r/InternalFamilySystems

Had a good IFS therapy session today and my homework was to come up with ways to connect to Self. For me it’s usually prayer, meditation, etc…as in ways that don’t involve substances or mistaking any kind of “high” for connectedness or self.

Us AuDHD folks have higher struggles with addiction so I’m curious if anyone else here has identified a Part that is the voice of addiction specifically? My therapist said usually an addictive part turns out to be a firefighter

I'm having great success engaging in IFS therapy on my own. Especially on lighter issues. Anyone else here doing the same?

I do have trauma and I've encountered times where it can be challenging to engage with several parts with exile and protection ongoing, and I do see why a good therapist is needed, but it has been good so far.

Do you have any advice for me regarding this?

I've found it important to spend enough time on each part, and that enganging with single parts (where possible) one on one, is easier and to always find a positive and healing conclusion to each session that the part feels comfortable ending each session with - and not leave things unfinished.

Please only constructive advice 💜 thank you for reading.

I feel like at 40yrs old and starting my healing journey my whole life so far has been wasted. everything I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember was motivated by trauma and anxiety 😢

For instance: the exile is feeling unloved. The firefighter starts sleeping around and having love affairs. But the pain of being unloved still remains intact in the long run. Well, why?

Hi - during my therapy session today with an ifs therapist my therapist connected with an exile and uncovered a rather horrifying traumatic memory. Until now I never understood why I was always anxious around this person. Anyway, all they left me with was to take easy, the pain & grief will come in waves. And they’re right, like since then more memories are coming and I had to pull over before it became too overwhelming. But is there anything else I can do? Like I’m angry one minute but next I’m crying. Anger was the protector so I understand why that’s surfacing.

But wow I was skeptical about all of this and when the protector surfaced saying I couldn’t handle this person because I didn’t know who they really were. Holy f like I’m not in Kansas anymore.

I don't know what to do. I think my issue is beyond reddit's pay grade. I have complex ptsd and bpd. obviously an attachment/ifs therapist would be ideal but I don't have the funds to do so rn. I love my partner so much but he keeps hurting me even though he means well. my condition is deteriorating. he doesn't see the problem bc its not his fault. its my trauma pattern. but by this stage he is contributing to the pattern and I’m unable to stop doing it on my own (it's unconscious and impulsive) I’ve asked for his support in breaking this pattern and he doesn't feel any sense of responsibility or obligation.

I think people really shouldn't be doing bdsm without psychological training and understanding of attachment dynamics as its dangerous and people's lives are at risk.

I’m so afraid of ending up in a place where i have less and less agency over this pattern bc it puts my life at risk. and I know its just a bad pattern/bad conditioning which needs a different input but he wont acknowledge or recognise that to help me change it.

like yea self agency and autonomy but what am I meant to do if its literally an UNCONSCIOUS thing I have no control over and it is fully in his power to help me break the cycle.

its like the core trauma pattern existed on its own long before him but its become a much more complex trauma now and I only realised recently that it began as a distinct pattern in the beginning of the relationship while he was seeing another woman. there were times where he was not completely upfront about it which led to some extremely deep fearful reinforcement of my attachment wounds.

its not that its his fault, this is my trauma and attachment pattern at its core but its not only that now, its become something else too which he contributes to, a new thing entirely which is perpetuated by his dismissal and reinforcement which makes any possibility of secure attachment impossible for me.

I guess at this point its just a Retraumatisation Loop.

I don't want to feel like im victimising myself but I don't see any way out of it on my own.

I would consider myself “far” into my healing journey, but I had a major CPTSD relapse in February.

Also in the last 3 years I emotionally lost:

• my mom to ongoing CSA

• my two brothers to severe domestic violence/addiction

• my sister delusions/maybe schizophrenia

• my in-laws when they shared how they truly feel about me (they don’t like me)

I also had:

• financial instability this year

• housing instability (not due to finances but added to the money stress)

• I moved abroad (3 years ago)

• I lost my job and started to work for my husbands company remotely instead (3 years ago)

• and then in February at 5 months pregnant, I lost my baby and almost my life, and found out I’ll never be able to carry a baby to term without serious medical intervention.

Basically it’s been insane and I feel fucking insane right now—so I started to see a new therapist.

Background: I had one meeting with this therapist 3 yrs ago, but she declined to see me because she was organizing some big events with really well known psychologists (think Gabor Mate level).

I was bummed because she’s one of only a few English speaking IFS therapist in my country, and she seemed really passionate about trauma work.

But..she was also drinking something red out of a wineglass during our zoom intake🍷 which I tried to tell myself was cultural but I’m really not sure it was.

Fast forward to this month and I contacted her again and we had 3 amazing sessions!

I was super happy I had found her, and everything seemed fine.

The only problem was that she was late (like up to 15 minutes late) a few times, and still ended my sessions on time.. so twice they were just 35 minutes at full price.

Then yesterday we had a weird session

:(

I’ve been having a serious breakdown the last 2 weeks, and my mood has been severely volatile.

