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Self-Therapy, Vol. 3 A Step-By-Step Guide To Using IFS For Eating Issues, Procrastination, The Inner Critic, Depression, Perfectionism, Anger, Communication, and More by Jay Earley
Self-Therapy, Vol. 3 A Step-By-Step Guide To Using IFS For Eating Issues, Procrastination, The Inner Critic, Depression, Perfectionism, Anger, Communication, and More by Jay Earley
Self-Therapy, Vol. 3 A Step-By-Step Guide To Using IFS For Eating Issues, Procrastination, The Inner Critic, Depression, Perfectionism, Anger, Communication, and More by Jay Earley
3
A Step-by-Step Guide to Using IFS for
Eating Issues, Procrastination, the
Inner Critic, Depression,
Perfectionism, Anger, Communication,
and More
Jay Earley, PhD
Self-Therapy, Vol. 3: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using IFS for Eating Issues,
Procrastination, the Inner Critic, Depression, Perfectionism, Anger,
Communication, and More
Copyright © 2016 by Jay Earley. All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
FIRST EDITION AMAZON eBOOK
• evaluate and judge your feelings and behavior and sometimes your
core self
• The Perfectionist
• The Taskmaster
• The Underminer
• The Destroyer
• The Conformist
The Perfectionist
The Perfectionist tries to get you to do everything perfectly. It has
very high standards for behavior, performance, production, and appearance.
When you don’t meet its standards, the Perfectionist attacks you by saying
that your work or behavior isn’t good enough, which makes it hard to finish
projects. Sometimes the Perfectionist even makes it difficult to get started, as
with writer’s block. We will discuss this further in Chapter 4.
Think of a way that one of your Inner Critic parts attacks you.
If you have another Critic, answer those questions for it, too.
Attacking was a game in our family. They were all doing it, so I had to
do it, too, and I had to be good at it. If they were going to do that to
me, then I wanted to do it to myself first so they couldn’t do it to me
worse. This gave me the power of not being hurt by them. I was trying
to protect this child part (which Sarah called the Scared Kid) from
being hurt by them and from feeling all that hate and criticism from
the family. That was too painful, so if I hurt the Scared Kid instead, it
wasn’t so bad because I was the one hurting her—not the people she
really wanted love from.
This information from the Attacker allowed Sarah to begin
connecting with it and gave her a different image of it.
Later in the session, when the Attacker was reluctant to give up its
role, I had Sarah explain that it had an impossible job trying to protect the
Scared Kid. It said, “It’s hard to believe that you could help the Scared Kid
when I couldn’t do it. It was my job. I had to be able to do it. I now realize
that I’m just this little kid, and I’m trying to protect this other kid.”
When Sarah and I heard this sentiment, we both had tears in our
eyes. The Attacker was actually a child part that was intent on protecting the
Scared Kid from pain. This is so different from the way we usually think of
our Critics. This understanding was moving for Sarah (as well as for me),
and it made it easy for her to feel compassion and caring for the Attacker.
She saw that the real Attacker had been revealed, like the little man behind
the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. And Sarah’s image of the Attacker changed.
Now she saw it as a frightened girl who was doing her best to act tough to
prevent a terrible tragedy.3
The Inner Critic as Enforcer
One of the main reasons our Inner Critic parts judge us is to enforce
the certain kind of behavior they want from us. They may want us to be
perfect, hardworking, moderate, or cautious, for example. If a Taskmaster
Critic thinks it is important for you to always have your nose to the
proverbial grindstone, it will push you to overwork and attack you when you
don’t. However, if you are generally a conscientious, focused worker, then
there isn’t so much need for a Taskmaster Critic. You might very well have a
Taskmaster Part of you that works too hard, but it wouldn’t be a Critic; it
would just be an overworking part.
If you have a part that follows the rules, there is little need for a
Critic to enforce them. For example, if you have a Dieter part that is very
careful about the food you eat, there would be no need for an Inner
Controller Critic to attack you. The Dieter might be overly rigid, but if it
doesn’t judge the way you eat, it’s not a Critic.
This distinction highlights a very interesting characteristic of Inner
Critic parts: They don’t have the power to act in the world directly.
Therefore, they must judge us and push us in an attempt to enforce the way
they want us to act. If they had the power to act, they would just do it; they
wouldn’t have to criticize us. Isn’t it interesting that we think Inner Critics
are so powerful when they can’t really take action in the world? They
certainly have the power to hurt us, and they can try to get us to act in the
world. Consequently, they seem very intimidating. But their judgments
derive from their frustration at not being able to act and their difficulty in
getting us to act the way they want.
Imagine that you are a parent who has been able to get your child to
obey you for many years. But now he is a teenager, and he isn’t listening to
you anymore. What do you do? Unless you are pretty enlightened, you may
resort to judging this teen in an attempt to get him to act in ways that will be
best for him. Maybe you can sympathize with your Critics, who resort to
judging you because they have no power to act.
Because of the enforcer nature of Critics, one might suddenly judge
you when you make a change in your life. Suppose you have been very
careful about food all your adult life and have therefore never gotten any
flak about your eating from a Critic. Lately you have been working on
loosening up, and you are beginning to experiment with being more relaxed
and less rigid about food. You might get attacked by an Inner Controller
Critic about this. Until this point, it didn’t need to attack you because you
were behaving in the way it wanted. Now that you are changing, it has
become activated in order to enforce its view of how you should be.
Therapist Note
If your client accesses his or her Criticized Child when trying to
work with his or her Inner Critic, explain that this is the Criticized Child, not
the Critic, and ask the client to find his or her Inner Critic and focus on it.
Even if the client is drawn to help his or her Criticized Child, it is usually
better to work with the Critic first. This goes along with the general IFS
guideline to work with protectors first.
When you get to the unblending step, make sure to unblend from
both the Critic and the Child, if necessary. This unblending can sometimes
be accomplished by simply recognizing that the bad feeling you have about
yourself isn’t the truth but rather the result of Inner Critic attacks. You can
also unblend from the Critic in the way you would unblend from any other
protector—by asking it to separate from you so you can get to know it or by
stepping back from it internally.
Here is an illustration of unblending from both the Critic and the
Child. They have stepped aside, and the Self resides in the seat of
consciousness, shining the flashlight of awareness on them.
To help the Criticized Child unblend, take a few moments to access a
nurturing side of you—an aspect of Self or a caring part of you. Now focus
on the sad, painful feelings that are coming from the Criticized Child. Let it
know that you understand its hurt and feel compassion for it. Give the Child
some time to take in your caring. Then ask the Child if it would be willing to
step aside into a safe place where you will protect it from the Critic. Explain
that you (as Self) will be connecting with the Critic, and you won’t allow the
Critic to attack the Child. Having the Child step aside will allow you to get
to know the Critic from the place of Self. In this illustration, the Child is
being taken care of by a nurturing part while the Self is focusing on getting
to know the Critic.
Here is how I helped Sarah unblend from her Criticized Child:
Jay: Check to see how you’re feeling toward the Attacker right now.
Sarah: Well, I’m really scared of it.
J: OK, that probably means that you’re blended with the Scared Kid.
So ask the Kid if it would be willing to step aside into a safe place. And let it
know that we’re going to work with the Attacker to understand it and
connect with it. And we’re not going to let it do more attacking. We’re going
to try to connect with it. See if the Scared Kid would be willing to step aside
for you to do that.
S: Yeah, so now it has stepped aside.
2. What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t judge me?
A difficulty is that Critics are more likely to mistrust you and not
really answer your questions at first. Sometimes a Critic will say that it isn’t
trying to accomplish anything. “You are just a loser (or worthless, or
whatever), and I just want you to know that.” Don’t accept this. Critics are
never just giving you information about your shortcomings. They always
have a reason for attacking you. Ask your Critic to answer your question
about its motivation for criticizing you.
If a Critic doesn’t tell you about its motivation, it often means that
the Critic doesn’t believe that you truly want to get to know it. It believes
that you just want to overpower it or get rid of it. This belief isn’t all that
surprising, because there are probably parts of you that do want to get rid of
it—namely, your Inner Defender parts. In fact, often those parts have been
quite actively trying to combat the Critic. It’s no wonder the Critic isn’t
ready to trust you easily.
Make sure that you are truly in Self with the Critic, and be persistent
in asking it to answer your questions. The Critic will eventually come
around.
