7.17.23 - 091: Internal Family Systems (IFS) for Trauma Recovery

2:24PM Jul 14, 2023

Speakers:

Amy Hoyt

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

Keywords:

parts

protector

feel

internal family systems

emotion

trauma

body

prefrontal cortex

work

brain

somatic experiencing

experience

happening

called

child

balance

vulnerable

mending

physical sensation

phrase

Hi, Amy here. Are you feeling stuck or overwhelmed by things that pop up in your daily life. And perhaps these are because of past traumas or toxic stress? Have you tried traditional therapy and found that it wasn't enough? I know that was the case for me. That's why we developed the whole health lab. Mini trauma has put together a program that combines the latest research with proven methods to help you recover from trauma and move forward from these daily stressors and triggers. We use somatic therapy EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy and internal family systems therapy. We use nervous system regulation, and many other tools so that we can combine the best methods that are identified in the research to help you recover without being completely overwhelmed. So you can work on trauma on your own pace, your own time. And still with the mentorship and support of a highly trained certified staff. That's us. No more waiting for appointments or sitting in traffic driving to see a therapist with our online program, the whole help lab. You can access it from anywhere, anytime, even on an app, visit mending trauma.com backslash whole health lab and learn more. Get your questions answered. We've got a Frequently Asked Questions section and sign up so that you can have this life changing program in your world today. Don't let your past hold you back any longer. Take control of your future and we can't wait to see you in the whole health lab. Welcome to the universe is your therapist. We are your hosts, Dr. Amy Hoyt and Lena Hoyt, we are sisters. Take a seat and let's dive into this week's episode.

Welcome back to another episode. I'm so excited to be here again. And today we're going to be talking about how to identify your internal parts. So tell us what internal family systems theory is lame

internal family systems is fascinating. It came about in the late 80s, Dr. Richard Swartz. And he was noticing that when he could respond kindly and with compassion to his clients in therapy, that they tended to be able to resolve some of that inner conflict between the Bossy insistent part of themselves and these other parts of themselves that also were a value in their lives. And so he developed a theory about how when we have experiences, we tend to have these parts of ourselves that get more silenced, or get more loud, depending on the experience that we have. So with trauma, what happens is that we develop protector parts. And these parts are designed to prevent us from ever doing anything embarrassing or ever having vulnerability. So the protector parts are designed to protect us from any perceived vulnerability, rejection, embarrassment, criticism, but ironically, the protector parts are really awesome at criticism. So we call protector parts things like the manager, or the boss, the firefighter, because it's always seen everything as a catastrophe and has to jump right in before anything could possibly go horribly wrong, and the inner critic, and then we have vulnerable parts that are the younger, softer parts of ourselves. And often these parts are able to think and feel at the same time while the manager or firefighter, those parts are all emotion and not a lot of logic. It's just really reactive.

So what you're saying is the more soft, younger vulnerable parts, they can be in that window of tolerance, where they're thinking and feeling at the same time, where as the more protective parts are possibly coming out of autonomic responses, yes,

with catastrophe and urgency and that sort of thing. One question I have is how does internal parts differ than having multiple personalities, multiple personalities, which is now called dissociative identity disorder has much more to do with breaking from reality in that you dissociate yourself out of the event in order to survive. So that also is an autonomic response. The difference is we all have internal parts, and part of the work we want to do is help people integrate after trauma. And if we ignore some parts and only attend to or listen to the loud, bossy, critical parts, we can't integrate our whole selves because we do have parts of ourselves that are softer and loving and kind. So

word on the street when you're not a professional people think of multiple personality disorder. or dissociative identity disorder as having different personalities within their same brain. So internal family systems are not different personalities, they're different parts

of you. Yeah, that's a perfect explanation.

So you're still one cohesive personality, but you have parts of that personality, some that are more protective, some that are more vulnerable. So with internal family systems theory and internal parts, give us some examples of what a protector would do. What does that look like in someone's head?

For me the energy I describe it as spinning, so I have this part that's always talking to me about how I should be doing things, and why aren't I doing things. And so this part of myself is the taskmaster or the driver. And well, that can be helpful. It's not balanced by the ability to use logic and to prioritize logically, it's all based on urgency and not necessarily importance. And Stephen Covey back in the 90s, wrote a book called First things first, and he talked about the really monumental difference between urgent and important tasks and how because of the way our brains work, we are always going to go for the urgent because to go for the important requires that we think and feel at the same time, so that we have our prefrontal cortex online. And we can use logic to prioritize not just reactivity.

So a protector part could be an inner critic, which is not necessarily balanced with an accurate portrayal of your qualities or a situation. It's almost like a running background chatter of what you're doing wrong, what

could go wrong, what you're lacking. And so tell me what a vulnerable part would look like a vulnerable part is going to oftentimes be a younger, softer part of ourselves. And they are perceived by the protector parts as being very vulnerable, naive, sometimes even foolish, and this is all subconscious. It's not something that we consciously think about. And so the manager boss, or the inner critic, or the firefighter part is desperate to control these parts of ourselves that aren't falling in line with the urgency of what's happening. And then these parts of us become more and more silent, and more and more relegated to the background.

