Ever feel like you’ve got a whole household of people contained in one skull? Fighting, just like they did in your family home? Turns out, that’s normal. 

Today, let’s talk about Internal Family Systems and the roles cemented in your brain. Protectors, Exiles, Distractors, and their vicious cycles that leave us feeling out of control of our own noggins. Plus, how to work with them, instead of hosting raging battles inside forever.

Looking for more deets or just want to help support this solo-DIY project? It’s much needed and appreciated. Hit up patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers to keep the knowledge spreading through diverse social systems. 

Check t-mfrs.com for more info on the whole community healing project.

🍻 Cheers y’all

Jess

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Transcript / Blog Version:

So this month in the Blanket Fort (that’s what we call the Patreon stream and private Discord) we’ve been talking about something slightly different than usual. Doing research through several books, with an intense focus on one called Internal Family Systems Therapy 2nd Edition by Schwartz and Sweezy.

So, if you’re new to Internal Family Systems (or IFS), what you need to know is, it’s a model for understanding the multiplicitous nature of brains. That is, how we’re alllll (ALLLL) not carrying ONE set of instructions in our heads, which is applied to every situation. Rather, we all have many somewhat distinct programs.

IFS says that this is the inherent nature of the brain, it’s normal. But when we have experiences such as trauma, those programs tend to get 1) more extreme and 2) more polarized. So, rather than being a *slightly* different version of ourselves or carrying out *sort of* different behaviors depending on the situation, we can have very strong and often very oppositional patterns.

This makes us feel like we’re several people, stuck under one roof together, and we can’t control or predict what’s going to pop up, when. Who are you today? Who knows.

So, this can be contained to your thoughts. Maybe you have differing perspectives on situations that keep you running in loops. Or they can present as acute behaviors, such as when you suddenly act “out of character” in a set of circumstances. They can also be patterns of behaviors, such as getting “stuck” in one mode of action that doesn’t feel fulfilling or authentic to you. OR, you can experience vicious cycles. Find yourself acting as one person for this period of the day, another set of feelings or thoughts crops up and changes your internal world, and maybe a new set of behaviors takes over for the remainder of the evening.

Things like that.

How are we seemingly many people or many personalities or many motivations and instincts, all bundled under one roof? How do those programs battle amongst themselves? And why?

IFS gives us a framework to understand these shifting trends inside and (eventually) outside of us, through a few simple categories of these inner programs. These… parts. Refer to prior episodes on parts and fragmented personalities, if you need a refresh.

So how did it all begin?

Well, Schwartz worked with children for several years early in his career and saw that children didn’t continue to progress in their mental illness recoveries when they returned home to the family. He realized, the family worked as a “system” in which the child was just one part. When one part attempted to change, it shook the entire system around it, and the system responded by putting the part back in its place.

So families often had a scapegoat for their problems, and the child couldn’t change their “role” in the system, or it threatened everyone’s normal mode of operation. Sound familiar already?

Let’s take it one step further. He also found that individuals often internalized these roles they were assigned… as well as the roles that other members in the system held. In other words, an overly critical parent would become part of the psyche, as the individual learned to monitor and edit themselves according to the standards set by their parent.

So even removing the child from the family or working directly with the family to try to change these dynamics didn’t really work. The client had already imprinted these roles from the external world into their own internal landscape. Their own brain functioned the same as the family system they originated from, as if they held the members of their family inside of themselves, which continually pushed them into the same patterns of behavior.

From this realization, Schwartz started seeing our brains as being reflective of the systems that we grew up in. Not ONLY our families, but also our broader social systems, such as educational and work environments, peer groups, local community, and expansive cultural norms. All of these influences trickle down from the top and become the framework for our brains as they develop.

The thing is, we can form very diverse and oppositional instructions from all of these sources. SOMETIMES you need to be this person to work in the system. SOMETIMES you need to be someone completely different.

And this led to imbalances and distress in the individual’s brain, when those acquired roles weren’t in agreement or didn’t feel authentic or fulfilling to the person. As if they were cutting out pieces of themselves and over-relying on others that were deemed “more important and necessary”, which often came with great internal confusion and distress.

Through this systems thinking and working with clients who used a particular term when describing these programming changes, Schwartz started to study “parts” and the interactions between them.