Ask if it would be willing to step aside (or relax) just for now so you
can get to know the Critic part from an open place. Explain that doing
this will help you to connect with the Critic and help it to change, and
that you won’t let the Critic take over and attack.
If the Defender is willing to step aside, check again to see how you
feel toward the Critic, and repeat.
If it still won’t step aside, ask what it is afraid would happen if it did,
and reassure it about its fears.
• You have the right to work reasonable hours so you can enjoy the rest
of your life.
Hearing these statements helped George feel confident and relaxed at work
and take time for his family and leisure activities.
Earlier I introduced the Inner Defender, the part of you that argues
with your Inner Critic and tries to convince it that you really are a good
person. The Inner Champion is the healthy version of the Inner Defender. It
doesn’t fight with the Inner Critic, though it may set some limits on the
Critic in a mature way. The main thing your Inner Champion does is support
you (and your Criticized Child) in the face of the Critic’s attacks. It helps
you feel self-confident not by fighting with the Critic but rather by
supporting and encouraging you. This way doesn’t lead to inner discord.
Your Inner Champion helps you feel good about yourself and be free to be
yourself.
The Inner Champion is like an ideal parent; the Inner Defender is
more like a rebellious teenager. The Inner Champion creates space from the
Inner Critic attacks; the Inner Defender constricts you to protect against hurt.
The Inner Champion implicitly acknowledges the Criticized Child and
becomes a resource for it.
The Inner Champion can set limits on the Critic by making
statements such as:
• You are beautiful and whole just the way you are.
• Your struggles just represent where you are now in your growth.
• You have the right to take your time and do things at your own pace.
Summary
This chapter has presented the basics of how to transform an Inner
Critic using IFS. For more details, applications, and stories, see Freedom
from Your Inner Critic. To learn more about the different types of Critics and
their corresponding Inner Champions, see Activating Your Inner Champion
Instead of Your Inner Critic. I have also developed an online tool, Self-
Therapy Journey,19 for personal growth and psychological healing, which
contains modules for the Inner Critic plus five of the specific types of Inner
Critics—Taskmaster, Perfectionist, Food Controller, Underminer, and
Destroyer.
Chapter 2
Procrastination
Do you find yourself avoiding important tasks? Is it hard for you to
make decisions and take action to move your life ahead? When you are
faced with a project you have decided to work on, do you get distracted or
busy with other tasks? Is it difficult for you to discipline yourself to exercise,
meditate, or eat well? If you answered yes to some of these questions, you
are one of the many people struggling with procrastination.
Procrastination usually happens out of awareness, except for those
situations where you sit down to do a task and can’t bring yourself to get
started. If you are a procrastinator, you probably don’t decide not to do a task
that needs to be done. You just go along with your life, and after a while you
realize that you haven’t done the task. You may get distracted with other
things. You may get lost in thought. You might spend time online, relaxing,
partying, having fun. You might work hard doing things that are less
important than the task you are avoiding. Or you may simply forget about
the task.
If you did heal them, did this permit the Procrastinator to let go?
What negotiation was necessary for both parts to agree to the resolution?
Summary
This chapter has shown how to use IFS to resolve procrastination
issues. For more information, see my book Taking Action or the
Procrastination Pattern in my web application, Self-Therapy Journey.26
Chapter 3
Eating Issues
with Bonnie Weiss, LCSW
The Indulger
Begin your IFS work by focusing on the part of you that is
responsible for your out-of-control eating. We call this the Indulger. This
part may cause unconscious eating, which involves just putting things in
your mouth out of habit without thinking. Your Indulger might drive binge
eating, which involves distracting yourself from pain by consuming large
quantities of food, despite the fact that you may be trying to control your
eating. Or you might just go unconscious while you are eating and not stop
when you are full.
If you did heal them, did this permit the Indulger to let go?
The Rebel
In addition to the Indulger, a defiant part, the Rebel, may get
triggered. The Inner Rebel doesn’t want to let the Food Controller control
you. It may purposely overeat just to prove that it can’t be pushed around.
The Rebel is trying to preserve your autonomy, but it goes overboard,
causing excessive levels of food addiction. Bonnie says, “In my eating
classes, identifying the Rebel Part helps clarify a great deal of previously
mysterious behavior for people who struggle with out-of-control eating.”
The Rebel bristles at the commands of the Food Controller and
(overtly or covertly) refuses to be bullied or bossed around. It often behaves
in direct opposition to the demands of the Food Controller by saying, “Oh
yeah? You can’t tell me what to do!” or “Oh, you say I can’t eat that cookie.
Watch me eat the whole box!”
A close cousin of this Inner Rebel is the Outer Rebel. This part fights
against authority. It doesn’t like to be told what to do or how to be. It can’t
recognize that another person might want good things for you. The Rebel
wants to preserve your autonomy. It wants you to be free to do what you
want. So the Rebel automatically fights any efforts to corral or control it,
even healthy attempts to eat moderately. It may trash diet plans or purposely
eat unhealthy foods in front of people, daring them to say something.
The Rebel is like a teenager or a defiant child fighting against a
parent. It can arise covertly as tension in your body, or it might pop out in a
defiant reaction to someone who is trying to help you with your eating. Your
Rebel might even act out flagrantly by eating forbidden food, refusing to
exercise, or not taking care of yourself in other ways. Or the Rebel may be
more indirect by sneaking snacks, buying unhealthy food, or creating turmoil
that it knows will give you an excuse to indulge. If there is someone in your
life who is acting as an outer Food Controller, explain to that person how his
or her efforts just trigger your Outer Rebel. Let the person know that you are
working on your eating issue, and ask him or her to refrain from trying to
help you.
When the Food Controller and the Indulger are polarized, the Rebel
is allied with the Indulger and at war with the Food Controller because it is
concerned about not being dominated by the Controller. Once you can
contact your Rebel and appreciate how it is trying to stand up for you in the
face of a harsh Food Controller, it will be easier to befriend it and use its
energy to work with you rather than against you. You might also need to
spend time healing the exile being protected by the Rebel, which would be a
part that was dominated or pushed too much by a parent.
You may need to work directly with the polarization between the
Food Controller and the Indulger/Rebel.28 After you connect with these
parts, arrange for them to talk with each other and learn how to cooperate
rather than battling. This will help the whole eating situation to calm down
inside you.
What did you need to do to get permission from both parts for the dialogue?
What negotiation needed to happen before both parts could agree to the
resolution?
Follow up in the situations in your life when you usually overeat, and
make sure to reassure the Indulger in the moment that it can let go. Ask the
Food Controller to relax, too, if necessary.
Self-Care Capacities
If you struggle with eating issues, you may not have permission to
know what your needs are and take care of them. If you didn’t receive
consistent loving attention as a child, you may have come to believe that
other people are more important than you and that your needs don’t matter.
You may not believe that you are valuable and deserving of gentle, loving
attention.
If the focus of your childhood was on meeting rigid expectations,
being good, or performing, you may have learned to ignore pleasure. Now
when you move toward something that will give you pleasure, you may feel
guilty or conflicted.
Just as it is important to transform the parts that cause you to overeat,
it is also important to develop healthy parts that will help you take care of
yourself in positive ways.
First is the Conscious Consumption Capacity. At its core, the Food
Controller wants you to take care of yourself. When it is transformed from
its extreme role, it becomes the Conscious Consumption Capacity. With this
capacity, you have the ability to stay grounded in your body and be aware of
your eating. You pay attention to the bodily cues that let you know that you
need something, and you can sense what you need. If you are hungry, you
can tell what you are hungry for, and you can stop eating when you are
satiated. If it isn’t hunger, you can identify what else you need—maybe love,
contact, or sensuality. You aren’t conflicted about satisfying your needs, and
you can choose between meeting your needs now or waiting until later.
• Get to know your Rebel Part, and heal the exile(s) it is protecting.
• Get to know your Foggy Part, and heal the exile(s) it is protecting.
Inner Critic
In order to enforce the goal of being perfect, your Perfectionist Inner
Critic judges you or shames you about your work or your life whenever it
feels that you aren’t living up to its expectations. It tells you that you are
stupid, incompetent, sloppy, inappropriate, or bad. You may end up feeling
worthless, depressed, or inadequate.
Your Perfectionist Inner Critic is judging you in order to get you to
work harder and achieve perfection so you can’t be judged or shamed for
mistakes. This Inner Critic type of Perfectionism may be combined with any
of the other types.
