IFS - Internal Family Systems Therapy

[Turgon]

Richard Schwartz started developing this therapeutic model back in the 1980's after working with clients who were bulimic and anorexic. By working with them and their extreme coping mechanisms, he discovered 'parts', sub-personalities, that existed that were influencing their behaviour and compulsions. His first major discovery of this was with a client who would cut herself. He spent one particular session with his client, arguing and trying to force the part of her that was cutting herself to stop. They managed to get this part to agree only to have his client come back the next session with her face slashed. In a fit of despair, he said aloud that he gave up, only to have this part of her reveal that it didn't event want to cut itself, and this opened the door towards a dialogue of what it actually wanted to release and unburden, and for her to actually start healing and integrating herself.

From Casswiki about Little 'I's':

The Fourth Way teaches that man in his normal state is not a single being. Rather, man is a collection of inconsistent habits, programs, or stimulus-response patterns; these rule all kinds of inner and outer behavior, and whichever resulting 'self' is active at the moment calls itself 'I' and sees itself always as the one, same person.

A metaphor that describes this state compares man to a nation where every citizen gets to be king for 5 minutes, with absolute power to enter into any commitments and to generally do what he pleases. The concept of the little 'I' is related to the concept of 'program,' 'personality' and 'buffer.'

The FotCM associates the concept of little 'I' with a neurological imprint or conditioned response or to a mental state that is characterized by typical conditional responses. Social roles which one assumes automatically without conscious decision are examples of different little 'I's coming in control in different combinations at different times.

Little 'I's are typical of the default state of man and are not a pathological condition like multiple personality disorder (MPD). Psychiatric conditions like MPD can arise if little 'I's are unusually split, which is not the case in normal 'sleeping' man. What contemporary psychology calls normal personality is however from the viewpoint of the Fourth Way a mechanical chaos of competing little 'I's, far removed from a 'fixed self' or 'real I.'

The model itself, aligns with Gurdjieff's concept of the Many I's. Although Schwartz's approach to these 'I's'/parts is different.

Generally, there are three main types of parts as described by IFS - Managers, Firefighters and Exiles.

Managers are the parts of one's self that needs to be 'on top of things'. Always in control of situations, one's self, heading off potential problems or issues. The inner critic, for example, could be seen as a Manager. In a misguided attempt to protect a person, it uses criticisms and negative self-talk in order to convince a person to do or not do something in order to avoid feelings of failure, rejection, etc.

Firefighters are parts that step in to 'soothe' and put out fires, again, in a misguided attempt to regulate one's self and protect from Managers punitive measures to control or when exiles start coming to the surface. This could be seen in the form of addictions, or compulsive habits or behaviours that rely on short term relief to escape from immediate pain or suffering without taking into account long-term consequences.

Exiles are the parts of ones self that hold onto the trauma's of the past that were never fully experienced or unburdened. They are usually quite young, and Managers and Firefighters spend a lot of time preventing exiles from coming to the surface through distraction and control because of the overwhelming nature of the hurts.

All three kinds work at odds with one another, creating seemingly endless patterns of suffering and programmed responses. A manager is constantly trying to keep exiles at bay, and when an exile bubbles to the surface, bringing with it the suppressed and repressed hurts and trauma's of the past, this can cause firefighters to immediately activate to try and medicate those hurts and pains away, which causes another manager to become harsh towards the firefighter for going back to self-destructive habits, which is reminiscent of unresolved hurts and trauma's, activating yet another exile. This type of polarization of parts is akin to a house divided and fractured, causing chaos

According to Schwartz, all of these parts are necessary and valuable to the healthy functioning of a human being as they make up the inner ecology of one's psyche or soul, but as sub-personalities, become stuck and frozen in time because at some point in a person's past, the Self, the Real I, experienced events that were so traumatizing, that a part stepped in to 'take on' the extreme beliefs and emotions that were formed from these past events. Through his work, he found that attachments or objects then glob onto these parts, distorting and influencing these parts further, which in turn influence the person. So when a part is activated, it's using a narrow and outdated belief system from the past to superimpose itself in the present.

In his book Internal Family Systems Therapy he uses the analogy of a company. Every person has their role to play within the system and there is harmony and balance when parts find their essential roles and work together instead of against one another. His style of therapy essentially is about learning to reconnect with the Self, one's essence, by teaching clients how to un-blend (not identify) with these parts so that instead of parts acting for the whole, they can be witnessed, understood and negotiated with so they can be unburdened of their extreme beliefs and emotions and eventually integrated or transformed.

