This post and others are inspired in part by the recent tragic death of the adult child of close friends. I also know countless others who struggle with addictions, depression and anxiety, and the many other faces of unhealed trauma — of whom I was once one. Held right alongside my grief is profound gratitude for all the ways that treatment for trauma in all its many forms is evolving and expanding and effective.
It is my perspective and experience that Internal Family Systems (IFS) is one significant step forward in saving lives and empowering even severely abused and addicted human beings to significantly transform their suffering, know deep peace and joy, and come to thrive through the gift of leading lives that are increasingly integrated and Self-led, compassionate and connected, loving and whole. This is my experience, wisdom, and hope for us all. — Molly
The Wisdom of Richard Schwartz, IFS, and a
Pathway to Healing and Transformation,
Wholeness and Authenticity,
Connectedness and Compassion,
Peace and Love
We need a new paradigm that convincingly shows that humanity is inherently good and thoroughly interconnected. With that understanding, we can finally move from being ego-, family-, and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric.
None of these changes are possible if we subscribe to the current paradigm of the mind and human nature. It’s not enough to simply address specific problems—green energy initiatives, for example—because as long as we continue to view human beings as selfish, separate, and disconnected, we will continue relating to our parts in ways that make them increasingly extreme, and the host of problems we now face will find other ways to manifest.
Jimmy Carter echoes that sentiment: “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.” Our leaders can’t do that, however, with the way we currently understand the mind because it highlights the darkness in humanity.
The mono-mind perspective, in combination with scientific and religious theories about how primitive human impulses are, created this backdrop of inner polarizations. One telling example comes from the influential Christian theologian John Calvin: “For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle … The whole man, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is so deluged, as it were, that no part remains exempt from sin, and, therefore, everything which proceeds from him is imputed as sin.” This is known as the doctrine of total depravity, which insists that only through the grace of God can we escape our fate of eternal damnation. Mainstream Protestantism and Evangelicalism have carried some version of this doctrine for several hundred years, and the cultural impact has been widespread. With “Original Sin,” Catholicism has its own version.
What I propose in this book is a hard sell in Western culture. We are primarily oriented toward getting from our partners what we need to feel good and don’t believe we can get much from ourselves. We want to transform the source of pain in the outside world rather than the source within us. That external focus—and the therapies of accommodation that subscribe to it—will only provide temporary relief at best from the inner and outer storms that gradually erode the fertile topsoil of our relationships. There is another way, and we will explore it in this book. Before we do, however, let’s further examine the problems with this accommodation premise.
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Imbalanced systems, whether internal or external, will tend to polarize.
Another is psychotherapist Matt Licata, who writes, ‘The ego’ is often spoken about as if it is some sort of self-existing thing that at times takes us over—some nasty, super unspiritual, ignorant little person living inside—and causes us to act in really unevolved ways creating unending messes in our lives and getting in the way of our progress on the path. It is something to be horribly ashamed of and the more spiritual we are the more we will strive to ‘get rid of it,’ transcend it, or enter into imaginary spiritual wars with it. If we look carefully, we may see that if the ego is anything, it is likely those very voices that are yelling at us to get rid of it.
The collection of parts that these traditions call the ego are protectors who are simply trying to keep us safe and are reacting to and containing other parts that carry emotions and memories from past traumas that we have locked away inside.
Jeff Brown explores the phenomenon in depth in his film Karmageddon: “After my childhood, I needed the kinds of spirituality that would keep me from allowing the pain to surface…. I was confusing self-avoidance with enlightenment.”
From the IFS point of view, the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place.
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A part is not just a temporary emotional state or habitual thought pattern. Instead, it is a discrete and autonomous mental system that has an idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, set of abilities, desires, and view of the world. In other words, it is as if we each contain a society of people, each of whom is at a different age and has different interests, talents, and temperaments.
Some of the most powerful personal burdens are similar to what attachment theory pioneer John Bowlby called internal working models. He saw them as maps you developed as a child of what to expect from your caretaker and the world in general, and then from subsequent close relationships. They also tell you things about your own level of goodness and how much you deserve love and support.
When you were young and experienced traumas or attachment injuries, you didn’t have enough body or mind to protect yourself. Your Self couldn’t protect your parts, so your parts lost trust in your Self as the inner leader. They may even have pushed your Self out of your body and took the hit themselves—they believed they had to take over and protect you and your other parts. But in trying to handle the emergency, they got stuck in that parentified place and carry intense burdens of responsibility and fear, like a parentified child in a family.
