When the IFS trainer suggested that that we all may have been in training spaces that weren’t safe, I needed to hear that. And then, she also extended a welcome to neurodivergent people in this work. This too was important for me to hear, as I have attracted three neurodevelopmental labels in my lifetime. On day one of this sixteen-week course, I hoped that this popular methodology, Internal Family Systems, might be the answer to addressing my own complex trauma. Being in a safe place that is open to neurodivergent people seemed like an important place to start.
I have found other trauma-focused psychotherapies, like eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and emotional freedom techniques (EFT) very hard to use. I struggled to feel enough to successfully work with either modality. EFT, or tapping on energy meridians, didn’t help me feel any better when I was numb and not feeling anything at all. Likewise, EMDR or using dual attention stimulus while reviewing my own early traumatic events, rendered me in a void at first, and as I worked with it more it started to feel like being inside my head during a hike. Because I don’t experience special healing from either of these modalities it is hard to use these practices on other people with promise and optimism.
I had already taken several PESI courses on IFS and thought I had a pretty good idea of IFS jargon and concepts.
IFS, created by Dick Schwartz, is an approach to understanding the human psyche that reasons that one individual has multiple parts. The impact of trauma is that it drives us away from having the unifying principle of Self that can lead our parts with the wisdom of all our experiences to heal and work together in a healthy existence. When traumatic events (known in IFS as “burdens”) exist in our past, younger “protector” parts come out and dominate our consciousness, taking on extreme roles and fighting with each other to cover up what happened. Being led by the principle of Self enables us to heal our burdens and let our protector parts to live in harmony with each other within our awareness.
The appeal of parts work for me is that it views problems as rooted in things that happen to us instead of some unfounded brain pathology that can only be reversed by adjusting neurotransmitters. Thus, instead of talking about clinical depression we talk more specifically about the part that is struggling. In IFS we get curious about not only what is wrong with a part or problem, but also how it works for us. Thus, when a part shows up that is struggling with motivation and feels negative, we curiously explore the part and as we describe it and explore its history, we find that we stop “blending” with it. In effect our Self, along with the Self-energy of the therapist, comes out and helps us understand it.
In IFS, there are three types of parts: managers; firefighters; and exiles. Managers are socially conscious and try to operate in acceptable ways to hide the effects of our pains and shame. Firefighters are more reactionary and do things that aren’t socially acceptable to ward off the pain and keep the exiles from coming out. Exiles hold the pain and the memory of distressing events. Understanding the nature of these parts becomes very important to get to the point where we can unburden the pain of exiles so that the Self can lead our parts in a healthy manner.
My Experience with The Course
As I began this latest IFSCA course, I could sense that my experience of doing IFS was different than that of my cohorts. They were more loyal to the model. When they began using IFS, they seemed to have visual or auditory experiences that I didn’t have, which seemingly allowed them connect to their parts. Indeed, having to practice being a vulnerable client—as is often the case in these training courses—quickly became so uncomfortable that I reached out to an IFS therapist who my insurance would cover to work with on my own.
In the past, I was punished by the state for purportedly hearing voices, when I didn’t realize I might be hearing very infrequent auditory illusions. How ironic it now felt in the group to be feeling outcasted for not being able to hear the voices of my parts. I learned that I had to use thinking parts to provide the answers to the questions because my parts didn’t speak directly for me.
With more practice coupled with individual therapy, I learned that with IFS one has to be in a trance-like state that I just wasn’t able to get into. This became very frustrating and I felt myself ruminating over the fact that I was different from the others in the group. It was a familiar rabbit hole that left me spinning and affected my mood and functioning.  I became concerned that the reason I was unable to hear from my parts was because I take antipsychotic medication. I continued to try to do the best I could, but the group was not proving to be a safe place for me. It was a place where I did not fit.
Repeatedly, I was directed to wait and hear from my parts and not let my thinking parts get in the way. One trainer suggested that I showed signs of having very big trauma in my background and that I couldn’t trust myself or my peers. While a part of me felt seen, another part of me felt uncomfortable with this. I have tended to be okay with trusting myself, it is other people I simply cannot trust. Where was this trainer getting this understanding of me from?
I noticed that after being consulted this way, my functioning in the course went down. Every four weeks we had sessions devoted to asking the trainer questions. During one of these sessions, I found myself less able to be attentive to her jargonized explanations. This left me in a tailspin. I found myself feeling bad about myself. This reminded me of being diagnosed with schizophrenia and feeling pathologized to function less and less.