So how do we start to quiet those parts that aren't serving us, I feel like the protector part in my life, they actually keep me playing very small, they keep me very fearful, which we know is the opposite of love and expansion and abundance. And it's not a mental position that I want to live in. And so how do we help people to quiet those protector parts that are actually important for survival and allow those more vulnerable parts to take a more balanced position?

I think the word balance is really what we're after. And because so much of this happens, subconsciously, we have difficulty with balance because we're unaware, one thing that we can do is start paying more attention to our body sensations and our thinking and our emotions. For example, if I say something that may be somebody found offensive, or I'm just afraid somebody found it offensive, then my thoughts might sound like what an idiot. I should have known better. What do they think of me? Why do I always do this? So that's your protector part your boss part like castigating you reprimanding you trying to keep you in line. And then my emotions will oftentimes be embarrassment, guilt, shame, or fear. And typically, what I experience is that I feel a flush that starts in my torso and moves upward. And that's my flush personally of shame. I feel mortified. I am so embarrassed and ashamed. And I don't even know if anybody's offended yet.

Right? So we attach a story, the protector part gives us a worry, a thought that thought provokes an emotion and we attach a meaning to that and that meaning may or may not be accurate. So I'm thinking of every single time I go to a party, I have the best time I'm an extrovert. While I'm probably an extrovert introvert, but I love seeing people. I absolutely love people. I love talking to them. I love laughing with them. I have a wonderful time. Don't feel self conscious while I'm in the moment, but I come home and as I lay in bed, all of a sudden I start wondering, oh, Was that too much? Was that appropriate? Was I being too loud? Or too? You know, I can be irreverent sometimes that's my humor. And I start to worry about things I said or didn't say and so that would be My inner critic, a protector part, you have

this worry, your inner protective part picks up on the worry, which is actually coming from a lot of subconscious thinking. And the protector part is going to make sure that it whips you into shape so that you can never potentially be irreverent to the detriment of your acceptance socially.

The thing is, it fails, I do it every single party, and then every single time I come home, and I do the same thing, although I have to say with meditation, and with journaling over the last year, it's much more subdued. Tell me more about the what we call somatic experiencing, which comes out of internal family parts systems theory, is that correct?

No, there is an approach to internal family systems. And one of the early practitioners of internal family systems developed what's called somatic internal family systems and what she's realizing because she's trained in all sorts of body work and energy work, she's realizing that we have a felt sense that happens in our body that most of us have taught ourselves to ignore, and that this physical experience and sensations can actually offer us information and cues to what's happening for us. And that through allowing those physical sensations to inform us we can

heal. So the other day, we were talking in the kitchen, we were talking about a subject and I was asking you questions about your decision. And you said, I'm having a really physical reaction right now. And I said, what's going on? And you said, I feel really warm and flushed from my stomach all the way up. And I wasn't aware that what you were speaking out was probably a sense of a protector part. So talk about how just naming it

helped you? Well, it's interesting, because it wasn't a sense of shame that I was experiencing. And it actually was a hot flush, that actually started lower in my body and moved all the way up. But it clearly was not shame. And so that was very helpful, because then I was still connected to my logical, rational mind along with my emotional brain. And what I realized is that I was having a reaction to some of the ideas that we were batting around about my life, and I wasn't certain what it meant. But being able to identify what was happening and name it automatically allowed me to kind of settle in and know that I didn't have to solve it. I didn't have to rush into reactive problem solving my protector part could dial down the intensity or wait in the lobby and allow me to just experience what I was experiencing. And then what I found was that the next day after I had had a good night's sleep, everything that was really activating to me the day before was no longer is activating. For me.

It was such a good example to see you work through that because you called it out. You named it and then I asked a couple follow up questions about it. Because sometimes when I feel spiritually nudged I feel this warm feeling as like, are you feeling spiritually nudged, you're like, No, it doesn't feel like that I'm not sure. And so for me, it was really helpful to see you walk through that. And then obviously, you went and figured it out on your own, which is great.

And the sleep, I was exhausted, it was a Sunday and I was exhausted because you and Kevin had been on your track. And I had the privilege of hanging out with your three youngest, which was you know, very busy. So by the time I went home on Sunday night and then slept, and I woke up on Monday, I was having different reactions to ideas than I had had the day before. And I was much more settled and calm. One of the things that occurred to me on Monday was that I didn't have to decide everything right now. And that brought me immense relief, put me back in touch with my prefrontal cortex and my cognitive brain so that I had more balance between my emotions and my thinking, and that's really what we're looking for is that balance so that we can make decisions with awareness and not just with reactivity.

Okay. And I think besides balance, what I hear you saying is we're looking for space between the thought the physical sensation and the decision, I find that really enlightening. You mentioned a phrase you said, we can ask that protector part to wait in the lobby, tell me what that means and why you feel that it's helpful.