Here as an interview with Andrew Hubermann about it, including working with some of Hubermann's parts to see what the process is like.

 

[Il Matto]

Thank you @Turgon for this great summary of IFS.
As I've mentioned in other threads, after you mentioned IFS in discussion I decided to look into it, read 'An Introduction to IFS' and 'No Bad Parts' by Schwartz and have subsequently started working with the exercises and meditations that can be found in the 'IFS Workbook' (no earth shattering revelations so far, but I'm trying not to anticipate / have expectations!).

The model itself, aligns with Gurdjieff's concept of the Many I's. Although Schwartz's approach to these 'I's'/parts is different.

In my - admittedly limited - experience so far I can certainly see how the inner work of IFS aligns quite nicely with Gurdjieff's concept of the Many I's that make up the personality of the normal 'sleeping man. As I was reading the above mentioned books by Schwartz, however, there was a quiet voice in the back of my mind (a 'part'?) that wanted to know why Dr Schwartz had made the assumption that all the 'parts' had their origins within the individual as projections of the psyche. I wanted to know if Dr Schwartz had entertained the idea that we may - when really 'going inside' to converse with these different parts, or I's - come across some that have their origins outside of us, either as spirit attachments or installed programmes from our 4D STS friends.
Then, this morning, I came across this substack post: IFS and the Spirits. Now, in reading this substack post you're obliged to read through quite a bit of woo woo nonsense / assumptions IMO, but the point is made:

And I have long held a critique of the above modalities re: respectability politics and uncredited Indigenous influences, but also re: commodifying and depersonalizing the Spirits, treating them as a resource and therefore behaving VERY extractively towards them.

So if IFS guy is now saying Parts are actual spirits (which I agree), is this a good thing? People in the IFS world confirmed to me that he didn’t say this sooner out of respectability and wanting to make a name for himself. He taught this modality to thousands of people, thousands of mainstream psychotherapists practice this. Worked with spirits but acted like they were just psychic projections explainable in Western psychology terms.

But there are protocols to working with spirits that there are not if you think they’re just “aspects of the psyche”. There are necessary respect and reciprocity protocols. Which people were not/are not doing. And likely are not going to start doing in conjunction with IFS because they mostly have no clue how and are not experienced as Spirit workers.

In highlighting this I'm certainly not trying to suggest that Dr Schwartz' IFS modal is wrong or not useful - I think it's a valuable tool. I can't really speculate on Dr Schwartz' motivation for presenting the IFS model in the way he did if he suspected that external forces could also be involved - perhaps it was simply out of a desire for respectability? I do think it's worth considering, however, that there is another dimension or level of complication added to the inner work it presents when you take into consideration the possibility that it may not always be in your best interests to 'harmonize' with all the parts, or many I's, you come across (some may need a dose of Spirit Release Therapy, for instance).
Its worth noting as well that the author of the above substack post accuses Dr Schwartz of being on one extreme regarding the provenance of our psychic 'parts' and then goes on to imply that all 'parts' are 'land spirits' (the other extreme). A rather nice example of the polarization that Dr Schwartz discusses, actually!
For my part, I'm going to continue working through the IFS Workbook and journaling about my experiences, but I'm also going to get myself a copy of Spirit Releasement Therapy by William Baldwin (a long overdue purchase) and continue re-reading High Strangeness alongside Beyond Disclosure and the Cassiopaean Substack. Knowledge Protects.

 

[Turgon]

Those are great points brought up as I have had similar questions in mind. Reading through the book I linked to in the original post, he does discuss burdens as being separate and external, and also having objects attached to parts. I interpret this to mean separate entities, or energetic attachments, etc. that are being released in the process of working with parts that frequency resonate because of the held on-to extreme beliefs and burdens or unresolved traumas that have never been resolved. So that by working on the Self through the parts, attachments are eventually released.

The little I've read of Baldwin's work, I do wonder if the inquiry process of Schwartz' parts work follows along similar principles as SRT and therefore it doesn't really matter if it's a part or separate beings. Correct me if I'm wrong but in Baldwin's work, I remember there being accounts of objects appearing in someone's auric field. In one IFS meditation session, that did happen and the belief and the memories from childhood associated with that object 'appeared' and I saw how they all connected together.

 

[Yas]

however, there was a quiet voice in the back of my mind (a 'part'?) that wanted to know why Dr Schwartz had made the assumption that all the 'parts' had their origins within the individual as projections of the psyche. I wanted to know if Dr Schwartz had entertained the idea that we may - when really 'going inside' to converse with these different parts, or I's - come across some that have their origins outside of us, either as spirit attachments or installed programmes from our 4D STS friends.