I remembered how I kept the faith and kept working to overcome this. Thus, I went back and watched the recordings of the sessions, did the readings, and got a better understanding of the materials. I got a grip and unblended from the part of me that was convinced that there was something wrong with me because I was incarcerated in a state hospital for three months.
Eventually, approximately two-thirds of the way through the course, I started coaching my cohorts that they had to deal with my thinking parts. Work with my therapist went a bit better because she let me use my thinking parts. Still, as I listened to the complex descriptions of IFS concepts in the training sessions, I couldn’t understand what it felt like to experience the world in this way.
For example, updating the parts was never something I could do because my parts didn’t communicate with me. I found the technique to work for others to enhance self-energy and help protector parts trust and build rapport with the Self. But when others tried to use the technique on me, I wanted to say please don’t ask me those questions because I don’t know the answers. Likewise, in a trance with the pressure on to provide answers, I could not tell if I was blended or unblended so it was hard to know what worked at un-blending from a negative state or part. Mostly I was just blank. I dissociated, which is a common firefighter response. I saw others update and unblend from their parts, but I couldn’t.
Meanwhile, I could go and tell my stories about traumatic things that happened to me anytime. I don’t need permission from my protector parts to do so. See, I have practiced telling stories as a keynote speaker. More frequently I have practiced sharing my stories in supportive groups I offer to others who experience psychosis. Furthermore, I have written a memoir to try to undo the sting of all the stigma I experience. I have faced a lot of rejection and weird energies from people who hear about my mental health; and I also wish they would open their ears and listen to the stories I uncover because there are so many valuable lessons to learn from them.
Lessons Learned and Moving Forward
One thing that I have learned from working with people who experience psychosis or what I prefer to call special messages is that therapy works best when you meet the person where they are regardless of their disabilities or differences. And because of that, I struggle as a therapist to push people into a trance-like state when I can’t deal with going there myself. I found that being in this training made me afraid of trying to go inside because so often when I do, I block and come up empty. This aversion gets in the way of me understanding my parts and how to heal the exile parts that hold the pain.
Now that the course is over, I am going to continue learning IFS with my therapist and see if I can get to the point where I can get in contact with my exile parts and relieve burdens. As a therapist, I want to be able to work with other people’s parts and use the skills I learned, but feel I still have some personal learning to do before I alter my day-to-day practice.
For me feeling different or not up to snuff has a long history. I recognize that trying to do IFS work in the course caused me to blend with this part. The lead trainer named her parts, like her anxiety, and was able to stay in Self. I, unlike her, name my parts but they linger and stick around. In the training sessions, not only did they stick around; they got reinforced and that did not feel safe.
At the end of the training, I took what I consider to be a courageous step to publicly ask if the fact that I take antipsychotic medications may deflate my ability to be in a trance like state. It is also possible that my lack of trust for professionals is so profound that I just can’t do the work in front of them. When the question stumped the trainer, I went through another tailspin feeling insecure about the fact that I had let people know that I had a history of madness.
The course suggested that we keep in contact with our cohorts and, somehow, I highly doubted anyone would want to keep in contact with me. Stumping the trainer felt very awkward to me and reinforced that it is not safe to deal with madness in public spaces.
Even though the trainer had bent over backwards to include neurodivergence and taught us to meet people where they are at, she was unable to deliver safety when there are mechanisms of oppression that are beyond her control. As is often the case, we therapists often think we are safe, when a lot of times we need to take the time to prove it. And sometimes it is impossible to make someone safe in certain contexts depending on what they’ve been through.
I do believe I can benefit from the non-pathologizing approach to healing that IFS promotes and that I can teach others like me who have been institutionalized and take medicine to unblend from warring protective parts. Even if I do not get clear communication from my parts, I know they my parts are there and that I can learn to understand them.
I think I may be able to benefit even if my parts never answer. Nonetheless, my struggles to feel safe lead to an interesting set of questions in my mind:
- Do medications make it harder to heal from trauma within these new modalities?
- Do episodes of institutionalization mixed with ongoing stigma make it that much harder to develop trust so that trauma work cannot be done?
- Does the IFS community need to do more outreach to include the mad community?
Indeed, in learning the answer to these questions I will have to practice and see what I can learn. I doubt there will be books that will give me an answer to them. Much as it was for me coming back from the schizophrenia diagnosis, I will have to push my limits and defy what doubters say to get answers to these questions.