Note that it is possible to have any (or all) of the first three types of
Perfectionism without an Inner Critic if you strive to be perfect in those
ways. The Inner Critic comes in as an enforcer when you aren’t striving hard
enough for perfection. Its attacks are aimed at making you try harder to be
perfect.
If you did heal them, did this permit the Perfectionist Part to let go?
Ease Qualities
There are various qualities of Ease that you may want to cultivate in
your life, such as relaxation, flow, life balance, enoughness, work ease, trust
in your abilities, experimenting, and so on. Choose the ones that you want to
have and decide what you can do to cultivate them. For example, for
enoughness, you can practice determining when a project is good enough to
turn in for your purposes so that you don’t need to waste time trying to make
it perfect. For flow, you could practice allowing your work to flow naturally
from your interests, energy, and creativity rather than pushing yourself.
What are the Ease Capacity qualities that you would like in that situation?
When you are in that situation, practice activating and living from those
Ease qualities. How did that go?
Jeremy’s Story Continued
When Jeremy started working on himself using IFS, he learned that
his Perfectionist Part was in fact trying to protect him. It believed that if it
forced him to make his work really perfect, he could prove to his boss that
he was a success and deserved appreciation and love.
Jeremy realized that he was behaving as if his boss were his father.
He knew that although his father had been harsh and critical, his boss was a
pretty nice guy who seemed fairly approachable when Jeremy wasn’t in the
grip of his fear.
“I did a reality check on the reactions I was expecting from my boss.
I’ve seen him in a lot of different situations at work, and he’s never flown off
the handle as my father used to. I made a checklist of my fears, and I
realized that none of them were going to happen with my boss—they were
all about my father. I was playing an old tape over and over, and it was time
to let it go. I pointed out to my Perfectionist that my father was no longer a
threat, and it understood.”
Jeremy asked for a private meeting with his boss and explained that
he wasn’t clear about his boss’s standards for his work. He asked if his boss
would be willing to give him feedback about a project so he could find out
where the bar was. He assured his boss that this information would go a long
way toward helping him meet his deadlines. Jeremy’s boss agreed to his
request and was happy to see Jeremy taking initiative to resolve the problem.
“At first it was hard to talk to my boss, but I knew it was the only
way out of my old pattern. I was never going to break the pattern unless I
tried something different. It was really exciting to see that I could take
initiative and create a different outcome. It helped me feel a lot more self-
confidence.”
Over time, Jeremy’s boss communicated the standard of work he
expected, and Jeremy learned that he didn’t have to be perfect to meet it. His
fears died down as he discovered that his work was adequate. Also, even
when his boss did express criticism, he did it in a respectful, professional
manner that didn’t threaten Jeremy. Jeremy began to turn in his work on
time, and he got excellent reviews from his boss.
What if Jeremy’s boss had been more like Jeremy’s father? Then
Jeremy couldn’t reassure his Perfectionist that there wasn’t any danger, but
he could still approach his boss the way he did by asking for feedback about
what the boss wanted. Jeremy would have to strategize about how to deal
with his boss if he did get angry and then explain this to his Perfectionist
Part so it realized that Jeremy could handle the situation. After all, Jeremy is
no longer a child. He now has many more inner resources for dealing with
difficult people.
Summary
This chapter has described how to work with Perfectionist protectors
using IFS. It lists the four types of Perfectionism—Not Enough, Creative
Block, Control, and Inner Critic. It also discusses the Ease Capacity, which
transforms Perfectionism. For further help, see my book Letting Go of
Perfectionism or my online tool for personal growth and psychological
healing, Self-Therapy Journey,34 which includes a module on Perfectionism.
Chapter 5
Depression
When you are depressed, your natural buoyancy, spark, and energy
are missing. You may feel lethargic and believe that there is no point in
doing anything because your life seems hopeless. It may be difficult to get
up the energy to do more than go through the motions of your life. You may
have little appetite, or you may eat too much. You may have difficulty
sleeping or, on the other hand, sleep too much.
You may isolate yourself from people because you don’t see any
point in trying to relate to them, and this may contribute to the sense of
bleakness in your life. Your inner landscape may feel empty and gray. You
may feel sadness and grief, or you may just feel dead inside. You could also
feel anxious and agitated along with your depression.
You probably also feel bad about yourself. You may believe that the
reason for your hopelessness is that there is something intrinsically wrong
with you. You think you are inadequate or worthless and that’s why your life
can’t work. You probably feel a lot of pain about this, though that pain may
be buried behind the bleakness.
Ginger’s Story
To understand depression better, let’s look at one person’s story.
Ginger had a good, well-paying job, but she lost it when the economy
crashed. Then six months later her mother died. This was too much for her;
it threw her into a deep depression that lasted for over a year. She felt listless
and low energy. It was hard for her to rouse herself to do much of anything
because her life seemed hopeless. She could barely do the minimal tasks
around her house.
Ginger reached out to friends less and less, and even when she was
with them, she was down and withdrawn. So she became more and more
isolated and alone. This increased her sense of bleakness.
Ginger came to believe that there was something deeply wrong with
her. She couldn’t say what it was, but she just felt as though she was a loser
and so, of course, she had no friends and couldn’t find a job.
Though she had enough money at the moment, she knew it wouldn’t
last too long, so she had to do something to find employment. She
continually told herself that she had to work on her resume, do networking,
and apply for openings, but she couldn’t even start on these tasks. A part of
her felt that there was no point in trying because nothing was going to work.
She sunk deeper into misery and sloth.
Depressing Protectors
Now let’s look at the psychological causes of depression. A
depressed part can be either a protector or an exile. Let’s look at protectors
first.
Protectors That Block Hope
One common cause of depression is having a protector that doesn’t
want you to feel hopeful. Such a protector doesn’t actually feel hopeless. It
makes you feel hopeless in order to keep you from feeling hopeful and then
suffering the disappointment of not getting what you were hoping for.
Therefore, it is more accurate to call it a Depressing Protector rather than a
Depressed Protector. It is afraid of your feeling devastated if you are
disappointed. It believes that if you are hopeful and your hopes don’t work
out, or if you fail at what you are trying to accomplish, you will be
devastated. It isn’t just worried about your being disappointed; it is afraid
you will be devastated in such a severe way that you couldn’t handle it. Its
fear probably goes back to times in childhood when you were hopeful and
then your hopes were dashed and you were devastated.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hopelessness is realistic or
that your Depressing Protector feels hopeless. It is purposely trying to make
you feel hopeless to protect you from devastation. However, even though it
is causing your depression, its heart is in the right place; your Depressing
Protector is trying to protect you from pain. So you can get to know it and
connect with it.
Of course, the pain this Depressing Protector causes you is far greater
that the actual disappointment you might feel if your hopes failed to
materialize. But your protector doesn’t realize that.
Therapist Note
Since the Destroyer Critic is such a primitive, harmful part, it is hard
for most people to deal with, so your client will need all the help you can
offer. Your client may need your help to get his or her concerned part (Inner
Defender) to step aside. Once clients are aware that they are being attacked
by a Destroyer Critic, their Inner Defender usually hates it and wants to get
rid of it. You can help your client to be more open to the Destroyer by
explaining how it might be trying to protect him or her. Reassure the Inner
Defender that you won’t let the Destroyer crush the client; instead you are
going to get to know the Destroyer and find out what it is trying to do for the
client. See Chapter 1: “Your Inner Critic Isn’t as Power and Intimidating as
It Seems” for a good example of the positive intent of a Destroyer.
Depressed Exiles
A Depressed Exile isn’t trying to make you depressed (like a
Depressing Protector)—it just feels depressed. There are two main types of
Depressed Exiles (though any given exile may be of both types).
Shame
If your Depressed Exile has a Shame or Judgment Wound (from the
Pattern System), it feels bad about itself, worthless, and deeply flawed. This
comes from being judged, shamed, or put down excessively during
childhood. Or the exile may have believed that there was something wrong
with you because of what happened to you as a child—because you were
neglected, yelled at, hit, or abused. If you are now being attacked by an Inner
Critic, this makes the exile feel even worse about itself.
The belief that you are no good and fundamentally worthless is very
depressing. You feel as though your life can’t possibly work out and that you
don’t deserve good things anyway.