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Parts often become extreme in their protective efforts and take over your system by blending. Some make you hypervigilant, others get you to overreact angrily to perceived slights, others make you somewhat dissociative all the time or cause you to fully dissociate in the face of perceived threats. Some become the inner critics as they try to motivate you to look or perform better or try to shame you into not taking risks. Others make you take care of everyone around you and neglect yourself.
The mono-mind paradigm has caused us to fear our parts and view them as pathological. In our attempts to control what we consider to be disturbing thoughts and emotions, we just end up fighting, ignoring, disciplining, hiding, or feeling ashamed of those impulses that keep us from doing what we want to do in our lives. And then we shame ourselves for not being able to control them. In other words, we hate what gets in our way.
Any approach that increases your inner drill sergeant’s impulse to shame you into behaving (and make you feel like a failure if you can’t) will do no better in internal families than it does in external ones in which parents adopt shaming tactics to control their children.
Your protectors’ goals for your life revolve around keeping you away from all that pain, shame, loneliness, and fear, and they use a wide array of tools to meet those goals—achievements, substances, food, entertainment, shopping, sex, obsession with your appearance, caretaking, meditation, money, and so on.
The critical voice that harangued Debbie Ford with so much self-loathing is an example of one common type of part called a protector, which tried to keep her from taking risks by running down her confidence. The more vulnerable inner childlike part that believed her critic and, as a consequence, felt worthless and empty is an example of a type of part I call an exile.
When I asked these protective parts what they’d rather do if they trusted they didn’t have to protect, they often wanted to do something opposite of the role they were in. Inner critics wanted to become cheerleaders or sage advisors, extreme caretakers wanted to help set boundaries, rageful parts wanted to help with discerning who was safe. It seemed that not only were parts not what they seemed, but also they each had qualities and resources to bring to the client’s life that were not available while they were tied up in the protective roles.
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We often find that the harder we try to get rid of emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become. This is because parts, like people, fight back against being shamed or exiled.
The difference here is that the Self says no to impulsive parts firmly but from a place of love and patience, in just the same way an ideal parent would. Additionally, in IFS, when parts do take over, we don’t shame them. Instead, we get curious and use the part’s impulse as a trailhead to find what is driving it that needs to be healed.
Revisit each of these parts, inviting them to relax inside in open space just for a few minutes, and ask them to trust that it’s safe to let you more into your body. Their energy tends to make it harder for you to be embodied when they’re triggered. And if they’re willing to let you in more, you’ll notice a shift each time they relax—you’ll feel more space inside your mind and body. Remind them that it’s just for a few minutes, that it’s just an experiment to see what happens if they let you be there more. They don’t have to if they don’t want to, in which case you can just continue to get to know them. But if they are willing, notice the qualities of this increase in spaciousness and embodiment. Notice what it feels like to be more in your body with a lot of space.
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Our exiles are a buried treasure that, because they are in a state of tremendous pain and need, we experience as toxic waste and remain convinced that if we get near them, we will be contaminated. Everyone around us agrees that we shouldn’t go there and instead should just get over it and not look back. This is because no one understands that what is toxic are the emotions and beliefs the exiles carry—their burdens—not the exiled parts themselves. On the contrary, those parts are the vulnerability, sensitivity, playfulness, creativity, and spontaneity that are the heart of intimacy. How can we expect to enjoy our partner when we’ve buried our joy?
It is also important to consider the sociological development of what the historian Philip Cushman calls the “empty self” that arose in this country after World War II. For Cushman, American individualism lost its soul at that point to the huge pressures of industrial capitalism. Whereas before the war our individualism was tempered by a strong ethic of community service, afterward that changed. The American Dream of ever-upward mobility, fueled by memories of the Great Depression and by increasingly pervasive national advertising, infused that war generation with a more selfish individualism. Their baby-boomer children inherited that perspective and, in addition, experienced less of the extended family and community-focused upbringing that their parents enjoyed. Many of us have lost our connection to connection.
As the urges of these protectors consume most of your attention, they drown out and keep exiled the more sensitive and loving parts of you. As you unburden your exiles, it allows your protectors to transform, and you begin hearing more from those parts of you that aren’t so obsessed and driven—the ones who love being truly intimate with others, the ones who want to create art and move your body, the ones who want to play with family and friends, and the ones who just love being in nature. When you’re more Self-led, you become a more complete, integrated, and whole person.
