiplicity.

Lexi: Yeah. And it blows my mind that she did that because she didn't know IFS, she wasn't even trained as a therapist then, she was a music teacher. I mean, this was just who she was naturally...

Aníbal: Amazing.

Lexi: From very young, very curious, very curious person.

Aníbal: So, Lexi, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Lexi: Absolutely. It was wonderful being with both of you and thank you for what you both have done over the past couple of years for the IFS community and beyond. Thank you.

Tisha: You're so welcome. And I just wanted to say for our listeners that might want to do some consulting with you or learn more about you, that you have a website.

Lexi: Thank you. Thank you.

Tisha: We’ll put it on the show notes.


Recorded 26th February 2021
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

A Talk with Robert Fox on OCD type Parts 40:34

Robert Fox, a therapist in Woburn, Massachusetts, also wishes more people knew about IFS. Diagnosed with obsessive- compulsive disorder at age 21 after a lifetime of unusual compulsions, Robert spent 23 years receiving the standard care: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure response  prevention (ERP).

Neither had much effect, especially ERP, which involved repeatedly exposing himself to things he was anxious about in the hopes of gradually habituating to them. “When you think about it, it’s a very painful method of therapy,” he says.

Robert discovered IFS in 2008.Before, he had always been encouraged to think of his compulsions as meaningless pathologies. Now, for the first time, they began making sense to him as the behavior of protectors who were trying to manage the underlying shame and fear of exiles.

( in “Inside the Revolutionary Treatment That Could Change Psychotherapy Forever” July 21,2020. Elemental)

For more info about Robert Fox please visit Rob's website

 

Today on IFS Talks we're speaking with Robert Fox. Robert Fox is a therapist in Woburn, Massachusetts, who wishes more people knew about IFS. Robert was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at age 21 after a lifetime of unusual compulsions. Robert spent 23 years receiving the standard care – cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure response prevention. In 2008, Robert Fox discovered Internal Family Systems therapy. Before, he'd always been encouraged to think of his compulsions as meaningless pathologies. Now, for the first time, they began making sense to him as the behavior of protectors who are trying to manage the underlying shame and fear of exiles. Now, Robert is an IFS level 3 trained and certified and EMDR certified therapist. He's also trained in AEDP. Robert, welcome to IFS Talks and thank you so much for being here with us today.

 

Robert Fox: Thank you. It's great to be here and I appreciate the warm welcome.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Robert, for sitting with us and willing to have such an open conversation. Robert, this bio of yours that Tisha just read, was published in July 2020 on this article called Inside the Revolutionary Treatment That Could Change Psychotherapy Forever. And it also says “After two particularly powerful unburdenings, his symptoms abided by 95% and stayed that way.” And then this article quoting you goes: “OCD used to be almost like kryptonite around my neck when I would have serious flare ups. I feel a lot of freedom and peace and I really owe it to Dick Schwartz and the model. So, Robert, was this symptom reduction of yours really like this article reports?

 

Robert: Well, you know, the humorous thing about OCD is there's a lot of doubts sometimes when OCD is pretty extreme, it's kind of a doubters disease in a way or doubters condition. And when you say that question, it's interesting because I can quickly flashback to “Oh, is that really true? 95% reduction, maybe, maybe it's overstated.” But I do feel really good. I mean, compared to where I was back in, say 2010, it's been an amazing journey and I have to say, yeah, it's pretty good that I'm at this place.

 

Aníbal: Amazing.

 

Robert: And I'm so grateful for it.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful.

 

Tisha: I was wondering if you would share with us what it was like to be diagnosed with OCD and what some of your symptoms were like?

 

Robert: Yeah, so, I was diagnosed as the introduction said at age 21. I had a psychiatrist who actually told me over the telephone when he seemed to have been a little bit frustrated with me, which is understandable because OCD can be so challenging even for very very, you know, experienced therapists. And he was a bit, I think if I'm not mistaken, a little bit frustrated at the time with some of my symptoms. So, at 21 is when I was diagnosed, but I had the symptoms pretty much since I was, as far back as I can remember. A lot of symptoms of needing to confess things to my parents or others due to extreme guilt. The word shame was not part of my vocabulary back then, but I certainly felt it as I now look back on it, for sure. That is a hallmark that I have found in my work with clients with OCD is that it seems to be shame is a very big part of what drives some of the symptoms of OCD.

 

Aníbal: And not so easily seen by those that carry this kind of struggle, right?

 

Robert: Right. I didn't see it myself until one day I was out for a walk with my dog Gizmo around my block, walking around the block with him and I had been to all these lectures about shame and I was walking one day and all of a sudden it was like, it just came to me “Holy, Holy, Holy shit. I carry that shame.” And it was like a dark cloud that was overhead and just kind of followed me wherever I went. And it was actually not an awful thing to realize. That's what had been basically walking around on my back for so long. It was this deep shame.

 

Aníbal: Besides this need to confess things to those around you, what type of obsessions or compulsions have you struggled with?

 

Robert: Well, I had the usual, like a need to hand-wash, need to touch things a certain number of times to feel just right. I remember very much being a little kid, my parents would call me for dinner, and I'd be downstairs needing to touch something so many times to land on an even or odd number or a number of times that I touched something in order to feel enough freedom to move to go upstairs. And until I did that I was left with this sort of aches in my body. So those are pretty typical that are out there in terms of what others suffer from. Yeah.

 

Aníbal: And what has been your lowest moment in your struggle with OCD?

 

Robert: Ah, you know, it's hard to say the lowest because there's so many, but, you know, fortunately that feels in the distant past, but I think when I was riding on a shuttle bus or van to the mall, when I was a patient at a hospital here in Boston -McLean hospital, and I had been in that unit for about five weeks and on the weekends it's a very, it's like a skeleton crew there. And they would take us on these like field trips. And I was sitting on the bus and I just felt very hopeless, like “Wow, how did I get here?” That was probably one of my lowest moments.

 

Aníbal: How old were you back then?

 

Robert: That was a 2010. So, I'm 56 now. So, 40, 46, well 45 years old. Well, one way I was grateful that I was getting treatment. There's so many people who don't have access to treatment, but what made it lower than low was I was actually getting worse even after four or five weeks in the hospital there. And so therefore my hope was fading. I still had some hope, but it felt pretty dismal that I wasn't improving.

 

Aníbal: What kind of treatment where were you having at that time?

 

Robert: I was receiving what was considered sort of the gold standard still in, you know, in terms of evidence-base, which is a type of CBT or cognitive-behavioral therapy or exposure response prevention, where a person is repeatedly asked to expose themselves to a very unpleasant material. Material that's very triggering for the anxiety. And it's understood that that will happen, that you will habituate to that anxiety after it gets to a certain peak and then it'll start to come down and that can be in the form of behavioral or thoughts. And it's hard. It's hard to watch. There was a young lady in the unit who had a difficulty with feeling contaminated by like things in bathrooms. So, she was asked to rub her hands all over the toilet, the sink all around and then put her hands in her hair and then be with that feeling for a certain amount of time and just sort of habituate to that anxiety. But it's meant to be, it's meant well, the intentions are good, but unfortunately, it's painful work, no doubt.

 

Tisha: It sounds incredibly painful.

 

Robert: Yeah.

 

Tisha: Yeah. Did it ever feel for you like it was supportive?

 

Robert: In the five weeks that I was there, it's strange, but I never did the type of, well, I’m not here to blame people in the unit that had good intentions...

 

Aníbal: Of course.

 

Robert: But my type of issue was called sort of relationship OCD. I obsessed about whether the person I was married to was the right person. And I never really got into that work in that unit. I was just sort of living there. It's strange that I never got to that work, but even when I did an outpatient, I didn't benefit from it, you know, the typical ERP or exposure response.

 

Tisha: So, it sounds like, we're piecing together more of your story and your life experience, it sounds as though it's been something that you've been living with for a really long time. It sounds like it was there when you are young around relationship with parents and then morphed into relationship with your wife or your partner.

 

Robert: Absolutely.

 

Tisha: What was it about growing up that brought these symptoms on? What were some of the circumstances that set the environment for you?

 

Robert: Yeah. I like what Gabor Maté says, you know, he's a person who works with addictions and trauma. There's no benefits of blaming parents, their intentions are always, are usually very good as was my parents. My parents, I know, love me very much. They're still both alive, not knock on wood. I was very attached to them emotionally when I was a kid, a psychiatrist that I saw said we were almost attached at the hip, that we were so close. And being sensitive and being very close to my parents I had tremendous anxiety whenever I would leave their presence like to go to camp for overnight. So, you know, I was so anxious when I was not in their presence that these obsessions and compulsions was probably my way of being able to almost regulate, in some way, the anxiety that was way too much for me when I wasn't in their presence, that was a harsh way for me to regulate, but it was a way for me not to probably be overwhelmed with something going on around me, whether it be the social scene at camp or school and college where freshman year, I was like, remember sitting in the dining hall, my freshman year, feeling overwhelmed with extreme feeling of loneliness frightened out of my mind.

 

Tisha: You're answering it so beautifully and I also appreciate like the parts language in there of understanding the purposefulness of what the OCD was doing, you know, and how helpful might have been early on to have that functionality of the parts that were checking as part of your language and part of the understanding.

 

Robert: I never knew that's what the OCD was doing. I never realized how much of my feelings were dissociated in a way from...you know, I was definitely anxious. I knew that, but I didn't know that the OCD was a way that my body was trying to help me get through

 

Aníbal: Ok, makes sense. Tell us, Robert, how did IFS help your OCD?

 

Robert: Well, after that hospitalization, I was, as you can imagine, in a pretty, pretty dark place. I came out of the hospital due to my insurance running out, but I actually was glad at that point to not be there anymore because I was getting worse and worse. Again, I'm not here to blame the hospital. I just, I was in a rough spot when I left. So, I was actually, I had already done Level 1 of IFS training and it was in Level 2 that I really struggled. And it was during that Level 2 training of IFS that Dick Schwartz did a demo with me, which is not uncommon in trainings. And I was so desperate for some healing and I already knew Dick by then that I could trust the process. So, we did this unburdening where this load of emotion came out. That was transformative, as you all know, because you all been through these. So, you know what it's like, I remember going out that night with my friend who had come to visit me in the hospital and I just felt so lighter in just that one demo and unburdening, I knew I had a lot more to do still, but I already was on my way, like something there clicked. And it was like, you know, like the sun was coming up again, you know,

 

Tisha: Are you open to sharing what the exile was carrying or what it was that got unburdened there?

 

Robert: It's interesting, as you say that I can feel in the back of my neck, this tingling, because it's still very powerful just that one time. I was dating someone who I couldn't decide whether to stay with or not at the time. No, it wasn't during the training. It was that the demo I did with Dick Schwartz was about what I carry from dating someone years ago. And you know, that was the theme. I couldn't decide whether to stay with her or not this girlfriend. And I carried a lot of anger, particularly at my dad who in the best way, or his intentions were good and that he said “If you don't stay with this young woman, then you can't come home.” I was, at that time, the time I was dating this young woman living with my parents. And he said, “You cannot come home and live with us anymore. You won't be welcomed.” And that statement from a father would have been so loving, hit me like a ton of bricks. And I remember in the demo yelling out something, all this anger, because I'm a fairly soft-spoken person. I don't usually get angry. And I was able to express that anger, which really was a protector of a terrible fear that my father was dumping me as a son basically. And that anger was protecting that awful feeling. And I had held that in my body for so long, that anger. And when I was able to unburden that exile of I'm shameful or something for having not done what he told me to do, which is stay with her...That's the feeling I had, it was like a ton of bricks had been lifted off my shoulders. And I remember Dick said “Are you open to looking around the room?” This was in the demo and seeing the faces of your peers. And I remember almost like I wanted to look through my fingers so I wouldn't see all their faces because I was worried that they would be looking back at me with shame. And instead I saw, just what I'm seeing right now, your two faces with this big glowing smiles. And it was the most, it was the most powerful sense of love that it gives me tingles right now because that shame was being unburdened. And that's when I knew I was onto something, well, Dick was onto something...

 

Aníbal: You both.

 

Robert: Or the group that, the energy of the room again, you know how it is. It's just unbelievable.

 

Aníbal: I know. Yeah.

 

Robert, this relates with what you say. You say that “when emotions are suppressed, particularly anger, these emotions find themselves attached to a compulsion.” Can you say more about this that you just illustrated so well?

 

Robert: Yeah, I didn't quite really realized this until about a year ago. I believe it, or two years ago I was working with some clients with OCD and I came to this realization that when I had the physical compulsion to like put things in a certain place, like sweaters, it brought me back to an argument I was having with my wife where I didn't feel heard or understood by her. I actually felt like I was being dissed and she just walked away. And I had this urge to redo what at the time I was arguing with her, I was putting things in my closet and I had this urge to straighten them out again. Almost like my anger was stuck in these clothes and having straightened it out. And it was like, I had taken that anger that I didn't allow myself to seal and almost transferred it to an obsession or compulsion. It was a protector, because I was afraid of my anger. I was afraid that that made me bad, which is a common theme for a lot of my clients, that they're bad. And would it be like if they were bad or I was bad, which is really a definition of shame, that I'm bad. So, when I talked to some of my clients, now I say, I asked them “Do you feel that you're bad?” It's a very important question. Anyway, I know I'm rambling a bit, but...

 

Tisha: Oh no, that's, it's very clear. We know that in your work that you work with clients who also struggle with addiction and you have noted that there's similarities to OCD. And, you know, I'm appreciating the, as you're describing, the way of working with the sweaters to transmute the anger that...I'm just appreciating the sophistication of the protectors. And so, I'm curious about your observation of the similarities between addiction and OCD.

 

Robert: Well, first of all, a lot of clients with addictions, whether it be chemical or behavioral carry shame as well. And there's a feeling of, with OCD of not being able to stop something that you're doing, even though there's a rational part of the brain that says “I know that this is excessive. I know that what I'm doing is out of the ordinary, but I can't stop.” So that's why addiction work felt in some ways, very similar. While drugs and alcohol or gambling and things like that weren't my vice, I still had a compulsion to do something, which I never realized was trying to, in a way, help me. I always thought of it as it's just a problem that I need to get rid of. And that's one of the wonderful benefits of IFS is that when we look at these firefighters, as we call them, behaviors, if we look at them in a new way with compassion and curiosity, rather than something that we need to get rid of, it's understandable we want to get rid of them, they're causing us problems, but we need to open in a way, if we can do it with the help of a therapist, to how these parts are trying to help us as I do with people with addictions, whether it be heroin, alcohol, most people say “I hate that part of me, or I hate that I can't stop.” But if we get curious about it and we show, you know, we help these clients see how that part's trying to help and help those parts become more moderate rather than extreme, then things start to happen.

 

Aníbal: Yeah. Beautiful.

 

Robert, you say also that OCD clients will do anything to avoid an intrusion. And you say intrusions may mimic intrusive thoughts from parents. Can you say more about this?

 

Robert: Yeah. Some of these things have come to me just only in the last year or two, believe it or not. Intrusions are debilitating for clients with OCD, as well as myself. They have been. Intrusions for me were often thoughts, like “What if I can't? What if I'm not good enough? What if, what if I'm inept as a therapist? What if I'm shameful?” One such intrusion happened after I had a panic attack in 2010, when my OCD hit a head, I had a panic attack in front of a couple. And from that point on, I thought “What if I can never focus again because I'm so worried about having it happen again?” And what Dick taught me was, if you don't fear the part - was the statement - If you don't fear the part and one has to fill in what the part is, then it can't hurt you. And for me, the part was shame. If you don't fear that you're shameful or that I am shameful. If I don't fear that, then that doesn't own me. It doesn't run my life. So, you asked about intrusions, one such intrusion was “What if I am not good enough? What if I'm, what if I have another panic attack and someone sees that and judges me?” So, in a way it's kind of like going back to exposure therapy. “What if I accept that if I make mistakes, what if I do have a panic attack?” And I learned to almost say “So what? I'm still a decent person. I may even be still a decent therapist.” So, intrusions, if we almost start to not fear them, then they don't run our lives. Now, my parents, as loving as they were, I always couldn't get their thoughts out of my head and that was kind of an intrusion, what they thought. And I even at one time yelled out loud when I was so frustrated in 2010, I wish I could get my father's comments out of my head. So that was a form of an intrusion. And then, in a way, it's like I didn't have, I think, enough boundary between my folks and my parents for whatever reason and I was trying to get that space from those intrusions. And I think obsessions and compulsions mimic sort of that lack of boundaries in a way. It's kind of like, we fear them taking over once, like an exile.

 

Tisha: When you hear your parents voice in your thoughts, does it feel like that is a protector that has evolved to mimic the voice? Or does it feel like it's like the parents' energy in you that needs to be separated and moved out? What have you discovered around that?

 

Robert: Yeah. Good question. Let me think about that because I'm not sure right away. Let me see.

 

Tisha: I think about it in terms of like critics, like hearing that like critical mom's voice or...

 

Robert: You just made me think of something. So, here's an example to give some information that might help. So, in two thousand 16 or so, I started after a good six years for my lowest moment in 2010, I started feeling like things are coming around. My practice is going well. And my parents visited my office in Woburn where I work and they were so happy for me that I was doing well, but my mom with good intentions said “You know, Rob, your shoes could be shined a little bit more and you could straighten things up here in the office a bit more...

 

Aníbal: Moms.

 

Robert: Because people make judgements based on what they see. There was my mom trying in a way to help me, but her, the critical voice was what I took in and internalize. And that's an example where I would hear that inner critic. The fact one of the hardest things I had to work with was my own inner critic. So, learning that inner critic is there to help, that part is trying to help, but if it's too extreme it can take over and almost overwhelm. So, I've learned to do that over the years. My latest thing is now that I've worked with my own inner critic is how do I work the inner critic of my partner or the critic part of my partner, because she's there too. She probably has good intentions, but it's hard.

 

Aníbal: It’s hard.

 

Are you in your highest moment in healing from OCD?

 

Robert: My highest moment in my healing from OCD or life itself is finding this community of IFS practitioners and therapists, as well as just feeling like I'm in a way home. I don't have to run anymore from feeling judged, or it's also a way of life for me now where I bring sort of like a humble sense to things or what they call a beginner's mind. I try to look at it as we're all, just trying to go through life here and learn. And when I first got out of grad school, I always thought, well, I'll never show the parts of me to other therapists that are inside, all my demons and exiles and all that. I don't want them to see all that. So, I would never share. And when I realized it was a community of therapists that were welcoming and they also have their own stuff and that we could talk about it and work with it in a really sweet way, it was like a breath of fresh air that I didn't have to hide under a shell anymore.

 

Tisha: I so appreciate you naming that because there is just a level of authenticity that is in this community where you really can be your faulted parts, your broken parts, your ambitious parts, there's permission.

 

Robert: Thank you for saying that. I never imagined being here, right with you guys, talking about OCD. Something that I never wanted people really to know about at one point. And here I am talking on a program that will be aired, you know, essentially to the world, if they are able to, you know, if people have interest, you know, there'll be able to be vulnerable and still feel safe in a way.

 

Tisha: Yeah, it's a gift.

 

Robert: A very much one.

 

Tisha: Yeah, I appreciate it.

 

Robert: This model of therapy is unbelievable in that way.

 

Aníbal: Robert, you say that most clients don't make a connection between their obsessions or compulsions and their exiles; you say it's dissociated. How can we help clients with this?

 

Robert: I'm working with clients who say, I got to just do what I got to do. And with the compulsions and obsessions. And, you know, as a therapist, as a person, I just have to be gentle with it. It takes time. It took me many years from when I started doing IFS to really make the connection. It just takes time. And, you know, I will say I do add in another therapy, EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, when some of these things are so dissociated, I do add that in as well. It helps clients sometimes make connections between different memories in a safe way...

 

Aníbal: Ok, makes sense.

 

Robert: But it does take time. I mean, people have asked me “Well, how long did it take once you discovered IFS?” It took me a while. I mean, it takes work, but compared to other things that I had done for 40, 50 years, it's relatively short.

 

Aníbal: You also say that shame plays a big, big role. What is the role of shame when it comes to OCD?

 

Robert: Well, you know, it's one thing to say I did something wrong. We that I feel guilt if I did something wrong, whereas definition of shame is I am wrong, I am bad at my core. Some people define it that way, which I tend to agree with. That's how I often felt. I felt shame from the OCD itself, because think of the word Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you know, we have this disorder. What's nice about IFS is it's a non-pathologizing model, but there's shame from just having the disease or disorder or the condition. And then I had shame of feeling bad about things unrelated to the OCD. Shame is a beast. It leads us to cower, to not want to be vulnerable. But the key to sort of working with shame is actually to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. That's what we're doing right here.

 

Tisha: That’s right. Is there anything that you would like to share with some of our listeners who I know there's a number of them who struggle with OCD? Is there anything that you'd like to have out there?

 

Robert: Well, I want them to know that there's hope because when I was riding on that van at the hospital, I was like “Wow, I'm a therapist and I'm struggling with this condition.” So, I want them to know there's a path to this healing that we need that really works. And to just keep trying, if it's not the right therapist, it takes time to find one who you feel comfortable with. Safety is so important to feel safe with. I've been to many where unfortunately was not feeling very safe. I was told by one psychiatrist when I was 15 to just grow the F up or man up. Looking back now, I know it sounds maybe like I'm being too easy on him, but he probably had good intentions thinking that was the way to get me better. But I remember as a 15-year-old, having heard that, that I needed to just grow the F up, that that hurt so deeply, but there's other ways as we know now, compassionate ways to be with clients. So, keep finding, keep trusting yourself to find the person, the therapist who uses an approach that brings more compassionate and humanity to this psychology in our healing. I want people who are suffering to know that from me, that trust your gut and find someone whom you feel safe with and comfortable.

 

Aníbal: Robert, OCD can sometimes really cause severe harm in our lives. Some say OCD is a form of mental illness, a chronic one with no cure. Do you want to comment on this?

 

Robert: Well, there's definitely a treatment for it. I wouldn't say I'm ever cured. It's always a work in progress. I want people to know that there is treatment for it, that it is so workable. It just requires someone who gets it. And someone who understands that these parts of us that are at times obsessive or compulsive are parts that are just really trying to help. They're not, as I was taught many years ago, when I would talk about my obsessions and compulsions, there was, I remember very distinctly a therapist would put them on a list and say, these are meaningless. These don't have any purpose. We just need to label them and say, these are just something that happens that we need to just identify as not having much of a purpose. They do have a purpose. It is parts trying to help us. So, there is a lot of help for them.

 

Aníbal: Thank you so much, Robert, for having us and for being so open and sharing so much of your personal struggles, it was really special to be here with you and Tisha and I hope we can keep meeting, sharing this model, our work, our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Robert: Thank you. It's been quite a journey and it's still going on.

 

Tisha: I so appreciate meeting you and speaking with you today. And I know this is going to be a valuable episode for so many people. Thank you.

Recorded 18th February 2021
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Becoming a sucessful Program Assistant: A Talk with Lead Trainer Rina Dubin 29:55

Rina Dubin, Ed.D, LPC, is a certified IFS therapist and IFS trainer in private practice in Newton, MA. Her involvement with the IFS community began in 2004, and loves being part of the healing process which has allowed IFS to become a centerpiece in her work. She has been affiliated with Internal Family Systems of New England (IFSNE) since its beginning in 2009 (until 2018), and as a member of the steering committee, she has been thrilled with the accelerating growth of IFS in the greater New England area. Rina has a broad background in trauma, and offers supervision and consultation.

Full Transcription soon

Self-led Eating during Stressful Times - with Jeanne Catanzaro 47:38

Today, on IFS Talks we welcome back Jeanne Catanzaro PhD. Jeanne is a licensed clinical psychologist with 25 years experience in treating eating and trauma-related issues. She’s written articles about IFS and eating disorders and is dedicated to helping people develop self-led relationships with food and their bodies. Jeanne is a certified IFS therapist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts and she’s the Vice Chair of the executive committee for the IFS Institute. Jeanne, thank you so much for being here with us today on IFS talks.

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Today on IFS Talks we're speaking with Dr. Jeanne Cantazaro. Jeanne is a licensed clinical psychologist with 25 years of experience in treating eating and trauma related issues. She's written articles about IFS and eating disorders and is dedicated to helping people develop Self-led relationships with food and their bodies. Jeanne is a certified IFS therapist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts and she's the vice chair of the executive committee for the IFS Institute. Jeanne, welcome back and thank you so much for being here with us again.

Jeanne Cantazaro: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Jeanne, and welcome back. Last time we sat together, it was August 2020, it's about six months ago. How have you been, Jeanne, throughout these stressful and challenging times at so many levels?

Jeanne: I can't believe, first of all, that it was, you know, in August. It feels like it was last week. I've been really fortunate. I'm one of those people who have benefited in many ways from the shutdown. I'm blessed that the people I know who've gotten sick have recovered and having some time to stop traveling as much, so that I could really focus on some long, you know, waiting, awaiting projects and do some work on them. Things like that. I'm also an introvert, which I've, I think more parts of me are introverted than I ever realized. And so, I am that person who is like, you know, not been as bothered by not being able to go out. There's been, I've noticed an easing in my system, but also have a lot of compassion for people who are really feeling stir crazy. I have an environment that is conducive to my wellbeing. It's spacious, it's connected, I have a lot of people around me that I can be close to virtually and some, you know, with socially distant contact locally. So, I just feel very fortunate, but also very aware for how many people this is not the case.

Tisha: Has the pandemic changed the nature of your work with people around eating and eating disorders? Is there anything pandemic related that you're noticing that brings specific challenges either to you as a therapist or to your clients?

Jeanne: Well, first I'm going to say that one of the things that's been a lovely surprise for many of my clients is that working remotely has been a catalyst for their treatment in ways that they didn't expect. In the middle of March when I stopped seeing people in person, there was some people were really concerned that they wouldn't be able to do this work. And so, I think a lot of us are finding that, you know, just because it's remote doesn't mean it isn't good treatment. And actually, helps sometimes, people go to places that they felt it harder to go to when they were face-to-face. For some people that's because they see me on the phone and the phone allows... they're not watching me, and they're not being watched, that helps them divulge things that they felt more anxiety or self-consciousness about. But in general, you know, my focus is a lot on disordered eating and eating disorders, trauma and so, the pandemic has just laid bare a lot of the tensions, a lot of the polarizations that I see normally. But now are more prominent and observable on a cultural level. So, I think that that's, again, that's also been a catalyst for a lot of healing. You know, a lot of people who struggle a lot internally with polarities around restricting and bingeing can see that on a cultural level that's what we're seeing, you know, they're seeing that out in the media. So, it kind of normalizes some of what they struggle with normally, you know, typically.

Tisha: And is that a response to stress or a response to being limited, mobility limited access?

Jeanne: All of the above. Our lives have been so disrupted in so many ways, all the things, all the routines that we typically engage in to keep us feeling grounded, whether that is having access to movement or contact or certain ways of feeding ourselves, all of that has been disrupted. And so, people are finding that they, everything that they typically do to take care of themselves now has to be reconfigured.

Aníbal: Jeanne, nowadays, people are offered so many options and different ways to go when it comes to eat and have foods. So many different diet minds, it became a complex science and a complex learning process. We need to know not only the impact of different foods in our bodies, we also need to know when we are using food to medicate, not only our bodies, but also our minds. And we can find readings about eating healthy, eating to reverse diseases, eating clean, intuitive eating, mindful eating. So, so many paths and ways to go when it comes to food. How can we manage such complexities?

Jeanne: All of these things engage parts, right? There's a woman named Virginia Sole-Smith, who said, if something a lot, I'm not going to quote her exactly. But she writes a wonderful book called The Eating Instinct, which basically talking about how eating it's inherent in us, right. To know what our bodies need and how that gets, for most of us, anyway, there's some, you know, babies who come into the world with that not being online. And of course, eating involves a lot of social learning, but in general, our bodies, you know, there's a wisdom, there's a core wisdom. We would call it the Self that knows what we need, but then all these different parts interfere with that. So, she was saying at the beginning of the pandemic, “If now is not a time to eat pasta, I don't know when's a good time.” You know, like of course, you know, food is used to sooth, it's used to connect, for ritual, all kinds of things. It's certainly for survival, right? First and foremost. And then there are parts of us that have taken on these beliefs, extreme beliefs, these feelings of shame often and fear, and, Aníbal, what you just mentioned in terms of, “If I eat the right food, I'm going to live forever. If I eat the right food, I won't get sick.” Right? There's a certain way to eat. If I just try this, if I eliminate that food. And so, what happens is we progressively get disconnected for what our system needs because of all these messages that we get from so many different people. And right now, in the media there's always polarized messages, and at least in Western culture, about what we should be doing, you know, messages that are about excess consumption and how that's bad. And then, you know, the next time you look at the paper, there's something about the best recipe for this or that, right? So, there's very conscious, conflicting, contradictory messages that pit us against ourselves. And certainly, that's been true in the pandemic. And so, you have, you have a baseline way that food and the relationships with food and our bodies has always been complicated by these cultural legacy burdens around what we should look like, how we should function, right? There's a hierarchy of bodies in our culture. You know, that some are more valuable than others. Some are more acceptable than others. So, we have that as a baseline, which results in so much fear and shame for so many people, right? Anybody who's certainly living in a marginalized body, anybody who's not white, not able-bodied, you know, et cetera, you know, who's in a larger body, all of that. But now add to that, this pandemic where now they're even more messages around which bodies are vulnerable, which bodies are okay. Reports about excess weight being related to poor outcomes with COVID and then a headline that says even a few extra pounds...Well, most of us or at least 42% of Americans around that number are categorized as overweight. So presumably carrying what people would call a few extra pounds. So, the message they're taking is “Oh my gosh, I'm more vulnerable to COVID, we are not doing well with COVID.” So, then what do we do when we get scared? What do we do when we feel shame? We tend look, parts of us tend to look for comfort, right? And then we look for comfort and then other parts panic, because the comfort is resulting in our bodies shifting, and we hear reports about the COVID-19 and, you know, so it snowballs, right. It becomes a big problem.

And so, people lose a connection. They lose the sense of...they certainly lose compassion for themselves, but they lose a connection for what does my body really want or need in this moment, in terms of our capacity for interoceptive awareness, our ability to check in and sense our bodies. How can we possibly do that if we're in our head reading about how we could die, we’re more likely to die because we're carrying a few extra pounds, right? So, it's just taken what's a baseline problem on a regular basis and made it so much more heightened for people in the backdrop of a political climate. And, you know, the pandemic climate that's stirring up so many of our vulnerable parts who have to deal with so much uncertainty about what's going to happen, when will this end, in addition to all of the ways that they're getting triggered in their smaller home environments. Right? So, it just ratchets everything up significantly.

Of the things that you mentioned, the types of things that are suggested to us in terms of what we do with our eating, mindful eating and intuitive eating indeed can be very helpful, but they’re almost impossible to attain or sustain when we’re burdened, when parts of us carry burdens about our bodies or about food. And so, what IFS does really well is to help us, and they also, intuitive eating certainly talks about rejecting the food police and kind of pushing those thoughts aside so that you can check in with what your body wants and needs. But it's really difficult to do because, of course, what we know is that when you reject a part, it's going to fight harder to be heard. And so, what IFS does is it helps us get to know the parts who feel critical or hold certain shoulds, you know, some of the things that you mentioned, like if I eat this way, then my body will look like this or it will function like this. And so, what IFS does really well helps us unblend from the part and get to know it, get to know what it's trying to do for us and helps us establish a relationship with it so that we can address the concerns it has about what if it stops trying to get us to do things a certain way. And then it becomes much easier to eat in alignment with our body’s cues and our inherent wisdom about what we need.

Tisha: Yeah. It sounds like you're really highlighting eating from activation and how prevalent that is. And that term being pitted against ourselves around food it just emphasizes how challenging of an issue this is for people who are, a lot of people who are isolated right now. So, I'm curious what you advise or what we can do individually to kind of work to unburden some of that strong activation and then develop more Self when it comes to eating.

Jeanne: I think probably first and foremost, really having some compassion for all of the parts that are getting stirred up by this pandemic in the backdrop of the political situation, the climate here, and I think everywhere, right? The state of the world, climate change...I mean, there's a lot of political unrest in places outside the US, but certainly, you know, the state of the planet, you know, why is this pandemic happening? You know, triggering lots of parts. And then in your immediate environment, so many things are getting disrupted. Kids are at home homeschooling, when will they go back to school, spouses spending time together that is unprecedented. What is it like to live in a small home? You know, we had zoom problems at the beginning of this call, but other people have to figure out a way to get five different people on a device at the same time. And I think so it starts with what we know to be important, which is compassion, right. And getting to know the parts that make it difficult to have compassion. And then what I talk a lot about general and non-pandemic times is there's so many messages about what we should do with their bodies and how they should look, how they should function and about when you were listing the parts, it gets so heady, right? We get so disconnected from what really supports my emotional and physical wellbeing right now, because both of those are important, right? There's a reason why the consumption of processed food and snack food, nostalgic, there's some press about nostalgic processed food like Oreos or Cheetos or whatever Campbell soup and how those products are skyrocketing. And, you know, they're convenient, which is of course important right now when people are working at home and trying to juggle so many things, but also there's a connection to what may feel like earlier times, you know, or a run on flour last year in March, right? The sense of scarcity, and I've got to get grounded. And so, having compassion for that, and then considering in your...So in general, when I talked to people about how can you develop a more self-lead relationship with food and your body? Of course, it's getting to know, first and foremost it's getting to know the parts that hold extreme beliefs about your body, right? Who focus on food or your body as a way to distract from emotional pain. Because of course that happens a lot, or have some idea about how improving, what you do with food and your body is going to help, is going to compensate for shame that you have or make you less likely to be judged by other people. So, unburdening is first and foremost, having compassion for yourself and really checking in with your body as it is, as in terms of what it needs, as opposed to what somebody else thinks you need, right? Because somebody else can tell you that it would be really good for you to not eat carbs. But if you really, if your body really feels good, feels well when you have carbs, that's what you need to be giving it, right? So, that's the first and foremost, it's getting to know the parts who carry extreme beliefs about food and the body and helping them unburden. And, at the same time, because of course we can't wait until we're unburdened to kind of handle these issues, we handle them every day, right? We have to eat several times a day. We have to deal with our personal environments every day, in which there are likely to be many people who have biased beliefs about food and bodies. So, in addition to unburdening, I talk a lot about creating a Self-led eating and wellbeing practice, and the components of those start with, you know, the unburdening, that's, you know, foundational. But in addition, then kind of considering what are the types of practices that support your emotional and physical wellbeing, right? Is it a certain amount of movement, a certain amount of rest, a certain amount of connection? It's really been a discovery to me, in a way that I hadn't understood previously, how introverted parts of me are. I knew it, but I didn't really realize it and I didn't really realize the impact it was having on my system to be traveling so much, to be doing so many public engagements of a kind. And, when I got a break from that, I could really sense that in my nervous system, a real relief, it almost felt like, okay, we can get regrounded. And now what I want to do is kind of calibrate more carefully how often I'm putting myself out into the world in a more public way, right? So, it's getting to know my system and what my parts need. It doesn't matter what somebody else thinks I should be doing. Like go, it's not a big deal. It's you, you go to lovely places which I'm fortunate to do. It's about what, what is it, what toll is that taking on my system as I check in with it. So, and there are other things that I know made my body feel good from I get to be the expert on my body, more or less, right? I can take in information, knowledge that I wouldn't have about bodies in general, and I can consider it, but not let that become the expertise that overrides what I know is good for my body. Right? So, checking in with what are the things that tend to make me feel good, a certain amount of connection with people, a certain amount of rest and individual time, what kinds of foods work for me, what does it work for me. That kind of thing. And so, just more or less having kind of Self-lead vision, not one that's agenda driven. “I have to do this, or else I won't look okay or I won't age well,” but more like, what will help me feel good in this body as it is now, not a future body.

Even though I may have some, you know, some light thinking, light attention being paid to, you know, I'm in my mid-fifties, I do want to be flexible. I know that doing more stretching and things like that is important to be able to have that more later, but it's not driving me. You know, I'm not doing a compulsive I have to stretch your else kind of practice. And then looking...one of the big things is creating an environment that is conducive to Self-lead eating and wellbeing, right? Because there's the internal environment, which hopefully I'm taking care of by help unburdening my own parts. But then I'm living with people with my immediate situation. And then in another system, the larger culture, right? And we get messages from the time we're born that really do disconnect us from our sense of what our bodies need. From doctors who tell us we should be at a certain weight, teachers or coaches who make comments about our bodies, right? Partners, friends, all of it, the media, lots of things that can get us disconnected. And so, when you create the conditions for a Self-led eating and wellness practice, you're really looking at that. You're looking at what's going on in my immediate environment, what's going on in my relationships. And certainly, some of that raises important trailheads. Like, if you have a partner who's keeping lots of treats out on the counter and it's making it difficult because right now, parts of you, understandably, are looking for some comfort and you don't want to ban the foods, but you really would like a little bit of a boundary around it, it can bring up, it can raise a trailhead when you find it difficult to say to your partner “It would really help me if you kept that in your own pantry.” You know, that would really facilitate my being able to stay connected to what I know serves me right now.

So, there's that, but all kinds of questions like, you know, what kind of food support your system, and that may be different now than it was six months ago, right? It's winter, it's not the summer and maybe different. And do you, does your body feel really good when you eat several small meals throughout the day, or does it feel better when you eat three meals a day at a specific time? What I do think does having some it's like when the Self can be like a good parent and do this kind of thing, make sure the environment...there are foods that are available, foods that support you and that there are these boundaries, also, a lot of people are hitting...Even people who cook. I love to cook. For me, it's a real connection with my heritage. It's a legacy heirloom for me that I love cooking and I think I mentioned this in the first podcast that when the pandemic first hit Italy, I'm on these Instagram accounts. I follow these women in Italy that are dedicated to cooking, and they started sharing pictures of their kitchens and their view from their kitchens because they couldn't leave their houses. And they would share a recipe a day that was based on ingredients that were pretty accessible. And it was just, for me a very loving, connected kind of experience. But I have friends who hate cooking, and this has been absolute drudgery for them. And they feel shame about it. I wish I could cook. Like, I wish I liked cooking like you. But again, if you're Self-led about your eating, you could just be present to the part that doesn't like to cook and then learn from it what it needs. Right? So, where do you want to get your food from? Is there a way to get it prepared in a way that is fairly easy, you know, or is there, you know, can you find a way to do that or are there things that you can combine the combination of things that are pre-prepared and things that you can whip together? You know, it's just...and it's individualized, is really the most important thing. And trying to see if you can remove the shame and the stigma associated with certain practices. You know, really essentially Self-led eating it's sustainable, it's achievable. It's not something that you have to work really hard to maintain because you're in consistent connection with all of your parts, not just the part who has some idea that if you eat enough broccoli, even though you hate broccoli, you're going to live a few more years, that kind of thing.

Aníbal: Jeanne, do you find that people are becoming more and more aware of those goals or qualities you referred them as burdens? I mean, they become aware that those qualities like to stay young, white, attractive, thin, and the flexible are our burdens? I mean, do you see any change in our stigmatizing culture climate?

Jeanne: It's not obvious to me. I mean, pockets. I think there are pockets. The people I spend a lot of time with for sure, you know, are very interested in drawing attention to these things. But, when you think last week, there was an article published on cnn.com that said it's impossible to be fat and healthy and metabolically healthy. And that's a blanket statement. And a lot of the research I'm giving you air quotes right now, but a lot of the scientific information that comes out, the CDC reporting poor outcomes from COVID for people who are obese, overweight or obese, like I said before, even a few extra pounds that they say negatively impacts outcome. There's a lot of controversy about the research that's been done around this, but things are presented as blanket statements and, you know, our culture, one of the largest legacy burdens that present in our culture is this idea of, if you work hard enough, if you're just applying enough willpower, you can get the desired outcome. And more and more people are going on diets. Not for lack of trying. I think the, I don't have the exact statistics, but more than ever, people are going on diets and yet our weight as a population is on the rise, right? So, if willpower was going to work, if it was a matter of applying that, and then that would work, it would have done so already.

So, I think that, and I don't, I, so I don't actually see a lot of change in the stigma around bodies. I see more attention in certain pockets. Like I do think one of the things that's come to light again, if you're willing, if you're interested in this area is how, the way we treat black and brown bodies, larger bodies, disabled bodies, is a source of a lot of stress and also, a lack of resources that in itself could explain a lot of the differential health outcomes, you know, race...I think I did mention this in the last podcast, that in areas where there are a lot of BiPAP folks, they're not having the same access to testing centers, they're not having the same access to doctors. Certainly, a lot of people who live in larger bodies avoid going to the doctor because they don't want to be shamed or have their problems minimize. So, no, I don't think yet that there is as much awareness of the beliefs that we hold are actually contributing significantly to the way people are treated when they live in marginalized bodies. And for some people who have an intersecting marginalized identities, it just compounds the problem so much more. We just keep looking at what people...we keep placing the responsibility...I'm speaking broad generalizations, but if the answer is as a culture, are we becoming more aware? I would say, we're still locating the problem in individual behaviors rather than systemic change and looking at the structural racism that results in an unequal treatment and a lack of resources for people, unfortunately. And that's part of why I'm so dedicated to the work I do, because IFS is so clear about the importance of doing our individual work, so that as our system changes, we can then bring our Self-energy out to help shift external systems and heal the burden set that perpetuate them.

Tisha: Is there something that you see or perceive or hope for within the IFS community and the broader community in terms of addressing and healing these collective burdens around food and the body?

Jeanne: I'm hopeful that people can start really just thinking about how they've come to hold some of these beliefs, you know, as we do with all burdens, right? These biases that we hold, that parts of us take on, you know, how is it that I've come to take hold this belief and how does it serve me and what are my concerns if I don't keep holding onto this belief, like what comes up when you think about the fact that you can eat as much fruit and vegetables as you want, and we're still going to die, right? Our bodies are still going to, you know, at times we're going to get sick, even when it doesn't make any sense, any sense from that perspective of...I mean, I'm sure you've known people where, where people say he was, he's so healthy, he's always exercising, he eats really well. You know, there's some sense of this doesn't add up, right? And so just, I'm hopeful that IFS as a community encourages that kind of self-exploration and consideration. So, for all of us to start thinking about a little bit more, when we see a scientific report to start thinking about, let me just not swallow that whole, no pun intended. Let me, let me really keep careful, let me think about it. Like what, what did they really find in this study? And did they consider life's individual lifestyle factors? And, then also the other piece is if the fact is, if some of these research studies are correct in certain ways, then what do we do? Right. So, if you're in a larger body and you're more susceptible to something, then you're going to need a lot of support to take care of yourself as best you can, right? So, I am hopeful that people will start thinking more critically about these automatic knee-jerk assumptions they make about food and bodies and why, you know, how do they serve them? And maybe, hopefully, you know, what IFS is so good at is reducing the shame, right? You know, thinking, you know, helping us consider if I need more comfort right now, while the world seems like it's falling apart. And some curiosity, right? Wow, what is this scarcity, as I'm really thinking about how many rolls of toilet paper I can get my hands on, what does this bring up? What part is getting stirred up and what does it need for me? Cause it certainly doesn't need a heap of shame about my inquisitiveness or the fact that I ate some potato chips today.

Aníbal: So, we should heal individually, but also collectively. How can we collectively heal? How can we help with that or organize that?

Jeanne: I think we have to start learning more about how other people are treated, how other bodies are treated in this culture. What is it like, for example, to live with a constant fear of being judged or hurt because of the body you live in. You know, what is the systemic impact of that? You know, there are so many things, we have this persistent belief that somehow calories in, calories out, putting in enough effort, doing the right exercise, an exercise that counts, for example, as opposed to connecting with our bodies and finding movement that we can sustain, you know, just really considering, you know, the beliefs we hold and considering what is it like to be in...live in a body that is attacked regularly? You know, I have clients who live in larger bodies, they go to the store and they are, you know, the contempt that they can feel, that they feel viscerally, you know, leads them to brace on a fairly consistent basis and to hide often to constrict their movement, you know, not go out to the world, but what is it like to be a black person who feels unsafe, unsafe to walk around and doesn't have the safety or the feeling of like, I will be protected if something happens, right? The police will help me out versus I could be attacked. I could be, I could be harmed. So, I think really educating ourselves and thinking, again, having compassion and part of, you know, when you're in Self, you have a larger perspective, right? Your capacity to have a larger perspective and see beyond yourself is much more available to you. So, really, really starting to consider what is it like for other people who live in bodies that are treated poorly in lots of different ways and who aren't given the same access to the things that keep us feeling and being well. Right? Adequate housing, adequate employment, adequate healthcare. Yeah.

Tisha: How does spirituality factor in to your work with food in the body?

Jeanne: Well, I think self-care is a spiritual practice. And I think that, I think I could tell you what that looks like for me, but it's going to be different for the next person, but I think Self-lead care of the body is spiritual.

Tisha: It seems like there's so many different ways of viewing self-care and it gets confusing. Like, is it self-care to take a bath every day? Or is that indulgent and not self-caring? Is it self-care to watch Netflix all afternoon? How do we work to feel into the difference of what is this type of self-care that you're talking about?

Jeanne: Well, just noticing, you know, your use of the word indulgent, right? There's a judgment there, right? So, there's a part coming in. And, you know, it's funny because I was just talking about this, that we don't tend to shame ourselves for bingeing on Netflix. We kind of get a kick out of it, right? Like what are you choosing to binge watch? Whereas if you're, if it's potato chips, that's a problem. Although there was this lovely, there was this, I liked this article recently, this guy was talking about making his way through a bag of Doritos, but just with some awareness, like right now, this is what makes sense. Kind of just an awareness that we're all doing lots of things to get away from certain feelings or manage them. I think the thing is, Tisha, I think checking in with what feels like it's coming, something's coming from a part versus more from your core Self, from your, your sense of right now, this is supportive of my system. So one of the things about Self...so I think what you're getting at is something that I talk about, which is Self-led eating and wellbeing really involves an ongoing negotiation, Self-led negotiation with your parts, because, you know, one day taking a bath or maybe one week taking a bath every night feels supportive. Right? But checking in with all of your parts, maybe there's one part that's like, I don't want to take a bath, you know, and if you're overriding that part all of the time, because there's some belief that taking a detox bath at the end of the day will be good for your system, then you're, you know, it's more parts driven because you're leaving, you're operating on the belief of a part rather than having more of a consensus from the whole group internally about what's really supportive. Does that make sense?

Tisha: Yeah. And it does feel as though there's going to be polarities, I guess, internally in terms that are so challenging and really coming back to that faith of trust and consensus seems important.

Jeanne: Well, I think that the issue is that even when times aren't stressful, it's very, it's a complicated business to have and maintain a body. Right? I mean, you know, sort of like I did my laundry yesterday and wished that it was done now forever. Like that could be it. I would never need to like, you know, “Oh God, I got to do it again tomorrow.” It's, you know, we have to feed ourselves, we have to move ourselves, we have to work to get enough rest, enough connection. What are we doing with our screens? Are we, you know, are we using them too much, not giving our eyes a rest? So, on a day-to-day basis, that's why the Self-lead negotiation is so important. The Self negotiating the polarizations that emerge in these moment to moment, day-to-day decisions with the idea that we're not going to get it perfectly because there is going to be a part that may be disgruntled because today we didn't move in the way that usually other parts like to move. Right? But in that case, developing more collaboration, right? So, the goals of IFS are really to unburden the parts, restore connection with the Self, right? Help parts collaborate and get along more harmoniously and then bring Self-leadership to external systems. So, this part about, we have so many different parts like today, there was a part that said, “You know what? It would be really great to exercise before I do this podcast.” And another part said, “Don't do that because...” you know, I had all kinds of reasons why it would be good to wait till later. And they kind of, I allowed them to have their little conversation and then worked out a compromise, which is I will do it later. You know? And, but in this case, it wasn't really a very difficult negotiation. There are other times where the negotiation is more pitched and in general, there are times when, you know, what I like to say is when we give the parts, when we extend some compassion and gratitude to the parts who step back so another part can have its way in a given moment, it goes a long way to stimulate or encourage a collaboration amongst the parts, because there's a real sense that the Self is going to step in consistently and be there to help negotiate these difficult decisions and not privilege one part who's driven by some idea of what will happen if we do this thing every day and to the exclusion of the other parts wants and needs, right? Sometimes eating for emotional reasons is the best thing you could do to take care of yourself. You know, in that moment, that may indeed be the best thing you can do.

Aníbal: Jeanne, one of the things I miss the more in these pandemic times is the freedom to hang out with friends and colleagues and have a meal out together. Is there any relevant role for the unburdening process for eating together and socially versus eating isolated?

Jeanne: You know, for some people eating with other people is actually something they hate to do. Right? It feels very uncomfortable for them to eat with other people and for other people it's sustaining. And, I think it's been very hard for people. I find more commonly people like, they really enjoy eating together. Right? That's really how culturally, most of us grew up eating and enjoying eating with each other. It's been a really, this has been one of the...when you talk to people, when I talk to people, that's been one of the biggest hardships. So, I think if you're eating with people who are Self-led in their relationships with food, it's easier.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Jeanne: Right? So one of the, when I talk about creating the conditions for Self-led eating and wellbeing, eating with somebody who is actively restricting, or has a lot of rules about food can actually feel very stressful and it can pull the parts of you who still haven't unburdened to join in that kind of a restriction or a diet talk or whatever it is. So, I think that, considering who you're eating with is important and are setting some, you know, speaking for your parts. Like, I am not shy about speaking for part who doesn't want to spend the meal talking about what I'm eating and why I should be eating this, or somebody's new diet. And, you know, like that, to me, doesn't feel supportive. So, I will speak for my parts or if the talk turns to body criticism or weight.

And the more, the more you do your own work, and the more clear you are about how burdened the external environment is, and the more committed you are to not living in a way where you, you know, I often say to people, which is not my, it's not a question unique to me, other great people who've done so much good work in this area. Like what would happen if like the b??? folks who are doing amazing work, you know, what would it be like if you weren't constantly criticizing your body or what you ate? Like, what would your life be like? You know, I think when you get clear about the importance of that question, if you weren't always trying to fix your body or how you eat, I think then it becomes easier to be in environment. It's like, it provides you with a little bit more resilience so that you can speak for the parts that don't want to have diet talk at a meal, or you can decide not to eat with people whom, you know, have funky eating patterns or extreme eating patterns. But I think that's been the biggest, one of the hardest things for people has been that their access to a very basic aspect of human life to, to break bread with each other, right? Has been disrupted. I think that's a very big heartbreak for a lot of people with, you know, a ripple effect, you know, kind of in terms of their sense of wellbeing and feeling increasingly depressed about being shut in and disconnected. It's just not the same on zoom. You know, those initial zoom cocktail hours, you know, I don't know if you had them, but certainly we had, you know, we'd have zoom calls in and meet up for a meal or a drink, but, you know, they get tired pretty quickly when you're not sitting across the table from somebody and really feeling their energy and the energy of the food. And so...

Tisha: I had to, through the pandemic, learn to enjoy cooking for myself because it's just me [inaudible] I love to cook. I love to cook for people.

Jeanne: Yes, exactly.

Tisha: If it was just me, I would like make popcorn.

Jeanne: Yeah, no, that's true.

Tisha: I'm like, I can make a meal for myself. And just put that energy and effort into...a lot of parts to kind of step aside or give that value or to not, not be feeding and including and sharing.

Jeanne: Right. Absolutely. It's very, I have sent out a lot of food gifts while I've been in the pandemic, you know, because that's just my way. I really like giving I'd like cooking for people. So, I understand what you're saying.

Tisha: It's a love language.

Jeanne: It is for me it's a love language. It's a real connection. And I also really, I really know that for people, for whom it's not a love language, it's so helpful when they cannot shame themselves for that and really just get “Wow, this is hard. You know, I don't want to cook for myself and I don't have an option to go out.” Very difficult. Yeah. So, a lot of trailheads being laid bare by this pandemic, right? In this way.

Tisha: And that's good for that to be illuminated. And it's so wonderful that you're plotting the course for all of us offering guidance.

Aníbal: Jeanne, you just did with Diana Richards a workshop on Self-led eating and wellbeing during stressful times.

Jeanne: Yeah.

Aníbal:  How was it and are you going to keep doing this? Or what else in the future?

Jeanne: Yes. One of the things that the pandemic has allowed me to do is finally write a book. I am probably close to being done with the draft of a book on Self-led eating and wellbeing. And then Diana and I are going to work on a workbook, a companion workbook that will be more hands-on exercises and meditations and reflections opportunities to map out parts, things like that, that we'll, you know, we'll get into next. So, and it was really nice to work with Diana because she's a dietician. So, we come, we come from slightly different perspectives, but sharing the same IFS lens, and a lovely group of people who joined us, it was really a nice experience.

Tisha: I heard some great feedback from some of the participants.

Jeanne: Oh, that's so nice.

Tisha: Yeah. I got so much...

Jeanne: That's great.

Tisha: So, you'll continue...potentially.

Jeanne: I'm sure. I mean, you know, it's, again, it's interesting. It would've been nice to have everybody in the same room, but it was interesting to see that we could feel really connected despite, you know, working remotely, which is such a relief, you know, because we don't, you know, we're still living in this backdrop of uncertainty about exactly when things will shift. So it's good to know that we will have access to these resources because certainly at this point, people, you know, in heavy duty panic about, you know, changes they've seen as a result of all these changes and in terms of their access to different food and movement practices and people are, there's a lot of alarm, especially in January when we're all supposed to start working on ourselves and do something to be improved. Right? New and improved. So, yeah. So, we're going to keep doing this kind of work in, in various ways. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you again more directly about that, about this.

Aníbal: Yes, we are very grateful, Jeanne. And thank you again so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha.

Jeanne: Thank you.

Aníbal: And I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and some meals and movement.

Jeanne: I look forward to that very much, very much, and I know things are hard in Portugal, so I hope things improve there very soon.

Tisha: Take care. Thanks so much.

 

Recorded 29th January 2021
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Our Relational Lives - with Terry Real 42:44

Terry Real is the bestselling author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, the straight-talking How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women, and most recently The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Make Love Work. Terry knows how to lead couples on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy—and greater personal fulfillment.

He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents as well as a professional training program for clinicians.Terry’s work, with its rigorous commonsense approach, speaks to both men and women. A proponent of “full-throttle marriage,” Terry has been called “the most innovative voice in thinking about and treating men and their relationships in the world today.

 Today on IFS Talks, we are honored to be speaking with Terry Real. Terry Real is the best-selling author of I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. Also, How Can I Get Through to You, Reconnecting Men and Women, and most recently The New Rules of Marriage, What You Need to Make Love Work. Terry knows how to lead couples on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy and greater personal fulfillment. He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, parents, as well as a professional training program for clinicians. Terry's work with its rigorous common-sense approach speaks to both men and women. Terry is a proponent of full throttle marriage and has been called the most innovative voice in thinking about and treating men and their relationships in the world today. Terry, we welcome you to IFS Talks and thank you for being here with us.

 

Terry Real: It's a pleasure to be here and an honor, thank you for inviting me.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Terry, for willing to sit with us. Starting off with this parts language that you, Terry, you also practice so eloquently, what parts come up today, hearing your bio?

 

Terry: That's a great first question. What parts came up today hearing my bio? I'll tell you a funny story that I always think about when I listen to my own bio. There was a great American blues man, Mississippi John Hurt, and he's from the rural south. Very simple man, very simple music, but beautiful. And the story about him, I don't know, even know if it's true, but it's an old story about him. He was playing it like the Philadelphia, you know, symphony hall or something this huge auditorium with thousands of people. And the announcer says, “And here is Mississippi John Hurt.” And nobody shows up. He goes, okay, “And here is Mississippi John.” And nobody shows up. And you know, the third time, and then all the way up in the rafter, there's this old black guy and he's going, “Oh, I was here, I was here” and he makes his way all the way down through all of the people, finally gets up on stage, he looks at the guy who announced him and says, “I just wanted to see what everybody was looking at.” I sort of feel like that guy. It's like, “Wow, it sounds like a cool guy. I wish I knew him.”

 

Aníbal: Terry, you are a major figure in the field of couples’ therapy. Also specializing in men's issues, particularly depression and relationships. I'd like to appreciate your dedication and beautiful work of decades for this noble cause of helping couples to find a better life together. We all know how fundamental can be for child development to have happy well-regulated and connected parents around. So, in your opinion, can better couples also be better parents?

 

Terry: No question. Absolutely no question. And better people are better parents. You know, you know this already, but let me just say it. One of the things I say to the people I work with is the best gift you can give your kids is your own recovery. And when I speak of recovery, I speak of what I call relational recovery that is recovering that original state of connection to ourselves and to others that is our birthright. A state of connection, that trauma and the culture pushes us out of with all of that consequence. So, the best thing you can give your kid is a healthy You. They say that is the height of pretension to quote yourself, but I always do quote this one quote from, I Don't Want to Talk About It. May I quote myself, please?

 

Aníbal: Yeah, please.

 

Tisha: Oh please, yeah, we'd love to hear it.

 

Terry: “Family pathology roles from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and spares the children that follow.” And so when you talk about bringing recovery to the parental unit, I speak to the people that I work with about daring to change the legacy, transforming the legacy, transforming the defaults that were given to you by your family of origin and the culture and handing to the next generation a completely different, but maybe not completely, but radically different and hopefully healthier set of defaults. And, you know, I say, each person is a bridge spinning those who came before and those who come after and their fate rests on your work. There's an old AA saying, pass it back or pass it on to the degree to which you do the sorting out of your legacy, which I believe is the true meaning of the word individuation. And to the degree, to which you have freedom from your own automatic responses. To that degree, you will be not just a better parent, but not a burden to the children that will come after you.

 

Aníbal: So important, yes. Beautifully said.

 

Tisha: It sounds like with your model, the Relational Life Therapy model, there's a few different layers to legacy unburdening I'm hearing about. Kind of addressing individual triggers, but also acknowledging how things have been passed down. Is there a process specifically that addresses how trauma has been passed through generations?

 

Terry: I don't go back generations as a rule. Although I learned how to do that by one of my mentors, Olga Silverstein, who used to do an incredible genogram, go back five generations and pick out all the themes. I usually only go back one generation, sometimes two. And I am concerned with, well, my correlate to managers and protectors is the part of you that I call the adaptive child part of you, the part of you that adapted to whatever was going on. And that part of you almost always represents, or you could have many different adaptive children, but let's call it a conglomerate for the moment. That part of you represents always a reaction to what was being thrown at you. I say the adaptive child has two avenues of being formed. The first is reaction. And that's the one we always think about because we always think about trauma. So, a reaction means if I have an intrusive mother, my adaptive child puts up big thick walls. If I meet an adult, an adult man, a guy with big thick walls, one thing that may have happened to him is that he had a lot of intrusion growing up. And so, he needed those walls. I don't know if you know him, but I have a friend and a colleague Thomas Hubl a German mystic...

Aníbal: Yeah, on collective trauma.

 

Terry: I love his many phrases. And one is, “We must always respect the exquisite intelligence of the adaptive child.” You did exactly what you needed to do back then. But I have a saying adaptive and maladaptive male, “You're not in that environment anymore. You're not that little boy or girl, you're talking to somebody different than your family, and you have different resources than you did as a child.” So, it's the adaptive child that resists what's coming at you, but the other pieces that internalizes what's coming at you. You model yourself on what you see. Is the adaptive childpart of us that is the repository for all of the multi-generational projections. It's like a battery. So, if you have a harsh inner critic, for example, you probably have multi-generational legacy of a harshness and criticism. And the spark jumps between your inner critic and you, it's the last line of the spark plug, but that spark goes back and back and back. I say, we tend to hold ourselves the way we were held. And so, you internalize it. So, our adaptation is almost always a mixture of resistance and internalizing both. And it's the particular balance, tension of that mixture that makes the adaptation so rich and interesting to deal with. So necessary back then. And so troublesome now, all the above,

 

Aníbal: Terry, you do a wonderful integration work, as we can hear of many authors in the field of couples and gender issues, and also parts work, as you just said. Can we say, Terry, that your approach to men and couples is on the spectrum of the mindfulness based or compassion centered therapies?

 

Terry: I would say that, but not that alone. There's a, you know, my friend and colleague Carol Gilligan has a phrase. She says, there is no relationship... There’s no voice without relationship and there's no relationship without voice. So yes, compassion, certainly self-compassion and compassion for your partner. I will put it more as staying in the wise adult part of ourselves, some correlates to what Dick would call the Self, capital S. Staying in the wise adult part of ourselves and remembering the relationship, remembering the whole. And that's what I'm writing about now in my new book, I'm talking about the difference between us consciousness and me and you consciousness. And us consciousness remembers that we are a biosphere. Our partnership is a biosphere that I live inside of and is in my interest to treat that biosphere well. When I'm not in my wise adult, when I'm in an adaptive child or wounded child part, I lose that sense of the relationship and it becomes zero sum and adversarial. It's only the wise adult part of us, prefrontal cortex, not triggered, that can hold the relationship and maintain a sense of that relationship and our own enlightened self-interest to do well by that relationship. When you move into what I call me and you consciousness, adaptive child, you lose the relationship and everything becomes adversarial. It's a zero sum game, one wins, and one loses. And once you're in that part of you, all bets are off in terms of doing anything constructive in your relationship. And so, the mindfulness piece is what I call relational mindfulness. And it's the art of moving from that triggered adaptive part of you back into the wiser Self. Compassion?  Yes, but I would also say wisdom, perspective, the ability to see the ecological whole and not just be too adversarial individuals that shift from that adversarial me and you consciousness to the us consciousness, from the Part to the Self, I think Dick might say. Is mindfulness and it is an intentional practice and is an intentional practice that can be cultivated and learned in strength.

 

Tisha: And how long does it take for people to learn this relational language?

 

Terry: You know, it's like learning any language as an adult. To be honest, I think it takes a couple three years to really get fluent at living a relational life. But one of the things that I say is that this way of thinking and these techniques are so different from the culture at large and so powerful that doing them badly will transform your life and your relationships. And you can start doing them badly right now.

 

Aníbal: You talk of first consciousness couples and second consciousness couples, first consciousness as fighters or fliers or fixers. And you also say that you are a first consciousness fighter. Are you still a first consciousness fighter?

 

Terry: Yes, that's my knee jerk response. I grew up in a violent family. My wife, Belinda grew up in a violent family and we're both fighters. We're a symmetrical couple, boom, boom, boom, screw me, screw you. And that's our particular dance. There's an old saying in family therapy, there are two kinds of couples in the world: there are symmetrical couples. Screw me, screw you, screw you, screw me. And then there are complimentary couples. Come talk to me. No, I won't, pursuer-distancer or as a complimentary couple. And I'll tell you a little secret. When you're dealing with a symmetrical couple, as the therapist, you want to introduce some complementarities screw me, screw your... “Honey, I don't want to fight.” And you go down and then you invite the other person to come down with you. When you're dealing with a complimentary couple, it's good to introduce some symmetricality. “I'm going to treat you badly. I'm going to put up with it. I'm going to treat you badly. I'm going to put up with it, I'm going to treat you badly. Don't treat me badly...” And that breaks the pattern. So, it's interesting to know what pattern you are and what you need to do to break it. Belinda and I are symmetrical, and I'm a fighter. Why? You guys tell me what to say about it.

 

Tisha: It sounds like parts. So much of the way, Terry, the way you work with couples fits with parts work and IFS. Do you find that as well? And do you believe in multiplicity?

 

Terry: Sure. Well, I have a tri-part system of the psyche as Dick does. They don't completely line up. They line up pretty remarkably. And, you know, Dick and I are not the only people with tri-part systems. There are lots of people, lots of people work with parts. One of the things that does, if I can say this as a non-IFS therapist, who's worked with parts for 50 years, it does get me a little bit when any work with parts is seen as IFS.

 

Tisha: Oh yeah, it's a language that's been around for a long time, hasn't it?

 

Terry: A really long time. Once I was presenting with Dick, we were doing the same couple. I would do them in the morning and he would do them in the afternoon. And one diehard IFS, a person came to me and said, “I just want to congratulate you. Your interview was absolutely masterful.” And I said, “Oh, thank you.” She said, “Yeah, it was IFS”. The best compliment this guy could give me was that...Thank you.

 

Aníbal: Terry, when so many in our field fear to sit with couples, even for 50 minutes, you can spend full days with couples in the most severe and critical crisis. Where do you find such an energy and space to do this?

 

Terry: Well, I started off about four years old in my family growing up, you know, I was the all hell was breaking and I did my best to regulate my parents. I'm comfortable with a certain level of chaos and blatant discharge of feelings because I grew up with it in a way that maybe somebody else wouldn't be, but like all RLT therapists, my strength comes from my detachment from outcome. It's a spiritual principle.

 

Aníbal: Ok.

 

Terry: Is this couple going to stay together or not? No, I don’t know. Is this couple going to shape up and stop beating each other up? Or are they just going to beat each other up endlessly? I don't know. I do a lot of shrugging. I don't know. I'm not God, it's not my life. It's your life. And we have very clear boundaries in RLT. You know, somebody says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and they give me a hard time. I'll often say to them “Look, I want you to know I'm in service, not sales. If you want these skills, I'll give them to you. If you don't there are other people wandering around the block who do, so give up your chair and then somebody else have it.” And I used to say that way before there were actually people, I faked it, I was just bullshitting.

 

Aníbal: So, you don't have an agenda or what is your agenda? Is just to help them to get...

 

Terry: I have a wish.

 

Aníbal: Okay.

 

Terry: I have a wish. I have passionate wishes for the people I work with. I wish they would open up. I wish they would have greater intimacy. I wish they'd be better people for children to witness and be with. But at the end of the day, it's between you and God. Is really, I'm not in charge of your fate. And I will say to somebody, “Look, you know, we're working...this is, you've behaved better in the past. You're indulging yourself. Now, I can give you, we can do work that will help you relax and shape up if you want, if you don't want, you don't. I want you to know at the end of the day, I go home to my happy family and you go home to your misery. And the reason why my family is happy is because of all the work Belinda and I have done, the same work we're asking you to do, but I don't have a gun to your head. It's really up to you.” One of the things I say to my students is “Don't be more ambitious for your clients than your clients are for themselves. You wind up with a big headache. Don't want more for them than they want.”

 

Tisha: Are there other aspects of spiritual practice that are running in the background for you aside from non-attachment to outcome? What else is present that keeps you working with couples and keeps you motivated?

 

Terry: That's a beautiful question. I'm going to say hope. And I think RLT is a phenomenally hopeful. What we hold the bar very high for our clients. We expect dramatic change quickly. And we usually get it. We often get it, not always. But you know, regular therapy kind of goes like this and we want you to go like this. So, I can teach a man who is a good-hearted guy who doesn't know a damn thing about how to cherish anybody, how to cherish somebody. I can break it down and give it to them. One of the differences between RLT and IFS is the phases. There are three phases in RLT. The first is confrontation, loving confrontation. This is what you're doing that's blowing your foot off. You will never get more of what you want if you keep doing this thing that you're doing. For example, we talk about relational stances, dysfunctional relational stances, and here's a classic: angry pursuit is a dysfunctional relational stance from in our book. You will never get more of what you want by complaining about what you're not getting. That is not going to work. And so, the first phase is this confrontation with the adaptive child part of you that is messing up your relationship. Once we have a clear picture of that adaptive child, we then take it back to family of origin. And we do inner child work, which looks very similar to parts work in many ways and in many ways not, but in many ways, yes. And then once we're done with the trauma work, and I say, the unburdening will  keep weaving. But once that phase is complete, then you move on to teaching. And we're different from IFS. Dick and I have been around the block on this one, in that we teach skills, we are explicitly educational. This is how you fight fair. This is how you identify your feelings. This is how you tell your partner that you love them here. Open up your lips. Say, I love you. Good. This is how you greet somebody. When they say hello to you, you don't just brush past them and walk into the room. You say hello back. And so, I think maybe because I work with so many men, I believe that there's a place to be an explicit mentor and to teach people how to be more relational. There's a lot of trauma work now...if you remove the traumatic obstacles to heal the trauma that people will instinctively know how to be relational. But I think, in your guys' language, I think before you do that, you'd have to unburden them from all of the societal messages that they've gotten about how you do this, because they're wrong. And I believe that along with that work, you teach them what right would look like. So, it's a three-step process. “This is what you're doing wrong. This is where it comes from. Can you take care of that little boy or girl that's making so much difficulty and now, okay, now that you're in your wise adult, let's arm, that part of you with skills and wisdom to figure out how to get this done.” Those are the three parts to it.

 

Aníbal: Terry, you also say the spirituality is the collision of two human imperfections. Want to say more?

 

Terry: Guy. You've actually been reading my stuff.

 

Aníbal: Yes.

 

Terry: Yes. What say is that we all long for the divine. Every one of us wants the perfect partner. We all want a God or goddess to complete us. And what we're stuck with is a woefully, imperfect human being, just like we are. And they're...It's all well and good to abstractly say, well, they're imperfect, but the particulars of their imperfections really stick in the crawl and make for a lot of soul searching and difficulty. I'm a big fan of the child developmental psychologist, Ed Tronick. And from him I got that all relationships are an endless dance of harmony, disharmony and repair, closeness, disruption, and return to closeness. And that disharmony phase, that disillusionment phase, it can be really raw. It's not acknowledged in our culture, how dark and raw that can be. But I talk about what I call normal marital hatred, normal marital hatred. And I like to say, I've been talking about this for 20 plus years and not one person has ever come backstage and said, what do you mean by that?

 

Aníbal: We all know well.

 

Terry: So, the collision of your imperfection and mine is the stuff of intimacy and how we manage that collision that's the character of our relationship. People try and get out of that imperfection, but it's how we manage it that is the very stuff of what renders us close. I talk to people about working with the man or woman you're with instead of the one you deserve. But there we are. Of course, we don't, it doesn't quite dawn on us that if we could find this super perfect partner, they probably wouldn't be interested in us.

 

Tisha: They might see through it all.

 

Aníbal: You'll also quote, LaTina Hunt. I guess Latina says “Women marry men hoping they will change. They don't. Men marry women hoping they won’t change. They do.” What is that?

 

Terry: Welcome to patriarchy. And women want men to be more open and connected and relational. And men want women to stay the way they were when they were first dating. And when men don't open up and learn to be more relational women close up and they get less generous. And that is the state of most heterosexual relationships under patriarchal culture, you have either shut down distant or entitled irresponsible men often, coupled with an accommodating, perhaps at times explosive, but certainly unhappy woman. And then you put a little boy or a little girl in that family and it's rife with all sorts of difficulties in the triangle. You know, for example, have you ever noticed how many men are avoidant? We talk about pursuers and distancers, talk about anxious attachment style and dismissive...

Aníbal: Avoidant.

 

Terry: I talk about the unholy triad of patriarchy, that there's a distant or irresponsible man, husband, father, that there's an accommodating, unhappy woman. And there's a sensitive little boy in the base triangle who feels his mother's pain and moves into caretaking. It isn't the way we used to think about it in family therapy that the mother enmeshes with the son is that the son of enmeshes with the mother out of compassion. But it's a burden to be a caretaker instead of a child. And so, these burdened boys grow up to be distant men because they have the trauma of their care-taking position.

 

Tisha: Yesterday, we had a big exodus of Trump and I heard that it was even to the tune of macho macho man. And yeah, that, that was actually playing. And I admire so much your work as a therapist addressing the systemic difficulty and challenges with patriarchy, but it's so striking to me how many people are behind a macho bullying self-aggrandizing man...

 

Terry: 94 million American.

 

Tisha: Yeah. So how do we approach that as a society, as a culture, as therapists? I know you're doing the hard work and I've heard you speak about the next generation, the millennial generation being more in touch with sensitivity and more able to be whole.

 

Terry: Yeah, I do believe that, but these boys have been raised by feminist mothers, you know? It shows. So, the first thing is I’m not neutral, and I don't like neutrality in the therapy room. I am an intimacy merchant. I am on the side of intimacy. Intimacy is healthy. All of the research is completely clear. The intimacy is good for us. The lack of intimacy kills us, literally, physically it has deleterious effects. So, I'm on the side of whoever is asking for more intimacy, which three out of four times, there's going to be the woman. It’s women who carry the dissatisfaction, it's women who want more. Across the board in heterosexual relationships, women are asking for more emotional intimacy than most men have been raised to deliver. And so, to help a man open up and be connected to his partner and his kids, is synonymous with moving and beyond patriarchy and beyond the traditional masculine role. Traditional masculinity rests on two pillars, invulnerability and dominance. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are, the more vulnerable you are, the more girly or, and of course what across the board women and children are asking, insisting on is vulnerability from their men. There's emotional connection. I want you to come to the table and tell me what you've been feeling, says a woman to a guy who hasn't thought about feelings in 20 years. And a lot of therapists will like, well, that's her opinion. That's your opinion. No. What she's asking for is legit, increased intimacy is legit. Now, the way she's asking for it may use, her delivery could probably use some work, but what she's wanting, I agree with. And so, we therapeutically side with that person and bring the other person in. We want you to step up and meet these new demands. They're good for you. They're good for your kids. They're good for your body. Let me show you how to do it. And we sell it to him. Most men are good-hearted guys, most. There there's some bad apples, but most better are good. And they're riding the cross-currents of entitlement and bewildering.

 

Aníbal: Terry, you say an inwardly shamed base, then outwardly driven men coupled with inwardly resentful and outwardly accommodating women, that's America's power, couple.

 

Terry: Yes, it is. Bill and Hill. That's it. That is, you know, because traditionally the set up...Eric Erickson said that is the hallmark of a functional culture that the roles that you're socialized into as a child fit with the roles you're going to be asked to play as an adult, that there's no disjuncture between them. And when cultures are in a period of change, there's a disjuncture. And then people get maladaptive and they start having symptoms and so forth. But right now, I like to say that masculinity is at war with itself. Patriarchy is at war with itself right now. I mean, literally at war, there are people storming the American Capitol with, you know, with arms. And it very much has to do with two versions of what masculinity looks like. All of those Trump supporters believe in traditional macho masculinity. That's why they like him. And I would venture to say that the liberals who were happy to see him gone ascribe to a more nuanced and progressive form of masculinity, but this is war and not just in America, it's going on all around the world. The strong men have re arisen. Esther Perel once said, I like the line that “The great story of the 20th century may be the empowerment of women. The great story of the 21st century may be how men react to that empowerment.” And right now, it's split. There are those who are going forward. There are those who are going backward, and they are not very friendly toward one another. It's a pitch battle.

 

Aníbal: Terry, it looks like patriarchy is the real enemy in intimacy?

 

Terry: Yes. And it's time...I know we're coming to a close but let me leave with this. It’s time for men and women and transgender folks and gender fluid folks, it's time for he, she and they to unite. It says time for us to move beyond the, what I call comparative victimology. The entitlement of men and the oppression of women is real, I call that political patriarchy and sexism is political patriarchy and has very real consequences, particularly the minute you step out of the west. Is time to understand that the system does great damage to both sexes. The system does great damage to both boys and girls, and it does horrible damage to the relationship between us.

 

Aníbal: Yeah, well said.

 

Terry: And if we are going to move into healthy intimacy, women need to move into loving firm voice and boys and men need to move into open connected hearts. And both of them are moving beyond the traditional gender roles of patriarchy. Somebody once said about RLT. It was deconstructing patriarchy one couple at a time. And I love that. That's what we're about.

 

Tisha: Can you say that one more time? Women need to move into...

 

Terry: Loving voice.

 

Tisha: And men...

 

Terry: Open connected hearts.

 

Tisha: Beautiful.

 

Terry: Because the wound to girls has been disempowerment, the loss of voice. The wound to boys is disconnection. So, the healing move for women is re empowerment. The healing move for men is reconnection. But when women are empowered, it needs to be empowered with love. And that's new, that's post-second way feminism we refer as pretty angry. Speaking up for yourself with love, I think not only breaks patriarchy, but I probably get a lot of grief over this, but I think it's the next step for feminism.

 

Aníbal: Interesting, very interesting.

 

Terry: And I consider myself a feminist. I have for 40 years. Under patriarchy, you can be connected, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both at the same time because power is power over, not power with, it’s dominance. So, if you move into power, you lose connection. If you move into accommodation, you lose your power. I want to break that binary. I want people in general and women in particular to be strong and cherishing and loving in the same breath. And those are some of the skills we teach.

 

Tisha: I so appreciate that.

 

Terry: How to, how to stand up to your partner and cherish your partner at the same...It’s the same thing as saying, “I don't like how you're talking to me,” and saying, “Honey, I want to hear what you have to say. Could you tone it down so I could listen?” It’s your way of saying the same thing, but one cherishes the relationship, the other one doesn’t, one works and the other one doesn’t. So, this is some of the skills that we teach.

 

Tisha: Yeah, it's incredible. It makes me think of a lot of clients who for them confrontation means that they feel as though they're going to be charged by a rhinoceros. 

 

Terry: Yeah, right.

 

Tisha: Righ? They've got to get into that place, but with love it softens. And that edge just softens and there's connection with firmness.

 

Terry: Yeah. Whether it's a therapist talking to the client or whether it's partners talking to each other, one of my favorite quotes and I'll leave with this. One of my favorite quotes is from the German poet Goethe and I paraphrase, but the quote went something like this, “If you treat someone as they ought to be, if you treat someone as if they were, as they ought to be, they may become who they ought to be.” If I look at you and I say, Tisha, you can do this. I know you're a decent person. Look at your partner. And with love in your heart, say that you need something different from them. And I hold that bar high. I'm reaching for the wise adult part of you and forming a therapeutic relationship with that part of you. You rise to the occasion and that's the essence of RLT. We provide an occasion for our clients to rise too.

 

Tisha: Thank you so much.

 

Aníbal: Well said.

 

Tisha: So, I know we need to wrap up, but I wanted to reflect that you're writing a new book, that you have an upcoming training for the general public on your website.

 

Terry: Yeah, I’d like to invite everybody to my website, just go to Terryreal.com, my name and make sure that you sign up. You, you know, subscribe, and we'll let you know what's going on. I'm very excited. This is my first online course for the general public coming this winter. And we expect that it will be a big course. And I've got a lot to say about how to make these relationships work.

 

Aníbal: And what about your new book? What are you putting up?

 

Terry: The book won't be out until next year, next spring. His tentative title is Us: The Power of Moving Beyond the End View. And it really is about which part of you am I speaking to? Am I speaking to the centered adult? Am I speaking to a triggered child? And it's for the general public about how to understand that and how to work with it.

 

Aníbal: So, Terry, thank you so much for having us and for helping us with your reason and experience. Our listeners will find in our show notes the link to your amazing conversation with Carol Gilligan as well. And it was a joy to be here with you and Tisha and wishing you the best for you and your work. Thank you so much.

 

Terry: Well, thank you. I wish the best for you too, as well. Keep up the good work.

 

Aníbal: Thank you.

 

Terry: It was a pleasure speaking to you. I feel deeply respected talking to you.

 

Tisha: Oh, good, you are.

 

Aníbal: Yes.

 

Recorded 21st January 2021 
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

 

Sexuality through IFS Lens with Patricia Rich 52:31

Patricia Rich, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified IFS Therapist and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor. She fell in love with IFS in 2011 and has since completed Level 3, served as a Program Assistant and offered IFS workshops. She founded The Relating Well Center, LLC, a relationship and sexuality focused private practice in the Philadelphia area. 

When Patty first became interested in IFS, she thought it would be useful in the treatment of sexual dysfunction. Then, as she learned the model she got curious about how sexuality “lives” in the internal system. Now she believes that IFS is not only extremely useful in the healing of sexual dysfunction and trauma, but  also for navigating today’s complex landscape of sexuality in a Self-Led way . She brought her insights to the IFS Annual Conference first as a half day session and then as a full day Pre-Conference workshop. She just completed teaching a four month module on Self-Led Sexuality for the IFS Institute’s Online Continuity Program.

Learn more about her offerings at www.relatingwellcenter.com or by joining her private Facebook group Self-Led Sexuality with Patricia Rich.

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks we have the privilege of meeting with Patty Rich. Patricia Rich is a licensed clinical social worker, certified IFS therapist, and a sex certified sex therapist and supervisor. She fell in love with IFS in 2011 and has since completed Level 3, served as a Program Assistant and offered IFS workshops. Patty founded The Relating Well Center, LLC, a relationship and sexuality focused private practice in the Philadelphia area. When Patty first became interested in IFS, she thought it would be useful in the treatment of sexual dysfunction. Then, as she learned the model, she got curious about how sexuality lives in the internal system. Now, she believes that IFS is not only extremely useful in the healing of sexual dysfunction and trauma, but also for navigating today's complex landscape of sexuality in a Self-lead way. Patty brought her insights to the IFS Annual Conference first as a half-day session and then as a full day pre-conference workshop. Also, she just completed teaching a four-month module on Self-lead Sexuality for the IFS institute's Online Continuity Program.

Patty, welcome to IFS Talks, and thank you so much for being with us today.

Patricia Rich: Thank you, Tisha. It is such an honor to be here with you and Aníbal. I'm very excited and looking forward to our conversation today.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Patty, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today, hearing your bio?

Patty: I think my parts are kind of retracing the journey that it's been to this point, and it's a feeling of appreciation for my parts that have helped me and also to all of my teachers and mentors in the IFS community and leadership that has been so welcoming of what I've been trying to bring forward. So, I guess I feel gratitude.

Tisha: Will you tell us a little bit about your journey, becoming a therapist and also your interest in sexuality?

Patty: Sure. I became a therapist as my primary career. Some people have made career changes. I've been on this path my whole life. And I would actually say before I knew about the profession, I was in something of that therapist role, had that therapist temperament as a child. I was one of those people that seem to listen to others and mediate and had a feel for helping people communicate. And actually, that theme of connection and communication has always been very enlightening for me and it's carried forth to this day. Professionally, actually, it's kind of relevant here, I suppose, that I tend to be interested in a lot of different things and it was hard to narrow when it was time to well to go to graduate school, basically. You know, when I was an undergrad, I could still take a lot of different courses. And when I was deciding about what kind of graduate degree I wanted, I had brochures in front of me from like all these different kinds of programs. They were somewhat related, you know, public health and psychology and social work and all of this. And I wasn't quite sure which way I wanted to go and I wound up one day just getting out a big piece of paper and listening to the conversation inside because it was such a loud debate and I didn't know about parts yet, but what I wound up doing was really identifying about eight different parts that I had and negotiating a meeting with them and coming up with social work as the best path forward for me. And I do remember that a lot because it was the first time I met my parts and so later when I encountered IFS, it was so resonant with my own experience of myself.

Tisha: And then how did you start specializing in sexuality?

Patty: Well, I had had an interest in sexuality...Again, my parts are like "Which part tells the story here?" You know, I had volunteered to do some sex education when I was in college. I'd always had an interest in feminism and women's health and had done some different things. So, and I could say also that I came from a background that was pretty progressive, I would say around sexuality, nothing very overt, but I would say I had the privilege of growing up in a family that was not particularly repressive around sex and sexuality. So, I had some interest in that area. And then, as I was starting to do clinical work, I started out with children and families and I became very interested in working with the parents. And so, I started working more with parents and couples and because I had that interest and comfort level with sexuality, I would kind of invite into the conversation, just provide an opening for that and many people were very happy to be able to talk about their sexual relationship. And I realized there was a real need for more therapists that were able to welcome sex and sexuality as part of the whole picture in working with people. So that was kind of how I, and then I decided to get more training and became certified in sex therapy.

Aníbal: Patty, I would like to appreciate your courage to address, in such a wise and eloquent way, this difficult and triggering topic, even for those like us, in the field of psychotherapies, this topic of human sexuality. We know well how difficult it is for therapists in general to inquire about their client's sex lives or even about their own sex life. So why is that?

Patty: I don't think it's our fault, you know. I want to say that it's a tough subject. I think that we as therapists live obviously within the larger culture as our clients do, and I appreciate your listeners are probably coming from very different diverse cultures and parts of the world, even, but at least where I am in the United States, we have very mixed messages in our culture around sex and sexuality. And we don't have a strong foundation of sex education and helping people to understand their bodies and their feelings and the translation into social relationships and our values. And as a culture, we also have many oppressive influences that try to shut down or exile or punish forms of sexual expression and identity that do not conform to what's considered to be the more permissible. And this is internalized for all of us, whether we're therapists or not. If we're seeing images of sexuality that highlight particular body types, you know, very thin people or very white or very, you know, men with, you know, abs of steel or whatever it is, you know. We're in the mix, you know, in a culture that gives us a lot of messages about being not good enough or not allowed, or maybe high expectations for us sexually. And then our training programs replicate that. You know, I've talked to a lot of therapists, it's really the minority that are required within their curriculum to have some kind of comprehensive course around human sexuality. And then even fewer who are taught how to incorporate that into the clinical process, within whatever approach people are using. So, as therapist, we have a lot of challenges, you know, we, we may or may not have a comfort level with our own identity and expression of our sexuality. We may not have adequate training. And we also are concerned about respecting people's boundaries. You know, there's of course we don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable and we don't want to overstep in any way, and I think that can lead to really exiling the subject entirely.

Another thing that really is important to me is that we don't only address sexuality within the context of pain and trauma. I feel like when we hear the word sex and sexual, most often, at least for me in my professional community, we're talking about sexual abuse, sexual perpetrators, we're talking about, you know, unwanted pregnancy, you know, there's just kind of a way that sexuality tends to be brought in as something on the negative end of the spectrum. And I don't think I've really had any training that I didn't seek out myself that highlighted how healing sexuality can be, how just, it's just an aspect of life at any life stage and how much connecting with others, which is such a big part of what we want to do as therapists is help people to be able to connect with others and attach and have healthy relationships, how much sexuality is an aspect of that. So, that's a lot to say, I could even add more, but as therapists, you know, we are challenged, but I think we also have opportunities to increase our comfort level. And I think IFS offers some amazing ways to get to know our own systems and to be able to help our clients.

Aníbal: I guess you just said, or you would agree that humans use sex for so many proposals, not only to reproduction, but also to connection, to pleasure, to feel powerful, to dominate, to humiliate, to abuse someone. Why is sex used in so many different ways?

Patty: Well, you know, I would say because we are complex people, right? And that sex and sexuality tap into our life force energy. There's a lot of power to sexual energy and to the feelings, you know, that can go along with it. And even as you say it can be very triggering because there can be so much shame, you know, there can be so much, so many values and judgments around sex and sexuality, that it can really activate so many different things. And I don't want to overlook that many people have experienced trauma sexually. So, in mentioning earlier that it's something in programs that's highlighted, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be, of course it should be. Just wanting to kind of widen the conversation. So, the subject, even as people are listening to this, might be triggering. So, it might even be good if we could just go there for a minute. You know, I always like to invite people to pause - nice thing with the podcast is that you can do that - and just really notice, even with, as far as we've gotten so far, you know, what's here, you know, just hearing the topic, hearing the words, I really would want to invite people to check inside and just notice how this is landing, if there's any responses in a physical level of comfort or discomfort interest. And just to notice, because it can be so activating in so many different ways. So, I just want to make a mention of that.

And in terms of Internal Family Systems, we know that our parts have jobs, right? We have protector parts that have jobs and our parts will use what's available to them to do their jobs. And we've had some wonderful learning in the community about parts in terms of physical illness and how parts might manifest, you know, as aspects or use maybe predisposition, someone might have toward illness or toward anything, you know, they'll use what's at their disposal to do their jobs, right? And so, to me it makes a lot of sense that with such a strong resource in a system of sexuality, that parts might use it, you know, to do their jobs in different ways. So, when I started to get curious about, you know, how does sexuality fit with IFS, you know. Is it parts? You know, who, who has sex? You know, is it parts? Is it Self? Like, I just started to get very curious about that. And that's what started to, you know, open up a lot of thoughts about how manager parts, firefighter parts, exiles, all might have their own roles and energies in relation to sexuality, but how, when those parts unblend, that Self, it seems to me is really the source of our life force energy and that there is kind of sexual qualities and aspects of Self-energy If we allow those to manifest.

Tisha: Can you name a little bit more about what those qualities are? Those sexual aspects of self?

Patty: Yeah. Yeah. So of course, the 8 C words, people may be familiar with already. And I would say that all of those are relevant, you know, in terms of being Self-led in the arena of sexuality. So, being able to feel calm, connected, having clarity, communicating. So, all those C words are certainly relevant, but then what came to me were what I'm calling a six S's.

Aníbal: And do you want to name them for us?

Patty: Yeah. So, the six S's are safe. Sexual Self-energy is Safe, Sensual, Spacious, Sensitive, Steamy, and Satisfying.

Tisha: I'm so curious about steamy.

Patty: I'll say a bit about each of these.

Tisha: Yeah. That would be great.

Patty: Self is Safe. You know, a lot of parts may show up and engage. We may have different challenges in the world related to sexuality, but when we are safe and our parts trust that we're safe and step back, our Self-energy and our sexual energy is not going to harm us, right? And it's safe for us. Sensual, when we are, when, again, when our parts have unblended, we are able to enjoy the feeling of flow, we may become more attuned to sensuality, more able to really savor, you know, sensations. Spacious, that we are able to feel expansive, we can feel like our full Self around sex and within sexual activity and around our sexual expression. And this one I find really resonates, you know, for a lot of people that they've developed a sexual life or feelings about sexuality that keep them in a very narrow and constricted place. And so, this idea that there's the possibility of spaciousness, and that doesn't mean you do everything. You know what I mean? Like you can have values, you make choices, you can embrace boundaries around sexuality and still be able to experience sexual Self-energy as spacious.

Tisha: Right, there's less agenda there. Room for freedom, it sounds like.

Patty: Yeah. And kind of like our protectors can relax, our exiles feel safe, the system is calm. And so, then we can just be present to whatever is arising. And then Sensitive is that...You know, originally, I didn't imagine these six S words as sequential, but to be, it seems that they do work well sequentially, or they kind of reflect what happens a lot of times as protectors relax. So, with more Spaciousness, I notice a lot of, you know, people will report feeling more Sensitivity, like more tuned into their partner, to their own body, a more empathic, more emotional attunement and physical attunement. And then that leads into Steamy. With more sensation, you know, Self-energy is energy, you know, so energy as we're feeling warmer and more open and, you know, it's an, it's an embodied energy, so, it can become, it can heat up, right? And so that can lead into the arousal process in a sense of, you know, Steaminess, in terms of just maybe getting more and more into things just, and it's not necessarily only sexual arousal, you know, but that just when we're feeling very excited about what we're doing, you know, we're very passionate. These aren't limited only to sexuality because it's Self-energy, right? So, we always have Self with us. So, times when we're really getting passionate about something that we're doing. I kind of refer to that as Steamy. And then Satisfying is that there's not agenda. That whatever has happened, it doesn't depend on a particular bodily function or a particular act in order to feel satisfied. At any time our part's really unblend and we're able to be present to Self-energy that that is satisfying inherently.

Aníbal: So, you are saying that sexuality can be motivated by Self or by parts? That we can have Self-led motivated sexuality or Parts-led motivated sexuality. So, we also can say that we can have burdened sexual systems?

Patty: Absolutely.

Aníbal: And if yes, how do they look like and what are some indicators?

Patty: Yeah. So, in a burden sexual system, and of course there's a picture of spectrum, you know, I don't think anyone goes through this life without any burdens around sexuality...

Aníbal: Of course.

Patty: But some of us have less and some of us have had tremendous trauma and pain and are, you know, tremendously burdened. So, those burdens can come in lots of different ways. So, and they might be explicitly sexual or not explicitly sexual, right? So, a system that's burdened anyway, with feelings of maybe not being lovable or worthy or having been harmed physically or sexually, you know, that's going to bring a lot of burden into the system most likely, right? In terms of emotions, beliefs, et cetera. So, a system can become sexually burdened the same way other burdens come in, or it could be very particular to the kinds of shame and pain that are specific to having had negative sexual experiences, those larger cultural messages based on one's physical body or appearance, maybe having an identity that's not congruent with one's inner experience of oneself in terms of gender or sexual orientation or other things. So those burdens can come in and in a lot of different ways. And then the protective system develops around that, right? So, we're going to have more extreme managers, more extreme firefighters, depending on how much burden is in a system. So a lot of times the inner burdened system firefighters might be there in terms of either shutting down sexuality and things like dissociating, avoiding, numbing with chemicals, or in other ways, you know, firefighters might show up in those ways or firefighters might use sexuality, you know, kind of like we were talking about earlier in order to shut down other feelings. So, being able to, to get those, you know, the rush of all those chemicals that get released or the feelings of power or of escape from the moment, you know, in a burden system those things are more extreme.

Aníbal: So, are you saying that not seeking consent or compulsivity or shame and regret after sex or lack of pleasure or aversion and avoidance of sex or not feeling free to say yes, no or maybe, all those are indicators of a burden sexual system?

Patty: They very much could be. And like all things IFS, you know, if someone has determined that some of that, some of those things are happening for them, and that is a Trailhead of interest for them, then, you know, they can kind of ask the parts and find out what are they doing and why, and, you know, that would point in that direction.

Aníbal: And the same for shame and guilt or I'm unlovable, or I'm bad, I'm dirty, I'm disgusting and broken. All those can be common sexual burdens?

Patty: Yes. Yes. And I feel there's a particular pain to the kinds of shame people feel around sexuality. You know, I think shame is...Many people are teaching and, you know, working with shame and that's painful in any form. And I think that because of our cultures, that the kind of shame people carry around sexuality can be particularly painful. You know, people can feel particularly exiled or judged or exile aspects of themselves with so much harshness based on, you know, values around sexuality. So, yes, that can definitely be, and it's, that's one of the passions I bring to this subject. This is really kind of why I think I'm so motivated around this is that I've just worked with so many people who suffer so much and whose parts suffer so much for not being allowed, you know, just not being allowed to be who they are, to tell their stories. And it's life-threatening, you know, the rates, you know, suicidal parts can be very active when there's this kind of shame or exiling in the system. There's a lot of consequence to us not being able to bring ourselves to those parts, both as clients and as therapists. Conversely, there could be a lot of healing when we do.

Tisha: As Aníbal was asking his last question around parts that say yes or no or maybe, it made me think about the issue of consent and I know there's multi tears with that. And like the first thing that comes to mind is consent within the therapy setting to talk about sex and to get that Self-energy between therapist and client. And I'm just curious about the different levels of consent and how you talk about that with clients and how that works within the IFS model.

Patty: It's a favorite subject of mine. So, I have a lot of parts chattering about where to start there, because there's the consent in our own system to even be present, you know, to the topic. And then there's the consent that happens in terms of ourselves as the, you know, if we're therapists, making sure that we have permission and we're not imposing or intruding in any way on the clients, you know, with the client. And at the same time, recognizing that a lot of people don't necessarily put out their content related to sexuality with a belief that it's not allowed, or it's not welcome, or it would be embarrassing, right? And so, how do we kind of welcome the topic without being intrusive or, you know, going past anyone's boundaries or protective system. So, I came to think about consent in terms of consent, if I could take it out of the therapy context for a minute and more into like a social context, there's, you know, been an increased awareness, obviously of sexual assault and both over, just in the news and, you know, in the public consciousness, you know, we're hearing a lot the “Me Too" stories and, you know, an awareness that sexual harassment and sexual boundaries can be violated both intentionally and less intentionally. And along with that, there've been a lot of different consent models that have been proposed, you know, like how do you explicitly ask for consent before engaging sexually with another person or making an overture, right? And what I noticed is that people, if they get as far as using a consent model, how do they know who's consenting basically, you know, because the part that's dominant in that situation might speak, but there might not be necessarily a consensus amongst the parts inside of each person about what consent is. So, I started to call that internal consent, you know, that not before you can really give consent to someone else, are you able to take a moment to be with your own parts and to see if you have like a consensus, you know, are all your parts okay with what it is that you're about to, you know, possibly do? Or are there polarities? And this gets back to burdens, right? When there's a highly burdened system, someone might not have access to as much Self-energy to be able to listen to all of their parts. And as people start to heal sexually, the system becomes less burdened and there's more access to the wisdom of our managers that are not burdened that can sort of see if this is good for us or not. You know, we can check in with the whole range of parts in order to consent.

Aníbal: So, we can see Part-motivated sexuality and Self-lead sexuality. Is Part-motivated sexuality always bad?

Patty: I would say, I would not want to be kind of adding to a sense of polarization that people may have, you know, around like kind of good sexuality, bad sexuality. And along those lines, you know, I would not say part-led sexuality is inherently bad, you know, like, we need our parts, just like in our larger system, the goal isn't to get rid of our parts, right. It's to have a harmonious system with as little burden as possible, so that Self and parts can kind of be in harmony. And so, you know, our parts might motivate sex for lots of reasons. In fact, an activity I often do in a workshop would be having a group brainstorm all the reasons they could think of that someone might want to have sex and also, maybe why they wouldn't, you know. And so, they range from things like I, you know, being able to sleep, "I got to fall asleep tonight," you know, to deal with stress, to feel close, you know, there's so many different ways that parts might turn to sexuality to do their jobs and that are not necessarily negative. Do you know what I mean? Just like eating, it's very akin to eating, right? Like eating is a biological function, but it also is something our parts might use food to socialize with others or to stay awake at night or, you know what I mean? So, our parts might motivate...

Aníbal: Yeah. Make sense, yes.

Patty: And if I could just add one thing there, I do like to not limit thinking about sexuality, to couples and interpersonal sexual behavior. I'd like to frame that we're sexual, you know, there's aspects of sensuality and appropriate to our developmental stage. It's an aspect of life from birth to death. And so, sexuality and consent to sexuality doesn't only involve others, but you know, is as an individual, something about how we live in our own skin and how we navigate and present ourselves to the world. And also, sexual activity can be solo as well as, as partnered. And that the whole notion even of consent and internal consent is relevant on an individual level within our internal community, as much as it is interpersonally or in a long-term relationship.

Tisha: Right. So, there can be shame around individual sexual acts or there can be parts that hold the guilt, or maybe even ancestral or religious burdens?

Patty: Definitely. Yes. And polarities, many polarities can exist around sexual behavior and sexual values.

Tisha: It's clearly, there's so much territory to cover with this topic. I'm curious if you have any advice for listeners around how to begin to open up to those six S's of Self around sexuality when either working with clients or working with their own system. Where do we all start?

Patty: Again, I would recommend a U-turn, you know, even listening to this conversation, you know, there's been a choice made to listen to this topic. So, I imagine there'd be some level of curiosity. And just to notice what's here and kind of where is the curiosity and does it feel possible to check for consent to do more exploring. You know, some people may feel clearly that this isn't something they're interested in, others might feel some of that curiosity. And then, in terms of the six S's, I like to frame it as, just like with the eight C's, we might ask ourselves, you know, we can figure out if we're blended or not, by saying, "Am I feeling calm right now? Am I feeling compassion?" You know, that's like an anchor. And then if I'm not, then I must be blended with a part. So, I see that the six S's can work similarly. So, if you're just saying "Am I feeling safe right now?" You know, or "Am I feeling sensual right now?" You might pretty quickly get a response of I am or I'm not. And then you can bring curiosity. Okay, like "What's between me and feeling safe right now," you know, "What's between me and feeling sensual." And then that might bring you to some parts. And you can then use, you know, the ways that we do things in IFS.

Tisha: There’s parts, for sure. Just scratching the surface while you were talking. "Oh, yeah, there's parts." That's great though, Patty, that was a great explanation, thank you.

Patty: And I actually find that that's just another way to check for Self-energy and these things are not limited only to sexuality, right? Like the work we do in any area that helps us to access more Self-energy can be used in lots of different ways, right? So, you know, sort of being in touch with our senses and you know, those S words can help us to access more Self and not only in a sexual context. Yeah.

Aníbal: Patty, do you think we may benefit from identifying and talk to Self-lead sexual managers and to burdened sexual managers? These can be helpful for our own lives and our client's lives, sexual lives?

Patty: I think it, it can be very meaningful to ask within our system, you know, "Who's here that has a job to do, to keep me safe in regard to sexuality?" And, you know, sometimes we tend to go for the pain points and not always appreciating the parts that are just on the job, doing what they do. And so, I think it can be really very meaningful to recognize our sexual managers and what it is that they're doing for us. And again, if there's less burden in the system, we may have more, they may have a little more space and a little more freedom to do their job with less pressure. If there's a lot of burden in the system, they may not have a lot of room. They might not be able to take their eyes off their job enough to even, you know, connect a whole lot with Self. So...

Aníbal: I'm going to quote you. You say "manager parts might be concerned with preventing sex and they have different strategies for preventing that. Preventing pregnancy, unwanted pregnancies or diseases. So, managers, if the system is burdened, these parts are going to take on more extreme roles. In an unburden system they can be very helpful. So is mostly what you've just said.

Patty: Yeah. I would want to broaden that in terms of sexual managers, right? That they, you know, our parts may, our manager parts may say yes to sex in order to do their jobs, or they may say no to sex in order to do their jobs, or they might just monitor what's happening during a sexual encounter, you know, just "is the door closed? Are the kids in bed? Are we using protection? Does my partner seem happy? My leg is numb. I need to do something different here." You know, so I would say all of that is in the domain of the managers, manager type parts. So, when they're pretty much in the here and now, you know, they're able to be more flexible and responsive, but if their primary job is to prevent pain, prevent exiles from being triggered, that's when our sexual managers may be trying to perform, make sure that we are really pleasing a partner, very concerned about maybe not lasting long enough or looking good enough, maybe wants to avoid sex because sex is a trigger. So, just maybe the managers find a lot of different ways to stay busy and avoid, you know, opportunities. So, they might do their jobs in different ways.

Aníbal: I'm going to quote you again, this time for the firefighters. You say "looking over at the firefighters again, they tend to be concerned with quick urges for pleasure. They can be impulsive and impulsively wanting to have pleasure, relief pain, emotional, or physical pain, procrastinating and procuring. So, firefighters might use sex to get something else that's needed, like drugs say, or money. Firefighters might use the sexual system to help in other ways." So, these are examples of firefighters-led sexuality, but can you give us examples of Self-lead sexual firefighters?

Patty: Yes. Yeah. That's always kind of a question people have when I talk about this, right? So, if we think of a firefighter as a reactive part, like a reactive protector, right? We may have situations where, for instance, if someone's just had something really scary happen and then they come home to a partner and they want to be really close with them and they have a very urgent desire to be close, and maybe they're going to kind of have sex. I like to say that whereas a burdened firefighter is sort of disconnected and does what it does almost autonomously, that in a Self-lead system, it's almost like the firefighter knocks on the door and Self says come in. So, it's reactive, but there's a sense that it's okay, you know, like I've come home to someone and this is okay, this is a person that I'm allowed to do this way, right? And so, there might be an urgency and a reactive, you know, I'm trying to calm myself. I'm trying to get rid of a feeling, you know, I'm trying to reconnect again in a sort of urgent way. So, that could be what I would think of as a more Self-lead firefighter, right?

Aníbal: You also talk of learning to l.u.s.t., how do we learn to l.u.s.t.?

Patty: Yes. So l.u.s.t. is an acronym that I came up with. It stands for loving your unblended sexual team. You got to keep the your as a lowercase. Loving your unblended sexual team.

Aníbal: Sounds good.

Patty: And so the idea is that by bringing radical welcoming to your own parts that are related in any and all aspects of your sexuality, which is a process over time, starting wherever you are, but just bringing curiosity and sort of unblending parts bit by bit that have any kind of role or burden or story related to your sexual wellbeing as you unblend those parts, they start to be able to be on your team. You know, they form a connection with Self, start to get to know other protectors or other young parts and become a resource to us. So, when we have unblended those parts and have a Self to part relationship with a diverse range of our own sexual parts, we can learn to l.u.s.t., You know, meaning that we can experience an unblended and harmonized system when it comes to sex and sexuality.

Aníbal: Beautiful. And Patty, does the world need a Self-led sexuality?

Patty: Yes. Yes.

Aníbal: And why do we need it?

Patty: What the world needs now is l.u.s.t.

Tisha: Because we need to learn to l.u.s.t.

[laughs]

Patty: And of course, it's a bit of a joke, right? Because the l.u.s.t. can also be something we typically might think of as, you know, out of control or I don't know, people bring their own sets of meanings to that. And so, yeah.

Tisha: In exploring my own system with...I have a great IFS therapist and I was doing some inner work around sexuality and we came upon a burden that...I grew up in the nineties and we came upon a burdened part that had feared that if she had sex, she would die. She could contract HIV and die. And that was a real fear that was guiding my sexual behavior for a long time. But I didn't know it was there, but it had just been hammered into us pretty heavily.

Tisha: So yeah, I share that example because to have freed that up and just to get in touch with it was, was so honoring of how much was here.

Patty: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Aníbal: Patty, you talk of five modalities for cultivating Self-lead sexuality. What are those five modalities?

Patty: One of them is IFS, IFS based model, but the next would be Embodiment. The next would be Sex Education. The next would be Social and Sexual Justice and the last would be Behavioral Exploration. And I guess I'm thinking of that now in terms of how, you know, our parts take pickup information and maybe really need updating, right? And so, when Self from a Self place can really be in connection with a part and help it to, as you so beautifully shared, maybe unburden something that isn't accurate through an updating process and possibly providing just a teensy-weensy, little bit of information that might, you know, help to update the part with something accurate, it can be tremendously relieving, you know, to the part and to the system

Aníbal: And, Patty, as the world needs so much a Self-led sexuality, are you putting together a model on sexuality or are you just writing a book on Self-led sexuality?

Patty: Yes. I haven't quite known how to refer to it because it is an approach, so I'm sort of calling it a model. It's an approach. I would say it's an approach and I'm hoping to do more writing. I'm getting to know my writing parts and wanting to be able to, you know, disseminate this perspective more widely. Yeah.

Tisha: I feel like we could have your back and have another discussion that dives more deeply into the five modalities, especially around social justice issues. So, I would look forward to that if you'd be open to coming back.

Patty: Yes. I would be honored. It would be lovely. There's always a lot to say it's a big, it's a huge area of life, right? And so, I guess I also want to say that I don't want to pretend to know what's right or wrong for anybody else, you know, or what's true of their system. And it's just big, I'm hoping to open a conversation with other people about this and for people to maybe open conversations within their own systems and to bring curiosity and just kind of open it up.

Tisha: It's really important. Yeah.

Aníbal: Patty, you have an IFS and sexuality clinical consultation group, right?

Patty: I do. I'm just starting a group now and I may be starting some additional groups as we move forward.

Aníbal: Do you want to say more about that consultation? What kind of consultation is?

Patty: Sure. Thank you. This particular group will be a small group and I wanted to have a space where people who are somewhat versed in IFS, you know, who've had Level 1 training or equivalent. So, they have some grounding in IFS to talk about cases related to sex and sexuality, and also to work with their own therapist parts and to learn a little more of some of the lenses that I'm bringing to this. So, this is a group that's going to be starting in January and I’m close to full with that one right now, but I'm sensing more interests so, I may be starting up another moving forward in the spring.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Interesting. So, Patty, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, your work and our lives.

Tisha: Thank you so much.

Aníbal: Thank you so much.

 

Recorded 8th January 2021 
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

A Meditation on Legacies - with Osnat Arbel 20:52

This is a Meditation on Legacies,  with Osnat Arbel.
Its called  "Legacy Meditation - Our Burdens an Heirlooms".
It  will take you about 17 minutes.
Hoping you can find the time and moment to enjoy it.

Legacy Burdens and Heirlooms: a Talk with Osnat Arbel 49:30

Osnat Arbel, grew up in Israel. She began her journey in the helping profession during her military service as a social work officer and by now has over 3 decades of experience in psychotherapy.
Ossi has completed her Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision with an emphasis on Marriage and Family Therapy, at the University of Northern Colorado, focusing on mindfulness and existential/humanistic therapy approaches.
She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and an AAMFT Clinical Fellow & Approved Supervisor. She is also a Certified Marriage and Family Therapist & a Supervisor at the Israeli Association for MFT.
Her passion and calling is in teaching, supervising, and mentoring therapists-in-training both in the academia world in Israel and the US and now mostly through training participants in the IFS model.
Ossi is a Certified IFS Therapist and Supervisor, and a Senior Lead Trainer for the IFS Institute. She is the co founder and co director of the Israeli institute for IFS.
She brings her passion and enthusiasm to leading and facilitating Level 1 and Level 2 trainings, workshops, and seminars. Altogether, she has been teaching, training, supervising and mentoring hundreds of students in Israel and around the world and has been dedicating her professional and personal growth to the IFS model.

Ossi is also offering a "Legacy Meditation - Our Burdens an Herlooms". Thanks much Ossi!

Today on IFS talks we're speaking with Osnat Arbel. Osnat or Ossi, as she is affectionately known, grew up in Israel. She has a PhD in counselor education and supervision with an emphasis on marriage and family therapy. Ossi is a certified marriage and family therapist and supervisor at the Israeli Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. Ossi is a certified IFS therapist and supervisor and a senior lead trainer for the IFS Institute. She's the co-founder and co-director of the Israeli Institute for IFS. She brings her passion and enthusiasm to leading and facilitating Level 1 and level 2 trainings, workshops and seminars. Altogether, she's been teaching, training, supervising and mentoring hundreds of students in Israel and around the world. And Ossi has dedicated her professional and personal growth to the IFS model. Ossi, thank you so much for being here on IFS talks. Welcome.

 

Osnat Arbel: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Ossi, for sitting with us. How is it for you to hear this bio? What parts come up?

 

Ossi: The little girl in me says "You go girl". And the me who is not a part, you know, I, I am saying that it really feels good to serve a purpose and to bring my passion and my calling, my inner mission, and altogether do something that I love and something that I'm really good at. And something that the world needs, to serve a cause. Really feels good.

 

Tisha: Ossi, will you tell us about your journey to becoming a psychotherapist and specifically marriage and family therapy.

 

Ossi: Yeah. I began my journey in the helping profession during my military service and I served back then, it was almost 37....Well, it was 37 years ago. A long time ago. I served as a social work officer taking care of soldiers, officers at a certain area. And after the military, I majored in psychology and became a high school counselor. So, I worked with junior and senior high school students. And since I was always very systemic in my thinking, I kept saying how I need to work with their parents, how it's not enough working with them. And so, then we relocated to the US and I could really fulfill my dream of getting a master's in marriage and family therapy because in Israel, marriage and family therapy is not a distinct academic discipline. It's part of social work and other disciplines. And I really wanted to focus on that because I held such a strong systemic view. I think I may say that throughout my life from a very young age, I was very, very systemic, always remembering myself, actually, you know, being a little girl looking at who said what to whom and who did it impact and how did it impact everyone involved and what kind of ripple effects did it have on the entire system. And so, I really got to do that and that was really a blessing. That was a blessing to be able to do that. So, I did my masters in marriage and family therapy and then I did my PhD later on in counselor education supervision and in marriage and family therapy.

 

Tisha: And when did IFS find you or how did you come across it?

 

Ossi: Yeah, so throughout my school years in every program, I also did a... actually, I had a parts party at some point, and I made a commitment and did an MBA as well. So, in all the programs that I was in, I was really kind of a junkie for models. And I really resonated with different models in a very deep way and kind of explored them more than just having, kind of looking at the model itself and having a skill set or a tool set. It was more looking for what I called my way, like a precise way of doing the work that I want to do that will correspond with who I am and with my personal philosophy, like on different aspects, like how would you define good versus evil or freewill versus no free will and all that. And it was really like a very internal journey to arrive at a certain model and to correspond with it and to identify with it. And, so through my own professional development, I kind of went through several models. I remember me as a young counselor using CBT and then later on, I discovered the postmodern approaches and really loved how the non-expert stance is used and manifested. And then on, I focused on mindfulness and existential humanistic therapy approaches, and then, kind of got into Jungian and Psychodynamic Archetypal work while I was facilitating, facilitating dreamwork circles. So, throughout all those, I was kind of looking at models that would integrate everything that I value and I had a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And I really wanted to find that model that would integrate the best of everything. And then I was introduced to IFS and I got to meet Dick and got to train with him and was thrilled, really thrilled to find the exact container that will hold all the ingredients that were important to me. And once I found IFS, it really became a lens, a suit, like a way of life and a way of being. I really resonated with it in so many ways, with the multiplicity, with the systemic point of view. It encompassed everything and I really have a deep gratitude towards Dick and towards the beauty and the richness he brought to my life. You sometimes think that, you know, kind of think back and look at the people that are most influential in your life and Dick has absolutely been one major person that I can attribute this to and I'm full of gratitude for that. So, going back to the reaction towards my bio, that I've heard you, Tisha, reading, you know, there is a very old wise voice inside of me that reminds me, you know, "If you've seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." So, you know, all that has been made possible with the support of many beautiful people and many great mentors. And I have a gift for finding and connecting with really outstanding mentors throughout my life. And it's always seemed to be a mutually valuable, and it's really, really moving, really moving.

 

Aníbal: And what is this wisdom about?

 

Ossi: This is like a voice of clarity, of connectedness. Some kind of precise knowing. I call it truth. Sometimes we're seeking the truth, but that's not It. It is being in truth. Knowing that all that I do does not really strictly belong to me. It is with me, it moves through me, but it's not mine. And it took me some years to shed some layers that restricted me from accessing this inner knowing, you know, unloading some burdens, trusting this inner knowing. And it really goes back to our model because this is a constraint release model. And once those constraints are unloaded, one gets access to this inner knowing. And I'm pretty certain that this inner wisdom can be named as a Legacy Heirloom that I was able to own.

 

Tisha: So today, I know you have many areas of expertise, Ossi, but today we were going to dive into the topic of Legacy Heirlooms. Can you start us off by letting us know what in your eyes or in your experience a Legacy Heirloom is?

 

Ossi: Yeah. So perhaps I'll take a few moments to distinguish, first of all, between burdens and heirlooms. So, in terms of burdens, everyone that probably listens to this podcast and knows IFS, knows that their parts are carrying burdens and there are personal burdens and there are legacy burdens. And personal burdens are those beliefs, those emotions, sensations or energies that are a result of a traumatic memory that the part holds and personal burdens can be something like I'm unworthy or I don't deserve, or I'm unlovable and they're developed in response to experiences, to traumatic experience experiences we've endured firsthand. But they're not necessarily the memory itself. It is more of the charge that is attached to the memory. So, then when we unburdened the part from its burdens, the memories stay in the system, but in a more neutral way, like, you know, less charged and the more charge there is to the memory, the more unburdening will maybe be needed to free the part to its original form or to what it was meant to be in the first place, what it was born to be. So, you know, we distinguish between memories and burdens and between parts and their burdens. And Dick says something that I love, I love hearing, I love saying that as well "You are not your parts and your parts are not your burdens."

 

Aníbal: Exactly.

 

Ossi: Yeah. He calls it one of the laws of inner physics. And Legacy Burdens are also burdens like beliefs, emotions, sensations or energy charges that are not necessarily from our own life experience, but are passed through a certain ancestral line, from one generation to the next. And it can also be passed through cultural, through our culture at large or through certain subgroup and not necessarily through a lineage. So, what it really means is that certain beliefs come from the experience of someone else. Ann Sinko wrote a chapter on it. And it really beautifully explains and gives a beautiful description of this.

 

Aníbal: So, what is a Legacy Heirloom and how do they differentiate from Legacy Gift somehow?

 

Ossi: Yeah. So, it would be...Legacy Heirlooms are the Legacy Gifts. You know, I would call that a blessing in disguise. There would be, you know, if the Legacy Burdens are the beliefs, feelings, or sensations or energies that are passed from one generation to the next, held by our parts then, and they didn't originate from our own experience, then the Legacy Heirlooms or gifts or assets, right? Initially we called them, in our experience, when we kind of looked at it in our work in Israel, we called them Legacy Assets and they are comprised of, we would say aspects of Self or Self essences that are really innate and often inherited from our ancestors, but they're really are disguised, they're crusted by the Legacy Burdens. And they are really a fundamental part of the Legacy Burden, but they're obscured and, or they're hidden because our parts are loaded with burdens. So, we don't really get to identify them that easily. But they're really important.

 

Tisha: Ossi, will you share with us how you arrive at the Legacy Heirlooms when working with clients or within your own system?

 

Ossi: Yeah. So, first of all, I'd like to really highlight two ways of addressing Legacy Heirlooms in therapy. One would be through like the regular protocol of work when we work with a part in the system and we come to learn that this part is holding a Legacy Burden. And I'll explain that in a moment. And the other way of addressing Legacy Heirlooms is actually through using Legacy Burden work as a Trailhead. So, I can give an example from my own healing process regarding the first example of just working with the protocol and kind of learning that "Oh, this part is holding a Legacy Burden." I want to share that actually my first unburdening ever was a legacy unburdening and it happened in my own Level 1. At the time I have struggled with the intense need and I'm kind of emphasizing the word need to go back to Israel. Like it wasn't a dream. It wasn't a vision. It was like a very intense need. And at the time we lived in Colorado for over 10 years then, and our original relocation timeframe was for two years only. So, it really, it was time, was about time, my daughter just entered high school and it felt like it's now or never. And so, the Trailhead was needing to return to Israel, and it was, it wasn't only a calling to go back home. Came again, with that intensity. And then, I came to learn that this part held really the entire future of the Jewish people, like entire future of the Jewish people on his shoulders. And if I will not return to Israel now, and that's what the part said, there won't be a later chance. And that's really how parts see things. See things in black and white, there is no perspective. And then, you know, this part went on saying that my children will probably marry outside of the Jewish religion and then some parts were really supportive and gave some statistics about that and how, how it's very probable that it would happen. And by asking the part, where did it get its messages from, it was really apparent that this part was holding a legacy of years in the diaspora, of the Jewish religion in the diaspora. And that message, of course, did not originate from my own life only. It was something that was very much a, a cultural or...Yeah, a cultural burden, I would say. So, the next very important question was “Why does this part feel that it needed to carry, that it needs to carry this message or this belief?” And the answer that this part gave related to a larger responsibility towards the group. So, I was asked "Is this part willing to let go of the burdens it is carrying?" And the answer was "No." It was really reluctant to do that. And, in fact, this is what we encounter in most of our work with Legacy Burdens in Israel. So, when the part was asked, what is it afraid it would happen if it were to let go of its burdens. It said that those burdens are a source of connection, a source of belonging, a source of community, identity, and it doesn't want to let go of all those and it is afraid that by letting go of all those burdens it will lose its identity. It will be unloyal to my family or to my ethnicity, or...And this is really, again, this is really common to hear that from parts that hold Legacy Burdens, especially what we hear in Israel, a lot of the work relates to unsafety, to years being persecuted to the Holocaust. You know, when parts hold the belief that Legacy Burden is the only way to stay connected to someone important or to something important and there is no other way to experience connection, to experience relatedness, meaning, but to be carrying this joint burden together, then it is really kind of showing how the parts are holding this "I need to do it or else I'll die." Something that intense, that type of fear. And that's nothing close to perspective. You know, we do know that parts, when they're burdened, they don't hold perspective. So, through my, you know, my work with clients, through the experience that I've had, it was apparent that there was something there that we named assets or heirlooms, or the gifts to the legacy that the part holds. So, if we could separate the heirlooms from the burdens and invite the client to cherish, to embody, to be one with, to breathe into, to own those heirlooms, thrive of them, allow them to blossom and to let go of their burdens, to unload them, to unburden them, those burdens that are associated with the legacy, then the part would be able to transform and the person can manifest the connection that they always wanted, the love, the belonging, all the aspects of Self that they were hoping for and yearning in a whole different way. And that heirloom is part of their repertoire. It's not something that they need to make up. It's just something that they are invited to discover and to differentiate. And this provided hope to the parts and their reluctance really dissolved easily. And the first fear of feeling the emptiness, and if they would let go of the Legacy Burden was replaced by a deep sense of hope and meaning and that was really a beautiful addition and a beautiful depth to the work that was allowed by identifying those heirlooms. So, this is an example, when you almost stumble upon a Legacy Burden and kind of get to discover Legacy Heirloom when the part is reluctant to let go of the burden, and you realize that there's a deeper yearning there, and you can also address the Legacy Heirloom before inviting the part to invite qualities. So, before the unburdening. It would really be important that you would differentiate between the two before the unburdening. Otherwise at times, many times, unburdening is impossible, because the part is reluctant to do that. But also, later on, you can invite the client to invite qualities and those qualities many times are helping the client to continue to embody those heirlooms. So, you know, clients would invite courage or connection or confidence to be able to continue to really blossom on those heirlooms.

 

Aníbal: So interesting. So, what would be the other way of addressing Legacy Heirlooms? You mentioned it's through addressing it as a trailhead.

 

Ossi: Yeah. So, there's, you know, there is another way. Let's say a client comes in to therapy to explore a Legacy Burden, to explore an issue that has been part of their family or a heritage or something that is very uncomfortable to them in a cultural sense or in a larger sense. And they're struggling with that. And their system is characterized by parts that are either holding, right, identifying with some inherited beliefs, those beliefs that are transferred through the ancestral line or through a specific subgroup or culture and there are parts that are reacting to those beliefs in opposite ways. So, that's polarization, right? That's what we know of in IFS, we call polarization. So, in my trainings, when I'm leading the day that focuses on Legacy Burdens, I often begin the day, even before the meditation, with a game I call Things my parents said, and my parts heard. So, perhaps you've been experiencing those because we've done some nice PAing together.

 

Aníbal: Yes, we did.

 

Ossi: This game is actually something to allow that energy of those messages to just come through and people get inspired by it and actually resonate or add their own and so we brainstorm messages that are heard by our parts from our parents or from the outside world from very important figures like teachers, rabbis, you know, priests, or, you know, community leaders and each person selects that message that touches them in a deepest way possible. And then through a guided meditation that I do in those training days, I invite them to find the parts that are playing a certain role related to this message. And mainly we're looking for the parts that are holding a polarized position regarding the message in both directions.

 

Tisha: Ossi, can you give us some example of how this may look?

 

Ossi: Sure. So, I can give you an example from my own system, for my own healing process. So, as a young adult, you know, at the age of high school, or later on, it was after my military service, I was really looking for my professional direction. And I, as my parts recall, I heard a very loud and clear message from my parents "You should be a teacher. It's a good occupation for a mother, for mothers." And my parents grew up in a traditional home, you know, it's like a traditional background and they adhere to traditional gender stereotypes in many areas of their lives. And that includes also, not only their profession, but also out, you know, outside of professional choice, outside of a career choice. My father was a military technical officer until he retired. My mother was a teacher until she retired, you know, and they held the beliefs about what a good mother should be doing or should be working at. But this message was really very strongly rejected by my rebellious parts So, if we take a look at this from an IFS perspective, there are protectors that are being organized around a certain burden, of an exile, and their attempt is to avoid feeling the pain of the burden, right? So, there are actually, it's not only that I've had a strong rejection to this message, but I actually had a polarization around this message. So, there were two main groups of protectors that were organized around that burdened exile and they were polarized with each other. So, one group of parts says it is really important for me to be a nurturing mother, a mother that has the capacity to be with her children and support and foster their development and have free time and be with them in the summer. And this group of parts says "Your choices and your availability will impact the way you are able to care for your children." So, that group of parts is really resonating with that message. And there's another group that says, well, you can not comply with gender stereotypes and complying with gender stereotypes or gender stereotypes is accepting and contributing to the glass ceiling that you're rejecting at your core. And this group is also saying that, you know, I'm powerful and I can do anything that I want and nurturing and supporting my children is not only my sole responsibility, it's a mutual responsibility of both parents, father, and mother and that group of parts is denying this message. So, we have both group of protectors that are trying to fill a protective strategy around the Legacy Burden. And the Legacy Burden is women's priority is to be a mother and the professional choice should take that aspect into account.