I do believe the course was a good starting point to enable me to work on my complex trauma. However, I felt extremely comforted when I told a recovery friend about stumping the trainer with my question about madness. He complimented me for my self-advocacy and said maybe my question would help the trainers be more prepared in the future. Viewing my efforts in the positive manner that they were intended helped me recapture my dignity and respect. Indeed, my manager parts—the protector parts that are concerned about being socially accepted—felt they would be interpreted as social-suicide.
My doubts about IFS concern the definitions of the parts which maybe different from inner parts experienced by the client. Is there a place to respect “original” voices? Even if the model is right, it is still a model. Personally I am afraid of such therapy because I know my inner world quite well and I want to speak about it in my own language.
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Love this: “the definitions of parts (might) be different from inner parts experienced by the clients” …. We all are different and the voices and our inner parts are as well.
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On Black Bee’s comment, I really do not see IFS as constrained within the labels found in standard IFS books and journals, personally IFS is just about tuning in to our inner voices and honestly being open to their experiences and being there to listen and eventually to heal them. I found that when I was fixating on whether parts were managers, firefighters or exiles I made little if any progress, but when I let go of the mainstream IFS titles and rules and just let things proceed naturally I saw real genuine progress. Just imagine what it’s like for a part to be obliged to fit into one of the above-mentioned categories, it’s not likely to make it feel welcome to express it’s true view of itself at all. I too had my own inner understanding of my system before going to a therapist and I ended up stalling with the therapist, then eventually stopping with him and only then when I was doing IFS on my own did my parts start telling me how hard it was for them to express themselves to a stranger who has pre-conceived notions of who they are and what their story is meant to be, expecting them to be either a manager or a firefighter etc. So I find that IFS is best taken as a baseline for a natural journey of self-discovery and I’ve indeed learned to block out the IFS books’ definitions and rules and to just let the system guide me to what it needs. Having advised friends along these lines I have found that they also succeeded much much more in inner healing when they let go of IFS “rules and regulations” and just let the system guide them to what it needs and what it’s stories are. It seems to me that IFS is really just tuning in to an innate healing process that happens naturally when a person opens up to listen to his inner voices so the various definitions etc only subtract from the naturalness of the healing process. Good luck..!
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I would guess Schwartz would agree with you L.J
Awesome article
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Thank you Janet, I really very much appreciate your validation, I would indeed like to believe that Schwartz would have gotten this point by now.. The institutionalisation of IFS and setting rules & guidelines may have been addressing certain needs of practitioners etc but I wonder whether the damage is more than the benefit. It’s hard to tell..
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Hi I’m not comfortable sharing much detail about my background but I do want to say that I very much connect with what you’ve written on IFS issues and have found myself that only once I let go of trying to do IFS the way the book says and instead just embarked on an honest non-rushed journey of self-discovery- on my own- did I start feeling safe and then went on to see real previously unimaginable progress. Our systems are so complex that a one-size-fits-all approach just can’t work. But very importantly, in my experience it actually isn’t necessary to be in a trance-like state to do IFS, indeed some of my best breakthroughs were totally trance-less. The point of the trance from what I have understood is just to enable a heightened level of self, but in my experience there’s a big downside to waiting for a trance state because then the day to day voices are often not able to fully and more importantly to naturally express themselves seeing as there is this whole situation which is not natural and not a state they’re used to operating within. I actually found that after trance-like sessions I would rarely see meaningful change in day to day life and only after I stopped trance sessions did my parts explain to me that what happened in a trance state is disconnected from real day to day life so any progress wouldn’t follow through to daily life.. Indeed, my experience has been that once parts find a safe place (i.e therapist-free and trance-free for me or where thinking parts aren’t criticised for you) they are likely to very slowly but yet surely start communicating their stories bit by bit and eventually be able to start healing. True inner healing is a long process and it’s normal for there to be even months before a given part feels safe to communicate or allow it’s experiences to be felt so having a slower journey is not a bad sign it just means the system is affected differently and naturally reacts differently to it’s experiences. There is no right and wrong in the (IFS) journey of self-discovery, everything is part of the journey.. However having taken anti-psychotic medications I found that when my dosage was significantly reduced I did find the IFS work much much easier, almost as if the meds were constraining and dulling me, so if that’s of any help there goes. However that may have been due to a part that was upset at being medicated and may have therefore resisted any progress, so it may be possible that others would see success even while on a relatively high dose seeing as they may not have that resistance. I also commiserate with the fact that many IFS practitioners are not really fully healthy themselves and therefore cannot offer a truly safe space for clients to grow within and indeed I have experienced this myself, ultimately having to do it on my own as I mentioned above. The issue is particularly acute when the therapist isn’t able to recognise his shortcomings, usually due to being subtly blended with some part (often what the books call a Self-Like part which resembles Self but is not fully open-minded and natural) All in all what you’re describing sounds very normal to me and I’ve had to deal with the same although with the obvious variations that come from the uniqueness of each person’s journey.. All I can say is follow your internal compass and you’ll eventually see real progress. The cornerstone of true IFS is honesty and naturality so if that means stepping away from certain professionals (when that feels safe) that may well be the best move one can make and also important is that perseverance and patience really is the name of the game. Many thanks for a great article, much appreciated!!
