My First IFS Session
by a 19-year-old client for her blog
I just finished my first IFS session, and it was so interesting that I wanted to write about it. I’m very new to IFS myself, but I’ll try my best to explain it. IFS, short for Internal Family Systems, is a type of work where patients try to get in touch with their inner “families”. It was developed by a therapist who, after working with both families and individuals, noticed that individuals often develop a variety of inner roles just like individuals in a family take on outer roles. You can read more about IFS and its founder/founding at Center for Self Leadership website.
My first appointment was over Skype with one of my mom’s coworkers, Karen, who is an IFS Practitioner. , in case you're interested. She began by asking me about any reoccurring emotions or problems and then had me do a “centering” exercise, kind of like exercises in yoga or meditation, where I paid attention to any physical feelings, emotions, or persistent thoughts, acknowledged them, and then let them go. The problem I decided to ask Karen about was feeling “stuck” in the face of large decisions, both because I’ve been dealing with it a lot recently, but also because it’s such a familiar problem from all the times I’ve experienced it in the past. Basically, whenever I’m faced with a large or far-reaching decision, I tend to get conflicted and freeze up, which often ends in the decision being made for me, either by other people or by the circumstances. Not very satisfying, right?
After the centering exercise, Karen had me identify the different “parts” of myself that were contributing to the overall feeling of being stuck. The language used in IFS is very unique; you actually “talk” and “listen” to the different parts of yourself, hearing their worries and reassuring them. It sounds really crazy and at first I felt uncomfortable, but pretty soon I eased into it and began to feel much more natural. In addition, IFS can be very visual. Partway through the session, I started to be able to “see” my voices and their characters.
In today’s session, we identified three of my inner “parts” or “voices”: a worrier, a frustrated character, and a thinker. All of a person’s inner roles accompany their true inner energy, which is called the “Self”. It was all so interesting! Sometimes I would feel like I was answering as just myself, like in regular therapy, but sometimes I felt like I was feeling each of my role’s different emotions and actually communicating with them. I know it sounds totally crazy, but I guess it’s just one of those things you have to experience.
Out of the three roles we addressed today, the worrier was the most complex. It has such a deep and multifaceted personality; sometimes it takes on a passive, withdrawn role, but other times it is dominant and insists that its way of thinking is correct. My worrier didn’t give me as clear of an image as the other voices, but my main feeling were of darkness and grayness or fog and a tiny, lost figure in the middle of a vast, empty wasteland. The worrier is very intertwined with fear and it’s the part of me that is concerned with failure and disappointing myself and others. While it can sometimes have a "mean" side and threaten the other voices with horrible outcomes and worst case scenarios, it is really just lost and clouded by doubt and fear. I learned that my worrier isn’t malicious, even though I’ve gotten angry with it in the past. Instead, it just wants the best for me, but when I listen only to my worrier’s voice and ignore the others, things get out of balance really fast.
The next part we addressed was the frustrated voice. I realized that I often ignore this character because I’m afraid that listening to it will lead me to make rash or reckless decisions. The frustrated voice is restless and angry, like the stereotypical teenager: all crossed arms and stomping feet and slamming doors. It can seem really pushy and aggressive at times, but, as I found out today, the only reason it acts like that is because it wants so desperately to be heard and considered. Just like the worrier, my frustrated voice wants the best for me; it demands that I consider myself and my desires, even if I’m not completely sure what I want yet. I understand my frustrated voice really well. It wants me to be strong and confident, which I want too. If I were braver, I would listen to this voice a lot more because it isn’t concerned with what others want, only what’s best for me. Like any role, the frustrated voice could easily “push out” the other voices, but that’s never even come close to happening with me. The frustrated voice gives me the restless, stuck feeling, but I know I need to listen to it more if I ever want to move forward.
The last voice was the thinker. The thinker didn’t really have a lot to say. In fact, it didn’t want or need to address me at all. It sat there quietly, researching and presenting facts. I was already familiar with the thinker; it’s the part my mom always called my “logical mind”. The thinker is nonjudgmental; it simply presents facts and options and outcomes. However, the thinker can easily get pushed to the side while the other voices ignore its logic. I was still able to acknowledge my thinker’s presence, though. I imagined it as a small, bookish type person with big glasses, hunched over a tiny desk, surrounded by stacks of books and papers and typing away. While the thinker didn’t have much of a role to play today, it has been a "voice of reason" in the past, and I think it will be very helpful in the future. If I let it, the thinker has a clear, unbiased voice that can cut through the strong emotions of the other roles and give me back peace and focus.
Again, I know this probably sounds incredibly strange, but it really, really made sense to me. I feel conflicted a lot in my life, and addressing my inner feelings as if they were little characters made things a lot clearer
.