 

Tisha: So, as you uncover this polarity, Ossi, how do you identify the exile underneath?

 

Ossi: So, yeah, when we look at the exile that is underneath those two groups, you know, that specific exile that was there was holding a message or a feeling or a belief that she's not good enough, and she's not a good enough mother. And we would, or she would not be a good enough mother. And being a good enough mother would depend on her career choice. And this is...very often we will find that exiles hold this kind of a stretch between be concerned with holding safety and security and attachment versus wanting to express themselves in authenticity, to find meaning, to find freedom and it was exactly, you know, the case. That exile was really holding those two yearnings, one would be to have that attachment to my future children and the other one to also find meaning. And those two group of protectors were really arranging themselves around that exile. So, you know, if we take a look at that Legacy Burden of good mothers choose to be teachers, that's the message as a Trailhead and we take a look at, you know, this beautiful woman, my mother, and if we unburden the intensity around being a good mother and unburden the cultural message that women are the only ones responsible for the safety and nurturance of children, if we unburden the beliefs that being in a teaching profession is all about being a mother or opposite, being a mother is all about being a teacher, if we unburden the charge around how it is to grow up in a traditional family with gender restriction role, restricted roles in the home and outside of the home, we arrive at the Legacy Heirloom, the Self essences, the assets, and those were a big part of that message, but they were obscured. They were ensnared and caught by the protective mechanism of both of my mother's protectors and my own protectors, because the protectors organize around burdens in an attempt to avoid feeling the pain of the exile and that's when the heirlooms maybe missed.

 

Aníbal: So interesting, Ossi. So, what is the essence of that Heirloom that you did receive or find?

 

Ossi: So, really, it's about the essence of teaching. It's about the essence of mentoring, of guiding others, of connecting with others, of allowing them to blossom, to grow. And that has been passed to me as well, but it was completely covered with a certain message that was burdened. And that burdened message was loaded with fear of me getting hurt, of my mother's own experience of being vulnerable and overstretched while, you know, juggling career and home and raising children, by the hardship of attempting to break the limits set by gender, by the pain of, you know, adhering to gender restrictions, but the essence of teaching, the Legacy Heirloom of being, or having the soul of the teacher when I was able to unblend it from the Legacy Burdens, I was able to honor that, to celebrate that and to embody that and to arrive at, actually, at what I was hoping for. So, you know, Legacy Burdens can be released, and heirlooms can be embodied, can be celebrated. And the beauty of that work is that after the polarized parts and the exile underneath are unburdened, there can be a choice in the system, whereas with Legacy Burdens, our parts are carrying the energy of burdens, of a burden without having the choice. So, here there can be a choice about what part of the message do I want to adopt and what part I chose not to adopt and discharging the reactivity around it. So, we're really sending healing to the collective, to the ancestral line, to the wider circles, to the larger culture. And we know this work is really changing our nervous system and changing our brain. So, all in all, this is really a very precious work. So, this is how we would work with Legacy Burdens as trailheads. And this is really a highly significant work because at times, Legacy Burdens are kind of obscuring the heirlooms and can prevent a person actually from fulfilling a life calling or drive a person to make decisions based on burdened parts rather than on Self and that's never, you know, a good direction. Had I given into this Legacy Burden or gotten a different, made a different decision based on the Legacy Burden, based on some point in this polarization, I wouldn't say that I could, that I have fulfilled my calling because that would have been just adhering to a burdened part rather than really getting into the essence of the message, the essence of the asset, the essence of the heirloom, and allowing me to get the real gift that is, that was underneath all the fears, all the restrictions, all the burdens.

 

Tisha: Ossi, this is just such a fascinating topic. And there's so much richness here. It makes me think a lot about how different cultures honor the ancestral gifts in different ways. And I can see how in many cultures, especially in America, we have a lot of disconnection from our ancestral heritage and these gifts, these heirlooms...You've worked teaching people from all over the world, are you noticing or learning that there are certain cultures that are connected to these gifts as a part of their culture? This is something that you're bringing to everyone by nominating the heirlooms, but do people...Are there certain cultures that are doing it well?

 

Ossi: You know, I think we're in a new age, in a new era and we are cherishing and coming back and are willing to and are maybe even able to give that respect to those gifts. You know, Dick and Deran Young are doing a summit, an Heirloom Summit very soon in October, sorry, in February. And this is something that will, that of course would, you know, no doubt will have an impact on many, many people. Jung talked about the collective unconscious. We all talk about collective unburdening. And so, honoring those gifts is maybe more related to Eastern and to shamanistic cultures. But I think we're, you know, with the mindfulness gift that we're, that we can see as a trend with the many ceremonial aspects in therapy, we are definitely giving that a big place or a new place or a renewed place and that is really a message of hope.

 

Aníbal: Ossi, in what other ways have you been able to embody Legacy Heirlooms?

 

Ossi: So, yeah. So, as I continued to unburden, to work with my system, to do the work that my parts are hoping for, are yearning for, seeking, I've learned and I continue to learn to listen to my intuition, to my inner wisdom, to my inner voice. So, some of the messages I've heard over the years, we're actually going against this inner voice, this inner wisdom or inner intuition. And it's not only about our, my upbringing. It is, it is also all around us. Mainstream psychology is looking for evidence-based, that's really important. That's really significant for a model to be accepted that way, to be accepted by a larger...by the institutions, by the mainstream. But as I am looking into my own parts, my own inner messages, as I'm able more and more to unblend from parts that are untrusting inner knowing, untrusting inner wisdom, doubting it's, being skeptical about it, this inner clarity appears and makes much sense and through that, I can bring more gifts to the world around me and to my, you know, to my own system. And, you know, one of those examples is a very strong teaching and experiential piece I did in Level 2 around Self-like parts, which I would love to share in the future. It was almost like being channeled or channeling something that was beyond my wisdom that was beyond me and it just became very clear, it became very structured and it came out and it is something that is definitely benefiting and can benefit others. So, it's more about listening inside and trusting my inner voice, my inner wisdom and relaxing, calming down those doubtful, those skeptical parts, those parts that need some kind of proof.

 

Aníbal: Yeah. Beautiful, well said. So, Ossi, thank you so much for bringing such an interesting topic on Legacy Burdens and Heirlooms, and for offering our listeners a meditation on this topic as well.

 

Ossi: Yeah, thank you.

 

Aníbal: We are running out of time for this episode, but I want to remember a beautiful piece of work you did on Legacy Burdens in our Level 2 in London with this amazing participant from Germany, married to an English man and living in the UK. And the problem she wanted to be addressed for this demo was the humiliation she was suffering every November in the UK media, during the remembrance holiday, when she felt all Germans were pictured as Nazis and aggressors. And she went through a beautiful Legacy Unburdening throughout many generations from her grand grandfathers to their children and grandchildren. Such a beautiful work you did together on such a difficult and traumatic event, the World Wars. And it was so amazing that the Jewish therapist was guiding a German client burdened with Nazi ancestors and the world war collective trauma. So, I just wanted to share these with you and to say that was one of the most beautiful demos I have ever seen.

 

Ossi: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. That is a gift actually, to be able to be there for those healing processes. And I don't think that it was by a coincidence. I believe that there needed to be my involvement or, you know, it was a calling for me to be there. And it was really something that has impacted me and gives me hope, gives me hope for future Legacy Burdens to be unburdened and Heirlooms to be cherished and celebrated.

 

Tisha: If listeners would like to find out more about you, Ossi, or find about your future teachings, how can you be contacted and known?

 

Ossi: Yeah. Thank you. I have a Facebook page called Osnat Arbel PhD LMFT, and I have a website called osnatarbel.com that is not as much up and running as I would like it to be, but it's very basic so they can contact me through there, they can write me an email osnat.arbel@gmail.com. And I would like to refer our listeners to a workshop organized by Michael Pasterski in Life Architect, focusing on Legacy Burdens and Heirlooms, and it'll take place in February. And we would love to see you there.

 

Aníbal: So again, it was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

 

Ossi: Thank you. Thank you, Aníbal.

 

Tisha: Thank you, Ossi.

 

Ossi: Thank you, Tisha. Thank you.

 

Recorded 2nd January 2021 
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

A Talk with Lead Trainer Paul Ginter 40:19

Paul Ginter is a licensed psychologist who serves as the Clinical Director for IFS Telehealth Collective, bringing more than 30 years of experience in Internal Family Systems. Working closely with IFS developer Richard Schwartz, Paul is an IFS Senior Lead Trainer for over 15 years,  who has traveled the globe training professionals on nearly every continent, China and Bali as well. 
In addition to IFS, Paul facilitates mindfulness meditation courses for businesses, conferences and clinical groups.  Based in Kalamazoo, MI, Paul is also co-founder of the Center for Psychotherapy and Wellness and previously served as the Organizational Learning Officer at Fetzer Institute, a philanthropic privately operated foundation.

Paul also has this new project called IFS Telehealth Collective (IFS-TC) - an online IFS supportive community and group practice  that you can find at this website

Today on IFS Talks we are lucky enough to be speaking with Paul Ginter. Paul is a licensed psychologist who serves as the clinical director for the IFS telehealth collective. Paul has more than 30 years of experience with the Internal Family Systems model. Working closely with Richard Schwartz, Paul has been an IFS senior lead trainer for over 15 years. He has traveled the globe training professionals on nearly every continent, including Bali and more recently, China. Paul also facilitates mindfulness meditation courses for businesses, conferences and clinical groups. Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Paul is the co-founder of the Center for Psychotherapy and Wellness, and he previously served as the organizational learning officer at Fetzer Institute, a philanthropic privately-operated foundation.

Tisha Shull: Paul, we're so happy to have you here with us today on IFS Talks. Thank you for joining us.

Paul Ginter: Thanks for having me.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks so much for willing to sit with us. And how is it for you, Paul, to hear this bio, what parts come up?

Paul: When I listened to the bio, I mostly feel grateful for having so many opportunities with IFS work. You know, it's been such a big part of my life and I was fortunate to begin with this work fairly early. It had been happening for a few years, but I was relatively on the beginning end of this. So, and I've just been able to do get to do so many cool things and, you know, so much travel and getting to know amazing people and getting to share this work with so many people. So, that's the biggest thing is I think I just feel really very fortunate. I was thinking about the last couple of days and one of the things that I kind of laugh about is years and years ago, I wasn't so much into astrology, but I had an astrological reading with somebody and I was in my, maybe my mid-twenties or so, maybe late twenties and this person said “Oh, I think you're going to teach. And I think you're going to teach in Europe.” And that was so laughable to me because I had this huge public speaking fear. And I would, I thought “Man, this is the last thing I want to do is to teach at all, let alone teach in, in Europe.” And it turns out with IFS I've gotten to gotten to do that and, yeah, anyway, so I'm also like a bit surprised when I look back or listen to my bio that I've been able to do this in so many places around the world. So, yeah.

Tisha: Did you know that you would be a therapist growing up? Was there something that determined this path for you?

Paul: Yeah, you know, I didn't necessarily...Early on, I think it was in college that I began to think that would be a pretty great thing to do. I went to a small college and the guy that was the psychologist there seemed like a really cool person. And so, I thought I would love to do that. And I had since high school been exposed to a psychology class and began to know that I was always really interested in the way humans worked and just found us all kind of fascinating in a way. So, in that sense, I, you know, I haven't been one of those mid-career changers or something. I've been pretty much moving in this direction since college. Yeah.

Aníbal: But Paul, you met Dick right back at the start in Chicago, right?

Paul: Yeah. Pretty early. I mean, I think he had been going for a couple of years at that time or maybe several, but yeah, it was pretty early.

Aníbal: How were those days?

Paul: Yeah. It was actually a really exciting time. I had been working at a... just to give a little bit of that background. I had been working at a university in Tennessee and it turned out that my...woman that I had been engaged to, at some point, she contacted me and said “Oh, there's this amazing work with this guy, Richard Schwartz and it's going to be this really great fit for you.” And so, I began to read some of his work and then contacted him to see if he might come down to this university and do a training and he was willing to do that. He wasn't nearly as busy back then as he is these days. And so, I got to begin to get to know him. And then, at some point, a couple of years later, after traveling up to Chicago pretty regularly for a couple of years, I thought, you know, just want to be closer to this. So, I moved up to Chicago to be closer and worked at a facility for court ordered adolescents, that Dick was the clinical supervisor for consultant. And so, all the treatment was based on the IFS model. So that was a great way to be thrown into, you know, doing more of the work and was also involved with writing a manual that he was doing for rehabilitation workers back then using IFS. And it was just a really exciting time to be involved because it felt like there were new things happening all the time. You know, I remember, actually, we were having dinner with Dick and his wife at the time and I remember him saying “Oh, I've come up with these eight C’s...”

Aníbal: Amazing.

Paul: And what do you think they are? I'm never good at those things. So, it was actually my wife that was, I think fiancé at that time, that said “Oh,” she started to name off those qualities. And anyway, but you know, to hear those for the first time or to hear about “Oh, there's this thing we're doing now, which is unburdening,” or, and then there would be some times when I would find myself doing something and then talk to Dick and he'd say “Oh yeah, other people have begun to do that as well...” So, yeah, it was a really, it was an exciting time, you know, I think that there's, continues to be that people are really open to learning and growing with the model and it does feel like some of that's a bit more subtle now that there's this kind of solid base for IFS that's there. And so, you know, back then it felt a little bit like, “Oh, that's wow, that's an amazing new development in the model.” Yeah. So it was, again, very fortunate. I feel very fortunate to be around at that time to, to get to experience that.

Tisha: Did you bump into any resistance around the model?

Paul: You know, the thing is I have to say, I have this huge appreciation and respect for Dick because he was out on the front lines. And, like I said before, I wasn't one to be doing a lot of teaching back there. So, I don't think I came face to face with as much of the resistance as maybe, well, certainly as he did and maybe others as well, but I think, you know, it is different now in that there's a, you know, there's such a wave of enthusiasm for IFS. And I do feel the difference in that. There's almost like just this, given that, well, of course we have many different personalities inside there and at the time some of those ideas were newer, but I don't remember so much having a lot of resistance maybe because I think I always have alive in me as skeptic that could also, you know, lean if I was talking to somebody, I might be able to really acknowledge. And, yeah, it might seem a little weird that I talk like this and I think sometimes some of that resistance wouldn't be there.

Aníbal: Paul, and back then, I've heard that one of your expertise is or was mindfulness meditation. Was it already back then when you met Dick? Where you already fond of mindful-based approaches?

Paul: Yeah, I had had a fairly long, well, at that time, it wasn't that long, but, you know, for, probably close to 10 years had been doing a lot of mindfulness meditation, and I had come in contact with the mindfulness based stress reduction program that John Kabat-Zinn was leading. And, at the time when I was in Chicago, I eventually moved from working with those adolescents to, I went to a place that is an amazing place to working with cancer patients and their families. And so, began to do the mindfulness work with them. Yeah. So, that was, you know, always something and it continues to be something that I think is really compatible with IFS. So, again, yeah, it's nice to have that as an added tool in some ways for people, but, again, I think that they're for the most part, quite compatible.

Aníbal: So, Paul, am I understanding that the first model you practice as a therapist, it was IFS or you learned many others before?

Paul: Yeah, well, you know, my graduate training was a bit of a, it was a psychodynamic perspective, but to be honest, I never really fully embraced that. You know, I think in some ways I was more Rogerian in some ways, but it also, when I began to read about IFS, there was something about it that felt quite natural. And it was certainly much more effective than anything I had been doing, but it also felt like it was familiar to me. Like, I had been doing some bits of other things, you know, back then people were doing inner child kind of visualizations or meditations with people. And I was doing some of that. And there was an aspect of, you know, some other kinds of work that looked very similar to what IFS was. Again, I think IFS was this...well to me at the time, and continues to be, to be quite honest, just an amazing, amazingly powerful way of doing the work. But yeah, but it did feel pretty consistent with the way I saw the world. And, in some ways, some of the way that I was working already.

Tisha: I'd like to ask you about your journey to becoming a lead trainer. And within that, I have a question about how you worked with your parts that were fearful around public speaking, if that was a gradual process or if it was a big unburdening all at once? How did that happen for you?

Paul: Yeah, well, one of the things I sometimes say with a bit of a laugh or humor is that I actually never have taken a Level 1 training because I was in it early enough that I, at some point, Dick was wanting to offer trainings. And so, there were four of us at the time that he ended up saying, you know, would you want to help with the training? And so, yeah, so I jumped into that and that was not at all a very front and center kind of role. It was like a PA position, program assistant kind of thing. And so that didn't challenge my public speaking fears so much, but, and then I was actually, at some point I moved to Michigan and was a little bit disconnected from my IFS. Not totally, but I took a job with a foundation that just was a very interesting place to work and eventually, or a couple of years later, was really missing IFS and so, came back and began to jump back into trainings. So, but yeah, you know, the shift for me, public speaking wise, has been both, I've had some big unburdening moments where there's some pretty profound healing that happened. I tend to, I have this five or six-year-old in me that I think, you know, to this day, I feel quite a connection with. He’s a sweet little boy in there who, it had some things happen in my family at that age that we're pretty. And, at some point learned, this boy learned that it really isn't safe to speak up and, you know, people could be hurt. And, yeah, so, and so I have done some, a lot of work with him actually, and I think that's been a big part of the shift for me. It's also just doing it, you know, like, I mean, there's just kind of a behavioral part of just doing it over and over again and it becomes more and more comfortable. But to this day, you know, if it's a big enough group, you know, like, if I have to speak at the conference or you can hear my words “have to speak at the conference,” like in front of the big group, you know, I definitely will have those parts come up and get scared. So, you know, I'm still working on that, but I am, again, just, I can't tell you how grateful I am to be able to go into trainings, you know, with 50 people or even China training where there's 250 people there and to feel really comfortable is, you know, really both an amazing as well, it's kind of mind blowing to me. Like, I'll catch myself and just say, wow, like, I just, again, I feel grateful for that. And almost always really make it a point to thank those parts of me that have been scared in the past for, I don't know, trusting me, I guess, is kind of the, maybe the way to say it, but yeah. So, yeah, so it's, you know, I don't know if either of you two have ever had any of that public speaking fear, but it's a, you know, it's a pretty tough thing, you know, and remember my history of sometimes not taking jobs, because I knew that, you know, I don't know if I want to be this like tennis coach at a school, because I'll have to speak at the conference or at the thing at the end of the year. And anyway, so it's nice to have made a shift with that.

Tisha: Yeah. Thank you. My public speaking fear has sort of bordered on phobia really at times. And I know many of our listeners have parts too that hold fear, shame exiles around public speaking. So, I'm so glad you spoke to that. Thank you.

Aníbal: It’s the same here.

Paul, do you want to share more about this amazing experience in China? You said large, large groups of 200 participants. This can be scary.

Paul: Yeah, you know, that was, I have to say that was a... that’s been an amazing thing for me, the China experience, you know, both because I think they are doing some really remarkable work there. I could say a little bit about that because I do think it's interesting.

Tisha: Please.

Paul: Yeah, there's this organization that's led by a woman named Hailan. Some people call her either the Oprah or the Dr. Phil of China. And she has this organization that basically has offered what I think are at the cutting edge of human psychology and spirituality, and has really...they've created this system in it’s very much peer oriented, you know, they don't really have psychologists so much in a place like China, but they took on the first of all, I don't know if this is first, but they begin to do like mindful self-compassion work and they had the very best people in the world, Chris Germer and Kristin Neff go to China and work with people and really quite committed to that work where I don't know the details exactly, but if you're a part of this at this point, maybe, I don't know if they have 12 hundred people involved with this group that meet regularly, but everyone's expected to do an hour a day of mindfulness meditation for, you know, for several years kind of thing. And then Hailan became very interested in IFS and began to connect with Dick and Dick went over there to teach, and then he did well, he did the first part and then I came in later and did a training to kind of the, almost like the second half of a Level 1 training in some ways. And yeah, and it's just remarkable what they're doing. They, again, they had this, like these webs of support and these groups. So, there is a kind of safety that's created within this organization. And, you know, there was some question about whether it would even make sense to go to some of the deeper places with IFS, like to exiles, for example, when people aren't really trained as clinicians there. But I do think that they've, you know, all the work that they've done really, there is a kind of safety and my experience there is it people go very, very deep with the model. And there’s just also this amazing commitment that they have. One of the kind of funny stories about this is that there were some people that couldn't make it to Dick training. And they said, well, could they come to yours? We have a bunch of ways to go catch them up to where others are and so they said, you know, they have to watch several videos of Dick doing work, they have to meet with groups of people and so forth. And, and one of them requirements was that they were to read Dick Schwartz's intro to IFS book 10 times. They had to read the book 10 times. And which I just think is, sounds a little crazy for most of us in our country. And I don't know for you in Portugal...

Aníbal: It’s a different culture.

Paul: Anyway, but I really, you know, it's like there's this amazing commitment to really deeply learning. And, part of my experience going over there was that people had really learned like the left-brain part of all of this so well, that then they could just be present. And, I think it was remarkable how deep people have gone. And then, you know, just then I got to go back because they wanted a big focus on cultural burdens and legacy burdens after the basic training and that was amazing to have people talk about, you know, some of those, you know, some of those cultural burdens and how much they're shared among people. And yeah, so very deep and rich, and there's just Hailan and there's a woman Joy, who's kind of the, her top person there. And they're just remarkable people and they know the model really well. And yeah. So, there've been conversations about how might we create peer groups like that in the States, and I think it's, you know, people are thinking about it. It's a little bit of a challenge, because I think we just operate so differently than they do there. But, it's, exciting.

Tisha: I can hear your enthusiasm. What does it feel like for you to be there? I imagine pretty different, what comes up in you?

Paul: You know, for one, I'm not sure what it is. They as a group were incredibly...there's just a lot of hospitality that's extended by the people there. I don't know. It feels a little funny to say this, but you know, in some ways I think their culture, they tend to hold up teachers in a particular way. So, that's an odd experience in some ways, because there's a bit of a, you know, a once in a lifetime thing for me to, to feel a little bit like, oh, that's a little bit like a rock star gets to experience that, because they, you know, they just, they so embrace people that show up. And so...

Tisha: It sounds like you are really welcomed.

Paul: Absolutely welcomed. Yeah. And again, I think it was partly that kind of energy that I just, I didn't feel anxious, you know, I didn't feel in-field public speaking fear even though there were yeah, whatever 250 people there. And, you know, it's just really a remarkable experience to go there and now we'd done. I was supposed to go back there to this last November, but it was, you know, we did the online thing. Yeah. So, I feel, again, very grateful to be connected with them.

Aníbal: Paul, do you see any major barriers, language barriers, or cultural barriers to prevent them from learning the model in the right way? If there is a right way to learn the model and to practice the model?

Paul: I, you know, that's such a great question. I don't, I was surprised that it didn't seem like there were a lot of barriers. You know, I don't, the thing is how do I know? Because I can't understand Chinese, like at all, you know, there's a couple of words that I would begin to pick up, but basically, I don't. And so, you're so trusting. But I have to say, I actually had, I had less concerns about that than in some other international trainings. And I think one of the differences is that the main translators, Hailan and Joy, they really deeply know the model. And so, and I knew that they knew the model, and I think there have been a few international trainings that were a little rockier because the translator didn't know the model. And so, you could begin to hear that, or maybe hear from participants, that the thing that I said, the ones that speak English wasn't, the subtlety was missed in the interpretation. And I didn't feel any of that in the China or haven't felt any of that and the China training.

Aníbal: Paul, we could eventually raise this same question when it comes to trainings online, we can also wonder how much the model is really well trained and passed on in these new modalities online. How was it for you? You already led some trainings online since the pandemic.

Paul: Yes. You know, it's been a mix. I, you know, there have been times, you've probably heard this from other trainers’, times when it's been surprising, how well it's gone online and to use IFS terms, I have been incredibly surprised to feel this thing happening in demo sessions online. And even in China, I feel like, wow, I just felt this same thing happen online than I feel in my office or in a group of people all together in the same place where, in IFS terms, we would say, there's this Self-energy that's present and it's palpable. Like, you know, so here I am talking to somebody that's a half a world away, and you could feel this shift happening between us, you know, and then you could even feel it as participants begin to give feedback into the big group. So, I've been, you know, just almost...shocked isn't quite the word, but like really taken aback and surprised by how much that can happen. And then there are these moments that I just, I feel this loss of just wanting to feel people's presence and I think in the trainings, you know, the thing that many of us trainers have talked about with this is that you, you miss a lot of the informal moments of, you know, somebody says something in the big group and, you know, you're going to get snacks or going to lunch or going to the bathroom and you bump up against somebody and you can feel their presence and they can feel yours and you can say “Oh, you know, I was really interested in the fact that you mentioned this and I was touched by that or, or whatever...” And I miss that. You know, I miss that kind of connection that I think happens that, you know, I mean, we still hear from people that the trainings, you know, you'll still hear people say things like, “Wow, this training has been the most powerful thing I've ever done,” and, you know, “I feel transformed or I feel more connected to a group of people that I've ever felt before.” So, you know, you still hear those things, but it just feels a little less strong, that kind of thing.

Aníbal: It looks like you're longing for coming back to traveling and do in-person trainings.

Paul: Yes, yeah.

Tisha: With that in mind, what's next on the horizon for you, Paul, personally and professionally?

Paul: You know, at this point, I have a lot of trainings lined up and I am looking forward to being in person. I think it's still a question about how that's all going to look. It sounds as though at least some of us have guessed that maybe part of trainings will still be online and part of them will be in person. Again, I haven't much heard about that. You know, there are some benefits about, less travel and less impact on the environment from being on planes and so forth. So, you know, I think there's less cost involved. So, I think there's some reasons to still do some online work, but I am looking forward to seeing people's faces and connecting with people in person. Yeah. So, I don't, aside from just the things that I have set up, I'm not one of these people that has some big vision for myself. Like, I just have never really operated that way. I am involved with the, you mentioned this in the very beginning, we have a group practice that I'm excited about, It's called the IFS telehealth collective and, you know, it's...with IFS exploding I think one of the challenges just personally for me is not having space for people to see new clients and then beginning to run out of people to refer to, you know, and so we're creating a practice that is going to be really just for people that want to have IFS. And it's a tele-health practice, but, you know, we're going to have...still in the middle of hiring people and having a staff of clinicians that are IFS trained and solid with the model.

Aníbal: So much needed, yes.

Paul: And so that's just going to be nice to have a place to say, “Oh, here, if you're looking for IFS therapy, here's one place that you can count on skilled people to give you that.

Aníbal: Beautiful. So important.

Tisha: Is there a website that will direct people?

Paul: There will be, probably in the next, maybe three weeks or so, I'm guessing the website will be up.

Tisha: Oh good, yeah. If you share it with us, we can put it on our session notes and...

Paul: Okay, great.

Aníbal: Paul, I have heard your son is a filmmaker and your daughter, a dancer. I guess it needs courage to let our children to pick on art as a profession.

Paul: Yes.

Aníbal: What's your tip or recommendation to become such a happy father?

Paul: Oh, gosh. Again, I just feel so grateful for that. I mean, you know, I just, I think it's hard for kids to know what they want to do in the world. I mean, for so many, it's a bit of a struggle, or maybe they go through three different careers before they know what they really want to do. And, for some reason, our kids have just landed where they, you know, they just have this amazing passion for what they do and so it's a joy, you know, it's a hard world to make it so...And I remember some years ago with our son, especially that, you know, there was a way that I kind of think, “Well, you know, maybe you should have a backup if the film thing doesn't work out for you.” And some years ago, I just think we just said, “You know, this is your thing, and you're going to, you'll figure it out.” And so, I do trust that he will, but again, you know, people say, “Well, you know, are you and your wife or partner or whatever, are you artistic?” And we kind of laugh and say “You know, not that so much,” but for some reason our kids have landed and really just love what they do. Our daughter, you know, she's a dancer at NYU and sometimes made the comment that I don't ever remember her in all the years from the time she was five or something, I don't ever remember her saying “Oh, I don't want to go to practice, I don't want to go dance.” And, you know, she just loves it. And so, when you find what you love, it's great to run with that.

Tisha: Well, it sounds like they have a really good model.

Paul: Yeah.

Tisha: Seems like you're doing what you love as well.

Paul: Yeah, yeah, no, that is true. And, again, it's true for all of us in our family. We've gotten to do really, again, get to do what we love. And so, yeah, it's been really good thing. Very fortunate.

Aníbal: You are also known in our community for this beautiful decision tree for the unblending process, one focused on anxiety and another one focused on depression. What was your idea doing such a beautiful document?

Paul: Yeah, yeah.  I have one that is kind of more toward unblending and right, the example of a client is a six-year-old anxious girl, or it's a person who's carrying anxiety and shows up as a girl. And then there's another one that's on unburdening. So, yeah. You know, I've been glad that for some people that visual of the decision has been helpful to some people.

Aníbal: Valuable one.

Paul: Yeah.

Aníbal: So, Paul, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives and wishing you happy holidays.

Paul: Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to say that I think both of you are just really, really lovely people and you do such a nice job with this. Having listened to many of your other interviews, I think it's a gift to the IFS community and you do it so skillfully.

Aníbal: Oh, thank you so much.

Paul: So, thank you for having me here.

Tisha: Thank you so much for all that you contribute and for giving us your time and happy holidays to you and your family.

Paul: Happy holidays too.

 

Recorded 22nd December 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Shaming and Shamed: a Talk with Martha Sweezy 41:47

Martha Sweezy grew up in Cambridge, MA. Her mother, Nancy Sweezy, was instrumental at the legendary folk music venue Club 47, revived and managed Jugtown Pottery in North Carolina, founded Refugee Arts Group to work with refugees from Southeast Asia and was finally awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the NEA for her work in traditional arts.
Her father, Paul Sweezy, the founder of Monthly Review magazine and press and the author of numerous books, most famously Monopoly Capital written with Paul Baran, was known around the world as the “dean of American Marxists.”

Martha is an assistant professor, part time, in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a consultant at Cambridge Health Alliance and a psychotherapist in private practice in Northampton, MA.

After using psychodynamics, DBT and EMDR with severely traumatized individuals in community mental health for more than 18 years, she discovered internal family systems therapy (IFS) and became fascinated with the response of clients, not to mention with her own experience (IFS training is experiential). When she had gone through all the levels of training on offer she began to write about her clinical experiences and published two articles on IFS in peer reviewed journals. Then, with Ellen Ziskind, she invited some master IFS clinicians to articulate their applications of the model and published two co-edited volumes.

Martha also teamed up with Toni Herbine-Blank and Donna Kerpelman to write a book on IFS couple therapy entitled Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy. More recently she co-authored a manual on IFS with Frank Anderson and Richard Schwartz, and co-authored a 2nd edition of Dr. Schwartz’s first book on IFS, Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd edition, which includes over 70% new material. She remains as impressed and charmed by IFS today as she was when she first saw a video of Dr. Schwartz in session in 2006.

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks, we have the pleasure of welcoming back Martha Sweezy. Martha Sweezy grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She's an Assistant Professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a consultant at Cambridge Health Alliance and a psychotherapist in private practice in North Hampton, mass. After using psychodynamics, DBT and EMDR with severely traumatized individuals in community mental health for more than 18 years, Martha discovered Internal Family Systems therapy. She became fascinated with the response of clients not to mention with her own experience. When she'd gone through all of the levels of training on offer, she began to write about her clinical experiences and published two articles on IFS in peer reviewed journals.

Then with Ellen Ziskind, she invited some master IFS clinicians to articulate their applications of the model and published two co-edited volumes. Martha also teamed up with Toni Herbine-Blank and Donna Kerpelman to write a book on IFS couples’ therapy, entitled Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy. More recently, she coauthored a manual on IFS with Frank Anderson and Richard Schwartz and coauthored the second edition of Dick Schwartz's first book on IFS Internal Family Systems therapy, second edition, which includes over 70% of new material. Martha remains as impressed and charmed by IFS today as she was when she first saw a video of Dr. Schwartz in 2006. Thank you so much, Martha, for joining us again on IFS Talks.

Martha Sweezy: You're welcome. It's a pleasure

Aníbal Henriques: Martha, welcome back. Last time we met was November 2019, one year ago, and the pandemic strikes, meanwhile, and we are just finishing one of the most difficult years in our lives. How have you been those pandemic days?

Martha: Well, it hasn't been the most difficult year of my life. It's actually been easy, but I'm extremely lucky because I live in a place that I like, and I can work from home and I don't have any food insecurity or housing insecurity or anything like that. So, it's actually, and also, I had several book contracts, which I was rash enough to sign up for all at once. So, I was in for sitting around writing a lot anyway, so, not socializing. So...

Aníbal: It's helping you.

Martha: Yeah, it wasn't bad for my work ethic, let's put it that way.

Tisha: So, we met with you a year ago and it sounds like you've been busy since then.

Martha: Yeah.

Tisha: What are you working on?

Martha: Well, Toni Herbine-Blank and I just finished a manual on Intimacy from the inside Out, the IFS couple therapy approach, which is being published by PESI, should be out in the spring. It's in press now.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Congratulations.

Martha: Thank you. And so, we're excited about that and I'm working on another manual for PESI with Cece Sykes on IFS and Addictions, how to treat addictions using IFS or and just compulsive behavior in general. And I'm working on another book with Dick on IFS for lay people. And I'm working on my own book, by myself on the topic of shame

Aníbal: On the topic of shame. Yes. So, you keep your particular interest in how shame and guilt affect our lives?

Martha: It's my central interest, I think. Because for me, everything keeps boiling down to that over and over again with my clients, as I sort of feel, I mean, it was my interest at the beginning of my career and then I circled back around to it because it's basically what I kept hearing over and over again over the years from the people I work with. And particularly when you're doing IFS and you get to exiles, what you get to is some kind of shame-based belief that a part who's been injured has about itself.

Aníbal: Martha, I've been browsing on this topic on shame and we can find so many interesting titles and works on this pervasive, somehow pervasive, topic of shame throughout or across psychopathology.

Martha: There's a big literature. A lot has been published on the topic of shame.

Aníbal: I found two titles really, really very interesting. One, I guess you know both of them, the first one, the one from John Bradshaw.

Martha: Yes. John Bradshaw Healing the Shame that Binds You. Yeah.

Aníbal: Very early on the 1980s. And later on, the one from Patricia DeYoung, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame.

Martha: Yeah. I reviewed that book actually for her publisher, yeah.

Aníbal: But how so while browsing this sea of publications on shame and guilt, I found this title called Step by Step Guide on How to Overcome Shame and Guilt for Good...

Martha: How about that? Getting rid of it for good. Yeah. Okay.

Aníbal: So, can we get rid for good of shame?

Martha: Not in my opinion, no. Shame and guilt... I mean, I don't know what the person meant by that title, what the author meant. So, I'm not speaking to that, but in my, you know, this is a hard-wired emotion that starts very young, younger than guilt, according to researchers. So, in my view, you don't get rid of it. You always have the capacity to feel ashamed. If someone shames you, you're going to, you know, it's going to be painful, especially if it hits near the mark of something that you already find sensitive or vulnerable about yourself. I mean, if it's meaningless to you, you're not going to feel shamed, but often embarrassing situations that actually means that it's sort of hit close to home for you. And the question for me is not should we never feel shamed by or embarrassed in situations, but how do we treat ourselves after that happens? And that's where the real problems develop. It's not so much a problem to, you know, we have the capacity to feel shame because it cues us up to be socially...Well, it can be a problem at times, but it cues us up to be socially conformist. It tells us how to belong to a group and that, as we know, has pluses and minuses, right? But, it's not something we want to do without people who have no access to feelings of shame or sociopaths. And I don't happen to think it's because they have no shame. I think it's because they have too much and they have parts who are blocking them from accessing their ability to connect with it and with other people.

Aníbal: You mean the sociopaths.

Martha: Yeah. Sociopaths. So, but so I don't, you know, it's just, it's something we need. All our emotions are hardwired, you know, an information system that we need. The question is, once I feel ashamed in a situation, what happens inside of me and how do I go forward from there? And IFS tells us a lot about that process that I think is fairly obscure if you don't understand, or it's more obscure, if you don't understand and think in terms of parts. Once you think in terms of parts, the process that gets going with the internal cycle that is launched by feeling shamed is something that you can unpack in a very useful way for clients. And it makes sense to them.

You know, you have one part who felt shameful and then you have other parts of step in to protect that part in various ways. And they tend to kind of become extreme over time, particularly for folks who are coming in for therapy, you'll see that we all have this, but people were seeking help for it, have gotten into a more extreme place where they have a proactive part, a so-called manager part, who's doing a lot of shaming internally, and then they have...We can just think in terms of inhibition, that part has an overall goal of inhibiting the shamefulness of the person from being visible to others in, you know, inhibiting the part who got injured and shamed. And then ultimately that's unbearable, you know, inhibition there's only so much one can tolerate of that, or any system can tolerate of that. And it actually ramps up the feeling of shamefulness. So, some other protectors step in on the polar opposite end of things, with disinhibition and distraction, and they actually cause more trouble, because I don't really care about consequences. So, they behave shamelessly.

And then you have this cycle that just keeps going with the parts who are trying to manage and contain and control and keep the shamefulness invisible ramping up their tactics of inhibition. And you stay over this big cycle of inhibition and disinhibition with the vulnerable part, just actually being ignored. So, the injury, the part who actually needs help for all this protection that's going on is getting into a worse and worse place because it's not getting help. It's getting handled by parts who were often barely older than it is and who can't help it, weren't equipped to help it. So that's where the, you know, in IFS, the Self comes in as the resource that can step into this closed cycle and change what's going on by addressing the initial problem of shamefulness. It's a relation, you know, it's an attachment issue, basically.

Tisha: What are some of the consequences of shame remaining obscure? Of not unpacking it in this way, where you understand how the managers and firefighters work? What happens?

Martha: Well, I mean, it depends on your level of suffering let's put it that way, suffering is the consequence, but we all have different, you know, suffering is on a continuum, right? And you can be perfectly functional in your life and not end up in therapy and having to be suffering a lot and have various ways of coping with it. You know, you can spend all your time working, or, and then when you get home, while your time on the computer, and then, you know, taking pills to get some sleep at night, and, you know, so there's all kinds of ways of, of coping with the suffering that's going on internally. But if it gets, if you have the wherewithal to get therapy. If someone urges you to get therapy, if you're desperately in a crisis and you have to get therapy, then you have the opportunity to go inside and begin to take a look at the ways in which you're abandoning your most vulnerable parts in this effort to survive and cope with injury.

Aníbal: Martha, are you saying that somehow shame plays a role in the violent behaviors of perpetrators?

Martha: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Aníbal: Like James Gilligan suggests...

Martha: Yeah. That's a brilliant book. James Gilligan's book called Violence.

Aníbal: So, the need to avoid the experience of shame can get you into crime and violence.

Martha: It's disinhibition. I mean, you know, at its extreme, right? You have the extreme inhibition, and that's one of the things that Gilligan points out is that these people who were supposed to be shameless, you know, and he's talking about murderers, people who were very, you know, in prison for the rest of their lives had terrible trauma histories and were very, you know, shame based in their view of themselves, and then had this extreme disinhibition and rage and a willingness to harm others. So...

Aníbal: So, they are shameless, but that, but they are also trying to avoid shame.

Martha: Well, just like, I mean, the writ large portrait we've had in the last four years of this is a guy named Donald Trump, right? He's...I don't want to go off too much on him, but he's such a classic portrait of the connections between narcissism and sociopathy, if it gets too strong and so-called shamelessness, but somebody who was traumatized as a child and, and cannot has such a level of shame in my view that he had protectors who made him blind to it completely and caused him to be at the other end of extreme disinhibition all the time, you know, unable to stop, kind of compulsive disinhibition and distraction from himself.

Martha: That's what I saw.

Aníbal: So, Martha, you are saying, as many authors in this topic, say that shame has healthy faces and also toxically destructive faces?

Martha: Well, see...Let me clarify something, which I think is important for people to think about clinically, that I don't talk about shame per se. I try not to, I talk about shaming or shamefulness or ashamed or any of those things, because that personifies the, you know, we're dealing with, we're talking about parts who, when someone comes into my office and says, I have so much shame. I don't know if they're talking about the internal critic that is shaming them actively all the time. Or if they're telling you about the exile who feels shameful, and it's extremely clarifying for them if I say let's unpack that and find out who's doing what to whom, because people have, they get hurt and it's not, you know, it's not written in stone that if we get shamed that we're going to go on feeling shameful, right? We get shamed, we might go home to our parents and say "Wha, wha, someone was mean to me." And the parent gives you a hug and says "Okay, don't worry about it, you're great, you're fine, I love you." And the kid doesn't feel shameful anymore, right? So, if a child is held in a loving enough environment, they can often shake off. Not always, but they can often shake off the majority of shaming kinds of interactions they would have with peers or whatever. So, it's really, how does this move inside us and who's doing what to whom, and that's what I want people to start looking at when they are saying, I have shame. So, I want it to be a verb.

Aníbal: I see you totally agree with this Patricia DeYoung definition of shame. She says "Shame is an experience of one's felt sense of self disintegrating in relation to a dysregulating other." So, the dysregulating other is the shaming part.

Martha: Yes. Well, it starts off externally.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Martha: But then it becomes an identity, right? The shaming goes from an incident, "a bad thing happens to me," to "I am bad, there's something wrong with me.” So, it goes from an event to an identity.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Martha: And in therapy, we're trying to take it back to "That was an event, actually, that wasn't, that's not your identity and you don't have to own that. Someone did that to you."

Aníbal: Patricia also says that this dysregulating other is someone close to us whose emotional response leaves us feeling fragmented instead.

Martha: Right. I mean, if she looked at this from the perspective of parts, she would probably have a slightly different angle on that leaves us feeling fragmented, because what makes people feel fragmented is the conflict between parts. Now there's, we always have parts, but if they're getting along, we don't feel so fragmented, but like any system, it starts to look and feel fragmented if people are in conflict.

Aníbal: So, how does shame feel in our bodies? How do we experience it? It comes as humiliation, unworthiness, diminishing, negatively compared?

Martha: Well, diminishing is the key word there, right? People often talk about feeling small when they're shamed. And I think that's because they actually go back to the, it's like a Yertle the turtle, you know, they get back to the exile at the bottom of the pile pretty quickly, the original injury in their life or injuries. So, they feel small because they're basically doing what in IFS, what we would call blending with an exiled part, a very young part. But that's a key feature of shame in the body is to feel diminished small and smaller than the person who is shaming you. And to want to hide. I think if there's a Scandinavian derivation, actually, to the word. It's like, people try to, you know, the perp walk, people try and hide their faces or not be seen. So that's...People try not to be seen emotionally, but they also try not to be seen literally, because there's a global judgment that they are projecting basically out into that other people are now seeing them the way they now see themselves, which is as defective or unworthy or disgusting or something like that. So, it's a very body-based and kind of, and, you know, people get flushed and they heat up and they feel exposed and...

Aníbal: And do you believe it's possible to help people that have criminal perpetrator behaviors to track his own shame or is so disassociated that it's not possible at all?

Martha: Well, as with everything, a person has to have a reason to track something. And most people, if you even say the word shame, you know, they'll try and get up and leave the room. You know, it's like, it's not a popular topic because it keys up these parts so quickly. So, a person who has gotten to the point of being a perpetrator in some kind of serious transgressive way is really defending against their feelings of shame. And they're, you know, they have parts who feel they're in danger all the time and are willing to go on the attack, and that person isn't going to usually be motivated unless, and Jim Gilligan talks about this, unless they're nailed down, you know, if they get put in prison, then they often look, a sociopath will suddenly become profoundly depressed. And, because they're not, they can't, they're not on the move anymore. They can't be doing that distraction of interacting with people in this way that is so painful for other people. So, yeah, it depends.

Tisha: It sounds like it's pretty vulnerable to introduce the idea of working with shame, you know, with your parts that feel it.

Martha: You know, I don't find it is with my clients to tell you the truth. I find they're really relieved. And they're really glad that someone's willing to name it in a very like “Oh, this is something we're going to look at.” You know, this is key to what you're experiencing, because if I were scared of it, then it would be hard for them to talk about it. But I'm so not scared of it at this point. I'm like, that's where we're going. We're going there as fast as we can, because this is going to get you out of this, out of the state of mind. And don't, you know, let's not waste time. Your money and your time. So, I'm right on it. And people like it. And I also clarify it for people, if they start using the word guilt, when I think they mean shame, I will explain the difference between guilt and shame. And we'll explore. Because guilt can be an issue for people too. But I want people to be clear whether shame or guilt that they're talking about.

Tisha: What's your cue there, Martha, for noting that difference between guilt and shame?

Martha: Well, if somebody starts talking about feeling that they transgressed against somebody else, we're in the zone of guilt, right? Now, they may not have like, say someone talks about having left home when their mother was depressed and gone off to college, and they've never gotten over the guilt that they felt about that, right? That's guilt. That's true, that it's guilt. It's maladaptive guilt, because it was perfectly appropriate for them to go off to college. They didn't really transgress against the person who was depressed, but they were in that situation, they felt responsible for the caretaker, phenomenal caretaker, and they are experiencing guilt. And so that's what we would focus on in the therapy. The parts who are attached to the sense that they have this responsibility for their nominal caretaker, which would probably be a parentified part, basically in this person. And as opposed to “I can't go home because I don't like how people look at me when I'm there at Thanksgiving dinner. I can't stand to be seen in a big family party or something.” That's shame. Right? “I am bad” versus “I did wrong”. And maladaptive guilt combines the two “ did wrong, therefore, I am bad,” but we start with “I did wrong” because that's where they are.

Aníbal: Martha, you say the antidote to shame is self-compassion. Freud said self-love is a proven way to overcome the feeling of shame.

Martha: What was that? What did you say?

Aníbal: Sigmund Freud.

Martha: Oh Sigmund Freud, yes.

Aníbal: Love is the proven way to overcome the feelings of shame.

Martha: Yes. I didn't know he said that. He's a smart guy.

Aníbal: A smart guy. Patricia DeYoung says shame needs light and air.

Martha: Yes.

Aníbal: So, how does this translate to therapy?

Martha: Well, that's what I was just talking about. Shame needs light in there that you, that if you feel confident in yourself, you're not ashamed of talking about shame. You don't want to leave the room. You're the therapist. You you've helped your parts who get triggered by that. Then you have a lot of, you're able to stay in your zone of compassion, which is where you need to be as a therapist. And you have a tremendous compassion for this person who is suffering in front of you, but you don't think there's anything shameful about them. You're actually very confident that no matter what, even if they did have feet that were too big, when they were, you know, five years old or whatever it was that that's, that there was nothing wrong with them and they got hurt, but that it didn't mean something about them. So, you hold that kind of confidence about their basic okayness and that they're fine, and that they got hurt. And that what they're there for is to get help with that injury that's never been healed. And that just reassures people, you know.

Tisha: I've experienced something, that's been one of those sort of thematic moments in the past couple of weeks with a couple of different clients who have encountered that some of the shame that they felt was inherited and have...Yeah. So, they've come upon beliefs of “I'm a failure, or I make terrible decisions.” And yeah. So, I just wanted to ask you about the legacy burden aspect of shame.

Martha: I'm just writing a chapter on that actually. And it's a big, it's a great topic because it's a different experience to feel shameful yourself or to join with somebody who feels shameful, right? And the first one is something wrong with me. And the second one is I have to take care of this person who is having a problem, because then maybe they'll be able to take care of me. And also, I love them. You know, so kids get pulled into the orbit of adults who are attacking themselves, who have strong critics. It doesn't mean they won't develop their own strong critic who will go after them. Then that is another risk. And it's much more likely if they see if they see the adult doing that, but there are two different things. And if you ask someone, you know, what percentage of this energy belongs to you and what percentage belongs to your, your parents or your care, your ancestors, and don't think about it. You know, they'll very quickly come up with a number, you know, say, Oh, 70% is theirs and 30 is mine or 50 50 or whatever. And then you just deal with the legacy aspect of it first. Because if you don't, that's a matter of loyalty. And if you don't address that for parts that protect, these are protectors like parentified child parts who were pulled into the vortex of a dysfunctional parent and, and caused to take care of that parent, basically to try and meet that parent's needs, meet the needs of that parents exiles actually. So, it gets complicated.

Then you, you know, so you're trying to unpack all that for the client and show them who's taking care of who in this and you're trying to help them, the parts who are, who are stuck in that place of responsibility to see that they don't have to do it anymore, or to find out what they're worried about, what would happen just as you would with any burden, what are you worried would happen if you let go of this? And, and it may be, it can go from something as real and scary as they'll commit suicide. You know, the parents are still alive and if I don't do this, they could die, which is, then it's a real issue you have to think about too, you know, “Oh, I see that was all from the past and I don't really have to worry about it anymore. And I'm going to update this part and let it know that person is dead or that person's doing okay. And, you know, you're not responsible.” So, it depends on what is going on in the relationship as to what needs to happen for the part who feels loyal and responsible. But you've got to address that or that part will not allow any unhooking and letting go of personal burdens is definitely unhooking from dysfunctional relationships. It doesn't mean you're not going to have a relationship with a person you might, or you might not, but you're definitely not going to do it the same way and protective parts who are protecting somebody else aren't going to allow that change unless their issues, their concerns have been addressed first.

Tisha: Oh, absolutely. And it seems like a profound step, especially when there's been a legacy, like for example, like the grandfather gambles the house away or a great-grandmother has severe mental illness, or the family takes the wrong side in war. Like it all seems to somehow feed in into not look at it.

Martha: Yeah. And there are so many ways in which things can have gone wrong and did go wrong in the past that children can be left feeling, holding the bag on I don't know why I feel ashamed shamefulness, or I don't know why I feel this guilt, or I do, but it's appropriate. It's the price my family has to pay for having done that.

Tisha: Yeah. So really good to just kind of lean into that and find out how it's affected oneself more than the story energetically or in terms of those beliefs that we carry.

Martha: I mean, it's in different picture, but the way you're doing it is still the same. You're just talking to parts and you're finding out what's the attachment here and what's the willingness and why do you need to do this? You know, what's at stake here. It's all relational and it's all attachment issues.

Tisha: Yeah. So, bring in your curiosity,

Martha: Bring your curious. Yeah, exactly. And your compassion. Yeah, exactly.

Aníbal: Martha, Patricia DeYoung also talks of chronic shame. Do you agree with her on this concept of chronic shame? Some clients really carry chronic shame.

Martha: I mean, I think we all do, most of us do. So, you know, as I was saying, a lot, a lot of people are perfectly functional with their current, you know, chronic shame that they're suffering and other people, when they become really dysfunctional and show up in therapy, then we get the chance to help with it. But I think shame, because it moves inside and becomes an internal process, is a chronic problem for most people. And I've never met, I've given talks and I'll say "How many people in this room have an internal critic?" Everybody in the room raises their hands.

Aníbal: Of course.

Martha: "How many people love their internal critic?" I've only had one person raised their hand once. And he was a guy that meditated for 50 years. He said "I'm trying, I'm really trying."

Aníbal: Is there a cure for chronic shame?

Martha: The cure is compassion. Self-compassion, compassion for other people and getting into...Helping people get into relationship with their Self so that their Self can form a relationship with their shaming parts and help their, the parts who get disinhibited in response to that and cause more shame and get to the exiles and help them unburden the sense of, you know, there's something wrong with me. And so, you're trying to take it back to the...it's very simple formula in my view, you're trying to take it back from I'm bad to something bad happened to me. That's it, that's what we're doing with all this months and years and effort and school and learning and input on our, you know, the time and investment our clients making. That's what we're looking for. You know. Even people who have, you know, people who have major mental illness and issues like that have been profoundly shamed for being mentally ill, for having something go wrong with their brain. And those people have parts who are trying to manage that, that shame. It's traumatic to be sick in certain ways. And so, you can help them too.

Aníbal: Let me check if you are more optimistic than Patricia DeYoung. Asking her if she believes there is a cure for chronic shame, she goes, and she says "As a psychotherapist, I'd like to say to my clients, yes, absolutely, we can beat this thing. As a person who has struggled to understand and integrate my own chronic shame, I would love to answer yes, I'm over it. To be honest, however, I have to say no, I don't think chronic shame can be cured."

Martha: Again. I think we deal in slightly...You know, I have a different angle on this, and we deal in slightly different terms. I don't think shame can be cured because it's a hard-wired emotion that we're going to feel again. But I do think the way in which we treat ourselves can be radically altered, which changes the problem and gets rid of chronic shame. We just have the ability to feel shame, but you're not spending your day, shaming yourself, your critic, isn't your most dominant part in your life, you know? And how do you, I mean, this is the question I've been thinking about as I'm working on this chapter right now is do critics ever give up, can you ever have a critic free mind?

You know, it would be interesting to ask the Dalai Lama, how he's doing on that. You know, I mean, I don't, I don't know...most of the people I work with clinically and myself, I don't have a critic free mind, but I have noticed that my critics are, they're mostly quite relaxed, but they're sort of ready to come back. They're on notice. They don't retire and give up and just go play, you know, go swimming or something entirely. So, I have been asking them "what makes you come back? You know, what, why are you so vigilant about this? " Well, the world's a dangerous place, you know, and we all have the capacity to feel shame. So, they may never not come back, but they're like the parts who are most sensitized to being shamed. But if I'm in a good relationship with them, they don't get going. You know, when something happens that’s shaming for me, I can immediately interact with them and say "you know, I get that that was scary for you and you know, I'll take care of the part who, who felt hurt by that and I can handle this." And so they go, you know, they say, okay, you know, "Okay, well, we don't need to ramp it up." And they're not waking me up in the night with, you know, with reminders of what a terrible person I am. So, it's my relationship with my parts that addresses the chronic part of this.

Tisha: So, like, the meditator who in 50 years, it's learning to love that shaming part.

Martha: Right. I mean, I think that, I think it depends on how you meditate. You know, I have a hope that meditation will... I think the two are coming closer together as meditators on IFS and IFS is more influenced by people who are into mindfulness that people will be taking the opportunity of mindfulness to actually, you know, make more room for their parts. And the more...that's what we're talking about is just, you know, welcoming all parts and being in relationship with them.

Tisha: Yeah. Who is your book on shame geared towards?

Martha: It's geared towards clinicians, but I'm hoping that it won't just be for people who already know IFS, I'd like it to be for a broader audience, although it is the IFS frame. So that's the balancing act that I'm trying to do with the help of my editor, who sort of...Who wants it to be that way too. So, so I'm hoping it'll reach a broader audience.

Aníbal: And when? Do you have an idea when?

Martha: I'm right in the middle of this one? So, I don't know how long it's going to take. This one. I mean, the others are fairly, I know the, the ones that are sort of how to apply IFS, I'm very steeped in that I know how to do what I'm working with people, with coauthors who are experts. And so that goes much faster. The shame book is really...what I get from writing something like this is I'm learning constantly as I write it, I'm articulating my ideas and see what fits and what doesn't fit and then I have to change them and I bring in clinical examples and it changes the whole thing again. And you know, so, it's a great process. I love it. But it's, I have no idea how long it's going to take.

Aníbal: I hope you can enjoy it as well.

Martha: Yeah, no, I enjoy it a lot. I learn a tremendous amount.

Tisha: We're looking forward to it. Yeah.

Martha: Thank you.

Aníbal: So again, Martha, thank you so much for all that you do. Thank you for having us.

Martha: You're welcome. Thank you.

Aníbal: Thank you for your wisdom. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can meet again and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Martha: Thank you.

Tisha: Thank you, Martha. Take care.

 

Recorded 12th December 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

MDMA Assisted Therapy - with Michael Mithoefer 52:10

Michael Mithoefer, MD is a Clinical Investigator and acting Medical Director of MAPS Public Benefit Corporation. He and his wife, Annie, completed the first phase 2 clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD in 2009 and a subsequent study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD in military veterans, firefighters and police officers. They are now supervising therapists in the ongoing MAPS Phase 3 trials of MDMA-assisted Psychotheapy for PTSD, leading trainings in MDMA- assisted psychotherapy for therapists interested in working on clinical trials, and providing FDA-approved MDMA sessions for research therapists. He is Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, is a Grof certified Holotropic Breathwork Practitioner, has been a Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist, and has been board certified in Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine.

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks we have the privilege of meeting with Dr. Michael Mithoefer. Michael is a psychiatrist living in Asheville, North Carolina, with a research office in Charleston, South Carolina. In the year 2000, he began collaborating with MAPS on the first US phase-two clinical trial of MDMA assisted psychotherapy. He and his wife, Annie have since conducted two of the six MAPS sponsored phase-two clinical trials, testing MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD as well as a study providing MDMA assisted sessions for therapists who have completed the MAPS sponsored MDMA therapy training program, and a pilot study treating couples with MDMA assisted psychotherapy combined with cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy.

He is now senior medical director for medical affairs, training and supervision at MAPS Public Benefit Corporation. He is a certified holotropic breathwork facilitator. He’s trained in EMDR and Internal Family Systems therapy. He also has nearly 30 years of experience treating trauma patients. Michael, thank you so much for being here with us today on IFS Talks. We're very excited to have this conversation with you.

Michael MithoeferYou're welcome. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it too.

Aníbal HenriquesSo, Michael, thank you so much for having us. Michael, it's been a long journey on this quest or crusade of yours and in many more like Rick Doblin to the MDMA assisted psychotherapy, and I guess with many setbacks and obstacles in the path. So, it took you decades of your life and your wife, Annie's life, Michael, to stand where MDMA research stands now, right?

MichaelIt has taken a long time, yeah. Luckily, we didn't know what we were getting into when we started, as you know is a good thing. We didn't know how long it was going to take, but it has taken about 20...We've been working on it for about 20 years. And of course, Rick Doblin has been working on it for more than 30 years and laying the groundwork for making the research possible and for developing the organization to sponsor it.

Aníbal:So, how is it for you to hear this bio? What parts come up?

Michael:I've got kind of an amazed part that it actually, you know, we've been doing it for 20 years and we've got a part that's a little horrified that I'm a researcher because I'm really, have always felt I'm a clinician at heart and I didn't set out to be a researcher, but we felt we had to do the research because we needed better treatment for the, for our clinical practice. So, we kind of were forced to, to do the research, to get the clinical tools we needed. So, it's been, and I feel tremendous gratitude for having been able to do this work, that we were able to do what we thought made sense.

And of course, it wasn't our idea that MDMA could be useful for therapy. There was a lots of anecdotal reports and past experience, just no formal research. So, the fact that we, you know, people were...Another remarkable thing about the research to me has been, you know, it's all, non-profit, we've had no money from government or industry sponsors, just nonprofit people that saw the value of supporting this research. So, it's been overall, I'd say, when I hear it, it's been kind of...Gratitude is the main thing that comes up, that we've been able to do this.

Tisha:Michael, was there something that compelled you to pick up the research where it had been left off with MDMA? What was it that interested you?

Michael:Well, I went into psychiatry with an interest in non-ordinary states of consciousness, which is Stan Grof's term. So actually, you know, I originally trained in internal medicine and then practiced emergency medicine for 10 years before I went into psychiatry. And then in 1991, when I was looking for a change in my career, I've kind of felt...Well, I was getting a bit burnt out by the ER, was part of it, but also just feeling that was very satisfying work for a long time, but then I got a sense I wanted to kind of collaborate with people in a different way about their health instead of just doing things to them all the time. So, I was kind of looking for something to do with my medical degree that would feel more compelling at that point. This was about 1990. So, I came across an article about Stan Grof and I thought it was fascinating about his work with LSD research in, in the past, when it was legal. And then I followed up on that and found one of his books at the medical school library and read about his work. And so I decided that I was going to go into psychiatry. So I applied for psychiatry residency and went back and did that training. But I also trained with Stan Grof and his holotropic breathwork training.

So, I went into psychiatry with an orientation toward wanting to explore more about what Stan calls the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The idea, if you can shift consciousness in the right setting with the right support, you can access this internal healing intelligence that Stan refers to. And that just made a lot of sense to me. And plus, reading his work explained some of my own experiences back in the, you know, I was in college in the sixties and I had experienced with psychedelics and we had experienced MDMA with the therapist back when it was legal. So I had some idea, but I sort of left that behind thinking that we had to do it with non-drug ways. So what Stan trained, you know, Stan has a training program and I'm using holotropic breathwork as another powerful way to shift consciousness. So I went into psychiatry with an orientation toward wanting to work that way, but assuming we'd have to do it without drugs because the drugs were now illegal, the psychedelic medicines. So, Andy and I did holotropic breathwork groups for 10 years. And it was kind of very much connected to our psychiatry practice. So, we were seeing people in the office, but then people were coming to our monthly breathwork groups and we were kind of already working with ways of shifting consciousness to help people access their own healing potential. The idea that they have the power of the information and the intelligence for healing within them.

Aníbal:It's amazing. That was back then in the 80's or the 90's?

Michael:That was...I went back and started my psychiatry training in 91, finished that in 94. So then it was between, you know, for the first part of my career we were just using the breathwork, we didn't use the MDMA. And then, over time we realized this is very powerful. The breathwork was really a powerful healing tool for people, but not everybody responded. So we realized, you know, there was every reason to think from prior reports that some of these medicines like MDMA could help to catalyze the therapeutic process. So we realized, okay, yes, holotropic breathwork is very helpful for a lot of people and there's some people that don't respond. And so that's why we decided it was important to study these other medicines and starting with MDMA.

Aníbal:Michael, help me walk us through these long and brave MDMA assisted therapy quest timeline. MDMA was criminalized in 1985. So, 35 years ago.

Michael:That's right. It was...MDMA was originally synthesized by Merck pharmaceutical in 1912 and patented in 1914. So, but they never did anything with it. So, it had been off patent for a long time, which is one reason it's non-profit research. So it had been...nothing was happening with it. There were a few things. The military did something, some experiments, but basically nothing happened until the 70's. And one of the main people that kind of brought it into awareness was Sasha Shulgin, Alexander Shulgin. And he synthesized it and took it himself and then gave it to his friend, Leo Zeff, who was a therapist who retired, and Leo Zeff came out of retirement to use. He saw the potential for MDMA as a therapeutic tool. And so he trained, he started working with his clients with it, and then trained a lot of other psychiatrists and psychologists and other therapists to use it. So there was a, you know, a small but significant group of professionals using MDMA in conjunction with psychotherapy between the late seventies and then 1985, when it became illegal.

You know, there were hearings at that time and that the administrative law judge for the DEA recommended that it be put in schedule three so that it can be used medically, but not sold in bars, but the DEA administrator overruled that and put it in schedule one anyway. So that's when it became illegal for therapeutic use and very much harder to do research in. So, no research happened for between 85 and then in 2000, fall of 2000, was when we got approval from FDA for our first study. But then we didn't get the DEA approvals in 2004, is when we finally started the research.

Aníbal:So immediately one year after MDMA became criminalized in 1996, MAPS was founded by Rick Doblin. Right?

Michael:First has something called Earth Metabolic Design, Earth Metabolic Design Laboratory, I think it was. And then it changed to MAPS around...I think it was 84, that MAPS was actually found it. I'm not, I've forgotten exactly, but he founded MAPS...Basically the first thing, well, the first thing they did was, you know, get the FDA to have hearings, the DEA, to have hearings about MDMA, which is what led to the hearings because the DEA was planning to just criminalize it and thought no one would care. They weren't even aware that it had been used therapeutically until MAPS brought the appeal for the hearings.

Tisha:Were you surprised to get the schedule 3 breakthrough?

Michael:Well, we didn't get schedule 3, that's something different.

Tisha:Oh, got you. That’s something different. Yeah.

Michael:Yeah. We got, you know, that first study that we started in 2004, now there've been six MAPS, phase-two trials, which is one of the FDA phases of drug development. So the phases of drug research are different from the categories of drug classifications later. So it's confusing. Yeah. But it's an FDA term. The phase-two trials are the kinds we've been doing since then. That first one was a phase-two trial. And so we've done a series of phase-two trials, and that's what led to breakthrough therapy designation. At the end of the phase-three trials, phase-two trials, FDA not only gave us permission to go on to the larger phase-three trials - which we've now completed one of those, waiting for the results to be released. And so, they not only allowed us to go on to phase-three, but they gave what's called breakthrough therapy designation, meaning the results of the phase-two are so strong enough, so that they could represent a possibility for major advance and an important treatment. So they want to expedite it. So, it's like the FDA way of making the process a little more expedited. But we still have to complete the phase-three trials. And as I said, we, it's very exciting. The first one is finished, and the data is being analyzed and will be released after it's published, probably.

Aníbal:So, you submitted the protocol to the FDA on October 2001, I guess. And then the study starting in 2004.

Michael:That's right. Yeah. We got FDA approval in 30 days, but then it took until 2004, another two and a half years to get a DEA IRB, which is ethics committee and DEA approval.

Aníbal:Beautiful. And then in 2017, the FDA declared MDMA, a breakthrough therapy...

Michael:That's right. But that doesn't mean it's approved for clinical use. It just means it expedites the process through the clinical trials toward getting approval.

Aníbal:I just want to give an idea to our listeners of how long and how much work this implies, all this process, these studies. And finally, phase-two trial article paper published in May 2019. So, the most recent paper that you published with those results for the second trial, they're available since 2019 May, yeah.

Michael:Yeah, with the pooled results. Yeah. So we took the results of all the six studies, phase-two studies together, which were, you know, we did two of those in Charleston. And then there was one in Boulder and one in Canada, one in Switzerland, one in Israel. So, you know, different sites in different countries and they all had positive results. So, combining pooling the results showed a very large effect size, 0.8 is the effect size. So, it showed that across six different studies, we had a very strong effect size and a good safety profile. So that was very promising. But again, for approval, we have to see if we can show that in larger groups in phase-three trials, and you have to have two of those usually. So, we've finished one and the others, the second one is started, and we're also have, you know, trials about to start in Europe. We've met with the European medicines agency and we're developing, there's a phase-two protocol already soon to start. It's been delayed by Covid. Hopefully soon to start in Europe and then move on hopefully to a phase-three trials and probably seven different European countries. So, we're hoping that if it goes well again, we have to complete the phase-three and see how it comes out. But if everything goes well, we're hoping for approval in Europe, you know, maybe a year after approval in the us. That's our hope

Tisha:Are all these trials working with clients who experience PTSD?

Michael:Those six are all clients with PTSD. The way that drug approval process is you get a drug approved for a specific indication. So, with our limited resources, as a nonprofit, we're putting most of the effort into PTSD as the indication that we're going to apply for if, if our trials are successful, but MAPS is also interested in other possible indications. There have been small studies...well, you mentioned the one we did with couples that was also people with PTSD, but one person had PTSD and the other didn't and both people got MDMA at the same time. And we saw it really helpful for their relationship satisfaction, as well as the PTSD. Phil Wolfson and Julane Andries did a study and Moran with MDMA Assisted Therapy for anxiety, for people with life-threatening illness. Charlie Grob and Alicia Danforth did a study in Los Angeles with adults with social anxiety on the adults on the autism spectrum with social anxiety. That was promising result. And there's an eating disorder study soon to start. Ben Sessa did a study in England with, for alcoholism, with MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy. So, other indications are cropping up and we're actually getting a lot of people interested in doing investigator-initiated studies, studies about other things that other people want to do now with the MDMA that MAPS is happy to share with people for doing research.

Aníbal:These results, Michael, led the FDA in 2017 to declare MDMA Assisted therapy, a breakthrough therapy, and to bring light to phase-three trials. So, do you think is MDMA a breakthrough for treating PTSD and even other difficulties, as you just mentioned?

Michael:I'm very hopeful that it will be, you know, we have to be careful not to get ahead of ourselves and claiming things that we haven't definitively prove until we finished with phase-three. So, but I am very encouraged by what we're seeing so far, not only the strong results, but the, you know, which is what counts for FDA approval, you know, the numbers on the, on the PTSD scales and that's appropriate. But the other thing that we're seeing that I think is a really interesting part of it is just the, the depth and the richness of the kinds of experience people are having and the way they're describing their healing process. It is, not only fascinating, but clearly suggesting that the benefits are going well beyond just decreasing flashbacks or nightmares or PTSD symptoms, which, you know, very important that it does that too. But I think, you know, one of the things that makes it so compelling is just the nature of the process and the way people describe, you know, what they, the way they're able to revisit painful experience without being overwhelmed and face it with real honesty and without self-judgment or judgment of others or defensiveness, it tends to help people face problems with more of those, in IFS terms with more Self-energy, you know, I think I've talked to Dick Schwartz quite a bit about what we're seeing and I think one of the best ways to describe the effects of MDMA is it brings forth a great deal of Self-energy and makes people, helps people be more aware of their parts and have the Self-energy to work with them.

So, I think it's kind of beyond being very promising for the effect on PTSD symptoms, I think, in a way, these medicines, not only MDMA, but there's exciting with psilocybin, as you know, I'm sure. And hopefully with others, there is research with other psychedelics also. I think it's, in a way, again, reconnect psychotherapy and Psychiatry. So, I think, yes, the answer is, I don't know, because we won't know until we finish the phase-three trials, but I'm very hopeful that it will be a very powerful tool.

Tisha:You just made it clear why IFS works so well with MDMA. It sounds like it brings a lot of Self-energy and then allows people to see their parts more clearly in the process. How did you designate IFS as a primary treatment?

Michael:Well, we didn't actually.

Tisha:You didn't. Oh, ok.

Michael:That gets confusing because, you know, our...We have a manual that describes our research method and we have raters that are trained to see if we're following it. So, the idea is not that we set out to do IFS. The idea is we set out to have beginner's mind to encourage people to open and not having an agenda and be open to whatever comes. And then the therapist role is to then support them in working with whatever comes. So we don't, some people don't do any parts work, but what we find is, so often, because of that phenomenon that we're seeing of people start talking about their parts more and have more, where with all to be curious and compassionate and courageous and creative and all those Self-energy, where is, it's fun to talk to [crosstalk] IFS podcasts because people know what I'm talking about [inaudible] IFS terms.

So, you know, what we've found, well, when we started the first study, I didn't, I'd never heard of IFS. We had been working with people with dissociation a lot and, you know, the phenomenon of multiplicity. And I was very interested in things like, well, I'd read about psychosynthesis originally. And I knew some people that did voice dialogue. I thought that was interesting. And I was, I wouldn't say, I didn't know about IFS. I was aware of it, but I didn't know much at all about it. So, but I, I was interested in these ways, different ways of working with multiplicity, had been years, but then...Annie was taking, it was in the Hakomi training early on during that first study. And she, you know, one of their readings was the Mosaic Mind, Dick Schwartz's book with the woman's name that he wrote it with. But anyway, she said, there's this meeting down in Hilton head, and there's a four-day workshop on IFS. Do you want to go? And, you know, normally I've been my whole life, I'm like a junkie for learning something new. But at that point I was so maxed out on getting the research done and having my clinical practice and everything. I said, well, you know, my plate is full. I'm not really ready to learn anything new, but it's, you know, it's only a couple hour drive it's down by the beach. It's nice. It'd be fun to go together. So sure. Let's go. And I'll go to this workshop with this guy, Dick Schwartz. And I was so blown away by that. It was a four-day workshop that Dick showed video and did demos. And I, I lost my resolve to not add anything more to my plate very quickly. And by the end of that, I went up to Dick and I asked for a recommendation for my own IFS Therapist and how do I get in, where is the training. So, the next thing I knew, I had my own IFS therapist and I was in the Level 1 training pretty soon.

And so I ended up doing all three levels of IFS training, and I just found it very exciting because although we didn't set out to use IFS and, and the other thing about MDMA often, you don't have to do much at all. People often do it themselves. And you might've seen some of the videos that have shown, IFS meetings with Dick. One of the veterans is allowed Dick to show video of the amazing parts work that people do spontaneously. So it's, you know, the way our method is defined in the manual is, we, when whatever's happening for the client, the participant, we support with whatever tools we have, if they're needed, we stay out of the way if not needed, but we bring tools when they're useful. And so if people are talking about parts, our approach is very much IFS informed. Occasionally it ends up, you know, especially maybe during an integration session afterwards, it can look like in a part of an IFS session, certainly, but so often it just unfolds spontaneously in the MDMA sessions. And it really helps to, for me, as my way of understanding, what's happening for one thing, but also sometimes there's a backlash and you get, you know, very challenging protectors. And then, in that point, where people need more help getting unstuck, that's when I find my, you know, training and experience with IFS so helpful.

So, we ended up doing a little sub study. I devised a scale with like eight questions about things, about IFS, and I sent it to Dick and he thought it made sense. It's not a validated scale. No one else has ever used it. But in our study with veterans and first responders, we tracked, whether parts came up, the questions were like, did parts come up? If so, who brought it up? And then, you know, what happened with it? Was there a shift? Did they work further with it? So, what we found was, and in that study, we had three groups that people were either randomized to 125 milligrams of MDMA, 75 milligrams or 30 milligrams. And what we found was 75 and one 25 were both very effective. 30 was not effective. You know, the therapy alone was a little more of, with inactive placebo is a little more effective than with 30 milligrams. So, in terms of responding on the PTSD symptoms, the 30-milligram group did not respond. The others did. What we found on our little sub study was that in the 30-milligram group, parts only came up less than 30% of the time. In the other groups with the effective doses, parts came up more than 75% of the time.

And they were almost always, if it came up as almost always brought up by the participant, if it was brought up by the therapist, it was only in response to what the participant was talking about. You know, we wouldn't just say let’s work with parts. If people were basically talking about parts, you might say, it sounds like there might be a polarity between two parts of you. Is that feel like that's what happening? And they'll say, yeah, that's what's happening. And then we would work with it. So really, our intention for the scale was about whether it came up spontaneously, either explicitly, which often was the case, you know, on 70% of the time, people just started talking about their parts. The rest of the time, it was a therapist that may use the word, but it was really in response to what was already happening. So there does appear to be something about MDMA in this set and setting with this preparation, you know, all of that set and setting is so important to the effect, but it does appear that MDMA seems to raise awareness as a normal phenomenon of multiplicity or some people talk about it beforehand, but then we're able to work with it in a much different way in the sessions. For instance, an example, if anybody's seen the video that the veteran has allowed us to show, one of the videos we show and that Dick Schwartz has shown is a veteran who described, you know...He had a lot of PTSD symptoms. He'd been a Marine in Iraq with two tours and he had this, the thing about it and most of the rage that would come up and he'd yell at his wife, he was never physically violent, but so, and he had a lot of shame about that and remorse, but he couldn't stop himself. So he told us about it. It was like a part of him, you know, he'd never heard of IFS, but he told us this in the preparation sessions that he had this image of a part of him erupting from his torso and he was trying to strangle it and it was stabbing him in the side. That was his experience at wrestling with the rage that he said, he felt like it felt like a monster inside that would just erupt. And then during his first MDMA session spontaneously, he told us about this experience that he had of realizing that actually that was a part of him that he locked in a cage. He said, I looked at it and it's written, had these evil red eyes and they just eyes faded, and it didn't look evil anymore and I realized it's not a monster, it's a warrior. And I think I was so afraid of what I saw that he was capable of and Iraq that I tried to keep him in a cage. So of course, when he got out, he was going to be angry and hurt people. So, it would be so much better if we can work together. And so he, in that first MDMA session, he, you know, spontaneously brought all this Self-energy to have compassion and understanding, clarity to his part. So, and that was all. You know, IFS training helped me understand what was happening, but it wasn't necessary at that moment, because he just did the whole thing and described it to him himself. Other times it's more challenging where people get stuck and it can be really helpful to help them sort out what's going on with their parts.

Aníbal:Michael, these studies are manualized since the beginning, right?

Michael:Yeah. The first study we had an appendix to the protocol that I had written. And then we developed the manual. We develop that into the full manual based on the first study and looking at recordings and figuring out what we thought we were doing and what we thought we wanted to be doing.

Aníbal:It looks such a great manual. So detailed and considerate of so many complexities. So, congratulations.

Michael:Thank you.

Aníbal:And it really walks us through a real MDMA process and sessions. And in this manual, you recommend for trainings to be familiar with the holotropic breathwork with Internal Family Systems therapy, with a sensory motor psychotherapy training or background in Hakomi, and other mindfulness-based approaches. And then you say that strictly behavioral contributor approaches while applicable to some extent are likely to be limiting in the context of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy. Why is that? Why those options?

Michael:Well, you know, we think that there are kind of two aspects to the way we think about our training, which is not to train therapists, but to train existing, not to train people to be therapists, obviously we're just training therapists about the way we approach using the MDMA. So, and they're kind of two aspects to that. One is what we can basically teach in a reasonable amount of time about the way we approach it. The other part is the therapist's own inner work and the ability to be present to have Self-energy themselves to work with their triggered parts if they come up in these very intense, long sessions. So, all of that is something that we can't teach in a, you know, several month therapy training, but they're very important for people to develop it and people do it in different ways. So, I think all of those kinds of trainings that you mentioned, holotropic breath, work on IFS and Somatic experiencing, those things fit very well with this approach in that they also involve, you know, people learning to be present with themselves. So, each person is going to have a different combination of experiences and inclinations. And then, also people are going to go on to do other research, it's already happening.

People are testing it in combination with other therapeutic methods. And we'll see, you know, this is not the only approach obviously. And I think it would be great to do a study with, you know, more specifically with IFS and MDMA. Hopefully that will happen. I think it probably will. So, I think, for one thing, if we get approval, it's going to be much easier to research all these other questions and, you know, be creative about how we make this available to different people in different contexts and with different needs. And I think it's, there's a lot to be learned for sure.

Aníbal:Exciting, yes.

Tisha:Beyond getting approval, what challenges do you perceive in bringing this therapeutic catalyst and bringing in this type of work into mainstream culture?

Michael:Our main challenge is now that...Along with kind of shepherding the phase-three trials and getting that done, we've already, for the last few years, we've been focusing on a few important challenges. One is diversity, cultural and ethnic diversity has been a real, has been limited in the psychedelic world or research in general. So when, and we've had trouble recruiting a very diverse population, so we're doing a little better with that. And we're making a big push to train a more diverse group of therapists to help get this treatment to a more diverse group of patients. So that's a big, there's a lot going on with that. And along with that is who's going to pay for this. You know, the drug is not going to be a big part of the expense because it's a, it's a public benefit corporation is not going to be trying to charge the maximum anyway, but it's also, most of the expense is therapy. So, I think it's a very cost-effective treatment, but it's more expensive upfront because the therapy is kind of concentrated. So how do we get insurance companies to pay for that and make it available to people, there's a big effort going on along those lines. And then the third, maybe major challenge in addition to getting the drug approved is how do we train enough therapist to meet the demand? Because, you know, we think if we get approval, the demand is going to be great.

Aníbal:Huge, yeah.

Michael:I mean, we know how many people have applied to our studies that we don't have room for. So part of our challenge is how do we efficiently train a lot more therapists to use this and do it in a way that doesn't compromise quality, but it also maximizes speed in getting access to the therapy. So, that's going to be a big challenge going forward.

Aníbal:For sure. Michael, how difficult is it for a therapist, the task of being seated and assist a MDMA session?

Michael:Well, I think it...That's a really good question. I think it takes a certain type of person, sitting in eight-hour sessions is not for everybody. And I think it takes a certain amount of Self-energy to, you know, stay as present as possible during that time. At the same time, so it can be, it can be challenging and it can be emotionally challenging and it can be tiring, but it's also can be very invigorating and emotionally, you know, nourishing because you find you're able to help people that hadn't been helped before. Kind of the way you find with IFS often, you know, when you're able to have some tools that, that make a difference, then it makes it a much easier experience for the therapist as well. And also, you know, the two, two therapist model, which probably won't always be the case in every setting going forward, but it's still a really good model in terms of safety, but also, you know, in an eight hour session, it's really nice if you have a co-therapist that you trust and help hold the energy. So I think it's a wonderful process that in some ways it's more challenging than other kinds of therapies, but in other ways, this is a lot more fun and easier because it works.

Aníbal:And also, you use music as an agent to therapy. So, another tough and challenging task to use music in an effectively and fitting way. Right? So, it's another challenge.

Michael:Yeah. And, you know, in our case of art co-therapy team, Annie is really good at the music and she's very immersed in the music. So, and that makes it nice for therapists too in a long day, if there's music, we play the music in the room, we'll add them headphones. So, it's a very meditative experience in a lot of ways, sort of like meditation, you know, I noticed my mind wondering and then try to gently bring it back and just be present. We don't check email. We don't read, we take some notes for a research, but we try to manually be kind of just being present just there with people. So, it's a challenging, but that can be a really rich experience. Meditative kind of experience for the therapist, noticing my parts that want to take me away to this place.

Aníbal:Michael, coming back to the studies, I was impressed with the long list of publications and research papers, MAPS display in its web page since maybe 2010, I guess. So, for the last decade, when and where you play such an important role, what's coming up now? What's the most important step now?

Michael:One thing I want to mention is all the people that are working more behind the scenes to make this possible. You know, you're mentioning all the papers and stuff. We've got an amazing group of what I call young people now, because I'm in my seventies, the amazing group of just very bright, talented, highly trained and educated people working at MAPS and that, so a benefit corporation and it's growing, one of the challenges as it growths, MAPS, you know, in the beginning, there were just a few of us, now they're between MAPS and not public benefit corporation I think it's more than a hundred and they're hiring people fast because it's a huge thing to run these different trials in different countries.

Tisha:Where would you like to see this work go? Or where would you like to see it evolve over time?

Michael:I'd like to see the series of Psychedelic treatment training and research in every village and town in the world. [laughs] Again, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, It's not a proven therapy yet. You got to make that clear until we finish phase-three, we don't know. And I think, you know, it'll remain to be seen if it's approved, how well it's accepted. We think the demand will be great. And I expect, obviously, we think we're correct in that, but not, it's not for everyone. Some people would rather just take a daily medicine to decrease their symptoms. This is a different model. You know, people have to be one thing that we prepare people for is, you know, this is about working with the underlying cause of the symptoms, which can involve sometimes having more symptoms, more prominent symptoms first. It can be an intense and challenging process. It's not about suppressing your symptoms, so, and people have to be prepared and choose that that's something they want. So not everybody's going to want it, but I think a lot of people are, and I think it's going to call for kind of a different model.

You know, the sessions are longer, but they're also possibilities for group therapy. And some people might be able to have somewhat shorter sessions if they have a good situation to go home to. So, I think, and the opportunity for young therapists to get experience if these are training centers as well, and also to do research about these new indications. So part of, you know, one of the exciting things, I think that MAPS and MAPS public benefit corporation are doing is not only this treatment model, but the drug development model. They're a drug development company. They're a pharma company, but they're doing it in a nonprofit, you know, in a public benefit way. And I don't think there's a precedent for that in the actual public benefit pharma company and, you know, public benefit corporations there have scorecards for different kinds of public benefit corporations, but there isn't a scorecard for pharma public benefit corporation. These are my understanding is there hasn't ever been one. So, they're all not only developing MDMA, but showing a model for drug development it's different.

Aníbal:It's amazing.

Michael:That I think it doesn't mean for-profit drug development will go away or should go away necessarily, but there's a place for that. But also, if there are companies working on a public benefit model, it puts downward pressure on prices for one thing, but also, you know, no one else would have studied MDMA, wasn't a good idea for profit because you can't patent it. And MAPS actually had an anti-patent strategy to prevent us, them, anyone from getting any use patents. So, you know, MAPS, could've theoretically tried to get a use patent for different indications, but then wanted it to stay in the non-profit world.

And so, they hired a patent attorney to help them prevent themselves from or anybody else from getting any use patents by putting everything out in the public domain. So, it's a very exciting model for developing drugs that otherwise wouldn't be developed and for doing it in a way that maximizes public benefit instead of profit. So, I think that's a whole exciting aspect of this that I really enjoy that part of it too. It feels...

Tisha:It's groundbreaking. You can really get behind, it feels good.

Michael:Yeah. People know when we're talking about our study results, no one's going to make any money selling MDMA except for MAPS. It's the only, the only shareholder in the public benefit corporation is the non-profit. So, it feels very clean to be able to, we report our results based on what it's doing for patients.

Aníbal:Michael, can we say we do have now a psychedelic science and a psychedelic medicine?

Michael:Yeah, I think we do, you know, there's not only all this research going on, especially with psilocybin and MDMA, but also with other psychedelics. And now, you know, universities are...Psychedelic centers are cropping up at major universities all over the country now. And when I speak at, you know, mainstream conferences, like the American Psychiatric Association or the American Psychological Association, there are always lots of residents and, you know, psychiatry residents and psychology graduate students and medical students coming up saying, you know, this is what I want to do with my career. There are going to be tracks and graduate programs that people can choose. Psychedelic medicine is already beginning to happen. So, I think, yeah, and you know, another challenge will be to, you know, work for an organization to support, you know, training and certification of psychedelic therapist. You know, MAPS doesn't want to be the gatekeeper. Yeah. MAPS wants to use its own MDMA responsibly and make sure people are trained. But ultimately, I think there need, hopefully there'll be, you know, a subspecialty in psychedelic medicine.

And I also, the other thing I hope for is ultimately that this will pave the way for other kinds of views that it's not just medicalized or that, you know, I think, hopefully we'll get to a model where people can responsibly access these medicines for personal growth and development and spiritual practice or whatever their responsible way of wanting to use these kinds of medicines would be. I hope eventually it'll that'll happen too. I think it's really important that we have him in for treating people that are suffering and dying so much. But ultimately, I think it, hopefully, attitudes will open up about the value of these medicines if they're used wisely. And that's a big IF, you know, it depends so much on the way they're used with the intention and what the certain setting is.

Aníbal:Michael such a well succeeded journey, yours, congratulations.

Michael:Thank you.

Aníbal:A long one and well succeeded. And so, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Michael:Thank you, really enjoyed talking to you.

Tisha:Yeah. Thank you for the time. We really appreciate your wisdom and all of the work that you're doing.

Michael:Thanks for your interest in them.

Recorded 3rd December 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Integrating IFS and 12 steps, with Robert Falconer 34:06

Robert Falconer has an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology, with a focus on the history of religions.In the early 1980s he pursued his masters degree in psychology while balancing a career in construction and real estate investment.When Robert started as a therapist, he focused on the work of Milton Erickson and hypnotherapy. He then moved into working with Jack and Helen Watkins; who developed ego state therapy. In his career as a therapist, Robert spent considerable time at the Esalen Institute and decades involved in gestalt therapy. Robert has been familiar with IFS therapy for 20 years, but completely devoted himself to the model for the last 10 years. Most recently Robert co-authored with Dick Schwartz a book entitled “Many Minds, One Self:evidence for a radical shift in paradigm“

In this episode, based in his long experience with addictions, Bob integrates IFS and 12 steps approach. 
You can know more about Bob and his activities at his website - https://robertfalconer.us

 

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks, we are welcoming back Robert Falconer. Robert Falconer has his undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology with a focus on the history of religions. In the early 1980s, he pursued his master's degree in psychology. In his career as a therapist, Robert spent considerable time at the Esalen Institute and decades involved in gestalt therapy. Robert has been familiar with the IFS therapy model for 20 years, but completely devoted himself to IFS for the last 10 years. For more than a decade, he was the director of the Institute for trauma-oriented psychotherapy. He has published six books, co-edited four and most recently co-authored one with Dick Schwartz, entitled Many Minds One Self.

Bob thank you so much for joining us again. Welcome back.

Robert Falconer: I really enjoy talking with you two.

Aníbal Henriques: So welcome back, Bob. Last time we met it was April 2020, the early days in this pandemic. So, it's about seven months ago. How have you been throughout those pandemic days?

Bob: It's actually been amazingly easy for me. I live up on a mountain side and often in regular times I would only go into town once or twice a week. And at the beginning of the pandemic, I was engaged to a wonderful Korean woman, who's a couple’s therapist in Korea. And because she was here when the pandemic got really bad, so we got married and she did not go back to Korea because there was like this one-time change in the immigration law, because of the extreme danger of travel. So, I'm really one of those...I shouldn't brag about it, but the lucky few who's been blessed by the pandemic.

I've gotten married, which, and I work from home and I have more work than ever because so many people are so distressed.

Aníbal: So, wishing you the best.

Tisha: Yes, congratulations. So today we discussed talking about your work with addictions. Could you share a little bit about your background? What brings you to addictions work?

Bob: Okay. In the last podcast we did, I talked about my own background of severe abuse. Both my parents were addicts. My father drank at least a six pack of beer every evening. And that didn't count as drinking. You know, that was just like baseline. And mom was a binge drinker and a prescription pill addict. And when I was very young in high school, I was a binge drinker and pretty severe, but I got out of that in college. And through some blessing, I don't seem to have that addictive gene and I have used wine and I've smoked marijuana and I've done a fair amount of psychedelics, but I worked a great deal with Pia Mellody who I think is one of the real lights of addiction treatment.And I asked her, you know "P do you think I'm an addict?" And she said no. After giving me all these questionnaires and stuff. So, I don't think I'm in denial.

Aníbal: So, Bob, how should we see and understand addictions?

Bob: Well, not the way most therapists do. I think that this is one of the truly wonderful things about IFS, is it has revolutionized the way, the approach to addictions. Let's see, when an addict comes into your office, they're going to be probably two parts and that's all you're going to see, two parts fighting each other. One of which says "You're an idiot. Why'd you take that drink? I hate you, don't ever drink again." This would be a manager in IFS talk. And the other one, just giving that other part the finger and saying "I don't care, It feels good."

And the traditional thing in addiction treatment, and it's sort of the obvious thing to do is you want to join with that critical part that's trying to cut down the addiction, but actually what this does is it increases the shame in the system. It's spurs that firefighter part, the one who just wants to get out of pain to drink more and it accelerates the problem. So, in IFS land, instead of joining with that manager right away and trying to shut down the addiction, we try and get that manager part to calm down, not be quite so critical. Let us get to know the firefighter from a compassionate place. So that would be the big revolution that IFS brings, or one of the big revolutions that IFS brings to addiction treatment.

Tisha: What kind of challenges do you bump into in working with that, that polarization?

Bob: Oh, a lot. If that was all that was there, if all the, you know, when they first come into your office, that's probably all you're going to see, those two parts fighting each other. If that was all that was there, that the, it wouldn't be hopeless just as the people believe, but in IFS we know that's not all that's there. There's also a Self and there's also an exile somewhere down under there. And when we can get those other two aspects of the person up into the field, the addiction problem becomes quite soluble and fairly easy to work with. But these two guys are in major war, there's a big civil war here. They sometimes they don't want to listen.

Aníbal: Bob in the early 1930s, someone with addiction visited the noted swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, for help with his alcoholism. Jung determined that this case was medically hopeless and that it could only find relief through a vital spiritual experience. Jung directed him to the Oxford group that would become the origins of AA's founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Robert Smith. So, Bob, can an IFS therapist nowadays do better than Carl Jung expected back then, or should we just simply direct those patients to AA?

Bob: [Laughs] I love these questions Aníbal. Hum, I think IFS is offering the same answer basically in a different language. Self is a gateway to spirituality. And Carl Jung said Spiritus Contra Spiritum, you need access to the spiritual realm to counter spiritum, the spirits, alcoholic spirits. It's the same thing we're offering in IFS in a very different language. We're offering Self, which is a doorway to spirit. And I think it's a doorway to spirit sort of, I don't want to...well, I'll say it dumbed down enough so that the most materialistic person can let it in. And just like in AA, you know, they use the God word a lot, but they also talk about higher power. And this is because there were a lot of atheists in early AA and they needed a language that allowed access to spirit that didn't evoke God and traditional religious imagery, so higher power and Self, I think both do the same thing. They allow access to spirit for people who have been poisoned against it by their experiences with religion.

Tisha: Are there other ways that IFS and 12 Steps or AA overlap?

Bob: I think they're all over the place. And it really saddens me that more therapists don't see this. You know, there recently was a big meta-study of all the studies that have been done on the effectiveness of AA. And the evidence is clear now, it works. It works better than almost every kind of therapy and it doesn't cost anything. So, it really saddens me that therapists are so down on it. And I think that's largely because the people who come into the therapist office are the ones who sort of couldn't work the AA program for some reason. So, they get a skewed population, but let me go back to your question. I got on my soap box a little, I apologize.

The very first step of the 12 Steps is, you know, we were powerless over alcohol and came to realize our lives were unmanageable. Now, that's exactly the IFS word - manager. What this first step is saying is our managers couldn't do it. This part up here in the civil war, you know, the manager who was trying to silence the firefighter, the manager cannot do it. That's the very first message we want to get through as an IFS therapist. The manager cannot do this, we have to turn to Self. And that's steps two and three, you know, came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That's Self. And then turned our lives [inaudible] care of, and now the God word came in. God as we understood him. But basically, the first three steps, our managers can't do it, we need to bring in Self, which is exactly what an IFS therapist will be doing with an addict.

Aníbal: So, you find IFS particularly powerful to help with addictions. And let me just remind you this, that recent studies give the 12 Steps, increased rates and lengths of abstinence compared with other common treatments. So according to your experiences, 12 Steps, the best way to go when it comes to addictions?

Bob: It helps so many people. I would encourage anyone who came to me to at least try, try a meeting. I actually, you know, I'm training a lot of therapists now. I try and get every therapist to go to at least a couple of different kinds of 12 Steps meetings, just so they get a sense of what's going on. And 12 Step meetings they're not highly centrally organized. So, the different meetings can be very, very, very different. So, I think, you know, I really would like to see every therapist go to a few 12 Steps meetings. And it's not just alcohol. You know, there's, Al-anon for people who have alcoholic relatives, adult ACOA - Adult children of alcoholics, Co-Dependents Anonymous, Food Overeaters Anonymous. There's even Survivors of Incest Anonymous. I mean, there's...Oh, and there's a new one for people who talk too much, it's called on and on.

[Laughs]

Tisha: Yeah, one thing I really love that's such, probably an important part of AA's effectiveness is the community. It's like another, another sea of Self.

Bob: It should be. What's his name? Johnathan Hari, who talks about the opposite of addiction is connection. Yeah. And we don't...in IFS that's one thing we don't have so effectively, there is not a, not an easy way for people like coming out of a Level 1 or a Level 2 to establish an IFS community. I try and encourage everyone to form some sort of ongoing group. And I'm in one with a couple other therapists I really like. But we don't have that built into our program and it's too bad. There is one thing I want to go on a little here on huge advance that I think IFS brings to the 12 Steps is the knowledge of exiles.

You know, both IFS and the 12 Steps, I would think the first job of an IFS therapist with an addict is to get both the manager and the firefighter relating to Self instead of fighting each other. That's number one. But the number two thing is to get permission from them to go to the exile they're both trying to protect. AA does not have a clear program for getting to an exile and for unburdening the exile when you get there. I mean, Mary Kruger, who is an absolutely wonderful therapist, especially with eating disorders, but all kinds of addictions, she sees the 12 Steps is basically a very elaborate and detailed unburdening pattern. And I think there's a lot to be said for that, but the explicit recognition of the exile and getting to the exile is something, I think, that comes from IFS that can really, really, really help the 12 Steps.

Tisha: I know it's probably not great to generalize, but are there common exiles that lead to addiction?

Bob: There's one word that's screaming at me, shame, shame. Yeah, because once these, you know, once the cycle starts, it tends to accelerate. That's, that's how, you know, an addict from somebody who's just abusing alcohol, right? The, the addict will just get going around this cycle faster of drinking and drinking and more self-criticism. And that's shame. What the manager is trying to do is to shame the firefighter into stopping. But the reservoir of shame is the exile. So, once any kind of addictive cycle starts, whatever the exile started with, they're going to be filled up with shame and just flooded with shame. So that would be the, the first thing I would look for.

Aníbal: Bob, Johann Hari, you have just mentioned him. Generally stand the best seller writer in his very acclaimed Ted talk called Everything you think you'll know about addictions is wrong. He claims that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection. Making the point that the addiction is just a reaction to disconnection that all we need is to bond. Would you agree? Or do you want to comment?

Bob: [Inaudible]. I love his work, Johann Hari, but I know connection's a huge thing. However, we need to get that exile unburdened and connection alone won't do that. So, that would be, I think, the part that IFS adds that the 12 Steps and other traditions don't know about, going to the exile, witnessing it completely where it's stuck, getting it out of there and doing a classic IFS unburdening. And then the manager and the firefighter can find new roles.

Tisha: How do you work with clients that have active addictions? Are those clients that you'll see when they have really strong firefighters that are up?

Bob: Yep. Yep. And I did a... I was on staff at a couple of trainings in an inpatient eating disorders clinic. Now there, you sort of have to collude with the managers because the people will starve themselves to death if you don't. So, it's very tricky. You know, Dick and... Talking about firefighters in general and addictions are a classic kind of firefighter activity, Dick always says, you know, there's a pyramid of them. You start with relatively easy things like, you know, an extra piece slice of cake or something and then you go up to, well, maybe a joint, then maybe cocaine and speed, and then maybe cutting. And you know, you go up this thing. But, at the top of everybody's pyramid is suicide, or pretty much everybody. Every time I make a generalization like that, somebody comes along and proves me wrong. Almost everybody, their number one top of the list firefighter is suicide. Now, you obviously, can't sort of, you have to sort of join with the managers about suicide, but you can do it from Self, as opposed from a managerial energy. You can say stuff like "Yeah, I can understand that you feel so terrible that you think the best thing you can do for this person is to kill yourself. And that makes a lot of sense to me. And I want you to know I'm going to do everything I can to prevent you from killing yourself and I get what you're doing and trying to do. And I really sympathize with you." That's a very different message than the classic shaming, no suicide contract. That's the same kind of attitude I want to take from the suicidal part and due toward the addicted part. You know, like the people in the eating disorders clinic. "Yeah. I get that you're in so much pain that this anorexia and this starvation feels good and healthy and all that and I really want to get to know the parts of you that are behind this, and I'm really sympathetic towards them and I'm going to do everything I can to keep your body alive and you may hate me for it, but..." You know, so it's a very different attitude from the classic sort of shaming managerial...Did that answer the question?

Tisha: Yeah, absolutely.

Aníbal: Bob, is there any link between addictions and legacy burdens or between addictions and unattached burdens, another topic of special interest to you?

Bob: Oh, you're asking some of my favorite questions Aníbal. Thank you.

Aníbal: You're welcome.

Bob: Yeah. Addictions are often legacy burdens and actually the guy who did one of the major studies of epigenetics, you know, how things are passed down outside of the genome, did it...Diaz. I'm forgetting his first name, but he noticed in that the ghettos of Georgia where he was, families would have multi-generational things of addiction. So, he thought "Hmm, Hmm. Could, could there be something biological behind this?" And he did the classic study with mice, where he would expose the male mouse to a smell while giving it a shock and it's sort of a smell with sort of like cherries or almonds, something in there, a nice smell. And then he would take sperm from the male mouse and impregnate a female mouse. And the children of the female mouse would have that same aversion to that same smell. Never having met the dad.

Aníbal: Amazing.

Bob: No, so it, yes, addictions and these kinds of things can be transmitted intergenerationally. And another thing I think is really important in this, and this is so classic in alcoholism, one generation will be alcoholics drunks, the next generation will be teetotalers. They won't drink at all and you think "Oh problem solved." But the generation after that it's drunks again. So even though the direct behavior isn't there, there's something that can get passed down intergenerationally, which in IFS we deal with as a legacy burden that does transmit addiction.

Aníbal: Bob, it looks like you find that IFS has many to offer to this field of addictions and IFS can be particularly powerful to help you with addictions. And if yes, can IFS lead to abstinence as well?

Bob: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And you know, this is something that Dick and I disagree about a little bit. I think there's some people who can't never take another drink in their life. They just have this thing built in, whereas Dick gets really upset with the AA thing of people coming in and saying "Hi, I'm Dick. I'm an alcoholic." He feels that's labeling the whole Self from a part and all of that. But I believe there's some people who can never take another drink. And I think IFS can lead to abstinence, but people need an ongoing program. You know, just like I believe IFS people need to have some kind of ongoing program, some kind of daily check-in, some kind of continuing personal work. Otherwise their mental health tends to deteriorate, same with the addicts.

Aníbal: Portugal has been depicted as a good example, as a country that since 2002 decriminalized drugs and offered the victim an opportunity to reconnect and the amazing results we can witness now in Portugal, but no other country really followed in spite of the amazing results. How do you understand this Portuguese miracle?

Bob: I think it's wonderful. And I think the rest of the world ought to be adopting what you're doing in Portugal. There, I think there's one thing, there is a huge industry behind keeping drugs illegal. There are so many people in jail. This is all...there's a tremendous vested interest in keeping drugs illegal and also the government and this vested interest have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, issuing propaganda about how we have to deal with drugs in this certain way. And maybe they believe their own propaganda. But I think the Portuguese model is ideal and wonderful. And I mean, so blatantly, obviously better, it astounds me that people can stay blind to it, but people do.

Tisha: I heard recently someone say the war on drugs is over and the drugs won.

Bob: [Laughs] Look at this country where, you know, psilocybin and MDMA are now being recognized as very valuable medical...

Tisha: Will you share with us a little bit about your involvement in that?

Bob: Okay. Yeah, gladly. Like I said, when I was in high school, I was a bad binge drinker. I mean, you know, it wouldn't be unusual for me to drink a case of beer in a day. You know, when I got to college, it was in the sixties and I started taking LSD, I lost all interest in alcohol and I didn't, I wasn't, I was taking LSD in what I thought was a search for God and spiritual growth, but there was no therapeutic help. You know, it was just the kind of experience that psychedelics allowed me to just went "Why would I want to get drunk?"

Bob: You know, it's like, it just seems...So, in my own history, that was a big influence. And then after I got out of college, I quit doing them for a long time. But lately, these studies by Mithoefer on MDMA and PTSD are astounding. It's clearly way, way, way ahead of, you know, most other treatments and the stuff with psilocybin, especially around terminal anxiety, people who were dying and who were terrified to die, incredible results. And actually, Nancy Morgan and I are offering trainings to people who provide these medicines to get them the basics of IFS, because we believe that IFS should be the therapeutic model for the medicine assisted psychotherapy. And Dick is very much behind this, which is, you know, requires some courage to want to have IFS associated with psychedelic medicine, but...and Mithoefer himself was trained in IFS. So, and he is, he's the guy who started all the trials of MDMA and treating PTSD in case you guys aren't up on that.

Aníbal: We are. He's coming to the show, our show, next week, I guess.

Tisha: Tuesday, we're going to speak with him. Have you had a chance to use IFS with, with someone who's getting treatment with psilocybin or MDMA? How is it, what's it like?

Bob: This is a complex subject, but it depends on the dosing. The dosing Mithoefer uses and the MAPS studies are based on is relatively low dose, so that the people are available throughout the entire experience for therapeutic intervention. Many people use a much higher dose, which they would refer to as a breakthrough dose and then I think the IFS is so important in preparation. And the preparation is basically getting permission from the protectors to do this in the first place. Sometimes the protectors are going to say no, and then you say, no, we're not going to do this.

You know, and the integration. It's like the MDMA can flood a person's system with compassion and self-compassion, and that's basically what happens. And it opens up their whole, you know, the whole structure of how their parts interrelate. And then afterwards, that structure starts to come back together over that evening and the next few days, and I think that's the incredible therapeutic window, you know. Because a few little thing is that structure coming back together can change the whole way all the parts relate to each other. So especially with the breakthrough dosage of MDMA or quite a few people are using a combination of MDMA and Psilocybin, and it's the preparation and the integration and with Mithoefer's much lower dose very often the IFS works right throughout the sessions.

Aníbal: Amazing. Bob, what's coming up to you for the coming months, both as a teacher and as a writer? I guess you are. You keep writing, right?

Bob: Yeah. Yeah. I have a big book project I'm doing, which is...My tentative title is The Others Within. And you know, it's on guides and unattached burdens. When we go in far enough into our own system, we find things that are not parts and are not Self. And what in the world are these and how can we best deal with them? I had some cases that were very, very, made a huge impression on me about eight years ago and I've been researching this ever since, and I'm starting, I'm getting really close, I've got outlines and stuff. I'm getting really close to actually producing the book and I've taught a couple courses on it. I've got another one coming up through Michael Paterski in Poland and his group. But Dick wants these limited to people who have at least had a Level 1 because I think this material can be easily misused and misinterpreted. And then I'm doing another...doing a class for Derek Scott in January on addictions, but it'll only be like three and a half hours. And then I'm, I am doing more of these trainings for consciousness medicine, psychedelic medicine providers, and that's like really IFS basics to help to help them work with their clientele.

Tisha: How do people find your trainings specifically? Do you have a website or is it through the IFS Institute?

Bob: Yeah, I do have a website. I just got one https://robertfalconer.us.

Aníbal: We'll put it on our show notes. Yes.

Bob: And I'm really bad at promotion and all that stuff. And until this year, everything I've done has been purely word of mouth.

Aníbal: Yeah. It's a good way to go. So, Robert, it's such a joy to talk with you and learn from you. You have so much experience and wisdom to share and teach. So, thank you again so much for having us.

Bob: It's been a delight.

Aníbal: And happy Thanksgiving.

Bob: Thank you.

Aníbal: So, I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Bob: Me too.

Tisha: Thanks Bob. It's great to talk to you again.

Recorded 29th November 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Janina Fisher Perspective on Trauma and IFS 43:20

Janina Fisher, PhD is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Instructor at the Trauma Center, an outpatient clinic and research center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Known for her expertise as both a therapist and consultant, she is also past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, a faculty member of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fisher has been an invited speaker at the Cape Cod Institute, Harvard Medical School Conference Series, the EMDR International Association Annual Conference, University of Wisconsin, University of Westminster in London, the Psychotraumatology Institute of Europe, and the Esalen Institute. Dr. Fisher lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of research and treatment and how to introduce these newer trauma treatment paradigms in traditional therapeutic approaches.

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks, we have the honor of welcoming Dr. Janina Fisher. Janina is the assistant educational director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. She's a former instructor at Harvard Medical School and an instructor at the Trauma Center, an outpatient clinic and research center founded by Besser van der Kolk. She is an international expert on the treatment of trauma and is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, Overcoming Self-Alienation, and his coauthor with Pat Ogden of Sensory Motor Psychotherapy, Interventions for Attachment and Trauma. She's known for her work on integrating neuroscience research and newer body centered interventions into traditional psychotherapy approaches. Thank you so much for being here with us today on IFS Talks, Janina.

Janina Fisher: It's a pleasure.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Janina, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up for you today, hearing your bio?

Janina: You know, I realized that it's missing two things, which are probably important for this audience. One of the things that I specialize in, besides somatic approaches to trauma, is integrating parts approaches to trauma, a lot of IFS and some hypnotic ego state work. So, this is, I feel like I'm talking to my people.

Aníbal: Yes.

Janina: We're the people who know about parts.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Tisha: Janina, will you tell us a little bit about your backstory? What got you interested to explore working with trauma as a career?

Janina: I was inspired by Judith Herman. I can still remember the day. It was September 1989. It was the first day of my pre-doctoral internship and she spoke at a grand round, and she talked... Remember 1989 was still the age of Freud. I mean, still the age where everybody was very much a proponent of the talking cure. And she said something that just changed my world. She said “Doesn’t it make more sense that people have developed symptoms because of real things that happened to them, not because of their infantile fantasies?” And I thought "Oh my God, of course, this makes so much more sense." And, so I just was inspired in that moment to commit my career to the study and treatment of trauma.

Aníbal: Janina, you are a renowned expert on trauma. In this amazing book of yours Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, 2017, you put together the best in trauma theory and trauma therapy. We can see the work of giants in the field of trauma theory like Judith Herman that you just named, Bessel van der Kolk, Onno van der Hart and many others, also the influence of big names in attachment and development psychology like Alan Shore and Dan Siegel. On the somatic side, names like Ron Kurtz and Pat Ogden, the Hakomi and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy originators, and also, Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory, and so many more we can see that influenced you and that you honor throughout your book.

Aníbal: So, your book is a masterclass on trauma and thanks for writing it.

Janina: Oh, thank you.

Aníbal: So, was there something originally that attracted you to trauma work besides the work of Judith Herman?

Janina: You know, there wasn't anything I was conscious of at the time. In 1989, I was just conscious of feeling just inspired. Probably, 10 years later, I discovered, from my 85-year-old father, I discovered that both of my parents had been trauma survivors, which he had never disclosed prior and so then it all made sense. I thought "Well, no wonder I felt this passion to do work with trauma." I didn't know why, but of course, in that moment, I knew why.

Aníbal: Janina, coming back to your book. In your book, are you describing and suggesting an integrated model, eventually the Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment, or are you suggesting a treatment paradigm or a treatment in general, guidelines or all these and above?

Janina: Probably all of the above. I think, you know, I think the trauma field started out as a field of integrating models because in 1989, we didn't have formalized trauma treatment models. We had the talking cure. If you talk about it, you'll be okay, which didn't seem to work very well. So, all of us in the trauma field, we just begged and borrowed any technique and if it worked, we said "Oh, this is trauma treatment."

Janina: In 1996, I was overwhelmed with a number of very severely traumatized clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder. And in desperation, I picked up The Mosaic Mind, Dick Schwartz's book...

Aníbal: Oh, that one, yes.

Janina: And it was another one of these moments of inspiration where I thought "Oh, this is how we should treat dissociative disorders." And it became, it really transformed my practice. I'm self-taught at IFS, but I love it and I love the whole, I think the whole kind of ethos of it, as well as the techniques.

Aníbal: So, what attracted you into IFS, it was that book from Richard Schwartz, The Mosaic Mind?

Janina: It was this idea that these very highly symptomatic out of control high risk suicidal clients had a higher Self inside them. I didn't have to save them. They were fully capable of saving themselves and that's, and so I began to teach my clients how to find Self or how to find Self-energy, because what I found, and Dick and I have had many, many discussions about this over 20 years. The severe clients whom I see, have a very hard time developing Self-energy in the usual ways of asking parts to step back or step aside. But I found they could still develop Self-energy if I help them to consciously and intentionally increase their curiosity, increase their capacity to find calm and clarity, even if we approached it more cognitively, instead of more spiritually, it could work for these very, very extreme cases.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Tisha: I was listening to a talk that you gave on YouTube and you talked about healing trauma and gave this beautiful quote from Rachel Yehuda who asks "What does it mean to treat trauma? Does it mean to treat the event, or does it mean to treat the shame, the sense of defenselessness, the hopelessness..." And I was struck by how, how beautiful that holding of the space of what happens for our clients when they are working through trauma to really have that perspective and understanding.

Janina: And it's so...

Tisha: Beautiful.

Janina: To me it's so clarifying, because it's so often when we talk about trauma, the assumption is we mean the event, as opposed to the parts, as opposed to the... What I call the body and feeling memories held by the parts

Aníbal: Janina, it looks like, when it comes to using parts language, to address the splitting resulting from trauma, you were influenced and inspired both by the works of Onno van der Hart's Theory of Structural Dissociation and by IFS. Do they integrate well? How do they go together?

Janina: I think so. I think, I mean, again, if Dick were here, he and I would have, you know, we would have our usual disagreement, but I, again, I'm coming from the perspective of severely traumatized people who struggle just to get through the day. And so, the theories of Onno van der Hart bring this idea that we all have an instinct to go on with normal life, to fight to function, to fight to raise our children in a loving, healthy environment. And to me that's more than a manager. And I think that my somatic approach influences me because that instinct to function no matter what and every therapist knows that there, you know, there are times in the therapist's life when we're struggling with something in our own lives, a loss, a tragedy, illness, and we think "How can I possibly be there for someone else?" But as soon as the client shows up, there we are, that instinct to keep on keeping on is more than a manager. So, I started to integrate the clinical techniques of IFS with this theoretical model, from Onno van der Hart, so that we had a more, a more neuro-biological theory with the beautiful, and I think healing IFS techniques.

Tisha: Why is including the body so important in the healing of trauma and in your work?

Janina: Because, we now know, thanks to Bessel van der Kolk, that trauma has very dramatic physiological effects. And that most likely we believe because from an evolutionary sense, the cave men and women whose trauma responses remained active live to become the next generation. Because if those physical effects of trauma get reactivated, anytime we're triggered, it means that the body continues to perpetuate the sense of threat or the sense of shame or the sense of being compelled to do what we don't want to do or the impulse to fight. So we have to, I mean, we have years of research that shows that if we don't address the body, either directly or indirectly, we don't, we don't resolve the, what we call the implicit aspect of trauma, which are the non-verbal memories that I believe are held by the parts, that the parts hold those nonverbal somatic responses. And so, we have to work with the parts, but we have to work with the parts and the body.

Aníbal: Janina, you say you believe the key to healing is not just knowing what happened, but to transforming how the mind, body, and soul still remember it. So somehow you help your clients to remember traumatic events differently. So, what does different mean?

Janina: Well, I actually don't try to help anybody remember traumatic events. What I do is I help them to understand their feeling and body memories as the trauma they're caring. So, rather than say what, you know, let's let that little part tell us what happened, I'm more likely to say, notice what gets triggered for her in this moment, because that's what I'm most interested in. I'm most interested in the implicit memories. Most of the time, most clients know, at least in a general sense what's happened to them. The, the ex, you know, if we go for the exile who holds the details of the event, that obviously brings more awareness, but it doesn't necessarily resolve the trauma.

I'm working right now with a client. I'm doing video sessions with a client of an IFS therapist. She's my former client. She's Frank Anderson's current client, and we're going to be doing a workshop together in which we compare and contrast our related, but slightly different ways of working. So, her exiles are sharing a tremendous number of traumatic event memories, but she has a very, very difficult time after they do so, because she has such intense physical and emotional responses. So, I'm using my integrated model to help her, to resolve the feeling and body memory piece of it. And, and I think it's a wonderful collaboration because she benefits so much from the IFS piece of her work and she also benefits so much from what we do.

Tisha: Can you share what some of those techniques look like?

Janina: So, I'll use this client as an example. In that, in the first of the series of sessions we scheduled, she said to me "I have a problem. I can't find Self. And my parts don't like Self. They think Self is another part. And they're really freaked out by this part that they don't know." And I said "Oh, a shame that those parts are so afraid of Self." I said "Self is not a part. Self is a place in your brain.” And we're just offering the parts a place in the brain that's already there. They can choose to take advantage of that Self-energy or that place in their brain. I have to be careful not to say Self to her. I always say that place in your brain. And since then her Self-energy has been growing, because there is no longer all this kind of interference by protectors "Stay away from Self, scary." I taught her clarity by giving her a somatic cue. I said, you know, what's missing here. I did it this way. If this is...You know, somatic therapy is not just about what do you feel in your body? It's the therapist using his or her own body. So, I said to her, I said, you know, each part sees the world through its little telescope, right? So, they all look through their little telescopes and they see just that part of the world that is scary or meaningful to them. They need you to have a wide-angle lens. And I, and I brought my hands up to show her the difference between a zoom lens and a wide-angle lens. So, now she's developing clarity by using her wide-angle lens. And, so we've been doing this with, you know, her protector parts didn't like the word compassion, compassion, bad idea, not going near that, god forbid.

So, I started playing with the idea, I said “Well, how about kindness? Would it be okay just to offer these young parts kindness?” And she said “No, I don't think they'll go along with kindness, but empathy I can do.” So, now we're working on, I'm just helping her to empathize. And that seems, I mean, you know, obviously we get interference from various protectors, but, but in general, she can do empathy. So, there are just these modifications that help her to begin to develop more Self-energy. And even the, and for instance, another little minor modification I use for trauma is instead of asking parts to step back, or step aside, I asked, would you ask those parts if they'd be willing to sit back? Because what I find in the very traumatized clients is that step back feels like rejection to the young exile parts. And, and then that triggers them, but they're okay with sitting back, right? "So, Mike, I don't want you to go away, but would you be willing just to sit back a little bit."

Aníbal: Lovely.

Janina: And also, I don't know if Dick still uses this language, but he did back in the late nineties. He would talk about what this part or that part be willing to step back and make more room for You. Is that language still used?

Aníbal: Yes. It's in the manual.

Janina: Because it's a wonderful language. And I find the parts really respond to that too.

Aníbal: Janina, you have a chapter on your book called repairing the past. So, is this possible to repair the past?

Janina: Well, I think that's a great question, so thank you for asking it. We can't undo the past. We can't make it not happen, but we can repair. We can repair the wounds of these little parts by providing them what I call the missing experience, whatever that missing experience might be. So, with the client I've been working with recently, she has a teenage part that was molested by an adult she trusted and the repair...So, we had to really, we had to really play around with what that teenager needed and to use the images the part kept giving her to help us figure out what was that part asking for? What was the experience that was missing then? And, as we found it, it was really being heard. It was being acknowledged. It was being believed. So, as she has been able to communicate, I am here and I do believe you, and I'm going to be a helper, not someone who's failed to help. You know, so instead of unburdening, which again, I think I've found unburdening works with clients like us, but I haven't had such good results in clients with the DID and various severe trauma related disorders. It's as if we unburden one part and three more pop up. Then you unburden those three, right? And five more pop up. So, the missing experience approach seems to settle more of the parts down and to provide this sense of healing and sense of that it's different now.

Aníbal: You say also, I'm quoting you again "In the mental health world that rejects the notion that personality and identity can be fragmented and compartmentalized, therapists are rarely trained to see the splits, much less the life or death battle for control being waged by selves with opposite and aims and instincts." So, it's still like you describe, your therapist training programs and this lack of skills to see the splits?

Janina: Again, in the traditional mental health world. In my world, most people believe in parts. Okay.

Aníbal: Good.

Janina: But I'm very blessed. When, you know, when I, for example, consult to clinics and psychiatric hospitals and residential programs, I hear the same old language that has always been used, which is that client is borderline attention-seeking and manipulative. And you know, and no recognition...There's a lot of research that shows that dissociative disorders are dramatically underdiagnosed because it's much easier to call them borderline and relegate them to the bad client, you know, category. So, what the beautiful thing is, the approach I wrote about in Healing the Fragmented Selves has been effective at the state hospital level. So, I've been able to do consulting to several state hospitals, to teach them to understand their borderline patients as fragmented and to understand that the suicidality and the high-risk behavior is really a reflection of the battle inside.

Tisha: There's so much shame and self-loathing in the system of trauma survivors and that very dynamic that you describe really contributes to that. What do you do you do to work people through shame and the self-loathing and self-criticism?

Janina: That's where a parts model is our best hope. So, I usually reframe shame as a relationship between a critical, a harsh, critical part and an ashamed child. So, I ask the client to say "Oh, I'm such a terrible person and it's all my fault." And I say "Is that the voice of a part accusing you of being at fault, or is that the shame of the child?"

Janina: And most people say it's both, when given that choice. So, then what I have to do, which is very much in keeping with IFS, is I have to consistently, without fail, reframe the shame as a part. Which is very hard for many therapists, because you have to have a willingness and a comfort level with interrupting. I think that's true with IFS, right? You have to have a comfort level with interrupting to say "Oh, so a part of you feels ashamed." But it's, I've found a parts’ approach the most effective way, because then I can help the client develop a relation of Self to a shamed part relationship. I can help the client even develop some compassion for this, this critical part that keeps saying you're horrible and you're disgusting, etcetera. So, I reframe the critical part as nervous. I say "You know, that part is such a nervous. Now, think of that part is asking you questions. Are you going to fail? Are you going to blow? Is it your fault? Are you going to look stupid? It's just so worried, It can hardly stand it.” And when they start to hear the judgmental part, as nervous, some of the intimidation that goes with that part decreases, then it's easier to have more compassion for the ashamed child part. But I think that what's tricky about shame is that both, it's a relationship between two parts. It's not one thing.

Tisha: Right. There's the shaming manager and then an exile that holds shame. So, getting the nuance of different...

Janina: Yeah, but the shaming manager has a kind of firefighter energy because it's intense often and people really report feeling intimidated by it.

Aníbal: Janina. You also say that we own some parts and that these own others. And why is that?

Janina: I think, you know, I think it's an idea very consistent with IFS. I think most people identify with their managers. That's me. That's why I am. I'm a perfectionist I'm of this I'm of that. And they disown their exiles. And often they disown their firefighters depending on the...You know, sometimes, you know, when people over identify with suicidal parts, that's what gets them in trouble. They don't, instead of disowning, well, not disowning, instead of relating to the suicidality as a part, they relate to it as me and that overidentification heightens the risk.

Aníbal: Janina, the theoretical models for understanding trauma, to which you have committed, have their origins in neuroscience and attachment research. So, mostly empirical supported theories. How did the IFS spiritual side land on you?

Janina: You know, I've always, I've always believed that spirituality and psychotherapy go together. I've never seen spirituality as something alien to psychotherapy, and I've tried as much as possible to integrate people's spiritual resources into the therapy. So, it's very comfortable for me. In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, we talk about body, mind, spirit. So actually, a spiritual component is embedded in a somatic model. So, it just, it makes sense to me that we have a spiritual life and that spiritual life has an impact on the body. When people meditate, when they pray, their nervous systems calm, right. They feel more centered, they feel lighter. So, if, you know, there are really neuro-biological effects of spirituality, as well as the emotional.

Aníbal: Exactly. Janina, a new book is coming, right?

Janina: Yes. In a few weeks.

Tisha: Congratulations.

Janina: Thank you.

Aníbal: And what is this one about?

Janina: It's called Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma and lift the living legacy is...this idea of a living legacy is really meant to communicate that trauma is not over when it's over as you know, which, because it continues to be carried by the body, the brain, the parts. And so, it's a workbook for survivors at therapist that takes the survivors step by step from I'm going crazy. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't want to think about what happened. It takes them step-by-step to not again, not to healing because you'd have to write 10 books to get people, from the very beginning, to I'm healed. That would take many, many, many volumes, but it's really meant to be a trauma kind of one on one and really support the deshaming of what they're going through.

Tisha: It sounds like a great resource. What compelled you to put a workbook together?

Janina: Because one of the things Judy Herman taught me back in 1990 was, she said, she's a political feminist. And she believed that the power differential between victims and perpetrators obviously is huge, but also the power differential between therapist and client. So, she had this theory that if we educated our traumatized clients so they knew as much about trauma as we did, it would equalize that imbalance of power. So, you know, I started my post-doctoral fellowship with having to learn how to teach my clients about the nature of their symptoms and to which in those days in 1990, that was considered non-therapeutic. That was considered too intellectual, right. Cause we were supposed to be delving into the deepest, darkest recesses of their traumatic lives. But what I saw was that people thrived on education, that the more they understood, the more they could be equal partners in the therapy. And, so I developed a psychoeducational flip chart, which consists of 22 very simple diagrams that explain trauma out to people visually more than verbally, because one of the more robust findings of the trauma research is that when trauma responses are triggered, the prefrontal cortex goes offline, which means that the individual, his ability to think, to be mindful, to be in Self are dramatically decreased. So, this, these simple diagrams, which I used to do by hand, I used to have a little easel in my office, and I would just draw a simple diagram of the brain and show my clients what happened when they got triggered. So, I took those drawings and I created a psychoeducational flip chart. And so, I always had this idea to create a workbook to accompany the flip chart so that people could use it for self-healing rather than being dependent on a therapist.

Aníbal: I'm looking forward to seeing that workbook and that new book of yours.

Janina: And there's actually there, there are pieces of Onno van der Hart in there. There's an IFS, there's an IFS piece. So, there's actually a worksheet developing the, what I call the C qualities because again, in a workbook, if it's too complex to try to teach IFS, but I created worksheets that help clients to grow their C qualities.

Aníbal: You do a wonderful integrative work, Janina, thank you so much.

Janina: Thank you.

Aníbal: And It's such a joy to speak with you.

Janina: Thank you.

