Modelling Internal Family Systems Therapy

Modelled & Simplified for NLP Master Practitioner Use by Richard Bolstad

IFS is an example of a therapeutic model that has explored collective trauma healing. Associate Professors of Psychiatry, Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy, in their book Internal Family Systems Therapy, apply the principles developed by family therapists such as Virginia Satir, to encourage clients to communicate with their internal “parts” respectfully. Their model has obvious parallels with NLP in general, and with both Mental Space Psychology and Connirae Andreas’ Wholeness Process in particular. I believe that an NLP Master Practitioner, especially one familiar with Wholeness Process, would have the skills and presence to effectively use this process in an NLP compatible way.

Schwartz explains “In the early days of developing IFS, I (RS) noticed strong parallels between my clients’ inner systems and the outer systems in which they were embedded, including systems that were larger than the family. Like trauma survivors, countries that have been attacked carry certain beliefs about danger and are at risk of depending on extremely protective parts who remain frozen in the past and overreact to potential threats. For example, following 9/11, then Vice President Dick Cheney said, “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response” (Suskind, 2006, p. 62).” (Schwartz and Sweezy, p. 240-252)

IFS maintains that whole communities can be understood as having internal parts, like the individual person. These parts include “Exiles” (people whose experience has been rejected and denied by the community, and who carry the memory of the pain that the community created, “Managers” (people who try to focus the community on achievements and on making most people feel OK about the situation, preventing the pain of exiles from being noticed), and “Firefighters” (people who try to cope with the emergencies generated by the suppressed pain, and may in fact become quite aggressive about that, either suppressing it, distracting from it, or demanding that someone be punished for it etc.). In contrast to these parts, the aspect of a community that corresponds to what IFS would call “Self” in an individual, responds compassionately and calmly as it works to create a better future.

Schwartz focuses especially on United States culture: “Like many trauma survivors, such national leaders take a rigid, authoritarian approach. They disdain the system’s weak, vulnerable elements, provoke others both within and outside of the system, and use the conflicts they generate to further justify their hegemony.” He suggests that in USA, a large percentage of the population is treated like what he calls “exiled parts” of a person, rejected by the person’s internal “management”: “The American legacy burdens of racism, patriarchy, individualism, and materialism imbue protectors with this kind of contempt. As a result the United States not only exiles a greater percentage of its population than any other Western nation, it has less compassion and more contempt for its exiled populations, which, in turn, are at high risk of self-contempt. This is completely parallel to the inner systems of abuse survivors, whose managers hate vulnerability and whose vulnerable parts believe they deserve abuse.” (Schwartz and Sweezy, p. 240-252). I agree with Schwartz that racism, patriarchy, individualism and materialism are legacy burdens of western culture. They take us away from our natural humanity. Of course, there are other obvious legacy burdens in our culture, and one of the most dramatic to me, missed out by most social theorists and psychotherapists, is rejection or fear of the human body. This is a characteristic that makes our modern civilization quite unique, and its origin in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition surely makes it almost invisible to us. In nature it is odd indeed for a species to be ashamed of its own body, to be afraid of its own physical desires, and to believe that only by denying and even punishing it’s own body can one be truly happy.

Richard Schwartz’ vision is of a renewed world. “What would the United States look like if we could unload our legacy burdens and have more Self-leadership? Our eyes and hearts would open to exiles and the destruction we are inflicting on the planet. This awakening would expedite our efforts to reverse climate change, economic inequity, and discrimination. We would offer treatment rather than punishment for destructive firefighters [by “Firefighters” he refers to people coping with immediate crises; in IFS this term could also refer to “parts” of people that are set up to cope with immediate crises], as they have done in Portugal with drug users. We would stop attacking firefighter activities, which are the result of exiling so many people nationally and globally, and would listen instead to their voices. We would value relationships over material possessions and power.  Our decreased avarice and Self-led foreign relations would reduce the number of our enemies globally. We would be less attracted to demagogues who appear strong but are cruel and full of empty promises.”

IFS has some supportive research about its use. After 16 hours of IFS therapy, only one of 13 people with PTSD diagnosis still had the diagnosis. A controlled study of treatment of depression, using a similar time frame, “provided preliminary evidence for the efficacy of IFS in the treatment of  depressive symptoms”. After a successful controlled study of long term (9 month) IFS use with people suffering rheumatoid arthritis, improvement was so dramatic that IFS was posted on the US Government National Registry  for Evidence- Based Programs and Practices. (Schwartz and Sweezy, p. 255-256).

