James Fitzgerald Therapy PLLC

Self Therapy by Jay Earley

Chapter 2: Your Internal System – Summary of the IFS Model

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This chapter introduces you to the IFS model, developed by psychologist Richard Schwartz, and gives a quick overview of how it works. As mentioned in Chapter 1, IFS sees the human psyche as divided into subpersonalities, or parts.

The concept of parts in IFS corresponds to ideas from other forms of psychotherapy—for example, defenses, psychic forces, self-images, introjects, and schemas. However, these concepts are normally seen as just mechanical or biological descriptions of how the psyche operates. Parts, or subpersonalities, may operate in similar ways, but they are alive and personal. They do what they do for reasons of their own, and they have relationships with you and with each other. For example, suppose you are using the defense of repression, which makes a certain memory unconscious. IFS recognizes that a protective part is purposely excluding that memory from your awareness for a reason. Perhaps it is afraid that the memory would cause you to be overwhelmed by pain.

Parts are entities of their own, with their own feelings, beliefs, motivations, and memories. It is especially important to understand that parts have motivations for everything they do. Nothing is just done out of habit. Nothing is just a pattern of thinking or behavior you learned. Everything (except for purely physiological reactions) is done by a part for a reason, even though that reason may be unconscious. For example, if you get distracted at a certain point while exploring yourself in therapy, this is probably not an accident. A part wants to distract you because it is seeking to avoid something.

Understanding the psyche in this way gives you a great deal of power to change your inner world for the better. Since parts are like little people inside you, you can make contact with them, get to know them, negotiate with them, encourage them to trust you, help them communicate with each other, and give them what they need to heal. When you do, you will have an enormously increased capacity for understanding and transforming your psyche—for achieving wholeness.

You may treat the idea of subpersonalities as simply a useful metaphor for viewing the psyche, which it is, but it is much more than that. If you treat the components of your psyche as real entities that you can interact with, they will respond to you in that way, which gives you tremendous power for transformation. Are they actually real? I believe so, but I invite you to read this book, do the exercises, and make up your own mind.

IFS is the latest in a long line of therapy methods that work with subpersonalities. Early methods were Jungian analysis, Psychosynthesis, Transactional Analysis, and Gestalt therapy. More recent approaches are hypnotherapy, inner child work, Voice Dialogue, Ego State Therapy, John Rowan’s work, and others. IFS is the latest and most sophisticated of these methods. And many forms of therapy that don’t explicitly work with subpersonalities nevertheless use concepts that are quite similar, such as “schemas” in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

IFS represents an advance over these other methods in a number of ways. It recognizes the power and importance of the Self and bases the therapy on relating to your parts from Self. The IFS method takes you deep inside yourself while still remaining alert and in charge during a session. It doesn’t just work with parts in isolation; it has a sophisticated understanding of the relationships between parts that guides the therapy method. As you will see, the most important relationship is between those parts that protect us from pain and those child parts that are in pain. The problems that occur within the human psyche are largely structured around the need to protect ourselves from pain. Since the IFS approach is organized around this, we can have respectful sensitivity to our pain and defenses while pinpointing our work with laser-like efficiency.

Each part has a role to play in your life; it brings a quality to your psyche and your actions in the world. Each tries to advance your interests in some way (even if sometimes it has the opposite effect). Some parts govern the way you handle practical tasks in your life. Some protect against external threats or internal pain. Some are open and friendly with people. Others hold unresolved fear or shame from your childhood. Some are performers; others solitary thinkers. Some care for people, while others affect the way you feel about yourself. And so on.

Many parts perform roles that are healthy and functional. They make sure your life works well. They may help you connect with people or get work done. They may help you assert yourself or comprehend the world. Many parts have positive qualities that enhance your inner experience and external life, and allow you to cope with difficulties that come your way. They may manifest charisma or humor. They may bring you creativity, aliveness, joy, or peace.