Aníbal: So, thank you so much for having us. And I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

An IFS Journey with Michelle Glass 33:54

Michelle Glass is a level three Certified IFS Practitioner, Alternative Counselor*, and SoulCollage® Facilitator in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of the well-received book, Daily Parts Meditation Practice©: A Journey of Embodied Integration for Clients and Therapists and provides DPMP workshops at the Annual IFS Conference and around the world, as well as offers support for those wanting to work with the tools of the DPMP process.

Having over 15 years of experience with the IFS Model and learning it first from the inside out, Michelle brings a palpable nature of a Self-led / mostly-unburdened system to the world. Becoming acquainted with her parts through healing from a childhood of complex trauma, she like Dick, is “a crusader for the personhood of parts.” Her IFS healing journey and Dick’s interest in her tools birthed the DPMP process. 

She loves bringing the gifts of intimately knowing her own system to facilitate others, especially therapists and practitioners, in doing so. Her private practice the Listener, LLC, has always been online enabling her to see clients around the world and she maintains a lengthy waitlist. Additionally, Michelle is the editor of the Foundation for Self Leadership's magazine, OUTLOOK

She has greatly enjoyed expanding her world-wide circle of colleagues and friends through these positions. She is currently on a writing sabbatical to complete her next book which will take readers through a felt sense of a highly-blended system with little access to Self to that of a mostly-unburdened Self-led system. 

Full Transcription
 

Today on IFS Talks we're speaking with Michelle Glass. Michelle Glass is a Level 3 certified IFS practitioner, alternative counselor and soul collage facilitator in Eugene, Oregon. She's the author of the well-received book, Daily Parts Meditation Practice: A Journey of Embodied Integration for Clients and Therapists. Michelle also provides DPMP workshops at the annual IFS Conference and around the world, as well as offers support for those wanting to work with the tools of the DPMP process. Having 15 years of experience with the IFS model and learning it for the first time from the inside out, Michelle brings a palpable nature of a Self-lead mostly unburdened system to the world. Additionally, Michelle Glass is the editor of the Foundation for Self Leadership's magazine Outlook. Michelle, welcome to IFS Talks, and thanks for being here with us today.

Michelle Glass: Thank you, Tisha and Aníbal. It's really nice to be here. My parts have been very excited to be here with you today.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks, Michelle, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today hearing your bio?

Michelle: I want to just check inside here. Well, the first one that usually comes up with things like this is...my main manager area in me, who wonders sometimes how much it matters to listeners that we don't hear big credentials behind my name. And that's often a big thought through her head, even though she's heard to the contrary many times, but that was not so important. I also hear her saying she's really proud of the work we've been doing and excited for the conversation. And she's also saying "How did we get here?" I also noticed a bunch of little shy parts, my younger parents, who don't like to be in the spotlight and they're kind of peeking their heads out from behind other parts kind of bodies. And it's, I'm getting this image from my parts of like, they see me and you, you both up on a stage talking and they're in the audience looking at us. So, that's kind of the image that I'm seeing from the collective. I suppose if I sat in there long enough, I'd get something more from probably every part.

Tisha: Will you share with us how you got here? A little bit of that journey that part was wondering about?

Michelle: Yeah. How did I get here? I guess more broadly, you know, how I came here is from my own healing journey with IFS. And, fast forward, going through that process, during that process came up with these different things that eventually led to my book and that book, you know, being so well-received as kind of catapult me to where I am. So, I mean, that's a very quick synopsis of how I got here, but we can take some time through each of those pieces. But that question from Ariadne, how did I get here is one of...think stemming back from my childhood of not wanting to be in the spotlight and not wanting to have eyes upon me and very, very afraid to speak to other people. So, she's like "Wow, look how far we've come," you know, it's not just that we were having a conversation in person with somebody, but this is a bigger piece, so...

Aníbal: Michelle, could you please tell us a bit about your journey into the helping profession once you are a counselor as well? So, was there something in your personal life that was determinant for you becoming a counselor?

Michelle: Yeah. I grew up with a lot of complex trauma, abused by two family members and also a child of divorce. And when I was a child, I always felt like there must be a way to prevent all of this that I was feeling And going through school I always thought I would go on to become a therapist and along my journey, I ended up having children and deciding to be a stay at home mom. So that got on hold. And, then my trauma became...what should I say? My exiled trauma began to resurface and so I had to, I was faced with having to work through that and working through that process and then going, I went to Esalen many years in a row and met Dick and became friends with a lot of therapists and they were all thinking, well, you know, you you're...they always thought I was a therapist to begin with, but then they were like "Well, if you're not one, you should become one."

Aníbal: You were a mother back then?

Michelle: I was, yes, definitely. And in that process of hearing from other therapists of, you know, really highly encouraging me to become a therapist or a counselor, I sat with parts around going back to school to get my master's and didn't do that in Oregon. Oregon's one of two states in the US that allows for people to practice counseling without higher degrees. So, and as long as I don't assess, diagnose or treat mental disorders, which fits very perfectly with IFS...

Aníbal: I would be happy as well not having to do that...

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. So, it fits very perfectly. So, I'm able to practice, you know, IFS with clients, so...

Tisha: Will you share a little bit about your own healing journey with us? Now you really know your system well and your parts are really well articulated, but how did you begin to explore that?

Michelle: Well, I'll say it was a really scary decision for my system to embark on this journey because it had been so exiled for me and having my children would bring up a lot of flashbacks for me and lots of memories that I hadn't remembered for a long time. And that was really problematic and so I knew I had to get into some sort of therapy and because my parts, that I didn't know were parts at the time, I just thought it was all of me, was really afraid of being diagnosed with anything and the pathology and so I looked for therapists who couldn't do that, or didn't have that in their frame of reference. So, I started with Hakomi therapist and she was very body focused and being an incest survivor that was really challenging and very scary for me to focus on the body. So, you know, I saw her for about three years, and I would say in retrospect that Hakomi was certainly helpful in many ways, but there was not, what I later learned, this process of unblending. To me, it felt like a lot of being highly blended still in Hakomi. But one day she was using IFS with me and I just stopped her in her tracks. I said, "Well what is this? Because whatever this is, it's exactly what I need, because this is going somewhere different, this feels really good." And she said "Oh, I had just come back from a training it's called IFS."

Aníbal: So, you had a Hakomi therapist making a foray or detour into IFS

Michelle: Yeah.

Tisha: Your system just recognized the difference.

Michelle: It was a huge difference...

Tisha: And said yes.

Michelle: Yeah, yeah. There was this...In the Hakomi, you know, she would mention parts work that, she would kind of lay the little seeds of..."Well, that's just a part of you." And that was just really scary for parts of me who felt like, you know, if I listened to these quilt parts, I'm going to be like Sybil, you know, I'm going to have DID, right? And that was just so scary, but there was something different in that first session with IFS that just made my system relax enough to go, okay, this feels safe. And from there I went home, and I had to look up IFS and there was a workshop with Dick at Esalen a couple of months later and I went straight into a workshop with Dick. And when I came home from that, I told my therapist, I said, "I want two sessions a week and I want 90 minutes each session." And it felt like Domino's like, we were just meeting part after part after part and unburdening and unburdening. And it just felt like maybe all those three years of Hakomi of listening into the body here and there and meeting the dissociation and resistance and all of this began to make sense in the parts framework for me.

Michelle: Yeah.

Tisha: And you spent a lot of time with your parts. I remember in that workshop with you, you had like maybe different, like beautiful representations of many of your parts.

Michelle: Yes. Yeah. That came much later, that came, I would say maybe 10 or 12 years after, after that initial IFS session. And that's a piece of, you know, I was in that regular, highly focused IFS sessions for a few years. And then I got to a place where I felt like, Oh, I could take a break from, from therapy for a while. You know, I have I'm feeling really good for the first time in my life. And so, I left therapy for a bit. And then as life has it was retriggered when a new relationship and new things were popping up, which brought me to what my parts refer to as the epicenter of the epicenter of my trauma, little extreme example that epicenter of the epicenter, which then ended up...my system at that point really wanted to be, I would say more recognized. And so that's where my daily meditation practice began and that's where these pendants are these externalization of those pendants that you saw came in as getting to know what item did my parts want so that when I saw that, or when my other parts saw that pendant, they knew who that part is.

Aníbal: So, Michelle, you have a long journey of therapy. This Hakomi becoming IFS. And then when you stopped, you started doing your daily practice?

Michelle: So, there wasn't, like I mentioned, there was a break between kind of pockets of therapy, if you will.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Michelle: And it was during that second segment of deep inner work that daily meditation practice started, which was about Hum...Maybe seven years ago. And that really stemmed from the, what felt like the epicenter, like the deepest part of my wounding really became available to me. And from that really making sense of the whole system. And that's where my parts really wanted to have a daily practice. And once I started connecting every morning on a walk in my local Arboretum, there was this really palpable sense of relief and calm in the system because my part's new, I've got roughly about 30, 31 parts and I choose one party today. So, they knew that at least one, one day a month, they'll get some time talking with me unless there's something big up, they also get some more time with me, right? So, there was this relief in my system of, "Oh, we don't have to wait for just, you know, going to Esalen or going to some place where we have the opportunity for meditation, we're going to do this every day."

Aníbal: You know, Michelle, in my work with my clients, I need to take notes for somehow tracking their parts. And maybe I track more clients’ parts in mine...

Michelle: Yes, yes.

Aníbal: And it's amazing that you can do this by yourself. Being able to track your own parts in such a beautiful and illustrated way. How was it for you with tracking your clients’ parts? Did you just went the same way you did it with yourself?

Michelle: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Along my journey, whenever a part would unburden, I would write down the critical...what a part of me calls the critical pieces. You know, what burdens there are, where they were retrieved, what they unburden and the qualities received.

Aníbal: So, I would write those down and it wasn't until later that I realized "Oh, this is actually really helpful. I can use this, use this with my clients." And so that's kind of how I started tracking with my clients is using what I call parts catalog cards. And that's something that's in my book that we'll talk about some other time, but being able to really listen to each part and write something down that we were hearing about them and capturing it on one individual sheet of paper that we just add to over time has been very helpful for me with my clients. And it was for me in my healing journey.

Tisha: I'm really curious about how you dovetailed into working with the IFS Institute and leading workshops. How did that happen?

Michelle: Yeah. I was preparing to go to Esalen one year and my therapist at the time when I had completed that strand of parts on the necklace, she said, "You must show this to Dick when you go to Esalen." And I did, and his jaw almost dropped and he said "Come sit down and show me this and tell me about all of these things that you have here." And I thought "Oh, this is just what everybody does, right? Everybody goes through their system and makes things like this with their parts." And he's like "Not everybody does this, no." So he suggested I introduced this to the group there at Esalen and then from there he said, "I think it would be really a great contribution to come to the conference and present these different things that you do and these tools that have now become tools." And it was scary enough initially for my part to present it in a group of 30 at Esalen. But to know, “Wow, Dick's wanting me to go to the conference” was a huge thing. So, I had to work with a lot of parts around public speaking because I hadn't given a presentation in probably 25 years at that point or something. And yeah, so I went to the conference and well, a little side piece of that is in preparation for that, making my PowerPoint, I soon discovered that this was more than a PowerPoint. This was more of a book and that's kind of how the book was birth and having a very short, a short time between when Dick invited me to the conference to getting the official confirmation from the Institute to come, was a very short time for me to get ready, so I wrote that book in about four to six months with, you know, probably 15 hours a day after clients and stuff. So, that's kind of my journey of getting to the conference and my first workshop that you Tisha were at.

Tisha: So, there are some really capable parts in there.

Michelle: That would be Ariadne and Henry, two of my parts. I know my system so well. So, when I, you know, when you asked about the bio or people ask, you know, what do your parts think, I can know exactly who's talking, but those two are the ones who really helped with the book.

Tisha: It's an incredible contribution.

Michelle: Thank you.

Aníbal: Michelle, you are now a counselor and a therapist and an IFS practitioner. What did help you more or as much to become a good practitioner or a good IFS therapist? Was it your own journey in the Hakomi IFS journey? Or how much this work you just mentioned, the daily practice helped you to become a better practitioner or therapist?

Michelle: That's a good question. I think if I were to look back at all of that, and just from the frame of reference of the model itself, to me just having healed my parts and knowing them well enough that they give me the space in sessions with clients is I think what, what is the biggest piece for me that my parts are very willing to give space and very seldom do they pop in in a session. So, I think that's the biggest piece.

Tisha: So, you're able to really just be there for clients with a lot of Self.

Michelle: Yeah. Right. And with that daily practice that I had begun seven years ago with my parts, when I did start working with clients at the end of my meditation practice, I would let my system know which clients I was seeing that day, and for them to let me know in this meditation, if there's anything that, you know, you're worried about or bothered about by these different clients I'm seeing today. And so, I would get to hear that at the beginning of my day, they would know that I understood them and then they could go about my parts could go about their own days, right? While I was busy with my clients. And if a part did come up in a session with a client, I would, you know, check in with them and I'd say, "I'll be right with you at the end of the day." And a different part kind of takes over and sits with that part, you know, during the session. And then at the end of the day, I can go back to my part and see what was it that made them feel like they needed to come into the session. And what was their concern.

Tisha: And with the clients that you work with, is there a specific arena that you prefer, or people who are drawn to you, do you work with abuse and trauma?

Michelle: Yeah. I do work with a lot of trauma survivors and, ironically, Ariadne would say ironically, I work with a lot of therapists, like I think probably three quarters of my clientele are therapists, whether they know IFS or not. So, and in fact, I've had a few non-IFS therapists come to me, and then over the course of our work, decided to go take a Level 1, and then they become IFS therapists themselves. But yeah, I see mostly trauma survivors and therapists with the varying different things that they want to work with.

Aníbal: Michelle, you also became the editor for the Outlook magazine newsletter on IFS Foundation. Can you tell us more about this work of yours?

Michelle: Yeah. That also stems from Esalen. One year I was there and my friend Marushka Glissen had talked about the Foundation, which was just getting started back then and mentioned that they were looking for volunteers. And at that time, I wasn't working, and I had a lot of time on my hands. So, I contacted Toufic Hakim, who is the executive director and said, "I've got some time, what would you like me to do?" And he said, "Well, what can you do?" And I said "Well, I've written newsletters before, and I could do some database management. And so, I started out as a volunteer, starting up their database and then creating Outlook. So, we started Outlook, which was then just a little 12-page newsletter and it goes out twice a year and each edition, it grew and grew and grew. So, we've grown from 12 pages. I think those last one is 64 pages. And about a year after the volunteering was brought on as a consultant. So, yeah, it's been a fun journey.

Aníbal: And what is this magazine about? Could you tell us a bit about what are their goals?

Michelle: Yeah. In Outlook, we like to feature pretty much anything IFS related. So, we've got dedicated sections for research, how people are using IFS, both in psychotherapy and then beyond psychotherapy. And we have a community, connections piece where we also feature the work, our updates from the Institute. And then also highlight what the Foundation itself has done over the course of the year. So, we do feature many people in the community and show the varying ways people are using IFS. And so, it goes out to everybody who's a member of the Foundation. And then the Institute has a reciprocal relationship with us, where about a week after we send ours out, they will send a digital form of Outlook out to everyone who's on the Institute’s mailing list.

Aníbal: So, Michelle, you keep an eye on the unfolding world of IFS.

Michelle: I do.

Aníbal: What are you seeing as for the future, for instance?

Michelle: Yeah. Good question. I would just want to say there are some parts of me that really enjoy this position there, because I do get a lot of insight perspectives that don't get to be shared for until they're ready. So, but as far as what I see, there's just in the last, as you both probably know, IFS has taken off by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, but especially in the last three to four. And being able to see just the wide variety of where IFS is used, not only in therapy, but just, you know, in business and schools and mediation and law, it's really becoming what Dick has talked about and what I've always dreamed about too, is having IFS as kind of the, the air we breathe. And that's kind of what I get to see as like all these different pockets of places where IFS is being used.

Tisha: And what about for you personally? What's next? What's coming down the line?

Michelle: What's coming down the line...Well, I'm on a sabbatical to write my next book, which will be capturing my IFS healing journey of bringing a system fully from really highly blended, very little access to Self through that process, through the whole system to a mostly unburdened Self-led life. So, it's going to show that huge trajectory for me. So, there's that.

Aníbal: So, this one is not a deepening of The Daily Practice?

Michelle: It's not so much a deepening of...well, I guess in some ways you might consider it a deepening of the DPMP. I think readers who have read the DPMP will get to see how, how and why that was created maybe through that, and why those different tools were really helpful. I'm also doing my first online DPMP workshop, and this will be December 11th with Derek Scott's masterclass series. And it's just a three-hour intro to the DPMP. But then in February, I will be doing two different series. The first one is a four-week series for therapists. And the second series is a three-week series for clients. And both of those are a real full experience of all the six tools of the DPMP. And that's through Michael in Poland with Life Architect.

Tisha: I understand that you are entitled to a big congratulations.

Michelle: Yes.

Tisha: Right?

Michelle: Yes. I'm getting married next week.

Aníbal: Oh, wishing you the best.

Michelle: Thank you.

Tisha: Yeah, I hope it goes beautifully. I know the pandemic has probably shifted plans.

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. Once the pandemic releases its grip on everybody, we'll have a much bigger celebration, but it'll be a very small one for now.

Tisha: Beautiful. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today and to share your journey and share your experience and your wisdom.

Michelle: Thank you.

Aníbal: Yes, Michelle. We look forward to sit with you again. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. We hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Michelle: Thank you for having me. I look forward to meeting with you again.

 

Recorded 18th November 2020 
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Self Led Parenting with Frank Anderson 51:32

Frank Anderson, MD, completed his residency and was a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is both a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and specializes in the treatment of trauma and dissociation. He is passionate about teaching brain-based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the IFS model of therapy. Dr. Anderson is a lead trainer at the IFS Institute with Richard Schwartz and maintains a long affiliation with, and trains for, Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Center. He serves as an advisor to the International Association of Trauma Professionals (IATP) and was the former chair and director of the Foundation for Self-Leadership.  Dr. Anderson has lectured extensively on the neurobiology of PTSD and dissociation. He co-authored the Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual. Dr. Anderson maintains a private practice in Concord, MA, and is one of the most respected and internationally-known Internal Family Systems lead trainers available.

In this episode Frank shares how becoming a father brought him into the IFS model, and many more ideas and perspectives on parenting while putting together a parenting curriculum through IFS lens.

Befriending your Inner Critic with Chris Burris 31:48

Chris Burris, LPC, LMFT, is a IFS Senior Lead Trainer for the IFS Institute. He has been an IFS Therapist since 1999 and is trained as a Marriage and Family Therapist. He utilizes mind/body approaches of therapy in alleviating traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety disorders. He has worked extensively with couples, families, teenagers, and children. He is currently in Private Practice in Asheville North Carolina.
In this episode Chris shares aspects of his journey as a therapist, and some of his special interest as an IFS therapist and lead trainer. A special focus on befriending your inner critic emerged.

Today on IFS Talks we're speaking with Chris Burris. Chris Burris is an IFS senior lead trainer. He has been an IFS therapist since 1999 and is trained as a marriage and family therapist. Chris uses mind-body approaches to therapy for working through traumatic stress, depression and anxiety disorders. He has worked extensively with couples, families, teenagers, and children, and is a licensed counselor supervisor. Chris is currently in private practice in Asheville, North Carolina.

 

Tisha Shull: Chris, welcome to IFS Talks, and thanks so much for being here with us today.

 

Chris Burris: Thank you very much Tisha. I appreciate it. It's great being with you guys.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Chris, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today, hearing your bio?

 

Chris Burris: I think that some parts noticing we've been a therapist for close to 30 years, it's been kind of a long journey, kind of beginning learning IFS and, you know, learning about psychotherapy and learning IFS and, you know, and sitting with clients for, you know, close to 30 years now. So, I guess some parts are aware of the journey that I've been on.

 

Tisha: Can you share with us, Chris, a little bit about your journey? What got you into the world of therapy to begin with?

 

Chris: You know, for me, I was always kind of good at talking to people. I had a pretty severe dyslexia as a kid. Didn't really read very well until fourth or fifth grade, but I could do things orally, so I could, I could learn and could talk with people and have pretty good social skills. So, I sort of got by at school by watching, and watching people, watching and learning orally. And so, that was kind of what I was good at, was listening and interacting with people. So, I think I was a child that really noticed how people felt, noticed their emotions, was pretty aware of family dynamics, did a lot of caretaking for my mom. And so, I, you know, I didn't like it that people didn't feel well, that felt anxious or scared or didn’t feel connected. So, I was that kind of kid that paid a lot attention socially to how people felt, you know, so I grew up in a rural area of North Carolina and there wasn’t...psychotherapists didn’t exist or that wasn't that sort of thing. The closest we had was a school counselor. I felt the school counselor was pretty inept. A lot of my friends had a lot of problems that no one was there to talk to. I was looking back the other day, like all of my best friends had fathers or grandfathers had alcohol problems and really no one to speak with. So, you know, then I discovered psychotherapy and I thought “Oh, well, that's a great thing. You know, people should have someone to talk to.” The best I had was maybe you know, a youth minister that I could talk to a little bit, you know. So, wow make a living, talking to people all the time? That sounds pretty great. You know, so...

 

Aníbal: Yes, it's amazing.

 

Chris: So, you know, kind of got interested in psychology and here I am, 30 years later, still enjoying talking to people every day.

 

Aníbal: It's such a privilege, isn't it?

 

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Especially when it's something we can heal trauma. And I think a lot of our heals in society are related to trauma and how very little we actually recognize the impact trauma has on systems and communities and nations.

 

Aníbal: Yeah, and it looks like you were a sensitive child. Yeah. And you could feel what's going around.

 

Chris: Yeah. I had an early sense of what was going on emotionally for people.

 

Aníbal: Chris, we know you have been leading level 1 and level 2 trainings for the IFS Institute. And more recently you are leading level 3 trainings as well. So, congratulations.

 

Chris: Oh, thank you.

 

Aníbal: And how is it, Chris, leading different levels of IFS trainings? How does it feel to you those different levels?

 

Chris: You know, I still enjoy, I enjoy teaching all different levels. I enjoy teaching this sort of core skills. I still enjoy teaching people discovering their system for the first time. Sometimes in level 1 trainings, people are discovering what their parts are for the very first time. So, I still enjoy that. I enjoy the complexities of, you know, level twos and threes. I haven't taught level three yet, we're getting ready for that, but we can start to get into the more complexities of how systems operate and sort of share some of the nuances. So, I like that...The upper levels I get to be a little bit more creative around how we deliver the material and experiential exercises. So, you know, I enjoy teaching all of those different areas.

 

Aníbal: Different challenges.

 

Chris: Yeah.

 

Tisha: And how did you find IFS?

 

Chris: I met Dick Schwartz at a networker conference, I was working with a client that...I’ve studied a parts model before, I would studied with David Calof for a long time, he has a parts model and I was working with a client that probably was, could be classified as dissociative disorder. And we were kind of stuck and I'd done a lot of trauma work with her, loved her. She was a wonderful woman, but we were a bit stuck. And I went and did a consult with Dick and learned some things just in the consult that I went back to and she's like “Yeah, that's exactly how my system operate around harmony and cooperation versus integration into a singular personality.” And that was sort of the thinking at the time was that dissociative identity disorders were meant to sort of integrate back into more of a singular operation personality versus being one of harmonious cooperation. Yeah. So, I loved his presence. I loved to how accessible he was. We did a consult right there in the middle of a book signing, and he took 30 minutes with me in a book signing to help me with this client. And none of the other gurus, you know, at the time were willing to do that. You know, they were, it was very hard for them to even give you five minutes. So, I was really impressed with how accessible he was at the time,

 

Aníbal: Chris, we also know you have some specific topics of interest like working with inner critics, sacred activism and contracting, or the therapeutic setup treatment plan and how that relates to IFS. Can you share more about your topics of interest? Like why this one? The inner critics is really one of your specialties, I understood.

 

Chris: Well, I was trained as a family therapist first and trained in this center for marriage and the family. And so, I kind of apply like how, what you would do in a regular family session to what you would do in an internal session. So, if we were in a family session with maybe mom, dad, grandfather, two children, and one of the members were quite harsh, we would start working with that right away. We wouldn't ask the exiles or the young children to divulge their vulnerability, if one of the parents cared a lot of harshness. So, I think about real-world physics and how that applies to our internal system. So, when I started looking at IFS protocols, it didn't quite fit with how we would operate in a normal family therapy setting that we wouldn't work with sort of the harshness in the room first to create a safe environment for, to get to the, for the younger children to begin to speak. You know, and I saw a lot of damage in family therapy that was done by asking children to be vulnerable before we really kind of neutralize the harshness of their parents. And so, I didn't want to recreate that. And a lot of my work as a family therapy supervisor was to change some of those dynamics of the way people conducted family therapy. So, I started applying that to the IFS process of looking at...Let’s see if we can help a lot of the harshness in the room and critics are parts that carry harsh behaviors or attitudes. So, that's kind of what got me interested in working with those parts a bit first. So, see if we can get some shifts with those parts. So, they don't come in with harshness as vulnerability emerges.

 

Tisha: How would you recommend to our listeners to work with their own critics first, before going to other parts that might come up?

 

Chris: Well, I think that if we pay attention, I mean, critics is not new, you know, this is Alfred Adler was talking about this inferiority complex, you know, so it's been around a long time. So I think there's some part of us , I'm curious these days around...there's some part of us that tries to hold us accountable, that wants us to be accountable to what our potential is and see as a discrepancy between our ideal self and our real self, somehow these parts learn to try to mitigate that discrepancy by using a harshness, a harsh way of interacting with us. So, with all parts would look at what's the intention, how's the part trying to help, what's its goal, how's it trying to help? So, noticing a bit, the protective nature of it, does it mean to make us feel bad or shame, is trying to protect us in some way? So, validating the desire to protect is the first step to helping these parts. And then when my own system, I get curious around, okay, like, why do you need to be harsh? And what are you hoping would happen by being harsh? And a lot of times these parts don't trust that they can be heard and listened to, unless they have some intensity to them. And then as I got closer with the work, I began to question like, where did, where did you learn this? My father wasn't a harsh person. My father was a pretty gentle guy. Never really got angry. So, it wasn't really my dad, my grandfather, wasn't very harsh. He was a pretty gentle kind guy. My mom could be a little harsh, but this part didn't seem like my mom, you know, so as I got to listen to it more, it kind of took on these words coaches, my football coach, they'd taken on...And this was kind of a time where I needed to get more disciplined and be more disciplined. I went sort of being a kid to being, you know, more disciplined athlete and my football coach particularly, and he helped me be successful, but he did it by being quite harsh. So, getting curious, so “Who are you mimicking?” This is one of the questions, “Who are you acting like and where did you learn to act like this person?” And the other question I asked a bit is, “Is there anyone else that would actually do a better job at this, had a better way of doing this a better job in your environment, that would be a better person to mimic?” Some people don't have that. Some people don't have, you know, that empowerment person in their life. And so, they mimic the best they can kind of come up with.

 

Aníbal: This is why people do overidentify, I don't know if you agree with this, people use to overidentify with their managers, with their inner critics?

 

Chris: I think these parts, they play a major role in our system, so they're quite active. So, there's managers and inner critics, you know, tend to be quite active. And so, I think that overidentification as you're describing is a bit of the nature of how active these parts are in our systems. So, they're kind of meant to play a major role. Sometimes they're meant to help us survive. For my inner critic, you know, the option of, you know, I'd already sort of got cut from the baseball team, I got cut from the basketball team, you know, so  getting cut from the football team, wasn't an option, you know, for this part. So, it became very, very overzealous to make sure that I was successful at football because to not have a sport, you know, in my day and time was not really acceptable to my part. So, it was quite active, it became quite active.

 

Aníbal: And usually those guys, these inner critics and smart parts of our system, they usually, in my practice, they say “This is me, the client says, this is not a part, this is me”, they really are big bosses and strong parts that believe can control our whole system and people overidentify in fact. So, usually it's hard work for me. How is it for you? I know that you learn and you teach how to embrace those parts, but let us know more.

 

Chris: I find that too. I, you know, I was fishing with a friend of mine and he was a doctor in med school and he was just kind of talking out loud and he said out loud, he said, you know, “I just think I am this scrutinizing critical person. I just think that's who I am.” And I found it kind of interesting because I had never felt him scrutinize me. He was pretty generous person. We're fishing in his boat, you know, and with his rod, his reel and all of this tackle and you know, and he had invited me to come on a regular basis. He was very generous. And I said, “Who's this generous person that's very kind and, you know, and caring towards me? Like I don't know that I experienced this, you know, in you.” And so, that little separation, that there's some, there's a separation between that part of us and there's something different, there's some other quality to our being, that recognition that there's something else besides that. It's kind of that crack, I think, where we began to get curious around like, you know, what else is there that there's more to our system then maybe this voice or these thoughts. It may be kind of predominant, but there's something more there.

 

Aníbal: So, besides that, how do you help clients to unblend from this part? And to find that they have Self? Usually they much more believe they are these inner critical or smart parts, rather than other thing. And it's the moment for us as therapists to help them to find Self in themselves. How do you help them?

 

Chris: Well, I think that what's a little different from maybe doing IFS for a long time and maybe learning IFS for the first time, you learn to really relax your agenda and your goals. And so, when I, I think the way that I tend to do IFS and the demos people watch is, I'm pretty good at just really sitting back and relaxing and getting to know whatever's there. So, listening really closely and getting really around. And I'm pretty comfortable just hanging out with a part, you know, so, it's like, we're just going to sit on the porch and get to know each other. So, the first thing I do is get comfortable, like, okay, we're just maybe the next 30 minutes all we're going to do is get to know this part of you and how it's protecting you and how it got its job. And what's afraid would happen if it didn't do his job and who was it mimicking and what's it, you know, what's it trying to protect and that there's not a goal to get beyond it or past it, or to get rid of it. And I think these parts can feel that type of curiosity. And the first step is to get to know them really well. And as you get to know them well, there's, there's a natural unblending happens. I don't have to force something. I don't have to make something happen. I don't have to do anything to anybody. You know, I just have to sit and be curious and get to get to know them well. And I found with IFS that's actually kind of what I was good at as a kid is just sitting back and listening. So, I don't have to do too much extra. Like I thought I had to when I was a younger therapist.

 

Tisha: Yeah. I really love that concept of really just being with the critic without agenda. This conversation is reminding me of a dynamic that I have with one client in particular, where we'll go through the model and have what feels like a lot of Self-energy. But then when we get to a vulnerable exile and I ask how they feel towards it, it always feels like a big critic comes up and really criticizes even the image of the exile. So, I don't know if you have any insight on working with that a little more.

 

Chris: Yeah. I think that I get curious around where did you learn that the vulnerability was so intolerable and such a bad thing, and that these feelings were so wrong and, you know, and there's certain things, certain parts, you know, I discovered a part not too long ago that just really dislikes, any helplessness, cannot tolerate helplessness in me. You know? So, if there's something that seems helpless, it's going to, like go into striving. I just can't tolerate it. You know? So, sometimes there's something that this part’s learned that is intolerable and, you know, maybe it could be some dynamic in there, you know, growing up or, but where did they, where did they learn that these vulnerabilities are so despicable or intolerable, or what are they afraid is going to happen? Who are they afraid? Who are they afraid off? You know, that sometimes the folks that are mean to us still live in our system and we are still anticipating that to happen again. So, getting curious about what's what feels so intolerable about these more vulnerable parts of us.

 

Tisha: Yeah. That's great. Thank you. Staying with the curiosity.

 

Aníbal: Chris, I'm going to quote you. I read somewhere; you say “your inner critic is a major player who tries to help you meet your ideals. It has learned how to use fear, shoulds, and harshness, but you can befriend your critic and it can transform as it learns there is another way to help.” So, again, what is this another way to help?

 

Chris: Yeah, you know, I was a director of counseling at North Carolina school of the arts, so I learned a lot with artists. We had really the most, some of the most incredible artists around in drama, visual arts, filmmaking, but they all tend to be driven by fear. So, fear is a major loud motivator in our system. We can feel it, it helps us survive and help us overcome, but it kills creativity. And so, because it's so loud, we learned to kind of rely on it and our parts are oriented toward helping us survive. So, fear it’s a survival instinct and with trauma, you know, trauma creates a lot of threat to survival. So, these parts get maladaptive and believe that our survival is at stake. So, they use fear to survive. The other motivation, which is the more the natural motivation is inspiration or creativity or imagination, enchantment, you know, intuition...This is a different energy. It actually comes through us when we're in Self-energy. And this is where we can imagine a different way of being in the world. And we can actually start to imagine a different world than the one that we're in, that we might be able to create. But we had to sort of turn off the fear, help the fear turn off in order to create space for that more creative energy to come through. So, IFS is a model where the Self emerges when the extreme parts can relax. So, it's an emergence model by releasing constraints. So, the parts have to have that negotiation to be able to know that the Self can emerge and there's a different energy that actually is more powerful, more creative and more productive than the fear. If you've ever tried to accomplish something just by being afraid, I remember staying at ride trying to write papers, being afraid of failing and just couldn't even hardly think straight. So, that's the other potential is the inspiration that Self-energy brings into the system.

 

Aníbal: So, exactly this term inner critic, I don't know exactly who coined it, maybe Jay Early or Sandra and Hal Stone?

 

Chris: Yeah.

 

Aníbal: So, this befriending approach is not new in our field, but what does IFS brings as new to this befriending approach?

 

Chris: I think a lot of cognitive-behavioral therapy is actually trying to mitigate these critical voices. You know, so the, I think what IFS brings...In a little bit, I see things a little different than Jay. I really appreciate his work, but I think, I think seeing that these parts are here to help us survive, they don't mean to cause trouble, they're maladaptive and there's more to them than this. So, critics have the capacity, all parts have the capacity to transform and change. So, when we use the inner critic, we actually kind of lock it in place as that's who it is. So, I try to even adapt our language, you know, to a part that uses harshness or a part that uses criticism to try to help you. So even if we change our language a bit, because we don't want to stagnate it into a fixed role or a fixed place, it's a part that uses harshness, you know? And so, as a way is a part that carries anxiety or part that carries fear, a part that has a burden of shame. So, the part is more than just its role and more than the energy that it carries. So, I think that's the one thing IFS brings is that it's more than that, as a player, as a major player in your system that has learned to use harshness as a way to try to help you. So, we don't want to, so in our language, we don't want to fix it into place and allow it to the space to be transformed as we allow other parts to transform.

 

Aníbal: Chris, we see such a booming in the IFS trainings and even the studies that turn IFS an empirical supported model. So, it's booming. How do you see the future for this model?

 

Chris: I think that's a really great question. You know, I think it's expanding into lots of other arenas and, you know, starting out as a psychotherapy model and then it kind of, it has...a lot of coaches have adopted it, bodyworkers have adopted it quite a bit, lawyers have adopted it. I just did a training with a group of trial lawyers on IFS and what really Self-energy brings to their credibility as trial lawyers. And so, there's a lot of expanding roles. Management has a lot of capacity to use IFS for business management, health, healthcare, and, you know, there's a lot of...I see it expanding into a lot of arenas and can be used a lot...education for children and teachers. So, there's a lot of arenas that it can really expand into and have a really important influence.

 

Tisha: What about for yourself, Chris? I know you're expanding into teaching the level threes, but do you have any personal manifestations that you'd like to share with us and things that you're bringing to the model or things that you're working on?

 

Chris: Yeah. I've been trying to work on finishing an IFS group therapy manual that was close to written and then COVID hit and then we all went online. So, I wrote everything to be able to use in an encounter group format, and then we've gone online and then our teaching has really increased a lot since then. So, I'm trying to complete this process and write a chapter for how to use it online. And so, with dyslexia, writing is not my favorite milieu. So, it's kind of, it's quite a slow process with lots of help. So, that's one of the areas that I am very interested in, I've been working a lot with activism and social justice and working with an organization called black therapists rock and doing level one trainings for them. So, I've gotten very active just with the spirit of our times in social justice and in my own work around bigotry and prejudice and racism. So, I've gotten very passionate about, you know, really the opportunity that we have to try to reimagine our institutions to be less systemically racist in the United States. So, we've got very engaged and involved in that process at best three years,

 

Aníbal: Very noble topics. And let us know, Chris, how about you in these pandemic times? How are you coping with?

 

Chris: For a while, in the beginning, it's kind of, we've kind of settled into another way of life, you know, that sort of the new normal in some ways, but the first four or five months were quite stressful. And I think we've kind of had a new rhythm here. For me, you know, I traveled a lot. I was gone from my family a couple of weeks a month, at least one week a month. And my children are still, you know, in junior high and high school. So that was really hard to be away from home. So, I've really enjoyed being home a lot and being able to teach at home. And so, it's been a bit of a respite for me in some ways and stressful in others. And teaching online has a lot of merits, a lot of benefits, as there's some challenges to it. I can't get up, move people around the room and just sculpt things the way I'd like love to. And so, I've had to design new ways of teaching, but so far, we've been healthy and that's been great.

 

Aníbal: Chris, thank you so much for having us. We really hope that we can sit again and go through those interesting topics that you are somehow deepening and hope that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Chris: Thank you very much for having me.

 

Tisha: Thank you, Chris. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

 

 

Recorded 30th October 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

IFS and Polyvagal integration with Ruth Culver 40:57

Ruth Culver is an Internal Family Systems Therapist based in Brighton, UK. After her original career in event management for the arts and charity sectors led to burn-out, she re-trained in clinical hypnotherapy.  Focussing on inner child work, she gradually integrated various other embodied and creative approaches into her sessions with adults and teenagers. Having witnessed overwhelm in some trainings, she developed a keen interest in the nervous system, and in ways to work deeply yet safely with trauma.

Ruth says it felt like ‘coming home’ when she came across IFS a few years ago, and the model is now at the core of all her work.  She loves facilitating groups and has adapted two somatic processes - Constellations, and intuitive drawing - to fully incorporate all the steps of IFS.  Her infographic called ‘The Survive/Thrive Spiral’ - which maps Polyvagal Theory alongside Internal Family Systems - went viral earlier this year.  She presented her work at the 2019 London Trauma Conference and the 2020 Online Embodiment Conference, and is currently writing a paper for a new Complex Trauma Journal.

Today on IFS Talks, we're speaking with Ruth Culver. Ruth Culver is an Internal Family Systems therapist based in Brighton, UK. After her original career in events management, she retrained in clinical hypnotherapy. Ruth developed a keen interest in the nervous system and in finding ways to work deeply, yet safely with trauma. Ruth says that it felt like coming home when she came across IFS and the model is now at the core of her work. She loves facilitating groups and has adapted to somatic processes, constellations and intuitive drawing  as a way to use the IFS model in a group setting. Her infographic called the Survive Thrive Spiral, which maps Polyvagal theory alongside Internal Family Systems, went viral earlier this year. 
 

 

Ruth, welcome to IFS Talks and thank you for being here with us today. 

 

Ruth Culver: Thank you. It's a great honor to be here. I love listening to the podcast and I'm amazed to find myself with you. 

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you for having us. How is it for you, Ruth, to hear this bio? What parts come up?

 

Ruth: Yeah, sort of amazement that I'm here in this place with that as my bio. An imposter part comes up who says "don't be so big headed." I know her well. She's been around a long time and, yeah, sort of ugly duckling part. I call her my ugly duckling part, she goes "Me? Really?" Yeah, and also some, a sort of proud amazement that I'm entering into this phase of my career where I'm starting to become a contribution in the world. 

 

Tisha: Wonderful. 

 

Aníbal: You are really busy, Ruth, those days, I guess. Once, besides your clinical work, you also do retreats, workshops and webinars, right? You organize Creative Constellations, Drawing Into Self Courses and more recently, the Survive Thrive Spiral webinars.  And you also are a jazz singer, I've heard. 

 

Ruth: Yes, I'm not singing at the moment because the therapeutic work took over, and  I love it. But when I was living in London until a few years back, I was regularly gigging, and it was an exciting part of my life.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. Missing it?

 

Ruth: Parts missing it and parts are relieved not to have the late nights.

 

Tisha: Will you share with us a little bit about your journey? You shifted careers at one point, and will you talk about how you found your way to the therapeutic world?

 

Ruth: Sure. I spent twenty-five years in event management in the arts and charity sectors. And of course, they're very underfunded sectors, so I worked really hard and my perfectionist parts drove me to exhaustion, so, I burned out. And then needed to take a little break and really looked at what was supporting me and my healing and realizing that it wasn't the job that meant I'd burned out; it was what was driving the job. So, I guess what I would now know as my perfectionist parts and my...The different aspects of my history that meant I was working too hard and not able to do self-care, to take care of myself, really. So, then I found that hypnotherapy was incredibly useful and trained in that, began working with clients and really focused on inner child work, understanding that this is a way to really heal. 
 
But what I saw through the hypnotherapy and then through some other things that I trained in was quite often clients were, in IFS terms, it's really easy in hypnotherapy to get the protectors to stand aside and go straight to the exiles, and we know that that isn't safe. And I saw that also in other modalities that I trained in. So, I got really interested in the nervous system, and it was only when I found IFS that has so much in common with that inner child work and with the constellations work that I was doing, I was trained as a facilitator, working with internal parts and in a different process, and saw that this was a safe way to really look at the protectors first. And so, it's sort of, it was it was easy for me, relatively easy to come into IFS because it linked so beautifully with what I was already doing. But I didn't have to reinvent the wheel. It was all there.

 

Aníbal: Was there something determinant for you to become a psychotherapist in the first place? 

 

Ruth: Really, from my own healing, it was finding the hypnotherapy. My earlier experiences of therapy had either been analytical in the head, which didn't help me, really got lots of upset parts around that or more what I'd call the empathy based, you know? Almost head on one side the empathy stuff, which also didn't help me. I didn't feel supported in it. So, I had actually thrown therapy aside as unhelpful. And then when I found the hypnotherapy, which went more to the subconscious, what was really going on, and emotions were allowed to be heard and expressed, that's when I got interested in complex trauma, relational trauma, attachment and I sort of fell into it. It wasn't a decision. It happened gradually and naturally.

 

Aníbal: And when did you come across with IFS? I mean, when did you get into the IFS training? 

 

Ruth: Yeah, it's only a few years ago, and that's why my imposter parts can jump up and down sometimes and say "Who are you to be here speaking publicly about something new to you?" But, yeah, I have very much more contact with Self-energy now, which really I'm clear that this was a natural progression for me and it was probably easier for me than many people to adopt the model because it was so much based on the gestalten parts and inner child work that I'd already been doing. 

 

Tisha: Will you share with us a little bit about how you created the Spiral that brings Polyvagal and IFS together? The visual is incredible and it's so useful. How did that come up for you? 

 

Ruth: Well, I was running workshops as a facilitator in this parts’ constellations process. And I was noticing that when I was working with clients, some of them would get overwhelmed. And in my experience of the training, some people were very badly overwhelmed, retraumatized, I would say. So, this was a real concern of mine that I didn't want to do it. I got very interested in the nervous system, started working originally with the window of tolerance. So, trying to map the parts onto the window of tolerance modeling Dan Siegel's model, where you've got the tolerance in the middle and at the top, you've got the hyperarousal, and at the bottom you've got the hyperarousal. And I mean, I'm a great admirer of Dan Siegel and his work, but this doesn't make sense to me because we don't go through a resilient place when we're going between fight, flight and freeze. That's not how it looks. 
 
So, I then started mapping it in a different way so that it was a continuum, because on my model you have this what he calls the window of tolerance, I might call the window of resilience and where we're in contact with Self, in IFS terms, we have that lovely contact with Self-energy and then we go into fight-flight, and Polyvagal theory really shows this. That's how the nervous system works. So, our first instinct is fight-flight. If we can't run away, then we have to go to freeze-collapse-submittal or shutdown processes if we can't fight or run away. Hence, the hierarchy of the model. So, when I found Polyvagal theory, Deb Dana's amazing book on using it in practice clinically and IFS at roughly similar time, my model completely changed throughout the old prototypes. I was looking at them the other day, I've got quite a few different, the model looks very different at different times. And in came this spiral, and that's when it really started falling into place.

 

Aníbal: Let's focus on your Survive Thrive Spiral chart that recently went viral, right? This chart of yours is such an inspiring integration of IFS and Polyvagal. Let me say that our listeners can lately find your illustrated chart in our show notes. And you presented this spiral work at the 2019 London Trauma Conference.

 

Ruth: Yes.

 

Aníbal: And at the 2020 Online Embodiment Conference. This chart maps the physiological model of Polyvagal Theory, alongside the psychological model of Internal Family Systems. That's your intention, right?

 

Ruth: Hmm.
 

Aníbal: And you say it aims to demonstrate how the two systems, IFS and Polyvagal, are linked. And how parts affect the nervous system and vice versa and how each can provide information about and insights into the other. So, over the past few months, the spiral has been shared and downloaded tens of thousands of times. Am I correct? 

 

Ruth: Yes. 

 

Aníbal: And translated into German, Spanish, French, Russian and Hebrew by international psychotherapists and psychologists keen to use it in their native language. So, you were already used to make some integrations, I understood, once you came from, you were trying this integration with Dan Siegel Interpersonal Neurobiology and even other modalities, I believe. How did this come up? This integration and chart? Did you feel that you needed it? 

 

Ruth: Yes. So, in these workshops and seeing people, their constellations process, everybody is in resonance. You're in a room with 10, 12, maybe even 14 different nervous systems working on trauma. And for people involved in the process, it can be quite strong. So, this ability to understand what's going on in themselves, my desire was to give them a tool, to offer a tool to just understand that what they were sensing in their body had a reason or maybe the emotions they were feeling had a physiological reason. So, it's this mind-body link they could understand it physiologically or psychologically from either side, whichever was the easier way in to in order to come into Self, really, that somebody else is turning up and saying "Oh, yeah, that numbness in my head or that twitching in my legs or whatever it might be, there's a reason for that. It's okay, yeah, that's a part of me that's really scared." So, it enabled, it gave an extra way in for people to come into Self when working in a group. That's my experience. By having the chart there in the wall, people reporting it, it's like an anchor "oh yeah, right, that's what's happening." So, you could just let that first process of IFS of noticing and naming the part that might be...That they're experiencing through emotions or through physical symptoms. So, yeah, it's supported that. 
 
It also I found that people who are very, very blended with intellectualizing part, that can really help to know the science. Okay, right, now the intellectual part can relax because I got a scientific reason for my emotions. And also, people who maybe had been very shamed by the system for having conditions, things that were called conditions like manic-depression or bipolar or whatever, for them to understand this link between the mind and body that both are perfectly explainable, just gave this shame so much reassurance, the parts holding shame about what was happening in them. So much reassurance and then, of course, there's more connection to Self because they can notice what's happening and name it as a part.

 

Aníbal: So, you say that understanding there is a biological explanation for behaviors and symptoms often enables parts carrying shame to relax and also that our dominant cognitive parts relax as well, knowing there is an explanation for our parts, right?

 

Ruth: Yeah. 

 

Aníbal: But still, do we really need Polyvagal? We need Polyvagal to do therapy? Isn't IFS enough? 

 

Ruth: So, this doesn't aim to change IFS. The difference is when I was working with groups, we've got multiple nervous systems in the room, which are not only doing their own thing, they're also getting involved in the constellations process, which is about resonating with other people's feelings. So, it's quite a complex system. So, it was really in terms of the groups that I originally created this as a resource. But then it's become something that people have liked to use one-to-one as well. They've seen it or I hear from colleagues who say "Oh, yeah, my client came in with your chart the other day and waved it at me, now I understand." So, the feedback I'm getting is that it's adding some information for some people. I don't introduce it to every client by any means, but for some it's really useful.

 

Tisha: So, you really enjoy working with groups, as we understand. Can you talk a little bit about how you work with the IFS model and larger groups?

 

Ruth: Two main ways. One was this constellations process working with parts which then, I have spent the last two years gradually adapting the one I trained into fully morph into now an IFS based. It's completely founded in IFS; every step of IFS is there. And I was enjoying that so much. Was the last thing I did before lockdown when my retreats, where we're doing these IFS constellations together. And I really felt that my process had...I was maturing to the point at which I was really beginning to be really happy with it, that it was honoring IFS fully, that it was responding to the needs of the participants because lookdown happened. So, I had to mourn the loss of that for a while. But what happened as a result was that I started to integrate an intuitive drawing process that I developed initially one-to-one with people. When clients, as we know, and when people have a lot of blending in their system, externalizing can be really useful whether you use little objects or chairs around the room or whatever it is. But I found that by using crayons, big piece of paper and just colors, lines and shapes to start listening to the body, it's very somatic, we just see what color they reach for, if they're in contact with a part that's maybe angry or terrified, what the color is, what the shape is, how much space it takes and we find out about the parts that way. And then gradually, I guess, a called it constellation, because a constellation is simply the word for a collection of parts. That's what constellation means. A constellation would appear in relation to a certain issue and then we could work with it using the steps of IFS. 
 
And so, I was doing this one to one with my clients and then when lockdown happened, I offered it as a workshop with eight people on Zoom and I'm now in the second course, eight week course, and it's maturing in a way that I'm really happy and proud, proud of. And I wouldn't have found it. It was one of those things that's come out of lockdown as a benefit, as a blessing. Because it's...I'm really happy with it. And it also then turned into this other workshop, which when we were socially distant in the summer but still allowed to meet, we did a group, in-person workshop where everybody had their own little space in the room. And we had basically a group therapy process where everybody was able to do that own process using the drawing, but also be seen, be witnessed, be heard by everybody there. Benefiting from each other's, from what they were hearing from each other, benefiting from being witnessed and benefiting from the group Self-energy that grows during the day. So, it's been a beautiful thing to emerge.

 

Aníbal: Well done. Beautiful.

 

Aníbal: So, IFS and Polyvagal go so well together. Let me ask you. Does this Survival Thrive Spiral is a new model in any way? 

 

Ruth: I wouldn't say it that it's a new way of working. So, not a model in that way, but it's certainly an infographic, a chart, which might be called a model, just as a background information. So, it doesn't change the way I do IFS. 

 

Aníbal: Yeah. 

 

Ruth: It simply informs parts about what's going on, which can help them relax.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. So, can we jump into these five stages, you say. Are they five stages? Am I saying well? 

 

Ruth: The different zones on the chart you mean?

 

Aníbal: Yeah.

 

Ruth: Yeah. On the right-hand side, which represents Polyvagal theory, there are three, three colors. The green at the bottom is the flow state of self-regulation, co-regulation. So, that's what in IFS terms would be connected to Self-connected. Then you've got in the center band horizontally, you've got the amber zone, which is the fight-flight state, where the sympathetic nervous system is taking over in order to help us find safety through action. And then at the top, the red third top that is red, that's the freeze zone, which, in Polyvagal terms, that's the dorsal vagal, which is collapse. And then also this state that feels like dorsal vagal, but you're still doing, even though it has a hopeless feeling to it. So, “I can't fight. I can't run away. I will carry on.” I call it submit. So, people are still doing, but it has this, this shut down feeling of...This hopeless shutdown feeling of dorsal vagal. So, that's the way safety is got in that zone through disconnection. 

 

Aníbal: Yeah, so, you differentiate a ventral state of resilience from states of survival, corresponding to the parasympathetic and sympathetic states of fight-flight-freeze, right?

 

Ruth: And then on the left-hand side is where I put Internal Family Systems, and that's where these two other zones come in. And they are represented by circles rather than these horizontal straight lines, these bars, which, by the way, in the UK, that's the color of traffic lights. I don't know if it is in Portugal or the States, but yeah. I think some countries is the other way around for the traffic lights, but certainly where I am, that's, that's how it works. So, we have these two other zones right at the bottom of the spiral and the spiral goes from the bottom up to the top in the center. So, right at the bottom there's this darker green space, which is where I've put in Self. So, it's a space, it's a place of being not doing. So, it's not activity, it's not protector activity or even manager activity when it's connected to Self, it just is Self. And so that holds all the feelings of, all the qualities of Self and I've named that I am. And then for the managers who are connected to Self, going about it as they need to in our daily lives still Self-connected, that's this paler green zone, the flow state, the Self co-regulation, this ventral vagal connected space of I can. And then the other circular space that's not in Polyvagal theory, but it is in Internal Family Systems is the exiles. And they inhabit a brown circle, which straddles the line between fight, flight and freeze and in it I sense, the words I heard, that's the kind of quality I heard of exiles. And it's surrounded on every side by either freeze protectors or fight-flight protectors. And we get to see how it's kind of contained, both protected and kept away by always protectors. And again, it's circular. And it feels to me, and I don't know if this is something that other people would recognize, it's only recently occurred to me that it's another state of being not doing, this exile state. And if you put that in terms of, sometimes is referred to as the masculine and the feminine or the yin and the yang, if we have those protectors and managers in the masculine or the yang and then the exiles and the Self in the yin or the feminine, that being not doing. I don't know, I'm playing with this idea at the moment. But it seems to work. And it's interesting that we've got the squareness of the yang and the circular nature of the yin. It's just interesting that that emerged. I'm kind of still emerging as I speak, yeah. 

 

Aníbal: There you are, integrating.

 

Tisha: It makes me curious about what typical protectors and exiles you find in a really activated nervous system. Like, if somebody is in shutdown and there is that state of being that they're experiencing of just being in shutdown, are there protectors there as well or is it always reflective of a traumatic experience?

 

Ruth: Well, the protectors that are doing the freezing are doing them through two different, if you like, I call them behaviors, through fainting, narcolepsy, chronic fatigue physical or emotional, that very extreme collapse, because "I cannot cope with this, it's too much, I have to go as close to death or face death, it's the only way to cope." So, that would be the strongest type of freeze protector. And then we've got these submit freeze protectors, which kind of disconnected but carrying on, so, just going through the motions or people pleasing, not speaking up and all the numbing addictions. The addictions are just numbing me out, so I don't have to be here. So, that would be part of this kind of submit I can't help myself. And that's why that red zone has this very short phrase I can't. Whereas the protectors in the amber zone in the fight-flight they got that short phrase I must. So, they have protectors...You've got to do something, got to run, they've got to fight through behaviors such as bullying or criticizing or being hyper vigilant or being perfectionist, using addictions that distract them, you know, work addictions or exercise addictions, things that have much more of that energy here as I speak. So, the protectors, it's the quality of I can't flag, that submit or collapse, or I must, it's more sympathetic arousal. It comes in the quality, so that when you've got some behaviors might be in either zone. So, spiritual bypassing, for example could be in just “I'll just numb out, I don't want to feel anything, I am super Zen.” Could have that or you could have spiritual bypassing "Oh yeah, I’m going to do lots of yoga, I'm really, I am so connected to myself." For each of those the exiles are not being heard. And you have a different quality of "I can't, I'm out of here" or "I've got to do this to stay away." 

 

Tisha: So, the sympathetic activation is to keep the individual from feeling the exile pain rather than a product of experiencing the exile pain again? 

 

Ruth: Well, I'd say it's the same as in core IFS. It's either to keep the exiles away. Keep you from feeling it. Or to keep the exiles from feeling more pain. I've got to do this so that my wounded little girl does not feel it again. It's exactly the same. 

 

Tisha: Yeah, great. 

 

Aníbal: So, Ruth, if I say I can't, I may be in a freeze or collapse or a submit state or part, right? Also, if I say this hurts or I hurt, I may be in a freeze part that may elicit a fixing reaction from our sympathetic system, meaning a fight or flight response?

 

Ruth Culver: Fight-flight state. 

 

Aníbal: And this equals the exiles, right? 

 

Ruth Culver: Yeah. The exiles are the...I haven't separated them into freeze or fight-flight. 

 

Aníbal: Yeah. 

 

Ruth Culver: Because those are the behaviors of the protectors.

 

Aníbal: Exactly. And so, if I say I must this comes from our sympathetically energized managers. And if I say I can, eventually Self-centered or ventral-centered and ventral energized?

 

Ruth: Yeah, “I can, even though it's hard, we'll get there.” You know. “We'll make it.” Yeah. 

 

Aníbal: Good. And I am what is it about? Is it pure Self? 

 

Ruth: Yeah. It's just you're being, you know. Self is sometimes called the essence or our true Self. It’s just like my being. I, as we know, we think of ourselves as our protectors. We think that's what our personality is. But actually, who we truly are is this Self. So, here it is, I am. I'm not busy doing stuff, even if it's Self-connected way, they’re still managers connected to Self, but no, this is just Self that doesn't really need to do anything, it just is. 

 

Aníbal: Good. That's why you differentiate a ventral state of resilience from states of survival. 

 

Ruth: Yeah. 

 

Aníbal: Corresponding to the sympathetic and sympathetic states of fight-flight-freeze, yes.

 

Ruth: Yeah. What I would say is that this chart is very much focused on trauma. If I were to do another one side by side with an integrated nervous system, someone who's got lots of lovely resilience, actually, let me just say something about resilience, if I may, because I know it can trigger a lot of people. It has been used sometimes or certainly interpreted as…people often feel shame about it because they don't have resilience. Well we're not born with it; I don't believe we're born with it. We're born with Self. But our system has to learn resilience. And we learn it from our carers, our caretakers. You know, it's usually the mother who has enough resilience in her system to be able to deal with the child's needs. The child crying, she can calm herself and then the child, the baby learns gradually to soothe itself. And that's the resilience. So, we learn it.

 

Aníbal: Yeah.

 

Ruth: So, if I was to put side by side of this chart with the resilient nervous system, the resilient system, what we've got is an ability to go into those survival states, fight-flight-freeze when needed and not get stuck, come back down again. So, our connection to Self is there. The spiral is that connection to Self and ideally we can move up and down without getting stuck. And we can also use the lovely bits of the sympathetic energy and indeed the dorsal vagal energy when we want to. So, that be in play, in lust for the sympathetic energy and then, for the dorsal energy it might be for self-connected meditation, bliss, this kind of thing. So, we could, again, we can use the nervous system states, but they're connected to ventral, just as if you go to the other side connected to Self.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. I also noticed you've put the ventral at the bottom of your chart instead of Deb's ladder that puts the ventral as a superior level. So, why is that?

 

Ruth: Yeah, I had a lovely chat with Deb, actually. She was generous enough to give me an hour on Zoom to chat this through and, of course, for her the traffic lights it's the other way around. So, it doesn't make sense to her. But for me this is how instinctively happened that when we are in contact with Self, we are naturally grounded. That is, as Dick says, you know. That we're grounded when we're in contact with Self and there it is on the ground. We come back down to ourselves. Whereas when we dissociate, which all these protectors are busy trying to take us away from things, we actually leave our Self. And so, we come down, back down. And for me it's much easier to come down into Self than to have to climb up to it. That sounds like a bit of an effort. So, for me, it makes sense this way. And Deb and I had to, respectfully, agree to disagree on our approach to this.

 

Aníbal: Again, we reinforce that we will put your beautiful chart, inspiring one in our show notes for everyone to have access to it. 

 

Ruth: Thank you. There was one more thing I wanted to add, if I may. Is that okay? 

 

Tisha: Yes, please, of course. 

 

Ruth: People often ask how attachment fits in with this.

 

Tisha: Oh, good point. 

 

Ruth: Yeah. And initially I had a version where I put attachment in, and I was super excited because it's really clear that disorganized attachment flips between the red and the amber zones and secure attachment is clearly in the green zone. But then I started thinking about the avoidant and anxious and I realized that different protectors would deal with this in different ways. So, avoidant could be numbing out. Just “I can't have a relationship. I can't do it. I'm not going to go there,” or avoidant could be running away, going into a relationship, running away, going to a relationship, running away. Or attacking men, for example, a woman who just attacks men, that's probably more accurate, actually, because, of course, going into relationship and running away would be more disorganized. So, yeah, for avoidant you might just “I'm just going to attack men, make them really bad,” but that's much more sympathetic. So, you've got two different energies. Similarly, with anxious. You could have the baby who's incredibly anxious and has to numb out to deal with her anxiety because she can't get what she needs. So, she might go into a collapsed state or she might develop OCD from her anxiety or self-harming from her anxiety that she's never going to be loved. So, they don't fit in this particular moment. 

 

Aníbal: Okay. 

 

Ruth: So, for me, there are just two styles of attachment relevant to this model, which is securely attached and insecurely attached.

 

Aníbal: Amazing, thank you, beautiful integration.

 

Tisha: So, the link that we'll share to the spiral image, will that also enable our listeners to find you to participate in your groups? I believe it brings listeners to your website. But I imagine there's going to be a good deal of interest in the groups that you facilitate.

 

Ruth: Yeah. If they sign up to download it from my website, which is calmheart.co.uk, I imagine that's the link you'll give. If they go to download it there, they can choose at that point to either get my mailings or not get my mailings. Yeah. And so they’ll hear about, I do webinars to discuss this. I have lots of lovely questions from people, rather they’re more Zoom meetings, because I can see everybody, and we can chat about it. And there's often quite a few of IFS colleagues there asking questions as well as therapists for whom IFS is completely new and, yeah, you can also find out details of my other online courses and in-person workshops and retreats.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful Ruth. We can see you are having a great time teaching this integration and offering others good learnings. Congratulations. 

 

Ruth: Thank you. 

 

Tisha: Thank you so much for taking the time with us. I've learned so much just listening to you today, and I'm so glad you're a part of the big Internal Family Systems community.

 

Ruth: It's given me more than I can ever express. So, I'm just really happy to be part of that community. I Really am.

 

Aníbal: And we will check with you later on the road, to see how this chart is evolving. Eventually, but by now, Ruth, thank you so much for having us and for organizing this interesting integration. Also, we will end this episode with one of your performances as a jazz singer. A beautiful standard, If I should lose you from your 2008 album Refashioned. And yes, it was such a lovely time together. I hope we keep meeting.

 

Ruth: I'd love that.

 

Aníbal: And may our days be filled with ventral vagal abundance as Deb Dana use to say. Thank you so much.

 

Ruth: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real delight.

 

Recorded 23th Oct 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Somatic IFS with Susan McConnell new book 01:01:59

Susan is a Lead Trainer for IFS Institute since the early days, and helped Richard Schwartz to develop the model all along the way. Susan just published a book on Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy: Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch in Practice -  North Atlantic Books.
In this episode we welcome back Susan and check in with her on this pandemic tough days. Then we dive in Susan's new book: writing process,  main ideas and practices.

Full Transcription

Today, we're talking to Susan about her new book, Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy: Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch in Practice. Susan, welcome back and thank you for joining us today.

Susan McConnell: Oh, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be back. I feel very honored.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Susan, and many congratulations on your new book, Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy. Before we dive in your book, let me share that I keep such beautiful memories of our time together in Lisbon back in April 2018 and February 2019. It was a privilege to benefit from your precious presence and help to certificate the first IFS Portuguese practitioners and therapists. So, I feel still grateful for the way you led those trainings and you offered participants a great experience and understanding of the model. Also, I want you to know your trainees in Portugal miss you, respect you and admire you.

Susan: Oh, thank you. Well, just even right now, hearing your voices and being able to see your pictures too, which I can see right now, it just brings back such wonderful memories of just being with that amazing group and the growth that all of us experienced being together, drawn together by this amazing model that I just have been so privileged to teach all these years. But being in Portugal was among the highlights, I think, of all my teaching experiences. And I thank you both for that, because you both contributed to that. You probably, Aníbal, so much just with your also falling in love with the model and wanting to offer this to people that that you're teaching, So, yeah, just lots of appreciation all around. Good way to start, right?

Tisha: Absolutely.

Aníbal: Susan, how have you been and how are you coping with these tough pandemic times?

Susan: Oh, yeah, it's been, what? Maybe seven, eight months or so. I sometimes have parts that criticize me for being slow to adapt to the changes that we need to make and then I remind those parts that, you know, to just step back a while and let me just be with the difficulty. And as someone, like you said, Tisha, that is focused very much on the somatic aspects, I think I do process things through my body and it's been more difficult to get all the information that I need in this more limited context of Zoom, you know, just the online experiences, both with clients and with the teaching.

There's been undeniable losses at the very beginning. I lost my mother and then a week later, very afraid I was going to lose my daughter, who had a serious case of covid-19 and who had even post viral symptoms. But I'm happy to say that she seems to be fully recovered now. And one of the gifts of this whole thing was when she and her family, which includes two my grandchildren, came and spent two months with us here. And we all had a lot of fun. And of course, there were a lot of changes, but it was just kind of set everything aside to be present with them for the summer. And, you know, the summertime hasn't been so bad because we have found creative ways to get together with friends outside. And I have to admit too, there's some parts that are wondering what the darker days, the colder days will bring when there's less opportunity to do that. But, you know, again, all in all, I'm so aware that most of us here are so much more fortunate and so much more blessed than so many people. The people of color in our country and people in developing countries around the world and people with less resources and people who don't have access to zoom, the Internet and on and on. I mean, really every day. And I'm grateful for my spouse, you know, that I'm not alone, I'm not isolated, really. And I feel just, maybe even more aware of the interdependence of all of us on this web. 

And, you know, it takes me back to my early days in IFS.  I was talking with a friend and colleague, another IFS trainer just yesterday, and we both were sharing how one of the strong things that drew us to this model was the community. Just the wonderful people that are drawn to Dick Schwartz and to the model. And, you know, both of us, we just kind of looked around and kind of got a sense of the people and said "Wow, this is an amazing group of people, we're going to stick with this.” Not only as a model, but the people that recognize how valuable this model is and that want to do whatever they can to promote it and to teach it and to share it with their clients and patients.

So, yeah, I just have both that sense of loss with how do we carry on without in-person trainings and particularly over time zones. Oh, the challenges, you know, to try to translate what we've offered in person to a more restricted venue. And yet, just the unexpected gifts. And just, you know, it's been a lot of lessons for me.

Aníbal: Mm hmm.

Susan: Yeah. So, thanks for asking. It's a good way to start.

Aníbal: Yeah. So, Susan, focusing on your new book just released in September, right? I found your book a powerful reading and learning to get a closer and more appreciative relationship with my body. Find it an eloquent deepening of the IFS model full of clinical applications and examples. And I'm still in the process of reading it. How long did this project took you since you started the writings? I remember you announcing a sabbatical time to work on it back in 2018. And of course, we can see this book start back in 2013, when you wrote that article for the IFS New Dimensions book, right?

Susan: Yeah, I can't really say that the idea for a book started in 2013. I think again there were parts thinking "I'm not an author, I can't write a book. I wrote that chapter and that was enough." You know, I was glad to be asked to write that chapter. But I never really considered a whole book, until...I really should try to go back through my records and see when I actually began. I was kind of looking at my computer and seeing how many little pieces of writing I had done, maybe after a particularly moving session and wanting to record that, it would take some time to write that down. And maybe I would read what someone else wrote and then take some notes on it and put that in another file. So, I began collecting a lot of stuff and just began to think that maybe someday I'll put this into a book form or something. But, you know, honestly, I think what really motivated me was when one of my former students, someone who had been at both the Costa Rica and had been in a training that I had done, basically sat me down to "Susan, someone needs to write a book on Somatic IFS, and it should be you. And if you're not going to do it, I'm going to write it."

And so, I'm like "whoa, she's right, it's got to be me." I mean, maybe other books will come too. But, you know, it's interesting, like, I remember when I first, years ago, started offering, you know, long before 2013, started offering three-day workshops, I thought "What do I want to call it?" And I just decided to call it Somatic IFS. And I wasn't really sure whether there'd be much interest in it. IFS is already a fairly embodied model. And yet I began to see the value of bringing the body in even more fully than we typically do in IFS. I was certainly doing it with my own clients and the participants in the trainings were giving me feedback, like "there's something a little different that you're offering." And I got curious about that. And so, out of that, I began to offer more and more of, you know, giving myself more permission to more fully bring the body in, which I didn't do when I was teaching Level 1's and Level 2's. But I think probably when I was in Portugal, I guess two years ago, I was already in the middle of it. So, perhaps I started about three years ago. Just, you know, at first thinking "I don't even know if someone will...if I can find a publisher, but I can always Self publish it." And I did submit a proposal to North Atlantic books and was quite surprised. I thought well maybe I'll have to, you know, I don't know. But they quickly said "Yes, we want to publish your book. Oh, my gosh. I guess it makes me an author." So, at that point, I got pretty busy to, not just with the first chapter, but to really begin to flesh out the remaining whatever, six or seven or eight chapters that are in the book. And yeah, just any time I had some free time just sitting down with my little laptop and putting it together, and it was just really one page at a time, you know, it's kind of amazing, it just all came together. And it was really quite a nice process that was, of course, completed maybe. I don't even know for sure. Well, I guess it would have been, maybe sometime in November or something of this year that they wanted it to be the final edits to be completed. So, it's just been an interesting process. I would really encourage anybody with an inclination to do this, to go ahead, because it's, you know, I think the more you write, the more you really learn what it is you're trying to teach.

Tisha: Susan, I picked up this book, it just came to me a couple of days ago, and it is such a gift and your writing it's easy to read, it addresses just an aspect of the model that is so important. And I wanted to give our listeners a sample of your writing and a sample of why Somatic IFS is so valuable. If I could read the first paragraph of your introduction. Are you all right with it?

Susan: Sure.

Tisha: Great. So, it says "including the body story, along with the verbal story in therapy, illuminates and awakens what has been obscured in darkness. The feral animal of our body, startled by light, may scurry back to hide in dark corners. The touch, the nourishment, the movement that our body craves may be buried under a history of neglect and trauma. We may feel our body has betrayed us. We may have internalized an objective attitude toward our body. Our individual hurts and collective societal burdens lodged in our tissues await the light of our courage and compassion shining into the depths of our interiority, leading us to the essence of our being." It's so, beautiful, Susan, and this book is a guide for how to do just that, to bring light into the depths of our interiority. And so, thank you.

Susan: Thank you for reading it. Yeah.

Aníbal: And also, Susan, you got the sweet forward words from Dick Schwartz acknowledging your central role developing the model along the way.

Susan: Yes, he was very kind in his introduction. I was so, again, honored that he wrote that introduction and he's... I've always felt his support, you know, even in the very early days, he was like "Well, yeah, bring it on. That's not my gift, but it is yours," you know. So, I've appreciated that. And I think there were times when I felt a bit on the fringe, you know, of the rest of IFS, as other topics were offered on Level 2, it never seemed like anyone thought about the body, you know. But I just kind of kept going because I thought, well, it's important to me and to many people who support it, who have supported me. And yeah, I just...And the two of you too, even right now, it just, it's just amazing, I just keep breathing it in and it really gives me fuel. I think too about, you know, as a writer, again, I didn't know, I didn’t particularly think of myself as a writer, but Mariel Pasteur who wrote our latest version of the manual, asked me to write a piece or two for that. And she was one person who just said "Susan, you have a voice." I was like "really?" I didn't know that I... I guess that was a part of me that didn't have the confidence that I could find my voice, that I had a voice. And, you know, another connection, I think maybe you're right. Maybe I did begin this more when I was teaching in Portugal because I remember Enrique, who was a PA during the training, and he said "You know, Susan, I'm glad to hear you're wanting to put a book together, because my wife, she's you know, we have a publishing company with this niche that your book fits into perfectly in Barcelona. But also, my wife is an editor and a coach...", I think is the word I'm looking for. I think she's a writing coach. So, it turned out that I end up actually not working with her for more than a session or two. But again, when I was in Portugal, I got so much support from the two of you for moving ahead and from Enrique as well for continuing on with this process of book writing.

Tisha: You break the book down into Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch. Can you speak a little bit about how you begun to organize the Somatic IFS in this way? Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch.

Susan: Well, you know, you have to come up with some way to structure things, right? I did, again, years ago, I think when I, possibly even 20 years ago, I like "how is it that I can convey this that I do?" And those were sort of the five practices or aspects of the work that seem to encompass it all. Sometimes in writing the book I thought I could have just picked one of these and written a hole two hundred and fifty pages on, you know, on Somatic Awareness, for example. But obviously it begins with that and I think of Awareness as just the foundational practice. And, you know, awareness, don't you think it's fairly synonymous with Self-energy when we are truly aware?

Aníbal: Exactly.

Susan: When we are aware without an agenda, but just sort of that open awareness, not needing to find something has to be fixed, or something wrong or something good or whatever. But just opening up to that broader field of awareness that includes our body, of course, and the sensations...That's really where we begin. And in order to really open up that awareness, we first often find the parts that, like I say in that first paragraph, maybe are afraid of opening, of shining the light onto those dark corners, that we find the parts of ourselves that block that awareness. We begin with that. We begin with the protectors that block our awareness. And then as we move into more and more awareness, that leads us to we become aware we're breathing. And then, lo and behold, we can deepen into that practice, it's like oh, yeah, all this breathing, which is both voluntary and involuntary, both conscious and unconscious. What happens when we bring awareness first to our natural breathing and how can that help us both access parts, but also witness the part story? How can breathing kind of be an opening into some of our parts? How can breathing be an opening to more Self-energy? How can we breathe into those places? How can breathing really be a vehicle for the light that I mentioned in that first paragraph? How can our breath shine a light on places in our body that are tight or unavailable to us? Breathing has been recognized for millennia by many spiritual practices and body mind spirit practices, yoga in particular - the pranayama - as a tool, and there's so many breathing practices that can help us with our healing, with the transformation. And again, it's just always there. It's always there. A breath away, right? Just like “Oh, my breath." I'm feeling, like overwhelmed or I'm feeling my trauma, you know, bringing me up, you know. But that actually, I'm glad I said that because these two practices, Somatic Awareness, connects us with the ground below us, the earth and Conscious Breathing brings us to a more awareness of the space around us and the infinite space above us. So, in a way, those are two amazing resources. When I'm sitting with a client who's bringing to me and sharing with me in a very sacred space the depths of their pain, I might get overwhelmed if I didn't remember that I have this access to a bigger space of Self-energy around me before I open into that relational realm, which is the third practice, which is Resonance. And that gives me the grounding, the anchor to be willing to enter into...I just can feel it even right now, like, isn't that amazing? It just really, when someone trusts us and says "I'm going to share with you how I've been hurt." And it is such an honor really. And how can we be fully, fully embodied in an embodied way present not just to the verbal story, but to all that they're sharing nonverbally, that is much more than half of the story. So, we use our bodies as a vehicle to really open to the entire story and they sense that full-bodied resonance, that full-bodied witnessing and invite them to fully embody their own witnessing of their part as well. 

So, in a way, these practices are sequential, like we first have the Somatic Awareness of our own bodies and of our client’s bodies and help them become more aware of their bodies. We become aware of our breathing that helped the client become aware they're breathing. We're just multiplying the resources to be able to then resonate with the body stories, the verbal and the non-verbal stories that our parts so need to be heard and not just heard with our ears, but heard with our hearts, heard with our limbic brains, you know. So, in that chapter, I go into various aspects of our body that we use to resonate in this radical fashion, which is our hearts, our limbic brains and our guts really. Our enteric nervous systems are also a part of our connection with other human beings. Yeah, just taking a moment myself because it's very...It just means a lot to me, these practices. I've been living and breathing them for years now.

 

Tisha: I think it would be easy to skip over the value of Resonance. It's a surprise to see the equal value that you give it to Breath and Awareness.

Susan: Yeah. Yes. And I can't really say any one of these is more important when I talk about them, when I say "Oh no, Somatic Awareness is the most important" and I'm like "Well, I don't know, Breath is kind of right up there..." And then, yeah, radical, but not only can we not skip over it, but sometimes I think that's it. That's what we do, just this Resonance that needs to be acknowledged and not just acknowledged, but kind of…I don't want to say practice, because I mean, I think Resonance maybe is like a practice, right? To find our blocks again to Resonance. Each one of these practices begins with finding the parts of ourselves that don't want us to fully open to utilizing these practices both for our own selves as well as our clients. But we all have blocks, we've all been hurt in relationship, and we all have parts that protect us by not letting us open up quite so much. And as therapists, I think sometimes we don't know if we can fully let ourselves resonate with such a painful, traumatic story, you know. So, we hold back a little bit, right? Do you feel that too? Like, "Oh, I don't know." But when we find, when we have those first two practices and we trust that will be okay even if we can reverberate, you know, that we can reverberate with far more than we even imagined and we can invite our clients to also reverberate with their Self, with their part stories. And none of it it’s ever more than we can handle. None of it is.

Aníbal: So, Susan, you say Somatic IFS consists of these five practices that you started describing.

Susan: Yes.

Aníbal: And you also say those practices can be sequential and interdependent.

Susan: Yes.

Aníbal: As you also illustrated. But how do you differentiate Awareness from Somatic Awareness or even Breath from Conscious Breath or Resonance from Radical Resonance? But let's start with this one, the Awareness. Is there some difference between Awareness and Somatic Awareness?

Susan: It's, it's...That's a really good question, and I think throughout this book I'm just wanting to emphasize the whole, the body, you know. That our parts are embodied. And if we don't experience them that way, then that's because that part or another part is blocking us from experiencing the embodied aspect of it. So, I bring the adjective, I have an adjective in front of each one of these practices just to emphasize something, you know. So Somatic Awareness, of course we're aware of what we're thinking, what we're feeling, but even just stopping there…Most everyone is agreeing that our emotions have a source in the body, so, our emotions are not never separate from the body, even though in our culture we tend to say "Oh, well, I'm confused" or "Well I'm frightened" or "I'm angry." And then you say "Well, where do you feel that in your body?” They're not really sure or even say "What are you aware of right now?" I might even say "What body sensation are you aware of?" And they'll say "Oh, I'm confused or I'm angry and frightened." It's like "Yes, okay, those are emotions. And what is the source of those emotions or those mental states - like confusion is more of a mental state, what is the source of that in your body?" And oftentimes it's hard to find. "I don't know. I'm just angry". "Yeah, would you be willing to just stay with that anger and just be curious about maybe how your body participates in that emotion?" So, I emphasize Aníbal, emphasize the adjective Somatic as way to say there's something of value, I believe, that comes when we focus our awareness on our body. And actually, as I hear you feedback what I said about - but Tisha also said about - the sequential nature, I also want to say these practices are not only sequential in a very linear way...

Aníbal: Of course.

Susan: They are not just only dependent on the one that lies before it in a sequential way, but there's actually another dimension to these practices where they are very non-linear and very interdependent. So, we can start with movement, like many movement, like dance movement therapists might do. Like let's see what movement wants to happen, you know. And then you begin moving and then you go "Is this some part of me moving? Is this Self-energy? Like who is it that's moving? And what happens as I move? And can I become aware of what's happening in my body? What sensations come up as I let this, you know, as I stamp my foot or as I make a fist or as I leap around the room or even just make a little shift in my posture, what happens as I do that? So, there are not only sequential and dependent on each other, but they are non-linear and interdependent. As a body worker, I often began with Touch. People came to me because they wanted my touch. I'm like "Okay, yeah, let's see what happens when I place my hands here. Yeah, like what images come up, what feelings come up, what memories come up." So, really, we can begin with any one of the practices.

Tisha: I am so grateful you included Touch. It's so important.

Susan: Oh, absolutely.

Tisha: And it's also...I think it can be a little dicey...

Susan: Yes.

Tisha: To talk to therapists, counselors about using touch. And you incorporate it so beautifully. But how was it for you to begin to own that Touch is a part of a Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy book?

Susan: Yeah, great question. I began to realize that my parts were exiling touch, which is just so ironic because before I became a Hakomi therapist and IFS therapist, I was a body therapist. I was doing craniosacral therapy and structural body therapy. And so, in a lot of ways, I have a lot more experience with touch. But I was being influenced by our culture and by the reluctance to.... By the diceyness of it to...When I would have an opportunity to do workshops or trainings, I somehow was never leaving enough time for this final practice. I'd be like, well, it's either working with attuned touch or doing about an adequate completion for our time together, well we'll just spend a little bit of time on touch so that we have enough time to really complete. And I started noticing that that was a real pattern and I thought "I can't let this happen. I really need to look at the parts of me that are colluding with the culture that has made a separation between mind and body and particularly between touch therapies and talk therapies and in the process of seeing these parts that have been so influenced by societal burdens and both understandable caution and also, in many cases, I think, almost throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if you want to use that awful expression. 

But there is so much, I think, as I describe in the book, that touch is so powerful. And that's what I got in touch with myself as I found my parts that knew had experienced both personally and also with so many clients on my table, the power of touch. And also knowing the power to harm. You know, so there is a power to heal and a power to harm, and that a lot of our very understandable inhibitions and regulations against touch are to really safeguard our clients from the abuses of touch. And yet the more I read, I realize that these well-intentioned safeguards are not what's really needed to truly safeguard our clients. Instead, what's needed is for each of us to work with our own experiences with touch, both abusive touch, neglect of touch, and our positive experiences with touch to unburden those parts that have been hurt. And then we can truly bring in Self-led, attuned touch as an offering. Plus, of course, therapists who are in very real ways, whose regulation or insurance or whatever would be threatened by incorporating touch, that is not at all necessary to include attuned touch in the panoply of practices, because we can, all of us do without even thinking we're all, when we're doing IFS, we're all making the possibility of the Self of the client to touch the parts, particularly our exiled parts, they often long for just to climb right in our laps, right? Or be hugged or held by us.

So, imaginary touch is what I call it in the book, just imagining as it “What is that part? There's a part wanting to get closer to you”? “Yes, it is actually jumping on my lap”. “Oh, great. Yeah. Is that okay with you”? “Yes, it's fine”. “Any parts concerned about that”? “No, not at all”. “Good. Well, what happens for your part when it's feeling your arms around it”? “Oh yeah. It's just really relaxing”. “What happens in your body as your part...”? “Oh, my whole body feels relaxed..." So, that's the imaginary touch. And then "Is there a place in your body that would like your touch right now?" And frankly, even when I do in-person work, oftentimes that's all that's needed. So, I don't really come up against that dilemma. Hardly at all. And in the IFS model is so much about our own Self-energy, healing our parts that oftentimes that's what's needed. And sometimes I only just say "Would you like my touch in addition to yours”? “Oh, yeah, that might be nice. Let's see let's see how that feels.” And it either feels really good or unnecessary. But for some of the people who have taken my trainings, they may be touch therapists, you know, they may be body workers or osteopaths, doctors or nurses who professionally are licensed to bring in touch. Yoga practitioners who often will incorporate "Let me just touch you here to bring more awareness to the fact that you could shift your posture a little bit." It's really good to have this information to know that they're touching not from a part that has energy of there's something wrong with what you're doing. And I'm going to have my criticism, my fixing part come through the energy of my hand, but instead more of a let's just touch here to see what's needed, you know, to see if my touch can bring your awareness, your breath, my resonance to that touch. So, it's a very different approach to touch than many of us were trained as body workers to bring that energy. So, yeah, you can see I have a whole chapter worth for want to talk about it. I appreciate your question, Tisha, because there's a lot there that I have to say about it. Yeah.

 

Aníbal: I'm glad that you called this beautiful chapter The Power of Ethical Touch and that you gave your readers good tools and guidelines to follow on this so much needed approach, the touch, yeah.

Susan: Yes. The Power of Ethical Touch. Attuned touch and ethical touch. And touch from embodied Self-energy, and that's why it's the final one, really, because it relies on the practices below it to, that we go through, that we immerse ourselves in these practices until we can be assured that we are in that state of embodied Self-energy and that we're not touching because our parts want to be touched. Our parts want us to touch, our parts need that touch. Or our parents feel like if we touch them...Anyway, it has to really be ethical and I think the best safeguard against the ethical touch and attuned touch is really not external regulations, external protectors, you know, societal protectors, but instead our own internal sense and our trust in the client knowing, being able to tell us. Like, I would not touch a client who is blended with a part, for example, because I wouldn't be able to trust that they in telling me "Yes, yes, it's fine, go ahead and touch me there." I wouldn't be able to trust that it really was fine with their parts and they weren't overriding any other parts who are basically kind of going "No way, no way, I'm not ready for that." And many of my trauma survivors, when I was doing body work taught me that. That it was really important for me to find a way to bring in that quality of touch, or else I was retraumatizing them.

Aníbal: Mm hmm.

Tisha: One thing I love about this book is how you use examples and you give a lot of exercises. I wonder if right now you could share an example of healing touch. Where touch might have helped the trauma survivor.

Susan: Well, interestingly, what you just said, Tisha, actually takes me to...I will get to your question. I mean, your invitation. But first I want to just acknowledge, and I think the book does that. I want to just acknowledge all the people came before me with each of the chapters. I mean, I am in a way, I'm standing on the shoulders of so many people who with each of these practices have written books and devoted their lives to…really hundreds of years, in many cases, to each of these practices. And so, I'm not making up any of these practices, obviously. And many, many teachers have taught me so much over decades, really, that I just want to, again, bow to all of them and hope that my book at least touches in on all their contributions, including on this very dicey topic of attuned touch.

Mm. Again, I think...I don't remember any of the examples that I might have put in my book, because that was, you know, perhaps a year ago that I wrote that chapter. And often when I think about what I just mentioned, like what I learned from my trauma survivors when I was just many, many years ago, just doing touch....I think I've mentioned her in the book if I recall, that her protector parts were assuring me that the Structural Therapy, which is a fairly intensive kind of touch, you know, very, very deep into the fascia, you know, she's like "Oh, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine with all this stuff. Just go right ahead. I'll just be laying here." But after a few sessions, I began to wonder. I just began to have some questions about whether she was really receiving my touch and started to talk with her about it and finally realized that she had a very, very severe trauma history that although she was seeing a therapist, was not resolved fully. And I invited her therapist to come in to our sessions. And so, it was myself and this client and her therapist together. We found out that what she could be Somatically aware of was...Not even with my touch, but just simply her own awareness, was one little finger, a portion of her little finger for about, you know, just a few seconds. That was so different than what I assumed when I first started working with her, I had to back way off...I just didn't touch her for quite a while until her parts were...I didn't even know about parts. It was long before IFS, even before Hakomi that I just eventually had her be able to inhabit her body more and more and then began to find ways to use touch to help her and safely inhabit her own body until we expanded that to more than a few seconds and more than just her hand, more than just her arm. And eventually we really did get to a place where she not only could inhabit her body, but begin to tell me what kind of touch she really wanted and could take in and appreciate and, you know, could really take it in and not just not just survive it, right? But to really enjoy it. And so, she really came to a place where she could enjoy her body. And so, I just have to credit her once again for teaching me so much about touch and about how far back oftentimes we need to go in that therapeutic relationship to know that we can be fully present, and they can be fully present to what we're offering. So, I think that was really the foundation of much of the later work I did with IFS and touch with my clients. So, I hope that that's a good enough example. Tisha.

Tisha: It's a great example. Thank you.

Aníbal: Susan, just quoting you from that chapter, you say "Attuned touch can repair the wounds from too little of the right kind of touch and too much of the wrong kind of touch, restoring our birthright of sensory aliveness." So well put, yeah.

Susan: Yeah. So, yeah, too little of the right kind of touch and too much of the wrong kind of touch. I mean, I think most of us can relate to that, right? In our childhoods there are times when even those of us who were fortunate enough to not be seriously wounded with touch, I think we all can remember the uncle who tickled us when we didn't want it, right? Or the aunt who insisted on a hug or, you know, being maybe seven or eight and wanting to climb on her mother's lap and being told we're way too old for that. And those are just experiences that all of us can relate to. And all of us deserve to have healed and not just have to cover over and just soldier on regardless. You know, that we all can go back to those even what we considered as minor wounds to get the right kind of touch, right? And particularly during this pandemic, how many of us are not getting...I mean, I can say I'm among those that are not getting the touch that I was counting on for my physical and emotional health from acupuncturists and chiropractors and body workers and friends. Every time I see a friend and we're six feet away and I just go "Oh, I wish we could hug." And we all go "Oh, I know." And we just can't, right? So, just to even acknowledge those parts that are longing for that touch and we have to say "I'm so sorry." And even someone said to me instead of, you know, the gesture I'm doing right now is stretching my arms out as if I could hug you when I can't, which is good. To just say "Oh, I want this, and I can't have it." But then to come back and just put my arms around my own arms and shoulders, my hands around my own arms and shoulders and go "Yeah, okay, and this will have to be enough for now." So, yeah.

 

Aníbal: Susan, the Somatic IFS differs from the so-called the regular original IFS or just deepens original IFS? I mean, I notice, for instance, you refer the unburdening process can be different than the shamanic one that Michi Rose and others put together. You say unburdenings can be spontaneous and felt in our body as well. Do you want to comment on this?

Susan: You too have fantastic questions. Yeah, because it gives me an opportunity to clarify, because I do want to clarify that I am not creating a new model. And I think people who have read the book will realize that I'm not trying to teach IFS all over again, only bringing the body in. I am more saying those of you who already know the model, primarily because you've been through the training or even people who are still quite informed about the model through other venues, or having been clients of, you know, IFS clients, that they will see that I'm relying on a certain base understanding of the model and I am...It's like I'm adding to it, not just on top of it, but sometimes going underneath and finding the embodied roots of it. So, that's the first thing I just want to be able to clarify that I'm not creating a new model. But at least that wasn't my intention. I don't believe I have created a new model. 

But yeah, unburdening is, again, I think I go back to my years, many decades ago, working with people on the table and learning so much about the therapeutic relationship and about how change happens and how healing happens by being present with not just touch, but also with the...From the very beginning, open to, like, very curious about how are the emotions being expressed through body symptoms. And I found that unburdenings were happening spontaneously as we brought body and mind together, that that created the alchemy for transformations to be happening. And we would then just go "Oh, there was a big shift. Did you feel that”? “Yeah, I felt that, let's be with that. Let's just stay with that shift and let that unfold, you know”. “Oh yeah. I'm so glad you told me to stay with it because I'm just feeling like this energy streaming through my body that I never felt before or I want to get up off your table. I feel there's this new way that I could...I have a new alignment. I feel more connected with the Earth and I feel my breath is just able to be coming in more freely and I feel my heart open." People are just sharing all these things that are happening just simply through that. So, I already had a foundation, I think, of experience, of unburdenings that underlay my understanding of what Dick was teaching me about his experience with unburdening that was also informed, I think, by Michi Rose and others of us who were there at the beginning who helped him really understand that unburdening...We could bring in the four elements, we could bring in the horizon, we could bring in the light, we could bring in these various elements to help the unburdening process. So, although I incorporated that, particularly when I was teaching the IFS trainings, but when I come back to Somatic IFS, I come back to my base, which is realizing that in a way unburdenings are happening all along. And it can help the process to just stop for a moment and say "Oh little shift. That part is trusting you, isn't it? That part heard your words. It just sort of shifted somehow, didn't it?" So, I really take unburdening as a bit of more of a process rather than event. That unburdening is definitely happening in the body, in IFS, again, we say, where is that burden in your body? And that can be very useful, but sometimes it's not necessary because it is so clear where the burden is on their body, you don't have to go back and touch back into the body. We've been with the body all along. And the burden has been unburdening through the body all along. But then in the actual unburdening process, I typically don't go to "Do you want to let that burden go through the earth, through fire, through water, through air?" But I more will say "How is it that that part...” I like to engage because it's more fun for me. I like to engage the creativity of the part. "Is that part really ready to let go of that? How would it like to do that? Does it have an idea?" Or sometimes it has no idea. Then I say it to my client "Do you have an idea?" And then I engage their creativity. And if I hear "I have no idea, I'm ready to do it, but can you help me?" Then I will go “Well, yeah.” And I'll either go with one of these elements or I'll go with...I just tune into the field around me and just say "How does this particular part, what's the best way to let go of that burden?" It's just more fun for me. It's more fluid, I guess, for me. So, I appreciate your question, Aníbal, because I think I offer, I think, an equally valid and perhaps more entertaining or interesting way to acknowledge the little micro unburdenings and then the more macro unburdenings that are happening during the course of our working with clients.

Aníbal: Susan, you finish your book with a chapter on the Embodied Self and another chapter called Nobody, No Mind, No Self, No Parts. Looks kind of a spiritual approach to the model. You want to say more about this?

Susan: Uh...You know, I think there is a way that this spiritual realm is something harder to talk about and it's something that takes me a while to enter into. And I think writing that book, that chapter was...I wasn't sure all along how we would end the book. And I think that an immersion in each of the five practices which lead to embodied Self and deepening into a description of embodied Self and trying to deepen into that description while being, while staying embodied in my Self, which is a bit of a challenge sometimes when you're sitting there, sometimes for too long, you know, when my body is kind of saying "Long enough, you know, get up and move around." But denying, unfortunately, some of my parts that...But just staying with that and typing with my fingers on the keyboard and yet it's trying to stay embodied as I write it and then finding it, just finding that it just took me to the spiritual place. I don't know that right now I can articulate it, so, I don't know, maybe you can do that for me, or Tisha can say where it took you, maybe as you read that.

Tisha: I haven't gotten there yet.

Susan: Okay.

Tisha: I'm still working on embodying my Self-energy.

Susan: Oh, I know. I know. Well...

Tisha: May happen sometimes. Sometimes I just, you know, when you feel a deep connection, when you feel that just natural confidence or clarity...

Aníbal: I just found those absence of boundaries that nobody, no mind, no Self, no parts, such an expanding experience for us collectively. And I found it beautiful and maybe it speaks for this spiritual approach.

Susan: Actually, that helps me, thank you, because I do...I think all along, even decades ago, I do realize that across our culture, which I explained at the beginning of the book, that our culture, which is created this...Western culture, meaning our culture, has created this sort of somewhat artificial but perhaps necessary for our development, separation between mind and body in many of us. I mean, I think, again, decades ago I realized that this was an artificial separation. And I think in the ensuing years, many more of particularly the therapy culture has recognized, particularly with Bessel Van der Kolk's wonderful book, you know, with trauma, but just with more and more of these clinical issues that come to us that we need to bring in the body. I have found that when we bring body and mind together, it opens us up to the spiritual realm. And again, body and mind and spirit is really overdone. It's become let’s try...They sell shampoo with it in, everything else it’s become a marketing ploy. And yet it's really true that when we bring mind and body together in a very full and authentic way, we just find ourselves in this realm of spirit. I guess when you said like the boundaries in a way, I mean, we need the boundaries, of course, and yet there is also an unboundaried place, which is a realm of spirit, right? That we all know, we all sense, and we know when we can enter into it. And it's a bit of a gift isn't it? That's a bit of that illumination, like, we can't really just turn on the light, but we do what we need to do before we end up...The light just emerges, right?

Aníbal: Susan, we would like to wish the best journey and success to this new book of yours, Somatic IFS. It's been a pleasure to read it and a pleasure to grasp it somehow with you today. I'm sure it can help us collectively to find a better relationship with our bodies and minds and also deepen our IFS understandings and practices.

I'm also looking forward to a time when, as you say in your book, touching and hugging is no more dangerous. And we can confidently benefit from the healing effects of loving and attuned touch as you say.

Susan: Hmm mm.

Aníbal: So, Susan, thank you so much for having us and for helping us with your wisdom and this book to welcome and better inhabit our bodies. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and I hope we can keep meeting, sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Susan: Hmm.

Tisha: I'd like to say thank you as well. This book is an incredible contribution to the community, greater than the IFS community. All the people that will be healed and all the lives that will be touched by your wisdom. Thank you.

Susan: This has been lovely for me too, and in a way, you know, the completion of the book and then the final steps of actually getting it out there and, you know, even a little bit of promotion, I think this talk with you is a necessary step for me to begin to take the next step, which is, I think, offering some trainings and first, you know, of course, online. But I think I do want to begin to find ways to do this in an embodied way. So, again, just to let the listeners know that I will be...Because a lot of people are asking about that, so, I just will be working towards that. So, thank you for this important step towards being able to do that more fully. Yeah.

Aníbal: Thank you, Susan.


Recorded  15th Oct 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

The UK IFS Open Space with Liz Martins 45:15

After a career in social work management, Liz became interested in alternative approaches to leadership and organisational change, working as an independent consultant and facilitator for public services.
She particularly engaged with participatory approaches based on ideas around systems theory, including Open Space Technology.

In 2008, Liz trained in psychosynthesis, a model that has many similarities with IFS, not least the idea of sub-personalities and a core self, within a spiritual context. She qualified as a therapist and set up in private practice, with an emphasis on working with trauma. She trained in other (Therapeutic )  modalities including EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, but since discovering IFS a few years later this has been her map for understanding and navigating the world, inside and out.

Liz is an experienced IFS therapist and has been a PA many times. Her travels with IFS over the last few years have taken her to cities Madrid, Copenhagen, South Korea and Bali, as well as to the IFS conference in Denver. Currently she is working as ‘lead PA’ on online L1 and L2 trainings internationally.

Alongside her therapy practice, Liz continues to work from time to time as an Open Space facilitator. With colleagues, in 2018 she organised the first Open Space weekend for the IFS community in the UK. This has now become an annual event and next year’s will be the fourth.

In between all this, she continues - and enjoys - her private practice as an IFS therapist and supervisor, based at her home in Bath in the UK.

Our Journeys as Therapists: a Talk with Cece Sykes 01:03:53

In this episode focused on our journeys as therapists and counselors, we welcome back Cece Sykes. Cece has over 40 years of experience of clinical work with individuals, couples and families, specializing in recovery from trauma and addictive processes. She is a Senior Trainer of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and travels internationally teaching, lecturing and consulting. Cece also developed workshop retreat as part of an ongoing worldwide project to explore the personal narratives of therapists and the impact on their work.

Our Journeys as Therapists: a Talk with Cece Sykes

Today on IFS Talks, we are welcoming back Cece Sykes. Cece has over 40 years of clinical experience working with individuals, couples, and families. Specializing in recovery from trauma and addictive processes. She is a senior Internal Family Systems trainer and travels internationally teaching, lecturing, and consulting. Cece has also developed a workshop retreat as part of an ongoing project to explore the personal narratives of therapists.

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Tisha: Cece, thank you so much for being here with us today and joining us again on IFS Talks.

Cece Sykes: Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to it, actually. Great to be with you guys.

Anibal: Welcome again, Cece. How have you been during these hard times, these pandemic days? It's been one year since we recorded our very first episode for this podcast. It was August 2019, before this pandemic started. How are you?

Cece Sykes: Wow, boy, so much has changed, hasn't it?

[music]

Cece Sykes: As you guys know, the state is still struggling to get a handle on this. I live in Chicago, in the city. And the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois, where I live, have very progressive governments and we have been very safe and taken care of for a long time, as have many places around the country and others are a little bit more unpredictable, but our federal government, obviously, is very unpredictable and it creates a lot of instability.

What I always say in my consultation groups, "We're not a page ahead, us therapists with our clients." So, our clients who are suffering with senses of isolation or unpredictability or anxiety, you know? We have the same. I can certainly notice that I can get parts that get anxious about the future and anxious about what I don't know. I always have a big reunion with my family in the summer and we just didn't do it this year because there's just too many of those, about 40.

Anibal: Wow, large family.

[music]

Cece Sykes: I have four brothers and a sister, and nieces and nephews, and then some babies coming. We add up to over 40 people now. We would never get together like that and aren't getting together. Things that resource us, that are traditions, many families are not able to pursue all the things. Summer is a time for that. We all thought summer would be better and it isn't. Those kinds of things are losses. So, we're all navigating losses all the time. Losses of resource, losses of the things that…The second thing that I'm navigating as a trainer, is keeping trainings online and trying to create connection and safety in a Zoom format, which works a little better than we thought, which is good, but the responsibility for creating that feels like it's on me and then on a staff, and that's a different level of responsibility than just walking into the room and sitting down. It has made things more challenging.

[music]

The second piece that's happening in our country is the upheaval around social justice issues, which is very important, very necessary. I'm very happy it's on the front burner of our country. I hope it stays there, and it's in part of our training. Helping people express and have safety around their strong feelings, around injustice with their own personal journeys around that, and how we can hold that as a community, and doing that on top of the pandemic, on top of being online, I think, for me, and other trainers, especially when I feel…I take my responsibility seriously as in running a training and I feel it weighs on me to have all that happen. And then at the same time, teach in this different format. It's been a lot and it feels like things just take more time.

[music]

Anibal: Cece, you used to do these workshops and retreats for therapists, focusing in therapist's lives that you call Heart Lessons of the Journey: A Workshop Retreat for Therapists and Counsellors. You say, and I'm quoting you, "Life, as a therapist is interesting, challenging, and deeply rewarding. We listen to narratives, we get you into emotions and offer support and guidance. Our own deep feeling and storyline remained firmly in the background, yet life is evolving for us too."

[music]

Anibal: Cece, what do you mean life is evolving for us too? Why this interesting therapists and counselors journey?

Cece Sykes: What I would say Aníbal, is that I have thought about this for maybe, I don't know, a number of decades really, but when I was in my thirties, my children were young, I found out more about my mother's childhood and her history. Her childhood was impacted by sexual abuse in her family, incest.

[music]

Cece Sykes: And I never knew that, but at the time I found that out, what I was doing for a living, was being a therapist, working with sexual abuse cases in the family.

Tisha: Wow.

Cece Sykes: I was a trained family therapist and had written a chapter in another article on denial and working with incest in the family, and this was impacting my…you know, and here this is. It's a powerful story as my mom ended up telling me about this. She had never talked about it before, never said it out loud.

Tisha: She had never talked about it with anyone?

Cece Sykes: With anyone.

Tisha: Wow.

[music]

Cece Sykes: I said at one point in the conversation, I said, "Mom, have you told dad?" She goes, "Your father?" I said, "Yes." She goes, "Why would I tell him?"

[laughter]

Anibal: Hard stories to tell.

Cece Sykes: I said, "Well, mom, I don't want to be the only one who knows." "Oh, well, all right. I'll tell him, but I don't know what he's going to say." [laughs]

Anibal: Amazing.

[music]

Cece Sykes: It speaks to the power, of course. I'm making a joke. I adore my mother. She was a piece of work. She was tough, but she told me that, it was like a shapeshifting about 1,000 pieces of a puzzle that were floating around in my mind about my mom, about who she was, about how she was when she raised us, all came together. It all made sense.

[music]

Cece Sykes: And there's a piece that connects to some of my own history and childhood as well. So I thought, “This is an accident? That of all the professions in the world, I happen to become a family therapist. And then in family therapy, this is an accident? That what I'm focusing on, is sexual abuse in the family?” At that time, I was working at an agency. We were a private agency that worked with the government to provide psychotherapy to families who have been reported for physical and sexual abuse of their children.

So, it can’t hit closer to home, and yet it was not something that I knew. She'd never talked about it, it had never been spoken. So, she and I continued conversations around that that were very rewarding and meaningful to me. [music]

Cece Sykes: At the same time, it created a thought in my mind that I never let go of. I thought, "Am I the only therapist that has a story? How unconsciously and out of my awareness do I pursue healing these issues when this wound is in my own family?" So, I've thought about that for many, many years. The second piece about it is as a trainer - and I've been…I participated in my own training with IFS in '98 and then I've been on staff for leading trainings for 20 years - I do hear therapists’ stories. I mean, that's therapists work on their own stuff in the training. So, I know we have powerful stories and just powerful stories to tell.

So, I finally decided I want to do a workshop around them and start making space for therapists to talk about their own stories, whatever they happen to be, and bringing our own attention to some of the places inside us that we maybe know. Everybody knows I was this role in my family. We all did genograms when we were in graduate school. But what do I not exactly know about how I came to be in the field or as I like to say, with great reverence, "I spend half my week alone in a room with miserable people." [laughs]

Anibal: Alone.

Tisha: And it's my destiny. [chuckles]

Cece Sykes: And I like it.

[music]

Cece Sykes: I really think to shine that spotlight a little bit on how we're here. What is it within us that gives us the gift or the ability for that? How do we sustain that gift and expand it? And then the third piece about it is we have a life. We choose partners, our partnerships work and they don't work. We get married, people die, people become ill. We have children, we don't have children, we adopt children, we combine families. We work through our relationships with our family of origin, our siblings, our parents, our extended family.

We have friendships. We navigate all of life's illness, unpredictability, financial stress. So, we're working on our own lives, also, and we learn things from going through the wounds, the hurts, the confusion, the pain of life. What do we do with that and how are we processing that? How does that impact us when we're sitting in the room? Am I the same person as I was 35 years ago or have I hopefully changed a little bit? Except, I am who I am, but have I maybe grown a little, and in what way? How does that impact our works?

[music]

Cece Sykes: I think also the journey of being a therapist, what's the journey like? They have that story about the London cab drivers. They're famous, and they have those beautiful black cabs that you can get in and you feel like you're in a limo and the London streets are a thousand years old and they know them all. And their brain, their visual spatial in their brain is very overdeveloped, not overdeveloped, extensively developed from having the streets of London in their head for all those years.

What's the brain look like for a psychotherapist? [chuckles] What's it's like to sit in these rooms and hear such intimate stories and to bear witness to trauma and also to be in a position of guiding, healing process? It's a very intimate world. I say that lightly, but I really mean how are we impacted? These are all I think, questions that I have entertained throughout the years and so this workshop is to give us all some space to talk about them.

[music]

Tisha: Cece, I remember having a conversation with you, I think we were on a bus to the airport. Just hearing about these workshops that you do and hearing your passion and enthusiasm for them was really inspiring. I'm curious how the first workshop went, what it was like for you and for the therapists that participated?

Cece Sykes: I'd done a few short workshops, but the first thing I did of a retreat, shall we say, for three days, was actually with a group that is a teleconference group. I've run teleconferences for many years and this is a group though, that it happened over time, that these same seven women from all parts of the US have been on the phone together once a month on Mondays for two hours for five years, but we had never met. I had met most of them, but not all of them and they had not met each other.

So, I thought, "Well, let's try this." We all came together, met together for three days and that was my first time. In a sense, we were not strangers to one another in any way and yet there was much about each other's personal stories that we didn't know, because what do we talk about? We talk about our parts and what's coming up regarding a client, but do we know each other's histories and our stories and our family of origin experience? We don't.

[music]

It was very, very powerful, very bonding, and very fascinating. Also, we were able, in this very direct way, to bear witness to events, losses, mental illness, premature death, losses of sibling. Just powerful stories that people have experienced in their lives and just to bear witness with one another, and but to bear witness also with the wisdom, if you will, and awareness of being a human relations expert, [chuckles] which is what we do. And so, bringing that to the table, but at the same time just being with our humanity and everybody have powerful stories to tell. So, it was very evocative and binding. There's a part of me that says I should just do this all the time.

[music]

Anibal: And so, they were listening to their stories, therapists' stories?

Cece Sykes: Yes. What I've noticed in myself and in them is there is a little bit of a craving, I think…

Tisha: It feels like we need it.

Cece Sykes: to tell our story. What is it like to always be the listener? It's not like we don't talk about ourselves and our love lives, we do. But to have a real set time where we're the focus and our own journey is the focus of the heart lessons. What's happening in our hearts and in our lives. This is interesting. Then to really say, "And then this is what I chose to do for living." It’s important, I think.

[music]

Anibal: Cece, they say we heal with our clients, but we also suffer and get trauma or re-trauma from them, right?

Cece Sykes: Yes.

Anibal: How can we bring more healing than suffering and re-trauma to our journeys as therapists?

Cece Sykes: That is such a good question Aníbal. When you asked that question, I'm thinking of a line that Mike Elkin has said, which I think is absolutely hilarious, maybe you know what it is. I wish I could do his voice just right because he has such a delivery. "Therapists are the only one who need 40 hours of therapy a week."

[laughter]

[music]

Anibal: We need more therapy, more and more.

[laughter]

Anibal: Totally agree with him.

Cece Sykes: I love that line of his. I love his perspective on things, the way he has a unique perspective.

Anibal: We need more therapy, but also, we spend so much time sitting with our clients and I feel sometimes that there are sessions that are healing to me and sessions that are traumatizing me. I don't know if you have this experience also.

Cece Sykes: Absolutely.

[music]

Cece Sykes: I started out my work, working with families where there was physical and sexual abuse. It's really intense to be witness to the parts of us that can be violent and exploitative and deny it or not want to be with it. So, there's so much that goes in witnessing it which is helping someone find the safety to accept their own parts, they engage in certain behavior. This is why I've worked with firefighters always because I've always been exposed to it because the challenge of how can you work with a part that you don't accept? You can't.

How can you develop a way to accept it? What happens to us around that is another question. So, I guess the shortest answer, and this is really a clinical answer, not a personal answer, I don't know my personal answer yet, I'm letting it work around back there, is when I feel like I can be useful and I feel like there's something I can do. When I know how I want to be and feel useful for someone, then I feel that I am of value.

And I do think to hold on to hope. I feel the gift of working with, we called them in the '80s, survivors of trauma. The term isn't used as frequently now. We just say trauma, experienced trauma. Laura Davis and Ellen Bass who wrote The Courage to Heal about…just a Bible really for working and recovering from sexual abuse. I feel that that community named themselves survivors as people who can flourish and move beyond. And that's inspiring to me and it creates a sense of hope and possibility.

So, I think if I'm holding that sense and I think people have impressed me over and over again with their resilience and ability to heal. I think it's to hold open that sense of hope and possibility and feeling like there's things I can do that can be useful. I think in that space, I don't have to sink. Now, having said that, there are some people stories, and I'm sure it's happened to every therapist, that just find their way inside our psyche, inside our inner experience, that are so disturbing, so painful.

[music]

Cece Sykes: I think that that takes work. So, when I have a client like that, I might have to go get consultation. What I do is not hold that experience alone. I have someone that I talk to, this is what they told me. Can you help me hold this so I'm not holding this alone? This is so disturbing. This is so painful. What happened to them was so sick or so painful or so degraded. I have to have someone help me so that I'm not in isolation. I think isolation is a risk and therapists work alone. When we have isolation, we are at risk. We have to know when we're feeling at risk. I think the short answer solution is not hold it in isolation, whether you have a group or a therapist or consultant of your own, and to really honor our heart with that.

[music]

Cece Sykes: Having said that, the other piece that happens with clinicians, and I see it all the time when I'm consulting, is that we have to find the space of being present, but not being too involved, but yet not being too distant. If we're at arms-length, then our parts are helping us not feel, and we're not really present, but if we're too close and we're getting very involved, "Oh, he said that to you? What did you say?" Like we'd almost…a girl finding it. I would say sometimes just like getting very involved and getting very protective of what happened, protective of their relationships, that shouldn't happen to you, trying to be helpful. I think that that, what hooking us into that kind of relationship where we end up feeling…That's the difference for me between compassion and empathy.

Anibal: Exactly.

Cece Sykes: And we're going to get burned out if we're in empathy, because empathy means that we're, well, as I'm defining it, I don't know that this is the definition, but the contrast I'm making is compassion is “I feel for you and I believe you can heal. I'm here to help us together, help you heal.” Empathy is, "Oh, no." It's sort of that sense of they've been victimized. People have them victimized, but I don't want them to be identified by that feeling. If I participate and sink into how bad it was, then I'm not in compassion. I can't be strong enough to help them hold the hope that it can get better for them. Does that make sense?

Anibal: Totally, yes.

Tisha: Right. It's like your parts are holding some of their pain and so they don't have it all to heal themselves.

Cece Sykes: I think it reduces what's available to us as tools, if you will, because we're so busy trying to help them. "Well, did you say this, or did you go here?" Or we're so struck by the pain of their lives that we can't feel into that there is… sense of possibility that something could change.

[music]

Tisha: I imagine that your workshops and being able to share our personal narratives as therapists creates another possibility for not having to hold it all.

Cece Sykes: That's right.

Tisha: A unique group experience and a real true acknowledgment of what it is that we're doing when we're one-on-one.

Cece Sykes: Right, Tisha, because the other thing about it is we've all gone to therapy. [chuckles] I hope to God we have. [laughs]

[music]

Cece Sykes: But anyway, the idea of sharing it in a group with others that are in our profession, I think is a very powerful experience also, because I think group in and of itself is important. Part art of that healing journey is to tell your story. So, I think that somewhere that's in my psyche too, is the healing and the learning that you get when you listen to yourself tell your story. Whatever that means to you and whatever it means in that moment.

So, I think being in a group and being in a place where…a safe group of acceptance. I might say for therapists, also a sense of being with people who were born witness to many, many things. There's some heft with that. That's a real strong cushion. And I think that that's also a gift of sharing that in a setting with others, not just one-on-one. One-on-one is completely important, but this is an extra thing. I always say groups for healing are so de-shaming. They're so normalizing.

[music]

Anibal: You are saying, Cece, that somehow, we can have hyper responsible parts and other therapist parts that can get in the way and disturb the work and also burnout therapists?

Cece Sykes: Yes.

Anibal: And also, you talked about isolation. You are saying that having meaningful connections, social support, and eventually career development are the good ways to keep us away from burnout and exhaustion?

Cece Sykes: Yes, because I think that the tendency of people who are attracted to a field like this is to have a huge sense of well of compassion. And some of the stories I hear, so many people of us who are in this field, have very early memories of people in our lives that we were helping and who needed help. So, we may have learned to be in this position at four or five, or very early times, very formative times.

If we have an opportunity to build relationship with those parts, we can certainly blend with them. We want to bring awareness to that specifically I think, is one of the risks that we would have that I think lead to burnout. And in that place of self-sacrificing, we might do things like not take proper breaks, take too many clients, and not handle our finances with our clients as well, not get proper resourcing in support and supervision, not taking that kind of time for ourselves. So, those parts of us might have started having to sacrifice their lives for others very, very young. We're not as aware. We aren't as unblended and unblend is awareness, right?

Anibal: Yes.

Cece Sykes: We're not as aware as we think we are about all that [chuckles] about all that.

Tisha: And so that's something that really comes out as a common thread I bet, in these workshops.

Cece Sykes: It does.

[music]

Anibal: Cece, here are some common therapist parts that you know well - and I have them all too - that tend to interfere. And I want you to comment on some of them. The striving or agenda parts, the approval-seeking, the pessimistic, the caregiving, fixer, the angry part, the hurt parts, and the evaluating or judgmental part. I have them all.

Cece Sykes: Right. We all do because we're all human. In fact, it's so interesting that you just did that list, Aníbal, because I was just doing weekend five, which is about the therapist parts, just a couple weeks ago. Again, I was doing it for the first time online. What I do when I'm in-person is I have the group participate in having me list therapist managers, therapist firefighters, and therapist exiles. I figured out a way to do this in a group, unmute everyone and we did it together online and it worked out okay. I wasn't sure. But one of the pieces of feedback we got after that was how normalizing it felt to have all of those things and every one thing that you just listed on about was on there. Have everybody listed and how normalizing to hear, "Oh, oh, oh," to hear that listed and to know that others could identify it, so de-shaming.

Anibal: De-shaming, yes.

Cece Sykes: It's safe to identify that and that we have it. Just the naming of it is powerful, Aníbal. There's a phrase of being attached to outcome. So striving, caregiving, even anger can come up around when we have a part that thinks the outcome of our client's lives or their therapy, then we're attached to what that would look like or that we're attached to something happening and it's not happening fast enough.

So, we get into self-criticism, which may become some judgment of them. It's a tricky business to say, "What is my agenda then?" And so, to make sure we over and over again work with our parts to redefine our agenda to being present to what is and building self to part relationships, if you're using the IFS model, helps our parts not be attached to what it should look like.

We might have an opinion about this relationship isn't good enough for them, or this is not working for them or we're having reactions to some of their relationships with their brother or their family of origin. They're too good or they're too nicer. When our clients are making decisions that are hard for us or parts of us, we get into striving, judgment, we can feel angry. Because these are real relationships, and yet it's not our space to get our needs taken care of.

So, where do we go with what's happening with us and that's, of course, our consultation and peer consultation, whatever we can have to do available to us to create for ourselves is important. And I think it relates to a sense of responsibility that many therapists had for helping people in their family when they were young. So, unless we really examine that, we start to feel that we are responsible for the outcome of our clients. We are responsible for doing our best, our very, very best every hour and to learning. There's a lot of things we're responsible for. But to know the difference of what we're not responsible for, I think is also important.

[music]

Anibal: Cece, do you feel IFS is well-equipped to help therapists and counselors to take good care of themselves?

Cece Sykes: I think it is, Aníbal because we can have…The whole idea of IFS, there's so much of an emphasis in IFS on working with their own parts. Let's just say psychoanalysts, they were in analysis as part of their training program. It's not new to the field of psychotherapy that an analyst or someone in the role of therapist would want and need to pursue awareness of their own journey.

The idea of that, I think, has been in our field from the beginning. People engage in it more or less directly. We don't require for instance, in IFS, if someone have an IFS therapist. Many people, I don't know the numbers of how many people do. I feel like many, many people do, the large majority, but just the idea of inviting people to be in psychotherapy and be in IFS psychotherapy, if you're an IFS person. If you're not an IFS person, to be in psychotherapy, to learn more about your own family system, for instance, if you're more body-centered, to be able to track and work with how your own body parts show up in your body, your own experiences show up in your body. These sustained exploration of our own worlds, is, I think, really important, whatever our practice is. And I think IFS helps us get quite specific about learning the burdens our parts are holding.

[music]

Tisha: Would you have some advice for people who are just beginning to hear your ideas around our own personal exploration of, what's developed ourselves into being therapists. Would you have any advice for people to begin to get in touch with their personal narrative? How to start to explore what’s made you a therapist, and can you do that on your own? Should people start groups?

Cece: I think it's not a process that's easily done in isolation. I do think that a lot can be learned in psychotherapeutic relationship. Just being open, staying open, I think IFS keeps inviting us to keep staying open on our journeys, but continue to stay open that I am impacted. And I do have parts of me and I am impacted by my clients' struggles, just to be honest with ourselves. We might think we're not supposed to be, and we're not supposed to be angry, we're not supposed to judge them. We're not supposed to wish they'd break up with their guy [laughs]. To be honest with ourselves that we are being impacted, is really important.

Then, to have our resources to go to, with that impact, whether it's peer consultation, a friend. When I first started my private practice a few decades ago, my friends and I were starting at the same time. We were trying to learn how to set a fee and what's a proper fee, and we decided a proper fee, and then we set a fee. Then, we made a rule because we kept lowering our fees. Then, she says, “Then, I lower my fee and then my client comes in the next weekend, and they just told me how they spent the weekend in Las Vegas. They could have gone to therapy for a year with what they blew in Last Vegas and I just lowered their fee.” [laughs]

Anibal: No social justice.

Cece: [laughs] That’s right. No social justice at all, Anibal.

[music]

So, we decided that we would not lower our fee until we had called each other first. If someone asked to have their fee lowered, we'd say, “Well, I'll consider that and I'll get back to you.” We practiced saying that because we are all in our own small businesses in private practice. We set the fee for our service. To properly value our service, and at the same time, be available to people, this is not an easy thing to do.

I don't think there's anything easy about that.

So, to have support around where your issues are and where you're going to be sensitive to clients and to know that and to get support around that, I think is really important. People graduate and then they go right into private practice. If you would ask my opinion, I'd say, "I'm against it 100%."

[music]

I think people need to operate in a group setting and a larger group practice where they're getting very regular, institutionalized, if you will, supervision before they wander into….instead of put up their shingle and sit alone, as I say, alone in a room with miserable people. It takes an enormous amount of wisdom and presence and judgment and integrity. It's not that people who graduate don't have it but it's just to really appreciate the emotional impact of this work and it is really an important aspect of being a good therapist, is to appreciate that I'm being impacted every day.

[music]

Anibal: So, precisely, we are all exposed to so much relational violence, neglect and abuse, directly and none directly through media but mostly in our consulting rooms, as you say. So, we all carry a lot of violence, fatigue, right? What protects you from exhaustion in the past and in the present?

Cece: Well, first, I think I have gotten exhausted. I may have said this in our first podcast, I don't remember, but there was a point I have to about 10 years, 12 years, 12, 14 somewhere in there, where I was emotionally exhausted, I was exhausted for my clients. I had stuff going on in my marriage, it was exhausting me. I was basically - to use an old-fashioned word that still applies - I was codependent with basically everyone I knew. Everyone I knew. I was trying to help and fix everyone I knew. Everyone I loved, I was trying to fix them.

So, I had a lot of those kinds of parts and that was very exhausting. I have gotten exhausted. And I think that's part of my journey too, is to recognize the importance of all that and was working with a lot of abuse cases. So, I said, I'm going to take some time off. My girls were little, four or five or something. And I said, I'm going to take some time and just be home with them and see what happens.

What I thought would be six months was actually a few years. I was so happy to just do my own work, and have my family be the only family. My family and extended family or family of origin be the only family in my head for a while. I want to say first, that we might get exhausted and that's okay because that just means it's time for us to do some work. And even if we're not free to quit our job…at that time I was married, I had a husband and I was free to do that at that time, even if we need to continue to work but in whatever way we can, to make it a priority to say, “I have to do my work. I have no choice right now. I'm not doing well.”

[music]

So many therapists can have such a hard time. I think I had to be hit over the head with about five things at once to be able to say, “I'm not doing well.” I thought it'd be the short break because I didn't know how well I wasn't doing and how much I needed to take care of myself.

So, I think, first, accept that we are impacted, and we might need to take time in some kind of way and or make our own healing be a very, very big priority. I think that that's first to say, maybe we can't prevent fatigue, maybe we'll have it. In fact, it’d be a great question to ask people. “Have you ever had that? How many therapists have had those times in their career or their lives?”

Second, if we are talking about prevention, I do think feeling confident that I can help someone is the most powerful relief that I have, that I'm being useful, that I can help them. That when I don't know what to do, I can go ask someone also. I think, being the therapist…Dick said the phrase, we’re hope merchants. I think that the idea that someone can get better no matter what, maybe I've always been sort of an optimistic person or I have optimistic parts, I don't know. I think so, but maybe that was also my role in my family. My role was to be cheerful and have no needs.

Anibal: Hard one.

Cece: [laughs] I was good at that.

Anibal: Yes. Amazing.

[music]

Cece: I have experienced people with such powerful stories, I have learned from my trauma survivors that the human spirit is so much more powerful than the wickedness that someone has experienced.

[music]

And I know that they taught me that. No matter what someone has experienced, I feel like there's always hope that they can move the ball forward. It can get better. Some people are going to get a little better and some people are going to get a lot better. I do believe that people have the capacity. In IFS the way we say it is that people have access to Self and it's in there no matter what, that Self is undamaged. So our goal is to help them have access to that.

In a larger sense I do think that is a spiritual question. You may or may not be religious. I was raised Catholic, progressive liberal Catholic that believed is social justice and all those kinds of things. But there are a lot of rules. I got a lot of joy from my Catholic church as a child. There was a lot of community in it, not so much when I was a teenager. I'm not in part of a church at this time but I do feel that my spiritual life also nourishes me to believe that there is resource. That there is grace. That we can access something beyond ourselves and so can my clients.

[music]

Cece: I had a client who used to ask me every week, "Am I too much for you? This is really awful. Am I to much for you?" And every survivor feels this way. Their life is too much for them in so many ways. I would say to her, "No," because I'm not the source. It's coming through me and if I'm overwhelmed then I'll go physically to a source but there's a greater resource out there that's helping us. That's my story but other people, I think we have to know.

The last thing I'll say about that is, someone I read, and I wish I could quote him. He said, that therapist, "You need a lot of stuff in your room, like beauty, like plants and like a pillow and objects that mean something to you. To be surrounded and comfortable in sort of meaningful ways." We need this when we're confronted with the evil and wickedness and exploitation.

Tisha: Thank you so much for that answer. Really powerful. Thank you. I appreciate that so much.

Anibal: Cece, you mentioned hope and spirituality, so the five P's of the therapist, aren’t they enough?

Cece: They're nice, aren't they?

Anibal: The patient and the presence and the perspective and the persistence and the playfulness, aren’t they enough?

Cece: Are they enough? Yes. Are they enough for us and for our clients? Are they enough in the room? Well, essential, I would say. But I think how we're resourcing ourselves is maybe the question that you guys, we keep coming back to in our conversation. Maybe that's the other key. And I think the risk is isolation and the antidote is not isolation, whatever that means for you and the safety, the safe place to be a mess. To be as messy as we really are.

[music]

Tisha: How do people access…I imagine that our listeners out there are going to be intrigued and interested in some of the work that you're doing with exploring these personal narratives. How do people access you in these workshops?