Self-led individuals have the great pleasure of recapturing all the energy their protectors used to expend on inhibition, containment, distraction, and rebellion.
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Parts are little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe.
Some discoveries I made about parts: •Even the most destructive parts have protective intentions. •Parts are often frozen in past traumas when their extreme roles were needed. •When they trust it’s safe to step out of their roles, they are highly valuable to the system.
Blended parts give us the projections, transferences, and other twisted views that are the bread and butter of psychotherapy. The Self’s view is unfiltered by those distortions. When we’re in Self, we see the pain that drives our enemies rather than only seeing their protective parts. Your protectors only see the protectors of others. The clarity of Self gives you a kind of X-ray vision, so you see behind the other person’s protectors to their vulnerability, and in turn your heart opens to them.
Well-known neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel has emphasized the importance of such integration in healing and has described IFS as a good way to achieve that. He writes, “Health comes from integration. It’s that simple, and that important. A system that is integrated is in a flow of harmony. Just as in a choir, with each singer’s voice both differentiated from the other singers’ voices but also linked, harmony emerges with integration. What is important to note is that this linkage does not remove the differences, as in the notion of blending: instead it maintains these unique contributions as it links them together. Integration is more like a fruit salad than a smoothie.” This, again, is one of the basic goals of IFS. Each part is honored for its unique qualities while also working in harmony with all the others.
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IFS can be seen as attachment theory taken inside, in the sense that the client’s Self becomes the good attachment figure to their insecure or avoidant parts. I was initially amazed to discover that when I was able to help clients access their Self, they would spontaneously begin to relate to their parts in the loving way that the textbooks on attachment theory prescribed. This was true even for people who had never had good parenting in the first place. Not only would they listen to their young exiles with loving attention and hold them patiently while they cried, they would firmly but lovingly discipline the parts in the roles of inner critics or distractors. Self just knows how to be a good inner leader.
Think of how your work environment would be altered if the leaders in your organization related to themselves differently. If they hate the parts of themselves that want to slow down and enjoy life, they will be impatient with workers who aren’t as driven as they are. If they want to get rid of their own insecurity and anxiety, they’ll create an atmosphere in which people fear for their jobs if they show vulnerability. If they attack themselves for making mistakes, everyone will pretend to be perfect. If they fear their own inner critics, they’ll fear the judgment of others and let people become exploitive. On the other hand, if they can relate to those parts of themselves in caring ways, that compassion and acceptance will permeate the company, making it much easier for all the employees to relate compassionately to their own parts and to one another. The same process applies to your inner family. This new way of relating to yourself can’t be forced. It doesn’t work to command yourself to be curious about these parts of you or pretend to feel compassion for them. It has to be genuine. So how do you get to that point? This raises the question of who the “you” is who relates to your parts. Who are you at your core?
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Usually, they’ve been operating by themselves in there without any adult supervision, and most of them are pretty young. When you finally turn around and give them some attention, it’s like you’re a parent who’s been somewhat neglectful, but who’s finally becoming more nurturing and interested in your children.
All of these are exiling projects. In the first, we try to get our partner to exile the parts of them that threaten us. In the second, we work to exile the parts of us that we think they don’t like. In the third, we exile the parts of us that are attached to them. As I will discuss later, whenever a relationship creates exiles, it will pay a price.
The inner battles between women’s caretakers and their assertive parts often built over time until, seemingly out of the blue, their assertive protectors would explode with an intensity that left their husbands stunned.
In addition, because of the collusion between women’s caretaker parts and men’s entitled ones, real imbalances often exist in the lifestyles of each spouse—the wife has more responsibility and fewer resources—that fuel her rage and his reluctance to talk.
In terms of the three projects, mentioned earlier, that protective parts take on in relationships once exiles have been hurt, it seems that women are more likely to keep plugging away with the first two, while men more quickly retreat to the third. That is, because women want a relational solution to their pain, their inner critics take aim at their husband and, when that doesn’t work, at themselves, in an effort to open his heart. Men, partly in response to what feels like intolerable criticism, will give up sooner on the intimacy-generating projects and will focus instead on distractions that make them feel good, such as work, sports, and drinking alcohol.