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I so appreciate what you said about also finding that antipsychotic medications made it difficult to access parts of yourself and how you have needed a therapist-free environment to really start hearing from your parts. It is great to know you have done this alone and it has worked out for you. I agree that a lot of therapists aren’t really healthy or are not always in Self and it makes it challenging. Thank you so much for your comment and sharing your experience.
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Really a pleasure Tim.. It is a true privilege to help someone else in an area I struggled so much with alone… Thanks.
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I am so comforted and encouraged by your sharing your experiences of I F S training. Thank you, as always for your work, Tim
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I totally agree with the writers above me.
I like the basic principle of IFS, but feels it falls into a rigid dogma when talking about their roles.
I much appreciate the rebellious notion against this professional stiffness and taking the freedom to explore the people within us, understand them in our terms and grant them with titles WE feel are most suitable for them.
As for your question:
Do episodes of institutionalization… make it that much harder to develop trust so that trauma work cannot be done?
I tend to say “yes”.
Having suffered institutional trauma by the hand of people who bathed in their benevolence, I strongly suggest that many helping professionals assume they can earn my trust and grant me emotional safety just by holding their role.
This is NOT the case. They need to actively earn trust and actively facilitate safety over a decent period.
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Thank you Tamar, so true that being institutionalized gets in the way of doing trauma work, thanks for validating me on that. I agree that it takes time to decide if you really trust someone outside their “role.” You put it so well!
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Thank you for this. I think it’s very important to recognize the limits of IFS and the frequent insularity of IFS communities.
I also took an IFSCA course a couple of years ago and had my own experience of not being able to get traction with the method. In this case, things actually went pretty badly. There were some serious problems with the way it was taught and every time a student expressed concern the instructor would insist they just needed to do more work with their own parts and, essentially, get over it. It was gaslighting, plain and simple. And abusive. Three of us wrote a very thoughtful, measured letter and it was flatly rejected. I left the class and later heard that almost one-third of the others did, also.
It was a really awful experience, especially as all the above happened in a setting where we were encouraged to delve into our own traumas and stay vulnerable, and as the instructor was considered one of the top experts in the IFS world and so had enormous power. I’m sure IFS can be helpful for many people, but my experience shows, I believe, how wrong things can go given the insularity of IFS communities, what I would call it’s seductiveness, and also the method’s emphasis on managing the internal system often at the expense of relationship, social concerns, and ethics.
Thank you, again!
p.s. I should add that the deflective trope of “you just need to do more work with your parts” seemed to be institutionalized. Before the course started, a few of us had concerns and the IFSCA administrator would repeat that every time. I’ve also seen it come up with some regularity in online forums. The whole thing seems very neoliberalized to me–just learn to adjust as an individual and stop worrying about what’s wrong with the context. I suspect that the popularity of IFS is very much a mark of its arising in the age of neoliberalism.
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My experience is that any manualized therapy applied rigidly results in limited to poor outcomes. What works is what works for the client. Following a script rigidly and then criticizing the client for not getting better with YOUR system is a crappy way to do therapy!
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Thanks, Steve. I should have mentioned that most of the problems came from a cavalier treatment of psychedelics, which were part of the curriculum. No attention to harm reduction, and a general attitude of… The drugs are great, go do it!… That’s what made it, especially sensitive, along with the gaslighting, of course,and overall, it was a problem of much more than rigid application of the method.