Other parts, however, have taken on more extreme roles in a desperate attempt to protect you from pain, vulnerability, or harm. In IFS, an extreme role amounts to any action, feeling or thought that is dysfunctional. Quite simply, a part playing an extreme role causes problems in your life; it hampers it at best and cripples it at worst. It can act in ways that are self-defeating or create conflicts with people. It can cause you to have distorted perceptions, inaccurate beliefs, or obsessive thought patterns. It can flood you with pain or body tension—anything that cuts you off from the richness of life.

Many extreme parts protect you even when it isn’t necessary, thereby causing you to act in abrasive ways that offend people or distance you from them. Some overdo it by pushing you to be perfect in all things, like a demanding parent. Others distort your perceptions of people or situations so that you believe they are threatening, causing you to act defensively or controlling and overbearing. Some parts have intense emotional reactions, while others close you off to all feelings.

Many parts play roles that are a mix of healthy and extreme. Their normally healthy approach turns extreme at certain times. For instance, I have a part that handles the details of my life with clear organization and efficiency. That’s fine. It isn’t fine is when it does this in a mechanical, driven way that takes the joy and presence out of my life. I don’t want to sacrifice aliveness just to get things done.

IFS focuses on parts that play extreme roles in order to heal and transform them, which is what you will learn to do in this book. There are two kinds of extreme parts—protectors and exiles.

The job of protectors is to protect you from feeling pain. IFS distinguishes between two types of protectors—proactive aggressive/passive managers and reactive aggressive/passive firefighters—but there isn’t space to go into that distinction in this book. They try to arrange your life and your psyche so that you are always in a kind of comfort zone and you never feel hurt, shame, or fear. They attempt to protect you from hurtful incidents or distressing relationships in your current life that could bring up buried pain from childhood. Since this can be intense, protectors are keen on preventing it from being activated. Some protectors block off pain that is arising inside you so that you can’t feel it at all. Others try to arrange your external world so that nothing happens to trigger pain in the first place. And some do both. Protectors are the parts you usually encounter first when exploring yourself because they are most accessible to everyday consciousness.

Even though protectors are ostensibly focused on your current life, most of them are strongly influenced by events and relationships from your childhood. There is a residual fear of events from long ago that involve abandonment, betrayal, judgment, or abuse. Protectors don’t realize that you aren’t a child anymore. They don’t realize that you have many more strengths and resources now, and you usually aren’t in danger as you were in the past. They try to avoid any situation that is similar to what you experienced as a child.

Protectors employ a wide variety of strategies. I have a part that closes off my emotions by being extremely intellectual. Another part of me hardens my heart in order to forestall vulnerability and heartache. Some people’s parts go into denial and pretend that everything in their life is all right when it isn’t. You might have a part that projects your feelings onto other people so you don’t have to face them in yourself. In standard psychological language, these protectors are called “defenses.”

Some protectors distract you from pain. Some people drink to drown out pain; others go shopping or work excessively. Any form of addiction can be used in this way, as long as it anesthetizes you. For example, many of us have protectors who eat to ward off pain. When we are rejected, judged, or ignored, a protector pops up and heads for the refrigerator. It wants to divert our attention from the pain through the pleasure of food. It wants to soothe us and fill us up to make us feel better about ourselves.

Some protectors criticize you and control you to try to make you into a “good boy or girl,” or they may push you to be productive and successful so no one can have reason to judge you. The infamous “inner critic” does this. In Chapter 1, we saw that Sandy has a Pushy Part that criticizes her to get her to work hard and avoid procrastination. It is trying to prevent her from being ridiculed the way she was as a child.

Some protectors help you be successful or popular to build up your confidence and self-esteem. They see a hole deep inside you where you feel deficient, and they want to compensate for it with accolades from others. Some try to make you into a loveable person so people will like you; that way they won’t hurt or abandon you. Others attempt to arrange your life so all of your needs are filled, which wards off an inner emptiness.

