Both Tom and I believe wholeheartedly in the power of working with our parts- or as Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) calls it, our “systems”. It’s transformed our lives personally and our professional practices as a therapist (Charity) and a coach (Tom). But how exactly does it do that?
What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?
First, in case you aren’t familiar with Parts Work/Internal Family Systems Therapy, here is the breakdown:
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is a modality that approaches people as made up of different “parts,” each with its own perspective and role, alongside a core Self that is calm, compassionate, and capable of healing. IFS helps us understand and learn to befriend our parts instead of fighting them. For example, maybe like me (Charity) you are an expert-level dissociator. Instead of wasting your energy being upset at your dissociation, through parts work you can learn to understand how your dissociation has tried to protect you throughout your life. This can result in a deep compassion towards your dissociation, and ultimately the ability to befriend it. And once you can befriend your dissociation, you can work together as a team. Through connecting your dissociation to your Core Self, it can learn when you are actually quite safe to live and enjoy your life, instead of always swooping in to try and protect you when you didn’t need saving.
Or perhaps like Tom, you are neurodivergent and have developed an inner critic that yells at you that you are lazy or underachieving. Through parts work, you learn that your inner critic is trying to protect you by motivating you to change. As you understand this, you start to feel gratitude for that part of yourself and you begin to befriend it. This befriending allows the inner critic to soften towards you, and to understand eventually that you don’t need it to yell at you all the time anymore.
If you’d like more help understanding this, Charity’s online trauma healing course has a whole module about it, which you can find at https://www.teawithatraumatherapist.com or here. And you can learn more about how IFS works on the Internal Family Systems Therapy website here. But what does all this have to do with the current state of the world?
How Can Internal Family Systems Therapy Help Me Right Now?
If you are anything like Tom and I, your heart is heavy with grief at the current condition of the United States. Our bodies feel heavy and tired, and our hearts feel even worse. It can be hard to focus, to sleep, and to function under all this weight. We have spent time checking in with our own parts, and what we have found is that underneath all the rage they feel totally helpless. We are doing all we can to help- attending protests, serving on the board of Maverique Therapeutic Services, a non profit dedicated to marginalized communities, calling our representatives, and Tom is very active on the board of our local political movement. And yet the feelings of grief and helplessness are still there. So what do we do with them?
Maverique Board Members at a Pride event
Here’s the thing. We learn to hold them. If you’ve never done parts work, that might sound weird…but I promise, it’s the only thing that truly helps. Just like learning to hold a heavy weight when you are working out, we learn to hold the heaviness of our helplessness and grief. We pick them up over and over, get to know them, and ask them questions about themselves. We learn what they feel like, sound like, and what they need. Sometimes it’s intentional movement. Sometimes it’s tears. Sometimes it’s to talk, or be held, or write a blog like this one. But we do not try and get rid of the feelings. Because in IFS, we recognize all of it as a meaningful part of us, and we don’t ask it to go away. Instead, we learn to live lovingly with it.
Does this sound hard? It is. It can really help to have someone guide you through the process, and Tom is uniquely gifted at that. You can schedule with him here. In the meantime…keep taking good care of all parts of you. These extra painful times call for extra good care.