I had some big things happen this week (like I broke my nose yesterday before our session) that I wanted to discuss with her, but instead we got about 15 minutes and I was trying to tell her about my work/week, and she started talking a lot about how I needed a different job—telling me to go walk dogs or babysit.

It was a bit of a left turn as I wasn’t telling her that I wanted a new job, I was trying to talk about my breakdown.

I was amiable to the idea though, as I know working for my husband isn’t the best thing in the world.

Unfortunately though, the whole session got derailed into jobs, and she ended up talking so much that I didn’t even get a word in to tell her I am getting a puppy on Monday and can’t even get a second job right now.

It got to the point where she called a prior well connected client in the middle of the session to ask them to find me local work under the table (I don’t have papers to work here legally).

She told them over the phone that I could work with kids.. I don’t know if I’m ready to work with kids after losing my pregnancy. And then she gave me that persons number and told me to call them right away.

I felt bulldozed, and left feeling awful about myself and so small. But on the other hand more connection might be nice—but also I’m not sure if I’m ready since losing my baby and I feel so confused.

We moved this last month, and this is our first unfurnished house since moving abroad and like we only have 2 forks and 2 spoons and no butter knives. We don’t own a couch or bookshelves.. I’m literally spending all my free time scraping together one home item at a time, and it’s hard to fathom throwing in a new job rn?

Especially because I’ve been spending like minimum 4 hrs a day crying this week (psychiatrist tomorrow).

I know she meant well and that I don’t have the best work life set up..but she told me that I need to take responsibility of my life, which was hard to hear as I am trying really hard to do that and not only be in survival mode.

Anyways this therapy session got in my head so badly that I was awake from 3am-8am last night worrying about what I need to do in life and I’m not sure if I should keep seeing her as those good sessions we had were so excellent.

I recently started ifs with my therapist and I feel really lost - like I don’t even know who I am. I see her next week and I will talk about it but I’m jsut wondering if anyone else has felt like this? And I am scared of change. Has anyone else been scared of changing? I want to process my trauma, but I’m scared.

Some people say they’re healed and others say it will always be an ongoing process.

Been having ifs therapy for 1,5 years now, and in total 5 years of therapy. I know my system, can be in self quite easily (when not overwhelmed), did some unburdenings. But my old triggers and coping mechanisms are all still there. I do feel triggered a little less and most of the time my coping mechanisms are less extreme, but sometimes they’re just as extreme as they used to be. Should I expect it to ever go away? From time to time it makes me want to give up and go back to my old toxic life.

I underwent severe childhood trauma and have a few exiles that carry very intense feelings. Their protectors keep them very repressed. I'm at the point where the protector parts trust me, and have made contact with the exiles a few times, but it's like a volcano explodes when they agree to step back and the exile comes out. I can still feel Self, but the protectors don't feel safe letting me experience the full breadth of their emotions and pretty quickly put the lid back on.

Going slow, but I'm not sure how to help them unburden if experiencing them pushes me out of my tolerable range. I did have one experience where I explained and asked an exile to try to keep the volume down. She did, but it was with a ton of effort. Like all her effort was going into keeping control. And when I asked her a question, the volume went up, and her protector was like ooookay, you're going back in the box.

Any tips or advice? I'm working with a wonderful IFS therapist, just looking to expand my toolkit.

Hi there, I am wondering if anyone knows of helpful introductions that are quick and visual that explain IFS to a beginner? Thank you!

She is such a sweet baby; a friend's baby. Whenever I want to leave, she reaches out for me. and starts crying. I hug her but then the same thing repeats. I want to find a way of leaving that does not leave any feelings of being abandoned. How can I do it? Any ideas?

After being introduced to the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model and having my initiation through it, I felt in my gut that I needed to leave everything behind and I moved to a small village in the Finnish countryside to explore my psyche. I call this stage the “cave”. 

The first three years were of course a blur as I kept hammering away at my mind, breaking away from the patterns that kept me stuck in my own loops. One of the parts I was most blended with was my self-critic part that was at the forefront and would never let me rest. It was the source of most of my misery and my anxiety.

Well, I had I tried everything. Read the right books. Woke up earlier. Tracked habits. Fixed my diet. My inner voice sounded productive but if you could hear it, it was vicious. I hated myself. I just dressed up this hatred as my drive. 

I didn't notice this for a long time because this voice had been my companion since I was a child. Disciplined, hard working, ambitious, getting things done. 

From the outside I seemed like a well put together man. But on the inside I was trying to outrun a sense of worthlessness and shame.

I managed to un-blend from and unburden the self-critical part, for it to step aside and let me lead myself. It took three years though. It happened in a meditation where I sat with the hatred situated in deep in my abdomen, and after a while I felt an opening, it was able to finally accept love. Love flowed into the belly and hatred flowed out from a narrow opening. Like the sands in an hourglass. I went from accepting love, to becoming love. 

It was a reality breaking moment for me and I was in a daze for a couple of weeks from the healing I had gone through. I was finally able to feel worthy, to feel MY love towards MYself.