Cece: Well, I´m doing the, for the first time I was invited to do one, I say for people in Toronto because…Although we'll all be online, but most of the people are in the Toronto area. They've invited me to do an online, so I'm going to see how that goes. It will be different because you know you can tell what I feel, not having human contact would be important. Then I'm going to try to do one in person again here in the Chicago area, outside of Chicago in June.

Maybe the outcome of this conversation for me is that's the polarity in me between my commitment to IFS, but my commitment to also…I actually presented last year at the conference. That's my duality. I presented on addictive process which is very important to me and I presented on therapist stories. For me to find space to offer these is, maybe that needs to be more on my own front burner in a certain way. I feel devoted to my IFS, specifically IFS training, but I am going to be doing a level 3. And so, some of my thinking will enter into that there, in the level 3, but the answer is, "Let's see. Let's see what I do.”

[music]

Tisha: Let's hope.

Cece: Yes, but I think it's…I'm glad. The other thing is when I first put it out there is that is anyone going to care? Is it just me? [chuckles] "See, that so interesting. You and your mother. That's really cool. Okay, let's move on." I didn't know. [laughs] But I'm finding that actually and I did one up in the UK last year and it was powerful. Two women who had each lost a mom to suicide found each other in the training. Just the most powerful moment. We were all so moved. Anyway, there was also another place to go with this.

Tisha: Absolutely.

Cece: Is it useful?

Tisha: We need it.

Cece: And I think it is.

[music]

Anibal: Cece, we are saying, I'm listening to you and I think you're saying that we may need more therapists and counselors or practitioners’ organizations and small or larger communities of therapists and counselors and practitioners for them not to stay or work isolated. That's what you are saying?

Cece: Right. I think, really, what can you do for yourself? You can find a few other therapists and develop a trusting space just to be together on a regular basis. I think there's so much healing in that. Yes, I think that's really healing. With the intention of talking about our own process. Setting that intention for ourselves.

Anibal: Cece, when should a therapist or counselor retire?

Cece: [laughs] Oh gosh. You know what?

Anibal: Or just take a break.

Cece: Yes. Take a break. Well, I'm shifting my own practice from private practice towards consultation. It's not towards retirement but it is making a shift. So, there is that way of thinking about what…try to think about something else, I am making that shift. I think, I heard it might be Mona Barbera, but I think she said, "Relationships," -she's talking about couples - "Relationships are still viable when you at least say you're interested in your partner."

Anibal: Yes. Well said.

Cece: I think as long as our work is interesting and nourishes us, I could…One of my dear friends we used to teach together 20 years ago. We were teaching together. She's 22 years older than me. We started teaching workshop for women. Women and our relationships with ourselves that we taught. It was through a university, but it was a three-day elective. We taught it for about five years together. We used to have lunch every Monday then. For 20 years we had lunch together every Monday.

Anyway, she saw clients until she is 84 years old. She just saw one or two a week after a while, she goes, "You know, I really don't like to play bridge."

[chuckles]

[music]

Cece: I'm not saying we should keep slaving away, but we have to find our own answer for that. But I think paying attention…your question brings up in me, Anibal, is paying attention to our own needs. That is always, I think, the challenge for those of us in the service professions, to pay attention to “What do I need, what am I feeling? How tired am I? Am I taking enough vacation?” These are always important questions that I think we tend to not ask quite as…You know, since we're in charge of our own, I always say, "I'm so busy," but whose fault is that? I'm self-employed.

[laughter]

Cece: Who can I call? [laughs]

Anibal: That's when, take a break is difficult.

Cece: I better call someone about this. A lot of therapists get into that. "Wow, I haven't taken a vacation. Is this wrong?" Just really paying attention to that and allow our own needs is, I think…

Tisha: Your boss needs to provide paid vacation.

Cece: Are you ready for a vacation, Anibal?

Anibal: No.

Tisha: He is ready. [chuckles]

[music]

Anibal: I'm learning that we, having meaningful connections, good social support, and eventually career development, keep learning versus isolation and no development. It's maybe a good way to go, to avoid…

Cece: Yes, that's right. Thank you for summing that up that way. We were taught these things. Most of us in graduate…I mean I was taught, "Go get supervision. If you're going to go to private practice, always have a supervisor." I was taught that, but I don't know if everyone was taught that. I think that relieving yourself of that level of isolation is really important.

Anibal: Cece, thank you so much for sitting with us again and congratulations for the level 3 coming.

Cece: Thank you.

Anibal: New level 3 are coming through your good work. It was such a joy to be here with you and Tisha. I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Cece: Thank you, Anibal. Thank you, Tisha. Also, I'm finding people are really enjoying all your podcasts and I've listened to many of them and they're always fascinating. So, thank you guys. You're doing this by what you're doing. These podcasts are creating connection too. This is a powerful thing to do this for our community and people are really loving it. Thank you, guys, for giving us this gift, to being able to listen to each other.

Anabel: Thank you, Cece.

Tisha: Thank you, Cece. Thanks so much. We do have an incredible community here.

[music]

[01:03:53] [END OF AUDIO]

 

Recorded 24th August 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Healing our Relationships with Food and Body with Jeanne Catanzaro 53:41

Jeanne Catanzaro, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist with 25 years’ experience in treating eating and trauma related issues. She has written articles about IFS and eating disorders, and is dedicated to helping people develop Self-led relationships with food and their bodies.

Jeanne is a certified IFS therapist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is Vice Chair of the executive committee for the IFS Institute.

 

Episode full transcription

Today, on IFS Talks we’re speaking with Jeanne Catanzaro PhD. Jeanne is a licensed clinical psychologist with 25 years experience in treating eating and trauma-related issues. She’s written articles about IFS and eating disorders and is dedicated to helping people develop self-led relationships with food and their bodies. Jeanne is a certified IFS therapist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts and she’s the Vice Chair of the executive committee for the IFS Institute. Jeanne, thank you so much for being here with us today on IFS talks.

Jeanne Catanzaro: Oh, thank you for having me.

[music]

Jeanne: I’m really looking forward to this discussion.

[music]

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much Jeanne for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today hearing this bio?

Jeanne: The part that immediately comes up is I have so much to say about this topic. How will I get it all in? And so, I have to remind that part to relax. In terms of the bio, there’s a part of me that can’t believe it’s been 25 years. That feels hard to believe.

I feel really good about the work that I am involved in now and get to be involved in my involvement with the IFS community. I feel grateful that after 25 years, I can continue to feel this inspired by my clients, the people I consult with, other therapists in this community. So, that´s not bad just be able to say after a quarter-century.

[pause 00:01:57]

[music]

Tisha: Jeanne, was there something that led you into the world of psychology? Was there a setup in your early life?

Jeanne: [laughs] Yes, in brief. Yes, I think that I’ve said to my mother more recently that I now get to do family therapy and get paid for it. I think I was born into a family where nobody really wanted to speak to feelings or be present to them. And I was very much a very sensitive, thoughtful kid who was very aware of things. And one of the things that I started doing quite early was writing and I would write stories and get very involved in all the different characters.

I loved reading. Then when I got into high school, I started studying a lot of different languages. I’m not fluent in any of them except English, but I studied French, Italian, and a little bit of German. Just the idea of being able to bridge gaps and be able to find ways to communicate and all of the psychology of that, the satisfaction of being able to bridge a gap and then connect with somebody who was so different was so exciting to me.

But I had parts who were so unbelievably self-conscious that I got very good. I was at depth at learning languages, reading, and writing, but really had parts who would not let me speak it for fear of being shamed. That really got in my way. So, I do have a degree in French, although I can’t speak it. At the same time, at some point, I decided that I would be a French teacher for about two months.

During that period of time, I took abnormal psych class that was part of the education degree. Once I took an abnormal psych class, I thought this is really what I want to do. Then I got some internship experiences working with chronically mentally ill clients at Mass Mental Hospital here in Boston and I just immediately knew this is what I really want to do. And again, it became, for me, a way of bridging the gap between people. A funny way to connect and reach across differences and make connections.

And so I really liked the idea of going into psychology and that’s really when I decided to become a therapist and go to grad school. I have not ever regretted it. To me, it’s the best decision I made.

[pause 00:04:51]

[music]

Tisha: What was it about that abnormal psych class that clicked for you?

[music]

Jeanne: Within the class, it was the fact that it was connected to an internship, and in the internship, I had a job in a day treating program for chronically mentally ill adults developing more social connection between them. So, I would just sit and have groups and just to speak with them one-on-one. It was more of the direct experience with people that made me say, “This is really what I want to do,” rather than the academic class, just that opening.

[music]

Aníbal: Jeanne, you used to work in an eating disorder treatment center, so your interest in food and body came before you came cross IFS, right?

Jeanne: It did but in an indirect way. Because I didn’t start working at an eating disorder treatment center because I had an interest in this area, per se. My first job out of my PhD program was at a university, a Jesuit university. I was the only woman at the time, the rest of the therapists were male. So, I had a lot of people coming to me. A lot of the issues related to eating or to sexuality, things like that, it was a very conservative environment.

I really liked that job and got some experience with eating issues and eating disorders certainly in that job, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. Then, after about five years in that job, a position became available in an eating disorder program. And it was a therapeutic milieu, so it was women working with a group of women and that was so interesting to me. It felt a little bit like my experience with the day treatment, with the chronic mentally ill. And I had also worked prior to graduate school on an inpatient psychiatric unit.

When I went to graduate school, my thought was that I would be working with the chronically mentally ill. And my internships, for much of the time that I was in graduate school, were in state psychiatric hospitals and day treatment programs, things like that. I really liked the relational component. I had the good fortune of working with supervisors who are very interested in really looking at the impact of the system, the larger system, cultural systems, and the smaller and more ethnic systems on the clients in the day treatment program.

One of my supervisors, she didn’t know IFS, this was In the mid-’90s, but she was speaking about parts. And so, when some of the clients came in with voices, she would relate to them like parts. It was very helpful. I really like that relational component, the system’s thinking. And so, when I saw that there was a job available in this day treatment program at The Renfrew Center in New York, I just jumped at the opportunity. I thought it would be really great to be in that kind of environment.

[music]

Jeanne: Then when I was there, it’s like boot camp for learning everything I ever wanted to know about eating disorders. But obviously, I was open to it. Obviously, I was open to doing that kind of work. I do think that there was an openness to it that, later on, I could reflect back and consider some of the aspects of my environment growing up that obviously led me to be open. I don’t know if it would be helpful for me to speak a little bit about that, but I would be happy to.

Tisha: I think it would be really interesting to hear, yes.

[pause 00:09:16]

[music]

Jeanne: I grew up in a family where my mother for much of my life growing up, she was in a larger body and had grown up with a lot of trauma about that, a lot of abuse, a lot of bullying, some from her own mother, name-calling. 

And when I was growing up, what I was very aware of, it was a concern for her. A concern about her health, her depression. As a couple of points my father would say to us, “What are we going to do about mom?” I felt like a lot of concern about what will we do.

It wasn’t something that I was aware of because we’re just in it, we’re in these environments. We’re not aware of all the messages that we get about bodies and about health and about ability. We’re just immersed in it. So I wasn’t really conscious of anything.

When I did reach puberty, my mother, who did not want me to experience the same type of abuse that she had, got nervous, I think, when I had a growth spurt and I developed a stomach and I was actually quite excited by it. I thought I looked, in my 10 or 11-year-old self, I thought I was more like a belly dancer. I thought, “This was cool.” But my mother, I think, had a part that was nervous for me and said, “I think we really need to have you…You need to watch it,” kind of thing.

She started packing my lunches with cottage cheese sandwiches, which aren’t as bad as they sound, but certainly aren’t gourmet and you know, just all of a sudden there was an awareness. There was a focus on it or more of a focus.

[music]

Jeanne: There was that, but I also had a lot of great positive experiences, body-wise, where I was very athletic. My sisters and I were involved with very competitive soccer from the time we were quite young. Another aspect of our childhood, which I’ve gotten clear about, especially as I’ve gotten older, is we were taught that there was nothing we couldn’t do if we just put enough effort into it and we tried. That included a lot of physical things.

As I get older, I’ve realized, “Oh, right now, in my mid-50s, it’s really important for me to notice the parts that feel like I should still be able to do whatever it is.” Like, I got locked out of our house and had to climb a fence to get, I mean, you know, just like whatever scrambling up, not thinking about like, “Oh, maybe this isn’t good for my body as it is now.”

So, the family values of physical strength and the capacity, emotional strength also and my mother’s history with being in a larger body and having family members who are really focused on it critically, were a part of the fabric for me.

[pause 00:13:05]

[music]

Jeanne: Then there was also, I grew up in an Italian family where there was an emphasis on home-cooked food. We talk about legacy heirlooms, things we get from our families and from our cultures. What I got was a real emphasis on the connection that food afforded. Connection and love, and really host really good food, good tasting food and where that can go.

On the flip side, there was also an attitude about processed food, so that home cooked food was better always kind of thing. I’ve become just much more aware of all these different biases that I did grow up with, but it wasn’t something that was…it wasn’t the thing that drove me to work with eating disorders per se.

[pause 00:14:20]

[music]

Tisha: When you were at, is it Renfrew?

Jeanne: Yes.

Tisha: Did they start incorporating IFS therapy into the work when you were there or was there a different modality?

Jeanne: They didn’t. No, they did not. It was psychodynamic largely. Some CBT and I know that’s changed now. What happened was I worked at Renfrew and I became the Program Director of the day treating program. In that position, what I was responsible for was referring people out to treatment programs around the country, if they needed to go to a higher level of care.

I also then would admit people being discharged from inpatient programs back to day treatment. I got a sense of what inpatient programs were doing excellent work. At some point, somebody recommended a treatment center in the Midwest that was doing IFS.

[pause 00:15:31]

[music]

Jeanne: I started referring my clients there. Apologies to anybody who has heard the story before, but at this point, I’d left Renfrew and I was working for a number of years in private practice, but again, I had the familiarity with the different facilities. I started referring to this treatment center that used IFS.

Then my client came back home very, very complicated family environment and was coming back to that very complicated family environment and also had had the chronicity of her eating disorder and the severity of it were significant. So I had a lot of concerns with her coming back and how that would happen. Because of insurance constraints she wasn’t able to stay there for as long as they wanted her to. Parts of me were very concerned.

[music]

Jeanne: She came back and she related that she went out to dinner, ate too much, as a part of her told her, and then she said, “You know, and went out to the alley.” It would have been quite typical for her to throw up in the alley next door. She said, “And I got outside and a part of me was like, ‘You should just throw up, and then another part of me was like, ‘No, we don’t need to do that.’’ She said, “So, I just worked with my parts.” I was like, “Work with your parts? That is phenomenal.”

I was so amazed by it. I just thought, “Wow, that is really something. It was inside of her.” Over the next couple of months, I watched, it wasn’t the customary I’ve been in treatment, my certain parts, a lot of times in traditional treatment there’s a focus on, you know, the managers can step up and they’re compliant in treatment. And then, when they get out, because the exiles haven’t been healed, then they come back home, get into the same environments, and start getting triggered and then get back into the eating disorder symptoms. This wasn’t happening with her.

[pause 00:17:51]

[music]

Jeanne: So, I decided, "This is something I really need to get training in." That’s when I decided to go to Esalen, which is where I met Dick. I think eight weeks later I was in a level one.

Aníbal: So that was when, back then?

Jeanne: That was…2008 was when I first started becoming familiar with IFS and 2009 was when I started the training.

Aníbal: And you started the training.

Jeanne: Yes.

[pause 00:18:31]

[music]

Tisha: How did it change your practice?

Jeanne: How did it change my practice? As somebody who’d been working with trauma and eating disorders for many years, I had done a lot of work and trained in different modalities like EMDR and somatic experiencing, which were really helpful. I really liked them and found them effective, but IFS really facilitated feeling for my clients and myself in a whole different way. It made me a much better therapist.

For my clients, first and foremost, the concept of all parts have positive intentions was so different from what they were used to. Within themselves they had parts that hated the ones that would restrict or hated the ones that would purge. They were also used to people outside of them, parents, doctors also being upset about those parts. So it was a shift, a really important shift in focus from viewing parts as problematic and instead considering they’re protective function and for some of my clients, in fact, a life-saving function, and so developing a respect and then honoring of those parts, instead of trying to get rid of them. The thing that really helped was for them to get that they were comprised of a system of interrelated parts, and that they could get to know those parts and get to know that those parts interacted in ways that were predictable. A lot of times when people have extreme or chronic eating issues, what happens is they get blended so much, and then there are extreme polarizations between parts, and so, things can seem very chaotic and out of control. So, having this inner map was extremely relieving because it made things make sense.

[pause 00:20:50]

[music]

Jeanne: Another thing that really was relieving was the awareness that protectors are forced into their protective strategies, they don’t choose them. They are forced into those roles because they’re necessary to help them survive in the environment in which they’ve developed, and that protectors won’t make a shift until they trust it’s safe to do so.

So many of my clients had been in either relationships or in treatment programs that were really focused on eliminating or stabilizing the behaviors and that just got them into power struggles either with parts of themselves who were saying, “Just stop it.” Or with people outside of themselves, or they would go to a treatment program, or a part of them would be compliant like a manager that wanted to please, and as soon as they got out of treatment, the firefighters would take over because the exiles hadn’t been healed.

So, this recognition that, to a part, you’ve been doing this for a reason and we get that, and our job is to help you trust that there’s a different way to go about this, it’s very relieving. And finally, the concept of a Self, of a core healing wisdom inherent to them that couldn’t be damaged by trauma was a big relief, even if they had skeptical parts, as many of my clients with significant trauma histories would be skeptical about ever having had this core wisdom, but parts of them felt relieved by the concept.

[music]

Jeanne: For me, the concept of Self was a big change, something that really facilitated my work. Because instead of it being incumbent upon me to fix the client, to take care of them, to give them a resource that they didn’t have, fill a deficiency, to really trust that that was within them. And that my job instead was to create the conditions for them to be able to access it, that was a big relief, it really changed things.

I could get my own parts to step back, especially, when fierce or entrenched protectors came up for me to be able to really get my parts to step back so I could be curious along with the client and gendering the client’s curiosity about what was going on for this part and to help it, so that we could get to know the exile it was protecting. The inner map is very helpful for me, similarly, to be able to anticipate sequences of behavior and to keep that in mind.

[music]

Jeanne: Lastly, to be able to work with my own parts and get to know my biases that I held about food and bodies was and continues to be very helpful. I mentioned earlier that I grew up with a mother who was in a larger body and there was a lot of concern about her health. And I got to know that I’d had parts that automatically assumed ill health when I assess somebody in a larger body.

And so that was a really important thing for me to be able to unburden, because whether it’s articulated or not the beliefs that we hold about other bodies are felt by our clients. So the things that we talk about, the things that we don’t talk about, lots of clients come into therapy and they have had either bad experiences, negative experiences of being a diagnosis based on what they look like, like, “You must be depressed because you’re in a larger body,” or therapists who never discuss anything related to food and the bodies. They talk about that.

So just knowing your own biases is so important for things that are more extreme, like what I just mentioned about the equation of weight with health and things that are more subtle, like when a client comes in and says something that seems like a throwaway comment, like, “Oh, I can’t wear shorts. Couldn’t find something to wear today because I can’t wear shorts. I can’t show my legs anymore.” In the past, I might have easily overlooked that, but because of IFS, I’m a much better parts detector.

[music]

Jeanne: One of the things that’s really important is I would like to inspire people to consider doing more and more of this work. I often hear from people, “I don’t work with eating disorders. I don’t work with eating issues.” Which to me just speaks to the ubiquity of the burdens around food and bodies in our culture that so many people feel challenged by their own difficulties that they feel like they can’t possibly be of help to people.

[pause 00:25:44]

[music]

Aníbal: That’s why you say somehow, Jeanne, that healing is difficult to sustain given this cultural climate and burdens regarding food and body. You just mentioned some aspects of these power struggles.

Jeanne: Oh sure. So, with IFS, in addition to the relief that is afforded by considering that it’s a part versus the whole and then really understanding that our parts have positive intentions, which really allows the system to relax. And then certainly with eating disorders, people with eating disorders are used to either themselves having parts who are trying to get rid of a part or other people who are trying to get rid of a part.

And so, just the recognition that we need to get the parts permission, we have to start earn the trust, first, validate what they’ve been trying to do. Learn what they’ve been trying to do and then help them trust that it’s safe to actually ease up or let go of their extreme strategies. That’s a whole process, a whole relationship process that’s incredibly relieving when people start to realize that you’re not going to try to make them change.

But in terms of the impact of the cultures, there’s our immediate family culture, there’s the ethnic group that we’re born into, there’s the larger culture. And another really important aspect of the IFS model is that we recognize those environments, we recognize the systems in which the protectors are embedded. Because if we’re going to ask a part to let go of its protective strategy in an environment which calls for the protective strategy, that’s not going to be safe.

And so a lot of the burdens that exist in our culture make it, so that it’s extremely difficult for protectors to ease up on their protective strategies. I could say a lot more about that if you would like.

[pause 00:28:21]

[music]

Tisha: Yes, it would be nice to hear an example.

Jeanne: A client I was working with had done a lot of work to get to know a couple of the most significant eating-related protectors in our system. One she called the general and the other one who was the medical concern part, one like a hand ringing, very worried about her health. She worked with those parts to step back a bit and give her some room to try intuitive eating.

She was really checking in with what she needed, what she wanted, what felt good to her in terms of eating, and in terms of movement, and was feeling pretty good about it. She would notice those parts grumbling here and there like every so often when she ate past the point of fullness or when she didn’t exercise for a few days she would notice the part she called the general, getting edgy. She was able to get those parts to step back and she was feeling happier and more self-led.

Then, she went to a wedding and her mother came up to her and just tugged at her dress and said, “Well, this is a lot tighter than the last time I saw you in it.” Probably about a week later, went to the doctor for a checkup and the doctor said, “You know, you’ve gained a little weight, you really want to watch it.” And immediately, that general came right back in and said, “See, I told you. I told you this is going to happen.” The medical concern part came in and said, “We got to do something about this. He’s right, it’s going to get worse, we should just go in the whole 30. That worked the last time.” And so, we had to then step back in and help these parts trust that she could take care of this. That she could…What it did involve was setting some different limits with her mother, and really getting clear with herself about she wasn’t in any medical danger, and really helping those parts step back again, so she could continue to explore this and continue it in a self-led way.

[pause 00:30:36]

[music]

Jeanne: There’s so much our emphasis on if you just work hard enough you can change your body and that you should change your body. There’s a lot of stigma about health and weight and ability in our culture, so the idea of no pain, no gain, or just work hard enough, eat less, move more. People chalk it up to self-discipline.

That’s a huge cultural burden that impacts people because actually, that’s not true. It causes a lot of pain and people who are stuck in the cycle of always either feeling like they should be dieting or they should be doing something to change their body or they actually are, they have parts who are doing it. It’s very difficult for those protectors to agree to not do it. Because with the reality is that in our society, we get judged.

People judge each other, for what? Letting themselves go for not working hard enough. There’s a, research has been done about when people demonstrate that they’re trying to lose weight. People in larger bodies say that they’ve been dieting or they show that they’re going to the gym and working out, they are met with less disgust. Then if they don’t express that they’re doing these things to, quote unquote, take care of themselves. It’s a very real threat that people face.

One of the things about IFS, also, that’s very helpful is when we’re talking to people about, we’ve always talked to people about “How does your eating disorder serve you?” How do those protectors, and before I learned IFS we would look at the function of the eating issue or the focus on body image. But we weren’t helping people create a relationship with those parts.

A relationship with that part, with those parts that acknowledges the threats, the systemic oppression that people who are in bodies that don’t, who are seen as less than. We have a hierarchy around bodies, fit bodies, attractive bodies, thin bodies, white bodies, able bodies, heterosexuals, cisgender, all of those things. And if you differ from those in any way, you’re more vulnerable to that kind of…And so it’s a matter of helping protect validating that person and protectors, and helping the person get into Self to part, you know, a relationship with their Self. And also, helping them connect with other people who are also self-led in these ways.

[pause 00:33:53]

[music]

Aníbal: Interesting. There is this dilemma of trying to heal personal burdens while continuing to live in a stigmatizing culture.

Jeanne: Absolutely. I think the one thing that I feel very clear about is just, even right now, what we’re noticing with the pandemic laying bare all the disparities, you know, structural racism and the oppression, the systemic oppression of different people in marginalized groups.

The fact is that we can work on our personal burdens but that is very different from bringing self-energy to external systems, which we were all really…It’s an important thing for all of us to get that the lived experiences of so many people involve daily threat, daily pain, a lack of resources, and that each of us can contribute to the shifting of that. That’s really going to be important to be able to maximize healing of more individuals, more broadly.

[pause 00:35:18]

[music]

Aníbal: Why do you say that implicit bias about weight is increasing while other biases are decreasing? Why so?

Jeanne: Unlike other forms of bias, we carry these beliefs about our bodies that we should be able to control them and that it’s our moral responsibility that there’s something wrong with us if we don’t change our bodies. We can’t control the color of our skin.

At one point, we did think that we could control our sexuality. That was the belief and homosexuality was considered an illness earlier. There was a sense that that was under your control. In this culture, we really want to feel we can control things and that we should be able to control things.

Implicit bias against bodies is perpetuated in part by that cultural burden, that belief that it’s a matter of personal responsibility, and that we’re just lazy if we don’t if, for some reason, we’re in the larger body, ignoring the fact that there’s a natural diversity of body size.

Then a natural diversity that instead of focusing on weight and on the status of somebody being in a marginalized group that we really need to look at the social determinants of health the great economic disparities, the great disparities in health care. How people are treated when they go to the doctor is very different if they are in a larger body, for example.

So I think implicit bias isn’t going down around age, weight, and healthism. Because we all want to believe…Not we alI, I shouldn’t say it that way. Many people in our culture would like to believe that if we just tried hard enough, we can change things, we can get out of that group.

[pause 00:37:40]

[music]

Jeanne: The group membership, there are a lot of people doing great work to really create groups where there’s more safety, where there’s a real emphasis on working on that and looking at this as a social justice issue. There’s increasing communities like that.

But you also have, at the same time, a president who’s talking disparagingly about larger-bodied people, you have comedians like Bill Maher going on tirades about how shaming humiliating tirades about how we need to just shame people more. So, we have a lot of different…Oprah Winfrey talking about within every large body woman there’s a thin woman, dying to get out. So, a lot of key figures in our culture that keep conveying this belief, reinforcing it. That, if there’s a will there’s a way and there’s something wrong with you.

Aníbal: Yes. Those are the burdens that we carry regarding food and our bodies. [crosstalk]

[pause 00:39:00]

[music]

Tisha: I so appreciate your perspective and your insight. It reminds me of a quote I read recently by Desmond Tutu, which I’m going to, not accurately quote, but it’s…

Jeanne: It’s great.

Tisha: After we keep pulling people out of the river, eventually we need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

Jeanne: I really love this quote, because it speaks directly to the predicament that our protectors are in. That they can shift, they can step back, and then we look up, and then they get bombarded by all these judgments and messages that continue unabated. And so, it’s very difficult. We are accustomed to thinking about privilege as automatic access to resources for being members of a dominant group. From an IFS perspective, I’m thinking about privilege as an absence of legacy burdens and direct burdens that result in so much exiling painful burdens and beliefs about food and our bodies, and protectors that need to remain on guard to be vigilant against ongoing threats.

One of the things that’s really so important about IFS is that it recognizes that individual healing is connected to the collective healing and that it’s really important to bring IFS to external systems.

That’s one of the goals of the IFS model and that when we do our own internal work, we’ve worked with our own biases about bodies and heal those that it’s really important to get to know the implicit bias we hold about other bodies, especially the lived experiences of people in marginalized bodies to learn about them and to understand the impact of health and wealth disparities, the systemic oppression that affects so many people.

[music]

Jeanne: During this pandemic, there’s a lot of discussion about how black and brown bodies and larger bodies are more susceptible with COVID. And we’re not looking at the different levels of healthcare accessibility, how many people are turned away for testing. How much testing is available depends on what zip code you live in. And the fact that there’s so many things that living in a marginalized body, the impact of so much stigma and discrimination and lack of resources is what results in a lot of these health disparities.

What IFS does so nicely as to recognize that in order to heal the collective, we have to heal ourselves, work with the parts that have bias about others and then take action, self-led action to help shift. So there’s healing on the broader level.

[pause 00:42:21]

[music]

Aníbal: Jean, what is really being self-led versus parts driven when it comes to food and body? What are Self-led eating practices? Can you give us some examples?

Jeanne: We are Self-led eaters when we’re born, for most of us, unless there’s a medical condition. We cry when we’re hungry. We eat until we’re full. Immediately, we’re subjected to all kinds of beliefs, messages about food and bodies from our parents, from medical providers, from parents, friends, parents, parents. All the biases they hold about food, the conditions in our environment, if there is enough food, if there are enough resources, things like that. Fears about food insecurity, all of those things impact and shape our relationships with food.

And so, lots of us, many of us get disconnected from our core wisdom about what our bodies want and need, as a result. A lot of people remember a time when they ate without thinking about it. They just ate what they liked, the ate untill they were full. I have clients who can never remember a time when they ate without being self-conscious, without thinking, without knowing that there was a good food or a bad food or without a self-consciousness about their bodies.

Self-led eating and wellness, in my view, involves getting to know and healing the parts who focus on food and the body to cope with emotional pain or trauma so that we can reconnect with that core wisdom with our Self and its wisdom about what we need. And so that most of the time, the decisions we make about food, movement, sleep and connection come from checking in with what we need inside with ourself, rather than focusing on external rules and guidelines.

So it really means being with the body we have now, not the body we had 10 years ago, not the body we could have in the future, which doesn’t mean not having an overarching intention, which I think is, can be a Self-led intension like, “I would like to be flexible as I age.” That’s a self-led intention versus a part driven agenda, which would be, “I have to stretch every day, because if I don’t stretch every day, I’m not going to be flexible.” So just being in the present, checking in with our parts, to see what it is that we need now.

[music]

Jeanne: And teasing apart, the different parts who have competing agendas about food in the body like, “I might have a part who wants to go to the gym and another part that wants to sleep.” If I’m self-led, I’m going to check in with the different parts and appreciate it for today what is it that feels important in terms of maximizing my wellbeing. Some days that’s going to mean to sleep in. Some days it’s going to mean to go to the gym.

Again, not letting certain parts dominate or get rigid. Because the fact of the matter, it takes a lot of work to take care of our bodies. It takes a lot of care. And so a lot of times we need to extend gratitude to the parts that step back so that we can go to the store and prepare meals or gratitude to the parts that step back when they would really rather that we go to the gym but instead we’re going to lie on the couch and take a rest.

So, from self, we negotiate between the parts and facilitate more of a collaborative relationship between and among the parts, appreciating that they all contribute something important. Stuff like eating in my view envolves, it’s almost like being a good parent to your parts. It’s not letting one kid take over and dominate. It’s not, let’s not giving your kids access to the kitchen saying, “Do whatever you want whenever you want.” It’s about saying, “We’re going to provide opportunities for adequate nutrition and rest.”

And when a part takes over being able to recognize as a sign that somebody needs attention. That there’s a part that needs attention and some support and perhaps unburdening.

[pause 00:47:05]

[music]

Tisha: Jeanne are you teaching some of what know about IFS in the body so that people have access to all that you’ve learned and have to share?

Jeanne: I do supervision and obviously work with my clients and have done a continuity program. And I’m in the middle of writing a book about self-lead eating. So I have a lot in my head about that. But I’m really excited about it because I think that there’s so much to learn and heal when we really look at the kind of relationships we have with food and our bodies, it’s like trailheads galore.

I suspect I’ll also, when the pandemic shifts, I have some thoughts about doing a workshop online. I really think that daily practice of really noticing the parts and healing the ones who have these unrealistic ideas about “What I should look like? How my body should function?” Really being with your body as it is now and then on a daily basis negotiating with needs for sleep, movement, connection that kind of thing.

[music]

Jeanne: One of the things that’s been very striking is this whole COVID, the pandemic has laid bare all of these polarities. It’s like on the one hand we should, there’s like all these recipes for comfort food, self-care in the form of a blueberry muffin and butter and sugar was one of the recipes. Then the following week, there’s an article about what to do about the COVID-19, the waking or what kind of home exercise practice.

People are really being bombarded by all of these polls to keep getting into parts. And when we’re vulnerable, as we are during a pandemic, we can be susceptible to that. Even if we have been pretty self-led about this and we can get caught up in that “Oh, now I’ll do Pilates during the pandemic,” or something like that. Just really checking in with that parts, so we can really address the vulnerability. We may end up also doing Pilates, but maybe in a different way, a more self-led way and with attention being given to the part who’s feeling scared.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

[pause 00:50:11]

[music]

Aníbal: Jeanne, you have now this special relationship and responsibility within the Institute organization as a Vice Chair. Congratulations.

Jeanne: Thank you.

Aníbal: In many ways, your role in the IFS Institute and community expanded. Do you want to share more on this development and also regarding the future for the IFS model? If you have some thoughts to share?

Jeanne: I’ve been kind of behind the scenes, for the last 12 years rightly so, I mean, I was learning and getting more and more experience with the model. And then accompanying Dick on so many retreats and trainings and such and really getting clear about as he moves, you know, on it to his career needing to have a rescaling of the organization. It’s really growing. And to meet the need of the interest, there’s a lot of interest in this model, which is so exciting and being able to meet that demand. Joining him and being able to think about all the ways that we can expand this and so we can make it more accessible to people across the world in different communities.

I feel excited about all of what’s happening right now in terms of really getting a sense of all of the systemic oppression and being able to alleviate that. Obviously, I have a specific focus here in terms of what happens with our relationships with food in our bodies. But just the larger, more global reach of IFS to alleviate suffering is something I think we’re all excited about and right now and in the midst of really working to create the infrastructure that can allow us to do that.

So, I’m looking at how we can make trainings more available both here and abroad, is currently our focus.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

[pause 00:52:38]

[music]

Aníbal: Jeanne, thank you so much for having us. I feel I’ve learned so much from you today on our relationship with foods and body. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. Our hope is that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Jeanne: Thank you so much for this opportunity. I feel like I just scratched the surface. Hopefully, we can speak again at another time.

Tisha: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed listening to you and being with you. Thank you.

[00:53:42] [END OF AUDIO]

Recorded the 14th August 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

A recovery journey with Mary Kruger 59:43

In this episode we are welcoming back Mary Kruger, an AAMFT supervisor and an IFS Lead Trainer. Mary is the founder of Rimmon Pond Counseling, an IFS-based private practice located in New Haven, Connecticut; specializing in addictions, eating disorders, and trauma for over 25 years. Mary incorporates IFS with her own penchant for the experience, and has developed a variety of creative ways to work with parts and access Self-energy in individual, relational, and group contexts.  She enjoys sharing her experience in teaching and consulting on a national level. Mary is noted for her humor, creativity, passion, and love of dancing and people. She also offers private therapy, consultations and workshops.

Polyvagal meets IFS: A Talk with Deb Dana 52:08

Deb Dana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, specialized in treating complex traumatic stress and lectures internationally on the ways Polyvagal Theory informs clinical interactions with trauma survivors.  She is the consulting to the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and the developer of the Rhythm of Regulation clinical training series. Deb is trained in Internal Family Systems and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy,  and completed the Certificate Program in Traumatic Stress Studies at the Trauma Center.  Deb is the author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy (Norton, 2018), Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection (from Norton) and co-editor with Stephen Porges, of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory (Norton, 2018). 

Today on IFS Talks, we are meeting with and speaking with Deb Dana. Deb Dana specializes in treating complex traumatic stress and lectures internationally on the ways Polyvagal Theory informs clinical interactions with trauma survivors. She is the consultant to the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium for the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.

Deb is the developer of the Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series. She's trained in Internal Family Systems and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and has completed the Certificate Program in Traumatic Stress Studies at the Trauma Center. Deb is also the author of the Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection, and co-editor with Stephen Porges of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory.

Deb, thank you so much for being here with us today on IFS Talks.

Deb Dana: It's lovely to join the two of you and have some time to talk about Polyvagal Theory and IFS.

[music]

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much Deb for willing to have this conversation. We really appreciate it. How is it for you to hear this bio?

[music]

Deb: [laughs] It's an interesting experience to hear yourself described through a bio. I struggle with putting out a bio. And I'm asked to do it all the time, so you'd think I will be used to it by now. But when you hear the pieces you have chosen to send to somebody read back to you…in my language it can be testing of my vagal brake, so it can make it a bit of a challenge to stay firmly anchored in ventral. In the IFS language, it can make it difficult to feel firmly anchored in self and not have some parts rise up to want to say something.

It's interesting to be seen in the world in this new way since the book was published, really. That brings up a lot of vulnerability, and so a lot of parts that want to go into hiding. My internal template is shaped towards a dorsal vagal invisibility disappearance as a survival tactic. So, if you translate that to your IFS paradigm, you can think about parts that take you away, make you small, make you invisible, bring a flavor of numbing. Those sorts of parts are more where my system is shaped from my personal history. So being seen and vulnerable and out in the world in this way has been a great test of actually not only teaching Polyvagal, but living the Polyvagal-informed lifestyle. [chuckles]

[music]

Tisha: Would you share with us a little bit about your journey into the world of working so extensively with trauma and then into the discovery of the Polyvagal work?

Deb: Sure. Where would I start? I think what I would like to say is I'm a clinical social worker, so in my graduate program, and I went back to get my Master's in Social Work 20 years after getting my Bachelor's in Social Work or 25 years, probably. Lived a very different life in between and then came back when my children were gone and I was living on my own and thought, “This is really what I want to do.” At that point, as I entered my master's program, I really quickly discovered that there are clinicians who are drawn towards working with trauma and clinicians who really want to not dip into that world.

My story has been wanting to always moving towards the trauma and being curious, and wanting to understand both from my own history and then from helping others. I was very fortunate to have a mentor for my internships in my program who was a gifted trauma specialist. I was working for a sexual assault response service agency, and I got paired up with Tracy, my mentor, which was like the world saying, “Here is your person who is going to guide you into this world.”

And so, we were working with survivors, and the beautiful thing about Tracy was she also worked with people who were on the other side of that equation. She worked with people who had sexually offended. She one day said, “Do you want to come do a group with me?” And I said, “Of course, yes.” Tracy was the kind of person that even though you knew the train was going to go off a cliff, you'd ride the train with her. She had that beautiful gift in the world. So that was my entry into working with the world of sexual abuse from both sides of the equation. Which I think is an incredibly important way to work in that field, to know both sides of the equation.

And so, from there, really, my focus has been on understanding trauma and understanding what's underneath the behaviors. Because we can stick with the behaviors and just make such judgments about people from looking at their behavior.

[music]

Aníbal: Back then, you weren’t equipped with the Polyvagal Theory [crosstalk]

Deb: That was before I found Steve's brilliant work. I did my first-level sensorimotor training, which I think was wonderful. It really helped me become more embodied and help my clients feel the trauma pathways in their body. Then I moved to the IFS world and dove into Level 1, Level 2 IFS, and really found that “Oh this makes sense, the parts. This is what we're working with”. Then along the way, I read Steve's first book. We laugh because we kindly call it the unreadable book. It's a very deep…

Aníbal: Yes, complex.

Deb: …book.

Aníbal: Yes, I know.

Deb: As you may remember, you may have tried to dive in, but I read that book and I absolutely loved it. It's as if something fell into place that I had not recognized was missing. Then I certainly became a Polyvagal.

[music]

Aníbal: What came first in your life; was it IFS or Polyvagal?

Deb: IFS came first. I did my studies at the Trauma Center with Bessel's…

Aníbal: Bessel, yes.

Deb: …work and understanding that way of looking at trauma, and then sensorimotor and IFS. And the last piece was Polyvagal. Yet, when I discovered Polyvagal, it's as if all the other pieces had a platform to sit on. They made sense in a different way.

[music]

Aníbal: So for you, there is a common ground between IFS and Polyvagal?

Deb: Yes, very much so. The thing I love about Polyvagal, and many of your listeners who have probably dipped a toe in the Polyvagal world will really resonate with this, is that Polyvagal is a platform that sits underneath all these models of therapy. It's a way of understanding the biology that work in ourselves and in our clients that we are then engaging with. Whether we're doing IFS, or AEDP, or DDP or any of the alphabets. All of that is being informed by the nervous system.

You can't work with another human being without being in communication with their nervous system, whether you know it or not. And Polyvagal Theory gives us a roadmap to be able to have…tune into those conversations and have explicit communication, nervous system to nervous system, and that only serves to boost the effectiveness of the model of therapy you're using.

[music]

Tisha: Is that where the term neuroception comes in?

Deb: Neuroception? Yes. Neuroception is Steve's beautiful word, and I love the word. It describes the way the nervous system perceives because the nervous system is below the level of cortex. And although it has projections to cortex and speaks with cortex, at its heart it's a subcortical biology. So neuroception is the nervous system's way of taking in information. That's happening every micro-moments that we are moving through the world by ourselves and with others.

And it does that through three ways of listening. It listens inside to your bodily experience, it listens outside in the environment, and for the therapy world, it listens between nervous systems. So, it's listening between you and your client all the time below the level of your explicit awareness. That's why I like to say, you're always having a conversation with another nervous system. You just don't always recognize it.

[music]

Tisha: So that explains the idea that trauma and healing trauma is not about thinking.

Deb: Yes. In the Polyvagal world, trauma recovery or resolution, or whatever we're going to call it, working with trauma is really about bringing flexibility back to the nervous system. It's about helping clients be able to anchor in regulation. Both with somebody else and on their own and understand when they get pulled out of that regulation and have pathways to find their way home to regulation.

If we translate that to the IFS world, then it's about being able to find connection to Self. Know when you've been pulled into a part or hijacked by a part and be able to find enough connection to Self to come back to that place of regulation so that you can be with a part, not hijacked by it. And it's the nervous system that allows you to do that.

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, how much IFS can inform Polyvagal, or how much Polyvagal can inform IFS?

Deb: It's a lovely two-way street. I'll give you my way of working now because, of course, I am coming from the Polyvagal-informed platform and using that to inform IFS. For me, when I am anchored in ventral, I'm anchored in that biological state that allows me to feel safe in the world or safe enough in the world and connect. And connection through our biology is about connecting to myself, to all my parts. So internal connections. Connecting out here to others, connecting to the world around me and connecting to spirit. And those qualities emerge from your biology when you are in a state of ventral vagal regulation.

And when you leave that state, when you lose what I call your anchor in ventral and you get pulled into sympathetic mobilization, fight-or-flight and the survival that happens there, or into the dorsal experience that I spoke about earlier, the survival by becoming immobile invisible, then you no longer have access to the qualities that live in ventral. So for me, it's about, first, the biological state that then opens the door for the parts that live in that state to emerge.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Deb: I would be looking at…Oh your system just moved into sympathetic and as you're in sympathetic, you have a range of parts that live in that sympathetic mobilizing energy and one, several, many are then invited to emerge to help you navigate what the nervous system has neurocepted as a dangerous experience.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, does ventral in Polyvagal equals self in IFS, and does fight-and-flight equals protectors, and dorsal or freeze states equals exiles? Usually people goe to this.

Deb: It's probably not such a one-to-one correspondence for me. Certainly, Self is an emergent quality of ventral. I think we also have Self-led parts, or when we connect to self and move through the world, that all comes from ventral spiritual connection guides. All of that comes out of this ventral-mediated place in your nervous system. In sympathetic, certainly the active firefighters, the firefighters that use energy to move are in sympathetic, but the firefighters that take us into numbing or dissociation or disappearing are dorsal firefighters. Your exiles, I think likely live in dorsal because shame has been mapped to dorsal and exiles usually carry shame. The managers that work so hard to prevent us from connecting to those exiles are probably sympathetically mobilized. I think we also have managers that work in service of Self that live in ventral.

If we think about the nervous system and the hierarchy, because it's a hierarchy. So ventral is the top of the hierarchy, sympathetic is the next step down and dorsal is at the bottom. It makes some sense when we think about parts that ventral oversees the system. Sympathetic's job is to help us come back to ventral, so to help us get back into some self but also to keep us out of dorsal. That's the sympathetic system's job, keep us out of dorsal because dorsal is a dangerous place, biologically, for us, everything slows down.

So, it makes sense because your parts, or your firefighters, your managers that live in sympathetic, their job, make sure the exile story doesn't come up and be heard in the system. In those ways it makes perfect sense, right?

Aníbal: Yes, you put it so beautifully.

[music]

Aníbal: How is it now in your mind's eye, Deb? Do you see parts or talk for parts, or do you see nervous system states and nervous system states and stages?

Deb: I see states. Once we work with the state, then clients certainly can tell me about the parts that are coming from those states, but I start with state and then see the other thing. Couple of things I do differently, because of this belief around the nervous system. If somebody is working with a part and another part comes up, my practice is to invite that part to come in, not to ask it to step aside or step back but come on in because when we're anchored in ventral, there's plenty of ventral energy for everybody.  So that part can come in and sit with us and feel what it's like to be held in ventral while we're working with another part. So that's one thing that I do.

The other thing, because Polyvagal Theory really tells us that co-regulation is an essential ingredient for wellbeing, it's called a biological imperative, which means you don't survive without enough experiences of co-regulation. And I think for many of our clients, safe co-regulation is a missing experience. And for me, co-regulation later on is, "Can I be with my own system and regulate?" But in the beginning, another system is coming with me to my system to help regulate. So, the thing I ask my client, as we're working with a part or going to a state, always is, "Do you want me to go with you?" Because that's the missing experience for their nervous system.

They're used to going to sympathetic danger or dorsal disappearing on their own because that's the survival response. So, when another nervous system goes with them, there's a disconfirming experience. It's a new experience in the nervous system. And if you change the nervous system state - which I like to think of is the air all the parts are breathing or the water they're all swimming in, however you want to think about it - everything changes.

We talk in IFS that all parts, they're all listening while we're doing the work. But what my experience is when the biology changes of the nervous system, every part has a new experience because it's your biology that changed. It's not a part that changed. It's your biology that changed, the environment has changed. It's fascinating to do this kind of work and have clients then check in. A lot of parts get a benefit from experiencing a regulated state in the body or from experiencing not being alone, lost in dorsal or sympathetic, and things happen that you don't have to attend to. They just come because of that biological change.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

[music]

Tisha: What was it like for you, Deb, to make this shift in your clinical work to incorporating the Polyvagal Theory? Do you have any examples of early work incorporating this?

Deb: Yes, [chuckles] as with most people who are playing around with something. Because I read Steve's theory, and it's a brilliant theory, made perfect sense to me. Then it was like, "Well, what do I do with this?" Because there was no roadmap, there was no translation to clinical work, and I thought, "Well, I'm going to have to do something." So, I started playing around with it.

Bless my clients who have always been so willing to go on a journey with me. Because they were the ones who we did the early exploration and the trial and error, which is probably the way we learn but not always the best way of learning. [chuckles] A lot of repair gets made when you do trial and error. So, we played around with, here's this new way of looking at yourself, at looking at how you are organized and how you move through the world.

Just like IFS is a non-shaming, non-blaming, non-pathologizing system, Polyvagal Theory is exactly that as well. Because it's letting people know this is your biology. This is not your desire, your motivation. The nervous system is simply acting. It doesn't assign motivation or moral meaning. We humans do that. So, when we can help a client simply be with, "Oh, this is my sympathetic nervous system. No wonder I can't connect with my partner right now. My biology won't let me," it's a lovely way of helping them understand.

So, I found early on, when we began to map the system - and mapping was really the foundation of my work - we began to map their system, they had these wonderful moments of enlightenment, of understanding in a new way. Then when they wanted to figure out where a part was, they put it on their autonomic map. So that was the first sort of integration of the two. What state is this part living in? Where is it emerging from? How did this state come to take over right now? Because it couldn't take over if you were anchored in ventral.

I mean, that's the thing. If your system is in a biological state of regulation, that firefighter cannot take over. Your state has to change for that firefighter to be able to be running your system. And we always have access to these three states in every moment we're alive, and the balance between them changes, which then allows different parts to be present.

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, how can we connect with our nervous system and their states, that you just described, once they are mostly unconscious states, right?

Deb: Right, so we bring perception to neuroception, and we bring the implicit into explicit awareness. That really is the way we do this work. That's the way most therapy works, right?

Aníbal: Yes.

Deb: You have to bring the implicit experience into explicit awareness in order to do anything with it. If it just stays implicit, it just keeps running the show in the background. So, rather than going to the brain, we go to the nervous system. And usually, if you talk with clients in the beginning, they're very aware that they wanted to do something. Their brain had this idea about what they were going to do, but they ended up doing something totally different, because the brain and the nervous system were not in agreement, and the nervous system is going to win that battle.

So, to begin to, again, on a map and to begin to help people bring the experience into language, into art form, into movements, is really how you begin to connect with your three states, and then begin to track, "Oh I just felt this. I just felt some energy moving down my arms." And I know, because I've done my map, that that's a signal to me that I'm having a little sympathetic energy flowing then. So, it's really in finding concrete ways for each client to bring each of their three states alive so that we get to know it, and then we begin to speak that language.

So, in IFS we talk the language of Self and parts, "There's a part of you that…" Right? In the Polyvagal language, you say, "It feels like you have a bit more dorsal in your system right now than might be helpful." Or, "It feels like your sympathetic is trying to take over." Or, "Wow, it really feels like you're anchored in ventral right now." So just a different way of languaging.

[music]

Tisha: What do you notice beginning to happen for clients when they can begin to recognize those different states within themselves? What's the usual pattern for people?

Deb: The first thing that happens truly is this moment where your client looks at you and it's as if some light bulb went off in their head. Don't you love those moments? It's like, "Oh, now I get it." Then there's this lovely relaxation of those self-critical, self-judging, self-blaming voices that they carry because it's like, "My biology is driving this. Yes, exactly." So first, we understand the biology and then the other piece that this brings is that we can reshape. We actually have scientific research that shows us we can reshape your system.

And that's very comforting to clients. But it's really that first sort of aha-moment that I love. Because once a client has that moment, "Oh, you mean this is because of this?" Then they just want to keep exploring, and I love that. The Cs of IFS, the one that I find comes from ventral is the one that I'm looking for most often is Curiosity. And that's what you get when a client begins to see something, they become curious and you know, they now have some ventral onboard. They have enough ventral that we're going to keep on going forward.

I think it allows them to feel more normal in the world because all of us have a nervous system that's shaped in these basic ways together. So, as my client is filling out their map, I'm often saying, "Yes, me too," in that place, and sometimes, "For me, that's a different experience." But it's this joining therapist to client because it's nervous system-to-nervous system joining. It's not me telling my story to my client. It's my nervous system and their nervous system finding common ground. And I think, again, that's a really beautiful way to begin to create that relationship.

I talk nervous system all the time. It's like, "My nervous system just felt this moment of our nervous systems joining. Did you feel that?" There are lots of ways to say that in different…you know, you might say, "I feel like you're in self and I'm in self," or whatever you want to say. I talk nervous system, or I might say, "Oh I just noticed I had a moment of sympathetic charge there, and I wonder what you felt on your end." It's these ways of talking that are really centered in the Polyvagal language.

Aníbal: That is when you say the autonomic nervous system is a relational system, right?

Deb: Yes. Our nervous system is shaped by our experience. Both our experience navigating the world, but our experience with others. That co-regulation that is essential for survival, when we come into the world, our nervous system has a built-in expectation that it will be met and cared for in a regulated way. We think about how many of us don't…that autonomic expectation is not met. We're either met with another nervous system that is dysregulated and so can't offer regulation or is unpredictably present. And these are things the nervous system needs in little ones.

So, if we don't get enough of that co-regulation, we then have to learn how to self-regulate before we were supposed to. It's out of order. We're supposed to co-regulate. Once the nervous system learns how to safely co-regulate, then we build skills to self-regulate.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Deb: For many of our clients, many of us, it's reversed, it's backward. Which is why when our clients come to us, it's this therapeutic relationship, it's nervous system-to-nervous system connection that is often the first step towards reshaping a system.

[music]

Tisha: Is that reshaping process similar in any way to going to the exiles or the original trauma in IFS and doing an unburdening? Is there a process like that with Polyvagal?

Deb: Yes, I think that's part of it. I think also some of the reshaping is simply having these common, everyday experiences of being in connection with another human being in a safe and regulated way. When I'm regulated, I offer that regulating energy to my client, both explicitly and just in the energy that I'm sending. Just being in that over and over and over, begins to reshape their system because they're getting an experience, not simply an exile, but their entire system is getting that experience that it missed, and so that happens.

Let me just say that a more regulated system or a system that has more flexibility in finding the way back to ventral is a more resilient system. As we unburden parts, you have more of that flexibility and regulation available. If we want to talk IFS, an unburden system is a more flexible system, and so brings more of that ventral capacity.

The Polyvagal approach is really not a model of therapy. Although, I have created certain frameworks for how to connect and accompany your clients through their three states and learn the landscape and do some work with them. And in doing that, often exiles are connected with and have some sort of a sense of unburdening, even though we don't do an unburdening process.

So, it's been fascinating to work. Especially, to work with colleagues who are IFS-trained clinicians and have them, in my trainings, do the Polyvagal-informed therapy approach, and have them talk about what it's like, how it's different and what it's like. I'm still trying to gather that information, because when you have one of these experiences where something reorganizes inside, it's hard to put into words. That's the experience that we're working with in Polyvagal because you're working with the biology. You're not working with a part. You're working with how your three states are in relationship with each other.

And when somebody has one of those reorganizing experiences, words are often hard to come by.

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, you call this beautiful application of polyvagal theory ‘The Rhythm of Regulation’. Why is that?

Deb: I know we do have an internal rhythm, that our body rhythms are always at work. So even when we're in the full collapse that is that freeze with collapse, we aren't totally immobile because our body rhythms are still moving inside. Our heart is still beating, our breath is still moving. So I love the thought of rhythms, but the rhythm that I really was talking about when I was talking about Rhythm of Regulation is the rhythm between nervous systems.

Aníbal: The connection.

Deb: Right, the way that I can offer, you can receive, you can offer back, I can receive. It's that reciprocity that happens. And when we miss that regulating rhythm, we experience dis-ease. Both physical ailment and psychological suffering.

[music]

Aníbal: You talk of triggers and glimmers and safe surroundings. What is safe surroundings?

Deb: Let's talk about triggers and glimmers for a minute, and then apply them to safe surroundings. The triggers are the experiences that take you into your sympathetic-mobilized, fight-and-flight or your dorsal-disappear, disconnect. Triggers are often or are usually both sort of a belief, a theme, and then concrete ways that theme comes to life. So, if you think about something that takes you to sympathetic…

Are you more sympathetic or dorsal, my friend Aníbal? Where's your home away from home, which is what I like to call it?

Aníbal: There are days. Some days, I'm more sympathetic. Some days, I'm more dorsal.

Deb: So, in sympathetic, is there a belief that comes alive that takes you to sympathetic?

Aníbal: Sympathetic brings me some energy.

Deb: I love that you're talking about because we're talking about the vagal brake. The vagal brake, which is this other lovely component of your nervous system, is really a biological circuit that runs from your brain stem to your heart and regulates your heartbeat. How fast or slow your heart rate is. It's another rhythm there. This lovely rhythm. Your vagal brake can relax and allow you to feel some of that energy that we need, but stays on so that you're still within the regulating energy or ventral.

It's when the vagal brake totally goes away that you drop into sympathetic survival. And there the energy is not energy that fills you, or fuels you, or nourishes you in any way. It's simply survival energy. People become dangerous, the world is unsafe and you feel endangered. Often a belief there, or something that triggers someone to get there is, "No, I'm not seen."

So if we take, "I'm not seen" - because that can work both for sympathetic and dorsal, a trigger "I'm not seen"- so then how does that specifically come alive for you that brings you to sympathetic? "Oh so when all my colleagues are having a conversation and don't include me." Or, "When my partner turns away from me when I'm talking," we get really specific about the triggers. And then in dorsal, "I'm not seen," might be, "When I get left off the email chain and nobody cares." Or, "When I walk into a room and nobody looks up." Each system has its own way. So those are the triggers and we really get to know the triggers.

If you were thinking about parts, you might say, "So, that's the part that feels distressed when your partner looks away from you." I'm just broadening it to be this a state that comes alive when this event happens. Then the glimmers, which is where we're going to go with safe surroundings, the glimmers are those micro-moments when you feel a ventral energy. They're just micro-moments. We think things have to be long and sustained to get benefit from them, but it's these micro-moments that really begin to accumulate.

So we look for glimmers. What's a small thing that gives you this moment of feeling ventral, regulated and safe? Then we begin to see what are the cues of safety and what are the cues of danger for your system. In order to create safe surroundings so that I can feel safe in my world where I am, in the environment with another person, the cues of safety have to outweigh the cues of danger.

For me, it's a simple equation. And sometimes when we're working, we start by anchoring together, and the cues of safety are enough to really move us forward but something happens, and all of a sudden, the equation shifts and there are more cues of danger than safety. Everything stops. Therapy stops, everything stops because my system has now gone into a survival state. And for me, my job is now to re-balance that equation, to be curious about what just came in that interrupted this, and how do we either reduce it, resolve it, or how do we bring in another cue of safety? So that's the safe surroundings piece. Because if we don't feel like we're in a safe place with a safe person and even feeling safely embodied, then we can't engage. We don't move forward. We don't engage.

Aníbal: So interesting.

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, do you still use breath and touch and eye contact as autonomic regulation?

Deb: I do. It's really fascinating because I was just creating a workshop on bringing touch safely into the therapy world, the therapy session, when COVID-19 came along. Then it's like, "Well, not sure this is going to be happening anytime soon."

Aníbal: What now?

Deb: However, I had just finished one of my in-person trainings…actually, two. One here in Maine and one in Minnesota. So I had people who were trained in this experimenting. Again, my participants are lovely test pilots for all this stuff, which is great. What I've discovered is the self-touch or the mirrored touch has great potential to bring connection and regulation. So, I'm not giving up on that.

Part of the process is to create a touch map with a client, to find the ways of touching that feel resourcing and the ways of touching that bring you dysregulation. Then to experiment with when you're touching, if I mirror the touch, does that help you feel more ventral, more regulated, more connected or less? Because the thing that Polyvagal reminds us is that everybody has their own individual response to that and that response changes moment to moment. So, in this moment in time, if I put my hand on my heart and you mirror that, that may help me feel more connected.

I've heard many clients say, "Please don't do that. It makes me feel like you're just mimicking what I'm doing and it takes me out of this." I say “Great”.

But this is the lovely explicit conversation that you have when you're working with touch. You would do it in an office, but boy, doesn't this way of working, this platform of working via remote session, really invite us to make the implicit explicit because we don't have the same way of being in the energy of another nervous system. So, I'm still working with touch. I'm actually going to create a workshop on remote touch and how to bring that in with the nervous system.

Breath is the same. We know that breath is the most direct route to changing your nervous system state because it's an autonomic activity but one we can directly control, which makes it both a powerful regulator and a powerful dysregulator. Again, with breath, if Tisha and I were going to do some breath work, we would be doing a lot of exploration first. I have created a breath map. Find your breath, feel your breath, follow your breath, before we would do anything. Because simply saying, "Let's take some deep breaths together," can be incredibly activating to another nervous system.

Again, it's this lovely experience of being curious. That's where we come back to this lovely C of Self curiosity, which is this ventral place. When I'm in ventral, I am really curious and I want to explore with you. Which leads me to one other thing that I wanted to mention while we're thinking about it.

Ventral energy is both me being ventral-regulated and letting you experience that regulation. It's also me actively using my ventral energy in service of healing. So, there's an active quality to what I do with my ventral energy when we're together- actually, when I'm with anybody. Not just a client, but with partner, friend, colleague. When I'm moving through the world, I am influencing other nervous systems simply by moving through the world. So, when I can recognize that, when I can be aware of that, I can then send out the cues of safety that welcome others to feel safe, too.

I got off on a tangent there but…[chuckles]

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, you are building an interesting and growing community of Polyvagal-informed people. Do you feel that you still belong to the IFS community that we also know is so much Polyvagal-informed?

Deb: What's been really fascinating to me…because I absolutely love the IFS work and have so many colleagues who are IFS clinicians, and still I'm in contact with some of my original training folks, which is lovely. What has happened as Steve and I have started to build, it began with the Polyvagal family, with the book we co-edited because the chapter authors became members of this beginning Polyvagal family, which was lovely. And then it expanded to a Polyvagal community and now sort of a global Polyvagal community, who Steve and I still call our Polyvagal family, but it's a community.

What I've discovered is many, many, many of my IFS friends and colleagues are also now part of my Polyvagal community. Because they come, they take the training, they're open, they're curious, they want to make the integration and find that it's a really lovely integration. It's not a competition in any way. It's a lovely integration that happens when people come and understand this nervous system platform. Many people say, "Now, I understand why, when I do this thing, it either works or doesn't work. Now, I understand a part came in."

So, when a part comes in to interrupt the process, what it's telling you is that the nervous system has just intuited a cue of danger and the balance has shifted, and so this part has come in to bring your attention to that. It's just a lovely way to put the science underneath the experience.

Aníbal: Totally.

[music]

Aníbal: Deb, thank you so much for bringing this beautiful platform of application of Polyvagal Theory to therapy, and thank you so much for having us. It was such a lovely time together, and I hope we keep meeting, and may your days and hours be filled with ventral vagal abundance, as you used to say.

Deb: That is what I…I love to say, "May you experience ventral vagal abundance," or my new one is, "May you find ventral vagal inspired adventures."

Tisha: I like that. That speaks to lots of parts.

Deb: There you go.

[music]

Tisha: Deb, I wanted, before we say goodbye, I wanted to just take a moment to plug your website the rhythmofregulation.com. Because if any listeners are interested in finding out more and learning more, there's so much resource on there. You can download trainings that have already happened, and it seems like you can sign-up for trainings that are coming up [crosstalk].

Deb: Yes, thank you. Yes, I try to post my webinars, my interviews, my things. Now that the world is all online, I, like the rest of the world, have had this steep learning curve of, "How do I do this online?" I would like to say, though, that my experience in doing this online has been really encouraging of continuing to do this. Because I get people telling me that, "I feel connected. I feel connected to you, I feel connected to my small groups, to my…” You know. So, I think all of us are getting creative in having ways to do this from a distance and make the world feel small and connected at the same time.

So, thanks for sending people to rhythmofregulation.com. Thank you.

Aníbal: Deb, my best hope is that we can meet in-person in September in 2021, in Lisbon. Thank you so much.

Tisha: All right, thank you. So good to talk with you today, Deb. Thanks for making the time.

Deb: Take care. Thank you. It was a joy.

[music]

[00:52:08] [END OF AUDIO]
 

Recorded 25th July 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

The Therapeutic Relationship in IFS with Einat Bronstein 46:58

In this episode Einat Bronstein, a Lead Trainer for IFS-I,  and co-founder and co-director of the Israeli Institute of IFS,  shares her journey with IFS since the early nineties. With a Law degree at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and Masters in Clinical Social Work at Washington University in St Louis, MO, USA, Einat studied with Dick Schwartz and practiced IFS from its early years in Chicago. She graduated from Level 1, 2 and 3 IFS trainings; an International Lead Trainer, an IFS supervisor and a Certified IFS Therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience in private practice. Einat taught Couples Therapy for 8 years in Tel Aviv university, she is married, and has 4 kids. The role of the Therapeutic Relationship in IFS end out being a topic in this conversation.

Today on IFS talks we're speaking with Einat Bronstein. With a law degree from Tel Aviv university in Israel and a Masters of Clinical Social Work from Washington university in St. Louis, Einat studied with Dick Schwartz and practices IFS from its earliest years in Chicago. She graduated from levels one, two, and three IFS trainings. And now she's currently an international lead trainer, an IFS supervisor, and a certified IFS therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience in private practice. Einat is the co-founder and co-director of the Israeli Institute of IFS. She has also taught couples therapy for eight years at Tel Aviv university. She is married and has four children.

 

Tisha Shull: Einat, thank you so much for joining us today on IFS talks and being here with us.

 

Einat Bronstein: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Einat, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today hearing this bio of yours?

 

Einat: Some parts are a bit surprised saying “Oh, is this what I want to say about myself, kind of is this the way I want to introduce myself to the world?” But I guess to the world of IFS this is relevant. So yes, but you know, at any given moment, different parts can give very different bios about me.

 

Aníbal: Einat, could you please tell us a bit about your journey into the mental health profession? Was there something in your personal life that was determinant for you becoming a psychotherapist?

 

Einat: Yeah. You know, these are things you always know in retrospect, but you know, like most Israelis, I served two years in the Israeli army, right after high school, then you come out of the army and your life begins. You need to launch yourself into your own path. And I think my pleasing parts chose for me what my father chose for me just to go to law school, be a good successful lawyer. I think I really always wanted to work with people. And I thought “well, this would be working with people, this will be helping people, and this would be pleasing my father,” which at the time was really important for my parts. I finished law school, but I was unhappy, you know, from the get-go and realized this was not really my path. Didn't know what exactly was my path. During my years of law school, being the overachiever that I am, I managed to get married and get divorced within two years, very quick marriage. But that bit in my life really brought me to the world of therapy because...I was very young, but I already had the, wherewithal to say to myself “Okay I rushed into the marriage, let's not rush into divorce. Let's work on it.” So, we were in couples’ therapy, individual therapy, group therapy, any kind of therapy to save the marriage, which when it was clear that it has to end, ended. But for me, that was an encounter with this world, the world of therapy. It was just mind-boggling. And it was kind of clear to me that I would want to be involved with that. And several years later I met the man who's still my husband after 33 years. And he's an American, I'm an Israeli. I lived in Israel at the time. I moved from Israel to America to get married and stayed there for, as I said, for many years. And that's when I decided that I've already made a big change in my life, I may as well change everything and change careers. This is how I ended up being a therapist. The decision to give up being a lawyer...I did finish law school. I could be, but that decision of, you know, giving up that career track and becoming a therapist was one that I have not had a second of regret in my life. This was the best decision. So, I am totally where I need to be. And I'm so grateful for that.

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. And when did you get across with IFS?

 

Einat: Yeah, I was actually very lucky, I think, to meet IFS early on in my, early on in my life and early on in my career. I just finished my masters and I was really looking for a model that could be my home. I think that, you know, in a master's program, you get introduced to multiple theories and multiple programs, you know, to multiple modalities, mostly those who are fashionable and trendy at the time that you were in school. When I was in school, it was family therapy. It was CBT, you know, a few other things, you know, of course psychodynamic was still there, but these were the main ones. And none of it really felt quite right. And I knew that I wanted to continue studying and becoming, you know, deeply involved with something, but I didn't know what. I thought family therapy, it was close, but not enough. And I was in Chicago visiting my very beloved sister-in-law who lives there. And I lived in St. Louis, Missouri at the time. So still in the Midwest and kind of in proximity to Chicago. And she said, you know, there's this little conference, little seminar day, long something nearby. Let's go listen. And we were both just fresh out of school and just wanting to take in everything we could. And we went in there and it was Dick. Dick was speaking. He was kind of the main speaker. And then there were little workshops. I think it was kind of a very early incarnation of, you know, what ended up being, I think, the Annual Conference, but very different. I think it was a day or two day, a bunch of little workshops and Dick, that was it.

 

Aníbal: And that was the nineties?

 

Einat: That was in early nineties. Yes. I think it was maybe 93, 92, 93, very early. And they were just starting. Dick was just starting. It was just in Chicago with really handful of people following. And I remember I just walked in and we sat down and I listened to him. And Dick was much more shy at the time and not so used to public speaking. And yet what he said was just like, I just, I was smitten. I was smitten and I fell in love and I felt like this is my home. This just absolutely echoed with every fiber of my being. And it was very, a very quick falling in love, which hasn't changed in all these years. So, yeah, so it's close to 30 years now. And ever since from that moment on, I was a follower and I try to get as much as I could. I kept flying from St. Louis to Chicago. I took the second level one to ever be offered. You know, these were the days again, that level one was two years long. We came once a month together or three years with three days before, and three days retreat at the end of the beginning of the end. And two years in the middle. Dick was teaching it personally. He had several PA’s at the time. Susan McConnell was one of them, was my personal PA, so, I remember it so vividly. And it was absolutely an incredible experience and it totally changed my life, first of all as a person, you know, when people ask me, I don't say how many years I work with IFS, I say how many years I live with IFS because I live with it. It's not something I do in the office and then close the door and go home. So, I've been living with IFS since the very early nineties, and it totally shaped me as a therapist and as a mother and as a wife and as a human being. And over the years, I have learned other things. I know how to do other things, not just IFS. I've explored, I've been trained and got supervision on other models and theories and yet IFS is absolutely the spine of my work. It's the trunk of what I do. And occasionally there would be other branches that can enhance what I do enrich it and form it, but it really is the spine and the core of what I do and how to be in the world.

 

Tisha: Do you remember what it was that resonated so strongly with you when you first went to that initial conference?

 

Einat: It just felt like he was describing so accurately my internal experience. Like all of a sudden there were words and images to capture that which was my internal experience. And as he was describing it, this voice in me was like “yeah, that's exactly it, exactly. That explains so much.” And things become clear right away just by naming them this way and mapping them out this way. It just felt so true and so accurate. And I think I right away understood the power of it. I mean, again, to the extent that you can right away, I mean, you need to have years of fully understanding it, I think, but there was a very intuitive and an immediate sense of how deep this can go and how accurate it is and how loving it is. It was very important to me. You know, in school, one of the main things was, as I said, family therapy and Jay Haley and Cloe Madanes, and, you know, kind of this group that was really very strong then. And I remember feeling that these were very talented people, so much of what they were doing, felt manipulative, disrespectful, and all these, you know, kind of paradoxical interventions, build shaming and belittling. And all of a sudden, I got that what Dick was describing was a very loving, respectful and safe way to conceptualize and work with people. That was really important to me, felt like I can really stand behind it without feeling conflicted and without questioning my integrity in doing certain things, because that just felt very whole, very wholesome as well.

 

Aníbal: We can see that for you there is a before and after IFS, that it was a steppingstone for you. And then you became a lead trainer. How long did it take you to become a lead trainer?

 

Einat: Actually very long because it was not traditional track, which I don't know if anyone has a traditional track on this, but...So I was an IFS trainer, as I said, since the early...I'm sorry, an IFS therapist since the very early nineties, following any seminar and any workshop in anything, and obviously all the levels. And in 2007, I managed to convince finally, after 20 years of campaigning, my husband and my children to move to Israel. For me it was going back home, for them it was really immigrating because they're all Americans and it was a very big step to come back to Israel. And part of my dream was to bring IFS to Israel. So, by that time, you know, when I arrived at Israel, 2007, I was already, you know, many years into the IFS scene, into IFS work and learning and I teamed up with Ossi Arbel. Was my IFS partner and a very close, and we received the authorization from CSL at the time Center for Self-leadership to start offering trainings in Israel. So, we brought our joint experiences, talents, skills and we started to teach. So, we're the only ones able to teach in Hebrew in Israel. Had a lot of experience, Osnat had more experience in academics, I had more clinical experience with IFS, many years of that. And together, I think we've created a very good team and started to train people in Israel. And we did this as in a co-lead structure for many years. And after about 10 years of doing that and multiple, multiple trainings we had about one or two trainings, you know, L1 trainings, level one trainings, every year, we had a tremendous amount of experience. We did this mentee training in the US as we each led, you know, solo led a training and were granted our title lead solo trainer. And since then, we've actually been, you know, each of us have been traveling all over the world doing, you know, level one and level two trainings, as well as in Israel still.

 

Aníbal: Well done.

 

Tisha: You ended up being one of the pioneers of the online trainings quite by accident. I've, heard. And so now are you only online currently and how is that going for you?

 

Einat: Yeah, so all the trainings are online when the COVID-19 started it caught us here in Israel in the middle of a level one. So that level one halfway had to switch to become online. Transition went pretty, pretty well. We had a level three with Dick that was planned. He was going to come here to Israel in June, and that obviously reformatted itself to being online. And

I have multiple trainings that are coming up starting now in July, later in July with England, and then in August with Australia and September with Moscow. So, they're all going to be online and it's been challenging. It's been successful in many ways. Definitely our trainings could be offered online with great results, but it's still not the same. It does not give us that direct human connection when all the senses participate, you have a full picture of the person in a room together, it's still really missing. So, talking about therapeutic relationship, you know, relationship that you can form online might be a bit different than the relationship when you are actually in person. A lot of people... I don't know how different yet, I think we're all learning what would be the long-term impact of this.

 

Aníbal: So, Einat, when I asked you about the topic of your preference for this talk, you chose the therapeutic relationship. Do we need the relationship or even a good therapist to do IFS?

 

Einat: You know, part of what, when I pause to think, I think that this is a topic, maybe every topic, but this is a topic that is, first of all, heavy with terminology that I'm not even sure that we all think the same. What is relationship? What is therapy? What is therapeutic? So even to talk about it, I think like, wait, wait, you know, we need to define those things to even know that we're talking about the same thing. So, what is a good therapist? Or no. We could find that, you know, is there one definition for an IFS therapist versus another therapist? These are all really, very thought-provoking pieces for me. I want to say that part of what I like to do when I teach, or when I talk about something is really to take advantage of our brain's tendency to search for answers. Basically, if you present a question, our brain immediately runs to search for the answer. We can’t control it. Now we may come back with no answer. We may come back with a wrong or misguided answer, but we're going to be searching for it. And for me, it's a great way to offer people trailheads, just to ask questions and have people go “Hmm, let me ponder that for a minute. I don't know the answer to that. Let me think.” I love doing that. I think that's the best way for us to learn as instead of really feeding answers, just to have people think. So, I want to really maybe offer these questions: What is therapeutic for people? What could be therapeutic and what is relationship here in this context? And I have all kinds of thoughts about that, of course, but I love to invite people to just ponder that.

 

Aníbal: Einat, we all know IFS is such an intense relational therapy and method, right? So, we see this intense relational activity inwards and outwards. So, where does this idea that the therapeutic relationship isn’t so important came from? This perception may be mistaken. Because Dick says IFS can honor Carl Rogers, attachment and transference theories, and also be a nurturing therapy as well. So, he’s stressing out the relationship between the therapist and the client. So, where does this idea come from that the relationship is not so important for IFS.

 

Einat: I don't know where this comes from. I strongly disagree with that. And actually, I get calls sometimes from people here in Israel. Hey, you know, I got the book, you know, this book, that book about IFS and some, and I'm listening to some recordings and I’m learning things. Maybe I can just teach myself IFS and I can solve my problems. And do I really need to go to therapy for that, you know, if I can just check and work with my parts? And I think we can do different things by ourselves, but we absolutely, I feel, we have to have relationship. You know, it's confusing maybe with IFS, because really when you say, listen, everyone has a Self and Self is the inner leader of the system. And when you can be more Self-lead and have more Self-energy, that's what you need to heal your wounds, you know, to heal your exiles. And once the exiles can get healed, you have, you know, more harmony in the system, more Self-leadership, parts, you know, protectors can relax. So, it seems like it's sort of like a closed system where you can just yourself, we'll just do it for your parts and you don't need anything else, but it just doesn't work that way. You know, even for, I think people who live and work with IFS for many years, maybe I'll put myself in that group too. I need other people to hold space for me many times, to help point out things that I might still not be able to see because parts are clouding it and keeping it in my blind field. We need a certain holding that is loving that is compassionate, that is nonjudgmental, that is patient. We sometimes need the perspective that someone else's Self has while we're not fully in Self, just to help us move along that continuing or continuum of more Self differentiation and unblending. We need to co-regulate before we can self-regulate many times, and that's how we start off in life. So why would that be different?

 

Aníbal: So, for you, Einat, the technique is not everything. I mean, it's somehow easy to memorize and say the eight C's or the five P’s, but so difficult to embody them, right? With many challenging clients or even family members like our spouses. It's so difficult to, as you say, self-regulate. So, why is this so difficult? Why is that the technique is not enough? Knowing it's not enough.

 

Einat: I think that's one of the best things about IFS, that it does acknowledge that awareness is not enough, knowing is not enough, psychoeducation is not enough. Because I think there is a relationship. And actually, in the therapy room, there are multiple relationships that operate, that exist at any given time. There is the relationship between me, the therapist and my clients, you know, me, the Self of me and my client’s Self. There's a relationship between my Self and my client's parts. There's a relationship between my Self and my parts. They're all there as well. There's the relationship between, you know, my client's Self and my parts, my client parts and my parts. I mean, there's just, it's a web. We are connected to each other in a very intricate web. It's not just in a therapy room. We are connected to everyone around us, in this web. And when it happens to someone that is connected to us in this web, we feel it, depending on how close we are and how many little wires connect us, what we feel, those, you know, those rattles, you know, those shakes and moves in the web. So here I am in the room and I'm connected to another person in this very intricate web and we are impacting each other. I think one of the things to consider that happens in therapy is therapy actually replaces something that is very profound in our experience, which we all experience, you know, when we just start our life, and that happens to us with our parents. And what happens to us is experiencing three things, which is exclusivity, closeness and dependence. Think of a child and the parents, there is exclusivity because there's just the parents. You know, we don't have other parents, even people who have stepparents or, you know, adopting parents, there is the parent that is raising us one or two, but this is it. You know, it's a finite personality. There's closeness as being a child with your parents. There's closeness that just, you live in a house with them. And there's dependence, as children we depend on the adults in our lives. And these aren't easy experiences, human experiences, many parts come from these experiences. So, think of therapy. That's what happens. Client comes and they experienced the exclusivity. They have one therapist and what the therapist does or doesn't do. And the way the therapist shows up, it's very, very important because there is exclusivity this way and there's closeness. They bare their soul. We sit there in a small room and people share, you know, everything intimate and important and painful in their lives. And there's dependence. They really do depend on us showing up and us showing up in a certain way and us not harming them, not taking advantage of their vulnerability. So, these three elements of exclusivity, closeness and dependence are the foundation of therapeutic relationship, which is why it's so hard for many parts to allow that. People come to therapy and we think that by coming to therapy, they say, I am open for therapy, but many parts aren't because it's not easy to relive this exclusivity, closeness and dependence. It's very powerful. And what's important for me to point out is the therapist experiences the same thing. The therapist is not anew, we sit in the room with our clients. We are very vulnerable. We are vulnerable to what they are expressing to us, what they're saying to us, their exclusivity, this unique client is one and only what this client experiences and what this client is going to save to the world afterwards and how this client is experiencing me is very exclusive. And there is closeness. They see me there, they see me day in and day out, you know, and sometimes this way, and sometimes on that way, and there is dependence because therapists also depend on the client to show up, to come, to be willing to listen, to be willing to be touched, to be moved, to be healed. So, we are connected in a very interdependent way with our clients.

 

Aníbal: And many times, we heal with them, right?

 

Einat: We must show up in a way that would allow us...well, must, I don't want to say this, it sounds like a very strong way, but I think that showing up in a human way and in an open way allows us to heal too and to grow. I mean, it's not always just about healing, but it's about growing because if I am with the client and I notice parts of me that got triggered, I can work with these parts and I can grow from that and I can own them.

 

Aníbal: Yeah.

 

Tisha: Speaking of that, how does the IFS model differ from other models in regard to the therapeutic relationship?

 

Einat: there is a difference, but I don't want to pretend that I know so much about other models that I can make, you know, this very educated intellectual comparison, but I would say that I think IFS is harder because it really puts tremendous amount of responsibility on the therapist to do their work. You can't not do your work and show up as an IFS therapist because then you'll be showing up in parts. If you don't do your inner work, you are vulnerable and fragile, which means that you need protectors to surround you so that you would not feel so vulnerable and fragile. And if you have a lot of protectors, then there must be a distance, you know, protectors create distance in one way or another, whether it's very noticeable, implicit or explicit, but protectors create distance between us and others for safety. And if you sit in a therapy room and there is a lot of distance, I think it will be...it's a different kind of energy. People will not feel as safe. They can appreciate how eloquent the therapist is and how knowledgeable the therapist is, but I think there's something in the heart to heart connection that's going to be missing when the therapist is distant. And therapists, because we're human, we end up being distant when we need to be protected. And if we don't really work with our parts and heal our wounds, and we have to be protected all the time, especially in therapy because it is so intimate, you really need to be protected. If you don't want to be vulnerable.

 

Aníbal: So, Einat, you were saying that we need a good relationship for IFS to work out, but also, we may need a good therapist. And what makes a good therapist for you?

 

Einat: These are really hard questions for me because there's a lot of value placing here. And again, you know, I have a whole, that's kind of my new favorite topic about values and beliefs in therapy and in IFS it's really big. And it's very important to the therapeutic relationship because, you know, for instance, because what makes the relationship? The relationship is the connection and the boundaries, because the boundaries also really, you know, draw the lines of the relationship. This is how far we go. this is what we can do, this is what we can't do. And boundaries are this really magical word in the world of psychotherapy, but how do we draw boundaries? How do we decide the distance between us and our clients? Boundaries come from beliefs and values that we're holding. So, when you say good therapist or not so good therapist, there's a value judgment here. And it must, for me to answer this question, I must check what beliefs do I have about a good therapist, and a not so good therapist, those are my beliefs. And do they apply to everyone? Are they always applicable? I don't know. I think, for me that would be maybe someone who really is aware of their parts and has perspective on their parts and can be, I guess, offering Self-energy in way of curiosity and compassion as much as possible to the people around them.

 

Aníbal: And how do we get there? These standing that you're just describing, it's mostly about experiencing the model in themselves? What about having a large clinical and life experience or both clinical experience and life experience or self-experiencing the model?

 

Einat: I think it's really important to experience the model on yourself, just be in the receiving end of IFS therapy, as well as you are in the giving end of it. I think life experience is always wonderful, but you know, I saw some young people that don't have much life experience and they are wonderful. They hold incredible solid Self-energy and Self presence, and they may not have as much clinical experience, but their heart is so open. They have this genuine curiosity and just in a compassion that they're wonderful, even though they may not have, you know, huge clinical experience. So, and actually life experience and clinical experience can cause other results. They can bring a lot of protected parts, you know, kind of intellectual knowing expert parts that won't necessarily lend themselves very easily to Self-energy. So, I think it just depends on the person and how they're, how they work with their system. It's not just about age and the quantity of years you have in the profession. It's really how you show up inside yourself and then outside yourself.

 

Aníbal: What about the technique? Does it help knowing the six F’s, the 8 C’s, the 5 P’s, the 7 steps of healing, the 11 fears of protectors? How much it helps?

 

Einat: It helps. It helps, but you know, it's kind of like, sometimes I say, it's kind of like learning, you know, a complicated dance. So, at first you just need to know the steps, okay. Forward, backwards sides, turn, whatever. But that's not a dance. You're just doing the steps. Once you really know what you're doing, you start dancing, then you really move and you have rhythm and you have music and your motion is beautiful, not just correct, but it's also graceful and beautiful and has an emotion and a feeling and an expression to it. So, it's important to know the protocol. It's important to know the definitions, the elements, the techniques, it's important because these are the steps. These are the bones of this language. It's kind of like speaking a language. We need to know the grammar. You need to know that the structure of the language, but if you really want to be fluent and creative in the language and use it in the most beautiful way, you really need to do more work with it and just have a lot of experience. And I think first experience is on yourself, you know, the more you do your work, less afraid you are to go the distance. I often say it's hard for therapists to take clients to places that they have not been to themselves. If you have not done much unburdening of your own trauma, you will be scared to take your clients all the way to do unburdening of their trauma. It'll just be this unknown and a darkish place that I have never gone to. So, I'm going to be afraid to go there. And I won't know much about it because I haven't. So, I think first thing is for us to do this, and then we can take our clients there as well. So yeah, there's some kind of a big responsibility that I think IFS places on the therapist to be really clean and really always aware working with yourself as you come to work with them.

 

Tisha: I'm curious about the therapeutic relationship and then when you're working with the client exiles, I'm just curious if exiles ever need the witness of someone other than the client's Self. If you find that, whether for other people, beyond the therapist who's working with them to know the exiles experience or the therapist in the room to be there for the exile to see as well. I'm just curious about it.

 

Einat: Yeah. So, I don't think there's one answer. I think for different people and different exiles, it's different. I think for some people, for some exiles, just the fact that the clients themselves in Self can see their exile and be with it and witness the story, that's the healing they need. And other exiles do need the witnessing of the therapist, that's really important. Have another person validate, to have another person hear, know, listen. I think that many times it's very important as well for some exiles, especially exiles maybe that had fears around them that they will not be believed or, you know, that they will be dismissed. So, it's really important to have another person, which is the therapist, listen and acknowledge and respect and hold. And for some exiles it's important to have even more people. And that's what happens sometimes with like great unburdenings that take place in demos, in trainings in groups. You wonder, wow, how could this person have such a big unburdening in front of so many people? But I think that sometimes that's what the exile needed. The witnessing by a group of people who really validated its experience and really solidifies that my story is believed and is real.

 

Aníbal: May we shift into your experience as a lead trainer? What do you enjoy the most in your trainings? And I'd like to remind all of us that we train in IFS, not only therapists, we somehow expect people to experience themselves and grow themselves and their relationships, not only on the professional level.

 

Einat: My biggest joy in life is being with people in ways that are meaningful. I can be with people just at a supermarket, but I'm talking about ways that are meaningful and interactive. And also, I think that I always, ever since I remember myself, I loved hearing stories. I love when people tell me stories. So, what do we do as therapists? We just sit and people tell us stories. I have parts that just can't believe it. You know, after almost 30 years of doing this, I still go to work and I'm so excited that people are going to tell me stories and I'm just, and I'm going to be there to hold their story and be with them in their story. So, it's the same thing in the trainings. I love hearing people stories, make room for that, even in, you know, personal encounters at the breaks and the evenings. I love having meaningful connections with people. I love to see how people experience what I experienced with my first encounter. That experience of being smitten by something that feels so true and so accurate and so resonating. To just be resonated, to feel resonating with something so profoundly is such a gift. And I see the light turns on in people's eyes and for different people it's different places, you know, different spots around the process of the training or the teaching or the learning. But to see that light turn on is magnificent. When people go through personal experiences with the demos or in the practice group and they come out and say, wow, I just worked with a part I didn't know existed. I just work with a part that is so difficult for me and I have a total different understanding. It’s seeing people developing relationships with their parts that I find fascinating and so empowering. You know, in IFS and definitely in the trainings there's a lot of talk about Self. Everybody wants to be in Self, but people constantly check. Am I in Self? Are you in Self? Are we in Self? Is there not enough Self? There's this big, big, you know, Self festival all the time. And you know, if we need to worry about that, we're not in Self already. These are parts. Parts who are worried. Am I in Self? Am I enough in Self? The other person is more in Self. I'm not enough. So, but for me, this is, you know, it's the love of our parts that really makes a big difference here. When we can love our parts and accept them and know them and make them welcome. And while we do that, we can welcome and accept other people's parts. When we do that, we are in Self without even planning to be, without even working at it. Just be curious about your parts, be interested and be loving you're in Self right there. So, to see how people do that in the trainings and how they get there is always just such a gift to me. And I love to see it when clients do it also in our work, just that understanding and the curiosity that comes with it is just, is a miracle.

 

Tisha: It sounds like you get so much out of what you do.

 

Einat: I do.

 

Tisha: I'm wondering how you envision the future of the IFS model? You now, it's taken so much traction, you're leading trainings in Moscow and England. What would you like to see?

 

Einat: I know that Dick wants it to change the world, really, like in small ways and in big ways and go into all the levels of human organizations, you know, schools to communities, to municipalities, to countries. So, I would, you know, obviously put my name right there next to his, you know? Yeah, let's do that. Let's change the world. I think IFS can do. It really, I'm such a believer in that, but also, I think even just this COVID-19 experience have been so humbling. We think we go a certain direction. We think we have a certain path unfolding under our feet and then the whole thing just gets totally taken away and twisted and you know, turned upside down and we are in a different place now. So, it's very hard for me to make predictions. I can only have a vision and have a hope. I am humbled in terms of, I would first hope that in my country, in Israel, we can have more Self for the individuals and for the government and just, you know, if each state can have more Self and less firefighters, I think it will already be a better world. So maybe that's where we're headed. I hope so

 

Aníbal: Beautiful. Well said. So, Einat, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

 

Einat: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

 

Tisha: Thank you. This was a wonderful conversation. It's great to get to know you.

 

Recorded 11th July 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Working with couples and relationships, with Kate Lingren 39:45

In this episode Kate Lingren helps us to understand how IFIO approaches communication and negative cycles both in couples and relationships.

IFIO is a relationship therapy born out of a desire to carry the concepts of IFS into a relational setting and to use the intimate relationship itself as a vehicle for growth and healing of the individual, as well as the couple.
You can find more on this model at Toni Herbine-Blank website (https://www.toniherbineblank.com)

You can learn more reading:
Self in Relationship: An Introduction to IFS Couple Therapy, in Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensions, edited by Martha Sweezy and Ellen L. Ziskind, Routledge, NY 2013; and  IFIO: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy, by Toni Herbine-Blank,  with co-authors Donna M. Kerpelman and Martha Sweezy 2016.

Full Transcription
Today on IFS talks, we're welcoming back Kate Lingren, talking today about relationships and intimacy. Kate Lingren is a certified IFS therapist and on the faculty of Intimacy From the Inside Out, using IFS and couples work as a lead trainer. She's also on the faculty of Boston College School of Social Work, where she teaches a class on IFS. Kate lives and practices in the Boston area and in Martha's Vineyard. Today, we are focusing with her on a different topic. Intimacy from the Inside Out, or IFIO as Toni Herbine-Blank collaborator on therapy method for couples’ relationships.

 

Thank you, Kate, for being with us today. 

Kate Lingren: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me back.

Aníbal Henriques: Kate, why this special interest of yours on couples and couples’ therapy, where does this come from? 

Kate: Well, you know. It's interesting, the first thing that comes to mind when you say that, Aníbal, is I sometimes say when I'm teaching that I had my first couple when I was seven. Let's just say it didn't go very well.

So, the first couple in my life had problems and there was no help available for them, and that had a huge impact on me and my siblings. So, that's in there somewhere, wanting to provide something that is truly helpful for couples because it's not easy to stay in a relationship long term. 

Aníbal: And how do we differentiate IFS from IFIO? And what does exactly from the inside out mean? 

Kate: Yes, so, IFIO is the application of IFS to multiple systems, dual systems in the room. So, to Couples. And it could be any dyad, as a matter of fact. We talk about couples in terms of romantic partners, it can be used with any dyad. I've certainly seen the adult child and parent dyads, sibling dyads, friends, business partners. So, Toni Herbine-Blank has taken IFS and really honed it to be very applicable to working with multiple systems in the room and from the inside out is really the basis of IFS, I think. You know, the internal connection Self-to-part is primary. And the more healing work we can do internally, the more available we are to working with our partner on the relationship, hence from the inside out.

Tisha: Did you work with couples before IFIO? And how is it different? 

Kate: I laugh, yes. And by the time I got to Tony's training, 2019 maybe. Was one of her first trainings I was ready to quit with couples, because it was too painful for me. Sitting with people, getting dysregulated and escalating in the room, and I didn't know what to do when that happened. And also, not to really...I wasn't able to really make a difference and provide something that felt really useful or helpful to couples. So, by the time I got to that training, I was thinking, ok, last ditch effort and that training changed everything for me.

Aníbal: Kate, how much someone that is trained in my IFS is ready to work with the couples or this kind of relations that you mentioned or how much is needed to go into this specific training on IFIO?

Kate: Yes, I think IFS alone does not prepare us to work with couples on so many levels. There's so much to it that it's impossible to cover all of that in the IFS training. The traditional level 2s often had a weekend on working with couples, the four-weekend model. And even that was just the very beginning. The 72-hour training that we offer is also just the beginning. And what I think makes it so complicated is what it triggers in us. It's…I think most people would agree with this, working with couples is more than twice as triggering as sitting with an individual, maybe exponentially because of our early experiences with our own first families. 

Tisha: How did that play out for you, you know, as your post training, feeling into your parts, working with couples. How did you work with that? What did you notice? 

Kate: That's a great question. One of the things I noticed through the training and got help with was how scared I got when one or both people in the couple got dysregulated. And then I would dissociate to protect myself and I have this memory of sitting with a couple in my office, they were screaming at each other and I just sat there glazed over and went away. And then, when I got my bearings, I actually had to stand up and say "you have to stop." It was the only tool I had. And now, so I really had to work with the parts of me that got so scared when people go into conflict in my office and we're really in parts, 

Aníbal: Yes, maybe parts remembering also. We all remember.

Kate: Exactly, absolutely. And now what's interesting is it doesn't get to that point in my office. I know how to keep people regulated, help people stay regulated, and if they start to escalate, I know how to interrupt that.

Aníbal: You have a grip on them.

Kate: Yes.

Aníbal: So, Kate what are the goals of IFIO, generally?

Kate: Well, the goal probably at its core is helping people find Self-to-Self communication, which translates into communicating on behalf of needs and vulnerable parts, as opposed to trying to get needs met from protector energy. So, Self-to-Self communication, Self-regulation is an important part of that. Unblending, of course, is an important part of that. 

Aníbal: It's a huge one, Self-to-Self communication. 

Kate: Yes, it is.

Tisha: So, is there a lot of education of the couples that you work with initially teaching them about how to notice their parts and how to unblend? Or does it happen naturally?

Kate: For me, at this point, Tisha, it happens more naturally. And I provide the education where it seems appropriate. I think I've put a fair number of couples to sleep, trying to explain how it works. So, I've learned to provide the information as needed and sometimes people don't need to know what we're doing. It just makes sense to them intuitively. And some people want to know "how does this work? What do you mean and what are you looking for with that question?" 

Aníbal: Kate, one of the watermarks for the model, I believe, is the U-turn, which is also a concept for IFS, of course. What exactly is this U-turn when it comes to couples? How do you implement this with couples?

Kate: Yes. So that is a term of Dicks' that's so, so important. And, when couples come in, they often, almost always, I think I can say, come in blaming the other. We're here because they are doing X or not doing Y. If they would stop doing that, things would be fine. Or something like that. So, the U-turn is really, over time, helping people slow down and bring the focus back to themselves. So, and one way to do that is to ask "Ok, so, when they do that, what happens inside for you?" Which brings the focus back here, to myself. 

Aníbal: Yes, "What am I feeling? And what am I needing?"

Kate: And they might still answer with something about the other person. And I'll just ask again until people really get in the habit of first checking in here, what's happening for me inside and taking the focus off of what their partner is or isn't doing.

Aníbal: So, Kate, on IFIO partners take turns on U-Turns and Returns. That may look really dynamic and lively. How easy is it for couples to take those turns and returns?

Kate: Yes, it's sort of organic, I think. If somebody is in a blaming part, for example, I might ask that person, you know, if it's showing up as an angry blaming part to see if that part would give them some space. So, there's the unblinding. And then, what's happening inside right now. So, it may be, it goes back and forth in some sessions. One person's doing a U-turn, the focus is on them. Then the other. Sometimes it's only one person in the whole hour and we stay with that So, it can look many different ways in a session. The important thing is that the therapist or me in this case, I'm interrupting every time if somebody is pointing the finger at their partner. 

Aníbal: Exactly. You need to be very firm doing that to ensure safety.

Kate: That, too, it has to be a safe triangle, right? 

Tisha: Speaking of that, how do you work with parts of yourself, as the therapist, that align with one member of the couple over the other? Do you speak for that...or how do you work with that inside? 

Kate: That's a great question. And of course, it's going to happen, right. 

Tisha: Because it happens, right?

Kate: Of course it's going to happen. And at this point, I'm connected enough with my system that right away I will notice it pretty quickly, if not immediately. And I do lovingly ask the part to move back so I can stay connected with both people, because that's what creates a safe triangle or contributes to a safe triangle.

It doesn't really happen so much anymore that I get, that I'm aligned with one and get called on it, but it has happened and when that happens, we have to be willing to take a look at that. “I feel like you're really siding with my partner over there on this.” And I'm ok now, I've learned to be ok with saying "Let me take a look at that" and yes, that's when I might speak for it. "You know, there was a part of me that was starting to ally with your partner around that, I'm going to work with that." 

Aníbal: Beautiful. 

Kate: Or to be able to say "I checked inside and..." Because sometimes it's a projection. So, to be able to say, you know...This happened not that long ago for me, when one of the one person in the partnership said "I feel like you're really taking her side," and I said "Let me just take a look." And I took a moment and I said "I don't find any part of me that's taking her side here. And I'm wondering what's happening for you."

Tisha: Yes, it's really good to name. 

Aníbal: Kate, it might be beautiful to see couples grow and change during these series of U-turns in order to see each other grow, but how relevant is it for a couple to heal that this U-turn, this individual work you described, get done with a partner presence or witnessing?

Kate: In IFIO there are a number of protocols that we use. One is tracking the sequence of an ineffective cycle that couples get into. That's pretty predictable for most people. Another protocol's courageous communication, which we can talk about a little bit more. Another protocol is doing an individual piece of work with one person in the presence of their partner. And I can tell you that it is so powerful. And I know that from the inside out because I've had that experience with my partner and being able to witness her doing a deep piece of work was deeply, deeply meaningful for me. And it helped me understand her in a very different way, which helped me not react to the protectors that I would sometimes react to. 

Tisha: You could meet them with compassion, seeing what they were protecting. 

Kate: Absolutely. Yes. That's one of the pieces of that protocol that is so powerful. The partner gets to say "Oh, this wasn't, it isn't about me? Wow." 

Aníbal: Yes. So, Kate, what exactly is courageous communication?

Kate: So, in essence, courageous communication is being able to speak on behalf of parts and listen from Self. So, in the training and in the model, there's a lot of emphasis not just on speaking for parts, but on how to listen from Self. So, we spend a lot of time and energy helping the listener get ready to listen. So, sometimes, for example, we might contract for one person to speak on behalf of an experience. Then we go to the listener and help them get ready. It could take a whole session to help the listener get unblended enough to be able to really hear their partner from their heart. I sometimes say from your heart or from Self-leadership. So courageous communication is basically that, speaking on behalf of parts and listening from Self. It sounds simple and it is not easy to do.

Aníbal: Yes, absolutely. And how does Self help to regulate couples?

Kate: Well, if you think about it, yes, the regulation has to happen first before anything else can happen. And so, unblending really allows access to Self-energy. And that's where calmness, centered energy, curiosity is, as you know. And so, when someone is in a Self-led place, more calm, more centered, more curious, the energy is calm. And it takes that to be able to listen to some difficult things from your partner, potentially difficult things. As opposed to being in a part and dysregulated, speaking from angry energy. There's nothing that can happen that's constructive then. And I sometimes say to people, if you are in an angry part, if you are speaking from this part or dysregulated, I use that word a lot with Couples' clients, and they actually seem to really like it. Is very affirming. "Oh, that is what it is, isn't it? I am not regulated." And I'll say "If you're coming from that angry part, you are not going to be heard. And I want you to be heard. So, let me help you get more regulated or calm or connect with some calm, centered energy or something like that." 

Aníbal: So, IFIO really helps couples with cycles. 

Kate: Yes.

Aníbal: And I'm curious, what is a negative cycle and how IFIO addresses negative cycles.

Kate: Yes, that's a big part of the work, is listening to the couple over time and really trying to suss out what this cycle is, and a cycle is a kind of predictable, repetitive pattern between two people. That, and my way of thinking is their attempt to get a need met, each of them attempt to get a need met, that's not working. And most couples have, like Toni says, basically one fight. Which means that we each have sort of this core exile or vulnerability that tends to energize our core front line protectors.

And the content can change, whether it's over who cleans the bathrooms or who does more around the house or who's wanting more attention from the other, the content can change, but that underlying core exile and front-line protectors tend to be the same. So, we're listening for that. We're listening for the protector, which I think is an attempt to get a need met. So, maybe it's getting louder and starting to raise one's voice. It's the protector energy. And what is that part afraid would happen, we might ask, if you don't get louder? 

Aníbal: Exactly.

Kate: What you might hear as well, then "I really won't be heard, I won't be seen. I'll never get what I need." And then we get closer to the exile.

Tisha: So, it sounds like there's a lot around negotiating needs. 

Kate: Yes. 

Tisha: And is it generally that there's an exile at the base of each of them, or is there sometimes needs that will never be met in a specific relationship?

Kate: That's a good question too. It's both. Any need, all needs are acceptable. If you can identify the need, it will make sense. "Oh, so, you need to be seen." I don't want for example, here's an example. I often hear this "I don't want to have to say what I need. I want my partner to know."

Aníbal: "You should guess. You should know."

Kate: "You should guess. You should know. "

Tisha: Right. "It doesn't have as much value if I have to ask." 

Kate: Exactly. So, "ok, you there's a part of you that really wants..." So, I might frame it for them “…to just know what you need.” "That makes sense. I get that." Who doesn't have that? That's not a need that's likely to get met though. Nobody can really know what we need before we speak for it. But I'm going to normalize it. "Ok, I get you have that need."

And there's kind of two things about that. One is we come back to the Self to part connection. So, I want to really deepen that person's Self-to-part relationship, so they can meet the need of that part a little bit more, speak on its behalf. And then the partner can then say, "I wish I did know what you need all the time. I'm sorry that I can't." But then there are other core needs that we all have that are not being met in a relationship. Say, for connection, to be seen in some basic ways, to be heard, for sexual intimacy, and sometimes these things are just not on offer.

Aníbal: Those are common also.

Kate: Yes, very.

Aníbal: Very common. 

Kate: And so, what I want to find out is, is it possible that those things could be on offer? So, working with the partner to hear this and to see if that is something that could be freed up. And if not, then what does that mean? 

Aníbal: So, our needs can be met or just be listened, listened by our partner. 

Kate: Yes, so here's a kind of benign example from my own relationship, So, my partner is a tech wizard and she really has a need to share that with me. And I tried to listen to, you know, these things she's finding out about and what this device can do and all this kind of stuff. And I just glaze over. I can't hold presence to it. And I tried and tried and tried, and it was painful to her that I would zone out until we could really talk about it, that "you know what, I wish I could meet this need. And I do, I do wish I could meet that need to connect around this, but I can't. It doesn't make sense to me and I just disconnect." And that freed us both up. For me not to feel guilty and lacking and like a bad partner, for her to get that need met place out, there are plenty of people who love to talk about that stuff.

Aníbal: And what about sexuality, Kate? We do not see a chapter on sexual intimacy on the book IFIO from, I believe, Toni Herbine-Blank, and Donna Kerpelman and also Martha Sweezy, 2016.

Aníbal: Yes, it was interesting to me that you pointed that out, yes.

It's curious as couples therapist, what we find is, and this was certainly true for me, a lot of us don't ask about sex. And that's an interesting internal inquiry, isn't it?

Aníbal: Yes, why is that?

Kate: Yes, I mean, we have parts that come up around...that have beliefs about what it means to ask about sex and sexuality. So, for me, there were parts that had discomfort around that topic and so, didn't ask. And once I saw those parts, I could really work with them and help them, so that I could be available to talk about sexuality in my office and ask about it, even if the couple didn't bring it up. A lot of couples’ therapists say if they want to talk about it, they'll bring it up. And what we find is that that's not necessarily true. People want and need to talk about it, but they're afraid to bring it up, So, we have to be courageous enough to ask. 

Tisha: I'm curious what parts you came upon in your own Self inquiry, if they're universal, if they're cultural. 

Kate: I'm sure there are universal ones and cultural ones, and for me, it was very much related to my own shame around sexuality. And some trauma from my early life that hadn't been worked through, that really got in the way of me feeling safe and comfortable talking with couples about their sexual experience. And what a gift it was to myself to access those parts and help them and help the younger ones not even be in the therapy room. No child needs to be hearing grownups talk about their sex life. 

Tisha: So, this work with couples has really been bolstered by how Self-reflective and how dedicated to your own work you've been? 

Kate: Yes, I would say so. 

Tisha: Sounds really important, especially for couples’ work. 

Kate: Yes. And I think it's, partly why the IFIO training is so powerful for people. It's really taught from the inside out. There's so much of it that's experiential as in a traditional IFS training and even more so in some ways. Particularly around shame, which a lot of people haven't even looked at.

Tisha: And so that comes up in other ways besides just around the sexual conversations. 

Kate: Yes.

Aníbal: So, Kate, what is exactly the role of shame and shaming in couples therapy success or failure?

Kate: So, you know, Martha Sweezy, talks about shame and Toni too. That there are internal shamers that are protectors, right? But they're not helpful. They'll... You know how Martha talks about shamers either going internally and, coming after us as inner critics? Or turning toward the other and becoming aggressive toward someone else. You see that in couples therapy a lot, there's shaming toward the partner, and it is an attempt to get a need met. It doesn't seem to make sense because is not rational that shaming somebody is going to get what you need. But it's the same belief internally that "if I shame myself, I won't make mistakes. And if I shame you, you're going to give me what I need." It's the same as blaming, only harsher, you know, like blaming and shaming, it's very common in couples, particularly if they have gone way down the river of difficult negative cycles.

Aníbal: I'd like to quote Toni in this book IFIO. She says...they write, three authors, that "IFIO approach to couples’ therapy, guides and supports couples in learning how to speak for parts and make requests that invite rather than threaten their partner into responding."

Kate: Yes. 

Aníbal: That's what you just said. 

Kate: Yes, they say it so much better. But, you know, it's like, if I say to my partner "You know, for whatever reasons, there's a part of me that just kind of cringes when I see the sponge in the sink, and it's all wet and it's been there for hours and hours, and I'm wondering if it would be ok with you just for me to just kind of squeeze it out and put it up on the side." Right? Very different than "What the fuck is wrong with you? I've asked you to not leave the sponge in the sink." That's a common one, by the way, the sponge. [laughs] Is amazing to me how often that comes up.

Tisha: I have sponge parts. 

Kate: [laughs] Right, yes.

So, you see, that's the difference, that the first way I might get what I'm asking for. The second way from a shaming protector, no way am I going to get what I'm asking. For why? Because if my partner were to hear that from me, her protectors come right up. She's not hearing what I'm asking for, she's just hearing the anger and the energy and the shaming. 

Tisha: So, the U-turn is really important. 

Kate: Absolutely. 

Aníbal: Kate, do you believe, as I have heard, Toni believes or says, that we could love anyone if it wasn't for our parts?

Kate: Well, you know, I thought about that. I think it's true. I think it's true in many ways. I don't know if it's true in a primary relationship because we're not going to love everybody. On the other hand, the kind of love that is part of Self leadership openheartedness, I might not say a friend, say an acquaintance or colleague, maybe, I might not really like all that person's parts, but I can find love for that person. Absolutely, from Self-leadership. With a primary partner, I think there has to be more. If I don't, if there's more of my partners parts that I don't like, that's going to be a good inquiry, and if those parts can be heard and relax back, ok. But if they can't, no. 

Tisha: Just a follow up question to that, what are your thoughts on chemistry? When there's just someone out of the blue and you feel that spark and... What is that all about?

Kate: I know, I love that, don't you?

Tisha: Yes, I'm so curious. What's firing up? Is it parts? Is it like our system knows that we can heal our exile's through a person? Or...

Kate: Yes. Or we might have that belief and then, after a little while, as the chemistry fades, we realize "oh guess what, no, that's not going to happen here." I think it's like drugs, something happens in the brain with oxytocin and we are actually high, when in that phase of a relationship. And it's wonderful, but it doesn't last, and in some ways in this culture in particular, we've grown up with the belief that if that doesn't last, then this isn't the relationship. This isn't my soul mate. But it's not going to last. And I think, you know, I've done a lot of grief work with clients about around that. Like “yes, that was wonderful, and it's past and it's not going to be like that again. And it could be something different and equally important.”

Tisha: So, could those drugs that our brain gives us, or our bodies flood us with, are those parts or is it attachment parts or...?

Kate: Yes, that's a great line of inquiry. I think parts definitely play a role in it. And if you think about it, though, it's all projection. I don't know anything about you, and yet I am completely smitten with you. And my parts are projecting who you are and who you could be to me. And that is a big layer of it, I believe. And so, when we realize that that may not be on offer, what our parts were projecting, that's a loss. And that's often when a lot of people come to therapy is when they really get "Oh, you're not this person that I thought you were".  And you'll hear it in session like "They were different when we first got together. And I feel like I've been sold a false bill of goods," people will say. And then that's worth unpacking, like "How much of what you thought you were getting was a projection or wish?"

Aníbal: Kate, do couples attend to your trainings on IFIO with Toni, is it more complex when there are more couples or more interesting when you have real couples in training?

Kate: It can it can be more interesting with a real couple, yes. And when there are couples in the training, it's, you know, Toni has to really meet with them and see if they're in a place to do a demonstration for the training that could be helpful; and is more in the service of the learning of the large group than in the service of helping that particular couple in that situation. And not all couples are able to do that. So, much more often we have staff people playing couples. And you didn't ask this, but we do that more than participants playing couples because the staff know what we're trying to demonstrate and will work with us. Whereas participants might get hijacked in their own parts and it goes in a different direction than what's in the service of learning for the group. 

Aníbal: So, in those trainings, there are also demos, but also mostly role-playings?

Kate: Yes.

Aníbal: Makes sense, yes. 

Kate: And they're very powerful because as we know, a role-play is never just a role play.

Aníbal: Yes, exactly.

Kate: Yes.

Aníbal: So, Kate, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and our hope is that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Kate: Thank you so much to each of you. It's a pleasure. 

Tisha: Thank you. In this conversation today, I just sit in so much appreciation for how much wisdom you have in working with couples. That's got to be really good for everyone who you sit with. 

Kate: Thank you.

Tisha: Can imagine the lives you've touched you. 

Kate: Thank you.

 

 

Recorded 14th June 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Anxiety, Depression and Shame with Michael Elkin 49:44

Mike Elkin is an IFS senior Lead trainer who has been involved with the model since 1995. He has been a popular presenter, conducting scores of trainings and workshops throughout the US and Europe and has taught level one trainings in Boston every year since 2003. He was a pioneer in applying hypnotic and strategic approaches to addiction treatment and has integrated those tools into IFS treatment. He is the author of, “Families Under the Influence” and several articles.

Michael has a private practice in marriage, family, and individual psychotherapy, and he is very focused on training therapists in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy model, which Michael believe is the most flexible, powerful, and humane tool for healing available. It enables people to use their spiritual resources without getting into religeon or metaphysics.

Full Transcription
 

Today on IFS talks, we are speaking with Michael Elkin. Michael Elkin is an IFS senior lead trainer, who has been involved with the model since 1995. He's been a popular presenter Conducting scores of trainings and workshops throughout the US and Europe and has taught level 1 trainings in Boston every year since 2003. He was a pioneer in applying hypnotic and strategic approaches to addiction treatment and has integrated those tools in IFS treatment. He's the author of Families Under the Influence and several other articles.

Mike has just started co-leading an IFS level 2 on Depression, Anxiety and Shame with Ann Sinko. He also has a private practice in marriage, family and individual therapy and is focused on training therapists in the Internal Family Systems model, which Mike believes is the most flexible, powerful and humane tool for healing available. Michael Elkin also specializes in high conflict, couples’ phobias, somatic issues, aftermath of trauma, addiction, eating disorders and cynicism. He has a wealth of knowledge and we are so happy to have him here with us on IFS talks today. Thank you, Mike. 

Michael Elkin: It's a pleasure to be here.
Aníbal Henriques: Mike, thanks for sitting with us. We really, really appreciate it. How is it for you to hear this bio? What parts come up? 

Mike: It's interesting, when I hear that kind of thing about me, I tend to dissociate a little bit. Because it either puffs up parts of me or embarrasses parts of me, so I just sort of drift off until it's over. It's the best and most descriptive bio, though, that I've had read of me, and I think you were responsible for putting it together.

Aníbal: Glad you enjoyed it. Mike, could you please tell us a bit more about your journey into the mental health profession? Was there something in your personal life that was determinant for you becoming a psychotherapist?

Mike: Well, it's very...It's odd because in the 1960s, if you had been a drug addict, you were considered to be qualified to do psychotherapy. Because it was then the...sort of middle to late 60s that drugs and hard drugs migrated from the neighborhoods with people with unfashionable complexions to the places where parents were organized and voting and could make noise, and it was discovered that psychiatry and the sort of the whole health profession was helpless against addiction. They had no idea how to deal with it.

And the only approaches that seem to show any promise were run by ex addicts. The 12 Steps programs, AA and all those, which defined addiction as a disease. And therefore, the people suffering from it were not condemned as being morally deficient but suffering from an illness. And the concept houses which were punitive or fascistic, exploitative sort of residential programs that basically took addicts and would humiliate them, sexually exploit them, and helped them to understand that their only hope for existence was to stay there for the rest of their lives.

Which was much more popular with the establishment because it was punitive and people were very...would project the parts of them that were addicted, the parts of them that couldn't discipline themselves on those bad addicts. And no punishment was considered to be too harsh for addiction. 

Actually, when I was an adolescent, I had sort of decided I was going to become a black jazz musician and I did my best given the circumstance, whereas I had sort of limited talent in both areas. But through a series of, you know, it's a long story, but I wound up going to college with a credential of having been addicted to heroin. I essentially got over it by getting addicted to martial arts instead. 

Aníbal: Wow, beautiful. 

Mike: So, I wound up working in one of these concept houses. It only lasted a couple of weeks because even at my very primitive state of development, I realized that it was just a horrible place and I couldn't be part of it.

But once I had been there, I had been given a tip to apply somewhere else and started working in a residential treatment center for adolescents, many of whom were drug involved, and turned out the clinical director there thought I was a talent. And encouraged me and introduced me to some mentors and I began to be a therapist. I got trained in family therapy. I went to the Boston Family Institute for two years and I was asked to join the faculty after I graduated. And I read a book by Jay Haley called Strategies of Psychotherapy.

Aníbal: That one.

Mike: And I realized I wasn't just a two-bit cool hustler, using essentially poolroom tricks on drug addicts, I was a strategic psychotherapist.

And that book made me take myself seriously as a therapist and also Jay Haley introduced me to the work of Milton Erickson, and I got fascinated with Eriksson's work, but I still didn't take myself seriously enough to go to Phoenix and study directly with Eriksson's. So, I studied with most of his mostly proteges, primarily a psychologist named Jo Barber, was very interested in pain. 

Aníbal: Mike, in such a good company. So, you were a family and strategic therapist, as you just described. You were already feeling close to Dick's work?

Mike: Yeah, well, what happened was I was invited to speak at the place that I had done my clinical internship at the Judge Baker Guidance Center, because by that time I was teaching a lot about how alcoholic families organized around drunkenness. And I was very interested in...And I gave a talk there and the woman who ran the family therapy training program, Cassie, asked if I had written anything about this, and I said, you know, I had a masters’ thesis that I had written. She said she had done a book at Norton and they were looking for books on families. So, she would let them know that I had it. And I thought, you know, it's one of the nice things people say. And I was on a Friday, Monday, I got a call from Norton.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Mike: And they asked me to send them what I had, and I sent them what I had. And they said, well, this isn't a book. How would you turn in the book I got in advance? And all of a sudden, I had a wonderful editor named Carol Smith, who had also edited Strategies to Psychotherapy. She had edited Haley's book that had sort of turned me around.

And she was like a good mommy, because I had a writing phobia. It was very difficult for me to write. And she just played me like a harp. And she was good at getting people who weren't writers to write. And so, I wound up publishing Families Under the Influence in 1984 and became a famous expert.

Aníbal: Beautiful. This is your book that is still in print.

Mike: It is still in print. Thirty-five years later you can still…it's still in print. I got a royalty check for like 9$80 sometime earlier this year. 
But what happened was Rich Simon, who was the editor of the Family Therapy Networker and ran the Family Therapy Networker Symposium every year, invited me to come and present. And at the presenter party, I heard somebody saying...so this guy raised his hand and said, "Aren't you afraid if you do therapy that way, the parents will kill the kid?" And, so I answered, I said, "Yeah, that's what we do in our therapy, we try to get the parents to kill the kid." And I turned and it was Dick Schwartz. And I said, another smart ass. And we hit it off and we started playing basketball together and our circle developed around Rich Simon. And I was in that circle, and so Dick and I became friends and we talked about basketball and cases...And I sort of thought he did about what I did, which is a form of strategic hypnosis, and when I read the IFS, whatever he wrote about it, that was the lens I saw through. 
So, I really didn't get it. And it got to be a joke that we never got to present opposite each other. Every week…we spoke at the big national conferences because that's how you market yourself if you do the circuit. And we never got a chance to see each other present until 1995. Eleven years later, Dick was presenting an after meeting AFTA, American Families Therapy Academy, which is an organization for sort of Family Therapy trainers. And I belong to it, but I never presented there because it's like presenting for your competition. But he was trying to get IFS around, and he was there, and he did a demo. And when I saw the demo, I realized that he was onto something so far beyond what I knew about or what anybody I knew about, know about.

Now, literally, I stopped doing what I was doing that day and started doing IFS. And I went out to Chicago to get trained. And it was a weekend training where I also got a cooking lesson - it was a wonderful weekend - and I came back and became the only IFS...to my knowledge - I said this many times and nobody's ever contradicted me - I was the only IFS therapist in the Northeast. From ninety five, to ninety nine, when Ralph Cohen found out about IFS and asked Dick if he would come to Central Connecticut State University and run a training, and Dick called and asked me if I would help him. And so, the team was Greg Johansson, who's a Hakomi trainer, who now lives in Portland; Michi Rose, who is one of the most creative minds I've been in contact with and I think is the inventor of unburdening...

Aníbal: Yeah. 

Mike: Who has also a PhD in Chemistry and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Ralph Cohen, who was a professor there and me. We were the staff and we ran 8 trainings in there. And I was essentially a PA. 

Aníbal: Beautiful

Mike: And one of the people who came to the training was Mona Barbera, who was the program director for something called The New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation. She asked Dick if he'd present, but, you know, they had an honorary of a hundred and fifty dollars and he's from Chicago, so he didn't do it, so she asked me if I would do it. And so, I found myself in McLean Hospital talking about a hundred and fifty trauma therapists about IFS. And when they saw the demo, you could see...there were two things, there was a demo, you could see there was not a closed mouth in the room. 

And then, when I talk about the fact that with IFS there's no real danger of abreaction…In other words, when I was trained in hypnosis, I was specifically told that in order to heal, particularly sexual trauma, the client had to reexperience the trauma. The client had to abreact. Which made trauma therapy no fun for the patient or the therapist. 

Aníbal: Yes. 

Mike: And with Dick's model there's no abreaction. The client is sitting there feeling compassion and curiosity, talking to a part that is carrying enormous suffering. But they're not feeling that suffering. So, I gave that talk on a Friday. When I got to my office on Monday, my answering machine was...was full and with people who either wanted to be clients on IFS or send their husbands to be clients on IFS. There was enormous interest and I was sharing an office with a guy named Dan Brown, who used to be married to Marushka Glissen, and was a primary hypnosis trainer in Boston. And a sort of a mover and shaker. And he decided to bring Dick Schwartz to Boston. And he did. There was enormous interest and I did the first level 1 in Boston with Sue McConnell...

Aníbal: Susan McConnell 

Mike: Who was sort of my mentor. She already knew how to teach. I was a presenter, I wasn't a trainer, which means I was a stand-up comedian, basically. You know, I showed people what I did, but I didn't really know a lot about teaching other people how to do. I did teach hypnosis. I don't think it was a great teacher of hypnosis.

Tisha: Mike can you share with us whether you have had personal, transformative experience with IFS in your own system? 

Mike: Yeah, what happened was, they used to have these retreats in Tulum, Mexico. Dick and Barbara Cargill ran them together. And it was a very good place to introduce your partner or spouse or something to the Model. And I went with my wife, who got totally hooked, by the way, and still is. I saw Barbara Cargill work. And the minute I saw her work, I said, there's my therapist.

Aníbal: Wow. 

Mike: So, I approached her. I asked her if she would be my therapist on the telephone. And she still is. I mean, I've been working with her, I think 17 years or something, and I'll be talking with her Sunday. So, I've had a couple of very good therapists...I've had a lot of love, I've been very lucky with people in general in my life. And I've had two therapists who call themselves analysts, but did a wonderful job for me.

And then I started working with Barb with IFS and it was amazing to me the kind of...I mean, I had one such, you know, I used to be very cheap, for instance. I mean, it was hard for me to buy anything that I thought I could get cheaper somewhere else, and that I would drive 15 miles to get chicken, 60 cents cheaper than…that kind of thing...

Aníbal: [laughs] I love that part of you. 

Mike: And in one session, I removed legacy burdens and my whole approach to money and generosity changed overnight, radically.

Tisha: I'm so curious where those legacy burdens were from.

Mike: They were from the Ukraine, about four generations before…of ancestors I had no idea I had. Most of my legacy work hasn't been that detailed. But this one, you know, I had a very detailed contact with this man, in the late 19th century in the Ukraine, and, you know, there were programs ran by Cossacks and they buried their potatoes and all that stuff. And anyway, when I gave my burdens back to him, I had a totally different approach to resources. It was a one session to end it. And the whole thing of legacy unburdening, you know, I was aware of the concept before. We very much, I think in the early days, underestimated the importance of legacy and wasn't mentioned in level 1, I bet, 10 years ago. There was no focus on it, even though it's incredibly important and the likelihood that you'll get a traumatic clinical effect from a legacy unburdening is very high. Like, you know, what happened to me isn't unique, or not even really unusual.

And also, I would I have to say, is I had a bias. When I was younger, I was basically a hustler. And I was violent, and I was frightened, and I was, I was a hard guy to be around.

Tisha: Mike, did that come from trauma or family of origin? 

Mike: What?

Tisha: Your hustler part and your violent part.

Mike: Oh, my grandfather, my father's father was a gangster. It was a Jewish mafioso. And my father ran his straight business. And my grandfather was the single most unpleasant human being I've been in the presence of so far. I may meet a more unpleasant human being someday, but...And my father was totally oppressed by him and he flowed that energy down to me. Though the worst thing that can happen to my family is you get played for a sucker. So, yes, that predatory attitude was what I grew up in.

So, because I was playing music and I thought of myself as a musician, I made, over the years I've made hundreds playing music. So, the way I made a living essentially was I...a hustle pool on poker, which turns out to be incredibly good training for psychotherapy.

Aníbal: Strategic psychotherapy.

Mike: It really is. I mean, how do you win at poker? You see what people do and you bet they'll keep doing it.

And then the manipulation involved in keeping somebody playing a pool game with you that they have no chance of winning, can be transferred into other disciplines. So, that's what I did. And then I married a woman who was a seeker. And, you know. I sort of said, she's into creepy studies, I'm into playing pool tournaments, you know, we live in LA, but she started working with something called a Course in Miracles.

And after she'd been doing it about a year and a half, I realized that she had changed rather profoundly. She was much more peaceful, she was less explosive, she was...And I said "What happened? And she said "It's the course." I'm very interested in anything that...any thought system that generates healing. And that's why I got so interested in AA, you know, and that's what I wrote a bunch about that in the book.

So, I started doing it with her and I needed it and I got very into it. And I was in a seminar with Ken Wapnick, who was the editor. He was a psychologist and he was the editor of the course and he knew the course well. He was the most Self-led being I've ever been in the presence of for any lengths of time. I was in a seminar with him for 11 years, for therapists who used the course, and it was the lens I saw through. And the course uses religious terms in a very different way, because they're trying to deconstruct your ideas to religion and God. So, they had a term called the Holy Spirit. And the definition of the Holy Spirit in the course is that memory of God's love in your mind, which, when asked, will correct the errors of ego. So, when I saw Dick do a demo, I said, this guy has figured out a way to mobilize, to manifest and mobilize Holy Spirit without going through all the crap...[laughs] at that point, thirteen years or something like that. And I just, I was blown out of the water. That's still how I see Self. So, Dick and I disagree on the nature of Self to some extent, and we've been arguing about it for pretty close to 40 years now.