I just finished my first IFS session, and it was so interesting that I wanted to write about it. I’m very new to IFS myself, but I’ll try my best to explain it. IFS, short for Internal Family Systems, is a type of work where patients try to get in touch with their inner “families”. It was developed by a therapist who, after working with both families and individuals, noticed that individuals often develop a variety of inner roles just like individuals in a family take on outer roles. You can read more about IFS and its founder/founding at Center for Self Leadership website.
My first appointment was over Skype with one of my mom’s coworkers, Karen, who is an IFS Practitioner. , in case you're interested. She began by asking me about any reoccurring emotions or problems and then had me do a “centering” exercise, kind of like exercises in yoga or meditation, where I paid attention to any physical feelings, emotions, or persistent thoughts, acknowledged them, and then let them go. The problem I decided to ask Karen about was feeling “stuck” in the face of large decisions, both because I’ve been dealing with it a lot recently, but also because it’s such a familiar problem from all the times I’ve experienced it in the past. Basically, whenever I’m faced with a large or far-reaching decision, I tend to get conflicted and freeze up, which often ends in the decision being made for me, either by other people or by the circumstances. Not very satisfying, right?
After the centering exercise, Karen had me identify the different “parts” of myself that were contributing to the overall feeling of being stuck. The language used in IFS is very unique; you actually “talk” and “listen” to the different parts of yourself, hearing their worries and reassuring them. It sounds really crazy and at first I felt uncomfortable, but pretty soon I eased into it and began to feel much more natural. In addition, IFS can be very visual. Partway through the session, I started to be able to “see” my voices and their characters.
In today’s session, we identified three of my inner “parts” or “voices”: a worrier, a frustrated character, and a thinker. All of a person’s inner roles accompany their true inner energy, which is called the “Self”. It was all so interesting! Sometimes I would feel like I was answering as just myself, like in regular therapy, but sometimes I felt like I was feeling each of my role’s different emotions and actually communicating with them. I know it sounds totally crazy, but I guess it’s just one of those things you have to experience.
Out of the three roles we addressed today, the worrier was the most complex. It has such a deep and multifaceted personality; sometimes it takes on a passive, withdrawn role, but other times it is dominant and insists that its way of thinking is correct. My worrier didn’t give me as clear of an image as the other voices, but my main feeling were of darkness and grayness or fog and a tiny, lost figure in the middle of a vast, empty wasteland. The worrier is very intertwined with fear and it’s the part of me that is concerned with failure and disappointing myself and others. While it can sometimes have a "mean" side and threaten the other voices with horrible outcomes and worst case scenarios, it is really just lost and clouded by doubt and fear. I learned that my worrier isn’t malicious, even though I’ve gotten angry with it in the past. Instead, it just wants the best for me, but when I listen only to my worrier’s voice and ignore the others, things get out of balance really fast.
The next part we addressed was the frustrated voice. I realized that I often ignore this character because I’m afraid that listening to it will lead me to make rash or reckless decisions. The frustrated voice is restless and angry, like the stereotypical teenager: all crossed arms and stomping feet and slamming doors. It can seem really pushy and aggressive at times, but, as I found out today, the only reason it acts like that is because it wants so desperately to be heard and considered. Just like the worrier, my frustrated voice wants the best for me; it demands that I consider myself and my desires, even if I’m not completely sure what I want yet. I understand my frustrated voice really well. It wants me to be strong and confident, which I want too. If I were braver, I would listen to this voice a lot more because it isn’t concerned with what others want, only what’s best for me. Like any role, the frustrated voice could easily “push out” the other voices, but that’s never even come close to happening with me. The frustrated voice gives me the restless, stuck feeling, but I know I need to listen to it more if I ever want to move forward.
The last voice was the thinker. The thinker didn’t really have a lot to say. In fact, it didn’t want or need to address me at all. It sat there quietly, researching and presenting facts. I was already familiar with the thinker; it’s the part my mom always called my “logical mind”. The thinker is nonjudgmental; it simply presents facts and options and outcomes. However, the thinker can easily get pushed to the side while the other voices ignore its logic. I was still able to acknowledge my thinker’s presence, though. I imagined it as a small, bookish type person with big glasses, hunched over a tiny desk, surrounded by stacks of books and papers and typing away. While the thinker didn’t have much of a role to play today, it has been a "voice of reason" in the past, and I think it will be very helpful in the future. If I let it, the thinker has a clear, unbiased voice that can cut through the strong emotions of the other roles and give me back peace and focus.
Again, I know this probably sounds incredibly strange, but it really, really made sense to me. I feel conflicted a lot in my life, and addressing my inner feelings as if they were little characters made things a lot clearer
.