And he came to a realization. There are specific roles that our inner roles fill amongst each other. They are their OWN system, but internalized within the client. And this explained how they could be, say, a highly functional professional at one point, then feel like a scared and insecure child a few minutes later, and fall into self-destructive pattern that resembled a dysfunctional and self-sabotaging human shortly thereafter.

Let’s talk about how that goes down.

He found that there were three basic categories these roles fell into.

First up are Manager roles or parts. These are the proactive programs that work to keep us safe, in whatever ways our external systems demanded or exemplified. For instance, having a strong “worker” part who puts everything on the backburner to achieve external success, which signifies financial and social stability and safety. Or a strong denier part who blocks out painful points of reality so the system can continue functioning without disturbing new revelations. Or, an intense caretaking part who learned that safety was found through serving others.

These Manager or Protector parts are our main strategies for surviving in the ways our systems showed us to. Internalized roles that we probably picked up from others, or were pushed into in order to keep them happy.

The problem is, they come with a great cost. These proactive Manager and Protector parts have to “shut out” other pieces of us in order to function in their limited and somewhat rigid scopes.

And that’s where the Exiles come in. We have pieces of ourselves that we push away, deactivate, and avoid, because they get in the way of the Managers/Protectors. For instance, highly emotional and historically painful pieces of us. Rageful or shameful aspects of our personalities. Or parts of us that detract from the Manager’s available energy, such as our creative pieces.

Anything that doesn’t serve the motivations of the Managers and Protectors? Get turned off, suppressed, and repressed.

Problem being, 1) that cuts out pieces of ourselves that we like. When we feel like we aren’t “our whole selves” or “don’t recognize who we’ve become” we might be speaking to Exiles who’ve been shut down by Managers. 2) Those exiles don’t stay quiet. They might be repressed, but they haven’t gone away. And they cause disturbances for us over time, as they increasingly scream and thrash to be let out of their cages.

Those feelings, memories, and behaviors we try to shut out? Don’t go anywhere. They’ll show up whenever there’s a crack in the system or something triggers them back to life. This causes the internal system a lot of distress, as the Managers fight even harder to push those aspects of us away.

This brings in the… sorry, I hate this word… Firefighter parts. Now, we prefer the term “Distractor” parts around here, because it’s less fucking stupid… and because that’s what they do. The function of THESE parts is to numb out or distract us from the unhappy exiles. In whatever ways possible. Even if they’re long-term destructive to everyone, we opt for the short-term relief from our historical wounds.

Our Exiles often contain our “burdens” as IFS terms it. Our long-standing pains and unwanted memories. Though, that’s not to say that Managers can’t be burdened as well.

So when both of them are fighting, we do what we can to pull our attention from the hurt.

Our Distractors can be disassociation, substance abuse, relationship reliances, and anything else that’s numbing or comforting… such as staring at your phone or dreaming of the sweet relief of suicide.

Next problem being, since they’re maladaptive coping skills, they push us in the wrong direction. Our Managers see that damage is being done – safety is in question – and they fight back harder than ever, taking control of the system again.

Meaning, we see these parts all working together, cyclically.

Our Managers and Protectors try to keep us safe by pushing every other program or instinct into line. Our Exiles get distressed when they’re being ignored and start causing a stink. Our Distractors shove themselves into the picture and offer relief, which only riles the system further. And then our Managers take back over to be able to present the necessary role to the external environment again.

So, days when you wake up, work out, go to work, kill it, and then… eventually… start having historical pains whispering at you from the depths below? Then, when you find yourself eating, drinking, exercising, retreating, fucking, or otherwise zoning out for comfort? You’re cycling through Managers, Exiles, and Distractors. So you can wake up the next morning, shame yourself harder than ever, and put that Manager back into place again, with a vengeance.

Vicious cycles of these internalized roles, all responding and reacting to one another.

Thing is, they have the intention of keeping you safe while doing so. None of these parts are BAD parts. They’re specialized parts with extreme roles that often contradict one another.

We can have multiple Manager parts, for example. And they can all have different acquired roles that seem ultimately “necessary.” So, when they’re telling us different things, we have no idea what to do. We’re locked in an internal battle between possible choices.

Though, they don’t FEEL like choices. Those parts feel necessary and unquestionable.

At the same time, they might even feel ill-equipped to handle the situation. Our Manager parts are rigid, but not necessarily confident. They’re, for all intents and purposes, often child versions of ourselves who’ve been thrust into these roles. They feel unquestionably responsible for keeping the rest of the system (you) safe, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it.