Tisha: What's your take? 

Mike: Dick sees it as having agenda. Actively leading, as opposed to, what I see it as, which is an access to reality, an access to what's really true. And that's all. And so, when an exile tells it story to the Self, it's essentially the opposite of shame. Shame is the experience of having your badness witnessed and it's the most painful experience available to people. And then the exile tells the story to Self. And just being in the presence of Self, the exile totally gets it that the way it was treated doesn't mean anything about it. 

A burden, in my opinion, is not just the meaning that a part has given its experience and the feelings and beliefs that proceed from it. It's the moral meaning that a part gives its experience. And moral meaning means that whatever somebody did or thought, mean something about their worth as a human being and the quality of their character, and I believe that our most basic motivator and need as humans is not physical survival. It is to feel morally intact. And that's really hard because we all know we have parts that are vicious and deceitful and mean and petty and vengeful. And what we can learn from Self is that doesn't mean we're bad people, that means that parts were forced into an extreme position. 

And I'm writing about that now and my son, who, by the way, just got trained in IFS by me in Austin, Texas, he was in my training group down there and...has been urging me to talk about not just the mechanics, which is what I talk about, but the metaphysics, which I'm very reluctant to talk about because when you're talking about metaphysics, you're talking about a thing you don't know anything about it. It's all speculation. So, I'm...But the Course in Miracles and IFS were combined in me, and that's where my healing came from. So, I can now - and my wife will tell you - I can go through months and months without getting triggered by anything. I used to be a hair trigger temper as my younger son said "You were intolerable." And he got the easiest part of it. My older son got more of it. So that's in terms of my own healing. 

Aníbal: Mike, coming back to your beautiful and rich journey before you stumble into IFS and you met Dick, how much there was of integration and how much there was of unlearning from you in this process after you stumbled into IFS. 

Mike: Well, my first...for the first 15 years I was a therapist, all of my clients were referred by agents of social control, mostly child protective services, probation officers, parole officers, pretrial diversion programs, all that. And so, one is I developed a technology of working with people that don't want to be in work with, and I actually did. That's one of the things I thought about traveling around the country, is essentially how to translate the legal motivation into a motivation for healing and how to use leverage and how to use tricks to get people to think a different way. And then, of course, along with that, I was studying Ericksonian hypnosis. And Erickson said essentially all hypnosis depends on confusion. So, I use tricks. And I thought of therapy as a competitive game between me and my client. And my job was to essentially cover all the holes they ran into until they had no alternative but to deal with the problem in front of them. And that's the way I thought about it. And, as my heart began to open, I began to sense other things. And then I had an experience teaching Pain Hypnosis at UMS Medical Center. They hired me for something else, but they were interested because I had a typology of alcoholic families. The guy who was head of medical education there, was an oncologist, thought maybe I could develop a typology of cancer families, cancer families that were afflicted by cancer. And what he didn't take into account is he's the Department of Medicine and the Department of Medicine doesn't to talk to families. The Department of Social Services talks to Families and the Department of Social Services says he's not talking to any family. So, I had a two-year contract and I couldn't do what they wanted me to do.

So, we were talking, and he said "Well, why don't you teach pain hypnosis in a palliative care unit?" And I spent two years doing that. So, one thing that exposes me to sort of medical education and expose me...And when I was teaching hypnosis, it really began to force me to understand what was actually going on, rather than doing the tricks I was taught. And I thought I was already beginning to develop a pretty multiplicity understanding of people when I met Dick. And when I met Dick, you know, when I found out about IFS, I finally realized what hypnosis was. I've been teaching it of the years, and I didn't. 

And I also realized at that point that trance induction was unnecessary waste of time. And a lot of the hypnotic techniques I used were much more effective and simple and easily taught, if you thought about it from an IFS perspective, like the phobia protocol, which when I first wrote it the way I did it at first, was 15 pages of anchoring and tricks and is now three quarters of a page, which you can sit with that and cure a phobia. Just guiding your client through a series of steps, because, you know, IFS just creates possibilities out for a therapist that weren't there before.

I don't have to be the agent of healing. All I do is broke a relationship between Self and troubled parts and at any moment an IFS Therapist can be clear on what they're trying to do and what is interfering with that and have tools for dealing with whatever is interfering with that. So, I think IFS empowers therapists in a way that no other model does. 

And if I taught a hundred people hypnosis, 25 would use it and 10 might use it well. If I teach 100 people IFS all of them will use it and all of them will be helpful and the talented ones will be more helpful, quicker with a wider range of people.

Aníbal: So, this is a good example of your process of integration, how IFS can inform so much other models. 
Mike: So, I went into IFS with...seeing it through the lens of the Course in Miracles and hypnosis and so, it's very, it was very friction free. There was almost no tension between the way I thought of, you know, IFS has clicked into place with me and I noticed people who've been trained hypnotically, learn IFS quicker. Because you develop a skill set that's very useful to IFS.

Tisha: You're used to guiding people inside. 

Mike: You're guiding people inside, you're watching very closely for changes in affect and micro-expressions and you're trained to instantly respond to feedback in a way which doesn't oppose, you know. And also, you're trained to be very directive, which is why I never teach level 1 alone, because my style, as you remember, uses a lot of hypnotic technology and I'm very active and very directive. Like Dick and I are the ends of the spectrum stylistically, although we're doing exactly the same thing. I'll use probably 15 words for every one he does when he's working. Because hypnotists just keep talking. [laughs]. So, that's why I always want to have somebody else for be a model of in level 1. Level 2, you know, they know the basics and I'll give them what I've got.

Tisha: Will you share with us about your level 2 that you and Ann are starting to teach. What brought up the topic and how it's going?

Mike: You know, we both are very cognizant of how central...that all the stuff we work with gets generated by shame. And that depression and anxiety are two ways the system responds to shame. And so, Ann got tired of co-teaching level 1, long before she stopped, because she kept doing it as a favor to me. Because I loved teaching with her. But finally, what happened was what she was up to here with it and Rina, who had been our AT for three training, sort of broke through and got very comfortable teaching. And so, we all felt good that Ann could drop, and Rina would take her place. But Ann and I just love teaching together. So, we were thinking about what we could do. And we came up with the depression, anxiety and shame, which was mostly designed by Ann. You know, the description of our teaching was Ann would do the play by play and I would do the color. And I thought that was a pretty good analogy.

So, it gave me a chance to also talk about the stuff that I had developed about shame and moral judgment, moral meaning, because we have a design flaw. And the design flaw, is that we give moral meaning to our experience and we project our moral meaning onto other people's experience. And it is, it's never useful, but it's unavoidable.

Aníbal: It's unavoidable. And so, one of the powers of moral meaning is to shame us.

Yeah, that's exactly. So, we use that as an opportunity to basically package all the ideas that we had both developed over teaching together for 10 years. And putting into a level 2 and we did it in Boston and it was a very successful...As a matter of fact, two consultation groups grew out of that. We were planning to do one in Chicago and one in Boulder and one in Lisbon.

Tisha: So that was your first one in Boston? 
Mike: Yeah, it was the only one we've done so far. We did it online. We did it as continuity circle. We did one...we went out to Boulder and visited with Barb and we taped this online thing and it was very popular. And we got royalties for how many people took it. So it was, you know, also I'm getting paid for work that I did before. That was fun.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Mike: So, then we were asked to turn it into a level 2, and we did. 

Aníbal: Do you want to say something about how does IFS approach to anxiety and depression and shame differs from other models, because it really differs. 

Mike: Well, I think, first of all, depression is mostly seen as a mental illness. Sort of chemical happening that should be approached chemically and say 15, 20 years ago, if somebody said they were depressed or even sad, and you didn't refer them to a psychiatrist for a meds evaluation, you were considered to be malpractice.

Anxiety is also seen largely that way, as a chemical condition that is treated with diazepines. IFS sees anxiety as parts that are afraid they're bad. And when something happens to the environment, internally or externally, and they get energized, what people experience is their fear out of context and so people are walking around being afraid all the times...By the way anxiety attacks are almost always, invariably, phobic reactions to something that people aren't aware of the trigger….And feels like your life is unclear, an immediate danger, and you don't know what's happening. So, it feels like, you know, some devil dropped on you out of the sky.

I've been just about a hundred percent effective in one session of curing anxiety attacks with the phobia protocol. And how do you cure anxiety attacks? You find the part that's ashamed of its feelings, you explain to it that there's no moral meaning to feelings. And that the way they felt doesn't mean anything bad about them and the phobia's gone. 

So, anxiety is the fear that you're bad. And it's very, very uncomfortable. So, what will happen, often, is parts will act to sort of shut things down and slow things down and lower level of intensity and energy. And so, depression, you know, it's a polarization between parts that want to just cure the pain by anesthetizing. And anxiety are the parts that sort of want to find some way of being good. With some people, it swings back and forth like other polarities, you swing from one extreme to another. But, as you know, many polarities, one side will dominate the other. Both will be constantly motivated by the other to keep dominating. So, there are people who just stay depressed and there are people who are always anxious and there are people who bounce back and forth between parts that are grandiose and either inflated or terrified or active and parts that are despairing and paralyzed.

Tisha: And you say that shame is usually behind this. 

Mike: Shame is always behind it. There are two strategies, both very expensive and unsuccessful for dealing with shame: anxiety and depression.

The nice thing about IFS is you don't need to explain anything. You just follow the affect in and find out who's doing it and bring Self energy. So, IFS has the same diagnosis for every client and the same essential treatment for every client, which is you get the parts that are attracting attention in the presence of Self and find out about them. 

Aníbal: And there you have the shame as an organizing principle in our inner systems, as you say, and Ann Sinko. 

Mike: Right. It's the organizing principle of the protective system. And the thing about the protective system, in case you forget for a second, that irony is the driving force of the universe... 

Aníbal: That one.

Mike: You know, protectors never protect. What they do, invariably, is they energize and attract that which they're protecting against. And they send in more troops. That's what they do. In other words, when protector energy gets generated and protectors get blended and start being you, nothing good is going to happen.

So, when you're working with couples. I just tell them “You know, when I detect protect energy, I'm going to stop you because. There are well motivated, but they have no chance of being of use to you”. So, what we're trying to do is, narrower and narrower the situations that trigger them and get them active. Which means you have to heal the exiles that they're responding to, either to keep the shame of this disgraceful thing out of sight or to relieve the shame that the firefighter feels when they see this bad part and they have to do something to deal with that acute pain and what they usually do to deal with the acute pain causes more trouble and more shame, which needs more dealing with it. That's why addictive process always escalates because it's a polarity. It's an escalating schizomogenic symmetry. 

Tisha: That's a book title right there. 

Mike: Right. I got that phrase from Jay Haley's book, because he talks about formal power theory and manipulation and all that.

Tisha: So, Mike, you've seen a lot of the evolution of the IFS model throughout your time with it. Where do you see it going or where would you like to see it going? 

Mike: That's one place I don't argue with Dick. That's one place I really admire Dick's vision. He sees it as a Paradigm filling in the world. One of the things is that basically...Judeo-Christian tradition and analytic theory both have an extremely pessimistic view of what humans are. Either we are bathed in sin or we are sort of a thin veneer of quasi civilization over this seething culture and of primitive tribes and needs. And it turns out that's not what we are. What we are is compassion and curiosity and covered over with a pretty thick veneer of fear and shame. But when all that fear is willing to move back, what's left is compassion and curiosity. So, it is optimistic at a level that no other paradigm I know is. And the other, you know, we're training more and more, we're training diplomats, we're training media. The more this way of understanding what people are and what we are gets spread, the more possibility it is to be optimistic about the future of humans, because if you'll pick up the paper, you don't see much that helps you be optimistic about the future of humans. 

Aníbal: Yes.

Mike: And I have parts that are in dangerous cynicism, and that's particularly true, I think, in terms of electoral politics, it's really hard for me to get interested in. And I know I have to, you know, I mean, it's what's there, but it's hard. And IFS has protected me against cynicism more than...Because I was brought up to be cynical. And it's such a bankrupt position, but it's so comfortable because you're always right.

Aníbal: I totally agree with you.

Mike: And the Course in Miracles has a question which goes "Would you rather be right or be happy? Know that you cannot be both." And that has proved true in my experience.

Aníbal: Mike, this is a beautiful way to close, you presenting IFS as a model for the mind and a new paradigm. Hoping to see you in Lisbon, 2021 in November.

Mike: My wife and I were planning to go to Lisbon on our honeymoon 20, 22 years ago. We wound up in Crete, which was fun. I've never been to Lisbon, so I really would like to take my wife to Lisbon. 

Aníbal: Please do. And so, Mike, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And my best hope is that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much. 

Mike: Thank you. It's nice to see you both again.


Recorded the 3rd June 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Noticing the Gifts of an Exile: A Meditation with Paul Neustadt 13:09

This is a Meditation with Paul Neustadt, on Noticing the Gifts of an Exile.
It will take you about 13 minutes.

Noticing the Gifts of an Exile: A Meditation with Paul Neustadt 13:09

This is a Meditation with Paul Neustadt, on Noticing the Gifts of an Exile.
It will take you about 13 minutes. Hope you Enjoy it as we did.

The Gifts of our Exiles with Paul Neustadt 01:16:07

In this Episode Paul Neustadt help us recognize the true nature of our exiles, differentiating them from their burdens, and identifying their natural qualities and Gifts, hiden behind experiences of neglet and abuse. Paul suggests some tools to find and reflect back this qualities and gifts, and shares some personal stories to ilustrate this inner processes. Paul also offers a Meditation and a writing exercise.

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks, we're welcoming back Paul Neustadt. Paul Neustadt is a senior IFS Co-Lead Trainer and AAMFT approved supervisor. In his private practice, he specializes in couples’ therapy, parent coaching, and IFS consultation. He co-leads a monthly seminar for level 1 graduates focused on integrating the skills learned in level 1. Paul has led workshops on IFS on a large variety of relevant topics to the model. As an IFS trainer, Paul's known for creating a safe accepting atmosphere, attending thoughtfully to group process, and ensuring that all parts are welcome. Paul is known for his clear down to earth and openhearted manner and we are so happy to welcome him back. Welcome back, Paul, and thank you so much for joining us again today on IFS Talks.

Paul Neustadt: Well, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be back with the two of you. You are both very special people to me, so it's a joy just to spend this time up here. 

[music]

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you Paul so much for willing to sit again with us. This time for a specific topic - the gift of our exiles. But before we dive deep into our topic, how have you been through those difficult pandemic days? How was this affecting you or your work?

Paul: Thank you for asking me that question, Aníbal. First of all, just acknowledge I'm in Massachusetts in the Boston area and that is one place where there is a lot of people getting infected and dying. So, we have had a pretty significant lockdown for a couple of months already. I guess it's two and a half months. Yes, it's been hard. Like everyone else, it's been really, really hard. Most of the time I feel grateful because I'm at home with my wife, we have each other, we support each other and that makes such a huge difference to be able to be going through this together. I'm grateful I still have an income. I can still see my clients. Also, I can go outside and go for walks. I'm in an area where there's a lot of nature and beauty and we have beautiful birds in our backyard. I feel very fortunate I have that. And at the same time, it's hard. It really is hard, and I have found myself at times disappointed in myself. Part of me has been disappointed in myself, wanted me to somehow have something more to offer people. I feel like... this part feels like, “You're just struggling like everybody else.” I guess one of the things that I am working on in my life right now, it's sort of a theme for me is, acknowledging parts who are disappointed in me, letting them feel the disappointment and then seeing if they'd be willing to forgive me, forgive us. The parts who are disappointed, can I make space for the disappointment? I'm not who they want me to be and then can they forgive me? I would say that it's been a good practice for me. So, this pandemic has given me more opportunities to experience that. I feel a lot more tired. I can't do as many things as I wish I could do because I get tired. Being on zoom so much is exhausting. It's hard...My daughter is pregnant, and they need to be very, very careful, so we have to keep social distance from her and her husband. That's been hard, it's been hard too. I guess that's a little bit about what it's been like for me.

Tisha: I've noticed with myself and with a lot of clients, there is this expectation that we'll just get through it, but then the reality is that there's a lot of challenging feelings and parts that come up on a day to day basis. It's hard in isolation to acknowledge them and give them the space that they need.

Paul: Yes. Thank you for saying that because it reminds me that one of the pieces for me is that there's this message a lot of teachers are putting out. This is an opportunity, actually, this is an opportunity for us to do some deep work, to do some deep transformation. Part of me is expected, so okay are you doing that? Are you doing your deep work? Are you transforming? Yes, no, I'm not always doing that. Sometimes I'm just struggling.

Tisha: Yes, yes. Thank you. 

[music]

Aníbal: Paul, you have been leading many workshops and teachings on IFS. You have been leading workshops and topics like Self Led Parenting, Therapeutic Relationship, Direct Access, IFS and climate change, the power of presence in IFS therapy, and the gifts of our exiles reconnecting with our true Self. This title called our attention. When we think of exiles, we mainly think of them as vulnerable or fragile young parts carrying burdens, fearful of being rejected or excluded, of being themselves. Paul, what are exiles? Where do they come from?

Paul: Well, so many different ways that young vulnerable parts can be exiled and of course we know they're not just young. A lot of our exiles are young, but parts can be exiled at any time. Yes, there's so many different things that do that, you know, trauma, attachment injuries, all the different ways that children are wounded growing up. Being humiliated, being rejected, messages that there's something wrong with me that either comes from our family or from our peers or from the culture, so many different ways. There's one quote that I really like that captures at least a piece of this. This is from Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and she says "To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others and yet, to comply with what others want, causes us to be exiled from ourselves.’’

Aníbal: Wow. Tricky.

Paul: Yes. So, this dilemma that we're in, because there are expectations put on us, how we should be that might be different from how we are. Then we might feel like we have to reject aspects of ourselves in order to please the people we're dependent on.

Aníbal: There you have the tension between our managers our exiles, right?

Paul: Yes.

Tisha: Paul, how did you conceive of or come across the idea of the gifts of our exiles? Where does that come from and how do you relate it to the work that you do?

Paul: Well, part of this is a legacy heirloom from my mother. My mother always saw the good in other people and so it's just something I think I learned from her. I see it as a gift that she passed down to me. So first, I actually started applying that to protectors, because we learn that protectors have positive intentions and so I really wanted to explore that. And a lot of my work with parents, for example, was around helping parents see that the reactive parts, the ones that they tend to be most ashamed of and self-critical of, that the reactive parts actually have gifts for them. Once they bring self-energy to their reactive protectors, there's a lot of wisdom there. That's how I started and then I started, I don't know, I think it was really just through my own inner work. I started to come to see that when I unburdened an exile and really felt into what that was like, I felt I was getting a gift. There were gifts I was getting from reintegrating that exile into my, into my sense of self, into my being because of my own personal experience, and I can share a couple of those experiences.

Tisha: That would be great. I'm curious about what some of the gifts are and how it feels to bring them in. And I love your personal stories.

Paul: Sure 

[music]

Aníbal: Just before that let me just quote you, Paul, you say "For most people, the prospect of approaching exiles is frightening. Our protectors tend to see our exiles as dangerous, shameful, too much or fragile. They are unable to see beyond the exiles' burdens and even the exiles often think they are their burden. And only when we help the client and their parts recognize the exile's gift, it can ease their resistance to connecting with and healing the exiles.” So mostly this is our experiences, we fear to get closer to our exiles, so we hardly can see any gift around our exiles. We just see fragility, vulnerability, shame, worthlessness and else. So why I'd like also to invite you, Paul, to revisit what are burdens. Finally, what are burdens? Because, really, our exiles carry so much burdens. What are those burdens?

Paul: Right. Yes, I think one of the key pieces is it that burdens have to do with a mistaken belief about myself that a part takes on. It's a really deeply misguided and mistaken belief. So there's a lot more, there is the energy of the wounding, the trauma that...One of the definitions of trauma is that it was something that was unbearable, it was too much to process, so the energy of it gets stuck in our bodies. I think that's part of the burden. The feelings that we couldn't process. A key piece is the meaning that we make since most parts are exiled as children. As a child we don't have the ability to really see clearly what's going on around us. And we're so dependent on our caretakers that we can't blame them. We can't see them as being at fault, that would be too dangerous, so children always tend to blame themselves in their effort to make meaning, which is such a basic need. “How do I understand? Why is this happening? Why is this happening to me? Why am I being treated this way? Why am I being told, punished and rejected and yelled at, whatever. How do I understand this? And so as children, we assume that it's something about me. Something wrong with me. Something I'm doing. I must be shameful.” That's, I think, a brief notion of what burdens are.

Aníbal: Paul, following with your lines on exiles, may I call Dick into the conversation? Quoting him from chapter on exiles, and he says "If an exile is young, which is often the case, its views will match its age, including the either-or. Either I'm good or either I'm bad, and self-deferential thinking that is characteristic of children. If it happened, I'm responsible. Trying to correct those beliefs cognitively is rarely persuasive with young exiles, but when the self gets close and extends love, they open up to alternative views." Is this somehow about what you were saying also?

Paul: Yes, that captures it beautifully. Absolutely. I would say that what happens is, our protectors have a mistaken view of our exiles also. They think that the exile is the burden. That's the biggest mistake. They assume the exile actually is its burden. They don't see this young, vulnerable, sensitive, beautiful, alive child underneath. They just see the burden. Helping protectors, and in doing that helping...you know, when we say the client, the client tends to be blended with their protectors, right? So, by helping the protectors understand that there is a difference between the burden and the part that's hidden by it. The client as a whole tends to shift their view of their exiles, and the protectors tend to be more willing then to allow the client to access self-energy and to allow Self to approach the exiles. 

[music]

Aníbal: Paul, coming back to Tisha's question, what are our exiles' gift? I'd like to quote you again. I think in 2019, IFS Conference, you described the different kinds of gifts that unburden exiles give us and you say, "Perhaps the most important gift is that they enable us to connect with our true Self." And I'd like to visit this with you, what is our true Self; and unique qualities and gifts we have to offer the world, you say "Our aliveness, our joy, our passion, and many other qualities are brought back to us when we re-integrate our exiles."

Paul: Yes, I can do that. Before I share my own stories, I can just say a little bit more about my idea of the true Self. I guess I'd start by saying that the concept of the Self in IFS, is such a powerful and important idea and a reality, it's for us to recognize all these qualities that are in us, inherent in us. And the idea of the Self is that these are really universal qualities. We all have these same eight C's. The one thing that felt like it was missing a little bit in that is the idea that each of us are also unique. Even when I am embodying Self-energy, the particular way that I embody Self-energy is still unique to me. Every IFS trainer manifests IFS a little bit differently. They teach it a little bit differently. We each have a little bit different way of understanding it and conveying it and embodying it. So, to me, there's something unique in each of us that's really important for us to include. I think of true Self... another way to say it is our true nature, that we're each unique beings, with unique gifts and qualities and a unique path to follow in life. One way to describe it is our personal unique divine essence. We each have our own personal unique divine essence. There is the universal divine essence and then each of us have our own unique manifestation of it.

Tisha: Would you say that that is expressed by our own different versions of being in our highest Self, when we're in a flow state or when we're connecting with our own exiles, we express that uniqueness with our own particular vibration or way of being...How does that uniqueness get expressed? I can grasp it when I think about the different lead trainers showing up with their own voice, their own style but I know that when I'm in Self, it feels a certain way to me, but I am not sure how it would feel to someone else.

Paul: First of all, I want to say...

Tisha: I love this concept though. I really appreciate it.

Paul: One of the things I like about IFS is that we don't have a dogma about things. There's a certain openness to people discovering what it is for them, how they understand what Self is, how they understand, how parts show up for them. There isn't a dogma about it. I guess I feel that way about what I'm calling the truth, the true Self, the true nature. I think different people are going to understand it differently. I think our parts, though, carry some aspect of our true Self. And when our parts are burdened, both exiles and protectors, I think the true Self, the true nature we were born with gets lost. We lose touch with it. It becomes disconnected. There's the idea that every part has Self. At the essence of each part is Self-energy. So, when we unburden our parts and we reconnect with them, I feel like they are carrying aspects of that true Self that gets reintegrated, reconnected.

Aníbal: So, you are saying that we exile, our managers, protectors exile important gifts and qualities of ourselves?

Paul: Yes.

Tisha: And now it’s time for a story. [laughter]

Paul: For most of my life, until I discovered IFS and did more work with my parts, I carried a belief that there was something terribly and fundamentally wrong with me that I needed to keep hidden from other people. [music]

And I was aware of that any time I was around other people, even good friends. Going out to dinner with good friends, I would be afraid. Feeling like there are things about me I still couldn't share even with my good friends. Sometimes it would silence me. It was like “No, no, no, you can't say anything because what if you reveal something about yourself that shows just how messed up you are?” I felt it as a therapist, I felt I was pretending that I was somebody who could help other people when here I was, I was so messed up myself. So, I always had this sense I was hiding. It just affected my whole life. And this belief, I would say was shared pretty much by my whole system. All my parts shared this belief. It wasn't until IFS that I realized these were parts holding this as a burden, that it wasn't the truth but then I still had to do the work to really believe that, really fully get it. 

What I discovered is that there was one young part who first took on that burden. Then other parts ended up agreeing and holding it because that's what it felt like. It felt like that was who I was. That was my experience. And so other parts assumed it was true. So, when I finally got to this part, the exile that was really, the first one, and I started witnessing this young Paul, I actually could see his goodness. I could see it. I could feel it like when he was sharing with me the experiences that led him to feel there was something so wrong with him, I could see his goodness and feel it, from self. Self can do that. Self sees beyond the burden. So I began to experience that with this part. As I felt his goodness, I began mirroring it back to him even before I helped him unburden, I started reflecting back to him that I was seeing how good he was. As I did that, as I experienced his goodness, as I reflected back, my protectors were watching. They started to soften, they started to be more comfortable with my spending time with his young part of me. It became easier. The whole process got easier as my protectors noticed this as well. Then finally, when I did unburden him of all that he had taken on, this sense that...you know, all the reasons why he felt there was something so fundamentally wrong with him, what I came to feel was that it wasn't just about this part. Wasn't just him who was good because my parts didn't... it wasn't just about him. I didn't think I, as a whole human being, was good, but once I experienced his goodness, I started to feel like, well, maybe that was true of me as a whole person. Maybe I really am a good person. Maybe that goodness is part of my whole nature, not just this one exile. 

That was amazing. That was like, what a transformation for me to feel like, yes, I was owning, I was owning my goodness, through this one exile. I was able to own. It's still moves me. I can feel I'm about to cry because that was so powerful. A gift he gave me to recognize my goodness.

Aníbal: Makes sense.

Paul: And part of that was coming to accept some of my frailties, some of my limitations as a human being. Those things made him feel like there was something wrong with him were just part of being a human being. We all have our frailties, our limitations, our unique ways that some people might've projected, but they're just in a part of us. Another gift I got from him was learning to accept who I really am. And that, that actually I realized was part of my life purpose. Part of my life purpose is... it still moves me. It still really moves me to tears.

Tisha: It's really powerful.

Paul: You know, most of my life I didn't know why was I here? What was my purpose? I couldn't figure it out and that was another thing that pained me. I didn't know what was the purpose of my life. It was through this exile, connecting with this exile that I got in touch with a big piece of my purpose in life was to help other people recognize the possibility of accepting ourselves and loving ourselves for who we are, not needing to be different than who we are. 

[music]

Tisha: Paul, you were my introduction to IFS, and I remember feeling that so tangibly, in your presence, how there is this possibility of self-acceptance and that felt like a far reach that hope that you brought, was incredible. I'm curious what it was like for your exile to be met. That's a deep question but how was that process for him?

Paul: That's a wonderful question, Tisha. I think that's part of the tears. I think it was very powerful for this exile, amazing, to be transformed from being seen as so terribly wrong to recognizing that he was carrying so much for me, you know? So, I think that's why it still makes me cry because, you know, what a powerful shift for that young part to go through.

Aníbal: And maybe not always present in every process when we do IFS, not always this gift is present in such a clear way for our clients and ourselves, so this is really huge what you are sharing.

Paul: Thank you for naming that. I believe that if we bring this perspective to our clients, it can be integrated into the process of unburdening, the process of invitation, and can help the unburdening process be even more deep and powerful. I do this at different stages. First I want to help protectors begin to see that there's something more to this exile than they think and then when we're finally doing the witnessing, I always have in mind let me notice, let me notice the good qualities that this exile is already demonstrating even in the witnessing and let me reflect that back. And as I do that there's already an unburdening that starts happening because these exiles have often never had this mirroring experience. The mirroring reflecting that all children need. Some of these exiles have never had their goodness, never had their uniqueness or their special qualities, they've never had them that mirrored back to them. And so, when they experience that in the witnessing, it's very powerful, already, even before they unburdened, even before they do the ritual of naming the burden and letting it go. Just that process of being mirrored is very powerful and healing. And so sometimes I will do that and then sometimes I help the client notice and do the mirroring. That's already in the witnessing process and then in the invitation. 

There’re two questions that we tend to ask when the exile has unburdened in the invitation, one is “Now invite this young part or this part - because it's not always young. Invite it to tune in to its true nature and then ask it if it would like to invite in any qualities that it would like to have or needs.” So, I tend to emphasize getting in touch with its true nature.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Paul, that leads me your four main strategies that you outlined for detecting the gifts in our exiles that I found so interesting and I'm going to name them, and I would like you to comment and illustrate if this is possible.

Paul: Before you do, I just want to say one more thing about that invitation process.

Aníbal: Please.

Paul: So, the client invites the exile, getting back in touch with your true nature and really spend time with that, feel into it. Then I'll say to the client "Can you also reflect back this part of you, what you see? What are the qualities that you're noticing in this part of you?" And then "What is that like for this part? What's it like for it to be seen by you in this way, to have you reflect back these qualities and then I'll say, what is it like for you now? What's it like for you to feel this part of you sharing these qualities with you? What is it like for you to reintegrate this part, to feel this part connected back in you? What's it like? Can you take some time and feel into it? Let it fill your whole body. Breathe it in. Let this part fill you so that you can feel what are the gifts this part now has for you now that it's been freed of its burden?" That deepens the process and that's often when the client begins to feel "Wow, yes, I see what this part is giving me. I can feel it." That piece to me is really a key piece of the unburdening process. 

[music]

Aníbal: So, here are the strategies. One, as the client is interacting with the exile, the therapist can listen for specific qualities of the exile to reflect back, such as courage or creativity. The therapist reflecting back actively, right?

Paul: Yes.

Aníbal: Second strategy, in the common scenario where there are a lot of protectors, therapists can spend some time wondering with the client what gift they have already received as a result of this young part of them. Do you want to comment on this one?

Paul: Sure. That gets to the different kinds of gifts that I believe exiles can give us. One is this reconnection with our true nature. And that's the one that I think is most powerful. The experience, the way we've been wounded and the way that exiles carry that wounding, sometimes, for a lot of us, it really transforms our lives in very positive way. Particularly, a lot of us as therapists, one of the reasons we decided we chose to become therapists was because of the ways we were wounded, growing up. So that's one gift, I think sometimes we can acknowledge that it was the experience that this part is holding for us, that actually shaped our lives in some positive ways.

Aníbal: Exactly, interesting.

Paul: Just naming that and helping the exile feel, even though they're carrying all this pain, that there's something positive and some positive way they impacted us, is helpful for an exile to hear. There's another gift, which I believe is, the way I understand it is that the fact that this one part, this part who is one of my sensitive parts, part who is so open and feels things deeply. The fact that this part took on the trauma, took on the wounding, and held it for me, right? This part holds it, it enabled the rest of my parts to go on so that my whole system isn't held back by this trauma. My system gets to go on, move on with life because this one part is holding the trauma for me.

Aníbal: Beautiful, well said.

Tisha: I just have a quick question about that. Does it feel like those parts are always waiting to be healed and does our life set up circumstances that invite us back there? Some sort of fate, you know. Are they always waiting and edging us in that direction that will bring us back?

Paul: Personally, I do believe that we come into this life with certain lessons that we need to learn and experiences that we need to have. I believe that our souls are evolving through many lifetimes. I think that some of this whole experience of experiencing wounds and being burned and then healing is part of this journey that we're each come into this life meant to have. I do believe that there is something that happens. There's something that we're guided to evolve in this way and to come back to these young parts and heal them. 

[music]

Aníbal: Coming back to these detecting gift strategies, the third one, Paul, you say therapists can ask the Exiles if there are any ways, as a result of their experiences, that the client's life might have been affected in a positive way?

Paul: Yes, exactly. I don't know what else to say.

Aníbal: What else to say, yes.

Paul: That's, yes. That is one of the questions I might ask.

Aníbal: And the fourth strategy, as part of the unburdening and to emphasize reconnecting with the exile's true nature, rather than just welcoming in new qualities, therapists can really take some time to let that exile's true nature become present. Do you want to comment on these? To illustrate these.

Paul: Yes, well, I think I did say a little bit about that already, but I can tell you another story. I don't know, maybe I have another personal story, I guess I'd like to share with you.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Paul: This was a session with my therapist in which I unburdened a part of me, who made me feel extremely fragile. Again, oftentimes, visually when we're in touch with our exiles, we're blended with them, right? And so, when this exile would come up, it would generally was blending with me. It was making me feel like I just was extremely fragile. And so that sense of fragility additionally, I became ashamed of it, I became ashamed that I was so fragile. This is one of the things that I was terrified of people seeing. So this exile carried both shame...first of all, carried the feeling of fragility. Then it carried shame about it, and then it carried a terror of people noticing how fragile I was. So, when I was witnessing this part, it asked me if it was included in my life purpose of modeling self-acceptance. It asked me, am “I part of that?” It said. “Are you going to accept me also?”

Tisha: “Do you really mean it?”

Paul: Yes. “Do you really mean it? Am I included? Will you accept me?” So, my therapist said to me that she was noticing the bravery and forthrightness of this part, that it would challenge me in that way. It challenged me. I realized then, that this part was actually stronger and more resilient than I had realized. It wasn't just fragile, like yes, it was carrying a burden of fragility, but as I was witnessing it, more of its true nature was already starting to come through. It became clear, it's not just the burden of fragility, there is more to this part than fragility. There was actually resilience, there was strength, there was forthrightness in this part, it was demonstrating it. My therapist called attention to it; I was able to acknowledge it to this part. And then I realized, also as part of this, it helped me see, this young part helped me see. This is when we get to the... once it was unburdened. When I wondered, like, "Okay, so what is the gift this part had had for me?" I realized that fragility, the experience of fragility is actually inherent to being human. How could we not sometimes feel fragile, given the world we live in? How could we not sometimes end up feeling very fragile? I ended up realizing, yes, well, that's actually part of being human at times is to feel that.

Tisha: That self-acceptance?

Paul: Yes [chuckles]. I ended up feeling and so this is part of that process, that invitation, and the integration was to really feel into what the part was giving me and then to acknowledge back to the part "Wow, this is what I feel like you're giving me, this is what I'm getting from you." So, I felt like it gave me a deeper appreciation of human nature. And I also began to see how those qualities that I saw in it were qualities I could own as part of who I am. Because I never before saw myself as someone who could be forthright, I saw myself more as kind of holding myself back, afraid to really express myself strongly in the world and here was a part who could be really forthright. And I began to feel like "Well, wait a minute. Maybe that ability, that quality of forthrightness, maybe I could really fully own that as me." So that was another gift this part gave me. Was that inner strength and forthrightness, and also resilience, the recognition that I could go through some really difficult experiences and initially feel knocked over, thrown over, lose my way or, but I could trust that I had some resilience, because this part was showing me that, this quality of the resilience. I just, really... part of the experience with this part was really reflecting back what it was giving me.

Tisha: Again, what you're highlighting, it really honors that our exiles are so dynamic. It's really easy to get into the mindset that they're weak, that they're vulnerable, but they're a whole young people that have so many different qualities. And even though the burdens have one lens, it sounds like you're really illuminating how much is there in each of our exiles. Not only fragile but resilient, not only hurt, but brave.

Paul: Right. Exactly. 

[music]

Aníbal: Paul, our exiles are not always so young, right? They can be as older as us or even older than us. I mean, we can exile any parts of us that carry some vulnerability or fragility like aging ones. The parts of us that are aging, that are feeling our body isn't the same, our shape isn't the same. Would you like to comment on this? 

[music]

Paul: Well, first of all, I just want to thank you for naming it Aníbal, because that helps me recognize a trailhead for me. I think I need to do some more work with the part of me carrying that burden of aging and seeing aging and all the difficulties of aging, the impact on my body, the not feeling able to do things as well anymore. You know, there's so much in the aging that I think is painful for some of my parts and so I don't think I've done that work yet actually, to really get in touch with exiles around aging. Yes, you're helping me identify some work I think I can still do.

Aníbal: Well, we can do it together.

Tisha: [chuckles] I'm in. 

The point about exiles being older... I think I characterized them as young, which we often do, but you know, when a trauma is recent and the exiles are recent or adult, are there different gifts, are there different ways of approaching them that you're aware of, Paul?

Paul: I've tended to focus more on young exiles. So, I don't have examples that come to mind of working with older exiles. I do imagine there's something different about that. I'm certain that there still are gifts that they have for us. I think Dick talks really beautifully about how, like in marriage, or, you know, any intimate relationship, we tend to exile parts of ourselves in our effort to make the relationship work. It often feels like some part of me can't be here in this relationship, the relationship can't handle having this part of me here, so I have to exile it. That's so common. So, I have done some work with that, with people who are exiling parts of themselves in a relationship. But I think there's more that could be done there that I haven't really fully explored yet.

Aníbal: Beautiful, Paul. We are coming to a close, are you willing to guide us into a meditation now?

Paul: Sure. I would love to do that. I have a meditation that I can often guide people in and then there's also a writing exercise that I invite people to do. This is an exercise of writing from self to an exile. Can also do a writing exercise with protectors, when protectors are not ready yet to let you have access to an exile. So, they're both options, but the invitation is really for people to embody qualities, some qualities of Self and then, when they focus on either the exile or the protector, first invite the part to write to them. And so you let the part just come through you, like you can just invite the part to embody, whether it's a protector or an exile and write to you, what it wants you to know, and then you thank it and then you invite it to hear from Self. And so you shift your energy to embodying Self and respond. You're writing all of this down. So you have a dialogue back and forth from your exile to Self, from Self back. So that can be a very powerful exercise. A lot of people find writing very helpful. 

I guess we'll just do the meditation and then the invitation is for people, if they'd like, at some point they can do that writing exercise. I just want to invite people to begin by taking some deep breaths and letting themselves really drop into their bodies. And letting your breath guide you into being more fully connected to your body. Just staying with that, being a witness to your body's experience in this moment. As you feel yourself becoming more fully present, more fully grounded in your body in this moment, invite you to set an intention. It might be to be a loving presence. A welcoming, warm, inviting, loving presence for a vulnerable part of you. A part of you that you might already have some familiarity with, that's been carrying a burden. Not needing to work at this, just trusting your deeper self to guide you and to invite some part of you that's needing to feel seen, needing its goodness to be seen. Needing to feel loved. A part needing to be accepted just the way it is. Just opening space for a part to come forward and if you do notice a protective part, not comfortable with this, yes? That's fine, just use this time to welcome that part. To have that same intention to see its goodness, to recognize it too is carrying a burden and it too has a gift. And if you can connect with a vulnerable part, help it to feel your welcoming presence. You might, as you spend time with it, have your eyes open for qualities that you might want to reflect back to it. You might ask it if there's something it wants to share with you now, or something it needs from you. Just letting this part and letting yourself guide this process, tuning into whatever this part of you is needing from you. And if it feels right, while you're witnessing whatever this part is sharing, you might see if you can notice both the burden it's carrying and its true essence that's been hidden by the burden. Just continuing to be with this part in whatever way it feels right. And if it feels right, you might just mirror back to this part the qualities that you're noticing. Maybe just taking another minute to bring this to some completion, you might ask what this part needs from you before we need to end. Just appreciate it and reflect back again anything else that you'd like it to feel, any way you'd like it to feel seen by you. And you might set an intention to be with this part again soon. If you've been connecting with a protector, also appreciating it and if it's needing more time from you, also sending an intention to spend more time with that as well. Then when you're ready, just gradually let your eyes open.

Aníbal: Thank you, Paul.

Paul: You're welcome. I'm curious if either of you want to share anything.

Tisha: Yes, sure. I connected with a younger part who I haven't seen in a really long time. Well, who was an adolescent going through awkward, crooked teeth and feathered hair and really struggling to feel good in her body. She shared how critical her mom was about her own body. It was a very powerful meditation for me to be back there and really connect from the heart with how hard that was. Really grateful. It feels deeper than a trailhead and I really like the idea of spending some time deepening the communication. A letter sounds beautiful. She would love that, and it was also nice to reflect the qualities that I saw in her back to her. Part of me worried that it would feel inauthentic without developing that relationship with her, but it felt really good for her to hear what I knew about her from a place of my heart connection.

Paul: Thank you so much, Tisha. You know, you named something that's really important in this, the heart connection. Having the reflection come from a place with deep heart connection makes such a difference. I'll just share one quick story. One time I invited a client to reflect back some positive quality to its exile. And the exile said back to him "Wait a minute. First, I want you to just accept me in my fear, in my terror. Before you say anything good, I want to make sure you can accept the fear that I'm feeling."

Tisha: I don't feel like my exile was, she had a good bullshit detector.

Paul: [laughs] So, that was powerful. Just to have the exile say, "No, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to hear that yet."

Tisha: Thank you. Thank you so much, Paul. It's always so wonderful to meet with you and to gain your insight. To learn about our true nature and self-acceptance and the gifts of our exiles. Beautiful, beautiful road you've paved for all of us.

Aníbal: Yes, Paul, thanks again for having us. It was again a joy to be with you and Tisha and let's hope that we can keep meeting in person as well, without pandemic restrictions.

Paul: Yes. I would love that. Thank you. I felt like I got so much from this too. The opportunity to reconnect with those parts of me and for them to feel like what they shared with me, other people might also benefit from. And just some of the things you brought up gave me more things I know I can, more trailheads for me, more for me to explore. Thank you. 

[01:16:07] [END OF AUDIO]

 

Recorded the 23rd May 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

A Talk with IFS creator and founder Richard Schwartz 43:37

This is an episode with Richard Schwartz,  author and founder of this amazing and unique Psychotherapy Model. Internal Family Systems is for many a Metamodel, a model of the Mind, a Map and a Path to our lives, a new Paradigm, a Social Mouvement. Please welcome Dick Schwartz.

Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks, we have the distinct honor of speaking with Dr. Richard Schwartz. He is the founder of the unique and transformative therapy model, Internal Family Systems. For many, a mental model, a perspective of the psyche, a map, and a path to live our lives, a new paradigm, and social movement in the world of psychology and beyond. Thank you, Dick for all that you have done, and for being with us today.

Dick Schwartz: Thank you Tisha and Aníbal, it's great to be with you. I'm so honored to have both of you in our community. Looking forward to our talk.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much Dick for sitting with us today. First of all, I have to say how beautiful and inspiring it has been to see the respect, the admiration, sometimes deep friendship, and love that our guests deeply and clearly feel towards you, Dick. It's really amazing and deeply touching. It reveals the love that all those colleagues and others feel both for the IFS as a model, but also for you as a mentor, a friend, a colleague, that still guides them in many ways. I can imagine this is such a gift for you, but also a responsibility, if not even a burden, let me know.

Dick: Yes, it can be both. I really appreciate you telling me that and it's mutual. I feel that for the people in the community, including you guys. I feel very, very blessed to have such a community. Also, like you said, it can be a bit of a burden at times to be a leader and being a leader in this way, wasn't something I was oriented to in the beginning at all. So, I've had to grow into the role, which has involved a lot of work with my parts. Yes, but it's great to hear.

Aníbal: Also, Dick, so many good friends of yours have been with you in this long journey since you started assembling this model. Missing those early days?

Dick: Yes, I've been very lucky that way. Everybody... Most everybody has been quite loyal and unlike other models, where people split off and start slightly altered versions, I haven't had to deal with that. I do think it's because of the connections we all have. We all share the vision of what's possible if this model was really adopted in a big way in the culture. So that also, I think, keeps everybody together and thinking the same way and working in the same direction.

Aníbal: Those were days of discovery and innovation in so many ways also.

Dick: Yes. Those early days are, you know, I have a terrible memory, but I don't forget a lot of those times because they were days of sort of awe. Awe and, could this really be true, could this be true? What about this one? It was an amazing, magical time and the people who were with me then I still feel very close to. [music]

Aníbal: Dick, you fully dedicated your life to this field of the helping profession. First as a family therapist, then as the creator and author of this model. It's been a passion and a pleasure, but also a crusade sometimes for you, I believe, with some ups and downs.

Dick: Yes. Many years where I felt very lonely in it. I had a small group of people who were students and were excited about it. I could always come back to that little group because I was getting beat up when I would bring it out into the world a lot, both within the institution I was in, which was the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which was a fairly psychoanalytic department very influenced by Kohut, Heinz Kohut, who had a big influence in Chicago. They had a big, what they called fear of fragmenting people. And they saw IFS as something that was potentially anyway fragmenting by having people focus on their parts. And so, there was a big backlash when I began to talk about it within the institution, and people tried to get me fired. And then at the same time when I ran into the model from clients, I was a kind of up and coming Family Therapist. I'd written and co-authored textbooks that had become very popular, and a lot of my colleagues had a lot of trouble with this because they saw me as a traitor to the cause. Family Therapy was a polarization away from the lack of context, in a lot of traditional psychotherapies. The lack of appreciating the external context, the family context. [music]

Tisha: What was it like within your own system during that time? How did you maintain the confidence and clarity through all those challenges?

Dick: I can't say I was terribly Self-led back then. I had a part that had served me well as a college football player, and in some other contexts that really didn't care what people thought and went toward danger rather than away from it. It was a big protector of parts of me that actually did care enormously and carried a lot of worthlessness coming out of my family of origin. And so, I would lead a lot and that part could be quite arrogant and polarizing with people, would insist on talking about why IFS was so much better than what they did. Yes, I can't say I was real Self-led back then, but I think if it weren't for that part, this wouldn't exist because I'm basically kind of a shy guy, especially in terms of public speaking. I avoided any opportunity to do that at all through high school, and most of college I made it through without having to do an oral report in front of my peers. [music] 

By then I was starting to speak publicly about family therapy. But when I ran into this and got the vision of it, I really had to rely on that part more than anything, and it did a good job until I became the leader of a community, where that kind of arrogance or defensiveness just get you in trouble. I was lucky that I had some people in the community who confronted me, who are actually some of the people you're talking about are still with me.

Aníbal: They help you with that.

Dick: What I feel proudest of is that I didn't blow them off, I actually listened to what they were saying and started working on myself. That's been a long journey of trying to heal the worthlessness and get that arrogant part to step back. Now, people comment on how humble I seem. And it's genuine, the product of a lot, a lot of work to get to where I don't need affirmation from anybody. Now, I do it from a Self-led place. And I think part of the reason that it's exploded in the last several years, is because I gotten ready, I'm ready to be a leader of it now. [music]

Aníbal: Wonderful. And those were the times when so many interesting and powerful experiential therapies arrived in the '90s like EMDR, AEDP, EFT, CT and many more, just were showing up on those decades, the '90s and the new millennium. So, those were challenging times, with very strong and powerful experiential therapies showing up.

Dick: Yes. I got to know some of the leaders of those therapies, and I actually collaborated with some of them different times and spent a lot of time trying to differentiate IFS from them. That was all quite fascinating. We were all kind of "Going to figure this out," and then actually went our separate ways. I don't interact that much anymore with people like Susan Johnson. I've done several workshops with her together, with Diana.

Aníbal: Fosha?

Dick: Diana Fosha. There's a woman named Deany Laliotis, who's the EMDR person that I collaborated with for a while. All those systems I think that you mentioned, I would dip in and see what fit with IFS and what didn't, and what I could even borrow from them. Try to give them credit. The system and the person though who probably influenced the development of IFS the most, preceded them, and was a guy named Ron Kurtz.

Aníbal: Yes, the Hakomi.

Dick: Developed the Hakomi, yes. Early, or I would say even before 1990, he got wind of IFS and got excited because he was a systems thinker. And so, he invited me to collaborate with him. He and I co-lead some workshops at Esalen, and then I presented at his conference a couple three times probably. And that collaboration was hugely influential in many aspects.

Aníbal: Mutually influential, that's what you're saying?

Dick: Yes. Many things that are just now kind of second nature in terms of what we do when we do IFS, collaborated with or borrowed from Hakomi. So that was incredibly rich. A lot of the trainers who've been around for so long came from that community. They have Hakomi background.

Aníbal: The Hakomi community.

Dick: Yes. [music]

Aníbal: Dick, you started writing, you wrote, maybe published, maybe 8, 10 books, and the first one on IFS was in 1994, 26 years ago. And then you keep going, publishing until most recently, the second edition of the first one, the Internal Family Systems Therapy, second edition. Is there any of these titles that you keep closer to your heart that you find most influential or most significant for you?

Dick: You know, I feel very, very proud of the second edition. It took many years. Guilford was very patient with me because I just couldn't get it right. I couldn't get it right. I felt overwhelmed by the task because as you said, it was '94 since the last one, '95.

Aníbal: 26 years ago?

Dick: Yes. But so many years have gone by and so many things have changed. So, I would start to work on it, and I would just get totally overwhelmed. And it wasn't until I had the brilliant idea of recruiting Martha Sweezy to come in and help me, that it actually happened, because I had been struggling for maybe eight years before. And so, Martha came in and is great, she's just a great writer, a great thinker, and great organizer, and gave me deadlines and just did a lot of the stuff that I wasn't able to do to make it manageable. So, I'm really grateful to her.

Aníbal: So, it was a huge work?

Dick: Yes.

Aníbal: I understood that maybe up to 70% of the book is new stuff?

Dick: Yes, that might be an underestimate, it's really mostly new.

Aníbal: So, it was again, a lot of work together with Martha?

Dick: Yes.

Tisha: And is that because the model has changed and evolved, and perspectives have changed?

Dick: Yes, kind of yes and no, because when I went back to the original book, I was both surprised at how much it held up all those years. Some of the core aspects of it and then also, how much it changed. But, you know, I added lots of new chapters, one chapter, I think, on burdens, chapter on what we call the laws of inner physics.

Aníbal: That one, a totally new one, yes.

Dick: Yes. So, there was so much more to touch on. I did write a chapter on .. I cant remember what we called it, but sort on looking at the culture or United States as a trauma survivor, and what kind of parts does the country have and how does that parallel trauma survivors?

Tisha: So, some of the polarities that exist?

Dick: Yes. I mean if you think of my country anyway, that way. First, you can't list how many exiles we have. We have never had a disparity in income like this. So, there's... much of the country live just above the poverty line. And when you have that many people who have...And there are other exiles, like people of color and so on, but when you have that many exiles in any system, you're going to have very extreme protectors whose work is to keep them exiled and also to keep them from rising up or getting triggered.

Tisha: And so those protectors are political institutions or other people?

Dick: Yes, the leaders. [music]

Aníbal: So precisely, Dick, how can IFS help with this societal polarization that is so prevalent today?

Dick: I think it can help a lot. That's what keeps me going. I think if everybody really got the Self is in there, and it's just beneath the surface and got that, you don't have to run away from your pain or your shame, you can actually go to it and heal it. So, there was a lot more Self-leadership in the country in general. People wouldn't polarize because one of the qualities of self is this X-ray vision, where you see behind the protectors of your enemy and you see the exiles, and you feel compassion for them, and you want to work things out. And you also, because of that C word connectedness, you also have a kind of in your bones knowledge that you're not separate from that person, that we're all connected. And when somebody else is hurting in our system of humanity, that's actually hurting you too. So, all of those aspects of Self would go a long way to change where we are. And Self-leadership in our leaders now is really hard to come by. [music]

Tisha: How is some of this playing out as you see the situation we're in with the pandemic unfolding? Do you see people accessing more Self or becoming more fearful, more exiled?

Dick: I think is both. Is kind of laying bare of how many exiles there are and how fragile exiles are.

Tisha: How vulnerable.

Dick: How vulnerable they are. Yes. In a trauma survivor, when the exiles get triggered, then the protectors get even more extreme. That's the good side of it. It's laying bare how much we need everybody. So, people who are making $15 an hour are heroes now and ideally will be valued a lot more. The bankers and all the people whose actual behaviors or work doesn't really contribute anything, are also being seen that way right now. They just don't contribute anything. So it has the potential, this whole episode, to really help reorganize our values and priorities, both individually because, you know, I can say for myself that having been forced to not travel and not spend my whole life waiting for the next event that I have to pack for, and get on an airplane and just being forced to be home and relax, it's both, brought to the surface a lot of parts that I need to work with, but also made me value other parts of me that like it this. I feel guilty saying it, but I, actually, this has been a really good period for me. Guilty because so many other people are suffering.

Aníbal: Yes, a lot, it's painful. [music]

Dick, we are seeing a growing, growing demand on IFS trainings and therapists, not only in the United States, but also in Europe and even in Asia. Would you be willing to share your feelings towards this evolution both on what concerns the growing demand, but also the trainings' evolution, concerning its qualities, focus and sophistication, once I understand that IFS trainings are becoming more and more sophisticated, you would agree?

Dick: More sophisticated? I'm not sure about that. I think one thing that's been actually very helpful with the crisis is...my brother, John, who runs the company, has done a great job of transitioning us to online. All the trainings now are online, and the trainers did that kicking and screaming like, you know, I've been talking about we should do more online and "No, people won't have the same experience, so much more powerful in-person." Every trainer I've talked to now, who's done it and says “Oh, it's much, much better than I thought. In fact, this actually can work. I'm excited about it.” And they're excited they don't have to travel and all that. So I think the outcome of this will be that, a lot of the trainings will be hybrids, where we'll do some online and some in-person, or some, there will be... will offer some trainings where they're all online and other trainings where they're all in-person. That's actually going to help us meet the demand you mentioned, because, as I go around, there's so many frustrated people. You know, trainings fill up in a matter of hours once they are announced and it hurts my heart that people can't get it when they want it. [music]

Aníbal: You are saying Dick that somehow the IFS Institute is making a movement forward during this pandemic crisis, meaning is evolving to a more blended training, more a mixture of in-person and online? And you see that as a good movement forward, a good improvement.

Dick: I do, there are lots of people who couldn't do the training unless we did it online, because they live in a remote area in the world and the online program is a bit cheaper. So, there are people who couldn't afford to do it in-person, both the tuition, but also all the travel and the housing.

Aníbal: This is clearly a change in the trainings, and the trainings as much as I understood they are happening for maybe 25 years now?

Dick: Yes.

Aníbal: When did you feel the training machine was highly tuned enough? It's still improving, but comparing to the beginning days and back then and the days that we are living, how do you compare the training?

Dick: I don't know that the format has changed a great deal. And a lot of the format I borrowed from Hakomi. The demos and the Home groups and a number of things and all that still in place, it seems to me.

Aníbal: Yes. They're still valuable. Yes.

Dick: Yes. So, I don't know that the actual format of the training is going to change all that much. The three to one ratio with the PA, very challenging in some ways, because it's expensive way to run trainings. You know, there's a lot of recruiting of PAs involved and making sure that they know what you're doing, but it also, to me, seems still crucial to have that ratio for people.

Aníbal: Yes. Keep the quality of the training.

Dick: That I also borrowed from Hakomi. Less theoretical stuff or technique stuff, I borrowed a lot of the practices they had.

Aníbal: So, I see that you see this evolution of the trainings mostly as turning them more available to everyone, and the online is helping on that sense.

Dick: Right

Tisha: Aníbal and I, we're currently in the middle of a training that shifted to online. It was supposed to be in Portugal this week. I've been incredibly surprised by how well it's going and how good it feels. You can have the breakout rooms for the press practice groups, and still been getting that sense of connection and Self- energy.

Dick: Had your group met in-person once?

Tisha: We had met in person once. So, I was curious about how it would be if that hadn't been the case.

Dick: What I'm hearing from people who are doing it without that, it seems to work just fine. It's all a big experiment now and this again, without the virus, the experiment wouldn't have happened.

Tisha: Yes. It created a lot of shifts that have been positive. [music]

Aníbal: Dick, you are still doing so much around all this IFS stuff, what do you love the most to do about IFS nowadays?

Dick: Oh, well, I'm one of these very blessed people because I love most all of it. Well, what is trying to orient me now more, my guidance now is to focus my activity more on things that will bring a bigger bang for the buck, in terms of the goals we were talking about earlier in terms of bringing it to larger systems. I love the personal retreats so much. It's really hard to let them go, but again, I've been forced to do that. I'm finding that I love the book I'm writing, working on now, trying to work on that and some of these podcasts like yours, where I can just reach a bigger audience. So, I'm just trying to get clear about what post-vaccine will look like for me. There will be some changes. I'm pretty clear about that.

Tisha: Is there a sense of a path or direction to bring IFS to some of these larger systems that you're talking about?

Dick: Yes, we're trying to actively move outside of psychotherapy into other regions. I've got fairly active collaboration going with some big executive consulting firms, and they work with not only fortune 500 CEOs but also world leaders. They consult all kinds of presidents of countries and so on. My vision, my hope is, this is one example, but indirectly through them, IFS can reach those leaders and we can bring more Self-leadership that way. But that's one. We also have several initiatives in the direction of education, and I've been collaborating with two Tibetan Lamas here locally, to try and integrate it into Tibetan Buddhism. Anyway, there's a number of projects like that.

Aníbal: Very ambitious ones.

Dick: They could reach bigger audiences and have influence...The whole psychedelic movement, I would love for IFS to be seen as the map for that territory. I'm going to do what I can to make that happen, because that has so much promise as things loosen up in particular. [music]

Tisha: It seems like IFS is an incredible model to use with psychedelics, but it's not entirely clear to me why. Is it clear to you?

Dick: I think so. I've dabbled myself. So, I've done several rounds with ketamine and with MDMA and psilocybin. My take is that each of them, in different ways, each of them accesses different aspects of Self. MDMA, you're just pure self a lot of the time. Your protectors melt and your heart opens up really wide. So, you're accessing in particular that compassion, C word. Ketamine, you leave, and you enter the non-dual, they call it, and in that state, you feel this unbelievable level of connection to everything. And so, connectedness. Then, as you come back, you're in a lot more Self too. Your exiles are a lot more available to you and so on. So, I think we can look at each substance or medicine from that perspective. Also, when there are bad things happening, somebody seems like they're having a panic attack or just a lot of reports of... people call it post-traumatic psychedelic, PTPD. I've seen people following bad trips like that who had psychotic experiences. Instead of thinking “Oh my God, I'm having a psychotic experience or I'm having a panic attack,” they could be reassured that, okay, there's this really scared part that just came up, or there's this part that is doing a delusion right now but it's just a part. And the leader could help them work with that part while they're in this phase and separate from it and calm them down. That's another application but there's lots of others, that, just as I play with that world, are possible. [music]

Tisha: Would you say that when people access the aspects of Self that MDMA, ketamine or psilocybin grant access to, after the experience, do you continue to have easier access to Self once you've gotten it that way?

Dick: Yes, I think so. I think that's part of the power. They're using a lot of ketamine for depression. It isn't because it changes your brain so much from my point of view, as it does take you into that unity experience. That non-dual experience and lifts you away from the parts that carry all that, those burdens and you get a different sense of who you really are, and what this world we're in is about, which happened to me. I used to say I believe that when I died, it would be a good experience. I would go on and it would be good but after several doses of ketamine, I can say I know that because you go kind of to that good place. And when you come back, as the ketamine is wearing off, people kept saying that I was saying, "I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave," because you really get a sense of how hard it is here. It's very hard to be separated from everybody by these bodies and their boundaries, and you don't realize that until you get away. We are in that pure bliss, pure beloved place. Then you come back with more perspective and compassion for yourself.

Aníbal: Yes, makes sense. [music]

Tisha: Is that the same place that our clients go in deep IFS work?

Dick: Absolutely. I totally believe it is. So yes, it's a wonderful place. I'm not necessarily advocating that these medicines are the answer. Michael Mithoefer did all these outcome studies with MDMA and PTSD and had really good results. So, we did an outcome study without any medicine, just with IFS, sixteen sessions of IFS and got better results. It was just a much smaller fail.

Aníbal: It's encouraging.

Dick: I'm saying we don't actually need those necessarily. Although I do think that when people get stuck, it can be very helpful to have an experience or two like that, to get to parts that you wouldn't get to otherwise. Systems that are just terrifying to go places. But sure of that, I don't know that we need that.

Aníbal: So, Dick, how does Bob Grant's idea - Bob Grant is a ketamine researcher - he asserted that IFS is a psychedelic model. How did that land on you?

Dick: [laughs] I guess so. I think we enter the same world. I don't think that I want to attach to that label, just because I still want to make some inroads and some more traditional bastions who would look askance at that.

Aníbal: Of course.

Tisha: You don't want all the marketing to be tie-dye?

Dick: Yes, I mean, I was a bit of a hippie back in the day, but more of a hippie wannabe. [music]

Aníbal: Dick, what about the IFS institute? What's the future? What’s coming?

Dick: It's an interesting time for this crisis to happen because we're in the process of a transition ourselves. My brother's been a CEO for 12 years and has done a great job. We have grown enormously over those years. He deserves a lot of credit for that. He's going to transition into a new role sometime this year, where he'll be a consultant, or... there are parts of him that are burning out on managing people. He's been doing that since he was in his twenties. And so, we've got a search going for a new CEO, and we're going to look for somebody who can, in the business world they call it scaling something. Who can do some of what we've been talking about in this call, which is to bring it to bigger venues and grow even more. Not grow more necessarily to be more profitable, but just to have more influence.

Aníbal: More influence, yes.

Dick: So, yes. We're going to put out the job description next week sometime. They have a few possible candidates now already. So, that's a big, big change. It actually feels like a really important crossroads in the history of the Institute.

Aníbal: Let's hope for the best.

Dick: Thank you.

Aníbal: Wishing you Good luck.

Dick: Thank you. [music]

Aníbal: Dick, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, your model our model and our work and our lives.

Dick: I'm very grateful to the two of you for airing this podcast and spreading the word and just for all your support in general. As I said before, there were many lonely years, and I don't feel lonely anymore to have people like you guys on this journey with me.

Aníbal: Thank you. This has been a labor of love for us. Thank you so much.

Dick: Thank you both.

Tisha: Thank you. Thank you so much. Before we got together today, I had a session with a client, and it was so powerful. I thought like “how many therapists are trained? How many clients are having sessions every week that are changing their lives, and changing the way that they're orienting to themselves and their families and their pain?” Just before we met with you, my heart was filled with so much gratitude. [00:43:37] [END OF AUDIO]

 

 

Recorded the 29th April 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Sexual Abuse through IFS lens: A recovery journey with Bob Falconer 47:25

Robert Falconer has an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology, with a focus on the history of religions.In the early 1980s he pursued his masters degree in psychology while balancing a career in construction and real estate investment.When Robert started as a therapist, he focused on the work of Milton Erickson and hypnotherapy. He then moved into working with Jack and Helen Watkins; who developed ego state therapy. In his career as a therapist, Robert spent considerable time at the Esalen Institute and decades involved in gestalt therapy. Robert has been familiar with IFS therapy for 20 years, but completely devoted himself to the model for the last 10 years.

Robert was one of the first men to speak publicly about being sexually abused as a child, and for many years he worked primarily with men with a similar trauma history. Now he works with people learning IFS. Most recently Robert co-authored with Dick Schwartz a book entitled “Many Minds, One Self:evidence for a radical shift in paradigm“

Full Transcription

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

Today on IFS Talks, we're speaking with Robert Falconer. Robert Falconer has an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology with a focus on the history of religions. In the early 1980s, he pursued his master’s degree in Psychology while balancing a career in construction and real estate investment. When Bob started as a therapist, he focused on the work of Milton Erickson and hypnotherapy. He then moved into working with Jack and Helen Watkins, who developed Ego State Therapy. In his career as a therapist, Bob spent considerable time at the Esalen Institute and decades involved in Gestalt therapy. Robert has been familiar with IFS for over 20 years, but completely devoted himself to the model for the last 10. For more than a decade, he was the director of the Institute for Trauma Oriented Psychotherapy. Bob was also one of the first men to speak publicly about being sexually abused as a child. And for many years he primarily worked with men with a similar trauma history. Now he works with people learning IFS. He has published six books, co-edited four, and most recently co-authored one with Dick Schwartz, entitled Many Minds One Self. Bob, thank you so much for being with us here today on IFS Talks. It's a privilege. 

Robert Falconer: Oh, thank you. I'm delighted you invited me. I really enjoyed your other talks online, I think you're doing a real, real service to the community. 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Robert. Thank you so much. How is it for you, Bob, to hear this bio. What parts come up?

Bob: "Who, me is that me?" So, there's some of...I Know a lot of people with trauma histories have this...Sometimes we call it the imposter syndrome. Ernie Rossi, a great therapist and researcher, when he was getting his third Ph.D., what occurred to him when they handed him the diploma was, I fooled them again. And somehow people, maybe especially men who were molested as children, no matter what happens in the outside world, they feel like they're fake. So, there was a little, a little echo of that, but not painful at all as you read that biography. You know, there's still that "Who me?".

Aníbal: Yes, it's still there, it’s still there, who me.

Bob: Yes.

Aníbal: It comes from those parts of yours that still carry some burdens. Yes, of course.

Bob: Yes. And since we're going to focus today a lot on men who were sexually abused as children, I think I just sort of like to launch and talk about what my own history was like...

Aníbal: Good.

Bob: As we get further along, why IFS has been so important to me.

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Bob: I was raised in New York City in what from the outside was a churchgoing upper middle-class family, but from my earliest memories, my father was sadistically raping and abusing me and my older brother. He had some of his gay lovers who were also child molesters, living in the house with the family throughout my childhood. Sometimes one, sometimes more, they also abused me. Mom was institutionalized a few times for mental illness, and she also sexually abused me. My brother committed suicide, or let me be more precise, died in a probably suicidal accident when we were teenagers.

Aníbal: Ok.

Bob: And he had also, at one point, turned on me. I was the youngest brother. He was given the opportunity, he could sort of join the other men and start abusing me or he could stay being one of the abused. And he took that opportunity. I would have taken that opportunity to if it had been offered to me, I was actually jealous that he was offered that opportunity. And because of knowing that about myself, it's allowed me to be compassionate with sex offenders and to work with them.

Aníbal: Make sense, yes.

Bob: So, he committed suicide when we were teenagers. A few years later, when I was 21, my father was murdered in an unsolved crime. There was money in his pocket, so it wasn't a robbery. The police said it was probably about a woman, but he would have sex with anything, but women were not high on his list. I imagine he was molesting the wrong person's children. As you can imagine, I was sort of a mess coming out of a family like this.

Aníbal: Yes, how do you survive extreme events like you have been through as losing a brother to suicide, right?

Bob: Well, I think...Sometimes I joke there were angels in my life, but I'm not so sure how much of a joke that is anymore.

Aníbal: And also, you lost your father to murder.

Bob: Yes, I was, you know, actually I was quite happy when he was murdered.

Aníbal: A part of you.

Bob: And I was ashamed because when I got the news, I was teaching at a high school and the headmaster took me into his office and said "You know, your father's been murdered." And I cried. And I hated that man so much that I was ashamed that I cried. You know, but it's a very natural human reaction, and I think it's actually proof that something clean and good in me had not died.

Aníbal: Beautiful, yes.

Tisha: So, there's a lot of painful experiences that you went through and adjusted to and I was thinking, just reading your bio, where the trauma was and where these parts were, as you were, you know, maybe working in construction and real estate development. And how did that all live in you in the early days?

Bob: Oh, it was buried.

Tisha: I was wondering, yes.

Bob: I was tough. I was totally independent. I didn't need anybody else on the planet. When I was in high school, I drank way too much. And was a binge drinker. And in college, I started doing LSD, and that made me hate alcohol, So, ironically, I quit drinking entirely for many years, which was...My father was also an alcoholic and mom was also probably an alcoholic and definitely a prescription pill addict. So, in the early years, I worked very hard. I was a very active athlete. I played competitive tennis. I would work hard all day, play tennis, have some pot, maybe, have a glass or two of wine, and I could sleep through the night, maybe. Sleep has always been an incredible issue for me as it is for most survivors. For most of my life, I would have nightmares so bad that I would sweat through many shirts, many T-shirts, I had to have three or four to change and I'd wake up screaming and throw the covers around. I just thought everybody was like this. I didn't know this was some weird thing that people thought was very odd.

Tisha: Was there something that happened that began to unlock the buried trauma?

Bob: Oh, Yes. Like I was saying, I was very active physically and very aggressive. And, you know, the construction world, they encourage you to be crude.

Aníbal: Yes.

Bob: You know, with the way we said good morning to each other at a job site would get you thrown out of a training. Very different worlds. I had a back injury. And overnight, I couldn't do the heavy construction work, I couldn't play tennis and I lost all my friends because they were all tennis people or construction people.

Aníbal: Oh, huge loss.

Bob: And I'd thought, you know, I thought I'd done a lot of work. You know, I studied Jung a lot and done all this other stuff. But when that happened, it broke open all the trauma and all these parts came rushing out. If somebody had told me that was one of the great blessings of my life at the time, I would have tried to strangle them. And it was one of the great blessings of my life. And it's really unfortunate that our blessings have to be so well disguised.

This one rabbi said. That you have to give thanks for everything, because we're too dumb to tell the blessings from the curses. My father was also the deacon and trustee of a big Presbyterian church. Besides being a businessman, So, I did not go into a church of any kind for more than twenty-five years, and the first time I tried to go into a church, I nearly vomited. I became physically nauseous. I don't think people heal from this kind of extreme trauma without some kind of spiritual connection, and I think that's one reason why the abuse by priests is so poisonous to people, because it prevents them from going back to the well where they can find the deep healing.

Aníbal: Yes, makes sense. 

Bob: So, you know, I'd done therapy. I thought I knew my inner world, but I'd been fooling myself. And with that back injury, it really started opening up. I found a good therapist here. You know, Santa Cruz, when I started this stuff, no therapy schools recognized child abuse as a major factor in trauma. None. In the late 1960s, there was a major textbook for psychiatrists that said incest is vanishingly rare, less than one in a million cases and when it happens it's often good for the children.

Aníbal: Oh, my God, that was the 60s?

Aníbal: That's like 1968, I think. So, we have come a very, very long ways.

Bob: Yes. Santa Cruz happens to be the place where Ellen Bass and Laurie Davis lived, and they wrote The Courage to Heal. She's a writing teacher and a lot of the women she was helping write wrote about being abused as a child. And they said, I've never told anyone. And then there was this place here in town called the Survivors Healing Center, that was founded by a couple of local therapists who worked with child sexual abuse and it was a storefront operation with no money. And they were the pioneers. And all the schools, and all the experts and all the big shots thought they were nuts, you know. So, for me there was almost a crusading attitude of, "hey, it's time to tell the truth."

Aníbal: It's time to tell the truth. Bob, you have joined the 1 in 6 movement.

Bob: Yes, I have. They came much later.

Aníbal: That much later. Do you want to explain what is the mission and the purpose of this platform?

Bob: Ok, yes. The current estimates, and I believe the world expert on statistics on child sexual abuse is a man with the name of David Finkelhor at the University of New Hampshire. So, I usually rely on his statistics. I think he's the best that's out there. He says it's about one in three women are sexually abused before the age of 18 and about one in six men. I think the numbers are much closer. I just think we men lie about it a lot more.

Aníbal: And why is so?

Bob: Well, I think for men, there's tremendous shame for any survivor, but for a man to stand up and say "I was raped" is even harder, I think, than for a woman. There's a lot of, you know, the shame is tremendous. It's very, very hard for a man to admit something like that. Anyway, so, many years later, there was an organization called One in Six that was founded that was specifically to work with men who were sexually abused and to invite people to publicly say they were sexually abused and be photographed and sometimes give video interviews and tell other men it's ok to say this publicly. But that was...I don't think that started until 20 years later.

I was on the board of directors of the Survivors Healing Center for a long time and worked with other non-profits. So, the kind of work I was doing early when I was working with my own abuse was a local therapist who had developed her own method. It was very much parts work. She didn't call them parts. She called them the insiders.

Aníbal: The insiders.

Bob: Which I still, it's a name I use, So, it was very much parts work, not as sophisticated as IFS, I don't think, but I worked with her. I still see her every once in a while. She's retired and, you know, but I still see her some. And I was so fortunate to find a sympathetic therapist that long ago.

Aníbal: That finally validated your experience or could also work with it?

Bob: Yes, could also work it and knew about parts and knew about parts who hid and exiles and protectors, even though she didn't use that language at all.

Aníbal: At the time you were in your 30s or...?

Bob: Yes, 30's, early 40's. But I was already seeing a few clients. And back then, I wrote a book under a pseudonym called A Man's Recovery from Traumatic Child Abuse, which described my own recovery in detail. And I did not want my clients knowing all the details of sadistic sexual abuse that I went through. And I think that book is still in print, I'm not sure. I used the pseudonym Robert Blackburn Knight. So, I did that, and I worked with Jack and Helen Watkins, the Ego state people, I got to know them, and they used to come down to San Francisco Bay Area and I went up to where they lived in Montana. And Ego state therapy is very much like IFS. The one thing that's quite different is they explicitly use hypnosis to access the inner states, which, as you know, Dick doesn't.

Aníbal: Dick doesn't, yes.

Bob: But, you know, if you watch people, when Dick works with someone, when he asks them to go inside, they enter an altered state of consciousness and they are profoundly altered. And Dick doesn't like discussing altered states of consciousness and I think he has good reasons for that.

Tisha: It sounds like for you, your experience with the Watkins was a valuable part of your healing process and learning process.

Bob: Very valuable. And I worked a lot with Milton Erickson and his work, not directly with him, but with his eldest daughter, Carol Erickson was a major force in my life. And they very much, you know...So, I was very familiar with all the hypnotic research, and so I came from that sort of altered state paradigm. And I actually like Dick's way much better of just asking people go inside, who's there. And they enter this other world, this inner world, without any folderol or special invitation, the other stuff now seems to me quite unnecessary.

Tisha: Were there exiles that you approached through hypnosis that you might not have met through IFS?

Bob: Good question. I don't know. What I did early on, and a lot of people did this early on in the trauma field that was a major mistake is I would use hypnosis. Hypnosis is a powerful tool to push past the protectors, batter down the walls and get to what I thought was the meat, you know, the intense trauma, memories and all this, you know, the terror and the pain. And I just went for that. And the model was abreaction catharsis kind of model.

Tisha: Yes.

Bob: And it worked, but it caused tremendous pain and distress. And after a session like that, there'd be a huge backlash and self-hate and loathing and internal civil war and all the things that Dick's more sophisticated, gentle model avoids.

Tisha: Yes. You overrule the protectors and then probably a lot of backlash, a lot of firefighter activity.

Bob: They were not happy, to put it mildly. 

Aníbal: So, Bob, when did you get across with IFS?

Bob: Well, I was trying to figure that out, and is actually in the bibliography of that book I just referred to that I wrote back in the early 90s or mid 90s, but I didn't really get serious, you know. I was so tied into the Gestalt community at Esalen, which is I live quite close to Esalen. So, I've been there more than one hundred and twenty times.

Aníbal: Wow.

Bob: And I knew all the Gestalt people. I was so tied in there, I wouldn't let go of that. It took a lot for me to realize, hey, this IFS stuff is a lot better. And quite similar to Gestalt in many ways, but better and stronger.

Aníbal: So, to you, IFS offers a very powerful way to let go of the shame and self-blame that every sexual abuse survivor feels.

Bob: Yes, and one of the great blessings of it is this knowledge that I see IFS, there's lots of ways to describe the therapy process, but one I really like is first you go to protectors, but not expecting them to change at all. All you're trying to do is get their permission. Once you have their permission to go to the exiles, you can go to the exiles, do the witnessing, retrieval, unburdening. Then you go back to the protectors and ask them to change. That simple, simple seeming model takes so much of the suffering and difficulty out of therapy for extreme abuse survivors, that the therapy no longer is this incredible battle.

Aníbal: So, Bob, what parts come up in IFS sexual abuse treatment when you sit with someone? And we all sit, even if we don't know, very often with people that I can see, they have some sexual issue and abuse in his past or her past, but not often they share. They know it. But for you, once you have an already long experience with sexual victims of abuse, what parts emerge in IFS sexual abuse treatment?

Bob: Well, there's huge protectors, huge ones. Self-hatred, self-loathing. Incredible amounts of self-hatred. And then there are the terrified exiles who were back there being abused, and very often the self-loathing protectors are doing everything they possibly can do to keep those exiles locked in the basement. And they will. If they think the therapist is attacking this or trying to open the basement door, they'll attacked the therapist, you know. And rightly so. They think this is how to save the person's life. So, that's why this three-stage model is so important of getting permission from these protectors, and they're often or they used to be for me, hard to be compassionate with. Because you see this part that's absolutely despising your client and trying to destroy him or....

Aníbal: Ok.

Bob: Here's a vivid example. I use this example a lot because we have to ask every client. It's really bad to assume anything. A lot of times, for instance, I'll have an intuition this person was abused. I don't go with that. I never say that to a client. And I don't take those assumptions for real.

Aníbal: Good.

Bob: So, I had this male client who was a severe cutter, you know. Self-mutilation. And he cut on the trunk on his stomach and chest.

Aníbal: Wow.

Bob: And one time he had cut himself so badly, hundreds of cuts, that he was in the hospital from blood loss. And I thought "oh, I know what this is about,", you know, if he causes physical pain, it will stop the emotional pain. And, you know, I sort of went in there, a little arrogant. I didn't go into the hospital. I dealt with him by phone saying, you know, just sort of thinking I knew what was going on. And he said "Oh, no, Bob, that's not why I do that. It was my mom who abused me, and my skin liked her touch. I hate my skin."

Aníbal: Ok, complex.

Bob: I never would have guessed that in a million years.

Aníbal: No.

Bob: And this guy was kind enough not to fire me as his therapist. For being arrogant and thinking I knew what was going on in him.

Aníbal: Always learning.

Bob: Boy, has he been a good teacher, you know?

Tisha: Right. I guess we need to maintain our curiosity all the time and not make any foregone conclusions.

Bob: Even on ones you think are, you know, drop dead simple. We know why they do this. No, we don't. And one of the things Dick says that I like a lot is: Don't think, just ask.

Aníbal: Yes, just ask.

Bob: That's one of the little sayings I have going around in the back of my head often when I'm doing therapy.

Aníbal: Don't think.

Bob: Don't think. Just ask. Don't think, just ask. The other ones I have going around the back of my head are WAIT, why am I talking.

Aníbal: WAIT, precious one.

Bob: Because I should be listening. And when I'm really bad with the WAIT, when I'm running my mouth too much, I go to WAIST, why am I still talking?

Aníbal: Well done Bob.

Bob: So, those are the slogans I often have running in my head.

Aníbal: Bob, I'd like to quote Nancy Wonder, colleague of ours, an IFS colleague, and she's telling us about how sexual abuse impacts our system. And she's saying "Most child sexual abuse victims don't trust other people, especially those with an incest history, it's hard for them. The research shows that incest survivors have difficulty with relationships, they have trouble regulating their emotions and relationships, they even avoid intimacy. A lot of sexual abuse victims avoid things in general. Some also develop sexual parts that develop sexual abuse and other clients also avoid sex at all. And finally, most people who have had any kind of sexual abuse have a difficult time just staying present with sexual partners.

Bob: Yeah, I think that's all true.

Aníbal: That's all true. It's devastating. Yes, it can be devastating.

Bob: And, you know, I think sexual abuse survivors tend to go in two directions, they don't have a sort of normal attitude toward sexuality, they either become totally hypersexual and try and have sex all over the place with as many partners as possible. Or they become sexually anorexic. It's very much parallel to eating disorders. You know, sort of binge purge or someone who horrendously overeats versus someone who's starving themselves to death, sexual abuse survivors are very much like that with sexuality.

I want to mention one other person I haven't mentioned yet who's incredibly helpful, and that's Pia Mellody. She was an RN, not a regular therapist, and she's a 12 step self-identified alcoholic. And she worked a great deal with survivors of sexual abuse. And the system she developed was very, very similar to IFS. She talked about the wounded inner child, which would be our exiles, and then she talked about the adult adapted wounded child, which would be our protectors.

Aníbal: Ok.

Bob: And she knew how to work back and forth between them. And she did all this inner framework of 12 step addictions treatment, and I think that's one area where IFS really could grow a lot. We really could partner with the 12-step community much more effectively than we're doing, because I think they actually fit together very, very well.

Bob: There's also that spiritual element there. That's a really profound aspect of healing that's known in the 12 step and similar to Self-energy.

Tisha: I'm so glad you brought that up, because that's something I didn't want to forget to talk about. One of the things that's so moved me about IFS and was so important...Dick said Self can never be damaged, no matter what happened to you, it can't even be dirtied. The message I had got most of my life from all of the, quote, experts, the best you can hope for is sort of a nasty little life and you probably should be on meds and don't expect much of anything. You're messed up. Too bad, it happened, you're crippled.

Aníbal: No hope.

Bob: Dick said “No, no. Self cannot be touched, it can't be damaged no matter what happened.” That was so powerful for me. And that is so powerful for abuse survivors. I'm not really in the trenches anymore. I spent almost all my time training therapists and helping people learn IFS, but I have one guy who's still really in the trenches. This guy was badly sexually abused. And then became a hunter when he was in his early teenage years, killing animals. Then started torturing the animals and then started having sex with them while he was torturing them to death.

Aníbal: Wow.

Bob: This man tested the limits of my compassion. But I've come to love him deeply, and this man hated himself more than I have ever seen anybody hate themselves. For him, this message that you have something in you that cannot be destroyed, it cannot even be dirtied, I think was lifesaving.

Aníbal: Wow.

Tisha: Yes, it counters those deeply held beliefs of being broken.

Bob: Yeah. And all the attachments studies, I think, are so poisonous for people. I think they're misinterpreted. People who say, oh, if you don't get it, by the time you're four or something...

Aníbal: You're lost.

Bob: You're hopeless. That is so wrong. So wrong.

Tisha: You've experienced that personally and worked with people who have countered that.

Bob: Yes. In some ways, I'm still a mess, but I think I've led a life that helps a lot of people and I'm happier. I'm in my early 70s and I'm happier now than I've ever been.

Aníbal: Wow, beautiful.

Bob: And more joyous and more full of love. I want to mention one other thing, it just came up. The image of Self being undestroyed for me is like a stormy day, no matter how bad the storm is, the sun is not affected, you know. Not at all. There could be floods and your house is blown down and all this happens, the sun is still there, not even dirty, nothing happened.

Aníbal: Beautiful idea.

Bob: So, that's the daylight image of Self. I also think there's a night sky image that's really important to me, that if you look at the night sky and just pick one little area of it, it could be just black, you know, nothing. You get a binoculars, you might see a couple of dim stars, you get a good telescope, you see a few more stars. You get a really good telescope, you can see stars and galaxies and you actually can see back in time, almost to the beginning, the big bang of the universe. I think that's what more advanced IFS work is like. You don't come to an end point of "oh, I got this now." It just opens up to deeper and deeper realms in that inner world that allow more and more access to Self and talk to a lot of other things that are of great value.

Aníbal: Very inspiring. What do you enjoy most to do nowadays?

Bob: Oh, this is just going to sound...I dance a lot and I haven't been doing it as regularly as I should, but I get up very early. I like to get up before dawn and be outside at dawn. And I dance with the trees. I live out in the forest and that's my way of praying.

Aníbal: Mm hmm.

Bob: There's an ethnic group in Russia called the MARI, and they never pray indoors. They say if you're in a building, you're limited into a particular culture and historic framework. But if you're out in the woods, you're in a much bigger container.

Aníbal: Make sense.

Bob: And in California, where I live, it's not such a big deal to go outside to do this. But in northern Russia where they live, this is a big commitment.

Aníbal: It's a challenge.

Bob: So, they inspire me. Yes.

Tisha: What a contrast to that church that brought up the somatic nausea. You've created your own commune with nature.

Bob: Yes. And a man who was a big part in redeeming spirituality for me was a man named Brother David Steindl-Rast, who's a Benedictine monk, and his main topic is gratefulness. Gratitude. He's written many books. And I was sort of an aggressive jerk for a large part of my life, and I would go around to these spiritual leaders and teachers and I would say "Your God is all good, right? And all powerful.” And, you know, and they'd go "Oh, yeah, yeah." And I'd say "Well, I can remember being a six-year-old cowering in the corner of my bed against the wall, my father's come in the room, he's drunk, he's naked, he has an erection, he's red faced, screaming obscenities at me. Where is your God? Where is your God in that?"

Aníbal: Yes. Yes.

Bob: And most of them would turn away like they smelled something bad, you know, they didn't...Brother David came towards me while he put his hand on my shoulder and he said "God was there, Bob, he was looking out in the room through your eyes and he was weeping."

Aníbal: Wow.

Bob: So, I spent as much time as I could with brother David.

Aníbal: Wow.

Bob: I wanted that kind of spiritual presence in my life. And he's still alive, but he's in his late 90s now and in seclusion in his home monastery outside of Vienna.

Aníbal: Bob, you are quite committed to IFS in many ways, right?

Bob: Yes, definitely.

Aníbal: You want to share with us? You just wrote this wonderful book with Dick Many minds One Self. But you are also teaching and practicing?

Bob: Yes, one of the other things I enjoy a lot besides dance is studying. For some people that's really, you know, annoying or bad, but I love it. So, a lot of that book with Dick was my joy in studying and doing all the research. I can start reading like these articles and academic books that put most people to sleep and I'm fascinated and sort of come to eight hours later and go, you know. So, I'm working on some other books around IFS issues, and I teach a lot. I've been a Program Assistant many times. And something I'm really excited about now is what's happening with IFS in China. But let me say, I do see people, you know, I have a few clients who are still the heavy-duty abuse clients, but most of the people I see are people who are learning IFS.

Aníbal: Ok.

Bob: But what's happening in China? There's a woman, Dr. Hailan Guo, who founded this organization. She's sort of like the Oprah Winfrey of China or the Dr. Phil. Many, many people know her. She's a media presence. And she developed this stuff she calls Interpeace Coaching, which is mainly IFS and some of Kristin Neff and Chris Germer's Self-compassion work. And she has turned IFS into a peer counseling method. She says almost no Chinese person would go to a therapist. It's way too shaming, but they will do peer counseling. So, she's developed this complex system of supervisors and supervisors of supervisors and short-term training for these peer counseling groups. And she has these whole pyramids of trainees and supervision over supervision. And she's reaching many, many people. She looks like this sort of friendly little old grandmother. And she's actually one of the toughest people I've ever met. And she just looked at me as though she was just saying something casual, just Bob, it's my goal to relieve the suffering of millions.

Aníbal: Wow.

Bob: And I, I really like her model, and she's having me help train some people and do some classes there. And it's fascinating to work through translators and in another culture. The inner world's the same.

Aníbal: The inner world is the same. Yes. Amazing.

Bob: Yes, it's the same. The differences are not...I don't think they go so deep. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I think we're basically the same.

Tisha: Have you been traveling over there in the past or have you been mostly connecting with China online?

Bob: Just online, just online. They invited me, but thanks to the virus, I'm not going. That's not for the foreseeable future.

Aníbal: What future, Bob, can you see for the IFS model? I mean...

Bob: What future?

Aníbal: How much IFS can impact not only our field of psychotherapy, but even more than that?

Bob: Yes. Oh, yes. It becomes more of a life path rather than something that's focused on healing difficulties or pathologies.

Aníbal: Yes.

Bob: And a very good friend of mine who's an attorney is deeply involved in IFS and his IFS in mediation. And we've had some trainings out here with mainly with divorce lawyers. So, that's very positive. IFS in education.

Aníbal: Yes.

Bob: There's now a friend of mine in... He teaches in the adult school in Salinas. Salinas's maybe the roughest town in my neighborhood. Very, very Mexican. Lot of gangs, a lot of violence. And he teaches the people who dropped out of high school and are now back, you know, trying to get some kind of equivalency diploma. And he's using IFS in the classroom. And he's been so successful that the principal of his school has invited him to train the other faculty. And that's been so successful that now the whole school district is having him train other teachers in how to use IFS in the classroom.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Bob: And he sort of has to disguise it a little bit because he's not a licensed therapist. So, they call it psychosocial education programs. And I believe that the IFS Foundation has funded a study, an outcome study on IFS in education.

Aníbal: Great.

Bob: And I'm also working with some ministers and spiritual directors. IFS is perfect for this kind of spiritual growth. It's such a good fit for many of them. 

Aníbal: Beautiful. Bob, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope we can keep meeting, maybe we sit  again for another talk and for other sharing of this model, our work and our lives. Thank you so much.

Bob: It was a pleasure to be with you, too.

Tisha: I thank you so much for your tenderness and your courage and for allowing us to hear about some of the burdens you've worked with and I feel a lot of admiration for what you've done and how you've contributed. So, thank you for being with us. 

Bob: You're so welcome.

 

Recorded 15th April 2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

All Parts are Welcome: a Talk with an IFS Client 27:56

Our guest for this episode is a young woman in her thirties, sharing her life as well as a research job with a kind and loving partner, with whom she feels connected and safe.However, eighteen months ago, this young woman started seeing a therapist. Back then, Mary was struggling with extreme perfectionist and demanding parts, that could exaust her, trigger anxious and depressed parts, that very often exiled Mary in her bedroom, for days.Today we ask Mary to share her journey in internal family systems therapy.

 

Biases in Pandemic Times with Kate Lingren 46:14

Kate Lingren is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in private practice with over 30 years of experience. She is a Certified IFS therapist and on the faculty of Intimacy From the Inside Out (using IFS in couples work) as a Lead Trainer.

She is also on the faculty of Boston College School of Social Work, where she teaches a class on IFS. Most recently she has been on a quest to discover, welcome and heal her parts that hold both explicit and implicit biases in an effort to more fully embody her true Self.

Kate lives and practices in the Boston area and in Martha’s Vineyard.

 

Adult Health with Nancy Sowell 49:25

Nancy Sowell is an IFS Senior Trainer, consultant, and therapist who teaches frequently in Europe and the US. She is a teaching associate at Harvard Medical School where she has been a clinical supervisor for over 20 years. She has pursued training from many therapeutic schools of thought and in various therapeutic techniques, such as IFS, hypnosis, biofeedback, EMDR and mindfulness meditation. She integrates mindful awareness of the body, emotions, thoughts, and deeply held beliefs, as they influence our mood, vitality, behavior, relationships and health. Nancy is the co-creator of the IFS program and research study with rheumatoid arthritis patients that enabled IFS to be certified as an evidence-based program and practice.

In this Talk, Nancy's chapter The Internal Family System and Adult Health: Changing the Course of Chronic Illness, on Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensionsis under analysis.

Episode Full Transcription

Today on IFS Talks, we are speaking with Nancy Sowell. Nancy Sowell is an IFS, senior trainer, consultant and therapist who teaches frequently in Europe and the US. She's a teaching associate at Harvard Medical School, where she has been a clinical supervisor for over 20 years. She has pursued training from many therapeutic schools of thought and in various therapeutic techniques such as IFS, hypnosis, biofeedback, EMDR and mindfulness meditation. She integrates mindful awareness of the body, emotions, thoughts and deeply held beliefs as they influence our mood, vitality, behavior, relationships and health. Nancy is the cocreator of the IFS program and research study with rheumatoid arthritis patients that enabled IFS to be certified as an evidence-based program and practice. Thank you so much for all your work, Nancy, and for being here speaking with us today.

Nancy Sowell: Well, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I appreciate it. 

Aníbal Henriques: Nancy, thanks much for willing to sit with us and have this conversation. How is it for you, Nancy, when you hear this bio? What parts come up? 

Nancy: What parts come up? I guess a part that first feels a little bit shy and a part that wonders if it's too much, you know. I'm not fond of self-promotion. I've got parts that have things to say about that.

Aníbal: But you have been doing a lot these two decades for the IFS trainings and communities. Nancy, could you tell us, please, about your journey into the mental health profession? Was there something in your personal life that was determinant for you to become a psychotherapist?

Nancy: Well, that's an interesting question. My road to becoming a therapist was personal. I was a teacher for young children, and I ran programs for children and their parents and then I had my own children. And I think through some dark times in my life I got into my own therapy and I learned so much from that process that I decided to take what I knew, the interest that I had in young children and understanding their development and go back to graduate school because I wanted to work with people at a deeper level and not just in...I wanted to help people heal. I think that's it. In the way that I had experienced healing myself personally and I wanted to work with other people in that process. And that's how I got into psychotherapy and decided to go back for more training and switch from teaching and working with families and young children to working with people that were interested in a healing process.

Tisha: What were your early days of practice in psychotherapy like? What population did you work with?

Nancy: Well, my first job out...Well, during graduate school, I worked for a human service department in the town where I live, which is in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in the US. And I had a very broad experience in working with people of all ages. I worked with families. I worked with organizations doing more macro practice. And then once I graduated, I started working with an outpatient mental health center that specialized in working with people who were healing from substance abuse and particularly their families. And I stayed there for six years. But I also started a private practice while I was there. And I was especially interested in people's early trauma as it influenced the decisions they were making in their lives and as it was playing out in their relationships. And I did a lot of group work there and a lot of family were couples work in a lot of individual work. And then I just kept learning and growing as a therapist, as a person, and kept up with my own work. And got introduced to IFS eventually. 

Tisha: How did that happen? How did you meet the model?

Nancy: Well, Dick had come to Boston and I had a mentor there that had been my teacher in hypnosis and also my first mentor in behavioral medicine, a guy named Dan Brown, who's very well known in the Boston area. And I ended up doing a program in hypnosis with Dan Brown and which I loved doing hypnosis. And Dan and Bessel van der Kolk had brought Dick to the Boston area. And I met him at a meeting for a program called NESTTD, the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation. And I met Dick there. And then the next thing I did was...Because I live on Cape Cod. He does this Cape Cod Institute talk. It's like a weeklong introductory training every year. And so, I went to that thinking, oh, well, that will be enough. But I just fell in love with the model. I thought Dick was great and I ended up signing up for the Kripalu personal retreat and then another retreat in Mexico, which I ended up going to every year for about a decade and ended up being on the staff there. But anyway, so it just took off from there. I just took to it like a fish to water and I couldn't get enough. 

Tisha: Do you remember what it was about, the model initially that hooked you? 

Nancy: Yes, I do. It was the concept of relationship and the belief that we all have a Self, because I had experienced that, but I had never heard anybody in therapeutic circles talk about it so directly. And I also felt like there was an acknowledgement and an awareness of Self-Leadership that I had experienced with people, but I didn't have a name for it. And so, it felt like Dick was putting into words something that I knew deeply in my bones, but I didn't have a language to describe. And it was something that I felt from the time I was a little girl. So, I just really loved it. That really spoke to me and then also just watching him work, I thought it was amazing to watch someone really, in a very short period of time, experience healing in that internal relationship.

Aníbal: Yes, it's really amazing. Nancy, and did you trained or practiced in other modalities before you get across with the IFS?

Nancy: Yes. Well, I had from the externship program that I did with Dan Brown in hypnosis. It was a combination of hypnosis and behavioral medicine. Behavioral medicine pays a lot of attention to the body, the integration of the body and the mind. And there's a great awareness of how the mind affects health. And I learned a lot about that and decided to do this follow up program through the Cambridge Health Alliance. They had a behavioral medicine program there for licensed psychotherapists. So, I decided to do this training program at the Cambridge Health Alliance, which is one of the Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. And there I studied many different things, psychodynamic thinking and formulation and cognitive-behavioral therapy. And they also worked at a very integrative level, so integrating many different schools of thought. So, I felt like I was really someplace where I could learn what was most important to me. And we did a lot of...I had also, in the meantime, I had been studying mindfulness meditation for many years on my own. Well, with the Dartmouth Study Group here in Falmouth. And then they were actually using John Kabat-Zinn's Protocol for Pain Management and other things. And so, I started working with medical patients back then. And that was before I learned IFS. That was many years before I learned IFS.

Aníbal: Wonderful. And Nancy, did IFS fit well with all this background of yours?

Nancy: Yes, it does very much. And even my background in working with children and also when I was working with children, I was very interested in environmental education, because for me as a child, the environment had been such a safe and healing place, and I began to understand more and more about that and yes, so all of those things started to get integrated into my clinical work, especially with hypnosis and guided meditations and mindfulness meditation and in all the group work that I'd been doing.

Aníbal: Yes, it makes sense. So that was the 90s, I believe, when you met Dick and this model. And back then, the trainings were not the same way they are now. Right?

Nancy: I actually met Dick in the early 2000s and it was a little bit more structured by then, but not as much, certainly not, I've seen it evolve over the years and it's much more structured now and much more evolved and it continues to evolve.

Tisha: Will you describe how you started on the path to becoming a Lead trainer?

Nancy: Well, because I fell so in love with IFS, I did everything that came down the pike. I started going to really every program that came up in Massachusetts I went to. And I started being a Program Assistant after I did my Level 1 training and right after my Level 2 training. Then I started to become a Program Assistant and then I was a Program Assistant for many years. At that point, you couldn't really move up in the organization unless you were made an Assistant Trainer and they didn't need any more Assistant Trainers. So, there was sort of a bottleneck. So, I just became a very experienced Program Assistant. And actually, there are many people in this position, I think, around the country and in Europe now. 

Aníbal: Yes, there are.

Nancy: And so, I'm an advocate actually for helping people move up. But anyway, my path was to just keep going. And I also loved doing the trainings in Europe. So, I worked in Sweden and Ireland and I just completely enjoyed it. And I kept going back and back and back for all these different trainings. And then eventually there was a spot for me, and I was made an Assistant Trainer and I very quickly became a co-Lead Trainer and a solo Lead Trainer, and that over the years I've been doing it enough that now I'm a Senior Trainer.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Nancy: Yes, that was the path. And all the while, of course, doing my own inner work and my education has been as much personal as it has been educational. So, I used everything that I learned personally, gets incorporated into my knowledge of using the model.

Tisha: It sounds like IFS has really changed your life.

Nancy: It definitely has changed my life. The other thing that happened was I got sick in there. I got sick and I had a disease called psoriatic arthritis, which is very, very similar to rheumatoid arthritis. And it affects people who have psoriasis, which I had almost my whole life from the time I was a little girl...

Aníbal: Wow. 

Nancy: Which now I believe was very much from early dysregulation in my autonomic nervous system. And so, I got well from traditional medical interventions, but I could not get off the medications that I was on. And then once I started using IFS, I got off the medications and I went into complete remission. So, that's part of how I got into using IFS for, you know, incorporating it into my behavioral medicine practice, working with medical patients. I truly believe that people have the capacity to heal, even if whatever they have is something that is not going to be cured. I do make this distinction between healing and cure, and I think everybody can heal.

Aníbal: So interesting. So, Nancy, you really came into this special interest on IFS and adult health, as you say in your chapter, out of your own desperation? 

Nancy: Yes, that's right. Out of my own desperation and my desire to really feel like I had more freedom in my life and calm. I wanted more calm and less fear. I think that was it. And that I could feel my health changing with a reduction in fear. And what I say fear, I mean fear like all of the stress that we live with and all of those worries we have that we might not even be consciously aware of, that are, I think, more social in nature than physical. But of course, some of them are physical. But I think most of the fears in at least in the Western world in 2020 are more social and societal fears.

Aníbal: Yes, they are. Nancy, in this chapter that you published in 2013 in this book called The New Dimensions, the chapter titled strongly suggests that our parts play or can play a role or a part in our health. And in the field of health psychology, we usually see more about how much people can or cannot accept illness or how do we cope and deal with illness or how do we adhere to the healing processes. So, this is quite new stuff in the field of health psychology. We are talking of how we in IFS language, our parts trigger, maintain and exacerbate symptoms and illness. So, this is really, really new. Could you tell us more about this innovative approach?

Nancy: Well, basically, the way that I think about it is that our parts carry burdens from whatever negative experiences we've had in our lives and those burdens can cause health problems and from a variety of what I think of as avenues. And some of the way that they impact our health can be very direct because parts will use whatever they can use to do their job. And if they're a protector, their job is to keep our pain out of our conscious awareness and to minimize the negative effect of whatever pain or whatever burdens of pain we're carrying.

But some of the ways that parts do that will very directly harm our health. And their purpose isn't to harm our health necessarily, but they may inadvertently harm our health. An example might be firefighters that take on roles such as compulsive overeating or smoking or what I think of as health risk behaviors. That's a pretty direct way that they're not purposefully trying to harm our health, but that they are inadvertently doing that in a very direct way. There's a direct correlation between what they use to help us with one problem, which would be the underlying burden of pain, but causing another problem, such as, you know, contributing to emphysema or COPD and things like that. 

But there are also parts that will use the symptoms to actually do their job. And they might use the symptoms, for instance, to have more influence in a polarization. Like an example might be from actually the rheumatoid arthritis study. This is very frequent. It's not just relevant to rheumatoid arthritis, people with rheumatoid arthritis, because many, many people have this polarization. But a polarization between, say, a stoic manager that pushes through pain and a part that advocates for self-care or is feeling resentful of caretaking other people or of all the work that the other part is promoting. So, this polarization between working really, really hard and being really, really good and a part that says "hey, what about my needs? All these other people are getting all this stuff that I'm doing for them. And I need some, we need some of this in here." And that polarization, sometimes a part will use the symptoms to actually shut down that stoic manager so that there's more balance in the system between overwork and...

Aníbal: Make sense, yes

Nancy: Yes, just between overwork and the need for self-care. So that's an example of how a part might directly affect the symptoms.

Tisha: It's such a fascinating frontier, right? To work with health issues, with IFS. I remember practicing with someone who had...She had really severe IBS. And at one point I was like "We should just talk to this like a part." And it revealed that when she was growing up, the only room in her house that was safe, that had a lock on it, was the bathroom. And her brother was so violent and like all of a sudden, she was able to see this chronic health condition as a hero, almost, as the thing that gave her a chance to be safe for a little while. 

Nancy: Yes.

Tisha: So, it's such an admirable work that you're doing, just kind of bringing this synthesis of health and IFS together. Sometimes the body gets left behind with psychotherapy. 

Nancy: It does, yes. And what you're describing is a story that I've heard before.

Tisha: Is that right?

Nancy: It is, yes. And I think about the autonomic nervous system and our stress response system as actually when people are living with dysregulation, there can be a lot of distress in the bowel and in the gut, especially if they had early trauma because little kids are trapped. They are. And they can feel held hostage like I'm sure your client probably felt like she was trapped there. And when you're trapped and you feel powerless, there's a branch of the parasympathetic nervous system called the dorsal vagal system, which has a great impact on our gut and on our intestines. And so, many people that I've treated with IBS have early trauma. And when we work with those parts, we do begin to see a change. So, you know, I never know how much parts are involved until we go inside and find out, but they definitely, working with them and reducing the fear, reducing that internal dysregulation can really help with symptoms. But I appreciate that story that you're telling. I'm so glad that that person found you.

Tisha: Thank you. It was an illuminating session for both of us.

Aníbal: Nancy, you also say in your chapter that your framework for applying IFS with medical symptoms includes identifying and checking for parts who trigger or exacerbate symptoms, parts who maintain symptoms, parts who know something about improving or healing symptoms, parts who are fearful of improving symptoms and being well and parts who want to die. So, so many parts playing a role in our health. Why do they do that? I mean, their main purpose is to call our attention. Could you tell us more about this? 

Nancy: So parts that want to die, for instance, if they know that there is a way out of the pain that doesn't involve death, then and if they have hope that there is a way out of the pain, then they don't need to be triggering symptoms that actually can cause death. And they don't need to be involved in kind of a vision of the way out of pain to the death. They can actually begin to have hope and when they can hold a vision that change is possible and that life is more than pain, then it might be that we see a shift in the ways that they might be contributing to a health problem.

But some of this, what's hard to sort out is that some of this is direct, like there might be a part that wants to die and that's what it's going for. And sometimes it's that a part is so burdened from the past that it doesn't have hope about life being better. And there's so much dysregulation that there's this natural sort of response between what's going on in the autonomic nervous system and the ripple effect through the body that it actually does contribute to the symptoms and to disease. I mean, there's a reason why the ACE study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study found, and all of the research that it has spawned, has found such consistent correlations between early trauma and adult disease. And that is a direct correlation. The more trauma, the higher the likelihood that someone is going to have chronic non-communicable diseases in adulthood. And it's because of that ripple effect that burdens have in our internal systems and that so when we can find the parts that are either directly or indirectly affecting health, then we can actually help them heal. And that can put people on a healing path and a path of hope because IFS is all about hope and it's also about relationship. Now, I'm guessing the two of you and anybody who's listening knows that that moment when a part is aware that they are not alone inside, that there is a calm, kind presence that they can turn to that can help them. That is a very powerful moment in IFS therapy. To me, that's one of the most powerful moments in the therapy. And I emphasize this a lot when I'm teaching IFS because it's profound to realize that there is someone inside to turn to. And what I always say to my clients and to my students is that it's not mutually exclusive either. You get to have that internal connection inside between Self and parts and you get to have it outside with other people. And when people can heal from their early trauma and feel safe enough to create those kinds of connections out in the world and create those connections inside with themselves and with their Self, with between their Self and parts, then that to me is the most healing situation that someone can be in.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Nancy: So. I don't know if there's more you want me to explain about the ways, the many ways that parts can influence health, but part of it is just because of the burdens that they carry or because of the jobs that they take on to deal with the burdens that exiles are carrying. And some of those jobs are very costly. You know, anybody that's doing IFS therapy knows that when you're working with protectors, some of the jobs they take on can come at a very high cost to one's life and one's relationships, like, for instance, people who have burdens of not feeling safe. They're not only caring that lack of safety within their body and their physiological symptoms they're carrying that lack of safety out into their relationships in the world. And if you can help those parts feel safer because there's someone at home inside, and feel safer in the therapeutic relationship so that they can begin to connect with other people and realize that they have a capacity for discerning safe people from unsafe people and that their autonomic nervous system isn't so dysregulated that everyone feels unsafe anymore, than they can begin to create community for themselves and life becomes much easier and much more fulfilling. So I do believe that relationship inside and outside has placed an enormous role in healing and that when we find the parts that had taken on jobs under the worst of circumstances in our life and release them from those burdens, things really do begin to move into healing psychologically and physically.

Aníbal: Beautiful. Nancy, you just stress out the strong connection between trauma and heal.

Nancy: I do.

Aníbal: And also, you are talking on healing. Is that really possible, the healing? Or the healing you talk is it a cure? Or do you differentiate between heal and cure?

Nancy: So, in my mind, a cure is something that can happen as we find our Self and our parts, and they enter that healing relationship. And to me, that's a journey when we really get that we have a Self inside that is undamaged. And sometimes it's hard for people to even believe that because they feel so damaged. But once they realize that they do have an undamaged Self inside that is accessible and they experience the connection between their Self and their parts and are on that journey, in the development of that relationship, that's what I consider healing, because it's the beginning of someone seeing themselves as more than their pain, as more than their negative experiences. They realize that they have, that they are full of life and light and compassion, confidence and things that maybe have been previously inaccessible to them... 

Aníbal: And that they are much more than a part.

Nancy: Yes, much more than their burdens. They become much more than their burdens.

Aníbal: Yes, totally. 

Nancy: And they have, they learn a path through IFS therapy and the personal work that they do for healing the burdens. Because people often identify with their burdens. They feel like they are the burden. I mean, that's the nature of shame. So, when you can heal that kind of shame attached to identity and that kind of pain attached to identity, then that's what I'm calling healing. And even in like a medical, when someone has a medical problem, when they realize that they are, that they can actually help the parts that are afraid of the disease or the symptoms or afraid in general in the world, that's also what I'm calling healing, because calm and self-compassion increase at that point and possibility and hope opens. And that's very healing. And cure, in my mind, happens in the context of healing. It's not something that can be guaranteed, and I would never guarantee that, but it is something that happens. I myself experienced that with my own disease. I really feel like I do not have psoriatic arthritis anymore. I don't get even a little ache when it gets rainy outside like I used to. I just never experienced symptoms. It feels like it's gone. 

Aníbal: Wow.

Nancy: But not everybody experiences that. That took a long time. That took years for that to happen, for it to be completely gone. But now it is. 

Aníbal: It makes sense, yes. 

Nancy: But I believe that that would not have happened had I not entered a state of healing between myself and my parts and a healing between myself and the rest of the world, you know, where I felt less anxious, less afraid, where I could raise my hand and speak publicly, where before in my life I was too afraid to do that. I couldn't be all that I am until I could free my parts from the fear that they carried and the pain that they carried. 

Tisha: I'm hearing you say that healing incorporate social and cultural aspects as well.

Nancy: Yes, it is healing to me is a path that opens up. Yes, and it's a path that evolves over time. 

Aníbal: So, Nancy, it looks like that to you healing is much more a process and eventually a long process?

Nancy: That's right, I see it that way and that it incorporates many aspects of who we are and many aspects of our lives and with particular emphasis in my mind on relationship, internal and external relationship, because I see us, we're primates and mammals and we are relationally oriented. And if we're living apart in isolation because of fear that that actually...I think has a negative effect on our health.

Aníbal: Wonderful, Nancy. May I quote Dick? Dick says in his recent book, IFS Therapy, Second Edition, he writes as the title, “If parts started, they can often stop it.” And he says, in general “parts can give the client a headache, stomach pain, muscle clenching, back pain, nausea, exhaustion, the urge to sleep, a pounding heart, chills, numb hands and feet and much more. They can also send intrusive thoughts and images into the client's consciousness that cause physical responses. But when we ask them to be direct about their wants and needs, rather than hurting the client physically or taking him out mentally and when they believe we will pay attention to their concerns if they stop, dramatic shifts can take place.” Would you like to comment on this, Nancy?

Nancy: Oh, I completely agree with that. And that refers to parts that are directly and consciously, um, the part itself is using the symptoms or triggering the symptoms. That that goes back to what I said, when parts will use the symptoms to do their job. So, parts will use whatever they can to do their job to help us. And it's not because they're bad parts. It's because they're trying to help us in whatever way they can find. And when we can help someone connect with a part that's doing that, we can help them to find out why the part is doing that and show the part another way. That's why in IFS therapy we talk about being hope merchants, merchants of hope. So we offer the part hope that there is another way that isn't costly and that we can help make their job much easier if they will allow us to go to the exile that they're protecting and heal it so that they don't have to keep using the symptoms to do whatever job it is they're trying to do and free them from being locked into that extreme role. And parts are interested in that, even though they might be skeptical, and they need to experience it rather than just be told about it. So, I completely agree with that. And it's something that is very important for anybody that wants to be working with helping people with medical problems...

Aníbal: Makes sense.

Nancy: To find the parts that might be triggering the symptoms or using the symptoms either directly or inadvertently and offer them hope and an alternative which is basically healing the underlying pain and releasing the bird. And so, they're not locked into that same role.

Aníbal: May I go on and quote again Dick? 

Nancy: Sure.

Aníbal: Same recent book. This time commenting on your rheumatoid arthritis study that you co-authored with a central role I believe in it. And Dick wrote "as the rheumatoid arthritis study demonstrated, IFS can help with physical illness. Parts can often stop the physical symptoms they initiate. Additionally, some parts can help with healing. Therefore, hope is warranted on this topic. Nevertheless, we recommend a mindful approach with clients. Some will have the experience of being blamed for their illness by family, friends or treaters. And many will be hearing a lot of internal blame. When medicine is not curious about the inner system and its burdens would be healers run the risk of missing the message because they are trying to kill the messenger? In IFS, we invite the messenger and explore physical illness the way we always do, by asking. So, this is about the way you were describing your approach to health, Nancy. So, again, do you want to comment on this? 

Nancy: Well, I would say that in IFS, we find the deeper we go, the more we find that there is no one to blame and that every part of us has a positive intention. And I believe that with every fiber of my being. I've never met a part that didn't have a positive intention, even when it was a part that seemed frightening or aggressive in some way. That's just a very dedicated part that's trying to do a job, an unpopular job. And once you hear the story of the part, you find out that there really is no one to blame. So, I love that Longfellow quote, which you two probably have heard "If you could read the secret history of your enemy, you would find sorrow and suffering enough to transform all hostility." And that's my experience with IFS. Every part I've ever met, every story I've ever heard from a part has let me know that every part has good intentions.

Aníbal: Yes, exactly.

Nancy: And when you befriend them, that befriending is the beginning of healing.

Tisha: Nancy, you have accomplished so much as a psychotherapist as an IFS trainer with your contributions to IFS and health and your work with the rheumatoid arthritis study. Do you have any ambitions as to what's next? Are you involved in a new project or is there something that you'd like to see yourself accomplish?

Nancy: Well, I am in at the moment I'm writing a book on IFS and early trauma and health, so I want to finish that book. I had to take a break from it because I was doing the Continuity program for the IFS Institute, which is just about done now. So, my plan is to get back to the book. And so, I want to finish that because I really want there to be...And it's a manual. So, I want people to have a manual that they can use for working with patients and working with themselves around using IFS to help heal physical disease. So that's one thing. 

Aníbal: And that one thing is a huge one.

Nancy: It is a huge.... 

Aníbal: It is.

Nancy: That's a huge thing. Because everybody asks me, you know, is there a manual? And there isn't a clear manual. So, I'm creating the clear manual right now. And that's my biggest ambition. And then once I do that, I don't know. You know, I'm not, I'm somebody that knows that no matter what I plan, it never goes exactly the way I planned because life just evolves. It's I think John Lennon said "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Aníbal: Yes, I truly believe that too. 

Nancy: I really believe that. So that's what will come of that. But I'm looking forward to it. I think I might want to do more writing, but I don't know, we'll see. It's sort of a wonderful and torturous process for me.

Aníbal: I can relate to that. You will sit for long, long periods.

Nancy: Yes, that's for sure. Yes. That's my next project between now and the summer. I'm hoping to finish it. I purposefully didn't schedule another training until October, so for sure I get it done now. 

Tisha: Pressure's on.

Nancy: Yes. It's about half, it's maybe more than halfway done.

Tisha: Are you teaching any level 2's on IFS and health specifically?

Nancy: You know, it's tricky because in order to make it a Level 2, I have to submit a proposal and in order to submit a proposal, I have to stop my other projects. And so, I'm not ready to do that. So, I think I probably I mean, the two big interests that I have right now that are really near and dear to me are IFS and health. And also, IFS and attachment wounding. And I think that comes from...That grew out of the IFS and health and also out of my own personal work. But I really would like to do more work on IFS and attachment. I don't know whether I'll make those official Level 2s, but I will continue to teach them as workshops because people just need more IFS, whether it's an official level 2 or whether it's a workshop. But maybe one of these days I'll turn that into an official level 2. So, I have done...In a deepening and expanding workshops there's a little leeway to incorporate your own work. So, I've done that. I kind of include more about IFS in health in those, but I haven't turned it into an official level 2, but I actually am doing it as workshops. So, one of these days... 

Tisha: These topics sound great. We look forward to it.

Nancy: Thank you.

Aníbal: And we are planning together a workshop on IFS and health for 2021. I hope, Nancy, that we can keep this project alive. 

Nancy: Yes. Well, I'm planning on it. If you're planning on it then I would say it's alive.

Aníbal: Yes, it's alive. Nancy, regarding the future, where do you see the growing edges for the IFS model community in the future?

Nancy: Oh, I think it's probably it's to create trainings, to really grow the international trainings and I believe, and I've been working on this, is that people from their own countries in their own language need to become trainers. So, I think that that's actually one of the next things that needs to happen. And that's started, I think that IFS can be expanded into many spheres beyond psychotherapy as well. Like, I think IFS should actually be brought into the field of health... 

Aníbal: Of course.

Nancy: Which has already started. That started with the rheumatoid arthritis study. And I'd like to see that keep going. But I see it in many fields. You know, people are bringing it into schools, and I think it needs to keep going. I would like to see everybody think about there...I'd like to see this IFS model of the mind as us having multiple parts of our personality and every single person on the planet having a Self. I would love to see that become universal. 

Aníbal: That would be beautiful.

Nancy: That we...Yes, I mean, that's a pretty big ambition, but that's where I'd like to see it go. Because it helps so much to realize that it's not all of me, it's part of me and there's other parts of me. And when I make decisions or lead my life, I don't want to betray any of my parts. I want to listen to all of them. And I want them to know that I'm here with them and they're not alone and everything comes down and that happens.

Aníbal: Beautifully said. 

Nancy: Life feels much easier. 

Aníbal: Totally. And, Nancy, you will keep working on these empirical supported studies for the effectiveness of IFS?

Nancy: I will. You know, one of the things that I might add, it depends on how my life evolves, like I said. But one of the things that I would like to do, another research project. That was a pretty big research project I was working on that I thought it would take a year. But it turns out with a big research project, it takes more than a year and it takes a lot of time and dedication. And I'd like to do another one maybe after I finish my book.

Aníbal: That's my best hope also, Nancy, that we can sit again for another episode, maybe this time with a focus on this study of yours, the 2013 study on rheumatoid arthritis or any other topic. By now, just thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. 

Nancy: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. 

Tisha: This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

 

Recorded 13th March  2020
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Celebrating the Unburdened System with Mariel Pastor 49:03

Mariel Pastor is a Lead Trainer who began her IFS journey back in 1998. She trains across the United States and internationally and is widely known for her clarity, warmth, and humor.Mariel recently wrote and edited the new Level 1 training manual, and has created advanced workshops designed around the Unburdened Internal System mandala. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist she worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Her love of working with artists has inspired her most recent project called Character Mapping - a psychological toolbox for actors, writers, and directors to build deeper characters and to find them selves. In her private practice she works primarily with individual adults and provides consultation for other therapists.

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems Model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

Mariel Pastor is an IFS lead trainer based in Portland, Oregon, who began her IFS journey back in 1998 with Richard Schwartz. She trains across the United States and internationally, and she is widely known for her clarity, warmth and humor. Mariel recently wrote and edited the new Level 1 Training Manual and has created advanced workshops designed around the Unburdened Internal System Mandala. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, she worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Her love of working with artists has inspired her most recent project called Character Mapping, a psychological toolbox for actors, writers, and directors to build deeper characters and to find themselves. In her private practice, she works primarily with individual adults and provides consultation for other therapists.

Tisha Shull: Thank you, Mariel, for being here with us today on IFS Talks.

Mariel Pastor: I'm very happy to be here with you both. Thank you for inviting me.

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Mariel, for willing to sit with us. What parts come up today for you hearing this bio?

Mariel: Oh, I think I was, let me take a second and see, I think there's a polarization. There's both some pride around, wow, I actually have done some of that. That's a little doubt that there's some timidness, little bit of it. A little bit of shyness, like, oh, let's just do the interview. And then at the end there was, well, that just kind of says it all. I think we answered all our questions. Are we done?

Aníbal: We're done.

Tisha: Oh, thank you for the heartfelt response, going to your parts.

Mariel: This was a trap. If you did this to just get trainers on here and like, see they've got parts.

Tisha: That's right.

Aníbal: We need to have fun.

Mariel: Good.

Tisha: All trainers’ parts are welcome.

Mariel: Oh, good.

Tisha: Will you tell us about your journey to becoming a therapist?

Mariel: Sure. It's a great segway. My parts drove me to it and my Self was an exile. So, I was in the entertainment industry, as you read, I worked in the music business for a long time in Hollywood and had a really great career and was in entertainment in other ways before that. But I was hating who I was becoming. I was becoming aggressive, really competitive, frustrated a lot. And part of that's because of gender issues.

Aníbal: This was, Mariel, the movies industry, or it was the music business?

Mariel: The music business. And before music, I was in public relations for movies and television actors and things like that. And then I went into music because I had a background as a pop singer. I was a rock and roll singer in college and after college. And I don't know which parts of me ever did that, frankly.

Aníbal: But you did.

Mariel: But I know which ones had a hard time. Anyways, I didn't like who I was becoming. It drove me into therapy. And at one point I did some volunteer work. Cuddling babies in a hospital, and my therapist asked me, I just knew I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. And I felt so good doing the volunteer work. And I was trying to find a way out. And she said, well, have you ever thought about doing this, being a therapist? And I asked two questions. I said, really, do you really think I could do it? And she said, yeah, I think you'd be really good. And then I said, do I have to take entrance exams? Because I didn't want to go to school. And so that was my journey, my Self-energy, when I look back, there were only a couple people that I would be deeply revealing to, in terms of my spirituality, like really just a couple people. And then in graduate school, towards the end, Richard Schwartz had just started writing about IFS. It was in a few paragraphs at the end of one of my textbooks. And I just zoomed in on that. I thought, what is this? And then he wrote his first book a couple years later and I have tenacious parts. I thought, oh, he's at Northwestern university. I can find him. And then the rest was just the journey to become an IFS therapist really early on. I liked parts work.

Aníbal: That was the nineties?

Mariel: It was the mid-nineties. I was in graduate school in 93, 94, 95. I started seeing IFS written about a little bit in other books. And then his textbook came out shortly after that, his first textbook. And I was in the first training on the West coast in Seattle, which is three hours away from where I live. And I waited a long time for it. And I was doing IFS based on the textbook, but it wasn't until the training and having something big happened in my life where I needed inner work that I realized, oh, you can't learn this from a book. There's no way, you have to have a direct experience. And then that just changed everything.

Aníbal: And then you took the trainings?

Mariel: Well, yeah, it was in the training, that first weekend, coincided with an unexpected divorce of mine. I have a good relationship with my ex-husband, definitely, but it was a shock. And then a lot of losses in my life. And I don't know where I would be if I hadn't had this model and this community to help me through that. So, my parts drove me to become a therapist. My Self was in hiding and I made a big career change and was so lucky to find the IFS really early on.

Tisha: Yeah. You never had to unlearn another model.

Mariel: That's right.

Aníbal: A huge transition for you that time.

Mariel: That's right.

Tisha: What was the process of bringing your Self out of hiding, like?

Mariel: You know, it felt like courage. It felt like the clarity and courage, you know, we talk so often about different C words a lot, but for me, those two are really tangible in my body as well. And when I knew, when I was holding those babies, it just instantly, it's like, I have to do something of service. I love people. I loved music and people. And like, I don't know what else I'll do. I loved bringing music to people, but that wasn't enough. And it just felt so clear in me. And when I was getting ready to leave records where I worked, and again, I had a well-paying job and I went into social services where I made my expense account, basically. You don't make money as a new therapist, especially. But when I told them I was leaving, right before then, they gave me a big offer to stay. And I said, no, I can't, I can't do it. I actually stayed for about six more months to help a couple artists. I worked with Sheryl Crow really closely. So, I thought, okay, I'll stay for her, but that's it. I could not leave. So, to me it felt like, I need to have the courage to take this path, this step, even though I will make hardly any money. I don't know what the future will hold, and I never regretted it. Everything seemed to work well. And so, it just felt like I was going to follow my intuition versus some other false promise of success, which is what I felt entertainment offered.

Tisha: Wow, what an incredible journey and trust.

Aníbal: So, you have done some IFS, personal work or therapy as much as we are following you. And then you became a Lead trainer. How long it took you to become a trainer?

Mariel: Well, it took a long time. However, and it's true Dick... So, there were too many people. I was in like maybe the second or third training outside of Chicago where Dick was.