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Thanks for sharing your experience with IFSCA. That sounds really frustrating and over emphasizing pschelelics sounds like a really frustrating thing to go through.
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Thank you, I agree, manualized treatment is not as good and thank you for saying this. Meeting people where they are at is so important.
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>Do medications make it harder to heal from trauma within these new modalities?
This might seem obvious, but it depends on the dose. In 1975 for my first hospitalization they used the “highest tolerated dose”. This *is* going to interfere with psychotherapy. Since then, after discovering my “lowest effective dose” is zero I have been doing much better.
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Tim,
Your review is really really useful to me. It gives grounded, lived-experience info about what works and doesn’t in IFS. I’ve always had quibbles about what seems like dogma and over-structure when I’ve read or heard presentations about the model. I’m wondering what you know about narrative therapy, which is my preferred model. I’m thinking from what you write that it would be a much better fit for you, and I’d love to read a detailed report such as the one you give here about what it’s like to go through a learning experience in narrative therapy.
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I worked with a narrative therapist through my crisis and while I really like the ideas of the model, I was always troubled by the way she used the model. She would say, “How does paranoia make you feel . . . ?” when I didn’t think I was in the least bit paranoid. I could really get over that disconnect. Really being forced to go to therapy when I was going through what I went through was really not helpful. But I didn’t get advanced training in Narrative so as to make a really deep commentary on it. THanks for your comment.
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Sounds like pretty pedestrian application of what I think of as narrative. A big word like paranoia should be unpacked, there should be a search for a less jargony, experience-near conceptualization of the problem, and the focus should be on experience (the whole of thought-feeling-action), and meaning. I also don’t get any sense that there was attention to the socio-political context. Sorry you didn’t get a better experience.
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I understand that you’re searching for a reason why this therapy didn’t work for you. And it makes sense that you’re considering the impact of your medication use. But perhaps it’s also worth considering that this particular method simply might not be the right fit for you.
Not everyone’s brain works the same way, and not everyone processes trauma in the same manner. I’m neurodivergent too, and this type of therapy just doesn’t resonate with me. I work with a different inner framework—my adult self and my inner child—and that feels much more helpful to me.
In my youth, I went through CBT and tried incredibly hard to make it work, but it only left me feeling worse. So maybe it’s not about trying harder—but about trying something different. There are other approaches out there that might speak more to your way of being.
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I feel compelled to comment that “CBT” is often referred to as a type of therapy, when it is really just one of many techniques one could employ when thinking about how to deal with one’s historical trauma and decisions. It is unrealistic to expect it to “work” for everyone, and even the most optimistic studies show that at least 20% of folks are not helped or made worse by CBT. When I did therapy years ago, I only viewed these “therapies” as something one might employ in the correct circumstances, but judged solely by the client’s reactions how well it worked. CBT asks one to change emotion through changing thoughts. For some people (including me), this is a viable option, but for plenty, they need help EXPERIENCING the emotions they are struggling with, and a CBT approach just makes them feel invalidated, like the should just be able to “think away” their problems. Others learn by simply trying out new behavior and seeing how they feel as a result, and managing thinking is not a part of the picture for them, either.
Trying to force square pegs into round holes seems to be most therapist’s approach these days. But it never has worked, and it still doesn’t. I rather like Milton Erickson’s quote, “We need to reinvent therapy for each client.” To do less is to treat clients in a mechanical and disrespectful manner, which is healing to no one.
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I really appreciate both comments about CBT which definately doesn’t work for me. I appreciate that the IFS might not help me, I am exploring it now to see if I can adjust to it. I have some experience with times I have dissociated so I know parts are there, but I agree with putting the person before any form of therapy is most important. It makes me feel good that I didn’t drop everything that I know and run into the IFS culture.
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I liked IFS a lot when it came out. I have a dissociation disorder mainly because of therapy and cult abuse, and it seemed compassionate.
But then as it got more popular, the vibe around IFS became more and more cult like. I think this is natural in our capitalist society when a business is growing. Branding is stressed more and things get oversimplified. Even casual friends suggestef it like it’s the magical cure.
Ironically, pushing IFS on me in that cult mindset of “this is the ANSWER” contributed to even more dissociation. Because trying to fit everything into this framework didn’t work for the way my brain was already split.
I still kind of like the framework, but I think the way businesses develop – including the hierarchy with Schwartz at the top – over time affects the message. He seems like a decent enough guy, but the medium is the message.
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