In the following script I edited out the belief, in IFS as in most non-NLP therapies, that parts of a person, once created, are usually there forever. I use the word “part” to refer to a neural network which functions, at least some times, autonomously in a way that contradicts my conscious intentions. I don’t think it is necessary to have such unconscious and undesired behavioural responses, and I don’t think it helps to presuppose that such “parts” will continue to exist forever, and especially that one should check in on them to see how they are doing after therapy. I believe, as is common in the NLP field, that this approach installs inner conflict. That said, there are many different ways of working with parts in NLP, and IFS certainly has the appearance of an NLP parts process, especially when you watch Dr Schwartz elegantly guiding someone through it.

There are a couple of things that IFS provides that NLP in general often misses. One is the ability to understand the wider social background of what is happening to us. NLP is strongly built on the idea that each person is autonomous and able to change individually. Sometimes that is actually counterproductive (I’ve had NLP Trainers on Facebook tell me, for example, that if millions of people in India die from Covid, that’s because they are not aligned inside, and there’s no reason the west should help them). Secondly there are some nice distinctions about working with clients who are resistant: if a client has anything other than a compassionate attitude towards their part that you are working with, then you are actually talking to an opposed part of the person, not to the person themself. In that case it’s more effective sometimes that the therapist talk directly to the part, as it may feel unsafe for it being a client of a hostile part. Also, there is the idea that parts are not just equal parts “in conflict” but usually have a specific kind of relationship: an “Exile part” emerges first coping with traumatic experience, and Protector parts then emerge to try and keep that pain out of consciousness. It’s a little scary that sometimes NLP Practitioners work with Protector parts to more effectively suppress Exiled parts (e.g. helping someone who has real life challenges due to racism or sexism in a relationship, to “grin and bear it” by being increasingly resourceful and overriding their own experiences; helping someone who is a workaholic to keep pushing themselves, to avoid facing the part that once felt it would not be loved if it didn’t get highest scores at school).

Simplified IFS Process

Reveal the Internal Part/s

  1. Identify a part that does something you find stops you being fully yourself (e.g. a rescuing part, a revengeful part, a guilty or ashamed part). Don’t think of it as “a part”? – that’s OK, just play along. Where is it in your body?
  2. How do you feel towards it? (note this information for choices later. If the person feels anything non-compassionate to the part, this suggests that you are not speaking to “the whole person” but to another protector part)
  3. What is it trying to do for you? (not your theory). If the part seems resistant, the therapist may take over directly interviewing the part.
  4. Reassure the part that you will treat it with compassion, respect, and presence, and want to understand what it needs. Once you understand its intention, always refer to the part as the “[positive intention] part” rather than the “[negative behavior] part”.
  5. Identify its age, either by asking what is the first event that it remembers, or asking how old it thinks the person is.

Guide Transformation of Parts

  1. Have the person tell the part their responses to its attempts to help, and acknowledge/thank it.
  2. Managing multiple parts: There may be several parts, especially an exiled part (a part that is traumatized, that other parts try to keep out of awareness), a manager part (a part that keeps the person safe from the emotions of the exile), and a firefighter part (a part that tries to handle emergencies by calming or distracting the exile). The two types of protector (manager and firefighter) may be in conflict about how to cope with the exile. Once a protector part is identified, and its intention understood, ask its permission to allow the person as a whole (or the therapist) to communicate with and “unburden” the exile. “Unburden” the exiled part before moving to unburden the protector parts. Unburdening may involve any of steps 3-9 below:
  3. May help the part grow up, or grow up its image of the self.
  4. May ask it to let the whole self take over its role now, with more choices: dissolve it into self. Reassure it that it can retake control if this doesn’t seem to be working well.
  5. May invite a part to revisit a traumatic situation and imagine saying what it was unable to say, being what it was unable to be.
  6. May invite it to unburden its emotion or burden to air, earth, fire, or water (make sure it has understood these emotions are no longer needed to reach its intention).
  7. May ask it to invite into itself new emotional qualities from a more resourceful time in life.
  8. If it seems to be reluctant, you may need to negotiate a deal, even a temporary deal (Would you be willing to …) or may need to find the part that it is concerned about and is protecting the person from (this is a little like Connirae Andreas’ Wholeness process).
  9. Check if it comes up: What amount of this part’s action is yours and what amount is a “legacy burden” you inherited from family or culture? Check that it understands now that the time has changed since the legacy began, and it’s OK to let that go.

Complete

  1. Post-test: How do you feel when you think of the issue now, and when you imagine future situations that might have been a challenge in the past?
  2. Set the task to check inside daily over the next week and discover what it feels like to be responding from a more integrated state of being.

Modelled from videos available from https://ifs-institute.com/ , and from Schwartz, R. C. & Sweezy, M., 2019, “Internal Family Systems Therapy. 2nd Edition” New York: Guilford Press