Working with an IFS therapist - What is it like?
What is it like to work with an IFS therapist?
One of my favorite parts about the IFS model is the stance that the model takes on humanity: that there are “no bad parts” and that people have a powerful, unbreakable capacity to heal themselves.
In a way, the role of the IFS therapist is, in large part, helping to guide the client’s experience in such a way that the self-healing properties of IFS can make the healing happen.
More specifically, the role of the IFS therapist is, if oversimplified, to help the client:
Unblend from their parts so that more Self-energy emerges.
Help the client use their Self-energy to soften their protectors, relieve them of their extreme roles, and, as the system allows, to facilitate unburdening of exiles.
As my martial arts instructor used to say about Muay Thai, IFS therapy is “simple, but not easy.”
In other words, the principles are fairly easy to understand, but in practice, IFS takes patience, persistence, practice, and a lot of courage on both the part of the client and the facilitator.
As the founder of IFS Richard Schwartz puts it, the IFS therapist must remember at all times that they are walking into a very delicate ecosystem that has organized itself for very specific, and often times very old reasons. As such, the system is not always ready to change abruptly, especially when trust has not been built between the client’s parts and the client’s Self, as well as the client’s parts and the therapist.
What is an IFS therapy session like?
At its most basic level, IFS therapy can look a lot like “regular” talk therapy. The therapist is listening intently, and with warm, positive regard for the client. The therapist is encouraging and validating, witnessing the client’s pain and offering compassion verbally and nonverbally. The “therapeutic relationship” is indeed a key ingredient in IFS therapy, just as it is in most any other therapy of today.
On a more subtle level, IFS therapy may look like the therapist simply thinking about their client “in parts.” In other words, if a client starts a therapy session saying they’ve been drinking too much and feeling really guilty about it, the therapist may consider that there is a “drinking part” and a “guilty part.”
From there, the IFS therapist may take a small step toward deepening the IFS process by asking the client if they’d like to focus on a part that’s bothering them (this is known as “contracting” and is done throughout the therapy process as well as throughout a given session). If the client consents, the therapist may then invite the client to find the part and get curious about how they experience it and how it’s different, to focus on it further, to ask about how the client feels toward the part, to get to know fears the part is carrying, and so forth. This is, in part, what IFS therapy calls the “6 F’s” and is a core component of an IFS therapy session.
What is unblending in IFS therapy?
If a client is too “blended” with a part, the therapist may ask the client to see if they can get a little separation from the part. A couple creative ways the IFS therapist may do this is by asking the client to:
Take a deep breath in, and when you exhale, imagine breathing space in between you and your parts, not in a way that pushes them back, but in a way that gently creates space.
Imagine you grew into a giant all of a sudden, and when you snapped back to your real size, your parts stepped back and gave you space.
Oftentimes, a little bit of unblending is enough for a client to feel relief from whatever is bothering them. Other times, unblending sets the stage for potential unburdenings of parts.
What is unburdening in IFS therapy?
When people endure difficult experiences (especially those that are traumatic with a lower case or a capital “T”), parts are forced into extreme role and until unburdened, tend to stay there, thus wreaking havoc on the client’s life. An exiled part carries shame, and a manager compensates by being overly perfectionistic, while a firefighter part douses the shame with drugs, alcohol, and cutting.
It is not the details of the trauma that matter as much as the emotional burden that the part took on during the trauma. When an IFS therapist has adequately worked with proctor parts and helped the client negotiate with the parts to step back, soften, and allow for access to the more vulnerable exile parts, an unburdening becomes possible.
When a client is accessing an exile, and when enough Self-energy is present, an unburdening can look like:
Helping the part leave the situation they’re stuck in.
Helping the part release a burden using one of the elements.
Helping the part do a “do-over.”
Witnessing and simply “being with” the part.
In my 12+ years of being a therapist, unburdenings are by far the most profound and moving moments I have ever witnessed in therapy. They often look like breakthrough moments where clients describe feeling lighter, more physically open, joyful, relieved, and hopeful. The results are often instant, and the client often continues to experience compounding relief in their life, often showing up to the next session saying they feel more calm, less reactive, more creative, less tempted to drink, and so forth. It is incredible to see.
As of writing this, I have yet to find a more beautiful, humanizing, and profound therapy model, especially for the treatment of trauma.
Interested in working with an IFS therapist in San Francisco?
Reach out today for a free consultation.