Deprivation
Your Depressed Exile might have a Deprivation or Abandonment
Wound. These wounds come from not being given enough nurturing, caring,
touch, feeding, and love when you were very young. This results in
“insecure attachment,” which is a technical term in psychology that means a
child and mother don’t develop a good connection. Your Deprived Exile
feels alone, lost, uncared for, and helpless. It feels as though there is no love
or connection possible, that its existence is dark and bleak. No one was there
for you as a child, and the exile fears that it won’t survive. When you feel
this way, it seems as though it will go on forever. This is very depressing.
Therapist Note
If your client has a Deprivation/Abandonment Wound, this involves a
lack of secure attachment. Even though this issue can be resolved by
forming a healthy attachment between the client’s Self and the exile in the
reparenting step of the IFS process, in some cases your client may also need
to do attachment work directly with you. This means that you work directly
on your relationship with the exile (and the client), and you gradually
become the healthy attachment figure for the client. This can be powerfully
healing, and it provides the grounding for successful reparenting between the
client’s Self and the exile.
If you did heal it, did this permit the Depressing Part to let go?
Grieving
Depression is often a natural outcome of grief. If you are grieving the
loss of a loved one, you will probably feel depressed for a while. This is
natural and doesn’t require therapy. You just allow the natural grieving
process to unfold. Your depression should disappear over time as your
period of grief comes to an end.
However, if your depression lasts longer than six months, your loss
may have triggered grieving about earlier losses in your life that weren’t
processed at the time. You may have been abandoned when you were young.
You may have lost a parent, grandparent, or other relative. You may not have
received the necessary support from your family to deal with this grief at the
time. Perhaps your family was overwhelmed and didn’t have the emotional
energy to help you with your grief. Maybe they tried to sweep the loss under
the rug and gave you the message that you shouldn’t talk about it. Or maybe
your grief was simply too overwhelming to handle at such a young age. This
left you with unresolved grief, which is held by an exile and defended
against by protectors.
Then when a new loss happens, it triggers this old, unresolved grief.
As a result, you need to do psychological work to resolve the grief from
those earlier losses so your current grieving can come to a close. You will
need to get to know the protectors that are blocking your awareness of the
earlier grief and then work with the grieving exile. Witness the exile’s grief
and then see if it needs any reparenting or unburdening to complete its
healing.
What are the aspects of Aliveness that you would like to have in that
situation?
When you are in that situation, practice living from those Aliveness
qualities.
Summary
This chapter has explored how to use IFS to work with depression,
which can be a protector or an exile. We explored how grief, a life purpose
crisis, or aging can lead to depression and what to do about it. This chapter
has also explained how to develop Aliveness and hope in place of
Depression. For further help, see my online tool for personal growth and
psychological healing, Self-Therapy Journey,43 which includes a module on
Depression.
Chapter 6
Anger and Disowned Anger
Anger is an emotion that is problematic for many of us. With other
emotions, the main question is usually whether or not to feel or show the
emotion. With anger, the situation is more complicated because anger can be
harmful and destructive when acted out. Therefore, many of us have
conflicting attitudes about anger. We live in a violent society, surrounded by
examples of the destructive effects of anger, and some of us have been
victims of it. Anger and violence are sometimes also celebrated—in war,
gangs, sports, and criminal TV shows. Working with anger in therapy is
therefore tricky and complex. It is too easy to just assume that anger is
always bad and disown it completely, while it actually has a positive role to
play in our lives.
Anger can arise in various ways in IFS work, depending on which
part holds the anger, what function the anger serves, and whether the anger is
disowned. Each situation requires a different approach. Protector anger that
is acted out in your life needs to be understood so you can heal the exile
being protected and the protector can let go. Expressing such anger is
usually not a good idea. Exile anger, on the other hand, needs to be
welcomed and expressed in sessions in order to fully witness the exile and
also as a way of helping the exile feel protected and safe from harm.
Disowned anger also needs to be expressed in sessions as a way of accessing
and developing your strength and healthy aggression.
Protector Anger
An angry protector may use anger as a way to avoid feeling the pain
of an exile. Because of this, your anger may arise in situations in which it is
inappropriate, and it may be more extreme than is warranted.
For example, when James is rejected by a woman he has been dating,
he often feels very angry at her. He doesn’t express the anger to her, but it
can become pretty intense inside. This anger is an attempt to protect him
from feeling the pain of an exile who feels hurt and unlovable. It distracts
him from those vulnerable emotions and substitutes a feeling that is more
acceptable to him.
Protector anger may also be an attempt to protect an exile from a
perceived external threat, because anger stimulates aggressive behavior to
keep people from harming you. For example, whenever someone acts
controlling or dominant toward Marlene, or when she perceives their
behavior in this way, a protector of hers is activated that feels angry at the
person.
Marlene often expresses her anger at the person she feels controlled
by. She tries to prove to the person that he or she is wrong for trying to
control her. This is an attempt to protect the exile from being dominated.
Because Marlene’s anger is protector-driven, it tends to be out of proportion
to what the other person has actually done. As a result, it often offends
people or makes them worry that Marlene will get out of control. They
respond with increased attempts to control her, which results in exactly what
her Angry Part fears.
There are four situations involving protector anger, each requiring a
somewhat different strategy:
2. The anger is felt, but the Self refrains from acting it out.
3. The anger is felt, but protectors suppress it, with perhaps occasional
outbursts.
Angry Part:
Exile(s) it is protecting:
Once you have permission, you can get to know the Enraged Part and
integrate it into your psyche. As you do this, the rage will lose its intensity,
and the Enraged Part won’t be so threatening. In fact, the image of the
Enraged Part as powerful and evil may shift to something much different.
The next step is to get permission from the Enraged Part to work with the
exile it is protecting and then to heal that exile so the Enraged Part can relax,
as discussed above under Protector Anger Being Acted Out.
Disowned Anger
In IFS, we sometimes encounter parts that have been disowned or
exiled because their feelings or behavior are seen as unacceptable. Because a
part wasn’t acceptable in childhood, other parts of you banished it, and this
dynamic has carried forward into the present.
I call these disowned parts. A disowned part can be a protector, an
exile, or a healthy part.47 Anger is probably the most common type of
disowned part. If you have disowned your anger, you tend to lack
assertiveness or strength. You may even be passive, pleasing, self-effacing,
or lacking in self-confidence and drive. This is because your Strength
(healthy aggression) has become disowned along with your anger.
This process is common among girls and women, although it is not
confined to them. Because of both innate hormonal makeup and gender
programming, the expression of anger tends to be fostered among males and
discouraged among females. However, these are just cultural tendencies.
Some men disown their anger, and some women act theirs out.
Let’s look at an example. Donna’s parents were judgmental and
shaming whenever she got angry. They gave her the message that she was
supposed to be a nice girl and not make waves or be aggressive. As a result,
her anger was disowned, and this was enforced by managers who believed
her anger was bad. Donna became meek and quiet, and had a hard time
asserting herself.
If you have disowned your anger, you may occasionally have angry
outbursts, due to the Angry Part breaking through. This anger is usually
extreme and inappropriate to the context. You may feel ashamed of these
incidents and believe they prove that you have an anger problem. However,
the real problem is that your anger has been disowned.
Disowned Anger can come from a protector, an exile, or even a
healthy part. When it comes from an exile or a healthy part, the part is just
responding in a naturally aggressive way to childhood insults or
deprivations. However, this anger can become extreme because it has been
disowned. The Angry Part reacts to being disowned by becoming
increasingly and irrationally angry.
When working with Disowned Anger, your goal is to gain access to
the disowned Angry Part and welcome it back into your internal family of
parts and into your conscious life, where it can live and express itself. It is
helpful to welcome even anger that is extreme, though it shouldn’t be acted
out. Witness the part’s anger and encourage it to express the anger in
whatever way it wants in a session. This is often a great relief since the anger
has been repressed for so long.
Therapist Note
If a client who has disowned his or her anger is angry at you, it can
be helpful to encourage the client to express the anger directly to you (as
long as you help him or her refrain from acting it out in an extreme way). By
doing this, you can demonstrate to your client that you welcome his or her
anger and can handle it. Of course, you must have already worked through
your fears of other people’s anger.
Strength
A disowned part often holds a positive quality or energy that should
be integrated into your psyche. For example, sexuality, spontaneity, and
caring are all positive qualities that could be disowned if they were
unacceptable to your family. When the disowned part is welcomed back, it
allows you to re-own this positive energy.