Darlene has a protector that religiously looks after the needs of other people at the expense of her own. It believes that the most important thing in life is making sure that other people are comfortable and feel good about themselves. The problem is that she neglects herself. As a child, Darlene didn’t get the love and nurturing she needed from her mother because her mother was often upset and depressed. As a result, Darlene felt empty and needy. However, she put aside her feelings and did her best to make her mother feel better. Darlene had a good heart and couldn’t bear to see her mother suffer, so she worked tirelessly to nurture her and take care of her. She reversed roles with her; she became the caretaker and her mother the child. But little girls need a mother. Who was there to take care of Darlene? The only time she received love from her mother was when she was caring for her. So Darlene’s protector learned that the way to get love was to give and give. Now, in Darlene’s adult life, this part propels her to tirelessly take care of others in an attempt to get some love to fill her inner emptiness.

As we have seen, parts play a wide variety of protective roles. Some try to control every situation to ward off unpredictable threats. Some rebel against authority in order to preserve our autonomy and keep us from being dominated by others. Some try to please other people so they can win their approval. Others are charismatic performers whose job is to obtain admiration from people. Some are self-effacing and quiet to avoid being judged. You might have a protector that avoids intimacy for fear of being engulfed or abused by someone close to you. You might have an angry protector that makes sure you don’t accept blame for problems. Or one that deadens your feelings so you’re not vulnerable to the slings and arrows of the world. The list goes on and on.

Exercise: Learning about Protectors
Think about two of your protectors. For each one, write out answers to the following questions:
• What is its role in helping you manage your life and interact with the world?
• How does it relate to other people?
• How does it protect you from pain?
• What is its positive intent for you?
• What is it trying to protect you from?

You may not have answers to all these questions. As you read further, however, you will learn much more about how to understand your protectors. This is just a beginning step. Keep these notes and add to them later.

Exiles are young child parts that are in pain from the past. While protectors try to keep us from feeling pain, exiles are the parts in pain. They are the ones the protectors are trying to protect us from.

Exiles are often stuck at a particular time in childhood, at a specific age. They are literally two years old, or five or seven, and they exist in a situation from that time in your life. They are frozen at that time because something difficult or traumatic happened then, and you didn’t have the inner resources or the external support to handle it. Therefore, it was overwhelming for you and the fallout couldn’t be processed and metabolized. There will be an exile (perhaps more than one) that experienced this painful event and is stuck there.

Let’s look at a traumatic example. Lisa has an exile that is stuck at age three. One day, her father went out of control and hit her repeatedly, which was terrifying and overwhelming for a three year old. And she didn’t have a strong enough connection with her mother that she could go to her for help. In fact, there was no one she could turn to for support and understanding. So the incident couldn’t be processed, and the part of Lisa that experienced that abuse was frozen at the point in time when she felt frightened and powerless. When Lisa contacts that exile, it looks like a three year old and feels terrified in just the way that a toddler does. It curls up in a ball and moans for someone to help it.

Exiles aren’t always stuck at a single place. There can be a series of childhood incidents, even a situation that went on for a number of years or all through your childhood. For example, Sam has an exile that is stuck in his relationship with his mother. Throughout his early years she was indifferent to his needs, and this exile constantly felt needy and unloved. There was no single incident. This exile took on pain from Sam’s entire relationship with his mother.

Exiles often take on the beliefs or the feeling tone of your family. If your family life was chaotic, you will probably have an exile that feels jumbled inside. If your family treated each other with cold silence most of the time, you may have an exile that feels as though it lives in the Arctic. Exiles can also be affected strongly by incidents that were beyond your family’s control. Perhaps you were caught in a war zone and went through traumatic and violent events. Or you had an illness that kept you bedridden and in pain for months. Maybe your mother had surgery that took her away from you at a crucial time. Perhaps your family was stuck in poverty, or you were deeply affected by prejudice.