I did a training in IFS with an official IFS trainer and he did mention that during their clinical practice there are instances in which they find parts which don't seem to belong to the person but are somewhat different. He called these 'misaligned energies' and said that the IFS community usually calls them 'unattached burdens'. He believes that these are energies that are floating around in the world and can attach to the system. He even says that it can happen to anyone but, generally speaking, dissociative states can induce this more often, like when people are under anaesthesia.

When encountered with a part that is kind of vague and negative, he recommends asking "does this energy belong to you or not?" and usually the person will have this understanding that it doesn't belong to them and might even remember when was the first time this thing got attached. It can get really complex because these 'misaligned energies' can also attach to parts, and so on. He says that these energies often appear menacing and unsophisticated.

What also struck me when I was in this training is that his suggestion on how to deal with these particular energies was similar to what is usually part of any SRT protocol, that is:

- Not necessarily confrontation, but firmness. Saying that we're here to help and that "it's time to go now", "we're here to help you transform, go to the light, etc..."
- Calling for help, like God, angels, ancestors (depends on the person's belief system too).

He does say that this is sort of advanced and recommended supervision when dealing with this but that it is important to be aware of it so that we know it is possible to encounter them and that they can block healing if we don't deal with them in the proper way. Again, knowledge protects.

Now, I agree with Turgon that in most cases it might be better not to immediately say that this doesn't belong to me, as many of our programs might indeed be parts, even if they are in some way influenced by external forces too. As we know, attachments usually attach to us because they match something in us, so working with what attracts the attachment in the first place can already help release those attachments. So, for example, if there's an attachment that felt lonely, it might attach to a part of us that feels lonely, so working on the part that feels lonely might already make the attachment go away because there no 'match' anymore.

Regarding the reason why Richard Schwartz didn't mention this in his books or research, I think that he was just trying to portray this in the most mainstream way so that IFS could become part of the "evidence-based" psychological models to be used in therapy.

 

[Il Matto]

Thank you @Yas, that's really helpful.

there are instances in which they find parts which don't seem to belong to the person but are somewhat different. He called these 'misaligned energies' and said that the IFS community usually calls them 'unattached burdens'. He believes that these are energies that are floating around in the world and can attach to the system. He even says that it can happen to anyone but, generally speaking, dissociative states can induce this more often, like when people are under anaesthesia.

As we know, attachments usually attach to us because they match something in us, so working with what attracts the attachment in the first place can already help release those attachments

So, it seems to me that whether or not the 'parts' or I's a person engages with in the process of IFS are attachments or aspects of their own psyche is not really a crucial distinction - the way of dealing or working with them is essentially the same. What matters most is that a person is Working sincerely on themselves and paying attention.
As an aside, whilst I can understand why Dr Schwartz decided to omit mention of 'unattached burdens' so as to gain mainstream acceptance, its a shame and says something important about what can and can't be considered worthy of study and investigation.

 

[Gabriela]

Thank you for sharing guys, very interesting information.

 

[Seato]

I wish to thank Il Matto for his comment as it is what prompted me to start writing this response hoping to inform on the spirit release therapy and 4D STS controlled foreign parts I have encountered doing the Internal Family Systems Therapy. Fortunately, or unfortunately this post developed differently as intended for in trying to explain the context I felt instead guided to try and ‘summarise’ my experience so my thoughts could be understood. And well perhaps anyone reading this may better understand my thoughts, but they will be finding it lacking on the initial query. I seem to have too many thoughts to process in one post and this took a quite a bit of time to assemble.

This is instead more of me describing the process I went through and am still going through with the IFS therapy since becoming aware of it around the 3rd October when mentioned by amthatis and later getting the books once brought up by Turgon.
The reason I have not been sharing much of my experience in this thread. Is because before starting to become aware of the self, progress was very gradual so it didn’t feel like there was much to say. And once I started to become aware of the self things started moving so quickly with my perspective shifting noticeably within days or less I felt unsure how to convey anything helpful from the pages of notes I started to accrue.
I apologise if this is a bit lengthy I did wonder if it would be more appropriate to make a more personal thread as it is heavy on personal experiences but since it mostly pertains to IFS I felt it appropriate here.
I will say if indeed your intuition is guiding you more and you are increasingly recognising the signs that is a good indication you are making progress.

To Start

I started engaging with the idea of these thoughts and emotions as parts. Beginning just with the tool provided by his ideas and speeches whilst waiting for the book to arrive. Practising the brief meditation at 41:00 in this speech by Richard Schwartz. I would also begin employing Arks idea of dream work before Éiriú-Eolas meditation and sleep. I feel this was particularly helpful in outlining my immediate goals. Which I would adjust as things began to change.

