The Session
The first step in the IFS protocol is to locate a target part, usually identifiable by its extremity (i.e., a harsh critic); by its conflict with another part (i.e., a part that feels angry at this harsh criticism); or by its distress (i.e., guilt). Focusing internally opens the patient’s attention to her subjective experience and, where there are psychiatric symptoms, to the vulnerability and conflicts of her parts. Polarized parts can cause an IFS session to move from one part to another. Since the guilty teenage girl we wanted to get to know was polarized with a critical part, this session began with the critic, visualized by Angie as an iron hand gripping her head.
I said, “How do you feel toward the iron hand?”
Angie replied, “I hate it.”
I asked, “ Would the part of you that hates it be willing to settle back and let you help the iron hand?”
Angie thought for a moment and then said, “Okay.”
“Now how do you feel toward it?” I asked.
Angie replied, “Afraid.”
“See if the fearful part would move back, too, and let you handle this,”
I said.
“Okay,” Angie replied.
“And how do you feel now?”
“Angry.”
Schwartz calls this process parts detecting, and it can go on for a long while or be over quickly. The goal is for the patient to express some feeling that falls along the continuum from curiosity to compassion toward the target part. Because relationships are dampened by negative affect (fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, hatred, anger) and cultivated by positive affect (curiosity, interest, concern, compassion, love), the patient is first asked to notice any strong negative feelings toward the target part and then to request that these parts separate, or unblend. Initially Angie hated the iron hand, next she was afraid of it, and then she felt angry. When these parts unblended, Angie felt curious. If she had had a stronger relationship with the target part she might have felt compassion or love. But curiosity was sufficient to reassure this critical part. It softened and complained that it was lonely and tired of protecting Angie. I asked Angie to ask the iron hand who it protected.
It replied, “You.”
I said, “Ask the hand how old it thinks you are.”
The hand replied that Angie was four.
“Now ask how old the hand is”
Angie looked startled and didn’t speak until I prompted her. Then she shook her head, saying, “I’m confused. Now it’s an eight-year-old boy.”
No matter how strange the information coming from inside the patient’s system is, accepting it is the right choice. There are common themes to internal worlds and this interaction with the iron hand-turned-boy captured three: first, the gender of parts is not necessarily linked to the gender of the patient; second, parts are shape-shifters; and, third, the parts involved in psychological trouble tend to be young, often morphing from a metaphoric image to a child, perhaps explaining the commonly child-like cognitions of extreme parts (for example, black and white thinking).
I coached Angie to explain to the boy that she was a grown up and not a four-year-old girl. He was skeptical. To discover why the part was responding this way, I said, “Ask him to look you in the eye and let you know what he sees you feeling toward him” He replied, “ Anxiety” When Angie asked the anxious part to move back, the boy relaxed. She thanked him for protecting the four-year-old and wondered what could be threatening her.
He replied, “That girl”
Cutting to the chase, that girl turned out to be the teenager who wanted to confess what she had done at the age of 13 when her younger brother, Joachim, was dying of cancer. Angie’s mother had always doted on her son and had been angry with her daughter. As the boy grew sicker, the mother’s behavior grew more extreme. One day, out of jealousy, Angie took Joachim by the hand and led him to a neighboring basement, that was reliably inhabited by Billy, a 17-year-old boy who paid Angie to undress. Billy had repeatedly asked her to bring Joachim along and she had always ignored him. Now she anticipated Billy’s look of disgust when he saw Joachim, who was crippled from several inoperable tumors on his spine. She relished her revenge on them both. But instead of looking with revulsion at Joachim, Billy whisked him off to a back room and raped him. Angie stood by paralyzed and, when her brother staggered out, she compounded her mistake by telling him to keep his mouth shut. Joachim stopped speaking altogether and died three months later.
Angie watched the replay of these events, as shown to her by the teenage girl, and wept. When a person is in this witnessing stage of interaction with a part, she may close her eyes or look down or sideways; she often becomes settled and still in the way of an intent observer, or she may feel the grief of (and for) a part. If she says that this level of feeling is ok, the therapist will not intervene.
When the teenager finished her story, I said to Angie, “Ask her what she needs from you.”
“She needs to make amends,” Angie replied. “She wants Joey to forgive her. But I don’t know how that can happen.”
I said, “Ask the part that doesn’t know how this can happen to move back and let you help her.”
Angie took a deep breath.
I continued, “Now ask the girl what she needs”
Angie was quiet for several seconds and then reported, “She’s going to write to Joey but she needs someone to deliver the letter.”
“ Who can do that?” I asked.
Angie hesitated, looking surprised. “ Well, there s this little … cricket standing up on his hind legs. He’s waiting.”
In the letter the girl apologized to her brother, explaining her feelings that day and afterward. She asked his forgiveness. She put the letter in an envelope and handed it to the cricket, who hurried off.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She wants to stay with me now,” Angie said.
“Is that okay?” I asked.
“Yes”
“Is she ready to leave that time?”
“Yes”
So the teenage girl moved out of the past. Her exit was followed in this session by a last, ceremonial step signifying change which Schwartz calls unburdening. I asked if the teenage girl was ready to let go of the beliefs and feelings she had been carrying from that experience. She was. I asked Angie to have the girl find them on or in her body.
“They’re like knots of wood all over her” Angie reported.
The girl took the knots out of her body and burned them. Angie signaled me when she was done.
“How is she now?” I asked.
“She feels light” Angie said.
Before ending the session, we checked with the two protective parts, the boy and suicide voice. Angie reported that the boy was feeling better but would keep his job for now. Since he protects the little girl, I said, maybe he’d like us to come back and help her? He was eager for Angie to do this as soon as possible.
Next we checked with the suicide voice, which had fallen silent. That day it refused to talk, but the next week it appeared to Angie for the first time in human form, morphing among multiple ages. The part explained that she had shielded Angie throughout her life from the little girl’s feelings of worthlessness. If Angie could take care of the little girl, then she would be glad to give up the job. Meanwhile, the part agreed to stop advocating suicide and see what Angie could do. As a postscript, Angie did take care of the little girl by witnessing her experience so that she could unburden, and the suicidal thoughts did not return.
Session Overview
Following the feelings, motivations, and interactions among the parts can be complex. I will track the dynamics of this session first by feelings and then by motivation. Angie’s baseline feeling was a continual, undifferentiated state of self-blame that, as she developed a measure of self-compassion, differentiated into the feelings held by particular parts: shame on the one hand, intense guilt over a specific transgression on the other. Once Angie had regulated the behavior of the shaming protector enough to hear from a part that felt guilt, and had then helped that part to resolve her guilt by offering a repair, Angie became attuned to her early experience of being chronically shamed by her mother, and she set an intention to help that youngest part with her burden of historical shame.
Now tracking the session by motivation, a protective part (the boy) tried to keep the shame and emotional pain of a vulnerable part (the little girl) from being activated by the confession of another vulnerable part (the teenage girl) because the little girl’s shame and suffering would provoke death threats from another protector (the suicide voice). That is, the boy feared that the confession of the teenager would stir the shame of the little girl, which in turn would activate the suicide part. Since his job was to keep the little girl alive, the boy felt compelled to block and suppress the voice of the guilty teenager. His tool was shame.