Recent Happenings
Those of you who have worked with me know that I have always had a strong value for learning and seeking new ways to work with clients and help them through their individual struggles. Over the years I have taken several courses to integrate the use of Internal Family Systems (IFS) theory with EMDR. Many of you have even experienced the collaboration of these two powerful therapy modalities coming together.
This past week, I had the opportunity to participate in a 5-day training to better understand some of the protectors through the IFS lens. I was surrounded by many therapists and we got to practice accessing the protectors that get in the way or block EMDR processing. It was fascinating and very helpful for me to better understand how to work with these parts.
No Bad Parts
Dick Schwartz Ph.D. wrote a fantastic book called No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. One of the things I love the most about this philosophy is that it looks at individuals with many different parts, none of which is inherently bad, or who wants to hurt you. In fact, all parts of you have a role and a strong desire to help you…they just often are operating from a very immature age, and don’t really go about their job in ways that are always beneficial to us. Our ability to get to know these parts and their roles is very important in order for us to begin to heal and start behaving from a place of self leadership.
Self Leadership
While I’ve read a lot about this and taken courses on it, I don’t think I really understood the concept until after taking this week-long training. From a Polyvagal and Shame Resilience perspective, we might call Self Leadership operating from a ventral vagal state where we are calm, feel safe and connected, and are curious. That part I understood pretty well. Yet IFS goes further to state that in order for us to be communicating and or participating in relational interactions from a place of Self, we need the following attributes: Curiosity, Compassion, Confidence, Courage, Calm, Connected, Creative, and Clarity. So essentially, if we aren’t demonstrating these 8 characteristics, it’s likely that a protector part of ours has jumped in to protect us from shame or some other wound we don’t want to feel.
Exploring Some Types of Protector Parts
Remember we all have parts and none are better than others. Protector parts that try to be proactive and run your daily life are what IFS calls “Managers.” This part creates an illusion of safety with a strong inner critic. It uses self-sufficiency to prevent humiliation and abandonment. Some good examples of these parts are people-pleasing perfectionism, self-sabotage, anxiety, procrastination, overachiever and caretaking. From a Polyvagal perspective, these parts live out in the Sympathetic or middle of the ladder.
Another category of protectors gets the name “Firefighter” in IFS because they are automatic reactions, attacking and creating diversions from a perceived problem or threat. They’re like the first responder called into service when anything hits too close to home. They respond with one purpose, to rescue you from a crisis, and they don’t necessarily care about what they destroy in the process of their rescue. These parts create the illusion of stability by numbing and distancing from pain with distraction. These parts show up as anger, overspending, overeating, restrictive eating or binge behaviors, addictions, obsessions, TV/video game and social media binging. From a Polyvagal perspective I believe these parts are what bring you into the Dorsal space once you’ve been overwhelmed.
The most wounded parts get the name “Exile” but essentially they are the ones that carry the shame, are traumatized, wounded, and rejected parts. They want to be seen, but are too afraid of feeling exposed and vulnerable. Protector parts fear that if they come out, you won’t be able to handle life. Some good examples of these are what we go after in EMDR with “not good enough, too much, bad, abandoned, rejected, dependency and other shameful beliefs about self.”
All This To Say
Ultimately, this is just another way of looking at the parts of self that have experienced the pain and shameful experiences that we want to hide, which eventually impact our behaviors and relationships with others. In order to heal from our wounded parts, we need to feel our way through experiences, not think our way through. That might mean those of you with strong “thinking” parts might need to develop curiosity about that part, in order to gain some space from it, and allow it to trust you enough to dive into the real work involved in healing.
If you are currently working with me you will likely get to experience some more of this work and learn to befriend your parts. If you are someone who would like more information and or know of someone who may want to explore this work with me, please send this blog to them and have them click the link below to get started.