When anger is disowned, it isn’t the anger itself that is the positive
quality to be re-owned. There is a positive quality that gets disowned along
with the anger, which I call the Strength Capacity. Strength means healthy
aggression, aliveness, personal power, and the ability to assert yourself and
establish healthy boundaries. It includes the ability to be firm, take risks,
adopt a powerful stance in the world, and feel a zest for life.48
Anger is a natural protective reaction to injustice, boundary
violations, mistreatment, or frustration of one’s aims. When our Strength
Capacity is activated, anger is rarely necessary because we can call on our
healthy sense of power, forcefulness, and limit setting to handle these
situations. We can be strong and assertive without frightening or harming
other people. However, when we exile our anger, we also exile our Strength,
not because we intend to but rather because of the way the human psyche
operates.
By welcoming back Disowned Anger, we take a step toward
reclaiming our
Strength. This is especially true if we welcome back the anger in an
embodied way that includes feeling the anger fully and perhaps even
expressing it. This helps us to embody our Strength and personal power.
When you work on fully expressing your anger in a therapy session,
your focus is not on containing it or communicating it in a constructive way.
You want to fully embody the anger as a means of re-owning your strength.
This is not intended as practice for real-life interactions; it should only be
done in a therapy session or when you are alone. Practice for real-life
communication of anger is an entirely different process that involves
speaking for your Angry Part, as discussed above under Constructive
Communication of Anger.
Let’s look at Donna’s work. She first allowed herself to feel the
emotion of anger, which had been disowned. When this felt reasonably safe
to the protectors who had disowned the anger, I encouraged her to notice
how the anger manifested in her body in the moment. She noticed a
clenching of her jaw, power in her arms, deeper breathing, and upright
posture. At some point, she wanted to express the anger, which she did by
yelling.
In subsequent sessions, I helped her express her anger even more
fully. One session involved hitting a pillow, another twisting a towel. These
activities allowed the anger to be fully embodied in a vibrant way. Donna
felt the strength and aliveness that were awakened in her by owning and
expressing her anger. She felt it as hot, streaming energy in her arms and a
feeling of potency in her trunk.
What if the anger that has been disowned is protector anger? Do you
still want to welcome it back? I mentioned earlier that it isn’t advisable to
express protector anger that is being acted out in your life. However, when
protector anger has been disowned, expressing it in sessions can be quite
helpful because you have two issues to deal with: (1) re-owning your anger
in order to develop strength, and (2) getting beneath the angry protector to
heal the exile it is protecting so the protector can let go.
It is important to re-own your anger first—to welcome it back into
your internal system and perhaps express it—so that you can develop your
Strength. Then you can get to know the Angry protector and heal its exile so
the protector can let go. This way, you get the benefits of both processes;
you gain Strength and let go of excessive anger. If you work on
understanding the anger as protection first, you may lose the possibility of
regaining your disowned Strength.
Reclaiming your Disowned Anger can also help you reclaim other
healthy capacities that were disowned along with your anger, such as
presence, freedom, or self-expression.
Therapist Note
You must also pay attention to any of your (therapist’s) parts that
may be uneasy with anger. If you aren’t completely comfortable with anger,
you may subtly side with the client’s Inner Controller, or, at least, you may
not fully support and encourage the client’s anger when needed. If necessary,
do your own IFS work with your protectors so you can completely support
your client’s anger and Strength. At times, this includes encouraging your
client’s anger using your strong, powerful voice.
When your Inner Controller blocks your anger, first ask it if it would
be willing to step aside so that the healing process can continue. If it won’t,
ask what it is afraid of and reassure it about its fears. If necessary, spend a
session or more working with the Controller to relax these fears.
Your Inner Controller may be afraid that you will do dangerous
things with your anger. In fact, if you have rage that has been disowned,
your Inner Controller may be afraid that it will be explosive and destructive
if allowed to come out. Often the problem is that your rage has become so
explosive because it has been disowned. The more the Angry Part is exiled,
the angrier it becomes.
Reassure your Inner Controller that, as you get to know your Enraged
Part, you will remain in Self, and therefore the rage won’t get out of control.
If you express the rage at all, it will only be done in private, not toward other
people.
You can also reassure the Inner Controller that there are hidden
positive qualities associated with the anger and rage, namely Strength, which
will help you in your life. For example, once Don got to know his Angry
Part and welcomed it into his internal family, it looked and felt like a
towering column of presence, which made him feel solid and potent.
Your Inner Controller may be afraid that you will be attacked,
judged, or ridiculed by others for showing anger. Reassure the protector that
if the anger is expressed in your life, you (in Self) will remain in charge and
not allow any destructive acting out. You will express the anger
constructively and will choose situations where it is safe to do so. This is the
Restraint Capacity.
Therapist Note
Reassure the protector that you welcome the anger and would never
judge or ridicule the client for expressing it. (Do your own work on yourself
to make sure this is true.)
Therapist Note
When working with a client who has disowned his or her anger, it is
important that your client’s anger not be discouraged, even when it is
extreme. The expression of anger, at this point, is a healthy step in the right
direction. You don’t want to simply access and heal the exile being protected
by the Angry Part so it can let go of its anger. Even if the anger is coming
from an extreme protector, the client is in the process of re-owning his or her
Strength. It is important not to undermine this process.
In fact, part of the reason that the anger is extreme is that the Angry
Part is fighting against the Inner Controller. Be careful not to side with the
Controller.
Get to know your Angry Part and appreciate the positive qualities it
can bring into your life, even if the anger is currently extreme. You might
have to work with your Inner Controller in order to accomplish this. Once
you, in Self, truly appreciate the Angry Part, it will often relax and become
less extreme. Once you (in Self) are connected to and cooperating with your
Angry Part, you can provide guidance about expressing the anger in a
constructive way in real-life interactions with people by relying on your
Restraint Capacity.
This supports the conversion of anger to Strength. The end result is
that you will be stronger and more assertive, and your anger, if it is there at
all, will be more appropriate to each situation. You may need to learn how to
interact with people from Strength rather than anger. This includes speaking
for parts, as discussed earlier, as well as finding other ways to be firm and
powerful without being reactive.
Let’s look at an example. My client Debbie had disowned her anger
all her life. Instead, she was a pleaser. In childhood, she was abused, both
physically and sexually, and had relatively little connection with her mother.
The only way she could cope was to try to please her parents. This pleasing
continued in her marriage and her friendships.
In our therapy, Debbie not only accessed and healed the exiles who
were abused and deprived, but she also uncovered her anger at what had
been done to her. As she expressed this anger in sessions, she gradually
began to feel angrier and angrier in her life. She identified a part she called
her Inner Bitch who wanted to yell at people whenever she felt they weren’t
respecting her boundaries or her needs.
Debbie felt ambivalent toward the Inner Bitch. While she appreciated
this part in some ways, she basically felt that it was a serious problem
because it threatened to undermine her relationships. In one session, I helped
her get to know the Inner Bitch in detail. It told her that its job was to keep
people from overpowering her and not respecting her needs. It would do
anything to protect her, and it didn’t care about the consequences. It really
didn’t like the pleasing part of her.
Her Inner Controller judged her Inner Bitch harshly. I helped Debbie
get her Controller to step aside so she could be in Self as she got to know the
Bitch. She came to really appreciate what her Inner Bitch was trying to do
for her and the strength it had to offer her.
Once she conveyed to the Bitch her appreciation for it, the part
softened. It let go of its extreme angry posture and became quite willing to
work with Debbie to express itself through Strength rather than rage. The
term “Inner Bitch” was a somewhat derogatory name for this part; once
Debbie’s relationship with it shifted, she asked the part what it wanted to be
called, and it chose “The Bodyguard.” As a result of Debbie’s new
connection with her Bodyguard, its overblown, angry reactions gradually
subsided and were replaced by a solid ability to be assertive and set limits.
In this session, I didn’t try to work with the exiles who were being
protected by the Bodyguard. We had already unburdened them a fair amount,
and though there is probably more work to be done with them, it was
important in this session to support Debbie in connecting with the
Bodyguard. We will work with those exiles in future sessions, if that
becomes necessary.
Exile Anger
Exile anger usually doesn’t show up in the way you relate to people.
It only arises in doing an IFS session when you work with an exile. Exiles
frequently feel angry at the way they were treated in childhood. For
example, Sally’s older sister made fun of her whenever she tried to play with
the sister and her friends. This caused one of Sally’s exiles to feel shame,
and, in addition, the exile also felt angry at her sister. Exile anger like this is
different from protector anger because it is felt along with the shame. If it
were protector anger, it would arise to block the feeling of shame.
