Integrating Internal Family Systems (IFS) into your clinical practice

1. Integrating Internal Family Systems (IFS)into your clinical practice Presented by Lawrence Wentworth, Ph.D., LPand Kristi LeBeau, M.A., LPC Wentworth & Associates, P.C.

3. The Background of IFS • Developed by Dick Schwartz, Ph.D. over 35 years ago • He was a family systems therapist before developing IFS • His experience working with self-harming clients at an eating disorders clinic, lead to his discoveries

4. An Integrative Approach • Systems thinking and multiplicity of the mind • Concepts and methods of structural, strategic, narrative, and Bowenian schools of therapy • IFS represents a new synthesis of two already existing paradigms- • Subpersonalities- e.g., Freud-Id, Ego Superego / Jung Ego State Therapy

5. Important Aspects of the Model • Evidenced-Based Psychotherapy • Trauma focused  • Non-pathological • All Parts Welcome

6. What is a “Part”? • A subpersonality which includes having it’s own feelings, thoughts, beliefs, impulses, and experiences • Parts have their own unique qualities, can serve important roles and are valuable resources to a person • Parts help us survive, all have noble intentions, can function in healthy adaptive ways and can also get stuck in extreme roles that can be maladaptive and destructive • Everyone has parts

7. Types of parts: Managers, Firefighters, and Exiles Managers • Parts that try to prevent and minimize the activation of exiles or emotional wounds • Proactive, anticipate, protect • Try to protect the individual in a number of ways, including by striving, controlling, evaluating, care taking and so on • Can provide drive and focus and may give outward appearance of success (example “perfectionist”)

8. Critics • Critical parts try to protect a person from disappointment and rejection • Can focus on perceived weakness and negative beliefs towards oneself in order to try to prevent an individual from vulnerability and hurt • Can be self sabotaging

9. Firefighters • Parts that go into action after the exiles have been activated, to extinguish painful feelings • Goal to calm the exiles or distract the system from them (dissociation). • Reactive • Examples –Cutting, Suicide, Binging, Drinking, Acting out Sexually

10. Disclaimer • Of course, if a client is actively suicidal and has ideation, a plan and a weapon, you must do all that you can do to keep your client safe, including hospitalization. • It is a way of working that prevents suicidal parts from becoming stronger and taking over the system or, ultimately, taking the client’s life.

11. Exiles • Vulnerable parts that have been exiled from the system for their own protection or for the protection of the system from them. • Can carry burdensome feelings and beliefs of being unworthy, unlovable, unsafe • Often young • Oppressed by the rest of the system • Put in a kind of mental prison

12. Qualities of Exiles • Are Desperate at times • Pushed out of awareness by protectors • Try to escape their prison cells • Often appear as flashbacks or nightmares • Moments of Fear or Pain • Want and need to be loved and cared for • Long for Self to come back for them and hear their story/be “witnessed.” • Carry Burdens and hold the pain and trauma of the System

13. Internal Conflicts and Polarities • Can and do occur between parts: • Managers vs. Firefighters • Creates Anxiety, Internal Discord, Depression, Confusion and a state of being overwhelmed. • Makes healing much more difficult when internal conflict is high and parts are phobic of each other.

14. The Concept of Self • The core of a person, which contains leadership qualities such as compassion, curiosity, and confidence. • The Self is best equipped to LEAD the internal system • Self-energy

15. Qualities of Self: The 8 C’s • Compassion • Courage • Clarity • Curiosity • Calm • Connectedness • Confidence • Creativity

16. Ways to think about Self • Flow state • A loving nurturing parent • A conductor • Self Leadership promotes healing and safe containment of parts • Most healing happens when parts feel safe and trust the Self to help • Focus of therapy is Self-to-Parts relationships • Ideally, Self is in an “unblended” state meaning other parts are not hijacking the system or interfering.

17. Empathy vs. Compassion • Empathy- to feel with the client. To experience what they are experiencing at the same time. Share the feelings of another. • Compassion- to be with, not in their experience. Concern for the suffering of others.

18. Major Goals of IFS • Help people unblend (differentiate) from parts • Have access to their self energy which can help heal and lead the system in a balanced way • Utilize parts as valuable resources in preferred roles • Bring hope to a hopeless system

19. How to work with firefighter Parts • “All Parts Are Welcome • Curiosity and open-heartedness • Safety is created when protective parts are being listened to, known, understood, and respected • Parts will feel more safety in sharing • Helpful in suicide risk assessment and treatment • Clients will be better engaged in therapy, ability to seek help when at risk, and, in safety planning

20. You must make friends with protectors first“I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed. Get along with the voices inside my head.” Eminem • Protective parts are like gatekeepers • Protective parts will be more likely to let us help and heal the exiled parts once they trust us

21. Therapist’s parts that come up around a client’s firefighter part What parts of you can come up when a client or someone you know is expressing suicidal ideation, cutting, rage?

22. Common parts that can become reactive (verbally or nonverbally) towards a firefighter part of a person: • Common emotions that get triggered: fear, helplessness, hopelessness, overwhelm, shame, anger, sadness, disgust. These feelings trigger our own internal parts and protectors that want to protect ourselves and our clients • Alarmist - Overreacts affecting assessment of risk, ability to connect and help • Minimizer/Avoider - Under-responsive and avoidant affecting assessment, appropriate safety planning and treatment • Rescuer-Desperate to fix things • Critic - Criticizes suicidal part, shaming/blaming/guilting • Positive thinker - Believes person needs to think more “positively” rather than “negative” and can send messages to exile or try to cover up suicidal part

23. How to identify parts of you that get triggered? • Do a “U - Turn” (and eventually Re-turn!) • What do you say to yourself? Listening to your thoughts or voices and recognizing beliefs and narratives • What am I feeling? Becoming aware of what your emotions that are present • Where in body does this part of me show up physically? Noticing sensations in and around your body where you experience a specific part. • When is the impulse of this part? What do you do or say when this part takes over?

24. How to unblend from a part and access self-energy when faced with a suicidal client • Listening open-heartedly • Validation • Asking inside for a part to give you some space • Can you give me some space right now and I will come back to you later?

25. More strategies for unblending and accessing Self Energy • Ask the part to take a step back • Model unblending by asking your client if you can have a moment to work with some parts of you that just came up • Would this part of you be willing to wait outside your office in the waiting room? • Ask the part: Can you take down the intensity just a notch? • Check-in within your heart to see if it feels open at all towards the suicidal part • Remember compassion and curiosity and the other Cs. • **Using support system, therapists, supervisors, and other external resources**

26. An overview of how IFS flows

27. OK! I’m interested. How do I learn more and get trained? • Go to www.Selfleadership.org There are tons of resources there. • Sign up for a training (There are three levels). They take place all over the country and abroad • Level One can be in successive weekends or in an immersive retreat style • Level Two is in specialty areas like IFS with couples or neuroscience • Level Three is with Dick Schwartz • Consultation and a videotape of you working someone with IFS Add your name to the Interest List to bring a training to Detroit • Go to www.selfleardership.org • Create a login and password (you’ll need it later) • Go to Training Schedule on Home Page then Level 1 Trainings • Scroll down to “Request a Training” • Click here for Level 1 Interest List-Click on Detroit • You will then be asked to log in • Add your name to the list under Detroit

29. IFS Demonstration