Most of my life I had been frozen and paralyzed under the weight of the self-critic’s burdens. In the beginning, I was able to actually take care of myself from a place of love and not hatred. Small things I noticed about myself, were endearing. The harshness thawed, I became more gentle. With myself and with others. 

Over the years as I cleared out more of the burdens and traumas I have been able to direct my attention and energy toward whatever I actually want. Motivation is not something I have to manufacture, what I want to produce is the only thing there is and setbacks I solve with calmness, patience and compassion.

Compassion, patience, connectedness helped me allow connecting with others, to allow myself to feel their emotions, to a degree I became more sensitive to where people were in their journeys and help point them towards what was going on in them accurately and gently. This initiated me into the the second phase of my journey to self-mastery. 

In my interactions with others, men and women alike, I have yet to see someone without a very strong self-critic running the show. As I have understood it, The self- critic is trying to protect us from something. Shame, rejection, being seen as lazy (this was my personal problem), seen as dumb, or being seen at all. But its method is to attack constantly, so you stay safe and don’t do anything that might hurt you. 

Speaking for myself, the transformation didn’t come from being better at discipline. It came by turning inward and finding that place of love to work from. Everything else just fell in place because my parts were aligned with me and not in conflict with what I wanted. The inner civil war had been conquered with compassion. 

My therapist and I did an exercise the other day to talk with my exile/inner child (I picture them as being 7 or 8). I set a chair aside so my protector had a place to sit and watch from a distance. My therapist asked me where in my body I felt my exile, and I said in my chest. She had me place a hand on my chest, and then asked me what my exile did in response.

My exile held my hand.

My therapist continued to guide the conversation, and my exile sat on the ground next to my chair (opposite from where my protector was sitting). She asked how my exile felt toward my protector.

"She's scary and makes me feel alone."

Then she asked how my exile felt toward my adult self. I was expecting... disappointment, or fear, or even anger.

"You seem big and strong and I want to be like you when I grow up."

It kind of blew my mind, that my hurt and scared inner child actually sees my current self as someone worth being. I was so used to listening to my protectors that I instinctively anticipated harshness or cruelty. Instead I got pure and compassionate love.

I wander if other people could just give me words of encouragement. Sometimes I feel I will stay like this forever. I experienced that IFS is helpful myself, I have clients who find it helpful and yet I still have parts who think all therapy is BS and I will always feel like shit.

On better days I do not think that but I do get overwhelmed easily.

Idk why i have this issue but whenever i feel vulnerable it can be as simple as like showing that i am disabled or talking about how i need support, my crotch start to feel really vulnerable and exposed and it makes me want to stop talking about it and stop being vulnerable.

I have no idea why i have this symptoms or what it means but i discovered recently that its what I'm feeling. Feeling vulnerable = crotch feels vulnerable!

Hey all! I've been poking around this sub a bit already, but I'm about to start IFS for the first time and am a little unsure about it, so I was hoping to get some perspectives from people who might be doing it that have had similar experiences. I'm coming into therapy for OCD, and I know the basics of IFS conceptually. But I'm admittedly a bit hesitant about it since it seems very abstract to me, and I haven't heard much about IFS's success with treating OCD

I'm also autistic and really struggle with visualization since I'm pretty sure I have aphantasia, so a lot of the talk about that in IFS makes me nervous about how this would work for me. I'm not sure if IFS is just very metaphorical and that's why the idea of it trips me up because I'm taking it too literally, or maybe if there's just something about it that's not clicking in my brain (especially with the idea of talking to parts and really personifying them, I just can't imagine how that would really work for me). But I want to give this a shot because I really need something to help with how bad my OCD has been lately, so any perspectives would be so helpful!

Hi there! As the title says, my therapist suggested us possibly trying IFS and I'm curious what the beginning is like/what other's experiences have been starting out?

I'm being treated for paranoid anxiety, PTSD symptoms, and OCD. We're going to be mixing in ERP with it as well, so it's not the only OCD treatment I'll be getting!

I do already kind of think of myself in "parts," in a way. I'm very prone to intellectualizing, and that often results in me getting very frustrated in session and feeling like my emotions and my logical brain are at odds with each other. So part of why I'm open to trying this with her is that I'm hoping it might lead to a way to bridge that gap. Do you guys think IFS might be effective for this?

The title conveys the inner polarization lol.

I've got a part that's very insistent that I listen to it about what I need and put myself first. Stop "powering through" tasks and stop doing things for others that don't feel good or aligned with myself.

I've got another part that's just like "sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do!" It sees this first part as unreasonable and selfish.

Right now the big conflict is over going to a family graduation this weekend. I actually want to go to the graduation itself but it will require a ton of time with my family, who I love but am easily dysregulated by. (They have no idea I get dysregulated around them, we never talk about this stuff.) The "self-protective"/"selfish" part says I should pretend I'm sick. The "self-abandoning"/"responsible" part says it's not going to be that bad, my family is loving and kind albeit dysregulating and sometimes you need to just tough things out. But that feels like abandoning the first part.

I've been miserable all day and unable to get any work done because I'm so stressed about this weekend. :(