With exile anger, the exile should be encouraged to feel (and possibly
express) its anger with the Self as witness. In Sally’s case, the exile needed
to internally express its anger at the sister. This is part of the witnessing step
that needs to happen before an exile is ready to unburden. Witnessing an
exile’s anger may happen before or after the exile’s pain is witnessed. Then
the exile can unburden its pain and negative beliefs.
In this situation, you may have to work with your Inner Controller,
which is afraid of the anger being expressed, especially expressing it to a
parent who had enraged, violent reactions when you expressed anger as a
child. You (in Self) need to protect the exile (in your imagination) from the
parent’s angry reaction so the exile feels safe in expressing its anger. Self can
be as large and strong as necessary to handle even a large father. Imagine
that you (in Self) are much bigger and stronger than your father, and then
protect the exile from him so it can fully express its anger without fear.
Angry Exile:
What did you do to support and protect the exile in expressing its anger?
Forgiveness
The last step in the process of healing anger is to develop
forgiveness. This is especially useful for anger that you have been acting out.
You learn to forgive the person you are angry at—the person who harmed
you. This doesn’t mean condoning what that person did to you. It may or
may not mean changing your relationship with that person. It means letting
go of your anger and especially your need for revenge. It means no longer
holding onto a grudge toward this person. You might think that this is for
that person’s sake, but it isn’t. It is for your sake.
Once you have worked through the anger and healed the exiles your
Angry Part was protecting, the final step is to let go of the anger completely
(unless it would be helpful to convert your anger to Strength). You may
think that you are punishing the other person by holding onto your anger at
him or her, but you are really hurting yourself. Anger can eat away at you
and keep you in a negative frame of mind. It can keep you from having
peace, joy, and love in your life. So for your sake, it is helpful to forgive the
person and free yourself from your anger.
You can do this through an unburdening ritual where you let go of
the anger. Or you can do it through an internal shift of perspective where you
forgive the person. If that person is someone you have an ongoing
relationship with, it might also be useful to tell the person to his or her face
that you forgive him or her. However, this is not the important part of
developing forgiveness. The important part is internal to you. Whether you
say anything directly to the person is secondary.
It is important not to push for forgiveness prematurely. Some people
who realize the importance of Forgiveness may expect themselves to forgive
the person who hurt them before they are ready to do so. Allow yourself to
fully feel your anger and express it first. Allow yourself to fully process and
heal the pain the person caused you.
If your anger is at a parent or other person from childhood who
wounded you, make sure you have fully witnessed what they did to you and
how it made you feel. The exiles who were wounded should be completely
healed. Any suppressed or Disowned Anger should be re-owned and
converted into Strength. And make sure that you are fully ready to forgive.
Don’t push yourself into forgiveness because you think you should forgive.
If you try to forgive prematurely, it won’t work. You may not actually feel
forgiving. One of your protectors may object and ratchet up your anger. Or
premature forgiveness may undercut the development of your Strength.
When you are fully ready, forgive the person or people who hurt you.
This will open your heart and free you to live in joy and contentment.
Help Sheet
The following is an outline of the various circumstances and
dynamics around anger that have been presented in this chapter and a
summary of the steps to deal with each one.
A. Protector Anger Acted Out
2. Learn to contain the anger in life situations and how to speak for the
angry part rather than from it.
3. Get permission to work with the exile that the Angry Part is
protecting.
6. Develop Forgiveness.
B. Protector Rage Felt but Suppressed, or with Occasional Outbursts
1. Work with your Inner Controller to get permission to work with your
Angry Part.
2. Heal its exile so the Angry Part can let go, as in A3–A6.
C. Disowned Anger
1. Work with your Inner Controller to get permission to work with your
Angry Part.
5. Appreciate what the Angry Part has to offer and develop a trusting
relationship with it.
D. Exile Anger
If you have the Angry Pattern, you need Restraint and Forgiveness to
transform it. If you have the Disowned Anger or the Inner Controller Pattern,
you need Strength to transform it. Make sure to re-own your Anger first and
then convert it to Strength.
Summary
This chapter contains a detailed exploration of various ways to work
with anger in IFS. It shows that anger comes up in a variety of contexts and
needs to be handled differently in each one. In some cases, it needs to be
witnessed and healed in the regular IFS way. In other situations, you need to
learn to contain it and communicate it constructively. In still others, you
need to feel and express it fully in a session as a way of developing Strength.
And sometimes anger is an aid in the healing process. In many cases, you
must work with your Inner Controller to allow access to your anger.
For further help, see my online tool for personal growth and
psychological healing, Self-Therapy Journey,50 which includes modules on
Anger and Disowned Anger.
Chapter 7
The Passive-Aggressive Pattern
If you have the Passive-Aggressive Pattern, you act in a way that
looks agreeable and pleasing on the surface, but in the end your behavior
hurts and frustrates people. You may only be aware of your desire to take
care of people and your fear of not pleasing them.
The clue to realizing that you may have the Passive-Aggressive
Pattern is when people you are close to often get frustrated or confused by
your actions. You may feel wronged when this happens. You may even say
to yourself, “I’m doing my best to be nice and agreeable, but my partner
doesn’t seem to get this. She keeps getting on my case for doing things that
upset her. But I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
If you are acting out the Passive-Aggressive Pattern, there is an
unconscious part of you that is resentful and defiant. This part may be
irritated at how much you give in to someone. Or the part may feel
resentment toward that person. However, that part doesn’t believe that it has
the right to be angry or defiant, so those feelings go underground. You act in
seemingly agreeable ways, but you add a mean little twist to your behavior
that hurts the other person. This is related to the Disowned Anger Pattern
discussed in the previous chapter.
For example, your partner asks you to do something for her by a
certain date. You agree to do it, but then you forget about it until after the
date has passed, and she has to suffer the consequences. Consciously, you
just forgot, but your Passive-Aggressive Part did this on purpose to punish
her.
Another example: There is a woman at work whom you find
attractive. You have no intention of acting on this because you are married.
Your wife has met her and is jealous, so she has made it clear that she
doesn’t want you to even have a friendship with the woman. Part of you
resents this restriction, but you push this into your unconscious and agree to
your wife’s demand. However, you decide to have lunch with the woman
without telling your wife, rationalizing, “I know I’m not going to have an
affair, so what’s wrong with just having lunch?” However, you
“accidentally” leave a clue that alerts your wife to the lunch. She is very
upset. Your Passive-Aggressive Part has “gotten” your wife in retaliation for
her trying to restrict your contact with this woman.
It isn’t easy to know that you have this pattern because it is often
unconscious. In addition, most of us don’t want to admit to being Passive-
Aggressive because we see it as a character flaw. However, it is
fundamentally no different from any other protective strategy, so there is no
reason to be ashamed of it. Just try to be aware of it and work to change it.
A Passive-Aggressive Story
Whenever Joe’s wife, Marge, asks him to do something around the
house, he always agrees to do it but rarely gets it done. He either
conveniently “forgets” about it, or he does a little bit of it but doesn’t finish
the job. Sometimes he does the job but in a way that isn’t really what Marge
wanted, so she ends up having to redo it herself. In every case, Marge is left
feeling frustrated with Joe.
Joe appears to feel vaguely guilty about this, but it keeps happening,
and Marge gets increasingly angry. She begins to wonder: “Does Joe really
care for me? Because I feel like I can’t trust him anymore.” Marge has a
vague feeling that he might be getting back at her, but she can’t really put it
into words.
Joe keeps saying, “Hey, I’m only human. I just forget sometimes.”
He claims he would really like to give her all the things she wants.
This is Passive-Aggressive behavior in action. What is really going
on with Joe? He has a part that is a People-Pleaser. This part of him really
wants to make Marge happy by doing everything she asks. It is actually
afraid of not pleasing her. It is afraid that she will become angry and
judgmental or that she will withdraw from Joe if he doesn’t please her.
Therefore, when Marge asks Joe to do something, his Pleaser doesn’t stop to
consider whether or not he wants to do it. The Pleaser automatically says
yes. It wants to protect Joe from the pain of being judged or rejected by
Marge. And Joe isn’t aware that this is going on.