Despite being extremely isolated inside, these childlike parts of the husbands were addicted to the little affection from their wives that was allowed to trickle down to these exiles through the walls of protection. The exiles knew that this trickle was all that kept them from a return to utter love-starvation and worthlessness. This phenomenon also explains why some men who seem so detached from their spouses are simultaneously so possessive and jealous, to the point of stalking and threatening them when they try to leave.
Terrence Real, the author of a valuable book on the wounding of men titled I Don’t Want to Talk About It, describes his life in a way that applies to my own experience and that of many of the men I work with.
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The other aspect of Mona’s account I want to underscore is that she used the fight with Monk to find and heal a key exile in herself. When partners can do this, they come to trust that such disconnecting episodes, as uncomfortable as they are, can be tremendously valuable opportunities to heal in ways that will serve the relationship in the future.
Thus this ability to care for yourself emotionally permits the intimacy you seek because you have the courage to allow your partner to come close or get distant without overreacting. With less fear of losing or being hurt by your partner, you can embrace them fully and delight in their love for you.
When each partner has courageous love for the other, many of the chronic struggles most couples face melt away because each partner is released from being primarily responsible for making the other feel good. Instead, each knows how to care for their own vulnerability, so neither has to force the other into a preconceived mold or control the other’s journey. Courageous love involves accepting all parts of the other because there is no longer a need to keep the other in the confining roles of parent/redeemer/ego booster/protector. The other senses that acceptance and freedom, which feel wonderful and unusual to them. They come to trust that they don’t have to protect themselves from you and can keep their heart open.
When your partner is freed from the extreme pressures to both caretake your parts and deal with your rage or pouting when they don’t, your partner can be the lover, companion, and co-adventurer that you want.
In the same vein, if you don’t fear your own anger, you’ll be able to stay Self-led when someone’s angry at you. The person’s judgment of you won’t trigger your own inner critics, because you know who you are, and because those critical parts of you have retired or taken on new roles. So many of the obstacles in our relationships are because we fear the mayhem that someone else’s behavior will create in our inner systems. When Self leads, the mayhem is gone.
You can become your own healer—the special person your vulnerable parts have been waiting for. When that happens, your partner will be released from the redeemer trap and its accompanying projects, and true intimacy will be possible.
When this process of vulnerability and acceptance is mutual, couples form such a secure connection that their protectors relax, and their young parts know it’s safe to pop out at any time. You may know a couple whose relationship seems full of lively spontaneity and creative playfulness. They literally bring out the best in each other because they each know that all their parts are welcome to step into the warm, safe space between them. Their interactions have the feel of an improv ensemble, with a wide variety of characters jumping excitedly onto the stage and playing off each other.
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Compassion as a spontaneous aspect of Self blew my mind, because I’d always assumed and learned that compassion was something you had to develop. There’s this idea—especially in some spiritual circles—that you have to build up the muscle of compassion over time, because it’s not inherent. Again, that’s the negative view on human nature at play. To be clear, what I mean by compassion is the ability to be in Self with somebody when they’re really hurting and feel for them, but not be overwhelmed by their pain. You can only do that if you’ve done it within yourself. That is, if you can be with your own exiles without blending and being overwhelmed by them and instead show them compassion and help them, then you can do the same for someone in pain who’s sitting across from you.
When you have that kind of love swirling around inside you, it spills out to people around you, and those people become part of your circle of love and support. You don’t need intimate others to keep you out of the inner dark sea because that sea has been drained of its pain, shame, and fear. In your inner world, your parts are on dry, solid land and are well housed and nourished. They trust you to be their primary caretaker, which allows your partner the freedom and delight that come with being their secondary caretaker.
If we were all fully Self-led, all parts and people would be welcome. One quality of Self is connectedness — not only the desire to connect, but the in-our-bones knowledge that we are all connected, so when one of us suffers, we all suffer.
IFS is a loving way of relating internally (to your parts) and externally (to the people in your life), so in that sense, IFS is a life practice, as well. It’s something you can do on a daily, moment-to-moment basis—at any time, by yourself or with others.
Another kind of happiness exists that you can feel steadily whether you are in a relationship or not. It comes from the sense of connectedness that happens when all your parts love one another and trust and feel accepted by your Self.
― Richard C. Schwartz
Most quotes are from No Bad Parts: Healing
the Internal Family Systems Model *****
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