Aníbal: It was the beginning.

Mariel: At the beginning. And he was already working too much. And I remember telling him, you know, how are you going to do this? You know, this is a lot of work. He asked me if I wanted to be a trainer in 98. And I said, no, because I had too many parts that were insecure. I thought, who are you? This was the voice inside. Who are you to be a trainer or a teacher? You know, I just, I didn't have the confidence.

Aníbal: It was too early.

Mariel: It was too early, but it was also, you know, my grandmother's voice. It was, you know, don't be proud, don't shine, do not shine, keep it down. I just was too insecure. And I said, no, but what I told him I would do, I wanted to help promote the model and him, which was what I had background in from entertainment. I was good at promoting artists. So, I was involved with Dick and before CSL became CSL, just now the Institute. And so, I was helping move the model forward or trying to, even though I lived in Oregon and then suddenly there were a lot of people that were getting on the trainer track. Susan McConnell was already a trainer. Let's see, Michi and Dick, Michi Rose was my trainer with Dick for several years. And I was a PA. We didn't actually, in my training, we didn't have Program Assistants. It feels like when people say back in my day, we didn't have the internet, but we didn't have Program Assistants. Then there were Program Assistants in the early 2000’s. So, in 2006, I realized if I wanted to stay involved and connected to the community, I needed to be a trainer.

Aníbal: Yeah. You should move forward.

Mariel: I had to move forward. And by that time, there was a long line in front of me. And I was okay with that because I thought, well, I can learn from all the things they already discovered. They already did the hard work. So, I was an Assistant Trainer for a long time. The thing is there weren't that many trainings. There wasn't work for all of us. So, for a long time, there were more trainers than there were opportunities. And now it's the opposite. So, I became a lead trainer. I don't remember when, it might've been 2011, eight years ago, something like that, but there still wasn't enough work for a while.

Tisha: What do you enjoy most about being a lead trainer?

Mariel: That's a great question. I love, at the end of the training when, and we do usually in the States six weekends. So, it's a year, but I love at the end..

Tisha: I liked that model.

Mariel: Yeah. When you hear people at their graduation, talk about how much they've changed and how much more self-acceptance and understanding they have and the risks they will take to be very vulnerable in a training where, when you've met them on the first day, they were mostly trying to make sure they looked good. It's beautiful. I like that people make peace on some level and feel inspired to bring it elsewhere. Fantastic.

Aníbal: And you keep enjoying it. You do it a lot right now.

Mariel: You know what? I think I finally really enjoy it. People are often surprised, this is a confession, but I often say I could leave teaching tomorrow. Like, that early story I had about not wanting to be a trainer or a teacher. I never wanted to be a teacher. And yet, here I am doing, I never wanted to be a writer. I have done a lot of it. And while I'm teaching and training, people are always surprised. They're like, you look like you're having so much fun. And it's because I love people. So, to me, it's a relationship and I'm an extrovert. So, I can like a lot of people at once, but I also like to be in the garden alone. So, at this point, I think all my other insecurities are questioning. It was just doubt that I don't think needed to be there, but it was, I'm the youngest of seven. So, I'm used to having everybody else ahead of me. So then once I was in the leader seat, I'm like, really? So, at this point, I don't worry about any of that. There's been hard things that have happened in trainings. And now I feel, knock on wood, a lot more confidence and everything will be okay. One thing I love is that in my staff with Program Assistants, there are a lot of talented people in that group. So, I never feel like I have to know everything, ever. It's like, I have a team and we're all there together.

Aníbal: You feel well assisted.

Mariel: These are seekers and people who have a lot of experience. So, I don't feel the same amount of pressure to like, keep everything together.

Aníbal: And did you see the trainings develop? I mean, you are there since the beginning, almost. You saw some development on the trainings. How was it for you? I mean, the trainings are as good as they were even better than they were at the beginning.

Mariel: You know, the essentials have always been there. It's always been a mix of different ways of learning the model, a demonstration, practice and different kinds of experientials. And then some teaching, depending on the trainer, you'll get different combinations of that. They have different specialties. So now the way I look at it, it is we have a much bigger menu of items, because there's so much creativity, there's a big talent pool. So, the basics are there, the same mix of ways you learn, but it's so creative. And when I go to the conference, it just, it's reflected there. It's like, wow, IFS is still the biggest approach to the mind and to the spirit, with the mind and body that I've seen. I've studied other approaches since I became an IFS therapist, I have enough of a skeptic, or open-minded part that wants to keep learning. And it's still the best. I think or it's the biggest that many other things fit. So, the bigger the community becomes, the more creativity I think there is.

Aníbal: Yes, I totally agree.

Mariel: The trainings themselves, I really credit the early trainers with Dick, and him for being open-minded, but Susan McConnell and Barb and Kate Gardner and Cece Sykes, but Susan, especially coming from Hakomi, I think she really knew early on how to keep that balance happening. And she wrote the early, the first trainer manual. Yeah. I think it's always been there, and she had a lot to do with it, I think.

Tisha: I really appreciate how fluid and continually evolving the model is.

Mariel: Right?

Tisha: It's just kind of this open evolving, growing community

Aníbal: Yes, Art Mones calls IFS a metamodel. And I think he is right, is really a model that integrates so much of other models. So, it's huge, large and integrative. Yes. And creative.

Mariel: Very creative. And we can... I'm never bored as a trainer. I've been in now, I don't know, 25 or more level one trainings either as a, you know, my first one in the late nineties, mid-nineties, and then a participant as PA. But at this point it's been 25 or more level ones and I'm never bored. Every time I teach it, I just, there's a new angle or there's a freshness every time.

Aníbal: You keep enjoying the trainings.

Tisha: And you've brought recently a huge contribution in your collaborative work, in creating the level one Training Manual. Can you talk to us about the manual and the process?

Mariel: It was a lot gestation period. The baby is born, and it feels heavy. It's heavy.

Tisha: Oh yeah. You've got it right here.

Mariel: So, I hold it for the first time in my hands.

Aníbal: Congratulations.

Mariel: It came out. It was born two days ago, finally, and it it's heavy.

Aníbal: Long process.

Mariel: Long. So almost eight years ago, I was on the trainer council, which was a group of trainers that would talk with CSL about how things were going or the Institute. I was a member of that council for several years. And I had just known as a trainer, we needed a new manual for the students. It just wasn't serving us anymore. At that point, the existing manual was 10 or 12 years old. So, we came together. Then finally it was put on the list of priorities and a group of trainers got together. And so, Toni and Chris Burris and I think Nancy Sowell. Yeah. She was a part of it. Ann Sinko... anyways, a number of us, Paul Neustadt met and talked like a couple of times about how we should do the process. So, Nancy Sowell and I then worked on the learning objectives with Dick. And somewhere along the way, as Nancy and I were putting together the next phase of what it should be, we realized, oh, this is a bigger project than we thought, the trainers need a new manual and the participants need a new manual. And we realized, wait, we can't make that the same project. Those are two things. And we had been trying to make a trainer manual. Well, oh, wait, wait, wait, somewhere we got confused. So, we pulled it apart. So, this was maybe 2014 at this point. And we decided, okay, let's just get the one going for the students first. We'll get the trainer one. And then we had groups of trainers work on each weekend. And then in 2016, Nancy had other projects. She's was starting to look at her book that she was going to write, and I kept going. And then we brought another writer on named Jennifer Gauvain who's from St. Louis, Missouri. And she was on staff with me in Colorado. And I found out she was a published writer because Nancy and I discovered, wait, you can't just take all these pieces from all the trainers and put it together in a book for the students. There's no unified voice. I was naive. We didn't know.

Tisha: You discovered you needed continuity.

Mariel: Oh my God. Yes. After all, a couple of years work, we're like, oh my gosh, it's not going to be so simple. So, Jen and I started to try to piece it together. And then we had to start from scratch, and she is skilled as an IFS therapist, but she's not a trainer. So, I ended up writing it. We pulled together some pieces, what's central. And then I was so, I'm the principal writer, but we wanted pieces from other trainers to be sprinkled in it. So, Ann Sinko has a couple pieces. Pam Krause has a few pieces. Toni does, Nancy Sowell, Susan McConnell, for sure.

Aníbal: It looks like a book with chapters, but it’s not a book with chapters

Mariel: It is written. It kind of, it's written according to the modules of the level one training. So, it's module one, two, three, four, five, and six, and it's broken down. It's like a specialized workbook, almost like a textbook for the training itself. So, it talks about all the main things that people have to learn but with the voices of the trainers in it. And the unburden system, I would say weekends five or modules five and six have the greatest changes compared to the first manual. So, the first manual I think was about 30 pages and bullet points. This one's, I don't even know how many, this one's 200.

Tisha: Oh wow.

Aníbal: And how does this manual compare to the one that Frank Anderson and Martha Sweezy and Dick just published recently? I understood that this one is maybe for applying IFS to whoever needs IFS. And this one that you are talking is for training, for trainees.

Mariel: Yeah. You know, I should look at that one again, but Jennifer and I looked at that actually, since this project was so long, I remember when that was starting and they asked initially, if I would be a part of that, so I could help bring things from this. I said, oh, you have no idea how far behind we are. I said, I'm not ready. So, it's like, oh wow, they finished their book. Martha Sweezy is a workhorse. She's a writer, she's a real writer.

Aníbal: She's a writer. Yes.

Mariel: You know, I think they're companions in a way, but this one's really according to the training, that one's more overall on IFS and there might be, well, I would say also this one includes some pieces of Dick's new textbook in it.

Aníbal: The second edition, yes.

Mariel: And it's got some articles from him in it. So, I don’t know, this one has more of the voices of the trainers in it. This one feels about the trainings

Aníbal: Yes, it makes sense. It’s for the trainings. Yes. And I believe the one Frank and Sweezy is for applying when you apply IFS to yourself or to someone.

Mariel: Yeah. And they also have a different kind of focus on trauma. We do talk about it a little bit, but I think it's got some info... Well, Frank actually also contributed to this manual. He has a piece on neuroscience, but this one just goes along with the training in particular. It doesn't have as many of the exercises because the trainers will all be able to still have their own signature pieces, even though a lot of us use some of the same ones, but it does have practice sheets and different skill building sheets, like very specifically on unblending or very specifically on the flow of the model and unburdening or practice sheets for when you're in your practice session.

Aníbal: It looks like a huge change and a huge integrative work.

Mariel: Yeah. It's really big. It's really big. It's got folders.

Tisha: Oh, I can’t wait, it's going to change the nature of the trainings. People are going to really have a lot of clarity as they're learning.

Mariel: Yeah. And people come in knowing a lot more from the Online Circle also. And I, you know, I don't want it to be used as like, you know, the school I went to in grade school where you're reading it, you still have to get practice.

Aníbal: Of course, it's going to help so much, as I am seeing, the trainings and improve the trainings. So, this is so welcome.

Mariel: Good. And it will be translated into other languages. I don't know the schedule for that. And it's important to say that graduates of level one will have an opportunity to buy it.

Aníbal: Yes. That's important also. Yes. Wonderful. Well done.

Mariel: Thank you.

Tisha: You shared that you've added a lot more on the unburdened system and you also do a lot of work with the unburdened IFS Mandala. Can you take a little time to share about some of that and why that's important to you?

Mariel: Happily. So, the origins of that go back to a session I had with a client, an adult male who had opiate addiction, not severely, but bad enough that it was finally coming out in the open at any rate, he was looking at going into treatment for that. And he and I had done some deep IFS work and some couples work as well, but like a lot of addictions, this was secret. And I don't use handouts with clients, hardly ever. I don't teach the model for years. I didn't have a website. I just told people, I'll teach them how to listen differently to themselves, but he needed some explanation about, he needed some hope and he needed... he's pretty rational. He needed to see something in print. So, I got out the mandala, that diagram we use that has the burden system, which has also been rewritten and is in the new manual. But do you know the one that looks like the yin yang only it's got four sections in it?

Tisha: They use it in the logo now. Almost, a version of it.

Mariel: Correct. Correct. It used to be part of the original logo. So that was in one of Dick's books. Anyways, I got that out for him and I just kind of explained, you know, this is how their inner system works. And he said at one point, well, I totally recognize myself there, but what am I going to look like when I'm doing better? And I thought that's a really good point. Why don't we have a version of this when people are feeling better? What do our parts look like when they're less burdened? So, I procrastinated on that for about three or four years. And then eventually I sat down and kind of wrote what that would be and about... I don’t know, it didn't take long. My heart's just kind of inspired me. And so, then I called Dick or saw him in a trainer meeting, and I said, hey, I've been working on this. He said, that's great, we need that. And so, then he and I started looking at it together. He made a couple of really important contributions to it. Most notably, he wanted to make sure that the new Mandala that has the unburden version of our parts surrounded by a glow that suggests that we are all held in greater Self-energy, not only our own. So, what it means to me, and actually I'm remembering when I first met Dick in the nineties and I'm systems trained as a marriage and family therapist, we had a wonderful conversation about Holons. Do you know that term? It's H O L O N S. And that means that a part is within a part is within the whole, they all reflect each other. So, we knew that, you know, that each part has the gift of Self-energy in it because there's no separation, everything comes from consciousness. So that's what this Mandala reflects. We say, all parts are welcome in IFS. And we mean that. It's the burdens that are a problem. And we ask parts to unblend all the time. When is it okay for them to be blended? So, with this Mandala, it reflects, this is what it can look like in daily life. There's a caution, however, with it.

Aníbal: What is it?

Mariel: The caution is if you have a spiritual manager or a manager who really likes self-help and growth, don't let it roll it up because it's a poster. Don't let it just take this little mandala and beat you over the head with it. Why are you like this? Why don't you look just like it says on the mandala? It's because this is an ideal and, and we're all evolving and, you know, just hold it lightly. It's what's possible. If we're alive, there's more we can grow into, but it's light.

Aníbal: Yes, but it brings hope. And I don't resist to read a short header from it, it says the Self-led person looks and acts comfortable in their own being interacting with others from integrated parts and awareness. Parts work more closely together with fewer burdens causing them to overreact. Many parts may be released from protective roles while others will effectively protect only when needed. Over time the person is less easily destabilized and better enabled to recover from challenges. In general, the inherent gifts of each part are more available weaving in and out consciously. The Self-led person brings an abiding sense of curiosity, acceptance and an open heartedness to their relationships, naturally inviting others Self-energy to increase. Self-energy flows seamlessly within a person with a sense of connectedness to the Self-energy that surrounds him. So, this brings a light and the perspective of a landscape where we can be and feel, feels good. And I'm also wondering, do you have a radar for these unburden systems?

Mariel: A radar, I do. I sell it for 49.95. You can buy it on my...

Aníbal: That's what I'm looking for.

Mariel: But for you a special deal.

Aníbal: Let this wonderful Mandala shine. And I think we should read then unburdened managers, the unburdened firefighters, and the unburdened exiles. We should read them because they are so beautiful.

Mariel: Nice. And people can also download this for free on my website.

Aníbal: The unburdened managers it's beautiful.

Mariel: Okay. I should make one other thing around the language. Dick and I went back and forth a lot about, should we call them formerly burdened managers? Do we call them, you know, we didn't know, unburdening managers? And we just left it at this. So, it says unburden managers will take on a balanced approach to daily responsibilities. They're effective and collaborative, encouraging other parts in people. They advocate for growth and contributing talents. They can be lovingly parental and nurturing.

Aníbal: And it says that they are confident, cooperative, clear, discerning, helpful, creative in problem solving, competent and calm.

Mariel: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they can be other things as well as those descriptors, but in general, I think that's true.

Aníbal: Yeah and we need to connect with these qualities to be able to see them when they are in us or in the room with our clients. So, it's a very welcome description.

Mariel: And sometimes people in my trainings on the unburden system, there are different lengths. And I will talk a lot about Self-like parts. And sometimes they're in that realm. I mean, there's different degrees of awareness about them. But when some of our Self-like managers, I mean, mine say, where would you be without me? Why would you want to get rid of me? I can be helpful. And I say, you know, parts help other parts cope, but only Self can help parts heal.

Aníbal: That’s correct.

Mariel: So, coping isn’t a bad thing.

Aníbal: Yes. At all. Can I ask you to read for our listeners the unburdened firefighters?

Mariel: Sure. They signal Self directly. When stress levels are high, they use effective self-soothing activities and diversions. They add spice to life with passion and adventure, healthy risk taking and humor. They advocate for fairness and stand up to injustices. They learned courage and competence to act briefly in challenging situations. They can be courageous, adventurous, competent, passionate, creative, sensual, and fun.

Aníbal: Good to know. It's really good to know. I'm going to read the unburdened exiles. They are beautiful. They are tender and sensitive parts with childlike curiosity and delight, advocating for connection and care. They feel secure with the Self as primary caretaker, feeling freer to reach out to others. They offer intuitions about others' feelings, enjoy being open and trusting. They are tender, playful, spontaneous, open, curious, trusting, sensitive, warm, innocent. It's beautiful. Nice to meet you again.

Mariel: Instead of stepping back, let them step in when the time is, right?

Aníbal: Yes. Yes. We don't have to be afraid of any of these parts.

Mariel: No. That what basic assumption of the model is it's natural to be multiple. It’s good. It's useful. And we just spend time as therapists looking at how to help people heal. Well, healing is a process and along the way, we want to smell the flowers, right?

Aníbal: And is that multiplicity that your character mapping wants to bring to the acting? Can you tell us more about how did you...

Mariel: Just briefly,  I'll say that when I got to graduate school, after being in the music business, I kept giving some of the books I had to writers I knew, to actors I knew and musicians, and would say, use this for your characters. This is some insight about people's psychology. And I was really interested in personality testing and or typing systems. And I had the idea about, you know, I wonder if they use this, if they'd get psychology and MFA, Masters of Fine Art’ programs and writing programs. And I assumed they did, but then later I found out no, that actors, writers and other kinds of storytellers, directors do not learn about psychology. They have to go and figure that out themselves. They might know a little bit about Freud or Jung, but that was it. So, I created a kind of a mini graduate degree in systems thinking for storytellers. So, it starts with integral theory, but the heart of it is on what I call the system of selves, which is IFS. So, I teach this voice dialogue, which is parts work. So, I want them to understand the inner workings of the mind for their character's sake, but also to understand the characters, outer world too. So, their inner and outer world, but it's psychological tools to help them, you know, to build the character backstory, but also to use their craft so they can heal themselves. Because I worry about storytellers who are maybe taking on dark burdens of a character and not knowing how to de-role or how to get permission from their protective system, how to say goodbye to characters. So, I've got both sort of the teaching about psychology for their backstory, for the character, but also a lot of artistic health practices that involve mindfulness and it's involved. It's taken again a lot of time. Didn't want to be a teacher. Didn't want to be a writer. And yet here I am.

Tisha: Do you work with groups or with individuals through the character mapping process?

Mariel: I’ve done both. And I taught on the campus of the American film Institute in 2017. One of my participants from IFS training is a director, her name's Jen Kleiner, and she hosted me there, but I'm taking this. I'm almost done with my first 4-hour online program called The System of Selves. And it involves, like I said, parts work. And I talk about IFS and voice dialogue, also the Enneagram. So, I look at personality typing, actually in IFS we don't do much around pers... We don't do anything really around personality types. With Myers-Briggs or Enneagram, I do a little bit, you know, it's fine that we don't, you can apply it, but for a storyteller, they like that. So, I do individual consultations, but this will be sold as an online course because I can't be like Dick. It's not like Dick Schwartz in the eighties where there wasn't an internet. And he to go all over the world to try to bring this onto people. And I hope that IFS therapists at some point might go on and teach this

Aníbal: And how open are those writers and actors to this multiplicity that IFS is offering?

Mariel: They love it. They love it. And they're so easy, when you talk about Direct Access and, you know, just be that part, oh my goodness. They'll do it in no time, flat, actors especially. So, it's different applications depending on the type of storyteller, but they're very, very open to it. And they realize that if they don't look at their own story, who they are as a storyteller, if there are some parts of them that they don't like, they won't do it justice for the character. So, they appreciate that.

Tisha: It sounds like it's great for you to synthesize your former career and your current and still be of service. But, bringing this model outside of the psychotherapy world, it must be, it must be good for your system too.

Mariel: It is. It is, it was a surprise that it came back to me years later and I had to do a lot of inner work. I had a couple parts that said, why are you going back into the entertainment industry? We couldn't wait to get out. Why are you doing this? That, you know, there's so much narcissism there, vanity. And, but there's also good people. I know that. And honestly, I believe that the arts and storytellers are medicine for our cultures. If I want to help artists, I always have my whole, you know, I just have, they just seem so important to me. And I had a critic or somebody inside me that said, if you don't do this, it will come out somewhere else. It's so obvious. So, after that, I just got on board.

Aníbal: Mariel, what do you enjoy the most? You are doing so much. You are doing clinical work, I believe, training, writing, and also this character mapping. Is there something that you really enjoy the most or you enjoy it all?

Mariel: Well, I am an Enneagram 7. I am Myers-Briggs ENFP. So that means, like an Enneagram 7 or ENFP, we do lots of things. I do enjoy that all. I mean, I'm getting older, right? Like everybody else, but so I want to choose. I love, right now, this character mapping gives me a lot of newness. It's very fresh. It's a whole new challenge. And secretly, now it's not a secret if I'm saying it on a podcast, but I love helping the storytellers find their health. I like helping clients find their Self and their health, but it's really fun to figure out what makes a character crazy, I feel like I get to be naughty therapists aren't supposed to do.

Tisha: Oh, you like to excavate.

Mariel: A little bit, a little bit. Let's say they have this burden and now what would their managers do?

Aníbal: Oh, I see.

Tisha: Wow. There is a lot. Let's say frontierless territory.

Mariel: Yeah. We're going the opposite direction.

Aníbal: When you say a bit crazy, are you saying more human in a way?

Mariel: More burdened.  And how to reveal the burdens. I mean, it depends on the story and how big the character is, how much they're going to need it. It's fun to do. I don't know. I honestly feel like I had to do this, or I wouldn't... My guides, my inner system was awake. They were waking me up at night. Like you have to do this. So, I feel like just like the manual, character mapping. I don't want to die anytime soon, but once that's done or mostly done, I'll feel like why I was here.

Tisha: I really appreciate how much you model following your intuition, following your path, listening.

Mariel: It's worse if you don't. I know what happens if you don't, right. Don't you?

Tisha: Oh yeah. What do you see happening with the model as we evolve and grow and the model ages?

Mariel: Probably a big mix of things. I honestly, I think that's such a big question. I don't know, probably more creativity going into new areas, maybe more common areas. Like people being able to use this in everyday life and not having to be specialists like therapists or coaches. I hope it reaches the common vernacular. I hope it doesn't lose some of its initial threads through Dick Schwartz. I don't want to say purity because it's always evolving, but it's getting so big that I wonder, you know, it's going to change. And I hope it doesn't stray too far. Like to know what real Self is, Self-energy, which is not a black or white thing, but I don't know. I just hope that people really do welcome all parts and realize it's the burdens that are a problem and the polarizations.

Aníbal: We all would love to see that happen in our lifetime.

Tisha: I love the idea of it, of it entering households and just becoming part of common language, you know, affecting relationships, and, maybe, you know, even entering the political dialogue.

Mariel: I was just thinking that, I mean, because the activism, you know, it can be Self-lead and being Self-led does not mean saying... I mean on some level, yes, everything is just as it is. There's a greater mystery in the way I look at it, however, while we're here, you know, don't we want to, I would like to promote more connectivity and more peace and generosity than what's happening out there. It worries me quite a bit, but we've just had a lovely conversation and it's, but I'm with you Tisha on that.

Mariel: A beautiful sentiment, more connectivity, less polarization.

Aníbal: Yes. Much needed, yes. So, Mariel, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing. This model will work and our lives.

Mariel: Thank you so much for the lovely conversation.

Tisha: Thank you.

This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.

The Spiritual Practice of Self-leadership 51:18

In this episode Derek Scott describes how Self-leadership is a Spiritual Practice. The conversation includes a consideration of how all major world religions have at their core the desire for Peace; the calm of Self; and how Love may be considered synonymous with the term God.

In discussing the Self quality of joy, he draws on sacred music from different traditions to exemplify their commonalities and articulates how Self seeks to connect with the “Self-energy”, the happiness of the parts.

He describes the “miraculous” nature of Self from a part’s perspective and in consideration of the differences between Spirituality and religion clarifies how Spiritual teachers were mystics with direct experiences of the transpersonal. Religions then emerged around these teachers as structures with prescribed behaviours on how to be more Spiritual.

Ironically these man-made “shoulding” managers bring shame into the system, reinforcing the exiles beliefs and often resulting in parts that need to “try harder to be ‘good’”. This unsatisfying state of affairs that has religion(s) determining that we are somehow unworthy may account for why many seekers are following paths using Ayahuasca, MDMA, Ketamine, Psilocybin and other medicines in order to connect with their own direct apprehension of Love or God or The All.

In asking, “What’s Right with Us?” Derek describes the evolution of the Western psychological view of the personality; from behaviourism through the cognitive revolution to Maslow’s Humanistic 3rd force psychology to our current Transpersonal 4th force understanding of the psychospiritual nature of being.

He suggests we may all be tender souls manifesting through the human experience. And posits that perhaps we were given our parts to learn how to love them. As we learn that there is more Peace inside; and therefore more love and Compassion becomes available both for those in the inside world, and our fellow human systems in the outside world.

He leaves us with the radical notion that if Self does not die, the more we can identify as Self-led, the more we can perhaps embrace our eternal nature.

The Spiritual Practice of Self-Leadership
Full Transcription

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.

Tisha Shull: Today on IFS Talks, we are speaking with Derek Scott on spirituality in IFS. Derek Scott is a registered social worker and certified IFS therapist. He has founded IFSCA, a Canadian organization dedicated to furthering the work of Dick Schwartz and offering online courses in IFS, as well as in-person courses at his beautiful retreat center outside of Toronto - Namaskar, meaning “I bow to the form you have taken”. Derek has been published multiple times and presents regularly at national and international conferences and other venues. His contributions to the spiritual aspects of the IFS include a 50-minute video; Evolving Compassion, Personality and Spirituality, which to date has had over 10,000 views. Also, he's contributed an article entitled The Integration of Spiritual Experiences  available at the resources tab of his website.

Tisha Shull: Derek, thank you so much for speaking with us today on this exciting topic.

Derek Scott: My pleasure.

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Derek, for having us. Derek, this topic of spirituality is quite new and even scary for me. I have parts very curious, and parts in panic. It is an area of exploration and also of some misbelief in a way for me. And I feel quite polarized. I have parts wanting to explore and parts in disbelief and avoidance. You know, I was taught, as many of us, that spirituality is something above life on earth, above the body. And I was taught to avoid both emotions and body as a way of transcending life on earth. Meanwhile, I learned in my journey as a psychotherapist and a psychologist to embrace my body, my emotions, and I'm doing well, even better now. This being said, now, Derek, do you want me out from my body and the emotions back to the skies and the spirits?

Derek: How about if we bring the sky and the spirit through your body and your emotions, how would that be?

Aníbal: That feels good and interesting. Yes.

Derek: Good.

Tisha: It's so interesting to hear Anibal’s take, because for me, my spiritual practice is what led me into IFS. So, you have a nice balanced set of interviewers here with you today.

Derek: Aníbal’s presentation sounds like a very traditional Christian understanding and is the same for you Tisha or did you have a more Buddhistic?

Tisha: I really early on was introduced to yoga philosophy, Gurukula in a yoga tradition, which is very aligned with the model of Self. Finding that God dwells within you as you, is sort of a tenet of where my background was coming from.

Derek: Well, let's see if over the conversation, we can maybe integrate the two because I've been able to integrate the two quite well. So, let's see how that works for your polarization Aníbal.

Tisha: Do you think Aníbal and I will get along better?

Aníbal: Let's hope.

This is a difficult topic and nothing is written in stone, as Michi Rose would say. The use of guides in IFS is an unfolding adventure once we do not see nothing written in the IFS readings. I was checking, even with the last book, Dick’s book, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition, and the word spiritual doesn't appear as many times in these recent editions. And ‘guides’, the word ‘guides’ only appears as a word for orientations from therapist to client. So, it looks like there is no reference in Dick’s first book and this second edition, as to guides or spirituality. Even though the Self - there is a quote in this book that I would like to remind you of - Dick says the Self of IFS interacts with parts and is also transcendent as an entity, it's available to hear competing perspectives, to nurture and to problem solve. As a wave, it is one with the universe and other people as if at that level, all waves overlap in ultimate commonality. So, here the Self appears so close to spirituality, in many ways. So, my first question is how do you see Self-leadership as a spiritual practice?

Derek: Yeah, I like your quote from Dick, because that reminds me of some of the research I've done into quantum physics, which I'll come to a little later, but for me Self-leadership is a spiritual practice. They're not separate.

Aníbal: Okay.

Derek: I was also raised within European Christianity in England with the Church of England, Protestant religion. Fundamental to those teachings is that God is Love. Now, there were a lot of complexities added to that leading to in confusion and bewilderment. It has taken me a very long time to come back to that teaching. But if you take that as the basis of Christianity, that God is Love, that they are equivalent, then anywhere you see the word God, you can replace it with the word Love. And for people that get triggered by the word, God, that's actually very helpful.

So, if you look at the belief system that Love created us all, that love exists within me, that love is God, that God is Divine; therefore, Love is Divine. If we think of spirituality as being about the fundamentals of Love as an organizing principle, as the creative principle of the universe, I think it's a lot easier than all the trappings that go along with the word God. So, if Love created everything, then I get curious about when do I feel love? Because when I feel love, then I'm in the presence of the Divine. I'm in the presence of God.

And I think all of us can relate to feeling love. If you have children, the first time you saw your baby, assuming it was an uncomplicated birth, my guess is you had a rush of something which I would call love. If people have animal companions, when you watch them sleep, you may feel a rush of love for them. And that's, that's pretty uncomplicated. So, to me, Self is present there. Self loves unconditionally. And of course, we can manifest that love at any time, as opposed to seeking it. The seeking of Self is a part that's trying, or a part to believes it needs to search for it. And as we know, when the parts soften back Self is just available and therefore Love is just available.

Aníbal: Makes sense. Yes.
Tisha: You bring up a question in me around the relationship between spirituality and religion. How

would you describe that relationship?

Derek: So, if you look at the spiritual teachers themselves, if you look at Christ, Mohammad, the Buddha, all of these individuals had direct revelation, direct revelation of what may be called The All or Divine Love. They were mystics. All of these teachers were mystics. In Hinduism, as Tisha, you were talking about the yoga philosophies, the soul, or the Self is a spirit form or life force that only temporarily lives in the body. So, these teachings are consistent with direct revelation or a philosophical understanding of how Self, how Soul is manifested in the body. And then, of course these teachings became codified in religious teachings, right? And sometimes those religious teachers add their own... and that's where it all gets muddled up with power and control and teachings being manifested within a certain socio-cultural context.

So, you know, the understanding within a patriarchal culture is that God is therefore male, God is the father, right? And those understandings would be different in different contexts. For example, in First Nations beliefs in Canada, the language is around Great Spirit, Great Spirit does not have a gender. So, I think when the revelations of a teacher, of a master, get codified within a religion is when it becomes complex. And then the religion wants to offer rules, how to be, rules on how to become closer to that Master-like state. And many people like rules, there’s a feeling of certainty, right? However, when those rules turn into critical managers telling you how you should be (and if you're not, bringing judgment and then shame), well, then you're in the territory of managers, right? And those critical managers, as with all protectors, now inadvertently create what they seek to avoid. So, insisting on having the truth and then condemning others, right, is like condemning our own parts. And it takes us further away from the Self-led compassion.

Tisha: Mm.

Derek: And then we have other managers that come in. So now we've got internal managers saying that's not a spiritual way to be. That's not a Christian or a Buddhist way to be in the world. And they adopt practices to make us “better people”. What John Welwood would refer to as a spiritual bypass. Now this is predicated on the assumption that we are not okay at our core. And this belief is held by an exile and ironically can be reinforced by adopting so-called spiritual practices seeking to be redeemed from the unworthiness. And when those spiritual managers do that, they can be reinforcing the belief that the exile holds, that I'm unworthy, that I need to be redeemed.

So, I think that's why many seekers today are seeking that direct apprehension of spirituality that arguably Christ and Buddha and Muhammad and other masters, Abraham, experienced. I think that accounts for the interest emerging in ayahuasca and MDMA and ketamine and psilocybin and DMT, you know, the many medicine practices that people seeking spiritual experiences are engaging in because I think there's a, there's a deficit in many of the religions, you know, I don't need to be told by a religious teacher that there's something wrong with me. I don't need my homosexuality to be a fault or a flaw, right? So, it's a complex answer, but those are some of the ways I understand the relationship between spirituality and religion.

Tisha: So, spirituality through the IFS lens is direct experience of Self-energy...

Derek: Hum, I would say, yeah.
Tisha: Without locking by managers or having exiles pushing up.

Derek: Yeah. And I think, Aníbal, to speak to what you were saying, this is where, you know, the notion of what belongs to the body is not sacred, not spiritual. And we need to, we need to transcend, right? That's a very common spiritual interpretation. But if you look at the word trans, trans can mean, you know, above, but it can also mean through. And I think with the separation of, in the West, the separation in Christianity of spirituality, which belongs to the church only, and then psychology, which had to be a science. I think that's an artificial split and what we have with IFS is a psycho- spiritual model.

You know, in psychology, of course, we've got the history of cognitive psychology, prior to that behaviorist psychology... very, very limiting models of the human being. Then with Abraham Maslow, we've got third-force psychology, the humanistic perspective, which looks at Self-actualization. And then with the transpersonal psychologists, you've got the consideration of us as psycho-spiritual beings. And for me, when we're opening our Self-energy, we're opening to that field. We're opening to the, in the quantum realm, what's called non-local consciousness. And it's from there that we draw on compassion, and we draw that through us as well as manifesting it.

And I had a conversation with Dick Schwartz a few years ago about this. My interest in quantum physics led me to look at local and non-local consciousness, and local consciousness is where the parts can be considered to operate; non-local consciousness is the shared Self field. We all have Self- energy, we have the same Self-energy, and we all have different parts.

Aníbal: Derek, you said that one of the qualities of Self is calm. How do you see calmness as important spirituality? Are there other qualities or Cs from Self that are also spiritual?

Derek: They probably all are. But calm, I think is, again, if you look at, you know, many, many religious and spiritual teachings, they teach about peace. Peace is the goal, right? And peace and calm, of course, are synonymous, right? So, when I was a young man, my seeker part was very curious, looking at these different religions and different spiritualities wanting to know answers to the big questions; Why are we here? What's our purpose? And if you look at again, in Christianity we have “may the peace of God” or the peace of love be with you. That's an offering in some Christian services.

In Judaism we have Shalom. It means peace. In Islam salaam alaikum, excuse my pronunciation, but that means peace be unto you. In Hinduism, stillness is the altar of the spirit. That's Paramahansa Yogananda. Lao-Tzu the founder of Taoism in the Tao Te Ching describes returning to the source of stillness, which is the way of nature. The Buddha is quoted as saying “resolutely train yourself to attain peace.” So, peace seems to be foundational in spirituality and in teachings and calm is an aspect of Self and when we're in that place of peace and calm, then we can notice, we can notice the busyness of our parts, but we don't need to identify with them.

Aníbal: And also, Derek, on this video, this so much viewed video Understanding the Personality System, you mentioned Self as having the quality of joy, and that is not one of the eight C’s we are used to normally associate with Self...

Derek: That's right.

Aníbal: Can you say more about that?

Derek: Sure. Again, a few years ago I was talking to Dick and I was actually, I was talking to him about gratitude. And I said, you know, when I'm in the experience of gratitude it feels very much like Self, but it's not one of the Cs. And he just chuckled. And he said, they don't all have to be Cs. I just like alliteration. And if you, if you look at Introduction to Internal Family Systems, joy is specifically mentioned as an aspect of Self. And, you know, I look to sacred music, music from around the world, which in celebration of love and in celebration of spirituality is very joyous. You know, there’s a Christian hymn, you probably are familiar with at Christmas time, that sings “Joy to the world.” There's a Zemirot, which is a hymn, if you would like, in Judaism. And it goes like this: <singing>.

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Derek: And then, as in many Jewish Zemirots, it builds, and it goes faster and there's handclapping. But the meaning of that, is we brought peace to you. There's a well-known Sikh singer, Snatam Kaur. In Sikh religion, God cannot be understood, but can be experienced through love, worship, and contemplation. One of her songs begins “We are light, we are loved, we are peace.” Absolutely beautiful. And again, in celebration of spiritual truths. There's an Amazonian religion called the Santo Daime that has a hymn that sings: “Esta forca este poder, eu devo amar no meu coracao. Trabalhar no munci terra, a beneficio dos meus irmaos”. Which means “this force, this power, I must love with all my heart. We work on this earth for the benefit of our brothers and our sisters.” Again, you know, another spiritual truth. And that's a fascinating religion because all of their propositions of how to be with each other are channeled, these hymns are received by people that have no musical background, no musical training.

Aníbal: Can you imagine, Derek, how wonderful it is to hear you to sing in Portuguese?

Derek: Mm hmm!
Aníbal: So beautiful.
Derek: Brazilian Portuguese.

Aníbal: Brazilian Portuguese. Thank you so much.

Derek: You're welcome.

And it's another piece. When we look at, when we look at religion, we tend to think of the Abrahamic religions, and you know, the major (other ones) Hinduism, Buddhism. But if you look across shamanic

and tribal cultures in the Amazon, the heart of the Santo Daime religion is deep in the Amazon, a place called Mapiá. And there's a tendency in our Western overdeveloped world to look at shamanic and tribal cultures as primitive somehow. And that's the, largely the responsibility of academia, I think. When I studied social anthropology, I remember reading a text by an early anthropologist, Malinowski. He was an exiled Polish aristocrat. He was working in the Trobriand Islands and he published a book called The Sexual Life of Savages about the people he was working with.

Aníbal: Oh, wow. That must be interesting.

Derek: Yeah. And it was the beginning of the 20th century. It wasn't that long ago. So, this view of other 20th century cultures as somehow being primitive is pervasive, right? And yet, if you come to any of the Aboriginal cultures in Canada, the First Nations people understand that the red people, which is how they identify, have particular gifts, the white people have particular gifts. The brown people, the yellow people all have particular gifts. The red people in Canada have the gift of looking seven generations back and planning seven generations forward, the Aboriginal people in Australia and any indigenous cultures know about the weather. They know about how that impacts the animals. They know about how that impacts farming. There's so much wisdom and understanding, and that's an integrated spirituality. And their understanding of worship, their understanding of celebration, you know, all can be considered spiritual paths and spiritual truths, which all have the same root. You all have the same root of love, of peace, of caring for each other, or the desire for peace.

Aníbal: Derek, you are talking of love, calmness, peace. And, what is your understanding of how Self heals? Is it not Self-compassion that heals? The healing element in many models like IFS?

Derek: So, here's my understanding of how Self heals. So, for me, you know, Self comes into the world of the parts. And if I do that in my system, I'll look around and I can say: who's up? Oh, my planning part that was up this morning, planning what to do for this podcast. So, if I say to the planning, how are you doing? He gives me a high five, because he’s doing great. He loves his job. That's great. And then I might come to my part that's planning a meal for tonight, my cooking part. How are you doing? Thumbs up! We've got the ingredients, we're good. My dog walking part. How are you? Yep. Great. We took the dogs for 90 minutes today. They're great. If we come to a part who is a perfectionist? How are you doing? Oh, I'm okay. Oh, you don't sound okay. What’s up? And this is the, you know, the Self-lead curiosity, it's that simple.

You know, we want our parts to be happy, if they're not, we get curious about them. And if I do, if I bring my curiosity to this perfectionist part and I ask how come you're not so happy? “I'm really busy.” Okay. Well, tell me about yourself. And as you know, we do the Self-led inquiry. Let's flip it. Let's look at this from the perspective of the part.

So, let's say I discover that this part starts off in my system when he's 12 years old. So, he's busy, he's doing his thing, right? He's a busy perfectionist part. And then suddenly I appear, and he might say to me,

“Why are you here?”

“Well, because you got my attention, you got my attention with your unhappiness and I care about you.”

And he might be suspicious. “Well, I'm really busy right now.”

“Oh,” I might say, “what are you up to?”

“Well, I'm trying to get everything right. I have to do my best in school to please the teachers, but be careful not to be a teacher's pet because then the kids won't like me and I have to figure out who to hang out with so I'm cool. And then I've got to make both of my parents happy, even though they sometimes want different things from me.”

I might say “that sounds like a lot.”
“Yeah, it is. That's why I'm too busy to talk to you.”
“Oh, got it. Okay. Sounds really important to do all this for you. How come?” I might say.

“Well, if I don't then my little brother over there, (he's pointing to another part) he's seven. He'll get really upset. He thinks he's really bad. And he hates it when we get stuff wrong and people are mean to us. And when he gets really upset, sometimes the scary one comes in and it says, maybe we should just kill ourselves.”

“Well, that does sound scary, I would say.”

“Yes,” says the little part.

So, of course, as we know, as we bring Self into the parts and we get to know them, we can offer them, Self can offer them healing. And from the perspective of the parts world, that's a miracle, that's actually miraculous, right? If you wanted to define a miracle as a surprising and welcome event, that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a Divine agency, you can look at a miracle in that way.

And if you're in the world of the parts, suddenly Self comes in, that little seven-year-old that hates to be blamed Self can listen to, Self can take somewhere else in the world. Self can come in and intervene with anyone that's been unkind to that little part. If, for example, you were coming into the world of the parts and you found out that you couldn't get to that seven-year-old because there was a big sea in between you and the seven-year-old. Well, how could we get to the seven-year-old? We could part the seas. So, we could just push the sea apart in the internal world and create a pathway. That's Old Testament, miraculous stuff.

And in the world of the parts, that's what can happen. As you know, this is what happens when we come in, when we bring our compassion and when we facilitate the transformation of the parts and the roles they've been holding. The analogy to me of Christ's coming into the external world and teaching compassion, and the stories of the miracles and the stories of the miracles in the Old

Testament, is a fascinating parallel to me. And this is what Dick calls the laws of inner physics, how we can do these incredible things in the internal world

Tisha: Derek, Aníbal and I just came from an incredible level 1 training in Portugal, and a lot of the participants debated, you know, in smaller groups over the question, what is the Self and how do we access it? And so, I know this is maybe backtracking a little bit, but how do you respond to that question? What is the Self and how do we access it?

Derek: I would probably respond which parts are asking that question?

Tisha: These are confusing, big, heady figure-it-out parts
Derek: Yeah. There you go.
Tisha: For sure. That want to kind of debate and grapple.

Derek: So, if I have those parts in myself, Tisha, not to trivialize what you're saying, but what I noticed that I can just bring my love. They're amazing parts. I actually, I, of course I have those parts. They're amazing. They're beautiful. I can love them. The moment I'm doing that I'm in Self. I have a lot of Self-energy and the questions become almost irrelevant. You know? So, somebody once said to me, I like this, because we were debating, I had my debating part up, “Oh, what does Self, blah, blah, blah.” And they said, it's the one who breathes. And I liked that, you know, from a meditative perspective, I like that. Who am I? I am the one who breathes.

Aníbal: Coming back to this video of yours Evolving Compassion, Personality and Spirituality, two questions around this wonderful video. One is why, what made you pick that title? And the other is, you said at the beginning of this video that we are spirits with a human experience, and not humans wanting a spiritual experience. What exactly did you mean?

Derek: That's a quote from Teilhard de Chardin who was the spiritual teacher, a Jesuit priest from the 1950s and his teaching is that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are not human beings seeking a spiritual experience, we were incarnated as spiritual beings. And the title for me about evolving compassion, when I first came across the model, I commented to Dick that it seems both revolutionary and evolutionary. It's revolutionary in terms of psychology, because it brings in Self and it starts on the premise that there's nothing wrong with us or with any of us. So completely non-pathological, and evolutionary in terms of consciousness, right? Pierre de Chardin said that evolution is an ascent towards consciousness.

And if we're raising Self-lead children who become Self-lead parents who welcome their children and all of their parts into the world, that looks very good for us as an evolving species, I think, when we're not raising our children from shaming parts that have been internalized from our own parents and passing down those, those wounds, right? So, my belief is that we're all tender, tender souls manifesting through this human experience.

At a level 3, one time I was asking Dick Schwartz about guides and he said, he's interviewed many over the years. And consistently they say the earth, this earth is a hard school. And so it makes me

wonder, you know, perhaps we were given our parts to learn how to love them, because once you, once you love them, as you know, there's more peace inside and there's more love and compassion available for the outside as well. I think particularly these days, you know, in North America, there's a lot of people referring to our global crisis as the end times, which I understand, but I also consider it more as a catalyst or a call to evolve. And whatever is going to happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years, our capacity to meet each other with greater compassion will help us all to get through it. So, these may be beginning times. The author, Richard Bach says what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Aníbal: You just said that IFS is a non-pathologizing model. How would you comment that from a spiritual perspective?

Derek: I think when we start to look at what's right about us, I think that opens us up to a different consideration of a human experience. So, we start from the basis of there's nothing wrong with us. And we look at parts that are having extreme behaviors. We get curious about them. We help them to heal. So, they no longer have to engage in those extreme behaviors. And then when we open to the inner world, as you know, we find guides sometimes, unattached burdens, intergenerational legacy burdens, sometimes malevolent entities presenting. My friend Robert Falconer will be presenting an online workshop in April, Friday, April 17th. If people are interested in that they can come to my site, it’s going to be three hours looking at some of these aspects of the model of what happens when we go inside.

And these understandings of, you know, spiritual forces interfacing with us, they're not new. If you've ever read or seen the play Macbeth, Shakespeare's Macbeth, there's a line from lady Macbeth she's

asking to be made so that she does not feel, because she has to support her husband in his desires. But the line she says is: “Come, ye spirits that do tend on mortal thoughts, and unsex me here”. So, she's asking to be made less of a woman, but she's calling on spirits. She's calling on the spirits that are present to help her do that. So, when Shakespeare was writing, this was a common understanding, which was sort of lost, but it still seems to be present when we go into the internal world, the non- pathologizing aspect too, when we look at connection, another of those Cs, were connected to all.

And when we have a lot of Self-energy, and I'm sure you two know this from your own experiences, we feel that connection to everyone or Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing, you know, and that can bring its challenges because then from that felt sense place, you know, your starving children are my starving children, those families being turned back at a border and left to die, are my family members being turned back at that border and left to die. And that can bring a whole bunch of parts, empathy, powerlessness, despair, and it's important to attend to all of those parts so that we can also take Self- led action. We know from the place of Self, we know when things are out of balance, we know when things are unfair, internally and externally, and we're motivated to fix that balance. And again, from a spiritual perspective, if you look at this model, Dick describes it as a fractal model because parts have parts as you go in. As you come out, well, what if I'm a part? Tisha what if you're a part? Aníbal what if you’re a part? What if every human being is a part?

Aníbal: Of a larger system?

Derek: Well, maybe, and then maybe Self is coming in to help us all in our world of parts.

Tisha: That explains it all.
Derek: Doesn’t it? Isn’t it a nice way to get it?

Tisha: Derek, with these more progressive, if I could put it that way, ideas around spirituality, the guides, the legacy burdens, the malevolent entities, where do you stand, or where does past lifetime experiences or burdens fit into your concept?

Derek: Well, I've worked with a number of people that have parts that present that seem a little out of sync with their present-day reality. And so, when I invite it to get curious, so sometimes a part, you know, how long is that part been around? If it's a part it will often say, since I was five or my whole life, or sometimes in utero, you know, if you've got an unwanted pregnancy, there's often that feeling of not belonging, we'll track back to in utero. The sense of that, that part has that consciousness, but sometimes forever.

Well, what does it mean by forever? Hundreds of years? Oh, isn't that interesting? So, let's stay curious. Let's get curious about that. What was happening hundreds of years ago? And it may present as a past life part. It may present as what I call a passenger, just a being who's got the attention of this person and for some reason is still connected, or has become connected to this person's system. I was working with someone once and we tracked a part. It was cold. Its initial presentation was that it was cold. And then it turned out to be a part that was older than the woman I was working with. And it was a woman who was dying, and she was freezing in the desert overnight. And she was so cold. She wrapped herself around herself, shivering right in an attempt to keep warm. And she was so bitter. She was so bitter that she was dying that way, that she turned her back on God, in her language. And what felt unresolved for her was that she turned her back on God. And as my client was listening to her with her compassion, the last piece of that was that the sun came up in the desert. And started to shine on the woman's back, and as she was dying now, she had the insight that when she turned her back on God, God warmed her back. And then she was able to be released from my client's system. And she flowed wherever she flowed to as a consciousness, as a soul, as a spirit, back into the universe, it was a remarkably beautiful session to witness.

Tisha: Wow. It impresses on me the power of the need to heal.

Derek: Yes.
Tisha: It’s incredible.

Derek: Yeah, yeah. And it seems, it seems that what can be unresolved, just sort of hangs around or may attach to another human being until it gets resolved. And we have the capacity as human beings to do that. When we open to that compassion flow.

Aníbal: Derek, I understood that you need to build on Self. You need to build the most Self possible to connect and find guides. And I'm wondering, I need a radar for parts and a radar for Self and a radar for guides, but I understood that there is some opportunity for guides when we have the most Self

possible. How do you differentiate guides and Self? How much do they differentiate, because somehow Self leads us in many ways, but the guides also can lead us. So, there is some difference between guides and Self for you?

Derek: Yes, there is. Well first let me just backtrack a little bit. There is an assumption and it occurs in various forms. There's an assumption that we somehow need to build more Self-energy, like it's a muscle, right? And you know, a lot of Buddhist practices, a particular form of Buddhist practice, for example Metta practice, is wanting to build more and more compassion. An IFS understanding is that as soon as the parts soften back Self is there. It's available at any moment for anyone. It doesn't need to be built. And again, that sense of needing to build more compassion can be predicated on a sense of, “Oh, I'm not good enough yet.”

Aníbal: Yes, it’s tricky, yes.

Derek: So it can, that thinking can be informed by an exile, so, I just wanted to speak to that piece. And in my experience when guides show up in working with clients, there's no rhyme or reason that there's not a client that's particularly more “spiritual” than anybody else. We're all equally spiritual. And when they show up, I just give the session over to the guides because I'm humbled and my assumption is that these beings have shown up with their own wisdom because they inevitably have something to offer. So, I just pull back and ask the client, usually, how come the guide is here? What's it here to do? What other information does it have for you? Does it want to be available for you in any other form? It's a very helpful way to help clients to integrate when guide, show up.

Now that said, I just want to be clear that we're not talking about some sort of new age belief system where, you know, Oh, I ask my guide every morning, you know what I should have for breakfast. There's a lot of false teachings, particularly in the new age movement, and I don't want it to confuse those two things, right? So, my experience of guides when they show up in a client system is that they're clear, they have something to offer often. There's a sense of warmth, of love, of letting the client know that you're doing great, all is well or shall be well, and often some specific healing that they bring in.

Tisha: Do you ever intentionally invite them, or is it that they show up when there's space?

Derek: In my experience is that when they show up, I bow to them and give the work over to them. I'm not in the habit of inviting guides in. If I have clients who are aware of their guides, we may start a session just by inviting the client to invite their guides. If that fits within their cosmology.

Aníbal: Derek, you are organizing this workshop with Robert Falconer on guides and spirituality, do you want to tell us more? And I will be assisting because I have so, so many questions around guides, how many types of guides there are, and then what for can we use them, who should guide us, the Self or guides? How much do guides and Self overlap? You know, I can imagine, I have so, so, so, many questions around this, but tell us more about this interesting workshop with Falconer.

Derek: Well, it's his area of specialty, so I don't have a lot more to say, but I'm not quite sure what he's going to be presenting, but what I will speak to is early on in the IFS work, Dick Schwartz and Michi Rose were leading the work and Michi was the one who still has a lot of expertise on guides.

She often presents at the conference, the annual conference, and some of their early discussions were around this. Do we want Self to be doing the work? Or do we want guides to be doing the work? And Dick's preference is that Self is doing the work because Self is available and accessible within everyone. Guides, maybe, I'm not sure, but certainly Self is. And the whole understanding of Self- leadership is that we are leading from our best place. We are leading from our compassion. We are leading from our connection to what we can call spirituality, and we do call spirituality. And yet, perhaps it's no more than just who we are.

Aníbal: Yes. Makes sense.

Tisha: I wanted to ask you about a few paragraphs I read on your amazing article, The Integration of Spiritual Experiences, which is on your website. I wanted to ask about spiritual emergencies, just a little bit about what they are and how you came to understand them. If you've had one yourself or...

Derek: The term is Stanislav Grof’s, who pioneered a lot of work with LSD. And then when LSD became unavailable, it was made illegal, he continued to work with breathwork, with holotropic breath work. And what he noticed was that people would have experiences that were clearly out of the ordinary consensual reality realms. And he coined the term with two meanings, a sense of emergency, urgency, what is this? Worry, fear, anxiety? What does this mean? How do I integrate it? As well as an emergence of sometimes very powerful immediacy of a connection to spirituality.

So, as I mentioned earlier, seekers that are using Ayahuasca, MDMA, DMT, ketamine are often taken into the transpersonal realms. And in those transpersonal realms, they have experiences. You might, for example, in a transpersonal realm, have an experience that you're perfect. You're perfect. And everything is perfect. And the universe is unfolding perfectly as it is. And then when you're no longer in the transpersonal realm, the managers might come in, the critical managers, and that doesn't fit there. That doesn't fit that perspective at all. So that's where they can invalidate what can feel very much like truths that are coming through. “Oh, you're not perfect. Look at these horrible things you do, look at how mean you were to your mum last week. You know, that's just the drugs talking. You shouldn't be taking drugs anyway. What's wrong with you.”

So, you know, if there's an understanding from a spiritual or a cosmological place, if teachings are received, it's helpful to be aware that our managers can come in with these invalidating responses, these kind of contracted responses so that we can then come to our managers and say, “What's the worry? What’s the worry? You know, if I do hold that my being, my nature in the world is perfect what's the worry about that?” And the managers will tell us what the worry is, and now we're working from the place of compassion with our managers. So, it's a very helpful model, the IFS model. So, facilitating the integration of transpersonal experiences I believe, and what we might call spiritual emergencies.

Tisha: Aha. So, like a conduit from the maybe traumatic nature or the intense nature of those experiences into something that we can synthesize and use.

Derek: Yes. As opposed to when Grof was writing his book, Spiritual Emergency. At the time people would have these experiences and they go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and they'd be told “You're hallucinating”, they’d be pathologized. You know, “Why were you taking drugs in the first

place?” Which didn't help, did not help with the integration of these experiences. Right. Whereas IFS offers us an understanding of how to integrate higher truths, if you like.

Tisha: Beautiful. Good, well put. And have you, did you have a spiritual emergency experience?

Derek: I wouldn't say an experience which felt like it was an emergency in terms of a panic or crisis, but certainly I've had experiences of... I mentioned earlier, years ago, I asked Dick, you know, what, what about gratitude is that part of Self, you know, my good learning student part, but what informed that was, I've been working with my parts for years and this particular period in my life I remember I was walking my dogs in the park and just saying thank you, thank you to my parts. And then thank you to my creator, and just thank you for my life. Thank you for my child. Thank you for my parts. Thank you for my animals. And I felt very overcome, and had to look around because I began to stumble and I had to hold myself up on the gate post and I was just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, with an experience of gratitude that filled my being, and it felt like it went through and beyond. And there was this wave of gratitude, and this particle of gratitude at the same time. So that felt like an emergent understanding.

And it's become a practice. My parts love to be thanked and I love thanking them. And when I thank them, they thank me back. And, you know, riding this wave of gratitude is a lovely way to engage with life. You know, and it's not always present. I don't want to offer this false, potentially false assumption that, you know, you hit this peak of Self-energy and you stay there forever. That's not the model. You know, I could be riding along with gratitude for a while and then I'll get scared, and I'll be scared for a bit. And it takes me a little while to realize, “Oh, that's a part holding fear. Good. Thank you for letting me know about yourself.” And then I'm back in the gratitude. “How come you're frightened? What else did you want me to know?” But prior to that recognition that it's a part, I'm frightened. It feels like I'm frightened, I'm blended with a scared part or I'm angry and blended with an angry part. And then once I get curious about it, I've got it back in the saddle again, I've got more Self-energy again. So, it seems to be as a process of Self-leadership, I have more Self-leadership for a period of time. Whoops, trip over, part gets my attention. I'll bring my attention to it, more Self-energy. And so, it goes, so it feels more like an undulation or an expansion contraction or a pulse or something like that. But I don't want to get this false assumption that we strive to reach a plateau of Self-energy and that I've achieved it. And you know, it's not that at all.

Aníbal: And then you stay there.

Derek: And then you stay there. When we have those moments, those moments of, what Maslow would call Self-actualization, of gratitude, of joy, of looking at our child and almost feeling overcome, that I think is a state of our true nature. Self-lead humanity.

Aníbal: Yes. Derek, this is such an interesting and exciting conversation, but we are coming to a close. Are there any final words that you'd like to say?

Derek: Well, here's something fun to consider, right? So, as we know, we've got all these parts that have to play as I, you know, “I'm scared”, “I'm angry”, “I'm a perfectionist”. But if we shift our I to the place of Self, if that's our identity, well, then Self doesn't die, right? Self is eternal. You know, if Self is having this human experience and then moves on, then I don't die. That's kind of nice.

And there are parts that are fearful of death and transitioning from this form. Self can attend to those, but if Self doesn't die, if I am immortal, Tisha if you're immortal, Aníbal if you're immortal, a lot of those worries and all that death anxiety that Ernest Becker has spoken so well about, doesn't need to be present. It's held by a part. And if you look at terror management theory, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's the understanding that our biggest fear, it’s a Neo-Freudian view, our biggest fear is death anxiety. And when we look at immortality systems that we create to mediate that fear, if you have a different immortality system to me, then that's a threat to my mortality system. And this is the basis of jihads.

The firefighters want to eradicate the other belief system because it's a threat. Well, if I'm immortal, and you are immortal, and your religion has a different take on all of that, there is no threat. So that's fun. Yeah. And you know, this is where, you know, fundamentalism is so connected to fear, right? And connected to firefighter activity. And we see that in any kind of fundamentalism. I was talking with Dick about the experience of a guide coming back, who was a deceased mother. And he tells me that, you know, post-death, we leave our burdens behind. And if we're available to return, we do so as pure Self and often can come as a guide.

But what I would like to leave you with is my favorite quote is an Indian philosopher, Sri Aurobindo, who was born in 1872. And one of his books is called: The colors of infinity. And this is my favorite quote. What? You ask, was the beginning of it all. And it is this, existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless, trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.

Aníbal: Beautiful way to end this episode Derek.

Derek: Thank you.

Tisha: Thank you for sharing all of your insights. It makes me just have more and more questions and want to hear more, but hopefully there'll be time for that.

Aníbal: It was a joy, hear the word, a joy to be here with you and Tisha again, and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives.

Derek: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Remember, “Esta forca, este poder...”

This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.

 

Self-led Grieving with Derek Scott 57:55

Derek Scott is a registered social worker, inactive, and certified IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapist with an international online practice based near Toronto, Canada. He is the founder of IFSCA– an organization dedicated to bringing awareness of the IFS model to counsellors and therapists in Canada and beyond.Through IFSCA he offers courses teaching the IFS model online and in person at his retreat centre, Namaskar.Derek has worked in the field of counselling/therapy for over 35 years, including 15 working exclusively as an IFS therapist and for 18 years as an AIDS counsellor specializing in multiple losses. He is a popular guest lecturer in the department of Thanatology at the University of Western Ontario and has presented at numerous national and international conferences.Derek also has a YouTube channel dedicated to IFS, featuring over 40 free videos;It has 5,000 subscribers and has had 400,000 views.Derek can be reached atwww.IFSCA.ca

 

Full Transcription

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. Today on IFS talks, we have the pleasure of interviewing Derek Scott. Derek Scott is a registered Social Worker and certified IFS therapist with an international online practice based near Toronto, Canada. He is the founder of IFSCA, an organization dedicated to bringing awareness of the IFS model to counselors and therapists in Canada and beyond. 

 

Through IFSCA he offers courses teaching the IFS model online and in person at his retreat center, Namaskar. He has the highest level of IFS training, Level 3, three times. Derek has worked in the field of counseling and therapy for over 35 years, including working exclusively as an IFS therapist and for 18 years as an AIDS counselor specializing in multiple lawsuits. He is a popular lecturer in the Department of Thanatology at the University of Western Ontario and has presented at numerous national and international conferences.

 

Derek also has a YouTube channel dedicated to IFS featuring over 40 free videos. It has five thousand subscribers and has four hundred thousand views. Derek, thank you so much for being here today.

 

Derek Scott: My pleasure. 

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Derek. It's wonderful to sit with you again. We sat some time ago, maybe two years ago or so. And I enjoyed so much, and I learned so much from you. At that time I was just beginning with IFS. Derek your published work includes Self-led grieving transitions, loss and death in the Innovations and Elaborations from Martha Sweezy, Ellen Ziskind, Routledge Edition 2017. Healing Through Internal Compassion in Techniques of Grief Therapy with my good friend Robert Neimeyer, another Routledge Edition in 2015. And also, Grief and Internal Family System in Principles and Practice of Grief Counseling, a Springer edition in 2012 and yet Multiplicity and Internal Family Systems Therapy in Psychologica, 2011 and also Coming Out: interpersonal Loss and Acquisition of a Stigmatized Identity in Counting our Losses, another Routledge edition in 2010. 

 

So, you have been doing so much for IFS also, and especially for this expertise of you, the grieving and the thanatology topic. How is it for you, Derek, to hear this bio? What parts come up? 

 

Derek: The parts "I have been busy", you're quite right. 

 

Aníbal: Really, really busy. 

 

Derek: And also, there's a…I remember years ago, talking to Dick Schwartz about his business and he said he had a crusader part. And I identify with that. I have a crusader part in terms of this model and bringing it forward and promoting it.

 

Aníbal: They want to give everything you have to those crusade parts. What do they want? They have a mission. 
 

Derek: They have a mission. They want to promote the model as far and wide as possible. So, I need to keep them in balance with my other parts that like to take care of my dogs. And like to spend time with my daughter. And like to do other things that aren't just about IFS.

 

Aníbal: Wonderful, well done.

 

Tisha: Derek, will you share with us your journey to becoming a therapist, a counselor? What led you into the field?

 

Derek: It goes back a long way when I was a teenager. I very much struggled with coming out as a gay boy, a gay teenager. And at the time it was nineteen seventies. I was in a small town in England and I was too full of shame really to talk to anybody about it. So, I remember looking it up in a dictionary, a medical dictionary, and it said homosexuality deviant associated with child molesters. So, there was a part of me that took on this immense fear that I was going to become a child molester when I grew up to. 

 

Aníbal: Wow, it's a huge stigma. 

 

Derek: It's a huge stigma and the shame was unbearable. So, I kind of just navigated the world in my teenage years pretending to be heterosexual and then decided I would take psychology. If I studied psychology, maybe I could find out why I was so messed up, what was wrong with me. So, I decided to study psychology for that reason and then went on to university to study psychology and eventually discovered there was actually nothing wrong with me. And that led to a lifelong critique of the orthodoxy of psychiatry and the orthodoxy of psychology. These authorities that determined that a child that I was, was deviant and didn't have a right to his own existence. So, I'm very grateful for the experience now in terms of the critique it affords me of mental health paradigms. But at the time, it was extraordinarily difficult to live through those years.

 

Tisha: That explains some of the crusader parts too. 

 

Derek: There you go.

 

Tisha: Really, really wishing that you had had what you're bringing to the world of psychiatry. Acceptance. 

 

Derek: Yes. And I wouldn't want any other teenager or child to have to go through that journey. Yes. So, then I graduated university. I emigrated to Canada and decided...I wasn't sure what to do. I was interested in a PhD in philosophy, I have thinking parts, I love to think. But then AIDS hit my community. This was the mid-eighties and I realized I needed to take some action. So, I started volunteering at the local AIDS committee and then looked around for how to study more counselling and signed up for the Gestalt Institute of Toronto's training programs. So, I became a gestalt therapist during the years when I was volunteering and then working in the AIDS community. They were very difficult years. We lived in what we call the death around. Twenty five percent of the community was infected. At the time, it looked like we had two years of life after diagnosis.

 

Tisha: Wow.

 

Aníbal: It was a devastating time, yes.

 

Tisha: Heartbreaking.

 

Derek: Challenging times, yes. So, I was very glad to have the skills, develop the skills I did as a Gestalt therapist and applied those and worked as a Gestalt therapist for a few years, many years before discovering IFS.

 

Aníbal: And what a beautiful match. Lucky you. Isn't it? Is a beautiful match gestalt and IFS, I would say.

 

Derek: I think if Fritz Perls had only discovered Self, I think he would have been on it. He had the rest of it, he just didn't have that piece, which is so crucial.

 

Tisha: How did you come to know IFS?

 

Derek: I had a client come to see me who specifically wanted to see a Gestalt therapist, and he held up this book and he said "Have you read this?" And it was Dick's Internal Family Systems book. I said "No." And I read it, as I usually read anything that looks like orthodoxy with my skeptical parts. And I thought this guy could be onto something. So, the next client that I saw, I said "Look, let me try something with you." And so, I had, I think by the end of the session, 26 parts in different floors of a hotel, in different rooms. I had no idea what to do with them. The client had no idea what to do with them. We got totally confused. I thought there's more to this than it looks, it's a bit more complicated than it looks. So, that year there was a retreat in Mexico. It was expensive...

 

Aníbal: That was in two thousand...

 

Derek: It was 15 years ago, I think.
 

Aníbal: 15 ago. So, 2004 or so.

 

Tisha: Was that with Barb and Dick?

 

Derek: Yes, with Barb and Dick, yes. So, my parts were like "Oh, my God, there's too much money," and other parts were like "Well, it is a week in Mexico in February." So those parts won. So I was sitting on the plane and then I heard this voice in my head, which I realized later was a part, saying "We're about to spend the week doing group therapy with a bunch of therapists we don't even know and we don't like therapists." And then this other voice said "You're telling me this now? We're on the plane. It's a little late." But went down, discovered the model, spend a few days with my skeptical part in high gear, and then I was the subject of a demo with Dick Schwartz. Such a shift in my system. So, it was from there that I came home and thought "This is important, this is really important and it's going to be important to let people know about this and what's possible with the model." So that was my conversion experience.

 

Aníbal: And how was it for you, Derek, in your clinical work to combine IFS with the other modalities, the gestalt or others, that you were already practicing for so long?

 

Derek: Well, it was challenging because what happened...This is an ethical challenge that I think many people experience when they begin to learn about the model, including people on the IFS Circle Programs and the various other programs. I had an ethical dilemma. I was sitting opposite my clients. I realized that they were speaking to me from blended parts and I was not trained in the model. So, what do I do with that? I couldn't pretend that they were unblended parts, but I didn't feel competent to work with the model. So, I asked my clients if they would be willing to explore this new learning that I'd picked up. And they were. I'm very grateful for that. And of course, my managers were taking the lead. My managers are very smart, and they thought that they'd figured out how to do this. So, there was one client I remember in particular by profession. She was a hairdresser, very bubbly, very lively, very chatty. I was working with the parts "Ask that part to soften back, ask that part to soften back, get that one to soften back..."  And she started to cry, and she said "I feel like you're bullying me. And I said "I'm so sorry. That's not what this is meant to be about at all. Let's go back to the way we were working." And then the second week with her, I asked if she'd be willing to try it again. She said yes. And the scenario repeated itself and she started to cry again. And in that very moment, this voice in my head said "Stop what you're doing. You need to get trained in this. You're doing harm. This is not ok." As I heard that voice inside, she said to me in that moment, she wiped the tears away and she said "It's ok, Derek, it takes me a while to learn a new cut." 

 

Tisha: Ohh.

 

Aníbal: Wow.

 

Derek: She was a hairdresser, right? And that felt like grace. It just felt like permission. And my managers softened and then I continued to work with the IFS model as best I could, continue to go to the retreats and finally found my way to New York City getting the overnight bus from Toronto, which was no fun, but I got my Level 1, got my Level 2, and then took the Level 3, three times.

 

Aníbal: And Dick uses to say that there is so much unlearning for more experienced therapists when they get into IFS. Did you feel the same way?

 

Derek: Well, not so much. Because I had the Gestalt practice already, I was familiar with working with parts and also familiar with working with creativity. But the parts of me that I had to get back - and this is what I noticed in the courses that I teach - the therapist parts that like to be the expert that like to give advice, that like to agree, that like to meet the client's expectations, to feel that they've done a good job. All of those parts I needed to increasingly get to know and get to soften back, so I could hold more Self-energy and hold the curiosity. And realized I have no idea what the client needs. None, but I can track their system and they know, they know exactly what they need. But it was a shift to come to that realization. And for the therapists that are trained, particularly in North America in CBT, it's very challenging because...

 

Aníbal: We have to know, right?
 

Derek: Yes, we have to know. And CBT is just disrespectful of the parts. It attempts to override them with its reframing, which is not helpful ultimately.

 

Aníbal: So finally, we could not know. And that is also relieving.

 

Derek: Yes.

 

Aníbal: A good experience.

 

Derek: Yes. Clients say to me, some of the new clients will tell me their story and then say "What should I do?" And I usually say "I have no idea." And then they look puzzled and I'll say "But I suspect you do. So, where did you give up your self-expertise? Let's explore that. When did you give up the trust in yourself that you can make your own decisions? The person sitting opposite me as a human being on the planet, just like myself with Self, just like myself, with parts just like myself. And why would they not be able to navigate the waters of their life in the same way I do?

 

Aníbal: It's refreshing. 

 

Derek: Yes.

 

Aníbal: Empowering. 

 

Tisha: When you finished your trainings, or throughout your process of becoming the IFS therapist that you are, when did you shift into specializing in grief and loss?

 

Derek: Well, I'd already had a specialty in grief and loss. In my time in AIDS work, I ran into grief very young. I was 26 when I started helping people die and then working with their care teams. So, it became an interest of mine. And then I specialized for four years. I was part of an organization funded by the Canadian government, the Ministry of Health. And we would fly to the AIDS service organizations in Canada, helping their staff, helping the volunteers, helping the boards process ongoing multiple loss, because in those environments, people were going to work. The executive director had AIDS. Most of the clients were HIV positive. Half the staff had AIDS. And then to get a break would maybe go to a gay bar at night to see a drag show, discover the drag queen had died that week and it was a fundraiser. It was extraordinarily challenging work. And I hit my 30s and burnt out. I stopped feeling and then I thought that was just a natural, you know maybe that's what happens as you age when you hit 30, you just stop feeling things. Until one day at work I got the information that one of the community leaders had died and I started to sob, and sob and sob and I could not stop. And I was sent home and for four days I was just crying and replenishing the electrolytes and crying. Didn't know what it was. Got quite worried. Contacted my former boss of the AIDS committee and met for lunch and she said "Oh, you've been in psychic numbing and now you're flooding." So, I thought "Oh there's language around this? Good." So, I had spent several years numbed out and then opened up to this flooding and very quickly then moved into focusing on grief. And I discovered IFS, I wanted to see how bereavement theory could complement IFS and vice versa, because bereavement theorists are not yet versed in multiplicity. And I discovered a whole bunch of different bereavement theories that perfectly match onto a name aspect of the grieving process, the attachment and loss process, which from an IFS perspective then we can just bring Self-energy to. So, it was a really lovely mapping.

 

Aníbal: Yes, makes sense. It was some clarity coming to the way we look to this complex process of loss.

 

Derek: Mm hmm. 

 

Aníbal: I'm going to quote you. You say in your beautiful chapter, Self-led grieving transitions, loss and death. You say something beautiful "I also point out that loss is inherent to the many transitions of childhood. When parents separate, for example, a child may lose the future she expected, along with her current life. When a family pet dies, a child may have lost a virtual sibling or a magical being who held many confidence. When a family moves to a new house, a child may lose the fabric and structure of the world. When we listen with open hearted curiosity, we hear about the client's attachment and the significance of her losses, which may not be what we would have assumed." So, we are saying that changes and transitions have always to do with losses and we are always counting our losses. And this is our life in our offices is about, always somehow losses. 

 

Derek: Yes. So, for me, there's two aspects here. One is that unlike other therapeutic issues, trauma, child abuse, addiction that our clients may come to us for, we may not have had those experiences as therapists, but as human beings, we've all had the experience of attachment and loss. That's what we do. We attach and we lose, we attach, and we lose. And there's a natural process then of responding to the inevitability of those losses and that process we call grief.
 

But because we oftentimes in childhood, those losses are not acknowledged, or they're dealt within a way which is not helpful or not supportive. "Don't be silly. Don't worry about it. It was just a dog. Well, it's great that we're moving to the new house." When children are not supported in their losses, then inevitably their managers need to come up and either minimize or trivialize or reframe or whatever the managers do around the grief. And then in adulthood, when we experience losses, Dick Schwartz talks about the need to reassure managers that grief is nature's way of healing and we're all hardwired to grieve productively, which is exactly the message that it's important for people to hear. So, one of the ways that we can access what gets in the way of our natural grieving process, we can get to know our managers what were we taught in childhood? What did the adults around us said to us? How were we supported? It's quite remarkable if you say to someone, what losses did you experience in childhood, they usually think you're talking about death and they'll usually say none. 

 

Aníbal: Yes.

 

Derek: And in fact, all of those losses that you named, you know, the moving to a new school or moving to a new house or whatever they are... 

 

Aníbal: Pet dies...

 

Derek: Yes, they all bring up a grief response. And some of those messages can be very distressing. I've worked with a woman who had a pet chicken. She lived on a farm and the chicken died. And so, she buried it. And her mother told her that if the chicken had led a good life, it would go to heaven, it would go up to heaven. And so, as a little girl, she would periodically go and unearth the chicken to see if it had gone to heaven and hadn't. It had stayed in the ground. And so, she determined that that was a bad chicken. And then she determined that there was maybe no God. So, she went into a spiritual crisis based on this message that she had had about death and loss. Need to be very careful what we share with our children about this process, because children will make meaning and they will believe what we tell them.

 

Tisha: This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

 

Aníbal: And so, Derek, what is exactly about grieving? What is behind this emotional state or process, exactly, when we are talking and we are processing, grieving, what is happening really inside us?

 

Derek: So, it seems to me what's happened is there's been an enormous emotional response, depending on the depth of the loss. But there are parts that hold huge distress around losses, and they need to be witnessed and sometimes they need to be expressed. So, when a recent loss and raw grief, if it's a significant attachment parent, child animal companion, there will be these surges of emotions coming through. And that's what the managers will often fear. We're going to be a basket case on the floor, the sadness is bottomless, we cannot go there, will go into despair, we'll go into depression and never find our way out. Anyone with a background that includes clinical depression will have parts very fearful of going into the reactive depression that is characteristic of loss. So, the common protectors tend to be numbing, disbelief, minimizing, and those are very, very helpful initially when the raw loss is occurring because they prevent us from getting overwhelmed. And then when we bring Self to them, we can say, would it be ok to get to know that part, holding all of that grief? And we negotiate with the managers to get the permission. We ask the part not to flood, not to overwhelm, so we can hear it, so we can attend to it. And often there's multiple parts. In a parental loss, for example, there'll be a number of parts that had different experiences of that loss. If it's an abusive parent, some may be relieved. Some may be grieving the parent that they never had. One of the aspects of working with grief is it brings in a full humanity and I'm very grateful to the IFS model for finding ways to acknowledge and articulate our full humanity. 
 

Oftentimes, people will report feeling a connection to the person that's passed or being visited by them. In some of the bereavement literature that's called the presence of absence. And in IFS, of course, we just stay curious and acknowledge and validate whatever's going on in the client system. So, there's space for that, whereas other modalities might call that wishful thinking, or may I call that hallucinating. So, this model, particularly with grief, facilitates the fullness of the experience. I'd like to share with you, if I may, an example of that. When I was working with a client who was bereaved and a guide came in to help with the work, would that be ok?

 

Tisha: Please.

 

Aníbal: Yes, please.

 

Tisha: Yes, it's Welcome.

 

Derek: So, this was a this is a woman in her 50s and her mother had what would fit the diagnostic criteria for a full-on narcissistic personality disorder. So, this woman's experience of being a child was that she was wheeled out as a trophy whenever there were people around to witness and praised. And then where there were no other people around, she would basically put back in the closet and neglected. This was a child who would wait for four hours outside of school to be picked up and her mother would show up singing because she'd been shopping and bought all these fabulous things and forgot that her child was there for four hours. So, a history of neglect and finding ways to cope with that. And her mother had terminal cancer. And so, I was working with her online and she came online and she said "My mother passed on the weekend." And I said "Oh, how are your parents with that?" And she said "Well, I thought I'd be dancing, but I'm not. I woke up this morning and I heard this little voice say, Where's my mommy?" And I said "Oh, would it be ok to go to that little voice?" She said "I guess." So, she focused in on that part and she told me, she's asking if I'm her mommy. I said "No, let her know you're not, let her know who you are and then see what she wants." And then she..."Well, the little girl wants me to take her to her mommy..." And then she... "hang on a second. I'm hearing another voice saying it will take her to her mommy" and I said "Ok, bring your attention to that voice. What does that part tell you?" She..."It doesn't feel like a part." Because I'm familiar with guides which are usually taught at the higher levels of the training, I could ask if it's a guide. She did and it was. "So, would it be ok to let the guide take the little girl to your mommy" She said "Sure." And then this guide...This is a little difficult to speak about because it was so moving. The guide picks up the little girl and starts carrying her through the forest. Now, all the time this journey through the forest is going on, the client has protectors that keep coming forward saying, excuse my language "This is bullshit. You're making all this up. Oh, my God, this is Mills and Boon. This is wish fulfillment." So, I kept asking the protector to soften back and they would. As they're going through the forest, the little girl says to the guide "Why was my mommy so mean when she was here?" And the guide says "Well, you know, sometimes when we're on Earth, we wear clothes that are too tight and it's very hard to relax and come through when your clothes are too tight, but your mommy's clothes are not too tight anymore. She left those behind." Which I thought was a beautiful, age appropriate way to talk about it.

 

Tisha: Oh, absolutely.

 

Aníbal: It is. 

 

Derek: Being in a blended part, right? Or in a diagnosis of some kind. So, then the little girl wanted to pick some flowers, so she did for her mom. And then she said to the guide "Well, will this be a different mummy to the mummy that was here?" And the guide said "Oh, this mummy is so looking forward to meeting you." And then they got to a cottage with the door and there was a light on in the cottage and the guide was about to knock on the door. And then the client opened her eyes and she stared at me and said "It's the session nearly over?" I said "We're fine. Close your eyes, drop back in, we're good." She knocked on the door, the door opened. Her mother was there in a white, easy flowing gown, said to the little girl "I have so missed you. I love you so much."

 

Aníbal: Wow.

 

Derek: The little girl said "I love you too." And they embraced for the first time. And shortly thereafter the client ceased therapy and whatever attachment wounds that were being carried seem to have been healed through the presence of a guide taking charge of the work. So, in my experience and when I just hold back, and hold my curiosity about the inner world, these kinds of healing become possible. Whenever a guide shows up, I just back off with gratitude and awe that this is both happening and available. So that's what I mean by the encompassing the fullness of our human experience and how this model is facilitative.

 

Aníbal: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing.

 

Tisha: And how you are facilitative. And you sharing that story we saw your heart and your significant guidance of the process. So, I'm sitting with a lot of appreciation.

 

Derek: It's an absolute privilege to facilitate this kind of work.
 

Aníbal: And your work is illustrating how much IFS particularly is appropriate to bereavement. How was it for you, Derek, to incorporate all your previous knowledge and wisdom on the bereavement field into IFS? Meaning, does IFS can inform and is informed by the field in grief integration? 

 

Derek: It's been surprising Aníbal, in a number of ways, how the integration of IFS with attachment and loss is working. So, recently I've been very excited to consider aging. I'm...we're all aging. So, I'm heading into my 60s and I'm noticing I'm very curious about the aging process in terms of loss, because if you ask most people what they think of when they think about aging, they will start articulating losses. I may lose my sight, I may lose my hearing, I may lose my mobility. All of which is absolutely true. I grew up in a residential home for the elderly in England. My parents were residential social workers. So, I saw the very old. I grew up from the age of 12 to 18 with people in the 80s and 90s. I used to play Scrabble with them. I used to play organ concerts for them. I used to sit with them. And what I found the very old was sometimes they would get mired in what I now know are stuck grieving parts. And so, they would spend their time complaining "Oh, it's not like the old days. Oh, I remember back when I was a girl that was very different. Oh, I miss those days." And then they'd sit and commiserate with each other about how terrible that is these days and just complain. Just unhappy parts, right? That I now know, of course, needed to be witnessed, but witnessed by Self. So instead they get witnessed by each other. And there's an expression in England, I don't know if it's in North America or Portugal, but it's: misery loves company. And so, I'd see this miserable old people being miserable with each other. I thought "That's not how I want to be." I'd also see amazing people with a lot of Self-energy. There was a guy, I loved him. His name was Mr. Hansford. He was in a wheelchair. He had one tooth in his head, always wore a flat cap. And during the dances that we had for the residents, he'd be doing wheelies in his wheelchair and flirting outrageously with the women. I thought, that's who I want to be. I want to be the guy with one tooth in my head floating outrageously. So, one of the gifts that IFS brings is who's aging and who's responding to aging? Because it's true that, you know, in my own experience, I have less mobility. My hearing's not what I was. And I have parts that hate that, they protest that. Well protest is part of grief. I have parts who wish it was different, that's part of grief. I have parts who regret that they put their head in speakers on rock concerts when I was a teenager. Regret is part of grief. And if I can attend to all of those and let them know "I get that this is hard for you. The aging body is hard for you." I don't need to identify them. They don't need to take charge and I can hold more Self-energy. And Self, of course, does not age. There is no reason why vitality in terms of Self-energy would be lost as the body ages.
 

I had the gift a few years ago of being at a retreat with some remarkable people. The average age of the retreatment was seventy. One couple had just come back from Cambodia, where they're working in sustainable farming. Another couple had just come from Hawaii, where they teach ayahuasca retreats and they were vital engaged human beings in their 70s. And some of the conversation, of course, was we have less energy than we had in the 60s, in our 50s. Where do we put our energy? Where's the bang for the buck? We were invited to explore parts of this that had ideas about aging, where they learned them. This is the legacy piece. We carry legacies around aging in our culture, which are important and helpful to identify because otherwise it feels like a predetermined path which need not be the case. So, in attending to the parts that respond to the inevitability of changes, losses, loss of hopes and dreams, we can hold that Self-led vitality.

 

Tisha: I'm curious about unburdening and the parts that have raw grief. Is there a different approach to being with grief? I guess it's always what someone's individual system needs. And I think about adult life loss and approaching it from an IFS perspective, I get curious as to whether it's always related to burdens or...

 

Derek: No, it's not. Yes, it's a great question. So, here's what I find. It seems to me that there is a cluster of parts that will help us move to the inevitability of loving and losing. And those attachments can be a concrete person place thing that can be abstract, my self-concept. So, wherever the heart attaches, there will be a loss response to that. And when I’ve work with those parts, so a part holding, you know, tremendous sadness, I mentioned to you before we started, my dog George passed a year and a half ago now. And he was my companion for 11 years. He was a remarkable being. And there are parts of me holding tremendous sadness, of course, around his loss. And when I'd say to them, you know "Does this feel like a burden? Does this need to be released?" The part would say "No, no, this is who I am, and this is what I do for you. I hold the sadness, so you don't have to." And they're like little bodhisattvas, these parts that help us move through grief are willing to do that. They're willing to hold the protest, to hold the sadness, to hold the missing and just want to be known and attended to. Now, in raw grief, sometimes they will just flood. They will take over the system. And that's fine. They just land and they vent. But when there's a little bit of distance or when we can say to them, because they don't know what's going on in the outside world, they live in the inside world. Right now, I'm working with a client "Right now I'm shopping. This isn't a good time, but I will attend to you later." If we return to them later, then we don't need to be flooded at times that are, quote unquote, inconvenient. So that cluster of parts is not necessarily burdened. I should also add that in the grief process, those parts come up and then we'll move to restoration cluster parts because there's inevitably a dance between the grief and the moving forward. That has to be, otherwise we'd drown in the grief.
 

Now, that said, there may be a burdened part. So, if I'm listening to a part that's so sad and, you know, "would you like to release some of that? Yes. Oh, Ok. Well, tell me about that." The burden can often go back to those childhood losses that were not attended to. And that's where the burden of not being witnessed or the burden of being told you're too sensitive or the burden of being told you feel too much or there's something wrong with you, or why can't you be happy? Or however the message got internalized from the family of origin, usually, those may result in burdened parts that are connected to loss. So, of course, we help them to release the burden, but don't assume that profound sadness, raging protests about how unfair all of this is. Don't assume that they are necessarily burdened to pass because they may well not be. It is unfair. Anyone that has ever experienced a significant loss. Of course, it feels unfair, of course it does. And there's a part that holds that. So, it can simply be attended to.

 

Aníbal: Yes. Derek, you just entered the field of complicated grief, right?

 

Derek: Yes. 

 

Aníbal: You can see the interface of bereavement and burdens in your chapter. You differentiate between simple grief and complicated grief. That's what you are saying right now.

 

Derek: Yes, and the complicated grief tends to have somewhat different protectors, more complex protector's around them. But, yes, that's one way to distinguish what you might call regular or healthy grief from grief, which is complicated by burdens.

 

Tisha: And so that would be, you know, all parts related response.The ones you just mentioned, the parts that were shamed, the parts that were told they were too sensitive. That's what leads to the complex grief.

 

Derek: I can do also traumatic grief or multiple loss. So, if there's a grief connected to a trauma, if you witnessed your parent being killed, you've got trauma and you've got grief. What the system wants to do with trauma is move away from it. But it needs to do in grief is move towards it. So, it's complex when you're working with traumatic grief. And so, the protectors will be more complex around it to. But one protective response that's very common is somatization. Particularly, when we're little if the grief is not supported, then it goes into the body. And there was a study done a couple of decades ago now of AIDS workers in Canada. They were simply asked as part of the study: Are there places in your body where you feel like you hold grief? And the results were remarkable and consistent, gastrointestinal distress, shoulder and neck pain. And so, when we come to those as parts, people that have a chronicity around gastrointestinal distress, shoulder and neck pain or other physiological distress, when we come into the body and we ask, is there a part connected to this? It's often unexpressed emotion from grief. And then we can facilitate that release and then there's a shift in the body as well.

 

Aníbal: You are describing, Derek, the protective strategies taking control? The minimizers, the somatizing and you say also, replacing and displacing and postponing. I'm just saying some of the protective strategies that can lead to somatizing or other kinds of symptoms. Help us with this language, beautiful language on your chapter. You talk of first responders, grief cluster restoration cluster, grief attack, tell us more.

 

Derek: Well, the grief attack...What's her name?  Therese Rando is a well-known bereavement theorist, and she refers to STUGS - Sudden Temporary Upsurge of Grief. And these are parts that are responding to internal or external cues that will suddenly flood the system with feelings. So, for example, if a good friend of mine has passed and I'm shopping and I will past the olives in the supermarket and my friend loved olives, that can trigger an emotional response in the system, a sudden temporary upsurge of grief. They also tend to come during anniversaries, the first year after a significant loss. Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, times without the person will trigger grieving parts. And also, not all parts get the information at the same time that the loss has occurred. So, you can be at the funeral present in whatever way you present at the funeral of someone that you've loved. But not every part will have that information at the same time. And so sometimes a part will get that information weeks or months later. And that will also result in a surge of grief.

 

Aníbal: And I'm going to quote you again for another interesting concept, the neoexiles. You say "After first responders, we usually hear from the grief cluster, the sad parts who are protesting, missing, searching, longing, regretting and feeling guilty. I therefore think of grief clusters, parts as neoxiles. Unlike exiles connected to childhood events, whose stories are kept out of awareness until the Self is available, neoexiles are only held in abeyance at first, so that their experience can be heard, held and assimilated gradually." Tell us more about this concept of neoexiles.

 

Derek: Well, the neoexiles here are...They're not full exiles because they're not holding burdens, but they have been kept, sort of out of awareness in the system because often because of the intensity that they carry, and they are kept usually by the protective system. So, we need to work with the protective system to invite it to know that it can be safe now for Self to hear the distress that these parts are carrying. So, we work, of course, with updating the protectors and making sure they know it's 2020 now. That Self is coming from this time. And then the typical manager concerns around overwhelm, of course, we address. And make sure that the managers of the protective system are genuinely appreciated. Whenever these managers came in to adopt their strategies, it's because they had to. There were no other options at the time. The external supports were not there, and the only resources that were available were internal. So, these amazing managers stepped forward with these ways to contain the distress, which is great. So, we let them know how much we appreciate them, how grateful we are and how thankful we are. And we now let them know that there's a different strategy available because the system is now adult and there is an adult with lots of Self-energy available that can help out the parts they've been protecting in a different way. And that is a way to get the managers online once they know that we also care deeply for the parts holding the distress and we have a way of helping them, which is not only about containing them, but is about a permanent release and a permanent transformation of the system. That's when the managers will happily come on board and work as allies in a different way. So, as opposed to seeing them as defenses or resistance, that is not helpful at all. And it's not true. They are extraordinarily helpful parts of the system that have been doing the best they can for a long time and often started out very young.

 

Tisha: So, a lot of hope and updating. 

 

Derek: Yes, Yes. But it's realistic hope. Because this is how it is, right? One of the things I love about the model, I don't even like calling it a model because I think Dick Schwartz has nailed it. This seems to be how the personality system operates. And thank goodness. Because now we can offer stuff that's genuinely facilitative of that kind of transformation and not get bogged down in either the grief or the avoidance of it. You know, I'm fine. Everything's fine. The meaning of life, which is impoverished because we don't have the full depth, when we when we go into those parts, we hear them, we know them. We're in the fullness, the richness of our humanity. And that's an incredible gift. 

 

Aníbal: It is. 

 

Derek: And it includes deep sorrow. Of course, it does. And it includes amazing joy and profound love. Our capacity as human beings is astonishing, really. And if we can work with the parents to get concerned about that, find out what their concerns are, addressed them, and then invite them to allow us into that richness, then it's a game changer.

 

Aníbal: I discovered another beautiful sentence on your work, written work, that maybe illustrates so well the love you put in your work with loss and grief. It's just this sentence. "We sat in silence. Lisa put her head in her hands and sobbed, and I felt honored to hold space for grieving parts." Just being there, just being present.

 

Derek: Yes, absolutely.

 

Aníbal: And I would like to have your help also with another concept that I think is so important. You talk of normal oscillations in grieving and when oscillations are absent.

 

Derek: Yes. 

 

Aníbal: Can you tell us more about what for are those normal oscillations in grieving and when they are absent, what does it mean?

 

Derek: Yes, so the oscillations, as I mentioned earlier, are between the grief cluster and the restoration cluster. And there's a dance between the two, so we don't get stuck in one or stuck in the other. But people can. They can get hijacked by grieving parents and stay stuck in them. So, for example, there's an organization in North America called Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And these are bereaved women, bereaved mothers who, as part of moving through, as part of their response to their child's death, campaign and organized against drunk drivers. Which is great, it's a great organization. However, someone can get stuck in that identity, a bereaved mother. Not move through it, not move beyond it and hold it because there's comfort in that identity. Awful as it is, there's comfort in it. And there's a way in which people can become known in that place and then not move towards moving forward or people can get into the restoration cost. So, ok, one door closed, the door was open. My partner died. I'm going to start dating in three months and I'm going to look for a different partner. And that doesn't allow for the fullness of the oscillation back to the grieving parts. So an example of this maybe make it more clear is the last parent dies and there's a whole bunch of parts, of course, connected to that who need to be attended to and then another part might pop up and say "Oh, I wonder how much money I'm going to get from the inheritance." And that part might get beaten up by other parents that are saying "How could you think of such a thing? Your mother just died. What's wrong with you?" I want people to know, is that absolutely normal? Because that part how much money am, I going to come into is part of the restoration costs. It's moving forward. That part is actually not a grieving part. It's a part that's looking at how are we going to continue with our lives and how will it be different. And it has every right to do that. And it's normal and natural that it does that. But we live in a culture which has these grief myths that say "you should only be grieving because you had a recent death. And if you think about anything about what you might gain from that, then you're a bad person and you should feel guilty." And we have managed to internalize those messages that beat us up internally. So that's just an example of the natural oscillation that occurs. And it gives you a break. If you if you're planning on let's say maybe I'm going to inherit fifty thousand dollars, maybe I could pay off my mortgage. That would be great. Help my kid through university. That's a break. It's a break from the intensity of oh, my God, I lost my mother. So, we need those breaks. Otherwise the system gets too weighted down.

 

Aníbal: Yes, thank you. I found this work of you so, so precious, so helpful for our everyday work because our work is mainly about losses. So, this is really hugely important for me and for the community working clinical work.

 

Derek: Thank you. 

 

Tisha: And you've given us all such an incredible gift with your YouTube channel and all the videos you've made have been so informative. I always start off new clients by referring them to those videos that are so clear and informative. And you're expanding into this retreat center and online trainings. And it's curious if you talk a little bit about that.

 

Aníbal: Where do you get such good energy, Derek?

 

Derek: I think it might be my crusader parts.  The retreat center it's outside of Toronto. It's about 40 minutes from Toronto Airport. It's in the country. It's quite beautiful. And it's where I run my courses now. So, I run the courses in teaching the ideas, model, skills and competencies. And I run a weekend periodically, which is a weekend for people that know the model to explore what we've been talking about. So, a weekend on attachment and loss and grief, getting to look at how grief is held in the body, getting to look at the loss history and then moving - this is one of the gifts of grief work - you can move from grief to gratitude. But in order to do that, the first parts that are presenting in the grief are the parts that hold the distress, the anguish, sadness, the protest. If we avoid those, we stay in an avoidant part, we stay in a numbing part. If we come to them, hear them, validate them, witness them, they will soften back. And what becomes inevitably available is the gratitude, right? 
 

So, you know, I had 11 years with my dog, George. I had a lot of parts that had intense feelings around his passing. And what I'm now able to come to is "Wow, I had 11 years with that dog, I had 11 years with that amazing being. The gift of that is astonishing." And then I can also go to the legacy. How did he enrich my life? What did he teach me? And George was a shepherd pit bulldog, is he? He had fantastic energy. And the main lesson I learned from him was be formidable as necessary, you know. He's a shepherd pit bull. He could have ripped most other animals and people in half and he only twice aggressed in his whole life on another human being. And it was because of human was being inappropriate towards me. He was being hostile towards me. And what a phenomenal gift. And any loss that you've had of any significant being in your life, attend to the grieving part it's really important, they want that. And then it makes space. They naturally fall back. And then that Self-led, that Self manifestation of gratitude and then the incorporation of the legacy becomes available. And that's the focus of the weekend, really, from grief to gratitude. And people come into the weekend not necessarily feeling a lot of gratitude, but by moving through that process, they come to that. And I believe spiritually, this is how we enrich our lives and how we enrich other's lives. When I pass, I want people to be able to remember if I've touched their lives in some way. When you pass, how have you touched people's lives in some way. This helps them. I think this is the gift that we bring each other. And loss is very, very hard. And there are ways of attending to it that allow us also to embody and embrace those gifts to move forward in life.

 

Tisha: I imagine these retreat weekends are so popular. Are they open to anyone and everyone or do they get full quickly?

 

Derek: They tend to fill. They're open to anyone that's familiar with the model. The retreat center itself has accommodation for 10 people. The weekend is capped at 20. So, I usually go with external people that need to fly in first. So, they've got the accommodation and then go to the local Toronto folks that want to come. I think the next one is in May. May this year, and then I'll run them again in the fall. But yes, they're quite lovely. And I think also they're available as CEU'S for IFS therapists. So, IFS therapists are seeking certification or recertification, they also get those.

 

Aníbal: Derek, you are doing so much for IFS as a teacher and the supervisor. Is there something else you would like to do or achieve besides keep doing all you are doing now?

 

Derek: Well Aníbal, it seems that the more I keep doing what I'm doing, people are finding me and inviting me to come and work with them, which is lovely. So, I had an agency last year in eastern Canada. They work with veterans. They flew me out to teach their entire staff the model. So now when the veterans come in, they work with IFS right from the get-go. The receptionist will say, I guess there's a part of you that's happy to be here. Maybe there's a part of you that isn't. So, they get invited into parts language right away. And then the other techniques they work with, biofeedback and neurofeedback, are also incorporated with the model. So, that was exciting. Next month, I'm back in Toronto. I'm teaching 80 Social Workers. I've been invited to teach these social workers for a day and a half. They work in family violence and sexual assault. So excited to work with them because these mainly women are at great risk for vicarious traumatization if they're working from their empathic parts. So, I'm going to help them, I hope, to understand there's a possibility of not needing to work from their empathic parts, which can get overwhelmed, but work more from compassion. My intent is to have them bring their compassion to their empathic parts, which I think is tremendously exciting. So, I'm just being invited various places and I'm pretty available. I can just respond to those requests very positively. So, it seems that by just holding the integrity of the work and promoting the work, I'm not quite sure where I'm going next. I love the retreat center. I love running courses out of there. And it's nice to have a home base. The main working space there has, I think seven couches in it, and it feels like a great big hug. And when you look outside and there's at least cedar trees, you can go for walks in the woods and the people stay over, there's a campfire. So, it's a very nurturing environment in which to learn the works.

 

Aníbal: And I can see you are enjoying it very much. 

 

Derek: Oh, immensely. 

 

Tisha: Do you have a vision for the future of IFS itself? 

 

Derek: I do. 

 

Tisha: Yes. What would you like to see? 

 

Derek: When I came across this model, 15 years ago, I said to Dick "You know, this is both revolutionary in terms of psychotherapeutic paradigms - once the psychospiritual paradigm is built - revolutionary and evolutionary. 

 

 

So, one thing I'm working on at the moment, which is a long project, is a series of videos for parents, because we know as therapists, if the parent had said to the child at some point, I'm sorry, I overreacted. Just that. Half of the people that we're seeing in our practice, we wouldn't be seeing, right? So, from an evolutionary perspective, I think if parents can recognize that they have parts, recognize that their parents had parts, recognize that they've internalized some of those messages which may not benefit their children, for example, shaming, shaming is a very effective behavior control tool because a child will do anything to avoid it. And shame is one of those core exiles that we all carry. We all have parts that hold shame...

 

Aníbal: It is.

 

Derek: If parents can be invited to not shame their children and to recognize the impact of shame in their own systems, then we have more opportunity for children to be raised in a way that's Self-led. So, Self will look at my child and say "Who are you? How are you unfolding? What beautiful parts are you presenting to the world? What gifts to you bring?" And then when that child grows up with more of a sense of Self-energy, they will repeat that with their children. And so, I believe this is an evolutionary model. I believe we're coming now more from a heart centered space. And at this time, when I look at the global crisis around climate change, I think the only thing that's going to help us to get through the next few decades, is a compassionate response. If I have enough food and you don't, do I hold up food very tightly to me and put armor around it from a part that's enmeshed in lack? Or do I realize I could go a little bit hungry if you can eat as well? And those are some of the very real decisions, I think, that we face. 

 

Aníbal: That we face, yes. 

 

Tisha: Yes, I love your vision for the future of the model. Yes, it is about the children growing up with more Self in the family.

 

Derek: Yes. It's about the evolution of our species, I believe, of our consciousness. So, there was a time before Freud, nobody knew what the unconscious was. Nobody...Can you imagine? Never attributing unconscious motivation to anything. 

 

Aníbal: No. 

 

Derek: Now the unconscious is of course, how we understand much of our lives. It's the same with multiplicity. Hopefully in a generation people look back and say “Can you imagine? There was a time when people tried to fit all of that into one thing called the personality. How do they do that? Oh, Yes, they had to say things like, oh, I was acting out of character or oh, that was not me.” People literally say it. Because they are trying to fit.

 

Aníbal: We were there Derek. 

 

Derek: That it's right, we all were.

 

Aníbal: Derek, you just showed us another of your passion, the Self-led parenting that I hope can lead us to sit again together for another episode for you to show more of this passion of yours on Self-led parenting.

 

Tisha: Aníbal wants to keep the conversation going.

 

Aníbal: I do.

 

Derek: Ok.

 

Aníbal: So, for now, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope we can keep meeting and keeping our conversation open and sharing this model and our work and our lives.

 

Tisha: Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. 

 

Derek: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 

Tisha: This was an IFS talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model.

Recorded 2nd January 2020
Transcript Edition by Carolina Abreu

 

Welcoming Erotic Parts, with Larry Rosenberg 42:09

Lawrence Rosenberg is a psychologist in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a therapy and consultation practice for individuals and couples. Lawrence is a supervisor at Cambridge Health Alliance and an Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School.He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1989 from Yale University, where being introduced to psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral models established his outlook as an integrative therapist.

During his internship and subsequent trainings, he incorporated trauma-informed, hypnosis and behavioral medicine perspectives.Today, IFS is the primary lens through which Larry views the world and he loves teaching it. He is on the staff of Toni Herbine-Blank’s couples therapy program, Intimacy from the Inside Out, and assists annually at Richard Schwartz and Sarah Stewart’s IFS workshop at Kripalu in western Massachusetts.He is particularly enthusiastic about sexuality and LGBTQ experiences.

Outside of professional life, Larry takes delight in the arts (film, theatre, museums), travel, dancing, exercise, and baking desserts.

Full Transcriptions

Today on IFS Talks, we're interviewing and speaking with Larry Rosenberg. Lawrence Rosenberg is a Psychologist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a therapy and consultation practice for individuals and couples. Larry is a supervisor at Cambridge Health Alliance and an instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1989 from Yale University, where being introduced to psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral models established his outlook as an integrative therapist.

During his internship and subsequent trainings, he incorporated trauma-informed hypnosis and behavioral medicine perspectives. Today, IFS is the primary lens through which Larry views the world, and he loves teaching it. He's on the staff of Tony Herbine-Blank's couples therapy program, Intimacy from The Inside Out, and assists annually at Richard Schwartz and Sarah Stewart's IFS workshop at Kripalu in western Massachusetts. He is particularly enthusiastic about sexuality and LGBTQ experiences. Outside of professional life, Larry takes delight in the arts, film, theater, museums, travel, dancing, exercise and baking desserts. Thank you so much for being with us today, Larry.

Larry Rosenberg: Thank you, Aníbal and Tisha. It's wonderful to be with you both today.

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Larry. Baking desserts, wonderful. You have also published two amazing chapters on IFS. One that I so much enjoyed Welcoming All Erotic Parts: Our Reactions to The Sexual and Using Polarities to Enhance Erotic Excitement and another Getting Unstuck also so relevant with Pam Krause and Martha Sweezy. The chapter focuses on Solutions for resolving stuck moments in therapy for both therapist and client. So, this one is a chapter on stuckness and how to overcome it. So relevant. So, you are doing so much for IFS. How is it for you Larry to hear this bio? What parts come up?

Larry: As I listen to the bio, I'm appreciating that my managers have been working very hard over the years to achieve lots of accomplishments and the bio also doesn't represent other parts of me who fulfill the rest of my life. My relationship with my very sweet boyfriend, Keith, and my delight in improvisational acting and other activities.

Tisha: Larry, could you please tell us a bit about your journey into the mental health profession? Was there something about in your personal life that was determinant for you becoming a psychotherapist?

Larry: So, probably for a lot of therapists, I started out as an unexpected family therapist in my own family of origin. Partly relationship with parents being a first born, perhaps being a sensitive child, all contributed to others turning to me for feelings that they might have had a hard time holding on to by themselves.

Aníbal: Oh, yes.

Larry: There are delights and burdens by that role, and probably lots of therapists can appreciate how growing up in that kind of family situation has its pleasures and challenges. So, I was always curious about what makes people tick and what motivates people in their actions. In high school was studying psychology. I read Freud. My dad gave me a copy of The Guide to Rational Living, Albert Ellis's treatise of Rational Emotive Therapy from the early sixties...

Aníbal: That one.

Larry: Because my dad viewed himself as a very rational person, and in many ways he is, but in relationships more emotionally ruled. So, it's a kind of ironic gift. But it got me on the way toward becoming a psychologist and in college sort of double majored in Psychology and Art History and had a couple of great professors at Brandeis University who were very inspirational. I did a senior thesis on the desynchronization of alpha brain waves as a measurement of attention...

Aníbal: Wow.

Larry: Sort of looking at differences in normal weight, and overweight people in men and women, and how they pay attention to emotional stimuli and using that brain wave measure to assess differences in attention. And I went on to graduate school, which was a very research-oriented program, seemingly to fit the research background I had as an undergraduate. But my advisor, Jerry Singer in graduate school, recognized at the end of the first year when I was procrastinating on writing the masters’ thesis and going to the library to get more references to avoid writing, he said "When you're hanging by a cliff from your fingernails, you don't go out to get a manicure."

Aníbal: Oh gosh.

Larry: And he suggested that I might benefit from taking some time off from studying. And so I took a few years off from school and kind of lived life, worked as a computer programmer in Boston and then returned, finished graduate school and did my internship at Cambridge Health Alliance, which is a terrific multicultural institution that really serves folks struggling with poverty, immigrants, complicated family lives, trauma. And that was a great experience. There I worked with Dan Brown, who is nationally known in the area of trauma and hypnosis and joined a practice with him. And so, like a lot of other Boston therapists, there's a lot of emphasis on different kinds of trainings in the area. And so, I learned hypnosis, learned trauma therapy, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, behavioral medicine. And then, as part of a peer group in the early 2000s, I heard from some colleagues of mine about this new model, Internal Family Systems, and Dan Brown brought Dick Schwartz to one of his trauma conferences and I was very intrigued by the model. Having learned Ego State Therapy through Hypnotherapy, IFS had a lot of commonalities to ego state, although IFS is a much more thorough and fuller system of personality. So, when my peer colleagues were talking about taking their Level 1 experience, it Sounded intriguing, but it also Sounded very experiential and I didn't want to have anything to do with that...

Aníbal: Researcher part.

Larry: That was a part. I didn't recognize it as a part at the time, but I kept hearing from them how fantastic it is and how it was making a huge difference in their clinical work with their clients. So, the next year, in 2005, I took the Level 1.

Aníbal: Back then you were... How seasoned you were as a therapist when you really got the cross with IFS?

Larry: Maybe about 15, 18 years at that point.

Aníbal: 15, 18 years, yes.

Larry: As a model, IFS fit in very nicely, integratively. But I'll share a personal experience at the very beginning of the training. So, the two trainers for that Level 1 were Tony Herbine-Blank and Mike Elkin...

Tisha: Good team.

Aníbal: Good team.

Larry: Great, great team. So, Tony was leading us through the first guided meditation. Go inside, notice what you're experiencing. And what happened for me is what happened a lot during hypnosis trainings, which is I hear the leader say, go inside and the next thing I noticed is "And now take a breath and come back to the room." And everything in between during hypnosis exercises have disappeared. So, as soon as Tony began to say "Go inside," I noticed I was starting to go away. And for the first time, I thought of it as "Oh, I have a going away part."

Aníbal: Absolutely.

Larry: That was very helpful. And so, it allowed me experientially to discover the power of IFS right at the very beginning of that training, and got very hooked on the model, both as a clinical, powerful tool, but also for personal growth.

Tisha: So, your parts that had inhibitions about the experiential aspect of the training were happily surprised?

Aníbal: And now going inside doesn't more trigger that part in you. That part that doesn't want to go inside.

Larry: Correct. That part has relaxed a ton over the years. There are sometimes other managers that need attention going inside before things really settle down.

Aníbal: Yes, it's a very common experience, isn't it? For beginners on going inside?

Larry: Yes.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model.

Tisha: How was it to make the shift to incorporating IFS in your practice?

Larry: I would say it evolves very naturally. Again, because I already had a concept of ego states through the hypnotherapy, the concept of parts felt very natural and people use the language of parts very colloquially. And so, clients took to it very well. I think it was a fairly smooth transition.

Tisha: Is there ever any overlap with hypnosis and IFS?

Larry: There is an overlap, but there are also differences. An overlap is the experience of going inside, can for many people be like a trance experience, where the external world, the peripheral world kind of fades a little bit and when it's focused on inner experience. So that's a shared component in those two modalities. What's different is that in hypnosis, the therapist gives suggestions. Like “The arm will become lighter...” or, let's say someone is wanting to stop smoking... “You'll find that the urge for a cigarette will grow smaller and smaller as time passes.” One does not make those kinds of suggestions in IFS, which is very phenomenologically is very client led. So, the language of hypnosis and the language of IFS are somewhat different, but the internal states are probably similar. Does that make any sense?

Tisha: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I'm curious about whether people incorporate, you know, if we can use hypnosis and IFS together.

Larry: So, I do sometimes use them together. For example, a client who has a very traumatic background, her parts really settle down with hypnotic language and then we can do IFS more seamlessly without already having done the hypnosis.

Aníbal: So, you keep integrating somehow, and IFS continues informing your clinical work and then you became also a trainer, somehow, for IFS.

Larry: I'm not technically a trainer through the IFS Institute. I've been assisting and I do some teaching of IFS locally for various organizations...

Aníbal: And how is it for you? So, somehow you train and supervise on IFS also. Not officially, but in many, many ways...

Larry: Yes, it's fantastic.

Aníbal: And how was it for you to integrate this expertise of you the sexuality? It was easy to you to find this special interest and becoming interested in integrating IFS and sexuality? When did that start happening?

Larry: So, I'd been interested in sexuality for many years. In graduate school most of my research was on erotic fantasy and how we think about our partners in our sexual lives. So that had been a thread going through my life and my education. And I believe that IFS is a wonderful way for people to think about their sexual lives and their erotic parts, because IFS helps people identify the parts that carry judgements and reactions. And sexuality brings up so many judging parts, given the cultural messages that we all grew up with. So, it allows people to first recognize those judging parts, soften them enough so that they feel comfortable with their sexual parts.

Tisha: I really appreciated in your chapter in New Dimensions, the Welcoming all Erotic Parts, how much emphasis was placed on us as therapists, owning our parts around sexuality, around discomfort that we might have in the clinical office or judging parts like you said. How are you addressing that issue of clinician parts with the people that you teach and the people that you supervise?

Larry: I would say my friends and colleagues think of me as often trying to bring sexuality into conversations, whether it's in an informal basis or formally. I do a lot of teaching, for example, at Cambridge Health Alliance and other programs in the Boston area, in Tony Herbine-Blank's Intimacy in the Inside out for Couples and sexuality. Usually I begin with having folks notice what parts are they bringing into the room as we're about to talk about sexual matters. Almost all the time people are coming in with some nervous, anxious, uncertain parts. Some excited, voyeuristic, curious parts coming in with parts who feel like they know a lot or parts who feel like they don't know very much. So right at the start, even before we start talking about sexual topics in particular, we're getting right into the whole domain of parts that are surrounding the subject for each person.

Aníbal: Why is it so difficult for us, Larry, to share this energy, this sexual energy, and to talk on this so important part of our lives? Is really, really important for everyone, but it's so difficult. Why?

Larry: That's a big, important question.

Aníbal: It is.

Larry: So, this might sound a little Freudian for a moment.

Aníbal: We are ready.

Tisha: Even Freudian parts are welcome.

Larry: So, sexual desire has been obviously such a central force in human life, human civilization, not only the need to reproduce ourselves so that our tribe gets to continue more effectively than other tribes from an evolutionary perspective. But sexual desire also has to do with do we feel good about ourselves? Are we attractive? Our self-esteem, our attachments, intimacy, love, connection.

Aníbal: Okay.

Larry: And it also has to do with power, dominance, submission. So, spirituality brings together so many of the kind of psychosocial, spiritual dimensions of life. And because these desires are so strong in us, in order for us to live in a civilized life, societies have needed to establish certain kinds of controls to limit the expression of sexual behavior. Controls involving property, legality in psychiatry, what's considered normal and abnormal. And so, we're taught in our culture that this is a very private area of life, but we're given very polarized messages. Sex is used for advertising in music videos and film all the time, and it brings the viewer's attention. It gets the advertisers to get viewers to pay attention to whatever they're selling. And at the same time, we're given messages from a puritanical point of view that sex is bad. It should be kept under control. So, we're given many conflicting messages that make this topic very confusing for people. So many people put it underground. I think, for therapists, because it really is going into the most private world of an individual or a couple, even though our work is to invite people to enter those private worlds and for us to join them in those realms, many therapists feel uncomfortable about pushing that and are unsure that they may discover something about themselves as they're listening to their clients sexual stories and fantasies...

Aníbal: Like getting triggered?

Larry: That they might get triggered. They may hear something in their client's sexual lives that makes them uncomfortable, that they might feel as disgusting, carry judgments toward or they might discover something that excites them unexpectedly. It brings in the subject of erotic attraction between therapist and client, which is a topic that lots of therapists feel uncomfortable facing, So, just in society in general and then in the clinical room, there are a number of factors that work together to keep sexuality out of the conversation.

Aníbal: Yes. So, we therapists, we should also know ourselves sexually.

Larry: Yes. Yeah.

Aníbal: That would be very welcome. May I quote you on this polarization? I found this quote of you so beautiful. You say, in the United States where the dominant culture is polarized between sex obsession and sex phobia, we receive messages that oscillate between the extremes of hedonistic libertinism, gratify yourself, sex sells, boys will be boys, anything goes, if you are sexual you are popular and restrictive and puritanism like you will get hurt, disease, pregnant, ostracized, it's sick, it's sinful, deviant, illegal. If you are sexual, you are a slut. So, the culture invokes shame and guilt as well as physical restraint and violence to control people's sexual urges and to define what specific sexual desires and actions are judged to be right or wrong, blessed or damned. And I found this really beautiful as an illustration for this polarity. And I also found beautiful the way you work with therapists for helping them to know themselves, on the sexual... How would you say?

Larry: Their sexual self.

Aníbal: Their sexual self. Thank you. Their sexual self, yes. I find it beautiful the way that some of the exercises that you describe in your chapter for helping therapists to get acquainted and find out their sexual self. I found them very brave and courageous and interesting and I bet that we all could benefit from this kind of trainings on getting acquainted and comfortable welcoming our erotic parts. You do these kinds of exercises and supervision often with your supervisees? It depends on the material that supervisees are bringing in about their clinical work, but I'm always listening for an entree into the sexual realm if it's relevant to the material. So, I wouldn't say all the time, but quite often, yes.

Aníbal: And it looks like it's really welcome for these supervisees and they really do get comfortable with your exercises. How does it land in your supervisees this kind of exercises? I'm just remembering two of them. One is when you just say some slang words, sexual words and help these supervisees, these psychotherapists to get comfortable and detect what parts come up...

Tisha: Or maybe activated...

Aníbal: Or maybe activated...

Tisha: As they hear certain slang

Aníbal: And the other one, so interesting also is get aroused in the presence of someone, get comfortable. I understood like that, I don't know if I understood, well correct me, please.

Larry: So, I would say I would pick and choose when to do those exercises with a supervisee. I wouldn't necessarily do them regularly, but on occasion. It kind of depends how the flow of the consultation is going. And if it looks like the clinician is really open to doing some personal discovery, because this supervision can begin to blend a little bit into therapy, and it depends on the nature of the supervisory relationship, whether we both feel comfortable moving in that domain a little bit. But if the person's really comfortable and we have a trusting, safe supervisory relationship, I have done this a few times and I think people have found it really helpful. We go really slowly. So, the way it's written in the chapter with one word after another, in real life, we would go much, much more slowly and we wouldn't be using all of those words, maybe just a few words to really give people the opportunity to check inside and notice what reactions they're having.
Aníbal: Could you tell us more about why do parts develop extreme roles to manage our reactions to erotic desires? You say, you have one paragraph on this topic. You say parts develop extreme roles to manage our reactions to erotic desires. Why so extreme?

Larry: So, for many people who are either growing up with conflicting messages from their family or peers or society or for people who have experienced some kind of developmental sexual trauma, their parts seem to develop in polarized kinds of ways. Either their parts pull them back from sexuality in a kind of avoidant inhibiting kind of way or their parts move them in a more compulsive, can't get enough of sex, in the opposite kind of way. These are two common patterns for people. Sometimes we see one pattern predominant for a person. Sometimes we see both patterns happening for a person, where people are both overeager and compulsive and also inhibited in certain ways. So, those are strategies probably more in the “firefighterish” domain that our system develops to manage feelings that feel either unsafe or out of control, or we've been told that we're bad, we've been shamed for having these desires. Nevertheless, the desires need someplace for expression. We get shamed about our sexual desires, so our protector parts, primarily our firefighters, find strategies to manage those desires that need some form of expression. It's really, really hard to completely exile sexual feelings.

Aníbal: Yes, some people try.

Larry: So, they're coming out in some fashion.

Tisha: It's a hard job for the firefighters.

Larry: Yes.

Tisha: Yeah. That explains the extreme.

Aníbal: I also found it interesting. You call lusty parts, relational parts...Sexual energy can be taken from any parts in our system; can be used by any part in our system.

Larry: If you look at research on the bio evolutionary basis of sexuality, often there are at least three levels that are identified. One is sex for procreation, for the continuation of the species. Two is more carnal sex for pleasure, satisfaction. And three, is sex as an element of intimacy, romance, attachment, affection.

Aníbal: And they are all very welcome.

Larry: And they're all welcome. But they don't all cooperate.

Aníbal: They don't, yes.

Larry: They're sometimes polarized. So, let's say the part who's really lusty and carnal for certain people wants to be sexual with as many people as possible because it's fun, it's pleasurable. And let's say that person also wants to have a primary attachment and that person's partner does not want that person to be actively sexual with lots of other people. So, there is a polarizing conflict that goes on between, let's say, the intimate attaching parts who want to use sex for connection with one partner and the lustful carnal parts who want to be sexual with multiple partners. And there are some people who really struggle balancing those two either as individuals or in relationship.

Aníbal: So, any of those three parts that you mentioned in this polarization, parts tend to exile other parts. Yes. I know so many of my clients that exile their lusty parts or exile their relational parts, sexual relationship parts. It's very helpful to think in this way that you are teaching us.

Larry: So, I don't think of it exactly as they're exiling, but I think of it more in polarization terms.

Aníbal: Yes, it is.

Larry: That the person may primarily be, let's say, focused on their attachment parts and that the lusty parts are right nearby in the wings. And so, when we're talking with our client and focusing on, let's say, deepening their relationship and their lusty parts are listening, they may feel sort of left out of the conversation. And so I'll often ask, even as we're talking about intimacy with your partner, might there be other parts sort of in the wings paying attention to our conversation who may not see it the way you and I are talking about it right now, to invite those other parts, so they don't try to come out in a back door fashion, but they're welcome into the conversation.

Aníbal: Yes, makes a lot of sense. How open are, in your experience, Larry, psychotherapists to reflect on this and to integrate this kind of work on welcoming our sexuality and bringing it into the office?

Larry: So, I'm a big believer in individual differences, so I think there is a wide spectrum of therapists’ comfort with this. Some therapists totally open, relaxed, knowledgeable, not a problem, not an issue. Other therapists, a lot more reserved, much less comfortable, want to talk about sex in a much more modified way. So, I'd say there's a continuum of therapists.

Tisha: Yeah. I was noticing just in reading your chapter that more than anything that I've read or kind of consumed in the IFS world recently, it made me incredibly self-reflective. Just because we don't really have or there's not that much opportunity to really to talk about sex and it's not emphasized in school. And it's not maybe something that's emphasized unless it really comes up with a clinical issue. But I love the idea of it being a growing edge for all of therapists, so that maybe our culture becomes more healthy in regards to sex, especially in the therapy office.

Aníbal: Yeah. And especially when it comes to couples...

Tisha: Right.

Aníbal: If you are doing some work with couples, how can you avoid sexuality? How can you cope with it? Because there is something always around sexuality when you sit with a couple. So, I can imagine that your work with Tony Herbine-Blank must be precious. She needs your assistance as an expertise on this field or these specifics.

Larry: So, Nancy Wonder and I, we're are both working with Tony, have been encouraging the topic of sexuality to come more into the couple's trainings.

Aníbal: Yes.

Larry: And we are doing that.

Aníbal: Makes sense.

Larry: So, you're absolutely right. For example, the issue of discrepant sexual desire is very common for couples where one partner wants sex more frequently than the other or wants a particular kind of sex more than the other. And many couples or partners are ashamed to talk about that. They feel there's something wrong with them. Either they want too much or too little. So, finding a way to welcome each partner's parts around difference in sexual desire or difference in sexual preference is a very rich avenue in couples work.

Aníbal: It's beautiful to see how IFS can inform in such a beautiful way our sexuality. And Larry, regarding the future. Your future as a trainer and a supervisor in IFS. What is coming up for you? What would you like to be happening?

Larry: This is a good question.

Aníbal: You enjoy so much what you are doing, right?

Larry: I enjoy it very much and I'm sixty-four and a current conversation with a number of colleagues has to do with slowing down.

Aníbal: Okay, yes.

Larry: And a core piece of my identity is as a caregiver and a therapist is obviously part of that role. And I have parts who are more and more curious about what life would be like outside of that role.

Aníbal: Okay.

Larry: So, this is all in wondering at the moment. So, it's not exactly answering your question about where to go with IFS in the future. But I think as I'm pondering where I want my life to go in the future, I know that IFS will fit into that, but I haven't exactly figured it out at the moment.

Tisha: Does baking desserts have anything to do with that?

[laughs]

Larry: I love desserts.

Tisha: What is your favorite dessert to bake?

Larry: One of my favorites is a chocolate walnut torte based on a recipe from Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts.

Aníbal: Don't you think you have a journey to complete? On bringing this sexuality into IFS?

Aníbal: Yes. In fact, through Tony's Intimacy from The Inside Out, Nancy Wonder and I are going to be doing an advanced sort of couples training on sexuality next spring...

Larry: Wonderful.

Larry: In the Boston area.

Tisha: Wow. That's near me. I'll sign up. That's going to fill up so quickly.

Larry: And she and I, both together and individually, have presented a lot at the IFS conference on sexual topics, So, yes, I definitely want to keep bringing this subject to a wider audience.

Aníbal: Yeah, that would be precious for us, for the whole community. You are doing it so well. You and Nancy Wonder.

Tisha: Yes, so needed. Do you have any ambitions for the model as it grows and shifts and changes? What do you see happening with the IFS model or community?

Larry: So, I think most people are seeing that IFS is beautiful, well beyond the clinical office. It's a world changing model...

Aníbal: And paradigm, yes.

Larry: And it's fantastic for conflict resolution. You know, my fantasy is that people in positions of power, who lead institutions, medical institutions, legal institutions, government institutions would all get IFS training so that we're not so much led by extreme protectors who are being driven by their fearful exiles. But could we lead in a more equanimous, curious, creative and courageous way. That would be my fantasy for how IFS could change the world.

Aníbal: Very welcome that fantasy, Larry.

Tisha: Did you teach a workshop on touch at one of the conferences?

Larry: Yes.

Tisha: With...Was it Nathalie?

Larry: Nathalie [unintelligible]...

Tisha: That was incredible.

Larry: Were you there?

Tisha: I was. It was one of the most powerful pieces of training that I've taken.

Larry: Three years ago, maybe?

Tisha: Yeah, it was it was so good. We all looked into each other's eyes and walked closer. Yeah, just that conversation around physicality and really appreciated your teaching style too.