Whatever the cause, exiles can exhibit a wide variety of painful emotions. Some feel lonely and abandoned, others abused or betrayed. Others feel ashamed of themselves because of something they did or because of what they believe is an intrinsic flaw. Some are afraid of being intruded upon or taken over by others. Many feel desperate for the nurturing and love they didn’t receive when they were young. Some feel that their very survival is at stake and are terrified of dying. Some feel powerless and under other people’s control.

In addition to painful emotions, exiles have negative beliefs about you and about the world. You might have one that believes you are intrinsically unlovable and no one will want to be close to you. You might have an exile that believes it is responsible for your mother’s pain, as Darlene does. Some exiles believe they are inadequate and therefore can’t be successful at anything they try. There are exiles who believe that the world is intrinsically dangerous. These are global viewpoints that cannot be pierced by logic. Because exiles hold pain from your past, they are pushed away by protectors.

They are exiled from your inner life and kept in dark dungeons away from the light of consciousness. An exile is usually caught in its own little world and is unaware that you have grown up and developed the capacity to take care of yourself, make friends, be independent, and perhaps start your own family. All it is aware of is a certain painful situation from your early life. Whenever something happens in the present that is similar, it reactivates that pain, which comes bubbling up toward the surface. Then your protectors go into high gear to prevent you from having to feel it.

For example, let’s say you worked hard in math in the fifth grade. You rushed home with a B+, which was better than anything you had achieved before. You thought for sure that your father would congratulate you for your achievement. You stood in front of him, full of hope for applause and approval, as he read the paper. Instead, he crumbled up the report card and threw it at the wall, then yelled at you for falling short. He told you that he never stooped to a B in math when he was in school and he can’t believe you’re his child sometimes. His words were no less than a knife through the heart. You were standing there, but you wished you could disappear. This incident caused one of your exiles to feel worthless; it ended up believing that no matter what you do, you aren’t good enough.

Now you are an adult performing well in your job, and your boss calls you into his office. He tells you that a proposal you wrote wasn’t done properly, explains why, and asks you to rewrite it. He isn’t particularly judgmental, mostly matter of fact. He just wants you to redo the proposal. However, that worthless-feeling exile is still there, hidden away in your unconscious, and it gets triggered by your boss. It perceives him as being harshly critical of you, and its worthlessness start to come up. That old feeling of never being good enough starts to arise. However, before you are even consciously aware of this, a protector takes over to prevent you from feeling that excruciating pain. There are many possibilities for what such a protector might do. One protector might get furious at your boss to distract you from the pain and to put the blame on him. Another protector might go out of your way to please your boss so he will like you and give you praise in the future. A third protector might cause you to go home and have a few drinks to dull the pain. All of these are in service of protecting you from that old humiliation that is emerging.

Another common occurrence: You have an exile who was harmed in the past—for example, physically abused by your brother, who was a bully. Whenever you are in a similar kind of danger, the fear of that exile will be triggered, and a protector will step in to protect you from being harmed again, even if there is no real danger now. For example, your husband comes home one night annoyed because traffic made him miss the beginning of Monday Night Football. He stomps around the house in a cranky mood. This triggers the fear of the exile that was beaten up by your brother. Even if your husband is only mildly angry and it isn’t aimed at you, a protector might step in and cause you to immediately withdraw from him. Your husband has no idea why you are pulling away, and incidents like this create distance in the marriage. Exiles aren’t always kept hidden. Sometimes they take over our consciousness despite the protectors. Then we may feel sadness, fear, shame, insecurity, or need, like a child.

Exercise: Learning about Exiles
Think about two of your exiles. For each one, please write out the answers to the following questions:
• What emotions does it feel?
• What pain does it carry?
• What is it afraid of?
• What negative beliefs does it have?
• What situation or relationship is it stuck in from childhood?
• What current situations tend to trigger it?
• What protectors come up when that happens?

It is fine if you don’t have answers to all these questions yet.

Fortunately, human beings are not simply a collection of parts. We are so much more than that. Our true Self is mature and loving, and has the capacity to heal and integrate our parts.