However, this is only half of the story. There is another part of Joe
that is Passive-Aggressive. This part has very different feelings about
Marge’s requests. First of all, it doesn’t see them as requests. It feels that
Marge is demanding things from him. It resents Marge for (what it sees as
her) pushing him around and telling him what to do. And the Passive-
Aggressive Part is even more resentful when Joe gives in. It feels angry at
Marge and wants to say, “How dare you tell me what to do!”
However, the Passive-Aggressive Part is overruled by the Pleaser, at
least consciously. It isn’t allowed to defy Marge or get angry at her because
the Pleaser would be terrified of Marge’s reaction. So the Passive-
Aggressive Part is silenced. It doesn’t get to act in a direct way, and Joe
doesn’t even know that he has a part like this. The Passive-Aggressive Part
can be completely unconscious.
Joe has a lot of anger and rage held over from his childhood,
especially directed at women. Sometimes this anger is directed at Marge,
even when she hasn’t done anything to warrant it. Joe has parts that are
terrified about what would happen if he expressed this anger directly, so it is
hidden away where Joe is unaware of it. It feeds into the feelings of the
Passive-Aggressive Part in an unconscious way.
The Passive-Aggressive Part is not without some power. Even though
it can’t be directly aggressive the way it would like, it can be passively
aggressive. It can prevent Joe from giving Marge what she wants. It may
cause Joe to forget what he has promised to do. The Passive-Aggressive Part
may influence Joe to do a job in a haphazard way that will frustrate Marge or
even scare her by leaving it precariously half-finished. It knows how to get
back at Marge in an indirect way that Joe isn’t even aware of. And when
Marge does get frustrated or scared, the Passive-Aggressive Part feels
satisfied because it has expressed its anger and rebellion. Ha-ha! It has
“gotten” her.
Joe has two sides that are at odds with each other. They are conflicted
about the best way to deal with Marge. The Pleaser takes charge directly
when Marge asks Joe to do something, and the Passive-Aggressive Part
takes charge later by acting out indirect revenge.
Passive-Aggressive Behavior
Here are some other examples of Passive-Aggressive behavior:
Pete’s spouse lets him know that it is important that she be able to
contact him at any time in case she needs help with the kids. After a fight, he
goes to a bar and his cell phone is out of juice. He is upset with her and
doesn’t want to hear any more of her anger, so he doesn’t bother to plug in
his phone to recharge it, so she can’t get hold of him.
Charles invited his wife, Donna, to go on a long bike ride with him,
even though he is a much stronger rider than she is. Charles was harboring
resentment toward her for a variety of issues in their marriage. About
halfway through the ride, Charles rode on far ahead of Donna. She got
exhausted and couldn’t go on, and she needed him to help her, but he wasn’t
there. Donna ended up feeling abandoned and scared. Charles’s Passive-
Aggressive Part indirectly expressed its anger at Donna by hurting her in this
way.
Sometimes Samantha talks about her husband to a group of friends
when he is present. She makes little jokes about his shortcomings in a way
that may seem innocuous to their friends, but he ends up feeling ridiculed
and shamed. When he brings it up, she says she was just kidding.
Danny is upset with his friend Walt about things that Walt has done
that have hurt him. However, Danny doesn’t bring up his concerns. Instead,
when Walt phones or emails him, Danny just doesn’t respond. Walt ends up
feeling baffled and frustrated.
People-Pleasing Behavior
The beginning of Passive-Aggressive behavior comes from being a
People-Pleaser and avoiding being assertive. When your People-Pleasing
Pattern is triggered, you try to comply with people to make them happy. You
may try to be who you think someone wants you to be and to agree with his
or her beliefs. You may try to make yourself think, feel, and want the same
things as another person, even if this doesn’t reflect your true feelings.
If you are in a relationship, a part of you may be trying to “merge”
with your partner and act the same as he or she does. If your
partner expresses an opinion about a movie you just saw, you automatically
agree. If your partner wants to go bike riding rather than hiking, you arrange
your desires so you feel the same way. This process is often unconscious and
involves ignoring your own opinions, feelings, and needs or distorting them
so they are almost always the same as your partner’s. You defer to his or her
preferences, values, and goals without quite realizing you are doing it.
It is important to be able to distinguish between situations in which
you genuinely agree with someone and those in which you automatically go
along without even considering what you think or want. If you consider your
opinions and feelings and you truly agree with someone, that is not being a
Pleaser.
You might go far out of your way to please people and make them
happy, to the extent of sacrificing your own needs or boundaries. The
People-Pleasing part of you may accept other people’s perceptions of you
without considering whether those perceptions are accurate. When you know
what you want, your People-Pleasing Part may be afraid to ask for it for fear
of people being angry at you.
Of course, there is nothing wrong about wanting to make another
person happy. The problem arises when you do this without even
considering what would make you happy or when you try to please others at
your own expense. You might even try to please people when those
particular actions end up causing you hardship. There may be special
circumstances when it would be a loving gesture to sacrifice your well-being
to help someone who is in serious trouble. However, if you do this very
often, you probably have the People-Pleasing Pattern.
If you are stuck in a situation in which someone has power over you,
such as your boss at work, and the person wouldn’t be receptive to your
bringing up your concerns or disagreements, you may consciously choose to
please him or her even though you would prefer not to. When this is a
conscious choice and the situation doesn’t really allow you to assert yourself
successfully, pleasing might be your best option. This wouldn’t be the
People-Pleasing Pattern, because you aren’t doing it to protect an exile.
However, make sure that you aren’t really avoiding standing up for yourself
in a way that might be successful.
Therapist Note
If you are a therapist, coach, or other helping professional, it can be
helpful to understand how a Passive-Aggressive client may act out this
pattern in his or her relationship with you.
A Passive-Aggressive client may experience you as pressuring him
or her to perform. When you ask the client questions or ask parts to step
aside, the client’s People-Pleasing Part may feel that the client must do it
right or you will be disappointed in them. The client’s Passive-Aggressive
Part may believe that your attempts to help the client change are really ways
of trying to control them.
Therefore, the client may consciously want to please you, but the
pressure he or she perceives as coming from you may trigger his or her
Passive-Aggressive Part. This part may act out its defiance by failing to
engage in therapy in a successful way. Or if the client does the therapy well,
a Passive-Aggressive Part may keep him or her from making any progress.
Or if the client is making progress, he or she may deny it. This is an
unconscious expression of anger at you and an attempt to defeat you. Since
the client’s Passive-Aggressive Part believes you are attempting to change
the client, it can defeat you by resisting change and thereby assert its
autonomy (in a self-defeating way).
You may react to this by becoming frustrated with the client for
failing in therapy. Or you may end up feeling ineffective and incompetent as
a therapist because you seemingly can’t help this client. However, once you
realize that the client is acting out his or her Passive-Aggressive Pattern with
you, it become much easier to deal with. You can help the client to access his
or her People-Pleasing Part and the part of him or her that feels pressured by
you. You can also get to know the Passive-Aggressive Part and find out its
motivation for sabotaging the therapy. Then you can work to heal the exiles
that these parts are protecting so the client can change his or her problematic
behavior. Once the client’s Passive-Aggressive Part has been transformed,
there will be a major shift in the client’s relationship with you and the
effectiveness of his or her therapy.
However, don’t assume that just because you are frustrated with a
client or feel ineffective, the client has a Passive-Aggressive Pattern. This is
just one possibility for what might be going on. And remember that a
Passive-Aggressive protector shouldn’t be judged for its actions. This pattern
is just another way of protecting an exile and is no worse than any other
protective pattern.
People-Pleasing Part:
Exile(s) it is protecting:
Passive-Aggressive Part:
Exile(s) it is protecting:
Developing Assertiveness
Assertiveness is the antidote to being Passive-Aggressive. You can’t
resolve your Passive-Aggression by simply learning to cooperate with
people. That is likely to play into your People-Pleasing Pattern and trigger
the unconscious need to rebel. You must first learn to be Assertive; then you
can choose to be cooperative without as much danger of sliding into People-
Pleasing.
Assertiveness involves having a firm knowledge of what you feel,
think, and desire, as opposed to being overly influenced by other people’s
opinions, feelings, and needs. When someone asks you to do something, you
consider whether you want to do it and tell the person if you don’t. You
realize that, with most people, you can assert yourself without their reacting
negatively. You know that you can find people who will appreciate your
being strong and assertive, and you have the right to choose to be with
people who welcome your opinions, feelings, and desires.