Larry: Thank you. That's an example of how I might use touch to address sexual issues with a couple. For example, many couples struggling with sexuality come to therapy because their sexual desire has kind of died over the years for a variety of reasons. And if they're interested in trying to rekindle that, one exercise I might do is called a touching pinkies exercise, where I have one partner touch a pinky to the other partners pinky. So, it's very, very light touch and just have each person notice what parts are coming forward inside themselves as they're making this very light touch with their partner. And it's quite remarkable that this seemingly innocuous touch brings up so many feelings and parts for people of desire and fear and sometimes people start playing with their pinkies and you see one pinky trying to get on top or underneath the other person's pinky. And so, we just slow down the process and hear from all the parts who are coming up in each partner, because that little exercise is an illustration of the bigger dilemma that they're struggling with around physical intimacy and affection.

Aníbal: So interesting. Yes.

Larry: So, the touching pinky exercise is a great example of the principle in Tony Herbine Blank's Intimacy from The Inside Out where differentiation of the two partners is essential for healthy attachments. With this exercise, the two people are staying connected, yet they're paying attention to their internal experience while they're connected.

Tisha: That exercise is illustrative of how experiential your teaching was that I participated in, which is interesting because there were avoidant parts around the experiential. Did you come up with these exercises with the pinkies and the eye gazing? Was there a good resource?

Larry: The pinkie's I probably came up with that one. The eye gazing, that's used in a lot of exercises, I think Nathalie brought that more to our workshop, but that it's often used around developing trust and safety with another person. Kind of looking into the other person's eyes and noticing what parts come up. And as you both see the other person and the other person is seeing you. So, I think the eye gaze can be used in many different contexts.

Aníbal: Wonderful. You should not stop. You should keep going. Larry please going.

Larry: So that's what someone might say around sex.

[laughs]

Tisha: That’s what Anibal says around sex.

Aníbal: It's a delight to be here with you. I wish we could sit again together maybe for a conversation on the stuckness in IFS?

Tisha: Oh, yeah.

Aníbal: Maybe in February or March, we can we can keep in touch and see if we can schedule another short conversation around the stuckness and IFS, the wonderful chapter that you did with Pam and Martha. Yes.

Larry: Great

Aníbal: So, Larry, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha, and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model.

Larry: So, thank you both. It's been a pleasure, really delighted to be with you both.

Tisha: Thank you so much.

Aníbal: And we hope we can keep in touch and have another sitting together. And happy holidays, it's holiday time.

Larry: Yes. Is it raining in Vermont?

Tisha: It sure is, yeah. It's warm, feels like spring. Thank you so much for the time.

Larry: You're very welcome. Thank you both. And thank you for what you're doing. This is a great contribution you're making. And good holidays to you both.

Tisha: Thank you.

Aníbal: Thank you.

 

Recorded  the 21st December 2019
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

IFS, Trauma and Neuroscience with Frank Anderson 55:44

Frank Anderson began his journey by earning his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1985, followed by his M.D. from Rush University Medical School in 1989. He completed his residency in psychiatry at Harver Medical School.After graduation, he stayed on as a clinical instructor at Harvard working as a staff psychiatrist at the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute, under the direction of Bessel van der Kolk.In 1994, Frank launched his private practice, centered on the treatment of trauma,including single-incident trauma, complex trauma, dissociative identity disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Frank also specializes in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders(ASD), lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) issues.Frank’s professional focus expanded in 2004 after he met his mentor and friend Richard Schwarz, Ph.D. From there, Frank learned to integrate IFS into his passion for psychopharmacology,neurobiology and trauma therapy. He teaches IFS, Trauma and Neuroscience,a five-day intensive training for therapists.Frank is the former chairman of the Foundation for Self Leadership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing IFS via research, scholarships and outreach.Frank continues to provide consultation, individual therapy and couples therapy at his office in Concord, Mass. Additionally, he maintains an active career as a speaker, teacher, consultant, writer and researcher often conducting seminars, workshops and training programs. He also remains affiliated with the IFS Institute and Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute.

Full Transcription

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

Today on IFS talks, we're speaking with Frank Anderson. Frank Anderson began his journey by earning his bachelor's degree in chemistry in the University of Illinois in 1985, followed by his M.D. from Rush University Medical School in 1989. He completed his residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. After graduation, he stayed on as a clinical instructor at Harvard, working as a staff psychiatrist at the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute under the direction of Bessel van der Kolk.

In 1994, Frank launched his private practice centered on the treatment of trauma, including single incident trauma, complex trauma, dissociative identity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Frank also specializes in the treatment of ADHD, autism spectrum disorders and LGBTQ issues. Frank's professional focus expanded in 2004 after he met his mentor and friend, Richard Schwartz. From there, Frank learned to integrate Internal Family Systems therapy into his passion for psychopharmacology, neurobiology and trauma therapy. He teaches IFS trauma and neuroscience at a five-day intensive training for therapists.

Frank is also the former chairman of the Foundation for Self-Leadership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing IFS bioresearch, scholarships and outreach. Frank continues to provide consultation, individual therapy and couples therapy at his office in Concord, Massachusetts. Additionally, he maintains an active career as a speaker, teacher, consultant, writer and researcher, often conducting seminars, workshops and training programs. He also remains affiliated with the IFS Institute and Trauma Center at the Justice Institute. Thank you so much for being here today, Frank. Thanks for having us. 

Frank Anderson: It's great to be here.

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Frank, for having us. This is a huge and long bio. You are doing so much, Frank. How is it to hear this bio to you, what parts come up?

Frank: That's a very good question Aníbal. Sometimes when I listen to stuff like that, I say "Oh, my gosh, that's amazing." Or "Holy cow, that's impressive." And then I think "But that's just me." So, it's a bit overwhelming. And, you know, I just was on a board meeting call with the Foundation for Self-Leadership just to kind of finish and wrap up my responsibilities there. And consistently they talked about my energy and my enthusiasm and is one of the things that they loved about me. And I just felt so seen and known in that moment. And, you know, my bio really kind of is a reflection of who I am as a person. So, listening to that, as much as it's overwhelming in some ways, it also is reflective of me. I'm someone with a lot of energy, a lot of passion and a lot of joy. And I love to do a lot of things. So, it's nice to be seen and reflected in that way. And I think the older I get, the more comfortable I get with just owning that space within myself and sending it out to the world in that way. So, mostly it feels good.

Aníbal: Yes, it's wonderful to be with you. We can feel that energy. You, Frank, also, you published a lot especially in IFS. You have published two chapters, the one that I really enjoyed so much "Who's taking what? Connecting neuroscience, psychopharmacology and the Internal Family Systems for trauma" on this wonderful book, New Dimensions. And another one, What IFS Offers to the Treatment of Trauma with Martha Sweezy on Innovations and Elaborations in IFS. And more recently, you just wrote the Internal Family System Skills Training Manual - Trauma-informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD and Substance Abuse. And that one is having a very recent Spanish edition, I understood. Congratulations it’s wonderful. The book is doing great, as much as I can understand. So, tell us more about how did you come up so close to IFS?

Frank: Yes, it's an interesting thing. I'll just speak a little bit about the writing aspect of my journey and then I'll talk a little bit more about my IFS journey. A little bit backwards in that way. Never in my life did I think I'd be a writer. I'm very extroverted. I love talking to people. I love connecting with people. That's such a natural venue for me. And it was not until really that first chapter where I was approached to say "Hey, you have something unique here around IFS and medications and psychopharmacology. Would you be interested in writing a chapter?" I thought "Oh my goodness, I'm not a writer. I don't know how to do that."

Aníbal: You need to sit and to get isolated. 

Frank: Yes, it's been a very interesting journey because to speak is different than to write. They are different skill sets. And that's really been an evolution for me around writing that first chapter with Martha or with Martha in that book. And that was a big accomplishment for me. I couldn't believe I could write a chapter. It was really, I had something to say. She really helped in the editing to get it to the place that it was. Then we wrote that second chapter and then a book. Like, this evolution of writing has been really striking and surprising to me. I'm in the midst of submitting another book that I'm writing by myself on IFS and complex trauma. I'll be submitting that to the publisher within the next month or two. And for the last year, I've really enjoyed writing on my own. This will be solely my adventure here of writing this next book on IFS and Complex Trauma.

Tisha: Wow, congratulations.

Aníbal: Yes. 

Frank: Thank you. And I love it. Like I've grown to love writing now in a way that's been very surprising to me. And it really informs your teaching. It informs your ideas and thinking. And it's a different skill set than speaking. So that's been a surprise for me is to become a writer. And as you said, Aníbal, much to our pleasure and enjoyment, surprise, this IFS Skills Training Manual, I think it's eight different languages now it's been translated in. So, it's done incredibly well throughout the world, which is just amazing to me. In Turkey and Japan and China and Spain and Spanish, Dutch, German...

Aníbal: You mean the manual? The skills manual?

Frank: Yes, the manual is being translated into all these different languages now, which is...

Aníbal: In a couple of years. It's a very short time.

Frank: Yes, Yes, so I'm thrilled that it's gotten so successful and it really does speak to the expansion of IFS throughout the world, you know. And it was a book that I think there was a certain niche of how to, a very kind of clear, organized way of presenting the model. So, I'm thrilled with the success of the book and my writing and we'll see what happens with this next book, which I'm excited about. I said to someone the other day, I love it so much. I hope other people do. I don't even care if they do or not because I just have enjoyed writing this so much. So, when you do what you love, that's kind of a home run, in my view. 

Aníbal: It is.

Frank: My journey to IFS was somewhat of an interesting one because originally in my career I was doing my residency at Harvard Medical School and Bessel van der Kolk at the time had his trauma center housed in my residency program. So, I met Bessel long time ago and became the psychiatrist for the trauma center with Bessel years ago. I graduated my residency in 1992, as you said. So, for years I've been working in trauma. Really my whole career it's been kind of trauma focused. And it was in 2004, I believe, that Dick and I did a workshop together at Bessel's annual trauma conference and just seeing him and hearing his workshop, I had one of those aha moments. Honestly, it was like "Wow, what this guy is doing is different." IFS offers something different in my experience and I met up with him, we had a drink together and I just dove in full on in this IFS journey.  

Aníbal: That was 1994?

Frank: No, that was 2004, I'm sorry 2004...

Aníbal: Oh 2004.

Frank: Yes. That, I met Dick Schwartz and started doing that work with him and it was really kind of a perfect fit from my perspective with trauma, because up until that time trauma was about managing symptoms and making sure parts, especially DID or in that time Multiple Personality Disorder. You wanted to make sure parts worked well together. Dick, for me, introduced this idea of permanent healing or healing these wounds. That was a whole new concept at the time. So, I was very intrigued by that. And I really dove in, like I said, full force. Did Level 1, Level 2, level 3. I just was really into it in a way that just fit for me with trauma beautifully. I have been trained in EMDR, been trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. I was actually the psychiatrist for the first EMDR Prozac study way back when with Francine Shapiro. So, I've been exposed to a lot of different modalities and there was something special and unique for me with regards to IFS. So, it's really changed my whole practice and way of working honestly.

Aníbal: So, you took all the trainings? I understood well, yes. You took all the trainings.

Frank: Quickly. [laughs]

Aníbal: Quickly.

Frank: Yes, I was one of those people, right? Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Aníbal: As I did it, yes in one year. I did it. 

Frank: That's right. That's exactly right. Because it spoke to me so profoundly.

Aníbal: Yes, wonderful. And what about the trauma, why the trauma? It just happened that you were with Bessel there at the Institute for Trauma? Or... 

Frank: Yes, good question, why trauma. Originally it was why trauma, because I sat with all these people in my residency program who had chronic mental illnesses. So, it was the institution that I worked with, you had to be homeless with no insurance in order to get into the hospital. And most of those people, when I sat and talked to them, had horrific trauma histories, chronic mental illness with horrific trauma histories. And because it was a Harvard affiliated hospital, we had all these psychoanalysts teaching us how to do psychotherapy with the chronically mentally ill. So, it was a very unique training perspective. But honestly, low and behold, as it is for many of us, the reason that I was so activated by working with these people with trauma histories was because of my own trauma history. And it totally, I didn't know it at the time, Aníbal, but I certainly subsequently have realized that's why I was so affected and intrigued by sitting with others with trauma histories was because of my own trauma history. So that really, you know, got the spark activated. But, you know, it's so much about my own history and healing my own wounds and then being able to offer that to other people.

Aníbal: It's our planet. It's our wounds, it's our trauma. It's ours, the trauma. So, it was there also to you. 

Frank: It was always there. You know, my sister was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 16 and I was in college. I was in college. So that was a big trauma in some ways for me to have that experience of my younger sister become psychotic and have these bipolar episodes... 

Aníbal: Can be scary, yes.

Frank: Yes, and that probably sent me into psychiatry. Honestly.

Tisha: I was wondering because you have a bachelor's in chemistry, right? 

Frank: That's right. 

Tisha: Yes. So, something shifted. Yes.

Frank: Yes. I was in college when she had her first break and it was so traumatic for our family and there was this part of me that's like, I've got to save her, I've got to rescue her because I love children, love children. And it would have been a natural fit for me to be a pediatrician, honestly, as I'm in medical school. But with my sister's first break, it really shifted my focus to psychiatry. So that's how I got into psychiatry originally, was through her episodes and then it shifted to being more about me and healing my own wounds.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model. 

Aníbal: Could you please tell us a bit more about your journey into the mental health profession? How did you make the link? You are really great doing this link between psychiatry and psychotherapy. You do it in a very unique way. 
Frank: Yes, it's very unusual, which is kind of surprising to me for a psychiatrist to also be a psychotherapist. 

Aníbal: It is. 

Frank: I mean, there's not many people that I know that really do both. I have a couple of dear friends that do both. But by and large, most psychiatrists do mostly medications and most social workers or mental health counselors or psychologists do the therapy. That never would have worked for me because of who I am. I'm a very social person, so sitting in an office all day and giving prescriptions would not have been fulfilling for me personally because I just love connection so much. So that's one thing I'll say that it would have never worked for me to just be that science type of person. Although I do love neuroscience, I love all the biology. So, I'm very interested in it.

Aníbal: And also, you do some research also. 

Frank: Yes, I've done research on trauma training. I've done research on psychotherapy in my residency program. So, I have that kind of research science mind. So, I'm interested in it. But I also love talking and connecting to people. And like I had said, my residency was unique because we were treating the chronically mentally ill with analysts, as psychoanalysts, as my supervisors. So, they were teaching me how to do psychotherapy. It was a unique training experience, but it also was a perfect fit for who I am. And I'm somebody who kind of knows the science but can digest it into easy, user friendly ways. So, I bridge the gap, you know what I mean, in a way that I think has been perfect for me because it's fits who I am. And I think a lot of the field needs that... 

Aníbal: Yes, totally.

Frank: ...Blending of these two worlds. I think Dan Siegel does a great job of blending these two worlds, for example. He's another person that I know and admire that he can take the complex science and make it user friendly. Some people stay in the clouds and the science and can't bridge the gap. I think I happen to be one of those people that can do both.

Tisha: Yes. To the benefit of all the trainees. I had the opportunity of taking your first trauma and neuroscience course with Dick and I was so impressed at how easy it was to take in some of the neuroscience and to understand how it works with parts. Would you be willing to talk a little bit about that today?

Frank: Yes, that's an interesting thing that...You know, at one point, Dick had asked me, because he really had wanted a trauma training. There was no trauma training. They had Level 1 training Level 2 trainings at the time or all multi topic. And then there was level 3. So, he had said "Frank, would you be interested in writing a trauma curriculum?" I said "Sure, why not?" And so, it started this journey for me of like ok, I know about neuroscience. For Bessel van der Kolk I've been teaching the psychopharmacology, the neurobiology of PTSD and dissociation at his conferences four years. So, I had all that information and I thought "How am I going to apply this to the IFS model?" So, on my own, I really started integrating these two things, like "what's going on with parts? Where our parts are located in the brain. How do these neural networks of PTSD and dissociation connect and relate to IFS and Self-energy and protective parts?" So, it was just kind of this natural curiosity. And nothing was written about this at all. So, I just kind of started reading books and picking pieces of what I've learned all along and what I found interesting work of Louis Cozolino, work of Steven Porges. But he wasn't even in the field at that time, honestly. I was at the first conference that Bessel had Steven Porges come to. But just these different people. Joseph Ledoux, for example, is a big somebody who works on the fear circuitry. Damasio. So, I pulled together all these people who I had admired in the neuroscience field and I thought "well, this is how I think it relates to IFS, it relates to parts, it relates to managers versus firefighters." And I just kind of created this theory. It's really Frank's ideas. There’re not tons of research yet on this. It's the way I put things together, that makes sense to me. So, this is a lot of what's going to be written in this new book. Is just more of that imprint, the integration of the neuroscience and IFS. Now, with the addition of the foundation...One of the big charges of the Foundation for Self-Leadership was to do research to prove some of this stuff. So that's a piece of what we did in the first trauma study. We did a trauma study to look at PTSD in IFS. So, that is going to be hopefully published soon. It's been a very long journey for that. 

Aníbal: Right. 

Frank: But just to kind of putting together some of my ideas of neuroscience, how I think it relates to the IFS model and then starting to prove that so that we can get some validity to the model, because like any model, you need validity, you need proof. Somebody said to me once, when I started this research in IFS with the foundation "It'll take you 10 years to prove what you already know." And I thought, that's interesting, it's a long journey, but it's kind of true. Like, we know how this model works and I'm one of the people who started applying some neuroscience knowledge to it and we're going to start testing it out to see if we're accurate or not. 

There are some key concepts like memory reconsolidation, for example, which I believe really does correlate with what happens in the IFS, the unburdening process. But we have to prove that. You know, I have this idea that parts live in the mind and they access and utilize neural networks in the brain to express themselves. Now, that's an idea we want to try to prove that. I pulled that from Dan Siegel's mind, brain combination. You know what I mean? I'm kind of taking what I've learned and try to apply it to the IFS model to the best way I can understand it at this point. And it's always an evolution. I'm always changing and expanding my thoughts and ideas around how neuroscience fits with IFS.

Aníbal: It's a huge challenge. One of our more difficult concepts to share with our students in psychology and psychotherapy is the concept of Self. And I believe that for you as a neuroscience interested and researcher perspective, what is Self for you? You referred Damasio. Damasio also has one wonderful book on consciousness and Self and he believes he found the place where Self lives in our body. How is it…?

Frank: Yes, I have a different view than that. People ask me this question all the time, "Where is Self located? Is it in the prefrontal cortex? 

Aníbal: Where is it?

Frank: Is it in parietal temporal junction? Is it in deeper brain structures? And this has been one of those experiential kind of evolutions for me, honestly, and I teach this in the Level 2 training that I talk about, is the different dimensions of Self energy, because I don't think Self-energy is one dimensional. I think it's multidimensional. And so, when I experience Self, whether it's connecting energetically with nature, connecting energetically with people, and that I'm in close proximity to. Whether it's connecting spiritually to what's beyond all of us, whether it's interpersonally within myself, I really see these different dimensions of Self energy and the way...My working model right now of that is that it's a state of being. And I think of Self is like this maximally integrative experience, that it maximally integrates neural networks in the body. It maximally integrates with energy and the environment. It maximally integrates with spirituality beyond us, and that it's this flow of movement through us. This is kind of the way I'm sitting with it now. And it may change over time, but it's one of the things we're trying to prove. One of the research studies...The foundation is looking physiologically and hooking up people with EEG to kind of see what your brain looks like when you're in Self-energy.

Tisha: Yes, is it measurable?

Frank: Exactly, we're really trying to measure that. I talked with Tania Singer quite a bit, and she's a researcher from the Max Planck Institute in Germany. And when I was talking to her at lunch a couple of years back, she said "you know, Frank...", it's interesting...Because I was telling her I think it's maximally integrative around neural networks. She said it might be the opposite. It might be the absence of neural networks, she said, because when she scans meditators who meditate for six to eight hours a day, their brain shuts off and there's nothing going on, as opposed to activation. So that was a very interesting “oh, I wonder if it's the lack of activation of neural networks is when we access Self-energy versus activating integrated neural networks, which I believe is in Self versus when parts are activated, I think they're activating dysregulated or unintegrated neural network.” So, this is a working model that I have right now. And I really think the science will help us answer some of these questions because we don't really know yet which one of these theories is as accurate or consistent with what shows up in brain scans.

Aníbal: So, it's much more a flowing energy, a flowing state than some structure or place where we can go and find the Self.

Frank: That's in my view. It's in my view, but it's also in my experience of Self. So, I'm using both to come up with a working hypothesis at this point that I'm hoping will be able to prove one way or another.

Aníbal: Do you still say, I believe you said that there's a life crisis of theory of mind once we confuse our Self with our parts? 

Frank: Well, yes, the theory, it's interesting. This is some of the work that comes out of Tania Singer's work, I think is what you're talking about, the theory of mind. And I really...She did this big study in her resource project, looking at these different dimensions of the value of mindfulness, the value of compassion and the value of theory of mind, which was an IFS component, really, because Dick and I met Tania in Iceland years ago at the Spirit of Humanity Conference, and she got excited about IFS, she knows Tom Holmes...And so her theory of mind component of her study really had a lot to do with parts and different people in different dyads learning and teaching people how to identify different parts of other people. So, there was all these dyadic experiences. And what she showed is that we can actually teach people how to step outside of themselves and be able to see and understand and identify different aspects of different people, of other people. And that is for me, there's huge implications to that in our ever complicated, divisive, polarized world that we live, right? Because that's not what's happening in the world today in my view. We are not, neither side, if you will, is very good at stepping outside of their selves and their views and being able to really see and appreciate what's happening with the other side. Okay, this is what we teach and value in IFS internally, is that we're always looking at the positive intention of every part. That's what separation and unblending affords you, right? We also need to do that as individual people in order to be able to separate from ourselves.

Aníbal: Yes.

Frank: And be able to see and value the good in others. If you believe in Self and you believe that it's all connected to source, this is what it is. We are all connected. And Tania's research shows that there's a way to teach people how to do this. There's a way to train them. And I think if we can harness some of that and start teaching people how to be able to do that, I think the world would be a different place. And I think IFS does that, I think it's really great for that, which is partly why I think it's expanding so dramatically throughout the world, because we're starving for that. 

Aníbal: Absolutely. 

Tisha: Right. The deep connection that comes from stepping outside of the polarization.

Frank: That's exactly right. 

Tisha: Internally and externally. It happens at every training.

Frank: Exactly. That's right. That's right.

Tisha: So, I'm curious, this is shifting a little bit, but with your work, with the intense trauma of your clients who are homeless and without insurance and then your background in psychopharmacology, I'm curious if you'll talk a little bit about working with parts, trauma and medication. 

Frank: Yes. That was an interesting journey and the way that Dick talks about the serendipity of the model and the way the model has organically unfolded for him over time, I would say very much consistently for me was this idea and way of working with meds and trauma and IFS. That it just kind of organically showed up for me. Originally when I was the psychiatrist, as I mentioned, for the trauma center with Bessel van der Kolk. Excuse me, but at the time, I was a straight white man who was working with predominantly not only females, patients, clients who had trauma histories. And so that kind of power differential was an awful setup for reenactments. When you’re worried about all powerful white male psychiatrist that's going to give a woman who has been violated not only by men, but predominantly by men, pills to take in their body and tell them what's best for them...It created horrible situations quickly. So, I have to say, I quickly learned this is not going to work this way because that was really how my medical training was set up. You're the expert. You know what's best. You give these people what they should have because you have this knowledge. So, I quickly said there's going to be a different way to do this. And over time, I just, by trial and error, but just by being a human being who also started identifying with my own trauma history, who came out as gay and got out of this power differential. So, this is a We thing. I'm a part of this group. I'm not the expert. And so, I started working with people from a very equalitarian, you know, we're equals. I'll educate, you decide. I'm not going to tell you what to do. You are going to decide what to do. I'll help you do it. 

Aníbal: What it's also so relieving, isn't it? 

Frank: Well, it was relieving for them and for me. You know, just even the playing field all across the board, we work together on this journey and I knew that most people with trauma history were violated and had their boundaries violated in some way and that giving meds could be another violation of their boundaries. So, I really wanted to do it differently and it became very collaborative. And then when I started learning IFS, I realized, oh, my goodness, these parts have a huge role in medication decisions, and nobody is asking them, and nobody ever did. Like, why doesn't a sleep medication work? Because nobody has ever asked the hyper vigilant part if it was willing to take a sleep medicine. Okay, as a psychiatrist, you treat the person as a whole, not as parts. But nobody's asking these polarizations that are inevitable with medications. For example, the desperate manager who's overworking and trying to please is exhausted and desperately wants help with Prozac, compared to the reactive firefighting part who says, no way, I'm not going to take anything unless I'm in charge and in control. It's these inherent polarizations around meds that I started seeing all over the place. I said there's got to be a different way to do this. So, I developed this way of working with parts and meds that's been really successful and been very helpful for my clients.

Aníbal: Yes, you are describing something that was IFS that could offer to the prescribing world.

Frank: Yes, that's exactly right. And many of them, it's hard to teach that group, unfortunately. They're not as interested in learning this this way. And I don't want to blame them in any way. You know, being a psychiatrist who's primarily a med person, you get 15 minutes if you're lucky during your med appointment. Okay? So, there's not a lot of time to be able to do this kind of work that I'm talking about. And so, I've taught a lot of therapists this. So, you guys spend more time with your clients. You have 50 minutes, if you're lucky. Spend the time and explore which parts want which meds, which parts are okay with which meds. 

Aníbal: Yes.

Frank: There's a lot of work that can be done from the therapist perspective without even knowing what kind of med does what biologically, but getting the system on board together in a unified way to take medication, that makes a huge difference in and of itself.

Aníbal: Yes.

Frank: The therapist can do that. 

Aníbal: And you get two in one. You get a much more respectable way of doing psychiatry and also you get more effective work with your clients. I mean, become much more effective the prescriptions and the work you do. 

Frank: Yes. You know, it's interesting, Aníbal, there's no compliance issues because I'm not making them take anything. They're taking what they want to take. Like, really, you know, how many times I've seen people, oh, I lost my prescription and I couldn't find it, oh I get all these side effects, you know. Parts know how to read the Internet. [laughs] They do. Parts go online, they come up with all these side facts and they say all these reasons why the meds don't work. Nobody was asking them. So, you know, it is different for everybody involved.

Tisha: It sounds like you have a lot of Self when it comes to being with people around medication. I find in my own system as a therapist, I have agended parts around medication. You know, working with my own parts, I find it can be really hard because I've got strong opinions and feelings and concerns. And so, being balanced around meds is...

Frank: It's one of the things I teach a lot. It is exactly right. And I say this to therapists and not only prescribers, but therapists, you have to work...That's the last kind of component of my model around working with meds is work with your own parts around medications, okay? Therapists or prescribers will say "I'm a failure as a therapist if my client needs meds." Or "Oh my gosh, you are so symptomatic. Please take a damn pill so we can get some work done." Okay, or any range. "I hate medicines. I don't like to take anything for in chemicals in my body. I only like to smoke pot because it's natural." You know what I mean? Like people have a whole range of responses as therapists and prescribers that influence our clients because our clients can feel very differently around meds than we do. And you really have to check yourself at the door. You know, I have to say, this is not about me and my parts. This is about my client and their parts and supporting their system because we all have views and biases around medicines, pro and con. And you have to work with them.

Aníbal: Are you noticing some curiosity from your professional community, the psychiatrists, the prescribers, to open to these perspectives?

Frank: More so. As IFS becomes more well known, there's definitely more of an interest. And, you know, I tried years ago to submit these workshop proposals to the American Psychiatric Association... 

Aníbal: Good, well done. 

Frank: They weren't interested. However, I will say that this community is really growing and expanding. And as you know or may be aware, last year at the annual conference Dick did this whole pre plenary workshop on medical issues in IFS... 

Aníbal: I heard about it. 

Frank: So, there really is a growing community within the traditional medical model of looking at different ways to work. So, my sense is, as we move forward, that this group will be more interested because it is a different way of working and it is more effective.

Aníbal: Absolutely, yes. Are you researching about this? Specifically, the effectiveness of prescribing, using...

Frank: Yes, I'm not doing any research on that at this point. You know, it's interesting.

Aníbal:

It's always complex, of course. 

Frank: Yes. And at some point, maybe, it's on the list, I will say something about what I am moving toward and interested in regards to medications in a minute. But, you know, one thing that's always intrigued me is that there's a thirty, a consistent percentage, thirty-four or thirty-three percent placebo response in every single medication trial. Like what is that? 

Aníbal: What is that, yes. 

Frank: Like, if sugar or parts can make a med work, why can't parts block meds? Like, for me, it makes total sense that it's totally aligned. It hasn't been researched yet. What I will say, for me, I believe, especially as it relates to trauma, the next frontier is all these psychedelics.

Tisha: I was going to ask you, yes.

Frank: Okay, so that's where I really think, that's where I would say some of my interest is heading. And that's where I really think there will be a huge breakthrough in treating trauma and PTSD and dissociation with these psychedelic medicines. Now, I'm also going to say, it's very complicated and I'm very mixed about this field as it evolves, because there's a huge group of people that are using these meds with the wrong intention to get high, to get away from their feelings, to just have a fun, hallucinatory experience. And there's a group of people that are very thoughtful and being very wise and diligent who know how to treat trauma and are using these in a very effective, profound way for some of our more severely traumatized people in a way that I think we're seeing dramatic results and improvements. So, it's a mixed field at this point. You know, for those of you who are old enough and aware, a lot of these meds were legal once upon a time and then the FDA shut them all down. So, there's this resurgence of these psychedelics that are coming out. And if we're smart about it and I think there's a group that is very smart about it, Michael Mithoefer is one of them. Him and I did Level 1 training together. Michael and I, we did our Level 1 training. Tony Herbine-Blank was our lead trainer years ago.

Tisha: Oh, he has an IFS background. 

Frank: He totally does. Him and I are colleagues and friends in that way. He's done a really remarkable job. I just finished last month in my office a training on ketamine assisted psychotherapy. So, we have trained twenty-five people for ketamine. I think psilocybin is another one, I think cannabis is another one, ayahuasca. We're going to see the range of differences in the treatments because they're not all doing the same things, they're all different medicines. So, we're going to learn the differences between what ketamine does for trauma versus what MDMA does for trauma, for example. 

Aníbal: Very interesting. 

Frank: So, I think the field is going to evolve in a profound way as long as we stay thoughtful and true. So, I think that's a whole new, exciting frontier. It's one of the things that I'm going to be hopefully involved with, is a new role that I have that I'll be announcing shortly with the IFS Institute because I left the foundation. And now I'm going to be working more formally with the IFS Institute. And that's one of the projects that I hope to be working on for them is the psychedelic assisted IFS therapy. 

Tisha: Fantastic. 

Aníbal: That's good news. Frank, you are the trainer for IFS Institute now for how long?  For maybe 10 years or more?

Frank: Ah, let's see, maybe 10 years. Is probably yes, I don't even know. I'm trying to think Aníbal, it's been a while.
Aníbal: Yes. My question is, how do you enjoy the trainings, the IFS institute trainings? And what do you enjoy the best in those trainings? 

Frank: I love doing. I have to say, I love doing them. I love doing them. To be able to...Let's see what I love the best about them. I love to see the transformation in participants within five days. 

Aníbal: Yes, it's intense.

Frank: It's one of the things that consistently happens to me. You know, Dick and I have specifically tried to make this trauma training work on your personal stuff. In my view, everybody has a trauma history. Nobody is excluded. And so, it's an opportunity to work on your part. So, we really try to create an environment in that trauma training that really allows people to do personal work. There's this learn how to do the model, learn how to do therapy and do your personal work. And I just love seeing the transformation of people in five days when they're really doing their own work and healing their own wounds. So that's so rewarding for me. I love the sense of community that gets created when we do these trainings. Like, you become close with people, you become vulnerable with them. We have an amazing, I'm so fortunate and I'm humbled with the level of assistants, Program Assistants that I have that are interested to work with me in this trauma training. They are just world class. They are so talented. And I just love, I mean, that only makes this training so much more rich because the skill level of the program assistance is phenomenal. So, we create this amazing environment to give people an opportunity to do some of the most painful work that they've ever had to encounter. And that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool to be a part of, I have to say.

Aníbal: You enjoy it, the whole set.

Frank: Yes, absolutely. Yes. And each group is different. Each group is different. And I can't keep up with it. This is a burden of riches because I'm asked all the time to do these trainings all over the world now. And I just don't have enough weeks in the year to be able to accommodate everyone. So, it's having an impact. And I know this is true for most of all the other IFS trainings, too. Not just the neuroscience training, obviously. 

Aníbal: Obviously.

Frank: But for all of them, you know what I mean. We're hitting people in an important way, which I'm grateful for.

Tisha: We were talking before we started the interview about you beginning to teach around parenting. And so that's a training for people to look forward to in the future. 

Frank: Yes, it's funny. That's another one of those organic coming from within passions of mine becoming a parent. I'll say a couple of things about that. Just like my passion for trauma is rooted in my own personal experience, so is my passion for IFS and parenting rooted in my own personal experience. And I will tell you, I forget this sometimes. I was a psychiatrist at the trauma center for a long time, and after I saw Dick Schwartz, I had a young baby. So, my first son was born around that time. And I remember getting so triggered around being a parent. 

Tisha: Oh yeah.

Aníbal: Of course.

Frank: You know, and it is really what shocked me into my own IFS therapy was really the way I got triggered and activated so profoundly being a parent. So, I was determined to not transgenerational repeat anything I experienced. And it really did motivate me to go into IFS. And, you know, I have, in a humbling kind of way, I have grown the most as a human being because of my role as a parent. 

Tisha: Wow. 

Frank: Nothing has brought me to the places that I've been and to the growth that I have experienced other than being a parent. So, it's just this natural, passionate place for me, you know, and you can read so many parenting magazines, books and magazines, and they're about the kid. And I just am like, no, we're missing the boat here. This is all about the parents and the way they get triggered and the way they lose the parent frame and the way they do not become the parent the child needs because of their history and their triggers. And that's really the whole focus of the training, in a nutshell, is really exploring doing your own work so that you...I talk about the parent Self, which is different than Self energy, and that's one of the things I teach in this curriculum is to how do you clear yourself in that parent kind of way to really become the parent the child needs, not the child that the parent wants or not the child the parent thinks it should be. There's so much that gets in the way of clearing that space for us to be able to help these kids evolve into their natural aligned selves. So, that's for me, a lot of the passion I have around this parenting curriculum. And I'm very, you know, it's like it is really the next dimension for me in the IFS community. And so is spirituality, by the way. That's the third dimension for me, because I've grown so much spiritually in my IFS journey that I hope to continue to teach all of those trauma, parenting and spirituality events.

Tisha: Did you have a spiritual inclination before IFS?

Frank: No, not at all. You know what?

Tisha: Cool.

Frank: It's interesting you say that, you know, I was a Harvard science guy. Like, that and spirituality don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. However, I will say that if I look back, there was always these moments and inklings of yes, yes, yes. But I think I just kind of pushed it aside and my smart intellectual part took over, really. And I can say that my husband has really brought that dimension to me in my life. He's very spiritual and then finding IFS it was just a beautiful, perfect fit. So, I have really expanded my spiritual awareness and integrated it and incorporated it into my clinical work on a daily basis now. Because for IFS is such a complete model that includes spirituality. If you're open to that, if you're not, it's really okay. But it's something that is was just a perfect alignment, my personal relationship with my husband and then the way it fits with my work and IFS.

Tisha: I really love to hear about the personal overlap with the professional work. It's such an intimate, a whole integration of who you are, doing what you love. Just feels really heart opening to hear it. 

Frank: Well, thank you. And it's because I've done so much of my own work that I'm able to be cleared and more aligned than I've ever been, you know. So, it really is a testament to IFS in my personal work that allows me to integrate and be aligned in this way. And it's nice for me that people can see and feel that from me. And I just feel honored to be able to bring that to the people that I touch. So, if they can also have that, that's a win win for my perspective.

Aníbal: There's so much love in you, towards people and the world, isn't it? It's beautiful to see, it's beautiful to see. 

Frank: Thank you. Yes, I feel it, I feel it. And I love. That's a great job to have. Spreading love.

Tisha: Oh.

Frank: Sign me up for that one, right? I have often said if I could bring more love and compassion to the world, I'll be happy.

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Frank: And I kind of feel that way. 

Aníbal: Frank, the IFS model is exploding, as you know. Are there some concerns and wishes for the future? On what concerns IFS for you. 

Frank: Yes, good. Thank you for bringing that up. I do have a lot of concerns about that, actually, and it's one of the reasons that I really had a desire and I'm grateful that the Institute is interested in me working more formally with them, because it's one of the things that I hope to help with as this model expands in the way that it is, which is really, truly wonderful. There is a real risk of diluting the model, of people taking it and using it in ways that are maybe not helpful, that are not true and aligned to what the model really is. As I told you, I was the psychiatrist for that EMDR Prozac study early on. I was one of the first people to be trained in EMDR because Francine came over and trained us so we could do the study for her, Francine Shapiro. So, and I saw the way EMDR evolved and people took it and made it their own and they did a pretty good job with it, but I see what's happening to the model. Like, sometimes I go to social media and I see who's doing what...

Aníbal: Yes. 

Frank: And who's calling themselves what or who's trying to, excuse me, take the model and make it their own. I get concerned about that. I get concerned about people doing a two-day workshop with Frank Anderson and then saying they're an IFS expert because that is not the case. That's not how it works, right? And I don't think we have control over what everybody does, you know.

So, I'm concerned about that. And one of the things that I'm hopefully will be working with the Institute on and helping the Institute is that at least we can start endorsing programs and workshops that people are doing in a way that we can give it a stamp of approval from the IFS Institute. That we can start endorsing the integrity of the model, so that people can use it in a thoughtful way that's helpful because taken in the wrong hands it can be harmful, especially when we start bringing this to the general public. This is one of my concerns. And I've been talking to Dick and John about this. When we have lawyers or massage therapists or pediatricians doing IFS or teachers, you know, that's one thing to work with protective parts, it's another thing to heal traumatic wounds. And those traumatic wounds do come up for people.

Tisha: Yes, it can go very deep.

Frank: If you're a lawyer or whatever. And I don't need to single out any profession. I'm just saying any profession that is not learned how to deal with vulnerability in a safe, healthy way, there's a risk of harm that's there. And I think we need to be very thoughtful about how we maneuver as this expands in a way that's really wonderful and beneficial to the world. So, I think, again, it's holding both sides of those things that feels very important to me.

Tisha: That makes a lot of sense, especially at this juncture. 

Frank: That's right.

Aníbal: Frank it's always a joy to sit with you. And I would like to invite you to sit again, maybe to focus on your parental curriculum. Am I saying, well? 

Frank: Yes.

Aníbal: And discover about that. But by now we have to thank you so much for having us and we hope that we can keep meeting and sharing this model and our work and our lives. And hopefully in Lisbon. You are coming hopefully to Lisbon in June.

Frank: I am coming to Lisbon in June for the first international IFS conference. I think I'm speaking on Saturday. I believe, I'm not quite sure.

Aníbal: Yes, it's on Saturday. Yes. 

Frank: I'm also very pleased and honored to be here and to have been asked to be a part of this. I too love our connection and hope and know it will continue as we move forward with the expansion of IFS throughout the world. 

Tisha: Thank you so much and thanks for all that you do.

Aníbal: Yes, amazing. 

Frank: Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. 




Recorded 9th December  2019
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Self Led Parenting with Paul Neustadt 50:26

Paul Neustadt, MSS, LICSW, is a senior IFS Co-Lead Trainer and AAMFT Approved Supervisor. In his private practice he specializes in couples therapy, parent coaching, and IFS consultation. He co-leads a monthly seminar for level 1 graduates focused on integrating the skills learned in level 1.He has led workshops on:
-Self Led Parenting
-the Therapeutic Relationship in IFS
-Direct Access: An Essential Skill of IFS
-IFS and Climate Change
-The Power of Presence in IFS Therapy: Transforming our Reactivity to Challenging Clients and Deepening our Capacity to be Present and Attuned
-The Gifts of Our Exiles

For 17 years he was director of a community counseling and prevention program for children, adolescents, and their families. Paul has also worked in a college counseling center and community mental health center, and taught couples and family therapy in a family therapy institute and two graduate programs. As an IFS trainer, Paul creates a safe, accepting atmosphere, attends thoughtfully to group process, and ensures that all parts are welcome. He is known for his clear, down to earth, and open-hearted manner.  Paul has also authored a chapter called  From Reactive to Self Led Parenting in Martha Sweezy and Ellen Ziskind “Innovations and Elaborations in IFS -  2017

Today on IFS Talks, we're interviewing and talking with Paul Neustadt. Paul Neustadt is a senior IFS co-lead trainer and AAMFT approved supervisor. In his private practice he specializes in couples’ therapy, parent coaching and IFS consultation. He co-leads a monthly seminar for Level 1 graduates focused on integrating the skills learned in Level 1. Paul has led workshops on Self-led parenting, The Therapeutic Relationship in IFS, Direct Access: an essential skill of IFS, IFS and Climate Change, The Power of Presence in IFS therapy: transforming our reactivity to challenging clients and deepening our capacity to be present and attuned and The Gifts of our Exile's.

For 17 years, Paul was director of a community counseling and prevention program for children, adolescents and their families. Paul has also worked in a college counseling center in a community mental health center and taught couples and family therapy in a family therapy institute and two graduate programs. As an IFS trainer, Paul creates a safe, accepting atmosphere, attends thoughtfully to group process and ensures that all parts are welcome. He is known for his clear down to earth and open-hearted manner. Paul has also authored a chapter called From Reactive to Self-led parenting in Martha Sweezy and Ellen Ziskind Innovations and Elaborations in IFS. Paul, thank you for having us. Thanks for being with us today.

Paul Neustadt: Yes. Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here.

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Paul, and Tisha for having us. How is it for you Paul to hear this bio? What parts come up? You are doing a lot around the IFS. I'm impressed. How is it for you to hear this bio?

Paul: It feels good. It feels good. Just one thing I'll say about that, part of my transformation through IFS...

Aníbal: Yes.

Paul: I think...My whole life, including my whole adult life, I really, I did not believe I had anything worthwhile to offer. I had a part of me that was trying to convince me that I did. But basically, I didn't believe it. And not until I found IFS and did a lot of my own inner work did I come to realize what I had to offer.

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Paul: And so now I do believe I have something to offer. And what's interesting is I have a lot of humility actually about it because it feels like we all have something to offer. We all come into this world with certain gifts. And I'm just grateful. I feel a lot of gratitude at getting in touch with what I have to offer. But I also have a sense that what I have to offer, a lot of it is kind of coming through me. It's not...It's like I just open to letting the gifts come through me. So, my parts kind of enjoy it. They like this feeling that we have something to offer, but it feels like it comes from some deep place rather than like an ego part of me that's doing this.

Tisha: Paul, can you share with us a little bit about your journey to becoming a therapist to begin with?

Paul: Sure. So, I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional family. My father had bipolar disorder and was hospitalized twice and had a really bad anger problem. You know, he would go into rages.

Aníbal: That might be scary for you as a child.

Paul: Yes, I have memories of very frightening episodes with my father. And my father sexually abused both my sisters.

Aníbal: Oh, that is sad, yes.

Paul: So, there was a lot of dysfunction in my family growing up. So, what I know is I went into being a therapist, really because it was a way for me to try to heal myself. That wasn't conscious at the time. I wasn't consciously saying all this, but that's why, I know that's why I was drawn to doing it.

Tisha: Had you had your own healing experience in therapy? Had you found anyone to support you and what you've been through before you became a counselor?

Paul: Honestly, I have to say that the therapy that I did experience wasn't that great.

Aníbal: It wasn't IFS, it was another...

Paul: [laughs] No, it wasn't. It wasn't IFS. I always thought therapy was pretty mysterious. I didn't really understand it, how it worked until IFS. You know, IFS really helped me to feel like "Ok, this really does make sense. I get how it works and both as a client and as a therapist."

Tisha: And how did you meet the IFS model?

Paul: So, 1999, my younger sister, who I was very close to, I feel like she and I are soulmates. She got cancer and died very quickly in 1999.

Tisha: So sorry to hear that.

Paul: And going through her dying with her was a very powerful experience for me. I had actually had cancer myself a year and a half before she got cancer. Fortunately, I survived. That was also a powerful experience. So, I think the two things, my own cancer, facing the possibility that I might die and then going through my sister dying, the two together were very powerful. And it just there was some shift in me as a result of that. And not too long after my sister died, I got a brochure in the mail that there was going to be an IFS training in Connecticut...

Aníbal: That was your 30s? How old were you?

Paul: I was, I think I was forty-eight.

Aníbal: Scary.

Paul: Yeah. Anyway, when I read that brochure, I just knew that this is something I needed to do and I was usually very cautious about, I mean, this is a lot of money to pay for training and, you know...

Aníbal: New models, new trainings.

Paul: But I just had this inner knowing, like, this is something I needed to do. So, I really connected to having gone through that experience with my own, you know, facing death, my sister's death. Somehow it got me more in touch on a deeper level with, you know, what is it then I really need to do in life? And came this brochure, so...

Aníbal: It landed well.

Paul: Yeah.

Aníbal: And when did your special interest on parenting styles come up in your life?

Paul: So, I have two children now grown and my oldest has had a very, an extremely difficult life journey. When he was a teenager, he went through a really, really rough time. He was acting out a lot. And we really didn't understand what was going on with him. I have to say it was very humbling as a therapist to have a son, a teenage son, who...I was totally at a loss for how to respond to what he was going through.

Aníbal: Want to help him.

Paul: So, really, it was my own experiences struggling with parenting, I think, that got me focused. Also, you know, I had been trained as a family therapist. So, I was interested in families and parenting anyway...

Aníbal: Since the beginning.

Paul: Yeah, but that really deepened my interest in working with parents, my own experience. So, I had a lot of very powerful experiences. The shift that I went through once I learned IFS, it dramatically changed the way that I was parenting.

Aníbal: So, for you, there is a before and after IFS, clearly.

Paul: Right. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Tisha: I remember in that initial training that you taught, that I took, you're talking about how the language of parts was so effective in parenting your son and something in that really landed for me, you know, just thinking about our parts as parents having that language. It seems like that is a really good home base for you and you've written a lot and taught a lot about parenting. Are there any key points that are good takeaways that you'd like to share with parents or families?

Paul: Sure. So, one is that my son was very, very good and he had a part who was very good that was very good at provoking me. And I had a part that would always take the bait that he would put out. So, he would provoke me and then I'd react, and we'd get into an argument. And once I learned IFS, I understood that was really just one part of him that was provoking me and that it was a protective part, I didn't know exactly what it was protecting, but I knew that it was just a part of him and I knew it was a part of me that was reacting. So, once I understood that I was able to kind of step back and be curious, like "What would happen if I didn't react, if I didn't play my part in this drama that we were enacting?" You know, what would happen? So, I chose not to respond when he provoked me. And very quickly, that provocative part of him...

Aníbal: Fade away...

Paul: Would kind of fade away, it didn't succeed in getting me into the argument. It would just fade away and then something else would emerge in him.

Aníbal: Amazing.

Paul: So, that was like such a dramatic shift, just that one dynamic. And then I'll just share another one. Another thing he used to do, he used to have these rants. He would just go on and on saying things that parts of me thought were absolutely ridiculous. I get really frustrated and really annoyed with him because my parts would say "Oh, I can't believe he's saying all these stupid things."

Aníbal: Yeah. Hm mm.

Paul: So, again, with IFS, I was able to step back from my reactions, the parts of me that were reacting so strongly. And I would acknowledge them. I would accept them, of course. I would say to my Self "Of course you're reacting that way, makes sense. And could you just kind of let me be curious right now?" And actually, I also asked my parts, did they have, like what was this about for them? Did they have anything to offer me about what was going on with my son? And then I had this insight, and so I asked my son one time, I said "Joseph, I'm wondering, when you're ranting, are you afraid that nobody is going to really listen to you? Are you afraid you're really not going to get heard?" And like, it's just sort of went right underneath the ranting and it was like, true, it was like yes, he said "Yes, that's it." He hadn't understood that himself. But when I said that to him, it was like he recognized the truth of that, and I won't say he stopped totally ranting...

Aníbal: Of course.

Paul: But it decreased so much.

Aníbal: Amazing.

Paul: And he would start catching himself ranting.

Aníbal: Amazing.

Paul: So, he would catch himself and then he'd say "Oh, I'm sorry".

Aníbal: Wow.

Paul: So, that was again, it was very powerful.

Aníbal: It is.

Tisha: He was met with your compassion instead of the critic.

Paul: Yeah, I'll share another. You know I have so many stories.

Tisha: I love it.

Paul: Yeah. So, when he was 30...So, he had both mental health and pretty severe substance abuse problems. And when he was 30, he had a breakdown. He had kind of a breakdown, which is actually his second time, you know, the second breakdown. And his drug use had been pretty bad. I was part of it. He was living out in Oakland, California. And I went out there and I took him to the treatment place.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Paul: He had actually found it, but he couldn't actually get himself there. So, I took him there. And then, after he got out, it was a few months later and he hated talking on the phone. He would not talk to us on the phone. So, this was like two or three months after he got out and we were worried about him, like, what's going on?

Aníbal: Of course.

Paul: We flew out to see him. And I had made myself a list of questions to ask him about how he was doing. So, he takes us on a hike and the first day were there and I immediately started asking him these questions and he got very uncomfortable and defensive and just shut down. And I realized "Oh, this is a managerial parenting part of me." This is a part reacting to...So, there was a part of me that was really, really worried, afraid for him and then there was this part of me who was going to manage that by, you know, trying to find out all these things that were going on in his life. So, because it was a managerial part...

Aníbal: Trying to be a very good parent.

Paul: Trying hard to be a good parent, but it just, you know, it just triggered parts of him that, you know, felt intruded on by me and I think, I don't know, I don't know all the things he was feeling, but whatever it was, made him feel very uncomfortable. So, again, I was able to step back and thank that part for trying, but ask it to relax and notice I'm here, too, and acknowledge the fear underneath...

Aníbal: Shifting to Self.

Paul: Yeah. And once I did that and I just thank these parts for sharing with me, I just got this sudden insight, which is he just needed us to love him.

Aníbal: Wow.

Paul: He needed us to love him and actually enjoy being with him. He needed us to enjoy him.

Aníbal: Show him how much you can enjoy him, yes.

Paul: And just enjoy being with him.

Aníbal: Yes.

Paul: Like, I needed to totally drop my agenda and just have a good time, help him feel loved and help him feel like we were really enjoying being with him.

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Paul: So, I told my wife that and she said yes. She said that totally makes sense. So, that's what we did. We just spent three days doing fun things, enjoying each other. And the last day we were there, that night, he came into our room and just started opening up and talking to us about what was going on in his life. And basically, you know, we found out all we needed to find out. But it was on his terms when he was ready and when he was feeling close to us.

Aníbal: As we say, Self contaminates Self.

Paul: Hm mm.

Aníbal: Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing Paul.

Tisha: Those are such beautiful illustrations of shifting out of reactive parts and parenting and moving into the Self-led parenting that you teach so beautifully.

Paul: Yeah. Thank you.

Aníbal: Paul, you work with parents as much I understood, right? You have so much to share and teach them and help them. Bu, Paul, parents usually wants us to change their sons and daughters. They don't want to do inner work or change themselves in any way, right?

Paul: Often that's the case. Yes.

Aníbal: How often? I don't know, in Lisbon is so often.

[laughs]

Tisha: In Burlington too.

Paul: Yeah. Well, my understanding of that is that most parents, if their child is having difficulty, somewhere inside, there is some inner critic. There is some shame, you know, that I have a child who has problems.

Aníbal: Yes. Yes.

Paul: And, you know, for a lot of parents, it's just like, it's unbearable. It's unbearable to have a child with problems. And so, who's to blame? I mean, people are so caught in the somebody is to blame for this.

Aníbal: Yeah. Always about shame and guilt.

Paul: Yeah. So, if it's, you know, the only way I can...It's not me that's to blame is if it's the child. There's something wrong with the child. You have to fix the child. So, I think it's just a very, you know, it's a very intense protector that's trying to protect that parent from feeling the shame themselves of being a bad parent. And the problem is, when they come in, that protector is so effective that we don't sense the shame in the parent. We don't see it. All we see is a parent who's just, you know, it's all about the child. And so that can provoke us. Right. That triggers parts of us who say "Wait a minute, how can you totally blame your child?" Like, you know "How can you be so blind? Aren't you seeing, you know, your role in this?"

Tisha: They didn't grow up in a vacuum.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. So, it triggers a part of us, particularly because we tend to be protective of the child, right? Parts of us are very protective of the child. The child is the vulnerable one. Right? I mean, this is the same thing if you're going, if you're working with a client inner system and you have a part of them who is very shaming and critical of the exile, the young part of them. We can do the same thing working with an individual where we feel, we can...

Aníbal: Of course.

Paul: A part of us gets angry at the part of them that is shaming themselves.

Aníbal: Yes.

Paul: That is hurting themselves.

Aníbal: Yes. So, Paul, how do you sit with those parents that sit with you and start blaming the children? This is really a challenge for...

Paul: It is a challenge. It's definitely a challenge. And yeah, I mean, you know, it varies. It really varies. But, you know, the main thing is I have to spend time just with the parents, you know. I used to when I was first a family therapist, you know, one of the approaches I learned is that you meet with everybody in the same room.

Aníbal: Yes.

Paul: But IFS really changed my understanding, especially when you have parents who say this is all about the child. So, basically, I don't argue with the parents about it. I just say...First of all, I say I'm not a child therapist. So, I say "You're with your child all the time. And..."

Aníbal: Absolutely.

Paul: "So, if I can help you with how you parent your child, that will be the most effective way that we can help your child." So, that's how I work. I mean, if parents are not willing to work with me then, ok, well, so, they won't work with me. So, I focus on the parenting piece and I'll talk about it as guidance. Given what your child is going through, this is really hard on you. It's really hard. Parenting is the hardest job on earth.

Aníbal: It is.

Paul: I do a lot of sharing with parents. I'm very open about my own struggles.

Aníbal: It's the best way to teach, right?

Paul: Yeah. Yes. I want them to be clear I am not sitting in the chair of judgment because that's what I think...I think when they come in, they're assuming...

Aníbal: They are going to be judged by you.

Paul: That as the therapist, I am sitting in judgment of them.

Paul: And so, I have to immediately shift that dynamic. I have to help them feel like "no, I am not the judge. I'm also a parent. I've been through tough times. You know, I struggled as a parent too, you know, I'm in this with you." Yeah. So, I have to help them feel safe with me.

Aníbal: Safe, that's the words. And so, you share with them your experience and your parts as a father.

Paul: Yes, yes.

Aníbal: We should all expect having parts and being reactive parents, right? It's the only way to become less reactive.

Paul: Yes. Well, so this is the other thing that for me has been so fundamental in changing the way I understand and the way I work, which is our reactive parts, how we respond to our reactive parts, because I think basically the way we grow up and even our professional training before IFS is to be critical of our own reactive parts. You know, they're just they're just getting in the way. They're creating a problem.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Paul: For me.

Aníbal: For me too.

Paul: So, with IFS I now understand that our reactive parts are allies. They're actually allies. They're important. They help us. There is so much important, valuable information that our reactive parts carry when we welcome them. So, yes, temporarily they can get in the way until we have a relationship with them and listen deeply to them. And once we're in relationship to them, once we've really witnessed them, heard them, why how are they trying to help, you know, all of the things that we do with a part? And then I ask them a really important question. I say "Ok, So, what do you have to offer me about this client?" So, if it's parents "What do you have to offer me about these parents?" But I do this with all my clients when I have parts that react to them. "What do you have to offer me about my client or about my work with my client"

Aníbal: Or about myself also.

Paul: Yeah, well, right. Because sometimes my parts are resonating with my client’s parts and other times they're just reacting. They have a strong reaction because of something they're picking up in the client. And it might be more about me, you know. So, sometimes basically the message is there's an issue that's very close to home for you. That's what the part is telling me. You have to work on something here in order...If you're going to be able to be with this client, you have to do your own work. So, sometimes it's a deep insight about the client and what they're actually really needing. I'll just share one example. This is not a parenting case, but this is a client who told me that he wanted IFS. But then, any time I would try to guide him into connecting with parts or focusing inside, would get extremely annoyed with me and critical of me and tell me it wasn't working. So, I had parts that got very intimidated by him because of how hard she would be, how critical he would be of me. So, I had to do a lot of work with my parts and I realized he was triggering for me memories of my father and how intimidated I felt by my father. Had lots of parts triggered by this relationship with him. After I spent all this time with them and listening to them and wondering what was going on for me, taking care of, I had to take care of a lot of my parts. And then I asked all my parts "Ok, so, now what do you have to offer me about this client?" And what I got was I've been totally ignoring the relational piece of my work with him. I had been so focused on just trying to get him to do IFS that I totally was missing that for him a lot of what was happening was about our relationship, and that he was trying...His parts were trying to put me into a particular role in relationship to him. He was trying to work through stuff with his father.

Aníbal: Ok, yes.

Paul: He had a very complicated relationship with his father. And he wasn't conscious of that. You know, his parts were trying to recruit me into being in a particular role that he can work through. And once I understood that and that came from asking that question "What do you what do you all have to offer me about my client?" And then I just like this is what this is what's going on. It just shifted entirely how I could approach him. I could relax the part of me that was trying to get him to do IFS, and I could begin to focus on trying to understand the parts of him that were doing this and what was the dynamic they were recruiting me into and then I'm just curious. So, what is he needing from me?

Tisha: You really bring into focus the value, it sounds like, in your teaching and in your clinical work, the value of honoring those reactive parts.

Paul: Yes.

Tisha: There's a lot of emphasis on that in your work. It sounds phenomenal. Would you be willing to talk about a little bit about the work with Direct Access that you teach us as an essential IFS skill?

Paul: Sure, I would love to do that. So, I teach this seminar for people who've graduated Level 1. And one of the things that is so common for people after Level 1 is that there's so many clients who don't take to going inside right away.

Tisha: Yeah.

Paul: You know, coming out of Level 1, most people don't know what to do. You know "what do I do?" They're not going, you know...There're clients who take IFS easily "ok, yeah, I can handle that." But what do we do when it's hard for them to unblended, when you know, they don't get it right away. So, that's where we have to do Direct Access and you just get introduced to it a little bit in Level 1, you don't really learn it. But as it turns out, for a lot of our clients, that's really where we need to start. You know, we need to really be doing Direct Access. And then we have clients who we have to do Direct Access with for quite a while, because often they've had so much trauma that their system is just too protected. But I have clients even who can do the insight work, and work with their parts, can even access Self- energy. But there are times when, still, parts totally take them over.

Tisha: They won’t unblend.

Paul: So, we have to be able to bring in Direct Access when it's needed. Again, people often get stymied, they get stuck like "I just don't know what to do." And so, being able to be comfortable with bringing in Direct Access at those moments, when it's needed...

Aníbal: It's precious, yes.

Paul: Is really, really important.

Tisha: Yeah.

Paul: So, yeah. So, I think it is a very essential skill. I also say I think it's harder. I think it's a lot harder than following the protocol and guiding people to go inside.

Aníbal: Paul, do you sit with parents and can parents, give you some space to do some Direct Access? That happens?

Paul: To do Direct Access with parents?

Aníbal: When you are working with parents about their children?

Paul: Well, so, just to be clear, So, there're two different kinds of Direct Access, right? There is...

Aníbal: Explicit and implicit, yes.

Paul: Explicit and explicit. So, the explicit is really when people are already pretty familiar with their parts. So, then if I say to them "Can I can I talk to that part directly?"

Aníbal: Yes, the explicit one.

Paul: "Just let that part be blended and I'll just talk to it directly.” You know, that's fine, because they know what we're doing. But with a lot of our clients and often with parents, especially in the beginning...

Aníbal: You go implicit.

Paul: It's implicit Direct Access.

Tisha: So, just talking about what parts you see and how to reflect kind of what's there and what you're hearing so that they can get the language?

Paul: Initially, I might not even be talking about parts.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Paul: Initially, if they're blended with a part, I just want them to feel...So, I'm being the Self for their system. And initially I'm just relating to that part understanding that that part needs to be heard, needs to be understood, acknowledged, before I can relax. So, that's all. I'm just trying to be as...

Aníbal: Validating.

Paul: I'm just trying to be as present and attuned to the part they're blended with...

Aníbal: Validating that.

Paul: As I can so, that it really feels "Ok, he got it. He really got me." And once that part feels that, then generally it can relax and then something else might be possible depending on the on the client. But initially, I'm not talking about it as a part. I'm not mentioning parts at all. I'm just being as present from Self-energy as I can be.

Aníbal: Just present.

Tisha: Yeah.

Aníbal: I was just trying to understand how much this technique, so interesting technique Direct Access can be in your toolbox when you sit with parents talking about their children.

Paul: Right. So, the most important thing that I'm doing initially, in Direct Access, is working with my own parts.

Aníbal: Ok.

Paul: Because my own parts are the ones that are getting in the way of me being really in Self-energy with this blended part.

Aníbal: Makes sense, yes.

Tisha: The training that you do for the post Level 1 on Direct Access is that online? Do all Level 1 participants have access o you when they want to deepen their understanding and get less clunky with Direct Access? How can people find out and link up with that?

Paul: Yeah, so, no, I don't have a training on that online. The Level 2 called deepening and expanding has Direct Access in it.

Tisha: Yeah.

Paul: So, people do that Level 2. They will get more about Direct Access. So, in Australia I'm going to be doing a two-day workshop on Direct Access.

Aníbal: That's right. You should come to Lisbon too. We have to plan that.

Tisha: Yes.

Aníbal: I'm just seeing these interesting topics that you have been visiting in your wonderful journey, the power of presence in Internal Family System Therapy, their experiences as a parent, as you said, the importance of honoring our reactive parts as a source of valuable information about ourselves and then IFS and climate change. Wow. And another one that I love, I don't know if we have time today or we have to schedule another talk, The gifts of our Exiles. That is huge. I am very curious about those topics. IFS and Climate Change and The Gifts of our Exiles. And you say, somehow, that, and I believe it's really a common experience that we fear approaching exiles and approaching exiles is frightening for most of the less experienced practitioners. Could you tell us a little bit more about IFS and climate change before we go into exiles? Huge topic.

Paul: Sure, I would love to. So, yeah, climate change. You know, at this point, we need to be really calling it our climate emergency. Yeah, that's something that I feel very deeply. You know, my own experience has been that it's really hard. It's just so hard to hold my awareness of the reality of it and hard not to not feel totally overwhelmed, totally helpless in reaction to it. But also, to feel isolated. I can also often feel isolated. Less so now, but, you know, there's this sense of we're all needing, you know, just living our daily lives take so much attention and energy.

Aníbal: It is.

Paul: I often have this very disturbing feeling of that we're all living in denial, like something, terrible things are about to happen and we're just going about our lives as if it's not, it's not going to happen. I hear people talking about things that are going to be happening in the future. And I say, you know, what about climate change? You know, how is that going to affect, you know, all these plans that you're talking about? Finally, cities are beginning to actually plan for climate change. And that's been some relief for my system, actually. When I see that actually there are organizations in cities that are finally taking it seriously...

Aníbal: Some very, very seriously, some very slowly.

Aníbal: My city is all...Burlington is all fueled on renewables.

Paul: Yes. Yeah, it's a relief when people around me are like...So, my synagogue just made a decision to have solar panels covering our parking lot.

Aníbal: Right.

Paul: At what an important thing for just for my parts, like "Ok, we're doing something." But when we don't know what we can do and being helpless in regard to something so frightening is a really hard place to be. Anyway. So, two colleagues and I created a workshop. Beth Davenport and Corky Becker. We created a workshop and it's based on a model of dialogue created by an organization called Public Conversation Project. Their name has since changed to Essential Partners, but they created a model of dialogue in the nineteen eighties when it was a very polarized time around abortion. So, you had the pro-life groups and groups who felt that a woman's right to choose was really important.

Aníbal: It was.

Paul: And there was a shooting in Boston, people were murdered in clinics.

Tisha: Yeah, I remember that.

Paul: So, they created this model of dialogue and it was actually based on skills of family therapy.

Aníbal: Good.

Paul: And they brought together the leaders in Boston from both sides and they met with them for a year in these dialogue sessions.

Aníbal: Wow, that is huge.

Paul: And at the end of the year, they gave a press conference where they talked about how they still disagreed with each other, but they had become good friends and they all agreed that they needed to calm down the bitterness of the public conversation around this. And they agreed that there needed to be conversation and dialogue and to be able to deal with their differences. Anyway, so, we integrated that model and IFS to create a method for helping people talk with each other about their parts around climate change.

Tisha: Wow.

Aníbal: Interesting, make sense, makes a lot of sense.

Paul: So, it was a structured approach that would guide people through identifying the protective parts of them that come up around climate change and then help them go...Ok, so, what's underneath the protective parts? What are the most vulnerable parts? And can you be with them and hear their concerns and fears and then look at, how people look at what's their vision for how they would like to be engaged in around climate change and what gets in the way, you know, what parts of them get in the way. And so, it was a process that I would say universally what people went through this workshop. And they would come through it feeling so relieved that connecting with these parts and also feel like they don't longer felt so isolated in their reactions and felt more hopeful, felt like there was something that they could do.

Aníbal: Can make a difference. A huge difference.

Paul: Yes. Yeah. So, to me, it's so key to overcome our isolation and to connect with other people. I want to just recommend this book by Joanna Macy, who is a Buddhist activist, and she wrote a book called Act of Hope. And she has a wonderful model of guiding people through their grief and despair around what's happening to connecting with other people and finding a way to listen to your heart and really respond from your heart with other people. What is it that I can do? And she...There's one key piece that I think is really important. She says that there are three narratives that are happening in our world right now. One is the narrative is business as usual. There's nothing that we can't solve. We just keep doing what we're doing and...

Aníbal: And see what happens.

Paul: And any problems that we have will figure them out, will solve them. We don't have to do anything different. The second narrative is the narrative of doom. We're watching now our civilization fall apart. There's nothing we can do. It's hopeless. We're on a path of self-destruction and things are just going to fall apart.

Aníbal: That one is sad and is risky, yes.

Paul: And the third one is what she calls the great turning. Basically, she says we have to go through a dark time. Things have to look really bad and get bad. We have to go through it to come to the other side. So, that's the hope. The hope is that we can and will get to the other side if we have that understanding and approach. So, basically, it's dangerous, really. The first two are pretty dangerous if you, you know, she's not guaranteeing we're going to have the great journey and get to the other side. It's really, which narrative is going to win out.

Aníbal: Very interesting and very helpful.

Paul: And what I notice is that I have parts that spend time in all three places. I have parts who sometimes feel like, yes, the doom narrative. That's the true one. That's really what's happening. I have parts who say "you just have to focus on your life. You know, you have a lot going on in your life. Just do that. Just you have to business as usual. You just got to do what you got to do." And then, hopefully, the story I'd like to hang out in the most is the hopeful one. And one of the things that's helpful there is she says you have to stay connected to your heart and it's not a managerial place. It's not like you can't be measuring by, you know, how successful are you being? It's really more, you know, listening to your heart, listening to your soul, coming from Self, really. That's the place we really need to try to land.

Aníbal: But we need to do it not alone.  And maybe connected and in groups.

Paul: Right. Exactly.

Aníbal: Because somehow, we need almost heal the world. We need to do it together.

Paul: Right. Exactly.

Tisha: This work and this this particular dialogue lands for me, for a lot of my clients who are up at the university, they're studying environmental science and natural resources and sometimes get so hopeless in learning about the world ecology that they want to change majors or drop out of school. And so, thinking about workshops that exist that can really get them in touch with their parts and create connections with other people it sounds so relevant for right now and I'm so glad you're doing this work and illuminating it. This is the first I'm hearing about IFS and climate change together. So, it's really exciting. Paul.

Aníbal: Very welcome, very necessary. Yes. Paul, I'm enjoying so much this conversation, and I'm just wondering if we need another time to sit together again, as soon as possible, for going into this wonderful topic of The Gifts of our Exiles. I think this needs a good space to be visited and for you to lead us on these qualities of exiles. You say, and I'm quoting you from your workshop in last conference, IFS conference. You say "for most people, the prospect of approaching exiles is frightening. Our protectors tend to see our exiles as dangerous, shameful or fragile. They are unable to see beyond the exile’s burdens, and even the exiles often think they themselves, they are that burden. And so, this is a workshop where you, somehow, help us to see the aliveness, the joy, the passion, the qualities of exiles. So, this is so, important. I would like to invite you to sit with me and Tisha again.

Paul: Sure, I would love to.

Aníbal: Yes, that would be wonderful. And we have a couple of questions regarding future that we can, maybe, offer you for the second time together.

Tisha: We could do like a condensed interview so people can really focus in on the exiles if they're interested.

Paul: Sure.

Tisha: Wonderful.

Paul: Ok. Sounds good.

Aníbal: Would you be willing to do it with us soon? We will find a time.

Paul: Sure. I would be happy.

Aníbal: Wonderful. So, by now we want so much thank you for all that you shared today with us. Is there anything that you want to share with us? As a link to our next conversation regarding the future of IFS? If you want to share with us, is there something that you'd like to share with us about the future in IFS as you see the model unfolding and exploding and also evolving, is somehow evolving.

Paul: But first of all, I want to say I'm grateful to the two of you because, you know, I'm just aware of how much passion there is in me around the things that I've been sharing today.

Aníbal: There is, yes.

Paul: So, yeah, that's felt good. You know, there is something in me that has felt good about this opportunity to share my passions with you. And, you know, whoever might be listening, the future of IFS is actually a pretty big topic.

Aníbal: I know.

Paul: You know, there's so much potential in IFS.

Aníbal: That would be another episode.

Paul: Yeah, there's so much potential.

Tisha: Let's schedule two more.

Paul: You know, I’ll just say that another area that I'm also passionate about that I didn't even mention yet is how IFS helps us deal with diversity and in particular in this country with...

Aníbal: So important.

Paul: Racism and the way that white supremacy has affected our culture and all of us. So, that's another huge area...

Aníbal: Topic.

Tisha: Great.

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Tisha: Thank you so much for your open hearted and vulnerable and really insightful talk today. I really appreciated it. And I appreciate reconnecting with you. It's probably been ten years. And, yeah, I've always wanted to take another workshop with you. So, hopefully that will happen. We had a mini version today.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Tisha. It's great to connect with you and also you, Aníbal. This has been this has been great for me.

Aníbal: Thank you. Thank you so, much. We used to say it was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. We used to say, we hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives, but we have to say speak soon.

Paul: Yes.

Aníbal: Because we are going to have a second episode.

Paul: Yes, I look forward to that.

Tisha: It's necessary. Thank you.

Aníbal: Thank you so much.

Tisha: Take care.

Paul: Take care.

Tisha: This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

IFS as a Metamodel of Therapy with Arthur Mones 48:48

Dr. Arthur Mones is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology who works with children, teens, adults, couples and families.
He is an Approved Supervisor for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy -licensed in New York and Massachusetts, and Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist.  Dr. Mones is on the faculty of the Adelphi University Derner Institute Postgraduate Training Program in Couples Therapy. Art was Coordinator of Marriage and Family Therapy Training in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at St. John’s University for 18 years.  He also was a faculty member of the Long Island Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Prior to that he served as Director of Psychological Services at Peninsula Counseling Center on Long Island. Art has maintained a private practice for over three decades. He has presented workshops in his areas of specialization on a local and national level.
In addition, Dr. Mones currently offers monthly professional consultation groups, teaching and supervising colleagues as they explore the essence of healing in psychotherapy.

Today on IFS Talks we're interviewing and talking to Art Mones. Dr. Mones is a diplomat in clinical psychologist who works with children, teens, adults, couples and families. He's an approved supervisor for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, licensed in New York and Massachusetts and certified in Internal Family Systems therapy.

Dr. Mones is on the faculty of the Adelphi University Derner Institute Postgraduate Training Program in Couples Therapy. Art was coordinator of Marriage and Family Therapy Training in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at St. John's University for 18 years. He was also a faculty member of the Long Island Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Prior to that, he served as director of psychological services at Peninsula Counseling Center on Long Island. Art has also maintained a private practice for over three decades.

He has presented workshops in his areas of specializations on a local and national level. In addition, Dr. Mones currently offers monthly professional consultation groups, teaching and supervising colleagues as they explore the essence of healing in psychotherapy. And as I read that bio, I realize we are just touching the tip of the iceberg of what you've accomplished. So, thank you so much for taking the time and being with us today, Art.

Arthur Mones: Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you for that.

Aníbal Henriques: Yes, thank you, Art, thank you Tisha for having us. Art, you have been publishing in our field since more than 25 years now, I believe. And we can see since the very beginning of your journey as a writer and even researcher, a concern with couples, families and the children. And you authored articles and titles like Marital Violence, Oppositional Children and their Families, Oppositional behavior in children. And with Dick, you just wrote this article on the functional hypothesis. Also, you have this wonderful 2014 book Transforming Troubled Children, Teens and Their Families. And also, in 2014, you have this wonderful therapeutic boardgame KidsWorld Inside and Out. And more recently, you have this new book coming 2017, The Therapist Guide to Kids World Inside and Out. So, this is huge, it's a huge journey, not only around family systems, but particularly now on Internal Family Systems throughout these two decades or so. How is it for you, Art, to hear this bio? What parts come up to you?

Art: No wonder I'm feeling tired.

[Laughs]

Art: Well, I always, when there's a spotlight on me, I love the opportunity, but there's always this little shy kid that pops in and I take a moment, which I've just done, to internally smile at him and let him know that, you know, we have some good ideas and things that we've learned, so would be good to put those forward. And he calms down and that's...

Aníbal: And how does he react when you stay with your inner child in that so sweet way?

Art: He likes that. He likes it. He likes hearing that. He likes the attention.

Aníbal: I love your journey, Art, in so many ways. You know, it's so important to bring this wonderful model into parents and children and families. And there are not so many doing that work. You know, I don't know why, maybe you have some idea on this, why so many people start working with families and children. Then somehow in their journeys, they give up and they come up into adult work mainly. And you stick with this work with children and parents. That is so, so important. So, my acknowledgement, my respect for your long journey doing this hard work, because I know it can be very hard to work with the families and the spouses and couples. So, I have a deep respect for your long journey around this special group. How do you manage?

Art: [laughs] You know, for me, it's energizing to...You know, my practice has always been quite varied. So, hour to hour, you know, I'll be seeing individual adult, I'll be seeing a couple, I'll be seeing a school aged teen, you know...

Aníbal: It helps.

Art: And the variety of that is always stimulating to me. And...

Aníbal: It's a good advice for our dear fellows. Variety.

Art: Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. And, you know, I entered the field having an idea of specializing with kids so that drew me from the beginning and that grew into family therapy and grew into couples work and, of course, always interested in doing adult individual work as well. So, the question was sort of like “How do you handle that burden?” But it's the opposite, the opposite has happened for me. You know, it's been a joy. And, you know, having that child energy in the office can be crazy, but it can be also very, very enlivening.

Tisha: Can you share with us a little bit about your journey, what brought you into the field to begin with? What set you up to be a therapist?

Art: Sure. When I was in college, I started with harder science, you know, studying biology and chemistry. I have an older brother who was in med school at that time. He became a pediatrician. So, we both had that kid's interest for some reason that we talk about, But I don't know that we understand fully and a little bit of a story, so, I started taking classes and I was doing ok. Not great. B's, some A's, maybe a C here and there. But it didn't grab me. Not only didn't it grab me, I was getting stomach aches. And I was in my early twenties, I guess, or beginning...So, I called my parents and I said, I'm getting stomach aches, maybe there's something in that science building that's toxic. And they said, well, get yourself checked out and go to a doctor, which I did. And the exam was fine. Doctor said it was fine and then kept taking the classes. And then the summer after my second year of college, I took a required psychology class, never even thought of psychology. And it really was pretty cool. It was like really interesting. It was focused more on syndromes and what they used to call abnormal psychology. 

Aníbal: Yeah. 

Art: And it was in the same building as the other sciences, and my stomach aches went away.

Aníbal: Wow.

Art: So, I started to be more and more curious about myself, plus taking the classes. And I found myself reading...I was taking subway, I was living, and I was in New York and reading the textbook on the subway, which sounds weird, but it was really grabbing me, and they were very cool. So, I switched majors. So, starting in my third year, let go of the sciences and basically took every class in psychology as new major.

Tisha: Your parts were communicating with you somatically so clearly.

Art: I would say, now that I kind of understand a lot of that stuff, but back then, hardly a clue. No clue.

Aníbal: What part was that, Arthur?

Art: What part was that that I was getting the stomach answer?

Aníbal: Yes, yes. That part that guided you.

Art: Smart part, smart part. If it was not for you, you know, this is...You know, you have the brain that [inaudible] with these things, but it's not meaningful. I have to say, what I started with psychology, and of course, undergraduate is very different than graduate, which is very different than when you really start to learn in the field, but it really fit. I feel so fortunate for that turn of events that led me to clinical psychology and then specializing with kids, as I said before, families and so on.

Aníbal: Since the beginning? Since the beginning.

Art: Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. My internships were with kids and then that expanded to doing work with families.

Aníbal: But at that time, you were trained in a family systems therapy, not necessarily, or a CBT or was that...?

Art: Well, in graduate school, that was mid, early 70s was...

Aníbal: Early 70's. So, yeah.

Art: So...

Art: Psychodynamic also?

Art: The program that I was in was psychodynamic and behavioral.

Aníbal: Ok.

Art: So, you took a sampling in both. There was no course in family therapy. There were maybe one or two classes that were child oriented-child focused. So, what I was learning was being out in the field, you know, on externships they call them at the time or internships and having supervisors who encouraged me and some of whom thought my thinking was strange to beginning to think more systemically even before I took trainings and so forth in family work. But they encouraged me. They said, you're thinking a little differently than we all.

Aníbal: They were open.

Art: Right. So that started that part of that journey with family therapy.

Aníbal: Yeah. So, you were a therapist for a while as a family therapist before you discovered IFS.

Art: Well, yeah. So, just to say a little bit more. So, at the same time that I was seeing kids and families, I also...And this was around graduate school, too. I also noticed starting to get a little insightful, perhaps, that I like to see the big picture. So, I felt, and I said to a couple of professors, and I said more to my peers who were in class with me, that I don't think there are all these models of what is the essence of psychotherapy or the essence of healing. I think there's one thing, because I think that if you watch a successful session of a therapist who may describe his or her, be a psychodynamic person or CBT and it goes well, I would say I think it's all the same thing. And it wasn't enormously popular thought. It wasn't that they were rejecting that thought. But they would say “Ok, now we have to go to a psychodynamic class.” And professors not at all responsive, not negatively, but not...It didn't quite get that, but I kept that in mind and probably be a bit oppositional myself, I kept that thought and began, I would say, a journey of finding out what that essence is. What is it that really heals people, that separate from the demarcation of the different models? And that's what I've been doing. So, family therapy, in addition to making sense in treating kids, also provided an impetus for that odd thought that there's one essence of healing. There is a central trail for that.

Aníbal: Yes. Art, you open your book Transforming Troubled Children with this chapter that you, exactly, you call it the essence of emotional healing.

Art: Right.

Aníbal: And it's about this essence that you already connected at the time?

Art: That's right. That's right.

Aníbal: Is that same essence. The essence of emotional healing. What is it that essence? I believe you also call it the common factor in a way. It's a common factor for every model. Every model has somehow this essence for healing? That's what you are saying?

Art: That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. So then, in searching for a meta-model, I went through many years of going to study with a lot of gurus. So, I trained a bit with Sal Minuchin, learned a little bit of Murray Bowen...

Aníbal: Big names.

Art: Right. And then was supervised by Jay Haley. I went to visit Milton Erickson in Arizona.

Aníbal: Wow.

Art: I studied NLP when it was just...Are you Familiar with neurolinguistic programming?

Aníbal: Absolutely, yes.

Art: So, I was looking and actually the NLP, Bandler and Grinder wrote this really amazing book that you're probably familiar with Structure of Magic.

Aníbal: Yes.

Art: And that resonated with this they're trying to figure out what the essence of healing is.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Art: So that very much connected with me. And then I met Dick at the time.

Aníbal: It was in the 90s?

Art: Actually, late 80s.

Aníbal: Late 80s, ok very early.

Art: Yeah, yeah. At the Networker conferences.

Aníbal: Yes.

Art: And went to his workshops, Dick was writing articles in the Networker Journal at that time and said "Here's a guy who gets it."

Art: So, I met him, introduced myself to him. We went to lunch and we established a bit of a friendship...

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Art: And a few of us were in a peer group and in that peer group, Steve Krantz, who you might know was one of the lead trainers now, and Jenny Hines and Steve said "Why don't we call Dick and see if we can get supervision on the phone? And we did that for many years, like once or twice a month. We felt so fortunate about that.

Aníbal: Wow.

Art: But I guess one of the pieces that happened was that what I was finding and experimenting with and thinking and doing, Dick put together.

Aníbal: Wow.

Art: You know, I don't know if Dick would say it, but he put forth what I would say is a meta-model of healing. I don't think he described...

Aníbal: Yeah, I never heard him about that also, but you are the only one that I heard to call the IFS Model a meta-model. Could you deepen a little bit about...I think I understand you well, why you call it a meta-model? But could you help us more about why you call it?

Art: Yeah, I would say mostly at the center of what I think is that it's a nonpathologizing...

Aníbal: It is

Art: Model...

Aníbal: Yes, refreshing, so refreshing

Art: At its core, it's that. And from there, it spins off into, as we know, the exploration of parts that, you know, our field, unfortunately, historically pathologize, those were all DSM categories, like if a person is OCD or a person has an addiction or whatever we might describe.

Aníbal: It's really a bad start trying to treat someone. It's a bad start, isn't it? Calling people those names?

Art: Yes.

Aníbal: Strange.

Art: Absolutely. Right. Right.

Tisha: Bring up a lot of shame.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Art: Absolutely. Right. Right. And that's what we're trying to heal, right?

Tisha: Right.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Art: Yeah, yeah. So, it's a model that spins back to, you know, the medical model basically...

Aníbal: The medical model, yes.

Art: Spin back to pathologizing people. Dick took a different direction. And I would say out of, you know, I met all these gurus, Dick, who's the same age, I would say he is probably the most courageous of all the people that I worked with. Certainly, the people, the clients who he worked with, you know, early in his career and later on as well...

Aníbal: Why do you say the most courageous?

Art: I think, in this tenacity of belief that people are good.

Aníbal: Yeah.

Art: And he's not going to get scared about their symptoms. He treated so many dissociative disorder people, severe eating disorder, people, that type of thing, and just went forward in a very courageous way. So, I would say, as I was going on my own journey of trying to figure out what this essence is, I met Dick and Dick brought courage and clarity to that search. And it seemed to me, you know, and I describe myself as oppositional, so the way that played out was that I would learn all these models and study Minuchin's work and Haley's work, everybody, really. And I would say, yes, but this doesn't feel exactly right. Sometimes the delivery system was edgy when I got to know Haley and Minuchin, they were edgy with clients sometimes. And as Tisha said, that was shaming in and of itself.

Aníbal: Ok.

Art: So, Dick was...

Aníbal: Different.

Art: So, I became kind of a true believer and that was unusual for me.

Aníbal: Wow, what a journey.

Art: Yeah.

Aníbal: You came up into the IFS models in such a close journey with Dick I'm seeing.

Art: Yeah.

Aníbal: It was quite close. You were close for years.

Tisha: I'm curious about that early on the phone supervision. Was that experiential? Was it learning the intricacies of the model? Was it case consults?

Art: It's kind of the way the trainings go. You know, a lot of people would show up "I want to learn this model."

Aníbal: Yes.

Art: And then there were six weekends of going inside, right. And you learn the model, but really the process of learning it is...

Aníbal: Going inside.

Art: The experiential journey. So that's exactly what it was on the phone.

Aníbal: At the time it was already like that.

Art: Yeah.

Tisha: So, you found yourself working on your own parts in your own system, being self-reflective and finding out about you as a therapist?

Art: Right, right. Yeah.

Aníbal: Again, Art, why do you call this model a meta-model?

Art: Because I think it has all of the elements that are central to healing. So, first and foremost is the nonpathologizing.

Aníbal: It is.

Art: And looks at what a person brings in as having parts. Maybe in the old days we used to call them defenses, but that's also perhaps shaming to the parts themselves. But in the IFS model, we call them protective parts, which is a whole different way to experience that they are working for us.

Aníbal: You somehow say in your book, you call it an integrative meta-model once it combines wisdom from psychodynamic, structural Bowenian and strategic sensorimotor and solution focus models.

Art: Right.

Aníbal: For instance. And more even more, eventually.

Art: Right. So, it's putting all of that together, which I think IFS, in a very clear and unencumbered way, does. It has systems thinking in it, you know, it deals with the paradox of how people get ill in recognizing that in our striving for self-protection, we have these parts that backfire if they're over employed.

Aníbal: Yes.

Art: And have us feeling less capable and less healthy.

Aníbal: Exactly. You wrote with Schwartz, with Dick Schwartz in 2007, this article on the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration called The Functional Hypothesis, a family system's contribution toward an understanding of the healing process of the common factors. What is this functional hypothesis?

Art: The functional hypothesis, you know, if we're looking for the essence of what heals, it's when the therapist can help the client see that what they're dealing with is be able to adapt and survive in various contexts. And that was actually, I would say, a revolution of family therapy.

Aníbal: Yes.

Art: Family therapy, really, as a field began in the 50s and 60s and it flipped around the idea that the things, the emotional struggles that people had are not illnesses.

Aníbal: The symptoms.

Art: Right.

Aníbal: They have a role.

Art: Right. Gregory Bateson, who is considered like the grandfather of the field, formed a study group in Palo Alto, California, and studied families of schizophrenic patients and came up with this idea that delusions or hallucinations make sense when you put them in context.

Aníbal: Yes.

Art: And that was a revolutionary idea. And to this day, people don't absorb that. There are many therapists and many people in the medical field who still do not absorb that.

Aníbal: They don't.

Art: So, I saw that Bateson idea - and by the way, Jay Haley was in that group and very wonderful people like Paul Watzlawick...

Aníbal: Yeah, wonderful times, wonderful times, in the 70s and the 80s. Lucky you. Lucky you Arthur.

Art: Yeah, I do. You know, it's interesting. I feel that way. I feel that way. Very lucky.

Aníbal: And fortunate for meeting them also.

Art: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Tisha: And then to have landed on a model that feels really true for you.

Art: Yes, absolutely.

Tisha: What was it like to shift into IFS being kind of your primary working model?

Art: That's an interesting question. I think, you know, it really wasn't anything of a challenge. In fact, it was just such a, you know, like a breathing easy...

Aníbal: Just fits you. Fits you.

Art: Fits what I was journeying to find. And now I think that IFS, EFT, ACT, Siegel's work, they're all kind of in the same genre, even though, you know, they have specifics or sabbatical work, you know, Pat Ogden, they're all kind of in this essence place. So, it's a very happy time for a person like me.

Tisha: Right. So, you've seen the evolution [inaudible 00:29:49] being used in other ways and adapted.

Aníbal: And what is that essence, Art? How would you name it? How would you call it?

Art: The essence is having the person experience that they're good. I know it sounds maybe simplistic, but it's that they're experiencing that they have, as you well know, these protectors and they're protecting against trauma that we all carry from mild to severe and that we were smart enough to develop these protectors so that we can survive in key context, mainly our families, but that, you know, the protective parts, as we start to say before, overwork and then constrain that goodness, which, in the eye of this model, is called Self. So, the idea is to unburden the residue of that trauma by asking the parts to step back, bringing Self in and having Self with the guidance of a therapist that delivers it well, you know, to release the burdens. So that's IFS meta-model. I think that's where the healing is.

Tisha: Can you talk a little bit about your experience with Self, either as a clinician or personally?

Art: Sure. Let me reflect on that for a moment. You know, Self is what I need to bring to myself first and foremost and then bring to my clients. And no matter what the drama of the session might be, I know that I have to get back to...I start my day with that, which I usually do with some meditation and breathing and just trying to keep my promise as to what got off track yesterday or this morning, early or whatever, to bring Self-energy to it or recognize what's in the way of that. And bring that forward in the hour to hour work that I do. Currently, my practice, because I just turned 70 last year, my practice is basically working with therapists, so I feel quite fortunate in that too. So, I have small groups and I have and, you know, one on one or couples who are therapists. And so, it's kind of like a mini IFS training day, where I have to get into Self, bring it out and you know, not infrequently get a question from people on either training or working with as a therapist. They'll say, well "Art, are you always in Self?" And I say "Yes, I'm always in Self, except when I'm not."

Aníbal: Absolutely, totally agree with you.

Art: But really, the more important question is, of course, not always, it's not a static kind of thing, but the more important thing is getting back to it, you know, having little signals inside and heading to it.

Aníbal: Art, you came from, you trained in so many models, you have a so reach and long journey in our field. In your clinical work do you combine IFS with any specific modality nowadays or you just stay mainly IFS focused?

Art: You know, I would say all the work is IFS informed. So, at the risk of being repetitious, the meta-model is what IFS offers and the specifics, you know, could range from taking a person at side to doing body exercises, doing some meditation in the session with the client. So, it's, you know, psychoanalytic ideas are always there. I haven't rejected that. CBT ideas about how we think about our thinking are useful. So, I would say, you know, it's kind of like screens on the computer when I'm very centered and I'm clear minded, I'll be able to click on the screen that fits for that moment with the meta-model as the umbrella of it all.

Aníbal: Interesting. Art, in a time of screens you were there to create a board game. How is it doing your game?

Art: Good. Yes. The nicest thing, I have to say, the two of you are such lovely individuals. I get that, I met Anibal before meeting you Tisha, and I'm saying this because you're doing the IFS talks, which is great, you should at some point in some form, and this may be part of what it is, right or do something that puts out what you figured out into the world, because it's a wonderful experience. It's great internally and it's also so nice to get an email from Lisbon, of all places, you know, saying that few of us read your book and we're delighted with it. Will you talk with us? And it's just a wonderful, generative, expansive way of coming out...

Aníbal: And some buy the game.

Art: And some buy the game, right, right, right. So, yeah, it's doing well. And that's why I started to say that, because I get periodic emails about it and that it was helpful. If I go to IFS conference, people see the name tag and they say "Oh, I love the game", it's just very nice that you, especially in my old age, paint on a larger on a larger canvas. It's a very wonderful...

Tisha: So people are using this game, it sounds like it, in practice with children to really solidify the model and, you know, it seems like there is reference to Self and reference to parts, that it's a great way to...I'd love to play it. I haven't. I just watched the demo.

Art: The one that's on the...

Tisha: Yeah, that's great. Somebody did a good job with your graphics.

Art: Yes. Yes.

Tisha: But yeah, it's such a great concept. Thank you for that contribution.

Art: My pleasure. Thank you for that comment. Over the years used various board games and always had in mind, you know, to kind of put together all the hundreds or thousands of questions that may have been helpful into something that therapists could use. Seems to work.

Tisha: Good tool for the office.

Art: They're getting into schools, which I'm delighted about, like school psychologists are using it.

Aníbal: Wow, wonderful. Art you have been working with hundreds of children and their families, I believe, over your long career. Are you sharing all this experience and knowledge, coaching other therapists now on this specific work with parents and families and children? Or they do consult you only for adults?

Art: No, no.

Aníbal: It's for children and...

Art: Many about kids and families. And that's one of the pieces about the book that people said "Can I have a phone, a supervision or come in to talk about ideas that you're writing about and might apply to the cases that we have." So, yeah.

Aníbal: Wonderful

Tisha: Do you have a sense of where you'd like to see the model itself go in the future? Any hopes and dreams?

Art: My own pet ideas about, you know, is there an essence of healing to the process of healing would be a nice development, talk about perhaps at IFS conferences, you know, bringing in key people who promote other models. So, I'd certainly like to see that. I think there are so many exciting things that are happening that I hear about. But that's the first thing that comes to mind that can we talk about. I think it's a little tricky, because everybody has their little territory. You know, I think that it's just human nature, I guess.

Aníbal: It is.

Art: You know, that we have these separate, restated models. But I'd love to see more of a discussion about what the commonalities are among all of these very wonderful healing models. I had some talks, you know, just to reflect on, Anibal, what you said at the beginning. You know, family therapy is not being taught in graduate schools in the states too much. I mean, being taught a little bit, but not emphasizing. People are not really offering a lot of supervision on it. I think the realities of doing of family therapy, which probably mean that you have to work after school hours as a therapist, that evening hours to have both parents participate is not always so appealing to people.

Aníbal: Too engaging.

Art: But it saddens me that, you know, certainly the Ph.D. programs on the East Coast, CBT has been pretty much the center piece model. And these other things, which I consider, as I've been saying, you know, more of the metal-model of what exactly happens, you really have to learn after school. You know, they're not really, unless you're fortunate to get maybe usually an adjunct person teaching you, you're not really getting the update on all the exciting things that are going on in the field.

Aníbal: Yes, you are right, and the world needs it so much.

Tisha: Yeah, this is really true. Yeah. I wonder when these models will make it into graduate program.

Art: I mean the only program that I know that's been doing it for, you know, since the late 90s is Ralph Cohen's program in Connecticut, it's an MFT training program. And students there are amazing, you know, I've taught for so many years, you know, very brilliant PhD students in clinical psychology when I got to be friends with Ralph and actually my initial training was in Connecticut in IFS, formal training beyond the individual work with Dick. These students were amazing at that age, at that stage at age. That was really encouraging.

Tisha: I was introduced to IFS in my clinical internship and I remember bringing it to my graduate class consult group and the professor actually scoffed at it. It was a great professor, but it was it was really dismissed, which, you know, looking down...

Art: I'm sorry that you had that experience.

Tisha: Well, it was interesting. It didn't change anything for me.

Aníbal: And Art, regarding the future for you as an IFS practitioner, you did it all. I understood you are in transition from clinical work to a discussion and coaching other therapies right now, but you have done it so much. What are your dreams now and ambitions at this time for you?

Art: Hmm. Thank you for asking that. So, this past year, I shifted, as I said, to, you know, fortunate enough to have a sector of my practice that are therapists seeking training and consultation and as the two of you know, leads into IFS work a lot, so it's all of that and I reduced my hours and that's been nice. My wife is retired, she was a dentist and she had retired a couple of years ago. And I was watching her, and she did like really beautifully. So, I didn't know that would go that smoothly for me and I knew that I wanted to stop fully. So, this is the first year, really the first 10 months that I've cut the hours. And it's been very healthy at this stage.

Aníbal: You are enjoying it.

Art: So that in itself has been good and I'm writing a book with the same title of that first chapter, The Essence of Healing, hoping that it might be able to reach a larger audience, not just about children and families, but what is that essence?

Aníbal: That common factor.

Art: Right. Right. And I've had these consultation groups for about ten years. Two different groups. I thought they were going to be one-year thing and the groups fell in love with each other, which is always great. So, we've continued of all these years. So, each month, once a month in each group, we have a topic with some readings. So, the book, I hope, will be kind of like those 10 years’ work of all those topics that we grappled with.

Aníbal: Good.

Art: I love to write, so it's a nice thing.

Aníbal: Yes, I see that you keep having fun. And I also understood that you plan to come to Lisbon. Did I understand well?

Art: Yes. We don't have a date, but we do. Actually, we both are very oh...We'd love to see beautiful places, but we're both big fans of Fado music.

Aníbal: Oh, wow. So come to Lisbon, please let me know.

Art: Tap your knowledge about where to see genuine...

Aníbal: Fado

Tisha: Yes, I think he might he might know, but he is very secretive about it.

Art: Oh really?

Aníbal: We'll keep in touch so... So, Art, I'll be waiting for your call for Lisbon. I'll be there waiting.

Art: Oh, thank you.

Aníbal: Yes. I hope we can keep in touch and you will let me know when you plan to come to Lisbon.

Art: I will do that.

Aníbal: Please. And thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha and I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work and our lives. Maybe next year we can repeat this talk together. Who knows? And how can listeners find you or find out more about your work? I believe you have a website, right?

Art: I have a website artmonesphd, that's easy enough.

Aníbal: Yes, that's easy to get.

Tisha: Thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time and talking to us.

Art: I want to thank you Tisha and thank you Aníbal for a wonderful experience and thanks for having this whole concept of getting inside the people, through the model. I think it's great. I think it's great.

Aníbal: Thanks so much. Take care. It was fun.

 

Recorded 21st November 2019
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Legacy Burdens with Ann Sinko 44:43

Ann L. Sinko, LMFT has 30 years of clinical experience and is licensed marriage and family therapist in Connecticut.
She is in private practice and has been teaching as a adjunct Professor in the Marriage and family therapy program at Central CT State University for 25 years. Ann has integrated IFS theory and technique in all facets of her creative work with families, couples, individuals and groups. She has a background in gestalt therapy and uses sandtray therapy in her work with client. Ann conducts continuing education workshops on Legacy Burdens and creative externalization of parts. She brings her down to earth, concrete style along with a sense of humor to her teaching and training , and has been a IFS lead Trainer since 2007.Ann has also authored a chapter on Legacy Burdens in Martha Sweezy and Ellen Ziskind “Innovations and Elaborations in IFS -  2017.

The role of Legacy Burdens on Anxiety, Depression and Shame

Full Transcription

Today on IFS talks, we're welcoming and talking to Ann Sinko. Ann Sinko, LMFT, has 30 years of clinical experience and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Connecticut. She's in private practice and has been teaching as an adjunct professor in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at Central Connecticut State University for 25 years. Ann has integrated IFS theory and technique in all facets of her creative work with families, couples, individuals and groups.

She has a background in Gestalt therapy and uses sand tray therapy in her work with clients. Ann conducts continuing education workshops on legacy burdens and creative externalization of parts. She brings her down to earth concrete style, along with her sense of humor to teaching and training and Ann has been a lead IFS trainer since 2007. She has also authored a chapter on legacy burdens in Martha Sweezy and Ellen Ziskind Innovations and Elaborations in IFS

Ann, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Ann Sinko: Well, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here. 

Aníbal Henriques: Yes, thank you Ann for having us. How is it for you Ann to hear this bio. What parts come up?

Ann: Well, there's always the little shy part, the young parts that go "who are they talking about?" But I've had to do a lot of updating. And being a trainer, being a teacher, my parts have really begun to settle in and trust that there is this old wise woman that can actually be the one that does these sorts of things. So, I'm aware of them, kind of in my gut, but they give me space to be here with you. 

Aníbal: Could you please tell us a bit about your journey to the mental health profession? Was there something in your personal life that was determinant for you becoming a psychotherapist?

Ann: Well, my father passed away very unexpectedly when I was 18, I had just graduated from high school and before the fall - he died in August - I didn't even think I wanted to go to college, but my mother got on her knees and said, please go. So, my whole family got very untethered. And so, I went to college and tried to write papers on grief and parent loss. And when it came time to graduate, I didn't feel like I was ready to go out in the world yet. It was kind of like was my safe family being in college. So, I went through the graduate catalog and I said "oh, marriage and family therapy."  So, I stayed in school a couple more years and got my degree. I had no idea I wanted to be a therapist before that, other than this following the trail of grief.

Aníbal: So, it was grief that led you to this profession, somehow. You were grieving your father at 18, you said.

Ann: Yes. And also, I got my undergraduate degree in public health. And public health there's so many different aspects of it. And I was really drawn to the mental health aspect of public health. So that was the other road that led me to psychotherapy.

Aníbal: And you felt good at this field since the beginning, it was never strange for you. It just fits you. 

Ann: It never was strange for me. I took too immediately, I started seeing families when I was 24 years old and it just felt like where I belonged.

Aníbal: Wonderful. And when did you get into the IFS trainings?

Ann: Well, that's kind of a fun story. I was teaching at Central Connecticut State University since 1995. And it was infused in all the classes because there was a book called Meta-Frameworks, which is like six domains, if you're familiar with it, of understanding human systems. So, IFS was one of them. And that was the basis Ralph Cohen set up that master's program and the IFS was one of the areas that we integrated into every course in the program.

And then Ralph met Dick and said "Hey, do you want to come to the university and do a training?" So, it was really the first training on the East Coast was in Connecticut at Central. And Ralph kept saying "Ann come take this training." And I'm like "Oh, I don't want to do another training." So, I had been teaching the model since 95, in different classes that I was teaching. So, the first training was in 98. So, in 2001 I finally, he finally talked me into doing the training and I was in a Home Group with Tony Herbine-Blank and Paul Neustad and Mona Barbera was also a participant in that. So many trainings...Pam Krauss was a PA. It was her first PA in that program. So, many of the current trainers came out of those early days in Connecticut. So, that was a very exciting time. It was like a grassroots movement. And I took the training and my husband's a therapist, I said "Honey, I am on a train speeding out of the station, I need you to get on board." And so, he took the training the next year.

Aníbal: And how was it? How did it fit? You came from a family therapy training, right? 

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: So how was it for you coming from this...I believe, so much focused on the context and the external context, and then you go inside in a quite different, almost psychodynamic way. I was it for you, this shifting process?

Ann: Well, I think because of my gestalt training, it fit perfectly, actually. It felt like just a natural. I didn't have to change any of my beliefs. I just needed to learn the technique, because I've always believed that people have everything they need inside of them and that the job of the therapist is to help release that. 

Aníbal: Yes.

Ann: So that was a belief I had even before IFS. So, it felt like just a better roadmap for me than the models that I had been using. So, it felt very natural.

Tisha: I'm curious how that first training was for you and how it was maybe different than trainings now. If it was more experiential, if it was less.

Ann: Well, I was so excited by what I was learning. So, I just I remember it very, very fondly. It was way less organized than they are now. There seem like there was a bit more movement. We did we did more psychodrama kinds of things. And when I took the training, Dick and Michi Rose were the trainers. And so, Michi is very experiential...

Aníbal: And also, spiritual, right?

Ann: Very spiritual. Very spiritual, yes.

Aníbal: And how did it land on you? This experiential and spiritual set of mind that I believe Michi...

Ann: Well, the funny thing is, is back then Dick really wanted to get on board in the psychotherapy world. So, it was kind of like a "Shhhh..." It's not a psychospiritual model. 

Aníbal: It was my guess.

Ann: Yes. So, he was really just trying to prove its efficacy just as a psychotherapy model, not as a psychospiritual model. But I remember in my first training, I just said, well "They're talking about God just like that." And I remember people like "Ohhhh," kind of having a reaction to that. So, again, it's been a spiritual path for me. The more IFS work that I do, the more I feel like I deepen into my spirituality, so they can't be separated. 

Tisha: Can you say a little bit more about that? Feel like that's a really important point.

Ann: Yes. Well, the more my parts heal, the more I know my own worth and the more I believe in our individual divinity and our oneness. And one thing that, you know, when you teach the eight C's is Self knows we're all connected. Really getting to know that in our bones, just seems like it is part of the healing work that gets done. Michi Rose used to say it's all the same one thing, lots of different roads to get there, but all the same one thing.

Aníbal: So, at that time when you met Michi and Dick and all the others you just mentioned, this open mind, spiritual open mind, there was space in you already for that open-minded approach to therapy?

Ann: Yes. I think it was it was already there just waiting for the right thing to open it up. 

Aníbal: Wow, that was the early 90s...?

Ann: The late 90s.

Aníbal: And then, Ann, since you became an IFS therapist, how did that change you and your practice as a therapist?

Ann: Well, I think being trained as a family therapist really helped me understand systems. So, I'm kind of having permission to take what I knew inside people and also then taking it inside, helped me understand even outside systems better. So, understanding that there are protected parts and protector parts. That's a game changer. That's a game changer. Not demonizing any of our parts, but understanding their positive intention, that really made it possible for me to work with anyone, with any issue.

And the other thing that I really liked about IFS is it really brought me into the equation as the therapist. You know, not just the therapist that knows the theory and tries to help people change, but what parts of me are in the room and how am I having impact? You know, instead of just reflecting on that in supervision. But in the moment when I'm working with someone. That relational impact was...that really changed too, having that awareness of my parts in the room. 

Aníbal: It becomes much more of who is present with the client than what techniques does the one that is there has.

Ann: Yes.

Aníbal: It's so different. So, Ann have you ever done some IFS personal work?

Ann: Oh yeah. Many, many, many, many years of it. So, when I, let's say, I started IFS when I was 38, and when I was 40, I got diagnosed with MS and that's when I got into therapy. I kept saying I got to get into therapy, I got to do my own IFS therapy. I'm a pretty happy person. I didn't feel like I was suffering. So, I didn't get into therapy right away. But when I got that diagnosis, I got into therapy and I did a very deep inquiry into why I had an overactive immune system. And I got a lot of answers and, knock on wood, I am a very, very healthy person and have stayed very healthy for 17 years.

Tisha: Wow, so the MS hasn't been aggressive. 

Ann: It has not. It has not. I had one flare in 17 years. It was pretty minimal. 

Tisha: That's incredible. Was it hard to, you know, I always find this challenging working with those tough physical or somatic parts that a lot of parts in our systems have a hard time getting space around not liking. Was it hard to get Self energy towards the MS? 

Ann: It really was, it was scary, like, you know, don't ask questions that you don't want the answers to. So, I felt...I had parts that were more scared than disliking of. Yeah. And basically, what I learned was that my overactive immune system kept me very safe in my family growing up, never having to be sick and have to stay home alone or get other certain relatives to take care of me. And it was, you know, later in my life when my life got really safe, that I didn't need an overactive immune system, that I started having MS symptoms.

Tisha: And so, did that part need to know that you were safe, did it need to be updated or...?

Ann: Well, parts needed to come out of silence and let me know the things that did happen. And then, yeah, lots of updating. That one I can't underline enough. My parts need to be updated all the time, because they get stuck in time.

Aníbal: Yes, makes a lot of sense. It's a good underline, very welcome. Totally agree. Ann in your clinical work, do you still combine IFS with other modalities when needed? How it happens?

Ann: Basically, IFS is the way that I understand how systems function. So, I'm always doing IFS and everything else that I do is a tool to get parts to unblended and begin to have an experience of Self. So, you know, I may use some DBT, CBT stuff, but it's all in service of unblending. 

Aníbal: So, IFS informed. 

Ann: Yes. Like it's a tool to get parts to trust. So...

Aníbal: So you can integrate. 

Ann: Everything has been integrated. Yes.

Aníbal: And tell us, how did you get into this special interest in legacy burdens?

Ann: Well, my interest in legacy burdens started in grad school when I was really drawn to the intergenerational models - Boin, Nage - where they talked about you can't even understand a family if you don't look at it in the frame of at least three generations. So, I found myself very much drawn to those models. And I also have a family history where my father died at age 43. His father died at 43 and my great grandfather died at 42. So, this early loss in the family line.

Aníbal: Young men.

Ann: Young men, yes, yes. And two of them, my father and his father were heart, and then the grandfather was a circulatory, a brain aneurysm. So... And I'm very grateful my brother's still alive. He turned 60 this year, but my brother in law died in his early 40s. So, it's still in my family, even though it went out of the bloodline. So, interestingly enough, also, my father's mother lost 13 babies, because...

Aníbal: 13 babies you said?

Ann: Yes, because of the RH factor, they didn't know back then. So, my father was first born, so he lived and then they one of his sisters lived. So, my father watched his parents lose 12 of his siblings, 12 children. And I don't have children. And in my IFS work, I came to understand that I didn't want to ever lose, I didn't want to love anything enough to lose it, and that that was a direct legacy burden from carrying my father's grief.

Aníbal: Wow, what a story. 

Ann: I really believe he died of a broken heart.

Tisha: Right, right, from his parents.

Ann: From his parents.

Aníbal: So that was early 20th century, I believe so.

Ann: Yes. My father was born in 37... 

Aníbal: 1937. 

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: What a story. Thank you so much for sharing. It's huge. It's really...

Ann: And it really has paved the way for me to understand what is it that we carry, and IFS has been a way to help people heal from carrying legacy burdens.

Aníbal: And we all carry them, right? They are everywhere in my clinical practice, I don't know if it's me in myself also, but more and more in my clients. So, there's a lot to do around legacy burdens. 

Ann: Yes. And just to give people that frame like "what you're carrying you didn't create all of it." Even just knowing that begins to ease it, begins to bring a little bit of relief to think that "oh, this overwhelming grief that's been crushing me isn't all mine."

Tisha: Right.

This is IFS talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

Aníbal: Help us with this a little bit, if you can. For sure you can. Ann, you say, I believe in your chapter, that legacy burdens are belief systems, emotions, coping mechanisms, memories and energies that get passed down through the generational line. And you say also legacy burdens are both covertly and overtly passed down through the generations.

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: So, tell us more about covertly and overtly. I mean, sometimes it's really difficult to see them to understand if it's a legacy burden, it's not a legacy burden, is it our experience? It's complex.

Ann: It is complex, and yet it can be very simple. So covert legacy burdens are just things that get infused in us being born into the family that we're born in. So, mine would be talking about my father's grief, that just is something that I've carried being born into the family that I was born into.
Aníbal: In an unconscious way.

Ann: In an unconscious way. It didn't come from any direct interaction that I had or anything that my father said, or my mother said, where are overt legacy burdens are...Let's say there's sexual abuse in the family and so people dissociate from their bodies and hate their bodies. So, let's say my grandmother really hated her body and then she interacted with my mother. So, my mother hated her body. But she now she's lost the story because my grandmother never told the story of sexual abuse. She just knows that as a woman, you're supposed to hate your body. And then my mother does the same thing to her daughters. So, you go around hating your body. You've directly learned it from your mother, yet it came from a trauma several generations ago. 

Aníbal: So how could people know if they don't know about their family stories? It's hard to believe for them that can be something like a covert never told experience from generations behind.

Ann: So, there's questions that we can ask that...

Aníbal: Help us to find out.

Ann: Yes. And you say to people "tell me the first thing that comes into your mind." One I learned from Michi Rose it's called the circle technique, which is you just have someone draw a circle, and then you think about something you've struggled with your whole life. And then what you do is you draw a piece of pie - how much of that did you inherit very quickly without thinking about it. Draw the piece of pie.

Aníbal: Wow.

Ann: Now, if you think about it and intellect gets in there and it gets...But immediately do it...

Aníbal: It's lost. 

Ann: When I do this with groups of people, at least three quarters draw more than 50 percent. So that's one way of doing it. Or you could just ask "So very quickly, just tell me, what percentage did you inherit?" And people will just give you a number. Even if they don't know where it came from.

Aníbal: So, our parts answer. 

Ann: Another one is if people like indications, if people's symptoms don't fit their life history, ok? The amount of grief I carried, even though my father died young, I was carrying that before he passed, you know. Their symptoms don't make sense with their life circumstances in their life history. People that carry a depression like "I have a good life, why do I... Why do I feel so depressed or why am I so anxious? I you know, my life's good." Or when you're listening as a clinician and someone say "Well, my mother had this, and my father had it and my uncles have it and my brother has it..." You know, those are, again, indications that you may be looking at a legacy burden. Language that repeats or doesn't quite fit the situation. I was working with someone and they kept saying "I have to atone; I have to atone." And the grievance was nothing that you might need to apologize for, but there was no need for atonement, so we can hear it in people's language. So, those are some of the ways that...And then we just begin to ask our clients parts and it's amazing, they can tell us.

Tisha: Wow.

With the more covert legacy burdens, would you say that people systems just know that they're inherited from the grandmother’s sexual abuse trauma or does that matter? Does the system just know that it goes back to the grandmother?

Ann: Sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they know that it's old or when you go into a witnessing, sometimes people actually witness their ancestors' stories. And if you don't have a legacy burden frame, people get really freaked out. Like "I'm seeing this horrific stuff that happened and it's not from my lifetime." 

Tisha: Right. 

Ann: Then you would say "Well, do you think it could belong to any of your ancestors? And then like “Oh, yeah, you know, they grew up in Russia when all these things were going on or it makes much more sense." There’re certain things that I hear when I talk about words. It's not ok to shine. Not enough. Not enough. Frequently that goes back to a time when there wasn't enough. But then it gets personalized that “I'm not enough.” There was not enough food and there was not enough shelter and there was not enough safety, so once you have this lens, you just start asking people about it and they seem to know much more than they ever thought they would about.

Tisha: How do you feel like that gets into our systems? Is it stories and impressions from growing up? Is it in the DNA?

Ann: All of the above. All of the above. There are the rules of shame that I think are ways in which things get reinforced and passed down to the generations, like be perfect, be in control, don't talk about anything vulnerable, don't trust. All of those are ways in which they're behaviorally and verbally passed down. I mean, it's through energy. I think it's injected. I think it is in our DNA. There's a lot of really exciting research now on epigenetics that are showing that it is in our DNA and in the clouds that influence our DNA, that we do have a physical, emotional inheritance. So, yeah, I think that it's all of the above, environment and physical. 

Aníbal: Can be complex, right?

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: You should come to Lisbon and help us. 

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: Let's do that. And also, complex when once a legacy is identified, how should we proceed? I know a bit of the, I believe it's a protocol made by Michi Rose and it's a complex one, it has about 24 steps or so. It's a long one.

Ann: I have a protocol and I think it's more like eight steps. 

Aníbal: Okay. 

Ann: You know. It's very much following the model, which is you get parts to unblend and one way in which I've tried to - because I always try to find the shortest way from point A to point B - is you call in the highest positive potential of the ancestors. So, you start with Self and when I'm doing legacy work, I say parts are not welcome. That's the only place where parts are not welcome, only Self is welcome because it's about healing ancestral burden. 

Aníbal: Ok.

Ann: Now, some IFS therapies don't clear the generational line. They just, they identify the legacy burden and they just have people unburden it...

Tisha: They just send it out into light or...

Ann: Light, earth, air, water, the way we unburden any other burden. So, if you're not comfortable with introducing this generational line clearing, then you can just do it that way. I believe that we actually help heal the planet even more if we clear the whole generational line and my interest in legacy burdens also has made me search in many different places for where is this wisdom known? So, in shamanism and other ancient traditions that have always known that there's a way to help heal that which gets passed down to the generations. So, bring me back to the protocol. 

Aníbal: The protocol. Yes, complex one. Can be complex, can be simplified. 

Ann: Yes. By just thinking about it as the IFS model. So, we start with unblending. We get everybody in some Self-leadership, then we witness if need be. Now, the neat thing about legacy burdens is frequently they don't need witnessing because they're not our story. So, parts are really on board, we don't have to do a lot of working with the protective system because once they understand I didn't create these, and I don't have to defend again...

Aníbal: They are ready to let it go.

Ann: Yes, they're much more likely to let it go. So, but the same thing, we deal with the fears and concerns. Then we unblend, and then we witness if need be. And then we unburden and then we invite. So, we can, when we get to the place of unburdening, you invite in people's children, so we clear the line forward... 

Aníbal: Forward, yes.

Tisha: For the future. 

Ann: And then into the future, and then we pass it back to, let's say, the client, and then you have the client pass it back and make a statement like invite in all and any ancestors known and unknown, because sometimes what people, they only know back to their grandparents. But when they do this, they see this whole line of ancestors that they know nothing about. That's really not that uncommon. 

Tisha: Have you noticed shifts in your own family's experience after doing legacy persons? You've done a lot of work.

Ann: My brother's alive. 

Aníbal: That one is huge. 

Ann: I mean, he doesn't even know the work I've done on trying to save his life. 

Aníbal: It doesn't need it.

Ann: He doesn't need to know, he wouldn't get it.

Ann: Yes. I feel, you know, huge shifts in myself. I've seen huge shifts in my clients unburdening legacy burdens. Because if you figure, let's say, you're carrying this hundred percent of this depression. If 50 percent of it gets unburdened, that makes the other 50 percent a lot easier to work with. 

Aníbal: Yeah, makes sense. And you are organizing with Mike level 2's on anxiety and depression. 

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: I'm trying to book one, too, you know.

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: Could you tell us more about this training and how this connects with legacy burdens?

Ann: Well, the training is on shame, anxiety and depression.

Aníbal: Exactly.

Ann: So, it's very, you know, it's taking a look at how shame actually is, in my belief and Mike's belief, at the core of anxiety and depression. 

Aníbal: Ok, makes sense. 

Ann: And basically, it's about deepening your understanding of constellations of parts, because we frequently work with one part, but it's never about one part. It's about a constellation of parts. You know, with clients, you rarely just someone talk about depression without anxiety or anxiety, without depression. They pretty much go together and have protective mechanisms. That's to understand them instead of these terrible, horrible symptoms we want to get rid of, to understand that they're part of trying to protect us from something. So that training will be really about deepening your understanding of shame and how we go about exiling that and then the symptoms that come out of it, how our internal systems use anxiety and depression to help protect us from shame and then to understand polarizations much more deeply, because that's really what we're talking about, the inner polarizations and the more extreme they get, the more symptoms we see that actually end up in addictive cycles. And in that we cover legacy burdens because that's a huge part. Shame is one of the feelings that gets passed down through the generations. And we can see it through behavior, and we can see it in language, and we can see it in how we relate to one another and how we parent. 

Tisha: That's a good one to draw a circle, to start with shame. 

Ann: Yes. 

Aníbal: See how much it's inherited. 

Ann: Yes. And the more disenfranchised your culture has been, the more shame you have on a on a societal level as well. 

Aníbal: So, there is really a legacy burden's role in depression, anxiety and shame.

Ann: Absolutely.

Aníbal: Ann could you, could we just say something about being an IFS trainer once you are an IFS lead trainer for now...

Tisha: Almost 14 years, 12, 13 years?

Ann: That's right. Long time. 

Tisha: A long time. Yeah. Can you tell us about your journey to becoming a trainer?

Ann: Well, like I said, when it started, I was feeling like I was part of this grassroots movement and IFS was just really starting to grow when I took, back then it was called your basic training, and I thought "Oh, I would like to be a trainer," but my parts were scared of that and they blocked me. But Michi Rose would not let me forget that I had said that. And she really did mentor me a great deal and she, you know, she really believed that I should be a trainer. And she made sure that I wasn't going to let my parts take me out.

Aníbal: Do you keep connection with Michi nowadays?

Ann: I do see her every year at the conference and I'm always really happy to see her. And she used to come out every couple of years and do workshops for us here in Connecticut because she has a huge fan club here. But I don't think she likes to travel anymore so much. So, she hasn't been out in several years. But she has much, much to teach, much to teach.

Tisha: And it sounds like she helped you unblend from some of your parts and let you open the door to becoming the amazing trainer that you are.

Ann: She did.

Tisha: Yeah, I was lucky enough to be one of your participants. 

Aníbal: Lucky you. 

Ann: Oh, thank you. And I think that it was kind of my mission in life that...If you had asked me if I was going to be a teacher and someone that stood up in front of groups, I would have thought you were crazy when I was a kid. I was so scared to speak in public. And so, I feel like I'm following my path. This is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Aníbal: Your shy parts are more and more healed or still healing?

Ann: They are. They are. And I have to tell them, like "You don't have to do this. This old lady who can do this, she's been doing it a long time. She's really good at it." 

Aníbal: Well done.

Ann: 13 years more.

Aníbal: And what about your future? You have a long future for sure, and a shiny one or interesting one regarding future as a trainer, as an IFS practitioner. What are you looking for? What are your best expectations?

Ann: You know, I'm kind of in a place where I'm asking myself those questions and I like to listen for my guidance and I really am excited about this new level 2 that Mike and I are going to be doing.

Aníbal: It's going to be the first? The first one?

Ann: This is the first one, will be in the beginning of December. So, it's been a couple of years coming to fruition. But, yes, it will be the first one on shame, anxiety and depression. And then I would like to work with Kay Gardner around creating a new level 2 on spirituality...

Aníbal: Wow. I will register for that one, too.

Ann: Yes. And I am feeling a calling to start doing retreats on grief. That we as communities, we need to come together in community and help each other with our grief. Because I believe that we don't have enough places and if you're not familiar with the book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow... 

Aníbal: Not much. 

Ann: I would totally recommend it because he talks about the five gates of grief. And Bruce Weller, is his name, and the five gates of grief are loss, shame, what's called loss of expectation, which is still in our DNA. We expect to be loved, nurtured and supported by a tribe. And we're grieving that, that we've lost community...

Aníbal: The village.

Ann: That we've lost our villages. Yes. So, there's a knowing that this is supposed to happen for us and that we don't get it. So, there's a grief there. Legacy is one of the gates and then the fifth one is the Earth, that we have a lot of grief about the state of the earth and what we've done to the Earth. 

Tisha: Yeah, it sounds like there's so much depth. 

Aníbal: It looks really interesting. 

Tisha: Really needed. 

Aníbal: Yes. And I I've introduced this to so many people and they're like "Oh, that's a thing? I thought it was just me." You know, that loss of expectation or the deep grief around the earth. And so, it's kind of like legacy burdens. People go "Oh, it's not just me?" 

Tisha: So, creating a retreat at some arena for connection around all of it sounds wonderful. 

Ann: Yeah.

Aníbal: Ann we could just see that you can bring so much more yet to IFS, the IFS world with those wonderful plans for your coming topics and trainings. And as for the IFS model, what future do you foresee?

Ann: Well, the IFS model is more concretized than it's ever been, but it's still evolving. That's one thing that Michi Rose said that, why she loved IFS so much is that she said it's organic, it continues to grow. 

Aníbal: Yes. 

Ann: And I love teaching the basics. And I believe I'm very good at it. So, I still see myself teaching the basics and I feel like every time I do a level 1, I deepen with the basics. But I also see a need for using the model as the base but understanding our legacy burdens and our spirituality. I guess those are the two areas that I'm very much drawn to. 

Aníbal: Wonderful. So, Ann, I thank you so much for having us. I'm very, very grateful for this wonderful conversation with you. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope we can meet again and share this model, our work and our lives. Is there any way that our listeners find you or find out more about your work? You have this wonderful chapter on the Innovations book, and you just announced your wonderful projects for other, eventually level 2 topics on IFS that are so much needed.

Ann: Well, thank you so much for inviting me to this interview today. And I would be happy to just take people's email addresses and let them know what I'm doing and when. Maybe a training, I mean, trainings will always be listed on...

Tisha: On the website.

Ann: On the institute's website, yes. And I have parts that think it's time to write a book. And I have other parts that say no way.

Aníbal: Yes, it's a lot of work and a lot of sitting time. I believe so, yes.

Ann: I think I would rather right now help create trainings and training manuals more than books.

Aníbal: Yes, are very welcome. I love to hear your wonderful plans for IFS for new topics.

Tisha: You make a training on shame, anxiety and depression seem really fun. 

Ann: Thank you. 

Tisha: Fantastic.

Ann: Yeah. And I'm really hoping to do much more of that with Mike. We would love to come to Lisbon. 

Tisha: This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

Recorded the 20th November 2019
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Shame and Guilt as Central, with Martha Sweezy 52:57

Martha Sweezy, PhD, is Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Program Consultant and Supervisor at Cambridge Health Alliance, and former Assistant Director and Director of Training for the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program at Cambridge Health Alliance.
Martha Sweezy has published several books on IFS therapy, and has authored  articles & chapters like
. The Teenager’s Confession: Regulating Shame in Internal Family Systems Therapy, AJP, 2011.
. Emotional Cannibalism: Shame in Action  - in innovations & elaborations - 2013
. Getting Unstuck (with Pam krause & Lawrence Rosenberg) - 2017
. What IFS Offers to the treatment of trauma (with Frank Anderson) - 2017

Martha Sweezy is also responsible for Titles like:
1. Internal Family Systems New Dimensions (with Ellen Ziskind)- Routledge 2013 
2. Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy with Toni Herbine-Blank  and  Donna M. Kerpelman - Routledge, 2015
3. innovations & elaborations in Internal Family Systems  … with Ellen Ziskind - 2017 by routledge.
4. Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual: Trauma-Informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD & Substance Abuse, with Frank Anderson and Richard Schwartz - 2017 by Pesi.
5. and more recently the Internal Family Systems Therapy Second Edition - with Dick Schwartz  - 2019 by Guilford.

