IFS Primer
Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems, postulates that we are made of many aspects, or parts. We say ths all the time, part of me wants to sit down and write, part of me wants to drink the day away in some hole in the wall bar. Schwartz believes that there are 3 kinds of parts. As for what a part is, exactly, it might be helpful to think of them as psychic minions, I as do. They are the things that carry their own thoughts and memories, have their own agenda, and feel our emotions. Emotions are “gateways” to parts, so it’s important to pay attention to them. .
Any one part can carry any and all emotions. They are usually formed in childhood. There are 3 types.
One type is the Exiles.
They are very young, hurt, shamed, scorned parts. We don’t much like thinking about them, so we push them into the basement of our subconscious mind. They are the thoughts and memories that make us cringe. They are very vulnerable; once, before injury, they were us at our most free, creative, and optimistic. Then there are protectors. There are two types of protectors.. Manager parts work hard to make sure we look good to the rest of the world. They keep the exiles in the basement, protecting them from the harsh gaze of the outside world. They are very helpful until they become extreme and begin to do damage to our lives. We owe them our gratitude for wanting to help, but need to be aware of when they’ve gone too far.
Finally, we have the firefighters, the second type of protector.
These are our self-destructive parts – the over-indulgers, the impulsive, compulsive behavers. Sex & drugs & rock-n-roll. We call them firefighters because they come out when the managers have failed to do their jobs properly, the house is now on fire, and the exiles are threatening to escape the basement and run screaming into our consciousness.
An example: Janet sits down to write. She’s had an idea for the book she’s working on. But the words aren’t coming. She gets up and gets herself some tea, sits back down to write. It’s just not happening. A voice starts telling her that this whole idea is stupid and she should give it up. Who is she to write a book anyway? Without being terribly aware of either the voice or her actions, Janet goes to her favorite online retailer and spends some money she doesn’t really have.
We can see that Janet has at least one manager here, her inner critic, who is shaming/blaming her for not being a “good writer,” and telling her that she should give up. If we asked it, this manager would probably say it’s trying to help her be happy. If she’s not going to write well, she should just give up and not go through the pain of this pursuit any longer. The problem is, of course, that its methods – harsh criticism – may have worked at some point in Janet’s life, but isn’t really sustainable as a mode of living. The voice only makes Janet feel like shit, doubt herself, and eventually give up the task at hand. When the manager fails to protect Janet (it’s only making things worse), the firefighter part comes in – in this case, Janet’s shopping addiction. It feels good to her to admire then obtain something, even though she knows she’s going to regret adding to her credit card debt.
So where is the exile? We’d have to ask the protector parts to show us who they’re protecting; in other words, when the protector first showed up to do this job for Janet. We might find that the critic showed up very early, when Janet was 4 years old and drew a picture for her grandmother, who said that the picture wasn’t very good because it had no nose (not writing from personal experience here or anything!). That was when Janet realized that others could say hurtful things about the things she made that caused her real pain. At the time, a part of Janet thought, Well, if I criticize myself first, maybe it won’t hurt as much. I didn’t even know it didn’t have a nose; I must be careful next time. Born in that moment were two parts: The young exile who had happily handed the picture to grandma, expecting praise; and the manager, who swore “never again” would Janet be taken off-guard by critical remarks; she would beat them to it.
If we asked the addicted shopper when it first showed up to protect Janet, we might hear a story about how Janet loves online shopping, but has run up her credit card bill, which really pisses off her husband. She’s actually quite ashamed of her inability to stop buying things; but she feels like she deserves nice things and it makes her feel better, briefly. She’s in what Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, calls a “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking” spiral. She might have some managers who try to stop the spiral – a part that shames her and tells her that she’ll never be able to control herself. The worse she feels about spending (triggering old shame-based exiles) the more she seeks to make herself feel better through … spending.
Check out some of my older posts about how to relate to and care for your parts -- and keep an eye out for my online course, Parts Care for Creatives!