Now back before covid I had a bit of a mental breakdown around which time I had issues with dark man and weird dream state dreams with negative entities. Eventually I began improving things and such experiences become an extreme rarity. Once I began engaging in IFS these things seemed to suddenly start manifesting again in force. For example, in my earlier breakdown I encountered a single dream state featuring getting suddenly pulled into a vortex. This October I have experienced three such dreams with the difference that in each of these instances I managed to catch myself before being pulled in.

With IFS when trying to sense my emotions I got the idea that they were not flowing properly they were like a tap that was dripping but dripping inconsistently. I tried to explain my idea to myself asking if I would allow the emotional tap to drip consistently. I felt a bit different over the next day. Eventually asking it to become a consistent trickle. I then began to express the flow in percentages starting low but with the idea of perhaps one day being able to reach 100% awareness of my emotions.
I was starting to feel like there was something there. Noticing the beginning of dark dreams I had the idea to try and ask my parts for help. My idea started as simple, if possible, when detecting negative things especially in dream if they would bark a bit like guard dogs. The idea was that its impossible for me to confuse barking for words and conflicting mind thoughts. If possible this would be a good way for parts to symbolically communicate danger for me that I could instantly recognise.
This worked and in doing so did a few things. I became more alert in dream states, as often it takes a while for me to realise what’s happening, but now as soon as one cooperative part would become aware they would start signalling (barking) and I would be propelled in engaging in resistance. It also showed me that the parts not only had a will or a least a program and could follow instructions but also could act autonomously within the subconscious. It never felt like I was ever making barking noises in my head just like lots of other things in my head were.

Dark things in dreams included new spider like imagery and awake I kept noticing spiders in odd places. I began to develop the mental image of being a puppet on web strings, with the threads connecting to my parts. I had long adopted a more aggressive response in dark dream, leading to things normally not appearing but instead messing about at a distance. With this idea of webs I began adapting mental fighting strategies to fight unseen things at a distance, first via interacting via the webs if there’s something on the other end pulling the webs maybe drawing them in like winding down a kite could pull them into attack range or onto a spike. Eventually I started visualising a kind of basketball hoop which represented a target with the idea of whatever I threw through it would strike the attackers regardless of distance or my own awareness of their location.

Mari has recently posted a nice summary of the official protection techniques of the forum here.

With the barking starting to become active occasionally in waking hours I would perform this odd series of defensive mental exercises, often coinciding with the sudden ear ringing discussed in Harrisons Beyond Disclosure and the forum.
In retrospect this may have been the start of my learning to utilise faith to defend myself. Its not as if I knew it was working in fact, I even got the idea that it wasn’t but when I was alerted to possible danger I would just mentally chuck as much imaginary stuff through the hoop as possible hoping it was doing something until things calmed down again.

Practicing Schwartz’s meditation exercise from above I asked a part that was hurting what did this to you and I saw briefly the face of a gray alien in my mind.

Looking over my notes this specific brief guided meditation therapy (only lasts a few minutes) seemed to facilitate clearest mental engagements with parts even though brief. More so than my reading of the books at the start.

The day of my second attempt I noticed a dead spider in a jug of water; never seen that happen before. This meditation I tried to focus on my protector parts trying to communicate with some part linked to thoughts relating to what I felt to be negative distractions in my life. I had an image of a key unlocking something. It shared it was driven by a desire to prevent a self-destruct scenario. When enquiring what role it wanted to have it mentioned something related to music.

By this time in terms of my emotional valve I was experimenting with a symbol of 25% and was noticing thoughts arguing over raising it higher. My interaction with parts began as essentially trying to persuade them to allow the continued increase even if slowly. I took to the idea of allowing to flow more from evening to morning and less from morning to evening to limit impact to daytime activities from increased emotions. I was becoming more keenly aware of my emotional state, which felt messy and uncomfortable. But by allowing it to be lowered at certain times protector parts became more willing to allow it to be higher outside those times.

Within a day or so whilst sorting some crockery I suddenly said aloud “help me”.

I asked parts to share what they wanted to do gathering their feedback. Noticing one included singing I told it that it could do so if it wished. Since singing can easily be done anywhere it looked like something good to start engaging with. Since then, I noticed music and songs playing in my head a lot. Sometimes I would join in, but it was active without my oversight unless. In the future it would eventually be revealed to be seemingly part of a higher center.
Following the feedback session, I started becoming aware of parts internal conflicts and personalities.