Martha has a therapy and consultation practice in Northampton, Massachusetts, and has a particular interest in how shame and guilt affect human behavior.

Full Transcription
 

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. Today, we're interviewing and talking to Martha Sweezy. Martha Sweezy is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, part time program consultant and supervisor at Cambridge Health Alliance, and former assistant director and director of training for the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Program at Cambridge Health Alliance. She has a therapy and consultation practice in Northampton, Mass. And has a particular interest in how shame and guilt affect human behavior. Martha has also published several books on IFS therapy. 

Martha, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for being with us on IFS talks. 

Martha Sweezy: Oh, you're welcome. It's a pleasure. 

Aníbal Henriques: Martha, thank you for having us. You have been publishing several books on IFS Therapy and also authored articles and chapters like The Teenagers Confessions, Emotional Cannibalism, Getting Unstuck and also with Frank Anderson What IFS offers to the Treatment of Trauma.

So, you have these really huge publishing and writing work. How is it for you to hear this bio? 

Martha: Well, you know, I got to work on writing. I got introduced to IFS by a colleague and I think it was 2005. And I took my first level one in 2006. And I'm a writer anyway. I was a writer before I became a psychotherapist, and so, I was already writing in the field and also fiction and playwrighting. And so, that's kind of how I process the world, is sitting down and writing, and I have been working in community mental health for 20 some years. And I was always looking for...I always had questions, you know, I went through a lot of different trainings and I always had a lot of questions about how to fit what I was seeing with clients into what the theories that I was learning. And nothing ever...It was like the leg of the elephant, the ear of the elephant, the trunk of the elephant. Nothing was putting the whole thing together for me enough. So, I was very blown away when I heard Dick speak and saw a video of what he was doing, and my way of continuing to process, as I began to practice IFS with clients and understand what was happening, was to sit down and start writing. So, I wrote a couple of articles that actually been, somewhat to my surprise, got published, because IFS was pretty out there in...

Aníbal: You Martha, you are responsible for titles like Internal Family Systems and New Dimensions...

Martha: Which I co-edited with Ellen Ziskind...

Aníbal: Yeah. 2013. Intimacy from the Inside Out with Tony Herbine-Blank and Donna Kerpelman… 

Martha: Yeah, 

Aníbal: 2015. Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems in 2016...

Martha: Which I coedited with Ellen Ziskind 

Aníbal: Internal Family System Skills Training Manual...

Martha: With Frank and Dick.

Aníbal: With Frank Anderson and yes, 2017.  And more recently the Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition... 

Martha: With Dick.

Aníbal: With Dick Schwartz, 2019. So, it looks like you really have a special interest and skills in writing and publishing and in IFS in particular. Once you have done it with Dick Schwartz, Toni Herbine-Blank, Frank Anderson, Pam Krouse, Lawrence Rosenberg…this is huge, you've really enjoyed to sit...

Martha: [laughs] Well, you know, one of the things that happened to me, I became very focused on IFS because it was answering a lot of questions for me. It was like putting together everything I had learned from client into a theory that really worked for me. And so, I wanted once I got through level 3, I thought, well, there is no level 4 and there is no level 5...

Aníbal: No level 4 or 5. 

Martha: So, I think I'll [crosstalk]...collecting all these people whom I used for my own personal level, you know, 4 or 5 and 6. I started collecting the lead trainers and saying "Write a chapter for me on what you do."

Aníbal: You really have to enjoy this writing and publishing because it can be hard work.

Martha: It's not hard work for me, actually.

Aníbal: Oh, you enjoy it really.

Martha: I enjoy it. I mean, it's work. You know, you have to, I have to put time and effort into it. But I really enjoy it. So, I'm not...I won't complain.

Tisha: Yes, thank you for all the contributions. 

Martha: Oh, you're welcome. It's been my pleasure. And I've learned a huge amount from the people who I've had the privilege to work with, co-author with.

Tisha: Martha, would you be willing to talk a little bit about your journey into the world of psychotherapy? You said you were a writer first and then a psychotherapist later.

Martha: I was a fiction writer, actually, and I had studied playwriting with Derek Walcott. And I then thought I might...I wrote some film scripts and then I thought about going out to Hollywood. And then I thought, either I do that and go all in or I earn an honest living some other way because, you know, I can't live on nothing. And I don't have the personality to go to hustle, you know, in the film world, and it's just not...there are wonderful things about it, but it's not something I'm very capable of. So, I decided to do what a lot of English majors do, which is to become a psychotherapist. There's a narrative, an interest in narrative that crosses over and a lot of folks make that switch. So, I went into the therapy business and I worked in community mental health for many years and studied a lot of different approaches to therapy.

Aníbal: And you are also a DBT, Dialectic Behavior Therapy interested...

Martha: Yes.

Aníbal: It was one of your trainings or interests.

Martha: Yes. And I've written some on that, too. Yes. So, I went through a lot. You know, when you're working with people who are really traumatized, you have to stay on your toes and you...I mean, I felt I had to constantly try new things because nothing ever worked enough.

Aníbal: Yes, it's never, never enough. Our training is never ending.

Martha: Exactly. And that's what I love about the field, too, is that it's never ending. I mean, there's always more to learn and we never know enough.

Aníbal: And when did you get across into the IFS trainings?

Martha: It was in 2005 that Nancy Sowell, who was a colleague of mine at Cambridge Health Alliance, brought IFS to Cambridge Hospital just when she first got introduced to it. She came in and started talking about it and did a little demonstration. And she kind of jokes before she knew anything. And I went with another colleague, I heard, because of what she was doing at the hospital, I heard that Dick was in town speaking in Cambridge and someone said "You want to go see him," and so, I went over to this church on the Cambridge county  where he was presenting, and he showed a video that just blew my mind. And I thought "I have no clue what he just did, but whatever it was, I want to do that. That's what I need to figure out.”

Aníbal: Was kind of a feeling? Or...

Martha: No, it was astonishing the results he was getting. I mean, Dick can look very minimalistic in these videos. It's not like he says a lot. And I had no orientation to the therapy. So, the whole thing was completely new to me. 

Aníbal: Absolutely, yes.

Martha: So, I really didn't know what he was doing. I was like, whatever he just did, that was like a magician. That was the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time, so, I want to do that.

Tisha: It was a demo that he shared.

Martha: No, he was actually working...It was one of the earlier videos that…he was working at an eating disorder facility. And it wasn't a demo, he was a consultant on a case with a young woman who had...It was her birthday, and she had long said that she was going to kill herself at her birthday. 

Aníbal: Yes, that one.

Martha: And I don't think he can show that unless he's with that. I don't think it's for sale or anything. But it's an amazing piece of work.

Aníbal: It's impacted you a lot.

Martha: Oh, yeah. It had a huge impact on me. So, I immediately signed up for a level 1 training and kept going from there...Fanatically.

Tisha: Your curiosity led you in the right direction.

Martha: Exactly.

Aníbal: And did you get some IFS personal work back then?

Martha: Yes, I have off and on over the years, had done some personal work. But I also... The training itself is experiential. 

Aníbal: It is.

Martha: Of course.

Martha: So, when you're...My husband, the first time I signed up for level 1, he said "This is kind of expensive." And then when I got done, he said "Well, when is the next one?"

Tisha: You come home with all that Self energy. 

Martha: Exactly.

Aníbal: But your husband didn’t take some training.

Martha: I did actually send him to Kripalu for a few days with Dick because I said "You just have to experience this firsthand if you want to know what I’m..." 

Aníbal: And he took the training?

Martha: No, it was just a weekend training. It wasn't a level 1 or anything. But he wanted to, and he was very impressed.

Aníbal: So, you can use parts language with him?

Martha: Yes, he gets it. 

Aníbal: Lucky you. I cannot do that at my home.

Tisha: "Part of me wishes you wouldn't say part of me anymore." That's what I get. 

How was it, Martha, to begin to use the model in your clinical work? 

Martha: It was a revelation, actually. And I immediately started to understand a lot of things that had long puzzled me. You know, what is the repetition compulsion? What is...How can we...There's a whole quality of this...With many psychotherapies that are more abstracted, there's a quality which is most...unless it's like Gestalt or something where they're really working with parts already, most psychotherapies are very abstracted in their language and their view of feelings and thoughts and whatnot.

And so, a lot of it is you're working with sort of disowned material and it doesn't work very well, unless you can find whoever is running, driving the car. If you're not talking to the person who is driving the car, you're not talking to the right person. I can get somebody, you know, someone might come in and say "I'll never drink again" and they go out the door and head straight to the bar. You know, I was talking to the wrong part.

Aníbal: I totally agree. I couldn't agree more with you. I also found that in my clinical practice. 

Martha: Yes. I mean, just everything fell into place in an amazing way, which was great because I had learned so much from my own experience with clients and from other approaches to therapy, but it was like putting the linchpin in the middle and having it all make sense when I understood psychic multiplicity as the driving factor. 

Tisha: And it was easy for your clients to comprehend too because it was...

Martha: They love, people love it. I mean, unless you run into a part that says "there are no other parts" and then it takes more skill, you know, it took me a few years to figure out how to handle very protective parts.

Tisha: “It's just me.” 

Martha: “It’s just me. What are you talking about?”

Martha: And that was a revelation there, actually. I was talking to Dick about, you know, some firefighters, and he said "Just say you're the boss, you are the boss." And I was like "oh, great, ok, you're the boss." Made all the difference.  For me it took a long time to make the switch from a more controlling position as a therapist to a real surrender and trust of the clients' systems...

Aníbal: And an unlearning process.

Martha: Yes, an unlearning process and that protectors are good. They're not always behaving well, but they mean well. And to really get that, it took me a while. 

Aníbal: So, you mean two steps, one is unlearning process and the other step, and the challenge is to bring parts language and the multiplicity of the mind into the office with clients, can be a challenge in many ways.

Martha: With some. Yes, with some. With many it's like a huge relief really fast. 

Aníbal: Oh yes. 

Martha: And I was, that's one of the reasons I ended up noticing the importance of this treatment in relation to shame is because it's very shame regulating right away to say "this is just a part of you. It's not all of you." One of the features of shame is that it's a global judgment about yourself. So, you're immediately challenging that global judgment when you say you have parts.

Aníbal: So, you find those clients, those that resist and those that jump immediately into parts language.

Martha: Yes, I mean, there are people who have been very traumatized, who have extremely wary protective systems. And if you don't...like, I was a beginner. So, those people - and I had plenty of them in my caseload - would have parts who were much more cautious about trusting me. And they were right, because I didn't know what I was doing the way I do now know. So, it was about me and my level of expertise and understanding and whether I was going to step on a landmine without realizing it. And now I'm much more trustworthy, I think, for my clients traumatized systems, and they respond accordingly. 

Tisha: There's that softening of saying you're the boss, that softening of that system where they can own that and take their own direction. 

Martha: Yes, right.

Aníbal: So far how long are you practicing IFS?

Martha: Since 2006. I'd say. So, what is that? Almost 14 years.

Aníbal: I'm practicing it maybe for three years only, and I'm still learning. And it can take more and more, right?

Martha: Oh, yeah. I mean, I learn every day from clients. That's one of the things I love about this, too, is I love going to work. I don't work that hard. I don't consider it work. I love going in and sitting with people and being right there and getting to, having the privilege of getting to know their internal systems and their parts.

Aníbal: So, you still enjoy doing therapy every day. 

Martha: Well, I don't do it every day, I write some days, but, yeah, when I do, I totally enjoy it and I enjoy writing too, because, you know, I can...[crosstalk]

Aníbal: So, every day you go to therapy you enjoy it.

Tisha: It really is an honor when people let you witness their internal world.

Martha: Yes. And when you...what I come to appreciate is the courage it takes to just come into therapy.

Aníbal: Right. As a client. 

Martha: We have these, kind of wild internal worlds, that are very private and to allow somebody else into all that, which is full of secret stuff, is a big deal. 

Aníbal: It is. Did you combine yet IFS with other modalities? There is some any other modality that you still...like DBT, you were somehow attached.

Martha: You know, DBT is a combination of CBT and Zen Buddhism, basically, not as a spiritual practice, but as a discipline of acceptance. And I learned a huge amount from that. And I think the concept of wise mind is the same as the concept of Self in IFS. It's basically headed toward the same, accessing the same resource. I happen to think that IFS is more experience nearer for folks and actually kind of gets people into their systems, and that's for me, a more useful way. But, the kinds of skills that people learn in DBT are enormously helpful. They just often would, I think, be more helpful for people after they've done some work with their protectors, rather than before.

So, I would say I use at my training before that, was psychodynamic and I also trained in EMDR. I'm sure I use things, particularly when I need to be creative, because things aren't going according to plan. I will jump in with whatever comes up. But it's integrating...And hypnosis. It's integrating, you know, snippets from here and there into IFS. IFS is my blueprint that I'm using. And so, I would say that's my roadmap and I stick to it. And then I can use anything I've learned along the way. 

Aníbal: Wonderful, Yes. And IFS fits and integrates well, yes. 

Tisha: What brought you into working or are having an interest with working with shame and guilt? 

Martha: Well, you know, it's interesting. I actually started when I started in the field in the 80's. I was introduced by a professor who was a very wonderful teacher, Bob (?) , to a theory called Control Mastery Theory, which was about pathogenic guilt. It was very popular in San Francisco at the time. And they were in a big debate with a woman named June Tangney, who's an emotion researcher, who was very interested in shame. And so, there was a big debate going on between them. And I read through all that literature and then I read James Gilligans' book. He's married to Carol Gilligan and he's a psychiatrist who ran a mental health criminal facility in Massachusetts for many years. And he wrote a book called Violence, which is one of the best books ever written on shame. And so, I was fascinated by the topic right from the beginning of my training and entrance into the field, but I learned all this other stuff that, kind of, along the way, I wasn't putting it all together. So, I sort of came back again later on when I got introduced to IFS and I was sitting in a Level 3 training actually with Dick. And I was sort of thinking "Why does this work so well? Why on earth does this treatment work so well?" And then, I had one of those, I suppose it was a part somewhere said "Ok dummy, let me tell you, it's because of shame." 

Tisha: Say more. Say more. 

Martha: Well, my parts, you know, talk to me. And, you know, is because compassion is the opposite of shame, right? And so, the two are mutually exclusive. And we have clients who come in, you know, I mean, that's what you see. When you get to an exile, you get to a part who says "I feel worthless, I feel unlovable, I feel bad, I feel..." And that's the burden they're carrying, but it's a burden of feeling this defective and/or evil in some way. And that burden is basically a result of having been traumatically shamed. An attachment rupture that was traumatically shaming. And the literature...It's like all over the literature we can read this. It's not hard to know. This is a huge topic and a field that's been a great interest since Helen Block Lewis, Judith Herman's mother, was writing about it as an analyst in the 50's, I think, maybe 40's. And so, it's not new. People have been working their way around this topic and I've read a lot of the literature. But psychic multiplicity, specifically plugging it into the inner dynamic of a mind that's trying to cope with trauma is like a third dimension that I had never....

Aníbal: Heard about.

Martha: At least maybe other people were tuning into it, but I wasn't, despite my interest in the whole thing. And I did later on read John Bradshaw. I don't know if you remember him. He used to have a show on PBS or Channel two, and he wrote The Shame That Binds You. And he was very famous. He did a TV show and he talked about the inner child and he talked a lot about shame and shame and addictions. And he was he was right on with a lot of stuff. There were things...He made the same mistake that most people in the field have made or many have, which is to think that you have to fight with protectors. So, in that way, he had, to my mind, a major glitch in terms of treatment being effective. But he was, he thought that, that's what was going on inside and he got a lot about what was going on with shame.

So, it was very interesting to read that after getting, having this light bulb go on for me about IFS and shame, and of course, shame and guilt are two...You know, they get conflated in a lot of research and a lot of literature. Not all. There has been...

Aníbal: What do you mean by conflated? In what way?

Martha: I mean, people think of them as the same thing. 

Aníbal: Oh, yes. 

Martha: Yes. And written about as interchangeable shame and guilt, shame and guilt. And they're actually totally different.

Tisha: They're different parts.

Martha: And some people understand that it's been written about and whatnot, but that shame is a global judgment about me, and guilt is a judgment about behavior. And guilt promotes a prosocial desire to repair, unless it's maladaptive. Pure guilt, guilt that's urging you to go and fix it with somebody. That's a good thing. We want to feel guilty if we transgress. We don't want to feel ashamed. Feeling ashamed causes people to hide. That's the derivation, I think, of the word, actually.

Aníbal: Anyway, shame has been used also as a socializer, as a glue for socializing or not? I mean, somehow you are saying we need to feel guilt, but we don't need to feel any shame?

Martha: Yes, I mean, I, I'm writing a book on this topic actually to...Shame is, you know, there's a big argument in the field about whether shame is useful or not. And some people say, yes, it's good to feel shameful, and other people say no. And my view is that it doesn't do people much good to feel shameful. It's like, what is it in King Lear? I can't remember. I think it's, maybe it's Cordelia who says "it's like the salt in the bread, you just need a little bit," in one of her lines. You just need a little. You need to be aware of the possibility that you could be stepping outside the group norms and that you should be vigilant about when you want to do that and when you don't, because you will pay a price for it. But you don't need to feel shameful. Feeling shameful is really very pathogenic actually, in terms of human behavior and correlates with a lot of really very dysfunctional behavior, which we could kind of group into broad categories of avoidance and aggression, right? So, a lot of symptomatic behavior that we see is connected to, when we talk to people, to their feeling there's something wrong with me. And either I have to make sure that I project that and then I get enraged or I hide it.

Aníbal: Would it be possible to say, Martha, that guilt somehow includes us, and shame can exclude us from the group?

Martha: Yeah. That's a nice way of putting it. Feeling shameful, actually, people will exclude themselves from the group, but they are also - if they've been shamed by an individual or group - they are being excluded from the group, they're being kicked out or exiled and IFS centers around this whole concept of exile. You know, when we exile parts of ourselves and we get exiled. So, if you look at it in terms of systems, systems have exiles, exile is basically a state of being shameful and having been shamed. So, you are in exile from that group, from that system.

Tisha: I worked with someone recently who, one of their shame parts was serving the purpose of protecting a perpetrator. So, keeping them quiet, keeping them...

Martha: Right. And shame can either be, it can also be a protector. Because protector shame...[crosstalk]. So, they're shaming and they're shameful. Shameful is the exile's state of being. It's a chronic condition and shaming is something that goes on internally on a pretty continual basis with most people who have been traumatized, because protective parts want the system to be...It's a constraining, inhibiting activity that managers engage in pretty chronically. And in response, we get these disinhibited behaviors of firefighters, because it's intolerable to be shamed, we need some distraction...[crosstalk] And so in that way, this is just kind of central, this feature of this dynamic of shaming and shameful, is central to the very typical kind of loop that we see inside of people where they go from inhibition to disinhibition. Yeah.

Aníbal: Yes. So many psychopathology feeds on that. Feeds on shame.

Martha: Right. And we look at, the thing with this is we also look at firefighters, we look at these disinhibited parts as the problem often. Many mental health treatment systems are set up around the emergency of these parts. But they're driven by the shaming of the managers, actually. So, if you treat one without the other or if you engage in more managerial behavior yourself in relation to that disinhibited behavior, you're in a losing battle. You have to deal with it as a package. It's both. The inhibition drives the disinhibition. 

Aníbal: Mm hmm. I'm just wondering, we do a lot of work on unburdening Shame also. But, should we try to exterminate it? 

Martha: Oh, no. You don't have to exterminate anything. It's a very bad word to bring into...And that's the fear that parts have. The shame is just a burden, it's just a feeling state and a belief, a set of beliefs. And parts let those go as soon as they feel lovable and loved, which is what we're doing with the attachment. We're basically doing inner attachment work between the self, the client Self and the part who's been injured and the whole system that has become an injured system, basically by trying to cope with that original injury. So, protectors need as much attachment and love as the as exile does.

Aníbal: Martha, you have this wonderful title of one of your chapters in The Innovations 2013...

Martha: Yeah, cannibalism, 

Aníbal: Emotional cannibalism, shame in action. It's a strong word.

Martha: Yes, it is a strong word. It is, indeed. Yeah, I intended that.

Aníbal: Why so?

Martha: Well, because that's I see a lot. I see people eating themselves up. I mean, after they get injured by somebody else that we...After we, if we get injured - this is true of everybody - if it lands, if that injury lands and feels true of me and I don't get anyone, have anyone around me protecting me and challenging that and saying, you know, bring me back to some kind of place that's more Self infused, particularly when I'm a child, then I am vulnerable to believing that's true of me. And as soon as I believe that's true of me, my internal system starts to eat me alive. That's what's shaming is. It's a kind of, it's a self-attack. 

Aníbal: It is. You also have these...I know it's this sentence yours, is coined by you, that is take in an injury and turning it into identity. 

Martha: Yeah. That's a quote from me. And that's the essence of what is going on with shaming. After trauma, if it goes inside, if it lands. In other words, there are some people...Like say I'm walking down the street and someone makes fun of me for the hat I'm wearing. And I like my hat. I'm like. you know, who cares, right? I'm not, it might be a little shocking to me that someone's going to make fun of me in the street, but it's not going to ruin my day if I feel confident about myself and my hat, right? So there's shaming where I'm kind of Teflon, it doesn't hit me, and there is shaming where it gets through and it lands right in my heart, you know, and it's like oops, that person just saw something really true about me where I'm defective and I'm not good enough. My choice of hat means I'm a stupid person or whatever.

Aníbal: Your inner shamer. 

Martha: Yeah. And then, once that happens, once that arrow kind of lands in my heart, my entire internal system starts panicking about it because it's a fearful thing to be unacceptable in human systems. You don't want that. It's not ok. So, your system galvanizes to manage this information that there's something unacceptable about you and your protectors who are often barely older than the part who got attacked, start trying to manage it in the best way they know how. They either get into severe inhibition or the...and then they end up over here with some disinhibition because the systems become unbalanced by that. But the first effort is to inhibit and hide this information, which is taken in as true. So, it goes from an injury to an identity.

Tisha: Is the emotional cannibalism, is that usually self-reflective or do we do that to each other as well? 

Martha: Oh, well, then it goes back out. Of course, we do. Of course we do it to each other as well. And that's why we have couples’ therapy and family therapy. There's no such thing as a person outside of systems.

Aníbal: Martha, you also have these interesting terms, historical shame and instrumental shame. Could you help us with this?

Martha: Yes. Historical shame, what I mean by that is historical shame is we all get shamed. I mean, there's no such thing as getting through childhood or adulthood without being shamed. I mean, in childhood, parents have to inhibit you all day long. Don't put your fingers in the light socket. Don't jump off the cliff. Don't go after that dog or it's going to bite your face off, you know. So, parents are constantly controlling their children to keep them alive. And in school...Some cultures are much more shame based in the ways that they do that. And it gets passed down, of course, within cultures and families, the way of governing children and socializing them. So, peers also and siblings can be terribly shaming, and it's a way of getting power over somebody else, making someone else feel smaller in relation to you. And there's all kinds of settings in which people want to do that to each other and children do it to each other and adults do it to children. So, you can't get through childhood without being injured in various ways. But presumably, if you have a loving enough environment where you're getting the infusion of "your fine, don't worry about it..."

Aníbal: That will buffer.

Martha: You're going to develop some resilience around that. And you'll definitely have some injuries. I mean, I don't know anybody who hasn't gone through an IFS training, for example, who says, you know "I don't have any exiles." I haven't met anybody who doesn't have any exiles parts, who hasn't taken some vulnerable part of themselves and put it in a cave or a dungeon.  But of course, there's a continuum to very extreme trauma. But life is full of opportunities to be shamed...

Aníbal: Yes. Even from, not only from parents, but also from, teachers, educators and...

Martha: Oh, absolutely. And there are some cultures where it's particularly considered the right way to teach. I went to some schools when I was a kid that...And my parents were kind of desperately trying to get me and my siblings into a school where that wasn't happening. They were appalled, but it was hard to find from public schools to private schools. And my experience of childhood was a lot of shaming, that my parents did not intend me to be subjected to.

Aníbal: And you differentiate between intentional and unintentional shaming...

Martha: Right. An unintentional shaming is your kid pours some orange juice on the floor and goes down and licks it and you go "oh my God, stop looking the flour, what are you doing?" As opposed to "Oh, honey, I forgot to tell you, it's not good for you to lick the floor because you could get sick." So, let's just wipe your shoes up. Your first reaction when you see your kid doing something dangerous is to respond like stop and that's unintentional. But I am shaming my child to get a quick response to stop them fast, because it works. Children are shocked by being shamed. They are much more likely to respond quickly to shame.

Aníbal: And it’s pretty pandemic, as you describe it. It's everywhere. 

Martha: Yeah. 

Aníbal: It is. So, for you, somehow, shame is adaptive or even innate?

Martha: Shame...The capacity to feel shame and guilt and all these different emotions is innate. I mean, we're all wired to feel that, right? So we all have the capacity to feel shame. And that warns us to stick with the group. Don't - when I'm in grade school - don't wear polka dot pants if nobody ever wears polka dot pants to school, because I'll stand out like a sore thumb and everyone will make fun of me, right? So I try to cohere to the group norms as much as I can so that I'm going to be included in the group. And shame cues us up to be conformist. And so there are good things about that and bad things about that, right?

Aníbal: Absolutely. And so, it's also adaptive. 

Martha: So, it's adaptive in that way. It keeps the group functioning as a group, but for individuals it's not so...it's not always so adaptive to be conformist, because you may not conform to the group, you may be somebody who likes to wear polka dot pants and you don’t get to or whatever, or you may wear them anyway and get kicked out of the group because you're not going to conform.

Aníbal: And also, Martha, why does this happen so, so, so often that "a bad thing happen to me and I turn it into I'm bad." 

Martha: Because we're primed. And I think this is...we're also primed by temperament. This is my view. That there are some people who are much more resilient temperamentally and some people who are much more sensitive physically and temperamentally to the kind of interface, social interface with other people.

Aníbal: So that's not only to do with the experience and the familiar setting or the perpetrators around, it also has to do...

Martha: With temperament, I mean and of course, legacy burdens. I mean, there's all kinds of factors that go into priming us. The culture of our family, the culture of our culture and our temperament and our personal experiences, which how much am I shammed, how traumatic is that shamming for me? I mean, I've had worked with people who came from what they...And I believe, and they say "my parents are very well meaning, I had a nice childhood, it was all fine." And we get to their exiles. It's like "someone looked at me sideways when I was two and I never got over it." And then the other parts are going "what is wrong with this part for being so oversensitive?" So, they get beaten, that part gets beaten up inside for being sensitive and being too traumatized by something that might not have bothered somebody else.

Aníbal: Are you saying Martha that it's also temperament, that differentiates between a victim that becomes a perpetrator versus a victim, that just stays a victim?

Martha: I mean, my view is that all of us dish out and as we receive and we dish out, both. And it's much harder to notice what we dish out another. Shaming other people is harder to notice than that I've been shamed. The ways in which I shamed other people, you know. It doesn't mean that someone who's been traumatized is going to turn around and become a perpetrator in the same way that they were traumatized. Many do not. Some do. Most people who become perpetrators have trauma histories. That's one of the things Gilligan writes about in his book, Violence. But it's not necessary. But people who have been traumatized certainly have parts that beat up on them. And they'll have parts who will take it out, as we all do on partners in terms of anger and shaming and...It's not easy to be a walking system, you know. We're all walking systems and we have lots of different ways of being as we go through the world. And if we've been hurt, some of those ways are angry and protective.

Aníbal: Yes, makes sense. And given your, already long experience as a therapist, how is it for you to undo experientially this fiction, what you named this, you call this fiction of... 

Martha: Fiction of shaming. Right. Well, it's not...That is what IFS is doing, in my view, is undoing the fiction of shaming. In other words, the attachment work between Self and parts internally, the parts who are...I think of it as like we have a little beehives in us basically. And so, the queen bee and each little beehive is the injured exile.

Aníbal: Say it again, you'd call it queen bee?

Martha: The queen bee. The exile is the queen bee in the middle of the high and around the queen bee, this little queen bee, are all these worker bees who can sting, you know. 

Aníbal: They sting yeas.

Tisha:  It's a great analogy.

Martha: They make honey and they sting.

Aníbal: Oh gosh, what an image.

Martha: They work really hard you know...

Tisha: Right, to protect the queen. 

Martha: That's right. And we have these, and then we have lots of parts who aren't involved with that who aren't pulled into the trauma hives. But around hurt parts, we have these little hives of bees. And, you know, we have to befriend the whole system to rescue the queen. That's what we're doing.

Aníbal: Yes. It makes sense.

Martha: It's so fascinating to hear you speak. I'm wondering if you lead any IFS trainings or...

Martha: Well, I helped Dick get an appointment at Harvard Medical School a few years back, and he teaches at Cambridge Health Alliance also. And Nancy Sowell also, who is a colleague of mine from there, has an appointment at medical school. And she and Dick...

Aníbal: She's doing some research also.

Martha: Yes. And we're working on maybe getting some research at Cambridge Health Alliance. And also, I've been involved with some of the other research projects. And Nancy did a big research project, yes. 

Aníbal: Are you doing some research right now?

Martha: No, not now. I'm actually writing two more manuals like the one, the trauma manual for PESI. One with Tony Herbine-blank on her intimacy from the inside out or couple therapy that's IFS based. And one with Cece Sykes on IFS treatment of addictions. 

Tisha: That fantastic.

Martha: That's going on right now. 

Tisha: That's really needed. 

Martha: Yeah, it will be great to have those two.  

Tisha: Absolutely, the manuals.

Aníbal: So, Martha, is it possible to do some IFS work without jumping in or stumbling into some shame?

Martha: No, not in my view. Well, in fact, one of the things that I encourage clinicians to do is not to be afraid of bringing it up. People are so relieved when you spot it. I mean, and if you're comfortable with it, they'll be comfortable with it. They like to know the difference between shame and guilt. They like to know that it's a part who's been hurt, who is carrying a burden. And the whole thing becomes much more bearable as they learn to unblend from parts, basically, because it's the blending that causes people to be overwhelmed with feelings of shamefulness. So, I just say this will feel better as we practice this. Let's practice unblending.

Aníbal: And regarding the future, Martha. You have been doing so much editing and publishing and writing and practicing IFS. Is there something, you just want to keep doing this? Well, I have the two books that I'm doing now, and I think I have a couple more on the runway. So, I want to do these books. 

Aníbal: You will sit a lot. 

Martha: I will sit a lot. I get up and walk around and, you know, but yeah, that's my main goal right now is to get these books done. And I love teaching and I love my practice with clients.

Aníbal: And we are very thankful to you because it's a gift that someone like you is leading in this strong way all the good publishing that IFS is having.

Martha: I'm so grateful that I've been able to do it and had such great collaborators. You know, I was a playwright. So, for me, doing these dialogue pieces was just a great fun. And I'm going into case studies. It's really fun for me to write. 

Tisha: It's also fascinating on the receiving end. Makes it real. Do you see a wish for any evolution of the model?

Martha: I see evolution all the time in two directions. One is that people are taking it out into so many different venues. And people like Tony has developed it with a couple therapy. And so, people are doing it in all these different settings. I would...I think there are people who are doing it with groups. I'd love to see someone write a book. I won't do it. I'm not enough of an expert in any kind of group except DBT groups, to write that book. But I would love to see somebody write a book on IFS. The various kinds of groups that exist and how IFS can be imported into that setting. So that would be great. You know, Dick is really kind of bringing it...Thinking a lot into the area of physical illness, as is Nancy Sowell is writing a manual for PESI on that topic...

Aníbal: Wonderful, it's good news.

Martha: Yes. And so, you know, just for people, as people use it, they will make discoveries and people all over the world are using it. People will use it in different cultures and make discoveries about their own cultures. And I just hope people write about this as well as make videos, because there's nothing to my mind like the written word. I mean, it's fantastic that we live in an era where we can capture demos and stuff with videos, but not everything. You're not going to be able to see all the intimate moments with clients with that, that people are getting in different cultures all over the world in video. So, I hope people write.

Aníbal: It's a wonderful moment for IFS and it's a privilege to witness this growing and the growing community. It's amazing.

Martha: Yeah. I mean, you can just see how interested people are, the minute they kind of get the concept.

Aníbal: I'm happy for finding IFS also. It's amazing.

Martha: And it's so nice to...People are so relieved not to be pathologized.

Tisha: Right. Not be shamed in therapy. 

Aníbal: Yes, right. Well said Tisha, it's exactly that. So, Martha, thank you so much for having us.

Martha: Yes. You're welcome. Thank you. 

Aníbal: It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model that our work and our lives. And is there any way that you like listeners, find you or find out more about your work...Well you have those wonderful books?

Martha: I have a Website, so people can find me on the Internet. I'm about to actually rehab that, but it exists, and it will exist so, yes, people can find me that way. 

Aníbal: Wonderful.

Martha: And through books, you know. If anyone wants to email me about any thoughts or responses they have to my books, I'd love to hear from people.

Aníbal: And many, many congratulations for all the publishing work that you have been doing. It's a huge gift for our community. 

Tisha: Impressive.

Martha: Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you. 

Tisha: This was an IFS talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.
 
 

Recorded 12th November 2019
Transcript Edition by Carolina Abreu

 

Bringing IFS to Children and Parenting with Lisa Spiegel 57:19

Lisa Spiegel received her BA from Vassar College, and has a Master's degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University. From her three decades of working with adults and children she has developed an approach that draws from an eclectic array of disciplines - talk therapy, yoga and mindfulness, and parent coaching.

Lisa is a certified Internal Family Systems therapist, LifeForce Yoga practitioner, and a couples counselor from the Relational Life Institute.

In addition to her clinical work, she founded and maintains Soho Parenting's New Orleans Project and is a published author.

Children and Adolescents with Pam Krause 55:44

This is an IFS Talks with Pam Krause. Pam Krause is a Senior Lead Trainer for the Center for Self-leadership and has been leading Level 1 and Level 2 trainings since 2005. Pam adapted the IFS model for use with children and adolescents and has created both onsite and online trainings on the topic. Ana Gomez and Pam co-authored the chapter EMDR Therapy and the Use of Internal Family Systems Strategies with Children in EMDR Therapy and Adjunct Approaches with Children. Pam authored a chapter on IFS with Children and Adolescents in Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensions, and also co-authored a chapter called Getting Unstuck, in the 2017 book “innovations and elaborations in IFS” - addressing occasional ruptures and impasses in our work in IFS. Pam also has a private practice in Mechanicsburg, PA.

Talk with Pam Krause on IFS with Children and Adolescents

Addictions and Eating Disorders with Mary Kruger 33:42

This is an IFS Talks with Mary Kruger.Mary Kruger, MS, LMFT, is an AAMFT supervisor and an IFS Lead Trainer. She is the founder of Rimmon Pond Counseling, an IFS-based private practice located in New Haven, Connecticut, specializing in addictions, eating disorders, and trauma for over 25 years. Mary incorporates IFS with her own penchant for the experience, and has developed a variety of creative ways to work with parts and access Self-energy in individual, relational, and group contexts. She enjoys sharing her experience in teaching and consulting on a national level. Mary is noted for her humor, creativity, passion, and love of dancing and people. She also offers private therapy, consultations and workshops.

Full Transcription

 This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

Today on IFS Talks we are interviewing and speaking with Mary Kruger. Mary Kruger, MS, LMFT is an AAMFT supervisor and a lead IFS trainer. She is the founder of Rimmon Pond Counseling, an IFS based Private Practice, located in New Haven, Connecticut, specializing in addictions, eating disorders and trauma for over 25 years. Mary incorporates IFS with her own pension for the experience and has developed a variety of creative ways to work with parts and access Self-energy in individual, relational and group contexts. She enjoys sharing her experience in teaching and consulting on a national level. Mary is noted for her humor, creativity, passion and love of dancing and people. She also offers private therapy, consultations and workshops. Hi Mary. Thank you for joining us today.

Mary Kruger: It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Mary, for having us. How is it for you, Mary, to hear this bio? What parts come up? 

Mary: Well, a part of me feels a little self-conscious. Part of me says I'm bragging about myself a little bit and I don't know if I like that. But another part of me was happy to hear you say that about me because I've worked hard for a long time.

Tisha: Yeah. Would you be willing to share with this about how you got into the mental health field to begin with?

Mary: Oh, certainly. My parents were divorced when I was five and I'm Italian and Irish and I believe a little Hungarian, don't know much about that part of me. And so, my father had a drinking problem and so did his father, which is part of my interest in the legacy of addiction. And my mother was a great enabler, a hard-working woman. So, we lived with my grandparents, my Italian grandparents for a number of years and then my mother remarried my stepfather, who was a violent alcoholic. And so, through my own experience with my own trauma and my journey with myself, I finally, in my twenties, got connected with a therapist that was decent. You know, when I was growing up, we didn't really do therapy and that wasn't really part of my culture. So, it was a new thing to me getting into therapy. So, the first time I went to therapy, I was not really on board with it. I felt self-conscious and embarrassed, so I didn't go back. But I finally, in my twenties, connected with someone who was an addiction person, actually and after a couple of years, he got me to go to a 12-step meeting, ACOA Al-Anon, which really started to change my life. Other than my spiritual practice that I was brought up with, it was really the first time that I really felt what we call, in IFS, Self-energy from a group. And that was the beginning of my journey. And I was working at the time for a Fortune 100 company and decided to go back and get my Masters in marriage and family therapy. My undergrad had been social sciences, by the way. I've always been interested in sociology and history and psychology, so, it was a really good fit. In the Fortune 100 company the job I was in at the time was sales, but we were trained really in psychological techniques and I was working with government education and (…). So, it was really an amazing journey.

Aníbal: There is a lot of social psychology on the sales.

Mary: Yeah, there is. We learn basic joining techniques just like we teach in family therapy in the training. So, I might not want to go on too much longer, but I was training interns by the time I became a family therapist. And Ralph Cohen, Dr. Cohen invited me to take a training with Dick Schwartz. So, I was like “oh, wow, he does that supervision thing and I've read about him and all that, that sounds cool.” And that's how I got introduced to IFS. So, it really brought together everything that I was loving and believing around psychology and sociology and healing. Yeah.

Aníbal: So, you took your first training in IFS directly with Dick Schwartz, right? 
Mary: Yes, we spent about five years working on it. 

Tisha: This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model, through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

Aníbal: How was it for you? There was a before and an after IFS? IFS was for you at the time, a steppingstone somehow? 

Mary: Yeah, that's a great question. The thing that really shifted for me is that I was really interested in how can we make those deeper internal changes. So, lots of the therapies I was trained in, we did really well with external changes and such, but I was finding that clients and even myself in my own work were really stuck around old deeper things inside of us. John Bradshaw called it the shame that binds us, but I didn't really know how we could undo that. And for me, IFS brought that opportunity to be able to do that through the unburdening process, which I love. And so, that really hooked me. And then I also love the idea of interweaving spiritual aspects into our healing and IFS is also a psycho spiritual therapy. So, it really brought that together for me and changed things.

Aníbal: And changed things. Did you have ever done some IFS work yourself personally?

Mary: Yes, actually. 

Aníbal: So, you took both at the same time, the trainings and also experiencing it doing some personal work.

Mary: Yeah. About a year into the training, I realized that I wasn't going to really learn how to do unburdening that well unless I had the experience. So, I started my own personal IFS journey in therapy then and continue through therapy and doing retreats and various things over the years to work on my own parts. I think that's the power of being a good IFS therapist is working on our own parts.

Aníbal: And then you became practicing IFS yourself in your clinical work.

Mary: Yes, I began to use it almost immediately when I started the training, at least speaking about parts. So, I like it because it's systemic therapy and I'm a systems thinker.

Aníbal: Absolutely. Yes, it fits so well. So, what kind of challenges and shifts did that brought into your clinical work? You did some clinical work before and after IFS, right?

Mary: Yeah, trained as a family therapist our work is more directive. So, what that means is we work fast and specifically with specific goals and in specific periods of time. So, one of the things I learned to do is to listen more, to slow down my process, especially with my New York background. It was easy for me to, you know, get rapid speaking and not listen and be agenda driven. So, I learned to be less agenda driven and to really listening more to my client and be more curious about their process rather than what I needed to make happen at the session.

Aníbal: That is a huge, huge plus in our toolbox, as therapists, right? At that time did you combine IFS with other modalities? You came from a family systems tradition as a family therapist. Can you recognize which modalities or principles still guide much of your clinical work? Once IFS is also such a beautiful integrative model.

Mary: Yes, I even presented as an integrative model. I essentially didn't really have to let go of my training because, you know, I love some of the work of Bowen, even though some of it is sexist, but I was interested in the women's project version of that. And, you know, they recognized a polarization in that modality. And also, I love intergenerational work and my interest in Legacy Burden ties into that...

Aníbal: We find so much in our clinical work, right?

Mary: That's right, yeah. And I love structural strategic therapy. Dick was a structural therapist. So, many of the things that we teach in IFS are structural, I'm going to say, techniques. Some of the basic ways. And I've integrated some of solution focused ideas into my work too, because it's very optimistic. And Peggy Papp doing experiential work and Virginia Satir. So, I do like to do sculptings and various experiential things. So, I found it very integrative. Just basically I talk about it enhancing my work rather than needing to leave things behind.

Tisha: What was the clinical population that you were working with when you first came back from that IFS training? Where you working with families or were you working with addictions?

Mary: Well, I always worked with individuals and also couples and families and groups. I do a lot of group work, too. So, the population was various populations from different socioeconomic and cultural classes and people adapted to it. People loved the work. I mean, there's some people that have parts that don't like to go inside, but that's just how that works. But people really resonate with doing the work. Yeah.

Tisha: Do you have a particular strategy for working with people who have parts that don't like to go inside?

Mary: It's called Direct Access. [laughs]

Tisha: Yes. That's a good strategy.

Mary: Yeah, they thought that(…)up. 

Tisha: Could work around, yeah. 

Aníbal: Do you enjoy it to go on Direct Access?

Mary: Oh, I do love it. Anyone who's working with addictions and eating disorders is going to be doing a lot of Direct Access initially. And also, people that are extremely traumatized. So, I do love it. And eventually people make shifts. Although I've had people that have never made a shift yet to insight work, yet they've made shifts in their own system. 

Aníbal: Mary, I'm a psychologist too and I was training in this Boulder model of practitioner-researcher, always with many, many concerns on outcomes, you know. Do you worry also about outcomes? Or saying it another way, how do you get a sense of the effectiveness of your clinical work?

Mary: Well, I'm not a researcher, so, I haven't actually done outcome studies. But I guess I would go on my own personal experience noticing that I've had greater improvements with clients using IFS than prior to using. I remember one specific story, if it's okay that I share it. 

Tisha: Please.

Mary: There was a woman when I was doing a group for overeaters, and one day people were saying, well "Mary's taught us all these things, but we're not like doing anything about our eating and our weight. We haven't really changed anything." So, one of the women said "Well, you know, for me what's really happening is that...", and she was from a very well-off family, she and her husband had many degrees. They had lovely children. They had many financial fortunes, good education but this person said "You know, there's something inside of me that still feels like that little girl that lived in Northern Ireland that's dressed in rags and was burned out of her home. And I just can't shake that feeling. There's some connection to why I eat with that." And that really stuck with me. So, when I learned about IFS, I was like "oh, wow, now we can heal that. There's a way to do that." Yeah.

Tisha: Beautiful.

Mary: Yeah, and so those were the folks that have made shifts before we're feeling rather stuck. 

Aníbal: Mary, somehow you chose a group that can be really very difficult to work with. I mean, people that are using substances, addictions, all kinds of addictions. Of course, there are harder ones than others, but how is it for you? Do you prefer to work with some kind of substances, or do you accept people that are in the beginning of the process that are still using substances? How do you differentiate between working with addictions versus working with eating disorders? Can you say something about why did you pick this group? I believe we can understand, you have your own personal history of having people suffering from these experiences, but it's still a very difficult population and groups to work with, I believe. And I'm talking for my parts that find difficult to work with people using substances mainly. 

Mary: Well, I like to say I was ( …) on a beer bottle. And I can really relate to people who have eating disorders or addictions. I should have mentioned I had my own eating disorder when I was younger. And didn't have the healing that I needed. I had to kind of get myself out of it. So, I feel very connected to those parts. And one of the things that I love is, and I will work with people at any stage of their recovery, even if they're still using. I was trained in intervention. I did work in a rehab for a while. And so, I've adapted. I call it like mini intervention that I do in session with people IFS informed. It's kind of my own little thing I do. So, I don't worry if someone comes in and they've been using. I know that there's a part of them that wants something better. So, I start to connect with those parts. And if they need to go to a treatment facility after we've established trust, then they may be willing to go. I find that people that have addictions and eating disorders actually resonate with parts work. It's one of the things they learn in the recovery community is that they are not their, quote, addiction or their eating disorder. So, they already have a sense of a part of them that's not really who they essentially are. So, I actually find it easier to work with them than some other clients. Sometimes the person that doesn't use anything is harder for me to work with.

Aníbal: How come?

Mary: Because they tend to focus on the people that are causing them issues in their family rather than the parts of them that have gotten hooked into the process of addictions. Yeah, 

Aníbal: So, they somehow blend with the manager, that's what you're saying?

Mary: Yes, they get really manager driven, very blended with that. And it's really hard to shift that to the idea that maybe I have a part that's gotten hooked into the system because there's so much shame underneath about that. And shame in that not wanting to be connected to that person that's done these awful things. So, sometimes it's more difficult to work with those people. But essentially, I get kind of bored if there's nothing exciting going on in the room.

Aníbal: Well, get a couple. 

Mary: So, give me a heroin addict...Oh well, the addictive couples are the most interesting. 

Aníbal: They are.

Mary: They are. You have to be on your toes and it's very challenging not to get hooked into either side, you know, take a side.

Aníbal: I saw myself very changeling couples in many ways. So, I totally understand your parts.

Tisha: I'm really appreciating your fearlessness and courage in approaching the work that you do. It's really, really beautiful to see that aspect of your Self-energy coming through. And I'm curious about how you got into the topic you lectured on at the conference. I'm definitely kind of chomping at the bit to find out more about your work with legacy burdens and addiction.

Mary: Well, I teach a Level 2 on addictions and eating disorders. So, part of the Level 2, a part of the program is to do some work on family towards the end of the week. And I started introducing legacy burden into that. And I've gotten really intrigued by how deep that goes. There's been a lot of focus in the states here on bias and discrimination and things and I've gotten much more interested in how historical trauma passed down from generation to generation can create addictive cycles in families. 

So, I'm part Irish and I mentioned that I was and I did a little research...Actually when I was a family therapist and came up with this little anecdote about Irish folks because they had been occupied for eight hundred years, had to develop a secret way to maintain their culture. So, being a secret keeper was really important and not letting things out, keeping things close to your sleeve in a survival technique. But as it gets passed down from generation to generation, and that's no longer necessary, it also creates a holding of feelings and all kinds of stuff, which leads people to have to find a way to deal with their pain. And one of those is through addictions. So, I was really fascinated by that, but there's many more legacy burdens that people carry from different cultures, different experiences. So, I'm really fascinated by that. And also, around the idea that, you know, we even talk about in the 12 steps set, that 20 percent of it is the using behavior and 80 percent is the attitudes and beliefs. So, that's always fascinated me, too. How did those beliefs and attitudes get passed down from generation to generation, especially when people talk about how it's skipped a generation, like “my parents weren't alcoholics, so why am I? What's happened to me? Why am I different? I must be an oddball or something.” So, when you get into legacy burden and I think it's freeing to realize that you're part of a bigger system and that you're not a flawed human being. Yeah, and I think that that's really powerful and that your ancestors wanted to help you to be able to be here and that's why they came up with these strategies to survive, but we’re not needing them anymore, so let's connect with those ancestors and let's let go of it with them together and let's thank them for allowing us to survive and be here. Yeah. 

Tisha: Yeah. So, powerful. 

Mary: And scientific research is now supporting us with the whole work on epigenetics. So, I'm just fascinated by that idea because as a family therapist in the beginning of my work, I loved intergenerational things. Being from Italian Irish background, we're big on family, so, we're always telling stories and talking about our grandparents and great grandparents. So, really resonates with me. You know, it's powerful.

Tisha: I feel like one of my own personal, maybe most transformative IFS sessions, was finding a legacy burden of poverty passed down from my Irish grandmother, you know, considering how that energy had affected my life, which was phenomenal. Also, amazing to unburden it for my ancestors and for future generations. 

Mary: Yes. 

Aníbal: Mary, if I may, I may be suggesting here a complex question, but how does working with addictions or eating disorders should change the way we approach the IFS model. Once this is such a specific group, with such specific difficulties,  that should change or not change the way we use IFS?

Mary: Well, I think it's a little bit more complex work that...First I mentioned we often have to start with Direct Access... 

Aníbal: Which is scary for many people. 

Mary: It is scary. And also, people often enter treatment with a manager that brought them in saying I want to get better. So, often the therapist ends up colluding with that part and they create a polarization with the addiction part because that part has not agreed to treatment. So, there needs to be an awareness that there's this other part in the room that's not being spoken for when that client appears to be so motivated and they're coming in. The other piece is that, you know, culturally we consider addictions or eating disorders like demons or monsters or something to be gotten rid of it and in IFS we're befriending those parts. So, that's a shift. And in that way of working, we end up spending a little more time with the protectors than we normally would doing traditional IFS. So, unburdening is an important piece, but we may not be able to get to unburdening until we can get some of those protectors to relax. And it can take more time, including needing to go to rehab or doing some kind of 12 step work or something to shift our usage to get there.

The other piece that's very important is as we're working with the unburdening process with exiles, it's important to check back with those protectors to see if there's been an escalation in behaviors, because if there has and we have to go back and do a little bit more work with those parts and then go back to working with the exile. So, it's a bit more intensive and we need to be careful around getting an alliance or a collusion with one of the parts that seem nicer, so to speak.

Aníbal: Yeah, makes lot of sense. You are giving us a short view of what will be your training in Lisbon in 20... 

Mary: Yeah, that's right. 

Aníbal: Yeah, it is. 

Tisha: Is that a Level 2 on addictions? 

Mary: Yeah, we have one in Lisbon in November of next year, 2020. We have one in Austin in June and one in Nashville in January. So, I'll be all over the globe. 

Aníbal: You are busy.

Mary: Teaching level 2. Yeah.

Tisha: Are you also teaching Level 1’s or are you really more specialized?

Mary: Oh, I'm doing a number of Level 1's as well. I'm in New Jersey, New York, California, Maryland.

Aníbal: So, Mary, you are a Lead Trainer for CSL for how long?

Mary: Oh, it's hard for me to say. I was an AT for quite a long time. I'd say I was an AT starting in 2005 and I think around 2011 I became a lead trainer. Yeah.
Aníbal: And what do you enjoy more in these IFS training? The demos, the large group sharing, the meditations, lecturing. Is there something that you enjoy it more? How is it for you?

Mary: I love doing all the experientials, whether it's a demo or a sculpting. I love doing that. Sometimes we do drawing and movement. I love doing that piece a lot. Yeah. I like to do meditations too. I like to do readings during the meditations and such. So, I like most of it actually. 

Aníbal: Yeah. They are really very, very rich and interesting. Is there anything that you'd like to see the trainings develop or change? Any evolution you'd like to see in the trainings, given there are already so good and structured?

Mary: That's a very good question. Well, I actually personally wish that we don't move into using so much PowerPoint. 

Aníbal: Okay, the lecturing.

Mary: I've been noticing that there's more and more PowerPoint. I like to see a little of it. You know, maybe a slide here and there can be helpful. But I would hope that we don't move into that whole thing where we're relying on PowerPoint and lecturing off of that. So, I guess it's kind of a change in that I hope we don't change to that. Because I see some of that happening now and it concerns me because I think the experiential nature of our teaching is very powerful.

Aníbal: Yeah, my parts jump with yours, very happy, because they get trigger also with the lectures. I really get mad when too many lectures are happening, but it happens sometimes.

Mary: Yeah. 

Tisha: This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

How do you feel about the retreat style, the more compact trainings versus...They used to be more kind of strung out over a year? How is that for your teaching parts? 

Mary: I actually like both. It's hard for me to decide. They each have their own special flavor, like the retreat style creates a little bit of a community if they're able to stay together or stay nearby and it allows for people who normally wouldn't be able to have a training either due to location or schedule to be able to take an IFS training. Yeah, but I also love the six-weekend model because it's spread out over a long period of time and people are often able to create an ongoing community out of those trainings. So, I love that aspect of it. Yeah. And there's a little more space in between to practice the model and then come back and learn another piece. 

Tisha: Right. Yeah, you can see someone's personal evolution over the course of the year. How does it feel sending these Level 1 certified IFS therapists out into the world? What is that feeling like for you?

Mary: Magnificent. 

Tisha: Good work.

Mary: Magnificent. I love it. I love seeing fabulous people out there doing good work. I do. And it makes my heart sing. Yeah. 

Aníbal: Mary, you have achieved so much in your journey as a family therapist and as an IFS practitioner and trainer. Is there something else you'd like to do or achieve, besides keeping doing all that you have been doing? You also supervise or have case discussions, right? 

Mary: The supervision I do. Consultation and supervision, yes, students and such. Although I'm not doing students anymore. The one last thing I'd like to do is...Not last thing, I hope it's not my last thing. I'd like to write. 

Aníbal: Oh, yes. 

Mary: I'd like to write about some of the things I've done... 

Aníbal: You'd like to write more.

Mary: Yeah, I've done very little writing other than a couple of blog articles and things I've written up for trainings and things like that regarding IFS.

Aníbal: It will be very welcome, yes. And you will be writing on these topics that you have been working all those years? Meaning the addictions and eating and legacies. That will be your topic. 

Mary: Yeah, and my polarization is, should I make it autobiographical or should I make it technical? One part of me says technical will be boring. 

Aníbal: Yes, absolutely, it can be. Absolutely, I totally agree with you. Please don't do that.

Tisha: I'm with those parts, I like the personal story. I always feel a deeper connection to that.

Aníbal: Yes, please allow your story to be present in every line. 

Tisha: So, there you go.

Mary: Perhaps, there's an integration of both. I'd be in the areas that I've worked in, but I have to find a way that it will be interesting. And time also to do it.

Tisha: What do you envision as a potential evolution for the model itself? Where do you see IFS going as it gets more traction and moves forward?

Mary: Well, you know, they've changed the name now to the Institute. Did you know that? The IFS Institute. And I think it's a fabulous idea because I believe that none of us live forever. And if you have an Institute, that means it'll be continuing like some of the other models, you know, Gestalt and Hakomi Institute. Many of them, their founders are now not with us anymore, but they're still viable. So, I'd like to see IFS be a viable...

Aníbal: Organization. 

Mary: Yes, an organization. And the more that it really is adapted, I think it will do a lot to change our thinking in our culture and can change the planet in a lot of positive ways. And I believe that starts with one person at a time. So, if each of us is out there doing work like this and we help shift even one or two people, we've made a huge contribution to the planet. And I believe IFS has the potential to do that. If we keep it going. 

Aníbal: It's inspiring, isn't it? 

Mary: It is inspiring. A lot of people could use this kind of therapy. 

Aníbal: Absolutely. It's not only a model of therapy, it's also very much a movement. Paradigm change in the way people can think of themselves. So, it's really a huge gift not only to the clinical field.

Mary: Yeah, I mean, I see in business and even politics and family, just the way we look at life, it's really a powerful way to experience and observe life. Yeah.

Tisha: Yeah, we have clarity on how to work with polarizations in a world that is very polarized.

Mary: That's right. I mean, some people knew these things before. It's not that this never happened in any kind of way, but I think this is a more focused way that pulls things together and it can reach more people. Yeah. 

Aníbal: Wonderful. So, Mary, thank you so much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this model, our work, our lives. And, you know, in Lisbon, we will have in June our first European Conference or Symposium on IFS. Maybe you can join us in June 2020?

Mary: I'm trying to think of a way to squeeze that into my schedule.

Tisha: Oh yeah. Make it happen. Lisbon in June? It's got to be beautiful. 

Mary: I bet. It sounds like a fabulous that you're having it there, too. Yeah. 

Aníbal: We hope so, we can meet the whole family and enjoy it, really.

Mary: I'm sure you'll get great attendance. 

Aníbal: Thank you. So, thank you so much, Mary. It was fun to have you and to learn from you, from your large experience with the model. I'm very, very grateful.

Mary: Thanks to both of you, Tisha and Aníbal. I appreciate the opportunity to speak a little bit more about my experiences. And I wish both of you a lovely day or evening.

Tisha: This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

Recorded 4th Oct 2019
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

Embodying IFS with Susan McConnell 52:56

This is an IFS Talks with Susan McConnell. Susan has taught IFS throughout the US and in Europe since 1997. Her involvement as Senior Trainer with the Center includes developing training curricula, training IFS training staff, and designing and leading somatic psychotherapy retreats and seminars. In her private practice in Chicago, Susan specializes in recovering the wholeness of body, mind and spirit, drawing from her bodywork and movement experience and her Buddhist practice. She brings commitment and passion to her work and her play with her partner and her dogs along Lake Michigan shores.

Full Transcription
 

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. Today, we're interviewing and talking to Susan McConnell. Susan McConnell has taught IFS throughout the US and in Europe since 1997. Her involvement as a senior trainer with the center includes developing training curricula, training IFS training staff and designing and leading somatic psychotherapy retreats and seminars. In her private practice in Chicago, Susan specializes in recovering the wholeness of the body, mind and spirit, drawing from her bodywork and movement experience and also her Buddhist practice. She brings commitment and passion to her work and play with her partner and her dogs along Lake Michigan shores. 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Tisha. How is it for you, Susan, to hear this bio? What parts come up?

Susan McConnell: [Laughs] It's fine. It's fine. You know, my dog has died, but I have a new one now. So, I guess it could be a singular dog, but, yeah, and my partner is now my wife, or my spouse. But anyway, it's a little embarrassing. You know, bios are always a little embarrassing for me, but they have to be, you have to be written So, people have an idea. And I like how you read it Tisha. It was good.

It makes me think about how I actually find myself going back to those early days. And actually, I feel very grateful that I got in on the ground floor, you know. It was just a very potent and exciting time in the development of IFS, and I got to be in a pretty close relationship with Dick and just felt like I had a lot of influence on helping to forge the direction of IFS. There's something about those beginnings that...I mean, almost the beginning of anything, that just really sort of brings out the best in me.

Tisha Shull: So, it sounds like I read a little bit of an outdated bio and it brought you back to the early days of IFS. What was it, Susan that brought you into the mental health profession to begin with?

Susan: You know, my early professional life was sort of hopscotching in a way back and forth between the field of the bodywork and somatics and movement and touch and then the field of mental health, beginning with working with survivors of domestic violence, when the first shelter for domestic violence opened up in Chicago and I was one of the counselors. And from there I went into bodywork. So, I was always interested in integrating the two. So, after I had been in that field for about seven years and I was called into bodywork primarily because, you know, it was very common for us to burn out back then because we weren't really very well prepared for what we had, what we were going to be facing, the complexity of things and how complicated helping people extricate themselves from violent situations was. So, none of us lasted very long. But after seven years, I had some physical symptoms that western medicine really couldn't explain or fix. So, that took me into the field of different alternative medicines and eventually became a practitioner of different forms of bodywork. And then, of course, even as I was learning it, I was really fascinated with how this might...how our emotions and our belief systems might be showing up on our bodies sometimes in my body structure.

So, I think that the fascination with the body came very early in my life. So, actually my first extensive real experiential training in psychotherapy came with Hakomi training. And that was, I think back in the early 80s, when body and mind were hardly spoken of in the same sentence, let alone offered in a training. So, when the Hakomi training, which was a body centered formal psychotherapy, came to Chicago, I just jumped at the chance to learn Hakomi. And I was very, very content with the model and doing a combination of just seeing people face to face, but also seeing some people on my table and whether they were sitting in a room with me or laying on my table with touch, I was always working kind of at that interface of mind and body.

Tisha: This IFS Talks and audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model. 

Susan: And then it was actually the need for consultation that got me in touch with Dick Schwartz. Some of my Hakomi friends had joined a consultation group with Dick, and they were saying that, in this consultation group he offered not just consultation for our difficulties with clients, but he also was teaching this model that he was just putting together.

Aníbal: That was the 80's? 

Susan: Well, no. Hakomi training was in the 80s, but the consultation group was probably around 94, 95, something like that.

Aníbal: The 90s.

Susan: Yes, the 90s. So, I thought, well ok, I'm happy to learn this model. People are saying IFS integrates really easily with Hakomi. It isn't like a huge leap into a whole other paradigm, but it was also involving mindfulness and exploring our inner systems. Yeah, so, I found myself, even though I wasn't really looking for a new model, just looking for some help with a client that had attempted suicide. I was really, really happy with Dick's approach and consultation, which wasn't really to say "Well, you should try this or what about that," but it was helping me explore my own parts that came up in the relationship and doing like a session with me and helping me find my own parts. And I found that my relationship with my client improved because I was, you know, more and more, a lot more in a greater state of Self-energy. And I had been when I was so concerned about her not killing herself. So, I was in the consultation group for a year or two and just kept learning more and more about the model as we met, and he explained it as he was...right around that time his book came out. His first book came out.

Aníbal: Yes, 1995, I believe so, yes.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

Aníbal: So, for you, Susan, there is a before and an after IFS, like it was a steppingstone to you. 

Susan: Yeah, it was the consultation group as a steppingstone, and then it was actually a dream that launched me into teaching. Dick had said to me "You know, if you want to learn the model much more thoroughly, Susan, you could consider taking this training I'm going to be offering in Chicago." And I said "Well, I'll think about it." And then I had a dream where in the dream I was at one end of the table with some Hakomi people, and then I saw Dick at the other end and I got up and walked down because I thought "Oh, I want to ask him about the training." So, I got up to ask him about the training and he said "Yes, well, I have two trainings and one has about 30 people in it, and the other training has like four people in it. And that's the one I want you in." Now, that made no sense to me because I had no idea how Dick organized the training back then. But what he said to me when I told him that was that the way he was organizing the trainings was that he basically taught the first like three fourths of the day, talking and sharing about trying to teach people to model with - and by the way, no handouts whatsoever, he's very auditory - and then doing a demo, and then people talk about the demo. And then he said "I want four people to take a small group and lead the small group." And when he told me that he would expect me to be able to perhaps to do a little demo and answer people's questions, come up with experiential exercises and lead the small group, I said...because at that point I was a Hakomi teacher and had been doing a lot of curriculum development as I developed a training of Hakomi for bodyworkers and doing various workshops and trainings in Hakomi.

Aníbal: So, you have already some experience teaching, yes.

Susan: Yeah. So, "Oh I could do that." And he said "Yeah." And I said "Oh absolutely." So, he said "Well show up at the training. I'm not really sure who’s going to be my trainers for this training. So, I would love it if you would be willing to be one of the assistants." Now, he didn't, back then, he didn't insist that the training that the assistants show up for the whole day. And I said I couldn't imagine not showing up for the whole day and then leading a group. “I have to be there, you'd care?” He said "No, no, it's all right. Just, you know, you're not required." So, I was actually the only one of the four who was there for the whole day. And so, I got to learn the model along with the students and tried to stay one step ahead of them. And from then on, I was kind of hooked. Actually, that isn't true. I decided to teach in one more, to assist in one more training, because at that point, Beth had decided to learn the IFS model and she was going to be in the next IFS training in the Chicago area. So, I assisted in that one as well. And that was nice to share that experience with Beth and to learn even more deeply this model, which sounds, of course, on one level that sounds fairly simple, but I was beginning to understand the depth and complexity of it and glad to get a chance to be more confident in it.

So, I was ready to move on to something else after the second training, when the third training started, and I found myself just wishing I could be a part of it. And I called up Dick to find out "how did it go, how did it go?" And then I said, "Oh, I just missed you all so, much." And at that point, another of my friends and colleagues have joined the training and he said "We could really use you if you'd like." And I'm like "well, the training is already started." And he said "Oh, that's ok, come." So, then I was in the third training and at that point he was starting to get requests to teach IFS all over the country or in several places in the country and asked if I could travel and at that point my daughter was old enough to make it possible and I said "Yeah, I could travel." So, that's when I started teaching in other states. And then I think it was 2000, I was teaching in Germany, which was a big leap for me to teach with a translator and to teach for six days in a row.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks an audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model. 

Susan: So, that's kind of my early beginnings. Oh, I didn't finish the dream. So, that was kind of a fun ending of a dream, because when Dick said “I want you to be in that small group of four people” in the dream, the music started. There was this music started playing and we both stood up and we started dancing, only I was in the lead and Dick got this really sweet smile on his face and he said "I like not having to lead all the time." 

Aníbal: So, you danced with Dick in your dream, am I follow you well?

Susan: Dancing in the dream. And he likes not having to lead all the time. And when I reflected on that dream, and particularly as IFS was already starting to spread, perhaps because of the publishing of his book...

Aníbal: That was late 90s?

Susan: It was 97. Maybe 98, 99. Yeah, late 90s. So, I realized at that point that Dick wasn't going to be able to teach in all of these trainings. And I started imagining, I thought I would like to teach in some of these trainings, but I started thinking "well how can I do that because I can't be Dick, I have to be me." And so, I started copying down his talks and introducing some of the experiential exercises that I and the other assistants were starting to just come up with kind of on the spot because we recognize that...Well, I particularly found that experiential exercises were so useful to adult learning. So, I started recording these notes, recording his talks as well as the exercises, and eventually put it in the form of our first training curriculum.

Aníbal: It was a really, really short period from learning the model to training, was it?

Susan: Yes, compared to now you're right, Aníbal. Compared to now where people might go through, you know, how I don't know, assisting in, what, five, ten...

Aníbal: Decades. Sometimes decades.

Susan: Yes, decades. And for me, it was just a couple of years. It was really, well, I didn't even take the training, as you can tell. I just basically started assisting immediately. 

Aníbal: Yeah. 

Susan: And then, as time wore on, there were weekends when Dick couldn't make it, either because he had double booked or was sick or something. And so, myself and a couple of other assistants were kind of acting first as substitutes and then later, as, you know, sometimes last minute substitutes, and then the trainings began to be organized in terms of, well, “I'll do four of the weekends and you do two and then I'll do three and you do three. How about if you do all six?” And anyway, that's really, it just sort of morphed into a form of organization based on the evolving needs, you know, as the training...as some different people were wanting to be trained... 

Aníbal: And so you could witness the beginning of all this movement.

Susan: And it was, you know, I remember flying on the airplanes next to Dick and getting chances to just talk with him and I remember one moment that was, that kind of solidified things for me in terms of whether IFS was really something I wanted to commit to from my professional life, because it took me a few trainings before I was really ready to do that. We were in Asheville and I wasn't really sure at that point because I felt that the model was a little too formulaic for me. I tend to be a little bit more kind of organic, go with the flow, just tune in and see where it's going to unfold, you know, and we were teaching very step by step approach.

Aníbal: Directive way sometimes. 

Susan: Yes. Yes. But then I would watch Dick do sessions and I could just tell that even though, you know, there was something just very much that transcended this formula, that was something very alive and almost pulsating or something, you know, in my soul, when I watched him work and it was it was very inspiring for me. And so then I got a chance to really share all this with Dick and then numerous times, share meals together, sit together and talk after the trainings. And I told him about my concern that was sort of too wrote and I said “But I see you work and I know it isn't." He goes "No, no. You know, the steps of the model are just there to help people safely enter an internal system. But no, the model is not defined by that map. You know, the work is very much more than that. And that was really, I think, the moment when I thought “yeah, this is for me.” So, from then on, I've been just finding ways to help out primarily as a trainer, but I think some of my other loves has been to, you know....Dick saying "I don't I don't want to have to lead all the time" or "I like it when I don't have to lead." I thought, you know “I can't lead all the time, I need to really develop others leadership as well, other people to first assist and then become trainers.” So that became a real focus for me as I was teaching in different places in the country and particularly in Germany. I thought “we can't be flying across the Atlantic Ocean. We need to develop leadership over here. And however the IFS model is going to flourish in foreign soil, we need to make space for that.” So, that became one of my passions, along with my continued interest in integrating the somatic aspect into IFS. And from the beginning, I felt permission and encouragement from Dick to do that. And I think if I had not felt that, I again, would have probably just gone back to Hakomi.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model. 

How did that piece translate into your clinical work with incorporating somatic and IFS together? How did that show up with your clients in the office? 

Susan: Well, that's a question I wish I could answer. I would think that it was such a process Tisha. It was really just really years of exploration. And one thing that grounded me in that, sort of not just grounded me, but also encouraged me on that path, was Dick telling me that he learned the model from listening to his clients. So, he really took a fresh start, of course, integrating what he learned from his structural family therapy background, but also holding it somewhat aside and just offering different things as they popped into his mind with his clients about parts and eventually Self, and really, really listening very deeply to his clients to put that into...to integrate that into the model. And I think similarly, my process involved...Well, I think first, probably integrating some of what I did with Hakomi into IFS. Actually, now that I think about it, Tisha, at the beginning, I tried to set a lot of the Hakomi and my bodywork background to the side because I really wanted to learn pure classic IFS. I felt “if I'm going to be teaching this, I want to really do this certainly in my demos and in the trainings.” But also, at that point, I was getting more and more referrals from people, you know, requests for doing therapy, because of IFS. I wanted to do the model in a very pure fashion. 

But it was almost as if in time the body orientation kind of wanted to creep back in. It didn't want to be exiled. So, I certainly was noticing my own body as perhaps a consultant in the therapy office. So, if I would feel agitated, it might be an indication that there's something going on in the relationship or perhaps with my client or even perhaps in other body symptoms like a headache or something, or feeling tired might indicate if it wasn't mine, it might be something communicating to me from my client. I also, because of my training in bodywork and in Hakomi, which was a lot of extensive practice and experience with observing people's bodies, their posture, their listening to the voice, the prosody of the voice and noticing little movements and unconscious gestures and involuntary movements. So, I was just trained in tracking that stuff. I couldn't really help myself but to keep noticing that. And eventually I found ways to bring that in to my IFS interventions.

Tisha: This IFS Talks and audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

Aníbal: In your chapter Embodying the Internal Family, you introduced this concept of embodied Self and you describe the 5 tools of Somatic IFS and you say these tools are Somatic Awareness, Conscious Breathing, Somatic Resonance, Mindful Movement and Attuned Touch. And so, these 5 tools. And then you described their applications to cases involving addiction, complex trauma, chronic illness, as well as body image. Could you tell us more about what exactly these tools are and how do they help in the... 

Susan: Yes. In the years since I wrote that chapter, I've switched it just a little bit. Someone suggested that the word tools didn't quite work, and I came up with the word practices. I like that work better. So [crosstalk]…the five practices of Somatic IFS and I felt like I used somatic too many times and Somatic IFS and then Somatic Awareness. So, now I thought about rather than somatic resonance, I wanted to think of another adjective. And so, I came up with radical and radical, the Latin root of the word radical means root actually. So, with resonance we go back to the root, even back to the embryological roots of attachment of the attachment process.

But yes, you know, I guess I could say that I wanted to come up with a way to convey people who were wanting to know "What is it that you're doing or something you're doing, something a little different." But some of the other trainers sometimes in trainings where people were having Dick as a trainer and then me as a trainer, they'd say "there's something different you're doing. I'm not sure if it's simply because you're a woman and there's sort of a gender difference or if there's something else.” So, I was really, you know, attempting to come up with a way to convey what it is I do and how to integrate the body more fully into IFS for those people who wanted that. And it wasn't really because I feel that the IFS model is lacking in any way. And yet, like I said, there are some people who want to have a more embodied approach to their therapy, particularly because it's just becoming a lot more popular and it's becoming, particularly with a lot of the neurological research, people are aware that there's a real body component to trauma and to relational trauma and attachment ones, as well as almost any psychotherapeutic issue. So, I came up with those five practices as a way to help people begin to bring the body and. So, I could sort of try to summarize each of those, if you'd like. You want me to?

Aníbal: You were somehow honoring your past experiences as...

Susan: It was more bodywork, really. [crosstalk]...bodywork for quite a few years. I did study some different movement. Practices as well and different somatic practices. As a professional body worker, I was doing structural therapy and craniosacral therapy.

Aníbal: Yes, and also honoring Hakomi, once Hakomi is so much body based.

Susan: Yes. And other things too. I've studied with quite a number of other approaches. Pat Ogden and Susan Aposhyan...Just different people to integrate different body orientations, different somatic psychotherapy orientations.

Aníbal: Yeah, and I understood that those tools are practices and tools to assess Self, that helps you to assess Self and helps others to assess Self. Being in Self.

Susan: Not totally. I mean, I say they lead to a sense, to a state of embodied Self. But I would say that these practices, combined with the IFS Model, take us to embodied Self. So, that they each of the practices can be used with every step of the model. So, they help us with those F's finding the part, with focusing on the part, of course, obviously help us fleshing out the part. They help us with how do you feel towards the part, and they help us with witnessing the part story, through the body, through movement, through touch and through resonance, of course. And they also help us with unburdening and with the integration and restoring of all the resources after unburdening. So, I find myself that each of these practices, you know, when I begin to get stuck or don't quite know what to do, and my client has a part that's very blended or they're getting overwhelmed, I just pull out one of these practices and use that right in that moment and it gets us back on track.

Aníbal: So, the body as a safe resource, as a safe place to come back or as a resource to help in all those processes that you just described.

Susan: Of course, for some people, the body is not a safe resource. But for them, you know, for a person who has severe trauma or even relational wounds that make for them the body a threatening place, then I would work differently, trying to help restore their sense of the body being a place where they can be at home and be safe. And that, I think, helps to round out a person's experience So, that they're not just healing verbally and cognitively and even emotionally, but they're also healing somatically, restoring their aliveness in their body and their abilities to really be fully embodied.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model. 

Would you be willing to share an example, either specifically or kind of a general theme that you have run across around working with IFS somatically? Something that you've noticed that happens, that creates shifts in the system.

Susan: Let's see? I was thinking about a client who recently contacted me because he has physical symptoms that, again, no one can explain and even IFS - he's been through the IFS training - but IFS, the demos he's had, the sessions he's had working with an IFS trainer has not really, even doing past life stuff, it hadn't really made a dent in the early paralyzing physical situation he was in. So, I've worked with him now three times and then in those sessions I used certainly somatic awareness, you know, just bringing his awareness to the symptoms, to the physical sensations that he feels and also touch my touch and his touch and imaginary touch. And in the last session, we actually worked prenatally with having him...I don't remember exactly now why I did this, but  I had him go inside and...This is some of the some of what I've been learning in my studies with this teacher on embryology, which is that our cells organize within the first week or two before we even have any identifiable features in the fetus. That it's organizing along a vertical line with the front body and the back body. And the front body changes, organizes and reorganizes until eventually in our bodies, the front body becomes the digestive organs and the back body becomes eventually the skin and the nervous system. So, in our front body we have nourishment, right? Which is what each of us need in order to survive and the back body provides protection, which is also a very basic need. Now, this man...His parents have been married for 12 years before they had a child, and it was never explained to him until we found out from another source that his mother had several miscarriages and obviously never processed her grief around that. So, I think that is really why I went to the womb, actually, because I wondered whether the source of, basically the body story wanting to be expressed in his body perhaps went that far back to when his mother first realized she was pregnant. And this is the radical resonance here, because I just imagine that, as I remembered how delighted I was when I found out I was pregnant and I wasn't burdened by multiple losses, that would have maybe shadowed my delight and excitement. And I just thought how a woman who's experienced all those losses would have fear and a reluctance to feel any excitement at all. And I just started wondering if this could be the cause. So, I had him get in touch with through his own touch and his awareness and his breath with his navel and had him reimagine forming, you know, from that front body outgrows the stock, which plants like he or his developing organism made the powerful decision to reach out and connect with his mother's body, the placenta. And in the back body eventually became an amniotic sac which held him in this wonderful safe bubble. And then, of course, like I said, both the umbilicus and the amniotic sac then changed in multiple way. Again, this is such a tribute to our very young organism's ability to be creative and to communicate and to collaborate to just keep functioning, to give us the nourishment and the protection that we need throughout our lives.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks in audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model.

Susan: So, that's probably the most recent example I can think of, where I've used quite a number of those practices to hopefully begin to get at the root of some of these mysterious body symptoms and emotional symptoms that seem to be just preventing him from moving ahead in his life.

Tisha: It sounds like a mix between your intuition and his Self-energy and knowing that brought him to a place that cognitively he wasn't getting to.

Susan: Yes, at the end, he felt relaxed. Mostly a big reduction in his symptoms. And just really hopeful that the direction that we're moving in is it for him So, sessions like that are very...Or clients like that kind of keep inspiring me to keep trying to synthesize this somatic IFS. To really keep bringing together what I've learned and what I continue to learn about the body.

And like you say, Tisha, my own, just my own intuition, whatever that is, I think that's some combination of, you know, is very right brain, I think. And so much of our communication, particularly in the therapy office, is really right brain to right brain communication. And much of it we are not attending to. Much of it we're only attending from our left brain to what's being spoken. And so much of the part stories are happening before we even have the words or the cognition to recount the story. So, I think if we're not paying really good attention to what's happening in our bodies and then our clients bodies and helping our clients to bring their awareness to that as well, then we may not be helping our clients as much as we could if we're only listening to half of the story in a way, you know, and maybe not even the most important half.

Aníbal: Yes, and reconnecting with our bodies. So healing per se, isn't it?

Susan: Yes, I mean, I really don't think I'm somebody who's walking around fully connected with my body. I mean, I think many of us get distracted, right? We get distracted all the time by our devices and working and thinking. And, you know, so, for me, it's continually just coming back and "what's going on right now? How can my body inform me about who I am and what I'm needing and what I want to say." So, for example, in an interaction, you know, I might feel reactive, but if I take a moment and just stop and before I speak, before I behave, before I act, I might just take a moment and tune in. That helps me find the vulnerability or find the part that wants to defend me against the vulnerability. So, it's for me a continual process that helps me be more in Self-energy. And that's why I have that adjective Embodied Self-energy just to remind me and ourselves that it's a state that, those C words are really embodied states.

Aníbal: May I quote you again, Susan, because I find this really remarkable how much you stress out the importance of the body. And you say, again in that chapter that you have, I believe it's called Embodied IFS. And you say “in addition to the process of finding the burden in the body and releasing it through the elements, burdens may be released through breathing, sound, movement and touch. We can be aware of the spontaneous unburdenings occurring in the tissues, in the nervous system and in the body's alignment.” So, this is it, somehow burdens are in the body for you and unburdening also happens through the body? That's how you see it? 

Susan: Yes, I would say unburdenings happen also in the body and sometimes they happen first in the body and at least the way I work seems to be kind of the way I maybe naturally, organically work, what's most comfortable for me. It turns out that in my work with my clients, these unburdenings tend to happen more spontaneously and as a process, rather than as a more kind of orchestrated event where we say "Are you ready to let go of that burden? Can you find that burden? How do you want to release the burden?" It's more like, it almost feels like there's different sort of layers of unburdening. So, for example, when a very isolated part that has never been contacted before, all of a sudden feels welcomed and feels trusting of Self-energy. In a way that's a bit of an unburdening. And you see that the voice changes and the person's body changes and their coloring and their eye contact changes, their spine might lengthen then and that more and more things are possible. We can just sort of feel or sense all of the other parts in the system begin to shift a bit. So that's maybe the first shift or you could call it unburdening that happens. But then, as the part then forms that relationship with Self and then the story is witnessed and then one gets a sense of what this part has been suffering from, what they've been carrying around over time, then you can be more specific. And of course, oftentimes, you know, I mean, even in traditional affairs, we say where in your body is that burden? And sometimes, though, in a sort of ironic way, sometimes my clients don't find the burden in their body, you know. So, sometimes I'll just be acknowledging what is being released. "So, you're your breath is now coming deeper, and your abdomen seems like it slowed down. Like, let's let that happen." Just bringing your awareness to that actually brings about a change. Awareness itself is transformative, you know.

Aníbal: Owning that body.

Susan: Yeah. Like "What do you notice with your breath? Well I guess I'm breathing kind of shallowly and kind of fast. We'll just watch that for a little while. It's funny. As I watch it, it begins to slow down a little bit, gets a little bit deeper." So, in a way, just simple awareness of what's happening in the body begins to bring more Self-energy into the system. And that's why the foundational tool of all of the Somatic practice, the foundational practice of all the Somatic IFS practices is awareness, because that really holds all the rest, leads up to all the rest of them.

Tisha: This is IFS Talks and audio series to deepen connection with the internal family systems model.

Aníbal: Thank you, Susan. You had a wonderful and long journey with IFS. Maybe about 25 years. I don't know...Maybe...

Susan: Yeah. 

Aníbal: That long? Yeah. And I know you are saving some time now for writing your book, but you still train. You are still leading...

Susan: I do Level 1, Level 2 trainings for Center for Self-Leadership. Not too many anymore. I used to do maybe one a month but I'm not doing that many. But I'm also trying to reserve some of my time to offer trainings in Somatic IFS because no one else is doing them and there's an increasing desire to be trained in that. So, I tend to do more of those lately.

Aníbal: So, what do you enjoy more in those trainings? There are the sharing of the group, the demos, the meditation, the lecturing…

Susan: What a great question. I think my first answer is I think I like it all. Yeah, I really surprised myself actually that I still get such pleasure and satisfaction with teaching, even the basics, you know. I never get tired of it. Um, I think, you know, I've realized recently - not all that recently, but anyway - I've realized that my intentions when I'm teaching are, of course, to try to help people learn the IFS model. That goes without saying. But I'm also wanting, in addition to people finding their own individual Self-energy, I'm wanting the people in a group to discover the Self of the group, to really have a felt sense of the group coming together in a coherent wholeness that is bigger than the Self of any individual.

Aníbal: It's a larger Self, yes. 

Susan: Yeah. So, we begin to really sense that Self-energy is not something within me or within you, but it's something that maybe is that nothing that we think of as that space around us and the whole universe that we think of as nothing but is actually everything. Perhaps that's Self-energy. And it comes into individuals and comes into a group that is working with their burdens and unburdening them and growing in trust and growing in connection and growing in love and compassion and understanding of each other. And that to me is a palpable felt experience. We felt it in the last the last training, 33 people and the 13 or whatever assistance that we had. And I can tell from WhatsApp that the energy just keeps expanding and expanding as far as people are continuing to support each other and inform each other. And the love just keeps flowing. So, when that happens and it doesn't happen in every training, but in my experience, it's happening more and more often for whatever reason. But when that happens that really excites me and satisfies me. So, that I think happens through each of the components of the training that you named. You know, it happens a lot in the demos, it happens a lot in the practice groups. It happens a lot just the assistance holds Self-energy within themselves and also hold... 

Aníbal: And the groups become larger and larger, right? Because now you can have up to 45 people in the room.

Susan: Yes, and I used to really think that the groups needed to be smaller, but as you know, that was just an idea that I had. And as I've held that idea more lightly and just waiting to see what does happen in a larger group, I'm finding, in fact, even in my Somatic IFS retreats that I do every year in Costa Rica, I used to hold the group at 15 and then 18 and then 24. And now I'm experimenting with even a few more than 24. Like last year we had I think 27, 28. And at each year I think it gets bigger and I think it gets better. So, maybe there is something about the multiplied kind of exponential factor of Self-energy.

Aníbal: Self-energy. 

Aníbal: Yeah.

Tisha: I just wanted to note that, that you have accomplished so much as a psychotherapist and as a lead trainer and a pioneering advocate for the wisdom of the body. I'm curious if there's something yet that you aspire to. Some dream to chase. 

Susan: You know, I'm not yet in a state, you know, I think there's a certain sort of spiral maybe that we go through. And with writing my book, I'm sort of in a place on that cycle or that spiral where I'm integrating and synthesizing and putting it all in written form and looking forward to it being published and going out to the world. And about a little over a year from now, about a year from now. And I'm anticipating that when that process is complete, that then the energies then will be ready to flow in me in a different direction. And it might be a related direction of which is born out of necessity, of training more people to do what I do, because it's likely that with the publication of this book, I will be getting even more than the already numerous requests for therapy and consultation that I'm getting. And I will want to be able to refer people out to them. So, I'm thinking that sort of a very practical next dream will be to find a way to do more of that teaching. But I might be surprised because it might be that when I'm really complete with, you know when I've really completed this process and the book is out there, who knows, maybe I'll take up, you know, parasailing or something...[laughs] 

Tisha: Some surfing with me.

Aníbal: Enjoying yourself.

Susan: So, stay tuned. But you know, this talk about the Self-energy just spreading and spreading, you know. I think what the two of you are doing is...And also like with the online circle, you know, it's just kind of getting out there in cyberspace. Just the frequencies of embodied and resonant Self-energy is, I think, really traveling and hopefully influencing all the places that this planet and the people on it and the beings on it so sorely need. So, I think if I don't have a dream, I at least have a prayer and a wish for that to happen. 

Aníbal: Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thank you So, much for having us. It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope we can keep meeting and sharing this mother our work, our lives. 

Susan: I feel the same way too. I feel just energized by your wonderful questions and, well, both of you just always warm my heart. So, thank you for giving me this time.

Tisha: This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the internal family systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users. 

Aníbal: And you know, Susan, today we have to honor Dick, Dick is celebrating, is turning 70.

Susan: Yes, I know. I want to send him an email about that. I always remember September 14th. Just a few months younger than me. I always tease him about being....

 

Recorded the 23th September 2019
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu

IFS and Extreme Parts with Cece Sykes 59:49

This is an IFS Talk with Cece Sykes, an IFS Senior Trainer, US and international. Cece has Contributed to Levels 1 and 2 IFS training manuals and teaches L1 as well as L2 Trauma and Addiction. Cece has over thirty years of clinical experience working with individuals, couples and families, specializing in work with the effects of trauma and addiction. Her chapter on compassionate approaches to addictive process appears in IFS: Innovations and Elaborations. Cece also has special interests in spiritual practices intersecting with therapy and in the impact of psychotherapy upon the life of the therapist and she lectures, consults and leads workshops on all of these topics. Cece lives and works in the city of Chicago.

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners and users.

 

Today we're interviewing and talking to Cece Sykes, a licensed clinical social worker and an IFS senior trainer in the US and internationally. She has contributed to levels one and two IFS training manuals and teaches level one, as well as level two on trauma and addiction. Cece has over 30 years of clinical experience working with individuals, couples, and families, specializing in the work with the effects of trauma and addiction. Her chapter on compassionate approaches to the addictive process appears in IFS Innovations and Elaborations. Cece also has special interests in spiritual practices, intersecting with therapy and on the impact of psychotherapy upon the life of the therapist. She lectures, consults and leads workshops on all of these topics. Cece currently lives and works in the city of Chicago.

 

Tisha Shull: Thank you, Cece, for having us and for being willing to be part of this series of Talks on Internal Family Systems.

 

Cece Sykes: Thank you for the invitation.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thank you, Cece. How is it for you to listen to this bio?

 

Cece: Good question. I think a part of me feels proud, actually, of the work I've done. Part of me feels old.  Saw my first client in 1978. So...

 

Aníbal: It’s more like experienced.

 

Cece: Yeah, but I think everything that I've been done has been, I like to approach things, you know, I'm always learning, I guess I would say. So, still I'm learning when I'm teaching. Something new will probably come to me in our conversation today, you know, how it is. So, I also think that this is an accumulation of being exposed to so many people who I've learned from. My clients, but also all the therapists I've worked with over the years and all the teaching situations, it's a challenge. And so, I think everything I have essentially is also in a way given to me.

 

Aníbal: So, you enjoy the journey very much, I see. So, Cece, could you please tell us a bit about your journey into the mental health profession? Was there something in your personal life that was determinant for you becoming a psychotherapist?

 

Cece: You know, I majored in social work. At 18 I chose that as my major for college when I was in high school, it was in the early seventies. It was a lot going on late sixties, early seventies in the United States and in Europe too, I think, around student demonstrations, the war, those kinds of things and the social workers at my school were very community involved, very...We would call it progressive. One was white, one was black, there were two women, they were good friends. I thought, I just liked the whole picture of that. I didn't have words for it. I just liked the idea of the sort of progressive thinking and trying to make change in the world, I think was how I was thinking about it. And I also liked just even when I talked to my high school counselor about, you know, I don't know, like classes, and then I thought, Oh, I like this idea of talking to people. So, then I would, I majored in it and stayed in it my whole life. So, you know, my family, if you want to go family systems, I'm the oldest of six kids and depressed mom, overwhelmed mom, overwhelmed parents. I was very much a parentified child. So that role of making myself available was always in my life. And so, it was very consistent with being a therapist.

 

Aníbal: It was a good training.

 

Tisha: It always felt like a good fit.

 

Cece: Yeah. It was. There was no stretch. You were a therapist and you were poor. I go, yeah. I was like, I remember.

 

This is IFS Talks and audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.

 

Tisha: I'm curious about your work before you met IFS.

 

Cece: Right.

 

Tisha: What was that part of your clinical work...

 

Cece: I actually was a therapist for 20 years before I got to IFS training and now it's 20 years since. What I started doing was very early on I worked in community mental health, you know, they kind of throw young people in, but I worked with adolescents and their families in a community mental health center, but right away, I heard someone speak on family systems and the idea of generational issues and boundaries and how the individual is very impacted by the context of their family. And that made a huge impact on me. So, I then specifically got trained in family therapy and family systems thinking. And in specific, I was drawn to a couple of women that I'd heard speak about working with physical and sexual abuse cases and we're changing family therapy. It was just very meaningful to me to think about how even the systemic issues of how abuse happens in families. So, I ended up taking a job. It was a private organization, but they worked with the department of children, family services, which is the protective services arm of the government. And that's the way it works in all the States in the U S. And so, I was doing therapy with families where the parents had been physically or sexually abusive to their children or stepchildren, or the children in their care, or who had lost their children through neglect. And we were very progressive in the sense that I would go do home visits in rough neighborhoods and try to do therapy in their homes. And we would come into the offices and they were very, very intense cases, but I really appreciated it and loved it. Most parents, their parents are very impacted of course, by the context of their lives, by poverty, by addiction, by no support from their own family, they grew up traumatized really. So, I just learned how traumatized these parents were and now the trauma was going on into the next generation. So, as a family therapist, how we could work with this family to create safety, you know, to create something that they never had. Well, how do you create that when you don't know it? So, I really loved family therapy and systems thinking because it's a resilience based. It's based on finding the strength of their parents, finding each of their strengths and helping a mother and a father. You know, now families have a broader definition, but of helping the two parents work together to the benefit of the child, they had learned such terrible and abusive patterns, emotionally abusive patterns, much less what they, you know, much less the physical abuse. So, always very poignant stories. It's never, things are never what they seem. You know, there's always a story for the parent. It was very touching work and, you know, getting kids reunited with families or recreating safety in a home is a really satisfying thing. And at the same time, while I'm working with adult survivors and we're running groups for women who are adults survivors, I was working with young men, some boys who were abused by their scout leader and then we did our family. We got all the parents in for a family group with them because all the parents had been impacted by their boys experiencing this. So, it was very, very interesting and impactful work. And, and at the same time, I would say, looking back at some of the individual interest psychic dynamics of some of the survivors, that wasn't the big focus of family therapists. You know, we were trying to change the context and create a safe environment, which, you know, which we were often able to do. And that doesn't mean of course, creating safety and having healthy dialogues and meaningful dialogues and healing dialogues between parents and children is healing. But there's more around some of those individual dynamics that I would include now. Having said that, bringing whole families in together, doing family meetings, bringing multi-families together over a larger event, these are hugely healing things also. So, that it's all healing, I guess. But I learned, I think, how to be a therapist from survivors of sexual abuse who are very vigilant in making sure they're taken care of, and they have that never again part we talk about in IFS. These never again managers. And I can still remember a woman coming in and I was about 15 minutes late to take her in. She was waiting in the waiting area and I brought her into my office, you know, cause a lot of my cases are a kind of crisis sessions. Anyway, I brought her in late and she was livid. She was so enraged with me and she talked about how she had left work early and it was very hard for her. And she got in check and she was on time. And here I am seeing her 15 minutes late and I could see that the, in IFS, we call it the exile, but behind that angry firefighter that felt not cared about and not appreciated for what she had done. So, you know, even though I didn't know the model at that time, I, you know, she taught me, I need to speak to what she is feeling on the inside, which is not cared about and not important. And so, I really...the impact of my behavior and how it impacted the belief of her exile about being not important or being taken advantage of, both of which had happened to her life many, many times. So I really learned how to be a therapist and listen to what we would call in IFS, the exiles, and the belief of the exiles and I think that the survivors who are so vigilant, teach me that, you know, they teach me, if they see my parts and if I'm in a part, they're going to tell me “are you angry with me, Cece? You sound angry.” I'm like “Am I angry?” You know, I have to think “Am I angry? Do I sound angry? Okay, tell me about that. Okay.” You know, so I think that that relational piece it's so important when you're healing from abuse. So much of that was taught to me by people who are vigilant about being safe.

 

Aníbal: It looks like IFS comes in a very natural way to you.

 

Cece: I think so. You know, because even back in those times we talked about the inner child that had this sort of...and a lot of addictions work and, you know, a lot of family therapy work, we talked about the roles in the family and also just the inner child inside each person. So, we see that in a more complex way now, but I think the psychological field in general was still making space for the inner experience as being somewhat unique and special and needing special attention. And that it is possible to get special attention to those traumatized parts.

 

Aníbal: Yes. But I see that in the family system trainings there was a huge focus on the external context, and you could already bring it to the inner world in a way. So, you did an interesting bridge between the out world and the inner world in your journey as a therapist.

 

Cece: I didn't think about it that way, Aníbal, but that's very well put, I think that's right. I've had the opportunity to have this big picture context and to be taught in that way and this systemic thinking is very much part of how I still think. But at the same time, I had the opportunity and I did work, of course, one-on-one with individuals, men and women who had been traumatized and had the opportunity to hear their inner experience of that. And also to hear how their ambivalence towards there, towards the offender, their father, stepfather, priest, whatever, the parts of them to hear that you don't, it's...there's not a unified feeling of rage, it's rage, but also hurt, but also sometimes love. So, you know, parts work because, you know, I could see the complexity of those feelings.

 

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model, through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.

 

Aníbal: If I may, Cece. You really didn't get a formal training in IFS. You just, you were already doing some work as you just explained so well, doing some inner work, natural and intuitive inner work, and you didn't get really a formal training in IFS, or once you...how did you...?

 

Cece: I did then. Then I took the trainings.

 

Aníbal: Oh, you did it.

 

Cece: So, in the meantime though, aside from that, you know, and I've told this story maybe before I tell at trainings. Dick Schwartz is also is from Chicago originally, he lives in Boston now, but he's born and raised here. So, I knew him in the family therapy field because his doctorate, his PhD is in family systems in family therapy. So, we knew each other in that community, and he taught and was on staff at the Institute for juvenile research and then at the family Institute. And so, I would present at the family Institute and  run into him. And so, one day we all said in the early eighties, we heard “Dick has a new idea. Okay!” So, we got in our car and we drove downtown to see Dick and hear his new idea...

 

Aníbal: It wasn’t a small idea at all.

 

Cece: It wasn’t. What do we know? You know, but from nine to 12, for three hours, he got in front of a group of like 25 people and he had a chalkboard and he drew a pie chart, you know, and he put different segments for his parts. And he started talking about the inner world as parts and parts of the personality. And he didn't have the whole segment. He didn't even have Self at that time, you know, I mean, but he talked about parts and working with parts, but he also [Inaudible] to say this idea that develop ideas about what Self was evolved. But he had this idea that people would say things like. He was working with a woman I worked with on eating disorders and his bulimics would have these extreme things. And so, we'd start to saying “Why don't you have this part of you talk to that part of you.” And so, but at the time I thought “well, is this good or not?” You know, I was very steeped in family therapy. I was very steep and working with survivors. So, I was...

 

Aníbal: And maybe attached to those models also.

 

Cece: I was very attached, exactly. So, I stay...it intrigued me, but I didn't pursue it. And there was no [inaudible] this was the early eighties. He didn't write his book until 94, 95 it was published. I'm sure he was writing it forever, but it was published in the mid-nineties and he started doing trainings in 95, 96. So this is 12, 14 years after his first presentation of this model. So, it had a long gestation. And then the third training in Chicago, which was in 1998, I did take, so then I took the IFS training at that time.

 

Aníbal: But before that you had some contact with Dick, and you were in the group, you were somehow discussing?

 

Cece: No, I didn't want to do that because I wasn't that interested. So, he continued with consultations. I heard it and I would hear him here and there.

 

Aníbal: You were just being loyal to your...

 

Cece: I also didn't like it exactly because there was a woman on my staff who did go to his consult groups and she would come to staff meetings and she'd say, well “a part of me feels like this and then another part of me feels we should do...” Uh, I don’t care! [laughs]

 

Aníbal: Even parts language can be abuse.

 

Cece: She did some beautiful work with an offender, a father who was sexually abusive to a child. And she also presented those cases. And we were also listening to her cases at staff. So, I had my parts, had parts that weren’t attracted to this model and my parts that were very intrigued by how she was working with her clients. So, there was both. I had, but I did not pursue anything more. I just, I followed Dick though. I read them in the networker, I'd see what was going on, but I didn't see, I hadn't seen him in a long time. And I went to see him give a presentation about IFS and that's when I thought “Oh, now, now I'm into it.”

 

Aníbal: And finally, you got to training, right? In the nineties?

 

Cece: Yeah, 98.

 

Aníbal: And how was it? It was a steppingstone, this was the...you also have a before and an after IFS?

 

Cece: Right. So after, you know, I really loved it and I've stayed interested in firefighter behavior, which in a way I was because I was working with families where...and in trauma, because I was working with families where there was heavy duty firefighter behavior on the part of the parents we would say abusive behavior and where survivors, who have very strong, extreme, sometimes managers and firefighters as well, you know, protecting their traumatized exiles. So, the way the model looked at firefighter behavior was always interesting to me and finding the compassion and the positive intention in the negative behavior. So, that stood out to me right away, I think because of my work. And, you know, I say this at different trainings...

 

Aníbal: At that time you were working with families, mainly, not with the addictions or also with addictions?

 

Cece: No, then I was working with...somewhere after that, I did community mental health for a while. Then I took actually a little break for a couple of years when my children were little. I was kind of burnt out really, I thought it was going to take a break for a summer. But I took a break for a couple years and it was good. My kids were little, and I was, I liked being at home with them, but it was also resting in a way and trying to reset my...reset some things, I think. I did some personal work at that time. You know, my own family has varied...My family, my extended family, my family tree is filled with physical, also has physical abuse, sexual abuse, addictions, eating disorders, suicide, gambling, it's all in my family tree.

 

Aníbal: You name it.

 

Cece: Right. And it affected the family I'm married into. So, I had to reset myself and find out who am I in that whole? What are my parts? My parts...I have very huge caretaking parts. So, I had to learn about that.

 

Tisha: Was IFS a part of that reflective process?

 

Cece: That happened before I took the training.

 

Tisha: Aha.

 

Anibal: Oh, wonderful.

 

Cece: I remember telling Dick I've worked in a lot of my stuff already, but I had. I don't know what's going to happen in this training, you know, but I think IFS helps us define and get to the nuances of our own parts beautifully, which it did for me too. But it also helps us have a model to reach people who have done very terrible things or have experienced very terrible things or both. And I think it’s a great way to reach people.

 

Aníbal: So, you are saying that IFS and the training you took improved and changed your clinical work in many, many ways.

Cece: In many ways.

 

Aníbal: And your personal and also your personal...

 

Cece: Sure. My personal journey was better. I could work more with my own parts in a different way. It offers another way for people in very extreme situations to be healed.

 

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Tisha: I am curious about what it was like to take that time to reflect on all the extreme trauma and work that you had done in the years before.

 

Cece: It was great.

 

Tisha: It was good to take the time. Yeah.

 

Cece: As I said at the time, the only family in my head right now is my own, and that was good. My own family was quite complex, and I really appreciated spending that time and doing therapy and going to groups and just really diving in.

 

Aníbal: When you say my own you your kids or you say your inner family?

 

Cece: I would say my family of origin, my parents, my extended family, understanding my relationship with my parents better, understanding my relationship with my husband better. My children were in preschool. You know, there was not a complex relationship there, you know, challenging of course, but not complex. But I was looking at my role of caretaking, basically anyone who crossed my path, anyone I loved I was trying to take care of. And so, to understand how to love people and not take care of them is a beautiful journey. And I think IFS also helps with that.

 

Tisha: Can you speak to that journey a little bit more?

 

Cece: Say more about what you'd like to hear.

 

Tisha: Well, I feel like a lot of us have those strong caretaker parts and they get really heralded as having a lot of space and that being ok. Yeah. So, I guess I'm curious how you began to work with the caretaker to maybe see it in a new light or to shift its role within you.

 

Cece: Well, you're speaking actually to that other interest of mine, which is the heart, I call it the Heart lessons of the journey, which is when you chosen to be a therapist and beginning to do your own work and what we find about our role and what leads us to this and some of those parts. So, I think there's an enormous well deep well of...I've done some retreats now, had some three-day retreats just for therapists who work on our story and our role as healers. In the addictions they call it wounded healers, acknowledgment that it's from woundedness that some of that healing ability comes. So, there's a lot that I could say about that. But what I would just say is that I was facing a crisis, that feeling burnt out was because it was overwhelmed, because I had the crisis of exhaustion was my teacher to teach me that I was taking care of in an emotional sense, not a physical sense, but in an emotional sense I felt responsible for the feelings of my mother, of my father, of my husband, specifically. And that I was in a role where I felt responsible for that. So that's the essence of caretaking is, there's a flat, I mean, I could talk, I could do a workshop on it for days, but the essence of...for a therapist and IFS, I think, helps us with this. From Self, I know the other person has a Self and I'm not responsible for their inner or outer world, but I am responsible for my world and what I bring to that person. So, if I'm trying to, if I'm responsible for their inner world, then they won't be doing their own work. I'm doing it for them. So, which, of course, is a very limited ability. So that essence of that, those boundaries, I think, are related to family systems and I'm informed by family systems around those boundaries. And I'm informed by IFS around those boundaries. And I'm informed by the healing teachings, the teachings of the addiction’s world, which talks so much about whose problem is it, when someone's addicted it’s so much hooks in others to help. So, I have spent a lot of years looking at how to be helpful and healing without being hooked. So, all of those things take time. Does that sort of address what you're asking?

 

Tisha: Oh, absolutely. I'm really honored that you took the time to share that and to share your passion and to share how it plays into your work with addiction as well.

 

Cece: Right. It's all about, it's all of a piece, really.

 

Aníbal: So, Cece, our wounds help us to heal, but in a way, we need to heal our wounds to heal. It's a little bit tricky.

 

Cece: [Laughs] It is. When are we done?

 

Aníbal: It’s also our wounds that prevent us from helping sometimes.

 

Cece: That's correct. So, what we would say is that not that we have to be perfect, but if we want to use the IFS model, we would say that we were, that our goal is to be accountable. So that if in fact, and again, I feel like survivors of trauma made me accountable when I was a young, a younger therapist, you know, cause they'd be like, you know, they would track my system so closely. And I think IFS gives us the opportunity to kind of say “Oh, you're right. I had a judgmental piece come up. Oh, you're right. I got distracted there and I didn't hear the first part of what you're saying. I had a part that took me away a little bit.” So, I think IFS, because this is really sort of safe way to talk about the fact that I'm still here for you and that I had a part that took us away. So, I don't feel that our role is to be perfect, of course, but it is to be accountable for the parts that come up. And I do think it's our role to stay actively involved in our own healing process, which for most of us means going to therapy or, you know, getting, having clinic, having healing, a network around us and a place of accountability around us, you know, where we take our cases and, you know, are held both personally and professionally accountable if you will.

 

Aníbal: Yes. Very well said.

 

Cece: Not to be in trouble, but to be able, to help us see, right?

 

Aníbal: Wonderful.

 

Tisha: You gave the example of using your exhaustion as a great teacher. And so not having the space to do that, you're just exhausted.

 

Cece: That's right.

 

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Aníbal: So, Cece, you became a lead trainer for IFS. I see that you are still doing your clinical work. You still enjoy doing your clinical work.

 

Cece: I do.

 

Aníbal: How was it for you to become a lead trainer and how do you enjoy to be a lead trainer now?

 

Cece: You know. I want to honor my first opportunity to be a lead trainer was for a training in Mississippi, which is, here in the States, it's in the South. It is a very warm, hospitable culture. The particular group, everyone in that group was Evangelical Christian. And, but we were attracted to the spirituality of the model or the organizers were, and they wanted to bring it to their evangelical community. And I was very challenged by that because it's not my spiritual practice and I was totally afraid I would offend them and say the wrong thing and, you know, how can I do all this? And I want to honor Karen Blicher because at the time to get me to go and teach down there and I didn't really exactly feel ready, I had only assisted a couple of times. So, I said, what if we do a co-lead? So, Karen Blicher  and I went into this together and she was the one we would talk, particular coordinator, she's from Asheville, North Carolina. And we did this together. And one of the things that she taught me was that we need to get seated. When we have responsibility for a group, we’re in our leadership and she taught me that phrasing, because I can remember the first time I'm sitting in a chair and the room is out in front of me and I'm in my chair at the front of the room and Karen's next to me and I'm like, “Holy freaking shit, I have to talk for the next three days and these people and they're going to listen, do I have anything to say?” [laughs]

 

Aníbal: And it was only three days at the time, six days now.

 

Cece: Well, we did six three-day weekends.

 

Aníbal: Ok, yes.

 

Cece: We were going to be there for three days. So, I was going to be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So, this idea of getting, can I teach the model well? Can I teach it, share these ideas well? I mean, I'm doing an experiential exercise at the right time of day? I had, you know, these are challenging questions about, I was guided also by Karen because we were co-leading. She was very specific with me. Well, if you say this part, then I want to say this part, so that we would share responsibility, but we would also share using our voice. And so that neither of us would feel not seen. She did a beautiful job of helping us be with our exiles around that. So, I learned a lot teaching with her.

 

Aníbal: Helping each other, yes.

 

Cece: Helping each other and then processing it at the end of the day. And so, the other part about being a trainer is at the end of the day, you have a staff meeting and what you do in staff meeting is you process your parts. And the lead trainer, when you have a co-lead, you might not process all of your parts with the whole staff. You know, you're more hearing the staff parts, but also the co-leads can process their parts together and that's another valuable aspect of learning how to train. It was learning what comes up when you're challenged, when somebody asks you a question, when someone disagrees with you, when someone feels hurt or angry in the training and learning how to basically just speak for your parts and hold on to your seat and hold on to your Self-energy and your perspective

 

Aníbal: So, it can be more difficult if you don't co-lead, as you don't now? You don't co-lead, you just lead.

 

Cece: Now, well, let's just say, now I'm less triggered. You know? And I might, you know, if I had something a lot going on for me, I would talk to an AT or I would take some time in Staff or chose someone to speak to about it, so I could speak for my parts, so I could unblend. I don't get particularly, you know, overly triggered anymore. I've been doing it a long time, but I think part of the learning of trainings is I'm there to facilitate their learning. I can't make people learn. I'm there to provide a safe container so they can learn and I'm there to help the staff provide a safe container.

 

Aníbal: It’s quite a different view or perspective or approach to the training as it was before, you somehow you are thinking you were to teach them and then you figured out you just have to hold there...

 

Cece: Hm mm.

 

Aníbal: Yeah. That’s the difference.

 

Cece: Obviously I have to teach, but yes, I had to get clear on really what my role is.

 

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Tisha: I have a bit of a two-part question about training. Firstly, what do you love about training? What do you enjoy?

 

Cece: Well, if I'm perfectly honest, one of the things I love about training is I love to be in charge. [laughs] I love, I mean, there's a lot of decisions to make and about how to respond to a particular issue, how to respond to parts, there’s lots of decisions that we make, not just curriculum decisions. And I enjoy the process. I guess I enjoy, I used to say I don't like groups, but I spend massive amounts of my time in groups, trainings, the smaller group of the staff and the large group of the group. So, I think I like the challenge to me of making good decisions and I enjoy it. Now. I also really enjoy. I just really believe in the model as a form of healing and I have no, I have no ambivalence about IFS as the best way I know to help therapists help others. And I think it has been put to the test because, in particular, not just around for me, people will say, well, it's good with trauma. It is. I'm not against that at all. I would never minimize it's in benefit for trauma. But the angle I would like to go to is in addition to trauma is its benefits for people who have done bad things, they lived a messed-up life, they’ve been addicts for a long time, they were abusive, they have abusive parts, they've fallen apart, they’ve hurt people, they've hurt themselves. I think this model offers so much healing for them. I love that. I am unambivalent about this model as a way to offer healing.

 

Aníbal: So, you enjoy every minute in the trainings.  

 

Cece: Yeah, and I enjoy giving, I enjoy spreading the word, you know, and I enjoy people getting it and I enjoy truly, and this is truly true, not just that leadership piece, but I like thinking of new ways to express these ideas that they can be heard. And that's always a challenge because every group has a different sort of, personality, if you will. And they ask different kinds of questions. And so, it's always, it keeps me on my toes as to how best to express these ideas to others.

 

Tisha: Part two of my question, what do you find the most challenging about trainings or what maybe it's triggering or...

 

Aníbal: About the demos?

 

Cece: You know, demos sometimes, the demos are okay. I mean, there really is a lot of group energy. I was challenged when I first started doing them, of course. And I can still get challenged, you know, because there is that sense of wanting the session to teach the group, but yet wanting the person to have their own experience and let that particular session go where they want to go. So, that can sometimes be a bit of a challenge and...

 

Aníbal: To get a real, real good demo. Yeah.

 

Cece: Yeah, and to get it just right. Dick has a tendency to always do a complete piece of work from beginning to unburdening...

 

Aníbal: Yeah, the whole process, all steps.

 

Cece: He's very focused in that way. And he should be, he wants to show the power of his model and he should, I'm glad he does. But I think in a training scenario, I want people to see all aspects of therapy and all the different aspects of therapy that occur in their weekly office. And that's not just an unburdening. So, for me, every demo is useful because it represents a different part of the therapeutic process. So, sometimes it’s not as dramatic as a full piece of work, but they're representative of what it's like to sit week after week with your client as their story unfolds. Though I like both. I mean, I like to be able to do burdening in a demo as well. So, finding that sweet spot in between all that I think is challenging sometimes. And I also think just sometimes, you know, a training will really hit people in a very vulnerable place. So, sometimes we have a very vulnerable participant, or we might have a very vulnerable staff person, and just having enough time and emotional space to hold all that, to give the time to the staff person that they need for their part, and for their healing, for their unblending and to have this time and space for the participants that need that as well. I find that sometimes it's challenging, there's a lot that's needed.

 

Aníbal: Yes, and they’re large groups too. Yes, it’s a lot.

 

Cece: Yes.

 

Tisha: And a lot comes up with that invitation to be with our parts.

 

Cece: That’s right. We invit it and then we have to deal with them. [laughs]

 

This is IFS Talks, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model, through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users,

 

Aníbal: Cece, is there any way that you would like to see the trainings develop or change in the future? Is there any evolution that you would like to see?

 

Cece: Hmm.

 

Aníbal: Because they are already so rich and so good in many ways.

 

Cece: They really are wonderful. And there's not a lot about the training that I would change. I suppose, some of the things that cross my mind as a trainer is, I still sort of, I'm a little conservative in a certain way. Like, I would love to have trainings that just have licensed clinicians in them. You know, we've always opened the model to practitioners, to bodyworkers, to organizational development. We've always opened it to everything and there's always everything. And sometimes I think because of my focus on being a clinician, I would want, I sometimes I'm frustrated when people who are coaches, not to be negative about coaching, it's a different task than psychotherapy and there are different pieces to it than psychotherapy, and there are different tasks to bodywork than psychotherapy. And I would love the freedom to just be talking to psychotherapists sometimes because I would love those people for their needs to be met. And I respect their work. It's different work though. And sometimes the differences are strike me as stark, sometimes not, but sometimes those differences seem stark.

 

Aníbal: You would like to work with more homogeneous groups.

 

Cece: And if I could choose that, I would, I really would. I would love that. And it's not as...I welcome everyone, and we all do, but I think to speak to practitioners and psychotherapists working with trauma and people coaching or doing bodywork, I think that they're engaged in different activities.

 

Aníbal: Absolutely.

 

Tisha: Yes, that makes sense.

 

Cece: That's something that comes up for me, but I think we are a very tap heavy. We have a lot of staff and that has evolved. We didn't use to have as many staff when I started, we did have six or seven staff for 30 people, and now we have 10 or 11 staff for 30 or 33 people, we have a staff for every small group and that has evolved over time. And initially I thought, is that really necessary? Because a PA would go in during a practice session, they'd spend 45 minutes with one group and then 45 minutes with another, it would split their time. And we did that a lot in the beginning and now it's more one staff person for every practice group. And I think that's been a good evolution and it's very top heavy. It means a lot of staff and organization, organizationally a lot, but I think it's very good for the training and I'm proud of the IFS and the organization for sticking to that.

 

Tisha: How has it been for you to watch IFS grow and develop in the way it has? There are trainings in countries all over the world now, there is trainings in the U S are full and there's wait lists. The model's really growing. What's that like for you and how has it been?

 

Cece: It's certainly it's mind-blowing, you know, I mean, it started out pretty small, you know, I mean, although Dick always had a...he was very well known in the family systems and the family therapy community, very well-known and respected at the time, he had been a family therapist, presented at national conferences, written a number of very well read books on family therapy...

 

Aníbal: Great manual, yes.

 

Cece: He brought that to the organization. So, he was well-known, but this having the model well-known, and it's just been an amazing thing, really, it has just exploded, and it is exciting because again, I am unambivalent about this as a way to approach healing. So, I think it's fantastic and I feel very grateful and very, very lucky to be along for the ride because I was in at the ground floor very early on. And so, I have had amazing opportunities along this ride to know the two of you, you know, to have gone to Portugal, to gone to all these places, to meet so many beautiful people in the States and out of the States. And I can't even, it has been a very expansive community to be a part of. And I feel very, very grateful.

 

Aníbal: It's beautiful. It's really, really a privilege for you to be present since the birth of the model and then see all the growing.

 

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Aníbal: Somehow you have a lot of clinical work on addictions and eating disorders. And how did you get interested? You said already something about this, how did you get interested in addictions and eating disorders and if this is the major work that you do a lot, you see a lot of addictions or you just stop doing this kind of...

 

Cece: Well, let's see. I would say it's probably more so...not as much...I have done a lot of work with eating disorders and just I would say just the overall category of trauma. I would say, for me what I have, if you want to say I've specialized in something, I’ve been specializing in sort of intense parts. So, whether those parts are addicted or abusive or traumatized, and I know that I'm attracted to that because of my family life, not my personal journey myself, but the people I have loved, who've been very...trauma survivors and addictions has very much impacted my life and so, I come at this, I think from a personal journey of how do I, what happens to me around people with self-destructive parts and what do I, what do I do? How does that impact me? And as a healer, as a partner, as a family member and as a person in the healing profession, what do I do about that? And that question interests me greatly, and that's still my most powerful draw. So, most of my clients are in some kind of recovery from addictions and I include all compulsive behaviors as addictions, not just substances. So, it could be eating disorders. It could be cutting, it could be a bad, you know, destructive sexual relationships. It could be, I've worked with gambling, you know, so any kind of, sort of extreme, or self-destructive sort of, most of my clients are recovering from that and, or trauma as well. So I don't, I would say as I'm older in my career, I don't take people at the initial points of recovery, so early in their recovery, which I did when I was younger, people are a little bit further in recovering when they get to me, because I actually don't, I'm not around to give that kind of once a week, twice a week session that you need earlier in recovery. So, I need people in mid or later periods of recovery to work with now, but I'm still working with those very...To me, those are the issues that are of interest to me and how they themselves also...because anyone from a traumatized family has other trauma people and addicted, addicts in their family. So how can they be in their families in healthy ways as well? So, and how can they operate in the world in a healthy way? So, I'm just attracted to working with those issues, I think.

 

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Tisha: That brings up such a, sort of juicy question, like how can people be in their families, in their challenging family dynamics in a way that's healthy? And, you know, do you have any insight or answers? I know it's an individual system. It's a personal parts experience, but any wisdom around that, you know, how to be in Self with family when there's so many triggers, I guess, that’s the question.

 

Cece: I think first just owning how triggered we might be, like for me to own my exhaustion and to not keep functioning when actually I wasn't functioning well at all anymore. I mean, I didn't want to, you know, to really own our exhaustion or own our pain. And then I would say to make it a priority and the priority is, you know, it's not like to really say I'm going to do this work me and my role or my parts to come up around this person or that person. This is my priority. And it's my priority because I need to heal because I don't want to carry resentments because I don't want to be distanced, because I need to find a healthy way to be with a crazy person or a not well person so that I'm not, I'm not writing their  merry go rounds. So, I think making it a priority and also acknowledging to ourselves how impacted we are. Many of us as therapists, we minimize emotion in order, we have to have our parts step back with trains to do that as clinicians, not to say we don't feel, but we can't get dysregulated. You know, the joke, how do you regulate a therapist? Put a client in front of you! [laughs]

 

Aníbal: I love that one.

 

Cece: We regulate around other people's dysfunction. But when we're in a relationship that requires mutuality, which is intimacy with this family, partnerships, our children and adult children where there's mutuality, which is not what a clinical relationship is, then our different parts come up. And so to say, this is important to me to say I'm not doing well to say I'm hurting to say, I'm in pain, to say I have exhaustion and pain. I think that's really the first place to go. And I think clinicians sometimes have a uniquely difficult time saying how hard some things are for us. Because we do many hard things so easily.

 

Cece: Brilliant. Thank you.

 

Aníbal: Cece, many people can be led mainly by firefighters and others mainly led by managers. And I believe you have a good radar for those systems. And those systems require different approaches and strategies from you as a therapist. Can you say something around this? Because it's really quite different to be in a room with someone firefighters led than someone managers led. And, what would be your advice towards young practitioners like me? [laughs]

 

Cece: Not quite Aníbal. But it's such a great, you know, it's such a great question. And I felt it when I went into private practice because when I did community mental health or was working with these really intense families, everything is right there, right in front of your face. You don't have to go searching. The dysfunction is sitting there, but when you're sitting in a practice in a much more managed situation...I sometimes sit in private practice and be like, how do I break through this? It’s one of the things I am attracted to about IFS also was how do I break through these well-functioning defenses because they're well-functioning in a manager. And so, I think that those are such great questions, but I think what I like about working with managers in IFS is that the nuances as helping someone separate from analytical thinking, from criticizing, from judging, from perfectionism, when people can get unblend from those things that really run their life as they can, to any of us, to get that kind of unblend is huge. And it's very subtle though. It's more subtle because being perfectionistic is very close to being good at what you do. So how is that a problem? So, helping people unblend, identify and unblend from that, but it's such a huge relief for them. And it gives them so much more freedom. And of course, it covers up parts of them that feel not good enough and those little exiles. And, for people that are firefighter run, there's a lot of chaos and unpredictability in their life. And well, it's sort of holding on to your seat and really staying centered and focused and deep down, they have a lot of shame. So, really working with our parts so that they can begin by not judging themselves for how bad it's gone, because it's gotten bad. So, to start with their own managers, that judge them is actually, it doesn't seem like the right place to start, but it usually is. They're usually under severe self-judgment

 

Aníbal: And it's not easy for many psychotherapists to see those managers acting in the system.

 

Cece: That's right. And that's what I like to teach when I'm teaching addictions, because the firefighters are so florid, they're so distracted by the drinking, the cutting, starving, you know what can we do about that? And really that is a system. And those drinking cutting parts are trying to soothe the exiles and soothe horribly intense contemptuous managers. So, the ability to work with the whole system and help them with addictions, no I am not my addiction and I'm not my trauma. I am not either of those things.

 

This is IFS Talks and audio series to deepen connection with the Internal Family Systems model, through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.

 

Aníbal: Cece, you have achieved so much as a psychotherapist, as a trainer and supervisor, is there something else you'd like to do or achieve besides keep doing what you are doing so well?

 

Cece: Thank you. Well, some of these questions that you're asking on, particularly the more personal journey questions that you're asking Tisha, that I think I also have a separate love for...That I'm starting to spend a little bit more of my clinical, my time which is making space for therapists to tell our own story. And, you know, that's just an interest of mine. I'm continuing to do these other...to teach IFS and to teach and talk about addictive processes, but then that's a separate love from mine. I don't know what's going to happen for it, but I have learned in my own life, I have done my own journey is, I mean, I, you know, I don't want to say it. I think we all have a journey that's interesting. I sit in trainings and therapists are working on their own parts in the training and therapists have powerful, powerful stories of their own, of our own. So, I'm interested in those stories too.

 

Aníbal: It’s very welcome that work.

 

Tisha: Well, I imagine that anyone listening to this audio podcast would be interested in finding out more about that work that you do. Is there a link that we could post to your website or are there, are there retreats that you have coming up, if people wanted to find out more about how to participate in that...

 

Cece:  I do have a website and I do right now offer retreats every summer, every June around that. And I may offer more. I'm busy. [laughs].

 

Aníbal: You are really busy. What are the topics Cece?

 

Cece: Well, I do, you know, I continuing to do stuff around addictive processes. And I do workshops around that. Mary Kruger also at CSL is doing a lot of level two training around teaching addiction. And she and I have co-lead together at the conference. And she's very, very, very seasoned in using IFS to those processes. So, I want to just name that she's an excellent trainer in this area and she, so she's been continuing to train these level twos and I will do some of them as well. And then sometimes I just do a workshop that's a little bit more experiential for a couple of days. And I've been doing that a long time, 10 years or so doing sort of experiential two-day workshops or three-day workshops, not a training, but it's helpful and it let you learn, but it's a little different.

 

Aníbal: So, the personal life of psychotherapists became a huge pleasure and interest for you?

 

Cece: Hmm mm.

 

Aníbal: Recently.  

 

Cece: Recently like 20 years ago.[laughs]

 

Aníbal: Let's keep it recently.

 

Cece: Yes, we can edit that part out.

 

Aníbal: Cece, is so, so good to be with you. We could make this conversation last for hours, but I hope we can get back to you as soon as possible. And we have to thank you so much for having us and the time you've spent...I don't know if you want to say something Tisha.

 

Tisha: Yeah, just a big thank you. It feels like a joy to be in your presence and to hear about your experience and your journey and where you're going. Sign me up for June, please. [laughs]

 

Cece: All right! Well, thanks so much for inviting me. It's a joy and an opportunity, you know, every time, just thinking about, you know, the opportunity to talk is always fun, but also to reflect. So, thanks for such lovely questions. Invites me to reflect.

 

Aníbal: Thank you. Thank you, Cece, it was fun. Again, thank you so much.

 

Cece: Yeah. Well, listen, you guys have a good weekend, everybody.

 

Tisha: You too enjoy the warm Chicago weather.

 

This was an IFS Talks episode, an audio series to deepen connections with the Internal Family Systems model through conversations with lead trainers, authors, practitioners, and users.