Internal Family Systems and Believing I'm...GOOD?

When religious trauma bumps up against IFS therapy

Friends! It has been so long. Life has been hectic around here, with a busy workload, busy personal life, and sometimes just not having much to say that feels relevant when the firehose of news feels so strong and immediate. But here I am again, showing up in your inboxes, and if you’re here reading this — thank you for being part of what we have going on!

This past week I began the much-coveted-by-therapists intensive training in the modality of Internal Family Systems (IFS), which is a real game-changer in how to approach change and healing in clients (but blends really well with the other modalities I’ve learned!). I’ll spend some time today giving an overview of how IFS works, then we’ll dive into the cross-section of religious trauma with IFS.

The foundation of IFS, as with NARM, is the belief in a Self that is innately good, oriented towards healing, and embodies compassion, curiosity, connection, clarity, creativity, calm, courage, and confidence (the “8 C’s,” in IFS terms). IFS is at its core a very spiritual model, which frankly is my favorite kind of model. The hope is to be a Self-grounded as possible and operate from that space.

However, along the road of life, “parts” develop. Sometimes they are innocuous and not emotionally charged and just help us function (“planners,” “going to bed on time” etc though any of these could get emotionally charged too). However, in the course, of life, we experiences hurts, losses, and traumas that create “exiles” that are often very young parts that hold pain. Because the pain can be so intense to experience directly, we also develop “protector” parts that function in ways to try to prevent us from feeling that intense pain anymore.

Protector parts generally fall into two categories: Managers and Firefighters. Managers are proactive parts that have figured out ways to help us operate so we don’t even fall into the pit of emotion again. Examples: the inner critic, the perfectionist, social anxiety, etc… Firefighters are reactive parts that show up once we’re already feeling intense, uncomfortable emotions, and do whatever they need to to distract us or take us away from the pain.

These parts can get “blended” with the Self where the Self’s light doesn’t shine through very clearly anymore. Our task in therapy is to help unblend the parts from Self, develop a relationship with the parts to better understand them (with the Self of the client to their own parts, ideally, though the therapist’s Self can be a stand-in for the client’s Self until theirs is strong enough to do it), and eventually help unburden exiles so they can heal and not have to be so ferociously guarded by protectors.

Yes, it’s a lot, and that’s why the training is so extensive! 😆 But I am loving the model and the ways it helps me access new places with my client. I love how respectful and non-agenda-oriented it is with clients, and the understanding that even if part of a client (usually a manager) is agreeing to healthier behaviors and healing, there might be other parts (e.g. firefighters or sometimes other managers) that are quite skeptical and might sabotage some things. People are complicated! And we deserve therapy that attunes to all the complications of our humanness!

Okay, now that you’ve gotten my little psychoeducation overview of IFS, let’s talk about why our religious trauma can make IFS challenging.

Yep. It’s the notion that we inherently have a GOOD Self at the core of us.

At the very start of our training, we were prompted in a guided meditation to try and access our Self qualities, and I started to get anxious and sad — what if I don’t have one of those? What if I’m really not good at my core?

Because of course, in the religious system many of us came from, we were directly taught that we were inherently sinful, fallen, even evil. That the only reason good would come from us is if it were God acting through us, or Jesus being in our hearts, and not because of anything we were.

I tried to make some space for the idea that maybe it’s just a part of me that holds this idea, instead of it being the gospel truth. And as the training continued, I found that if I could break down the Self into being more the qualities of Self-ness rather than having to take in Self as one whole, spiritual entity, I could handle that idea better. Basically: okay, I can offer myself (my parts) compassion, or curiosity, or connection. Even if I’m not quite ready to believe that I am fundamentally good.

I am curious how my feelings and gut-level beliefs about Self will evolve as I continue this training and continue my therapeutic journey with IFS. I know that I cognitively believe in a Self, and feel much more capable to access it in service of my clients… but really feeling and believing in it in myself? Well, that was a surprise challenge I didn’t know I’d encounter. Hope to keep you posted on how things develop and what else I learn through this modality!