Over the next days I noted some odd occurrences. I found a dead spider in my water mug with my water crystal inside it. Note I place a loose cover over the mug at night in case of moonlight so it would not have been easy to get in there.
A Éiriú-Eolas meditation showed ‘dinosaurs’ eating people and a web connected to a computer keyboard I tried to smash.
One time coming home I saw four to six partially white doves gathered only on our house. Normally we only get wood pigeons and crows.
My chickens ventured onto their grass run extension for the first time in weeks after avoiding it for some reason.

By the 17th October I had actively begun experimenting with full emotional release for meditation and sleep. Though I never got above 60% in daily activities before encountering a shift in perspective that seemed to render the emotional percentage tool redundant.
Note when talking about percentage it is more of a representation of a kind of baseline, I sensed not all emotions could or perhaps should match each other until they are ready, but they were all encouraged to at least move upwards together as a kind of block so I could at least perceive their imbalance more clearly. At 100% even the most buried emotions in my mind should be partially visible even if only 1%.

The days before this I had become aware of a strong manager part I named Scribe because as more distinct parts became apparent it was difficult to describe them as what they were. This part seemed most to dominate my thinking and I seemed to relate to it the most. It seemed to have an idea that its true purpose was gathering knowledge and was seemingly intelligent, strong, angry, egotistical. It was abusive to the parts beneath it which it felt kept screwing things up. Think of Pauls talk on love and how knowledge is worthless without love.
A few days after being introduced other parts would start to share their grievances about Scribe. As they released their thoughts to me Scribe issued a weak apology.
But days later after reading 1 Corinthians 13 (Pauls words on love) and then listening to some real and sad music Scribe began apologising genuinely for the harm they had caused. As I observed and listened, I began to understand they had only wanted to protect everyone. As I saw him earnestly apologise to me, I became aware suddenly of a presence watching me from above. I instantly realized I too had failed Scribes faults were my own, in part because my personality was mostly consisted of Scribe on the surface. I began my own apology.
I then asked to see the part above me and was able to visualise more clearly than any previous part. It was an old gentleman dressed in white with a moustache at a bench feeding ducks. This was the first direct glance at the self. Which I would take to referring to as Higher self because all the terminology of selves was getting a bit confusing.
I felt ashamed at the state of myself in the presence of a figure of authority who could recognise all my negativity and worst aspects. I issued an earnest response this time addressing all my parts asking for forgiveness, some responded affirmatively while others were silent.
I realised the odd fear I had long had about being observed by dead people I knew in life was not actually connected to the dead at all but this Higher self, Real I. I had been actively blocking them out and hiding from them my entire life. I agreed to stop shutting them out. From then on things have been move faster my daily notes started growing and this Higher self who in future appearances now appeared feminine increasingly became visible in the inner environment. Eventually transforming into a kind of teacher student relationship. Think the Master and his Emissary.

The communication with Higher self is extremely symbolic and I have to be patient and think over things. To be patient, if I feel rushed to make a decision it is always the control system trying to elicit a panicked response. Visual mental imagery increased to an insane degree and kept growing to an insane degree. The vision from it is easiest to refer to as a third eye because I don’t see what it sees with my physical eyes.
Things moved so fast I previously felt quite lost in how to properly relay any of it. Especially as once Higher self-got involved a lot of it became symbolism often involving heavy Christian imagery and themes. So it’s even harder to convey what I think is happening other than I seem to be able to read far more meaning in things I couldn’t before; knowledge vs understanding as in Life is Religion book.
In fact, I have found Richard Schwartz’s books far more helpful for trying to practice working with the Higher self to treat my parts than in discovering it. Note my intent was always towards understanding and helping my parts, I wasn’t actually looking for the self it just kind of popped in.
On this I think Schwartz’s 8 C’s are very important especially curiosity and compassion. I keep checking on the curiosity and compassion explanation when dealing with parts.

Now I seem to have ended up somewhere completely different from where I expected when I started. I seem to have an idea of how to summarise important plot points in the future. To be clear it feels like a lot has happened since the end of the events in this post. This might be kind of an intro clearing the space for the self to manifest things of more importance in the future. I have been learning that to give requires one be willing to both give part of themselves and to be open to receive.
I had hoped to actually get to the bit about the dangerous part that was not a part at all and the bits involving spirit release.

All I can say for now when dealing with foreign parts that are in fact part of the 4D STS control system is to repeat.
To be patient, if you feel rushed to make a decision it is always the control system trying to elicit a panicked response.