In the early days of the development of IFS, Richard Schwartz was learning the model through feedback from his therapy clients. He had learned about parts, and when he worked with a client, he would often ask a protector to step aside so they could go deeper with a piece of work. Then another protector would emerge, and he would help the client to get that one to relax, too. This would continue until eventually a different kind of presence would emerge. Dick would ask his clients what part that was, and they would say, “Well, it’s not a part exactly. It has a different quality to it. It doesn’t feel like all my other parts.” Then he would say, “Well, if it’s not a part, what is it?” And they would answer, “Well, I don’t know, it’s just me. It’s who I really am.” When the clients expanded on what they meant, they would usually say something like, “When my parts have all stepped aside, what is left is me.” And once this “me” was accessed, the therapy would flow effortlessly because now the person’s energy was freed up. It felt like a surfer who was in “the zone,” catching a wave and riding it smoothly and easily.

And so Dick learned about the Self. This was wonderfully transformative, and a deeper level of the power of IFS was unleashed. We all have a core part of us that is our true self, our spiritual center. When our extreme parts are not activated and in the way, this is who we are. The Self is relaxed, open, and accepting of yourself and others. When you are in Self, you are grounded, centered, and non-reactive. You don’t get triggered by what people do. You remain calm and unruffled, even in difficult circumstances. The Self is so much larger and more spacious than our parts and is not frightened by events that would scare them. The Self has the strength and clarity to function well in the world and connect with other people. When you are in Self, you come from a depth of compassion, enabling you to be loving and caring toward others as well as yourself and your parts. The Self is like the sun—it just shines.

The Self is connected to the deeper ground of being that spiritual teachings speak of, sometimes called God. It has access to a kind of higher wisdom and understanding that can guide you in dealing with the larger questions of life. It allows you to be fully present and embodied in each moment with aliveness and depth. It is an inexhaustible fountain of love. Most of us have had glimpses of the Self, experiences that give us an idea of what is possible. However, our extreme parts are frequently so prevalent that they obscure it. When a part is strongly triggered, it tends to take over and push out the Self. We identify with the part, feeling as if we have become it, and have little or no access to the wondrous qualities of the Self.

To return to an earlier example, when your husband comes home from work in a cranky mood, a part of you gets triggered and takes over, and you withdraw from him. Your normal ability to be caring and reasonable, which comes from your Self, isn’t available at that moment. Most of us have at least a few parts activated much of the time, so we rarely have full access to Self. We may feel some openness and compassion, or other Self qualities, but not the complete depth and scope of the Self.

Much can be said about the Self, but for our purposes, the most important thing is that it is the agent of psychological healing in IFS. It is, by nature, compassionate and curious about our parts. The Self wants to connect with each part and get to know it and heal it.

The IFS concept of the Self has a counterpart in Voice Dialogue, Jungian analysis, and Psychosynthesis. However, it doesn’t seem to exist in most other forms of therapy. Even methods that use the term “self” are usually referring to something different. On the other hand, many spiritual traditions do have an understanding that is similar to the IFS Self, called by a variety of names—for example, Essence, Source, Buddha Nature, Atman, and Inner Light.

Let’s look at four qualities of the Self that are particularly important for psychological healing. When you are in Self, you will naturally embody these qualities.

1. The Self is connected. When you are in Self, you naturally feel close to other people and want to relate in harmonious, supportive ways. You are drawn to make contact with them, to be in community. The Self also wants to be connected to your parts. When you are in Self, you are interested in having a relationship with each of your parts, which helps them to trust you, opening the way for healing.

2. The Self is curious. When you are in Self, you are curious about other people in an open, accepting way. When you inquire into what makes them tick, it’s because you want to understand them, not judge them. The Self is also curious about the inner workings of your mind. You want to understand why each part acts as it does, what its positive intent is for you, and what it is trying to protect you from. This curiosity comes from an accepting place, not a critical one. When parts sense this genuine interest, they know they are entering a welcoming environment, and they aren’t afraid to reveal themselves to you.