The protector part is always in emergency mode. And so when we are able to say to that protector part, thank you for sharing your concerns. I appreciate that you're warning me that this could go badly. And right now I want to be able to hear from the other parts of myself that are not just Be active and in emergency. And so it involves, for me visualization. I'm a really visual thinker. And so I actually have a protector part that is the manager and he actually looks like Mr. Clean from the 1970s and 80s. And so I visualize saying to Mr. Clean, I appreciate you warning me I'm gonna have you wait in the lobby, while we other parts discuss this with some emotion and some thought and so doing that helps that part of me that voice, the inner critic become less loud, and allows me to engage other parts of my self that helped me make sound decisions. Okay, let's

go back to somatic

experiencing, or somatic internal parts. Tell us what that is, and how we can help people practice that? Well, somatic experiencing is an approach therapeutically, it also is the idea that we experience emotions in our bodies, and most of us are so cut off from our bodies, that it's very unusual for us, at least in Western culture, to be attentive to what's happening in our bodies. The beauty of attending to that is that again, it offers a piece of the puzzle. And if we only focus on our thoughts and our emotions, and we don't include our bodies, then we're missing a third of the puzzle that could provide information and a roadmap

when I'm aware that there's so much research that shows not only is the majority of our serotonin receptors in our gut, but many other receptors and neurotransmitters and we're constantly receiving neuro information from our gut, and I believe other parts of our body if I'm remembering what I read, and so by actually considering how we feel it is very real valid data that is connected to our brain, we just actually have a felt sensation about it,

we've talked so much about how in trauma, you can have an autonomic nervous response that could take you immediately into fear or terror. And so we want to be able to attend to that or notice that and then involve our thinking to make sure that we are not engaging in a thinking style that's creating or exacerbating the emotion and the felt body sensation. And then

what are some phrases that people can use to help regain emotional regulation, if they have a protector part that's just not relenting there are several

different phrases, each person would work out what works best for them, we don't want to use a phrase that one part of our brain rejects. One thing that does not work for me is to say, this is all happening exactly as it's supposed to, that freaks my brain out. But I can say to myself, everything will be okay, because I have 100% survival rate. And generally everything does turn out. Okay. So that is something that works for me, there's probably something in your head that you use to help you get back into a balance of emotion and thinking and body sensation.

Yeah, for me, it's definitely releasing control to my higher power that comes from my work in the 12 steps when I was young, and from my journey of sobriety, but I constantly released and what I say to myself is, there is a plan, and I'm not in charge of it, because I have zero clue what the future holds. And I'm okay with that for some odd reason. Yeah. So I visualize benevolent hands coming down, and I bundle up all my worry into a ball. And then I placed it in those hands and those hands retract. And I sometimes have to do that several times an hour when I'm very, very worried or anxious. And so it's repetitive visualization. And really the phrases, there's a plan and I'm not in charge of

it. One thing that I think has helped a lot of the people I've worked with in the past is to understand what I own what I'm responsible for and what I'm not. And the manager or protector part is going to be relentless and convincing you that you have to make sure something happens or doesn't happen and staying in your own lane, which is another 12 Step phrase that I love becomes really pertinent. So if my child is in extreme distress, because they didn't get invited to a birthday party, I don't need to merge with their distress. I don't need to take on that distress. In fact, if I do, it's very unhelpful in terms of how I parent in that moment. What I can do is I can acknowledge that it's distressing. I am experiencing distress because my child is so distressed and that I don't have to fix it because no one is going to die right this second. If there's not action taken, the idea is slowing down. And so that instead of having a knee jerk reaction, that's always going to be a little off, I can acknowledge the emotion, the body sensations, the thinking, and we can sit with it. I can say to my child, I'm so sorry, this happened. I think that that is really disappointing. Let's talk about it tomorrow. Because if I can't get myself into emotional regulation, then I'm not gonna be able to help my child regulate around their disappointment. Yeah, we are the container. Yes, and we are the prefrontal cortex. So as parents, when our child is extremely emotional, it is vitally important that we remain in our prefrontal cortex. And what most of us do, understandably, is we get hooked into our emotional brain. And now you have an adult and a child who are both extremely emotionally dysregulated.

And then when that happens with me when I'm parenting, I obviously can't model how to self regulate, which we'll talk about in our next episode. Thank you so much. This was so helpful. Is there anything else you want to add?

No, just to continue to be kind to yourself and understand that so much of this is autonomic. And it's beyond our conscious control, and the goal of paying attention to our body, our emotions, and our thoughts. Those goals are designed to help us to become more aware, so that we can use our knowledge and our awareness together to bring about change. And if we do not learn how to be kind to ourselves around the change process, it takes longer and it's extremely painful.

I think the only other thing I want to add is that for me, the way I connect to my higher power, whom I call God is through a feeling. And so when I cut myself off from feeling my body, I am less in tuned with my spirituality. And so for me, part of this work of identifying my internal parts and actually allowing myself to feel is I am also receiving the benefit of becoming more in tune with the very, very subtle ways that I feel spiritually nudged in my life. And so there's an added benefit for me that I've just been so happy with, because it was unexpected.

That's a great point.

Thanks so much. Thank you for listening to the universe's your therapist this week. If you have any questions or looking for more information, you can find us at mending trauma on Instagram, as well as mending trauma.com Our website and if you're enjoying our content, we'd love it if you could rate review and subscribe to the show. We'll see you all next week.