So we can have parts that battle against each other from insecure positions (think of managers at your past work places and all the drama they cause to one another). OR they can form coalitions together. Similar parts with similar roles or similar perspectives link up and dampen other parts of us down.

With all that being said… the answer to working with your parts is NOT to bully them. We don’t want to, say, send Managers after other Managers, and think that’ll end well. Telling yourself “don’t do that anymore” for example? Will just put a Manager in charge of another part, in order to create more distress and internal strife.

You can’t change one part of the system without the rest of the system being affected. Remember?

So how do we do inner work with these duders (ng’d) to calm everyone down and make the system more balanced, harmonious, cohesive, capable of self-direction, and able to grow out of these rigid roles?

Well, we do it… Using the Self.

The fourth component of IFS is something separate from our parts. It isn’t a role. It isn’t a part of the brain, even. So it isn’t linked to our development and adaptations in systems, the way that the Managers, Exiles, and Distractors are.

The Self, as we talk about consistently on this show – check out a year and half of Self exploration in the backlog of Patreon episodes – is a different entity. It’s that thing that feels like your “soul” or “spirit” or “core energy” or whatever phrasing doesn’t make you gag.

But the point is, it’s an unadulterated aspect of all of us, which is able to see things more broadly and innately contains the knowledge for how to heal ourselves. It knows, inherently, what we need and how to guide us. All of us. All of our parts. If we could just shut down the brainy chatter, reconnect with it, and let it do its job.

The job? To talk to these discrepant programs in our heads. To understand where they came from and why – what the context of our broader systems is. Then to understand the burdens that each part contains – the pain points and survival motivations, which may have been passed down generationally. And to find out how that role could be slightly altered in order to capitalize on its strengths without letting it take over the entire brain. How could this part be put into a slightly different position that better serves the whole system, without shutting other parts of us down or actively working against them?

We find all this information and make these minor adjustments through the Self, while accessing our parts one by one, and asking them to reveal all the history they contain. We figure out what’s fucking them – which other roles are silencing them, what painful memories they contain, what self-judgments or survival strategies are keeping them lit up – and we self-therapize them to move towards healing the whole internal system.

The end goal of this work is to create a mind that isn’t relying on potentially inauthentic, survival-based, parts of you at the expense of suppressing other, more historical and “feely” parts of you. To allow you to access ALL your parts and roles, as needed, rather than feeling shut down and trapped in their vicious cycles.

To get back to being your full fucking Self. Rather than fitting into the defined templates that you picked up from your broader social systems.

That means, getting room from your inner critic, your workaholic drive, your professional fawning career, your depressed parts, your emotionally cold and protective bits. And creating space for your other interests, thoughts, emotions, and motivations to emerge. While also erasing the need for self-destructive distractions in your life. AND providing clarity on the past times in your life that your brain felt out of control, as through it was working against you.

Really, it was working FOR you, all along. Each part has a purpose, a specific function. And this kept you alive, in the ways that were deemed necessary. It juuuuust may have gone about that in a way that reflected your external systems doing the same thing… which, around here, means that it’s probably been pretty abusive, dismissive, critical and neglectful to live inside that brain.

So the power of IFS is ultimately coming to self-understanding and acceptance. Gaining clarity on the baffling things your brain automatically does. Releasing outdated perspectives, pain points, and burdens that have been “frozen in time.” And from there, developing a new path forward, with an ever-developing internal system that isn’t parroting the same negative and constraining experiences you’ve had in the real world.

And that’s… trauma recovery, folks. Through an IFS lens.

For a lot more information on this whole system, relating to YOUR system… check out IFS Therapy Second Edition. Or, pop into the Patreon community to hear the full detailed rundown, as well as the personal reflections and insights on IFS from MFs like you.

Or, if this was enough info to get your noggin churning, you might also consider throwing a few bucks at the Patreon to help support this project, supporting brains around the world. As a one-human DIY project, it’s greatly needed and appreciated.

And that’s it, y’all.

Understand your system. Negotiate with your parts. And create a new inner landscape for yourself – one that’s less polarized against its own parts.

Til we rap again… you know…

Hail your Goddamn Self. Capital S.

Hail Archie.

Hail your adaptations to ever changing or continually rigid social systems.

And cheers, y’all.