3. The Self is compassionate. Compassion is a form of kindness and love that arises when people are in pain. You genuinely care about how they feel and want to support them through difficult times. When you are in Self, you naturally feel compassion for others as well as yourself. Your extreme parts are reacting to pain; exiles feel it, and protectors try to avoid it. So compassion is really needed to hold, support, and nurture you while you take on very difficult material. When you are in Self, you care about the pain of your exiles and feel compassion for your protectors, which are driven to wall off your misery. Parts can sense the compassion of the Self, which makes them feel safe and cared for, so they want to open up and share themselves with you.

4. The Self is calm, centered, and grounded. This is especially helpful when you are relating to a part that has intense emotions. Intense grief or shame, for example, can be overwhelming if you aren’t grounded in Self, and protectors will avoid a part that has emotions like this at all costs. But when you are centered in the calmness of Self, there is no need to avoid a part with intense affect. You remain in Self while the part shows you its pain. The calmness of Self supports you through the difficult work of witnessing and healing this part.

For all these reasons, the Self is the agent of psychological healing in IFS work. It helps you to heal and transform your parts so they become free of their extreme feelings and behavior, and can assume healthy roles in your life.

The Self is also the natural leader of your internal system. It has the courage to take risks, the perspective to see reality clearly, the creativity to find good solutions to problems. The Self is balanced and fair, and sees what needs to happen in most situations. When you have healed your parts and they trust you, they finally allow the Self to lead. Ideally the Self is the one who makes decisions and takes action. It works together with your healthy parts and the parts that have been healed through therapy. Parts provide a lot. They offer you the capacities and insights you need in any particular situation—spontaneity, humor, organization, perseverance, for example. But on their own, they lack a larger sense of direction.

The Self provides that. The Self is the conductor of the orchestra, the one who brings in the woodwinds at the right time, tells the musicians when to play softly, cues the horn solo. It chooses the best course of action in each moment and calls on your healthy parts to contribute their gifts. Your parts trust the Self and count on it for wisdom.

This is the ideal situation, and it’s how your psyche tends to operate after IFS therapy. However, most of us don’t start here. Because of pain and trauma in our lives, and especially in childhood, our parts have taken over and shoved the Self into the background. When you were wounded at a young age, your Self wasn’t developed enough to handle what life threw at you. You probably felt weak and vulnerable, completely defenseless, unable to grapple with the situation on your own. Your parts felt that no one was minding the store, so they had to protect you at all costs. They took over and did their best.

Being primitive and immature, your parts had to protect you in extreme ways because that was all they were capable of. You didn’t have the experience and the inner resources of an adult, so your parts had to do what they could—shut you down completely, throw a tantrum, become overly pleasing—whatever seemed to work. In this way the Self got eclipsed, to a greater or lesser extent, and you have lived a life influenced or dominated by your extreme parts. But now that you are a resourceful adult living in a better situation, those extremes reactions are no longer needed. Through IFS therapy, you can learn to access your Self, heal those parts, and transform your internal system. There are two goals for IFS therapy: one, heal your parts so that their extreme roles are converted to healthy roles, and two, help them to cooperate with each other under the leadership of the Self.

The illustration in the book shows the structure of an internal system before therapy. The exiles are hidden behind a curtain so you won’t feel their pain.
The protectors have taken over leadership from the Self and determine your feelings and actions. They don’t trust the Self and therefore push it
into the background, where it can’t lead.

Let’s now look at the IFS process of psychological healing. The most important aspect of this is learning how to stay in Self. IFS has many effective ways of doing this, which are covered in this book.

You begin a session by choosing a part to focus on, usually a protector.

For example, let’s look at Bill, whom we met in Chapter 1. He has a protector that is judgmental and competitive. This is distressing because these qualities are contrary to his better values. He believes in being cooperative, accepting, and inclusive. To some extent he is, but any time he is threatened or pushed to his limits, his judgmental protector crops up to take control. Often he is able to hide his judgments, but sometimes they leak out and offend people because he seems critical and harsh. At work, this behavior causes a great deal of dissension and hostility, which Bill genuinely hates, even though he is often the one causing it. Bill also wants a close and affectionate relationship with his wife, but this same protector can be derisive and mocking with her. The atmosphere in their home is not harmonious, and that is the one thing he most wants.

Bill started out his IFS work with me by focusing on this particular protector because it was clearly the most disruptive. He called it, aptly, “the Judge.” It wasn’t easy for Bill to even approach working with the Judge because he was disgusted with it for not living up to his ideals. I knew that he wasn’t in Self when he was disparaging of the Judge because the Self is never disgusted. This could only be another protector passing judgment on the Judge!

With some work, Bill was able to access Self, which allowed him to be genuinely interested in getting to know the Judge. Bill had grown up in a judgmental, competitive home, so The Judge modeled itself after his parents. It puts people down and acts superior to them to compensate for another part of him that feels worthless and scared. As Bill got to know the Judge, he understood why it acted as it did, and he came to appreciate its efforts on his behalf, even though they led to problems.

He asked the Judge for permission to work with the exile who felt worthless, which he called Little Billy. Getting to know this child proved invaluable. Little Billy showed him childhood scenes when he was hit by his impatient father for not doing a task perfectly or for not grasping a homework assignment quickly enough. Up until then, Little Billy had been hidden away in Bill’s unconscious. Being locked in the basement of the psyche only increased Little Billy’s feelings of worthlessness because he felt rejected by Bill.

As a result of childhood incidents, our exiles take on pain and negative beliefs, which, in IFS, are called burdens. Little Billy had taken on the burdens of worthlessness and fear. Burdens are not intrinsic to the part; they “land on” the part as a result of what happened in the past. The good news is that they can be released through IFS therapy.

Bill responded to Billy with compassion and caring from Self, and the part took this in, feeling cherished and valuable for the first time. With love from Bill’s Self and with my direction, Little Billy took additional steps to release the burdens he had been carrying. He transformed into the healthy part he truly is, feeling adequate and competent for the first time, and also safe from harm. This allowed him to be playful, loose, and free as well.

The transformation went even further. Bill’s judgmental protector could now relax since there was nothing to protect. It no longer needed to criticize people to compensate for Billy’s pain. It let go of its protective role of judging people and took on a new role as a kindly supporter and mentor for people. This enabled Bill to respond to people in the way he had always wanted, with openness and acceptance and a cooperative attitude. As a result, he became much more effective at work, and his fights with his wife decreased dramatically.

This description of the IFS process has been simplified for the sake of this introduction. There are, of course, many other difficulties and complexities that will be covered in the rest of the book. Though some of the steps in the IFS process are similar to procedures in other forms of therapy or spiritual work, IFS brings them together in a comprehensive process that is unique.

The illustration below (displayed in the book) shows how the psyche transforms as a result of IFS therapy. All parts are now cooperating under the leadership of the Self. (The parts will also be transformed so they are performing healthier roles, but that isn’t shown in the illustration.)

In these first two chapters, you have been introduced to the IFS Model and learned about protectors, exiles, and the Self. You have seen something about how the IFS approach works to heal and transform parts and help them to cooperate in your best interests.

In the rest of the book, I teach a step-by-step procedure for doing IFS sessions. I also show how to work with parts in the moment when they become activated by the events of your life. Part I describes how to get to know a protector, which includes how to stay in Self. Part II explains the steps for getting to know an exile and releasing it from its burdens. Each chapter teaches one step in the overall process and includes exercises for practicing that step on your own or with a partner. The steps are illustrated with stories of people’s IFS work and transcripts of IFS sessions. Some of the chapters also show how to work with parts in real time in your life. I invite you to dig in and begin this great adventure of self-healing. Prepare to eliminate the pain you have lived with and lift yourself from the stuck places in your psyche. Now is the time to discover its riches.