Assertiveness is part of being an autonomous adult. You realize that
your needs are just as important as other people’s, and, in fact, they are more
important to you. You have the right to make your own decisions and choose
how to live your life. Assertiveness involves exerting power to ask for what
you want, explaining why something is important to you, and following
through, even if others don’t agree with you. You can bring up difficult
issues with someone in order to try to improve your relationship with that
person. You can stand up for yourself and set limits with people when they
are harming you in some way. You can say no when someone asks you for
something that you don’t want to give.
Assertiveness involves being able to initiate action, take risks,
accomplish goals, and move forward in your life. Sometimes it involves
reaching out for connection. Sometimes it means clearly stating what your
opinion is or what you believe is right.
Assertiveness can also involve exerting power to take care of others
or to achieve what you think is right in a given situation. It can involve
assuming a powerful or responsible role in a group or organization.
Assertiveness means doing these things without needing to be defiant
or angry. You can be both assertive and cooperative, which means you are
open to other people’s needs and opinions without giving up your own.
It is helpful to practice being assertive in typical situations when you
are usually People-Pleasing (which sets you up to be Passive-Aggressive).
You can help yourself to be assertive by assuming an assertive body position
—standing tall or sitting up straight, breathing fully, grounding yourself in
your legs and feet, raising your voice, stepping forward. Remind yourself
that you have the right to your opinions, feelings, and desires, and that it is
OK for you to be powerful. Reassure your People-Pleasing Part that you
won’t be hurt or abandoned if you are assertive and that you can handle it if
you are judged or otherwise challenged. Start with small differences and
gradually work your way up to more challenging situations for practicing
self-assertion.
When you are in that situation, practice acting from those Assertive
qualities.
How did that go?
Summary
This chapter has explored the Passive-Aggressive Pattern—how to
recognize it, understand it, and work with it using IFS. It also includes a
discussion of how to relate to someone with a Passive-Aggressive Pattern.
Since the People-Pleasing and Rebel Patterns are aspects of Passive-
Aggression, they are also touched on. The Controlling Pattern is also
mentioned because it often interacts with the Passive-Aggressive Pattern.
The chapter also describes how to develop Assertiveness as a solution to
Passive-Aggression.
For further help, see my online tool for personal growth and
psychological healing, Self-Therapy Journey,54 which includes a module on
the Passive-Aggressive Pattern. It provides more detailed help in setting up a
real-time practice for being assertive (among other things).
Chapter 8
Conflicts in Love Relationships
IFS, in conjunction with the Pattern System, can be very useful in
understanding arguments that happen frequently between partners in love
relationships. In fact, this isn’t limited to love relationships. These concepts
also apply to business partnerships, friendships, family relationships, and
any other close bonds.
Therapist Note
If you are working with a couple, don’t let them act out their fights in
your office, because this may cause them to feel that the therapy situation is
unsafe. Help the couple to understand the sequence of their parts that gets
triggered in their usual conflicts. Ask each partner to identify which wounds
of his or hers get triggered when his or her partner says or does certain
things, and how he or she responds from a protective pattern to protect
against these wounds. Then help each partner to see that when he or she acts
out his or her protective pattern, it triggers wounds and protective patterns in
his or her partner. Once the sequence is clarified, you might want to do some
individual IFS work with one partner (in front of the other) on his or her
parts that get triggered. Then you can work with the other partner on his or
her parts. Once both partners have healed some of their parts, have them try
talking to each other from Self. If one of them gets triggered and starts the
argument cycle, stop that partner right away and do more IFS work on the
part that just got activated.
There is much more to say about this, but it is outside the scope of
this book. For more information about IFS and couple’s therapy, see You’re
the One You’ve Been Waiting For, by Richard Schwartz; Intimacy from the
Inside Out, by Toni Herbine-Blank and Donna M. Kerpelman; and Bring
Yourself to Love, by Mona Barbera.
1. If your partner leads with Judgment or Anger, you might just give
in and agree with him or her, without considering whether or not you really
believe your partner is right, in an attempt to preserve your connection with
him or her. This is the Conflict-Avoiding Pattern. You might also disown
your Anger (and therefore your Strength) to avoid getting into a fight, but
this leads to compliance and passivity.
2. If your partner pulls away from you (Distancing Pattern), you
might reach out to connect with your partner from a needy place (Dependent
Pattern), where you are desperate to reestablish the connection and will do
anything to get him or her back.
3. If your partner is being Controlling, you might go along with his
or her control and try to please your partner in an attempt to maintain your
connection with him or her.
The next time a conflict starts to happen, try responding in this new way.
What happened?
Summary
This chapter has explored the sequences of parts that get triggered in
conflicts in love relationships and other close connections. We have looked
at the different patterns and wounds that tend to be activated and how to
respond from healthy capacities. The next chapter goes into more detail
about how to communicate in a skillful manner.
Chapter 9
IFS and Skillful Communication
This chapter discusses how to use IFS to communicate in a skillful
manner when you are in a conflict with someone. Since most conflicts like
this happen in love relationships, I will focus on those situations, but these
principles apply to any conflict you have with another person, especially one
you have an ongoing relationship with. Many of the ideas in this chapter
have been inspired by Nonviolent Communication, developed by Marshall
Rosenberg.57
Basic Attitudes
Here are some basic attitudes that are crucial to skillful
communication in the midst of conflict with your partner. The more you can
approach communication with these attitudes, the better things will work.
• You want to understand what your partner is upset about. You are in
an open, curious, and compassionate place, and you are ready to listen
to your partner’s feelings, opinions, and desires, and really try to
understand them.
• You want to communicate to your partner what you are upset about
and what your concerns are while minimizing the chances of triggering
or hurting your partner so he or she will be able to hear and understand
you.
• You are willing to look at your part in the difficulties with your
partner. You are open to what your partner may say to you about your
contribution to the problem, even if this hurts you. You are willing to
consider working on changing your behavior for the better and
growing in ways that will improve your relationship.
Two Aspects of Skillful Communication
There are two key aspects of skillful communication:
1. Expressing yourself by bringing up a concern with your partner
and perhaps asking him or her to change, and doing this in such a way that
your partner is likely to hear you.
2. Listening to your partner’s feelings and concerns in such a way
that he or she feels heard and understood by you.
Expressing Yourself
Let’s explore the best ways to express your feelings, concerns, and
desires. The general approach is as follows: “When you do X, a part of me
feels Y.” Let’s look at each phrase separately.
When You Do X
When describing another person’s behavior that bothers you, do it
objectively or in terms your partner can understand and agree with. You
want your partner to be interested in what you are talking about and not be
hurt or offended. It usually isn’t helpful to judge your partner’s behavior or
speculate about his or her feelings or underlying issues. For example, it is
helpful to say, “When you raise your voice and point your finger at me…”
This is an objective description of your partner’s behavior. This is better than
saying, “When you yell at me and reprimand me” because your partner may
not agree that he or she is yelling or reprimanding you. It is also better than
saying, “When you get out of control” or “When you act needy.” These
phrases might trigger defensiveness in your partner. Your partner might say,
“I didn’t reprimand you” or “I wasn’t out of control” or “I’m not needy.”
On the other hand, if your partner has acknowledged that he or she
gets out of control sometimes or that he or she is needy, you may be able to
use those phrases without your partner getting defensive.
A Part of Me Feels Y
When describing your emotional reaction to what your partner does,
speak for the part of you that has these feelings, not as this part. Speaking
for a part means being in Self and talking about what the part is feeling from
a centered place. For example, if you are angry, you might say, “A part of
me feels angry at you.” This is speaking for your Angry Part. Don’t say,
“You are so judgmental. Leave me alone!” This is speaking as the Angry
Part.
It is important to understand the difference between feelings and
interpretations. For example, you might say, “When you raised your voice, a
part of me became frightened.” Or you might say, “When you left the room
in the middle of our conversation, a part of me felt abandoned.”58 These are
your feeling reactions, and you are owning them.
It isn’t helpful to say, “When you left the room in the middle of our
conversation, I realized that you didn’t care about me.” That is an
interpretation of what your partner’s behavior meant. For another example, if
you say, “When you act needy…” you are interpreting your partner’s inner
state. This may or may not be accurate, but even when it is, your partner may
resent you for telling him or her what he or she feels and for judging him or
her.
Here is another way to distinguish between feelings and
interpretations. When you say, “I feel like X” or “I feel that X,” X is almost
never a feeling but rather an interpretation. “I feel like you don’t love me” is
an interpretation. “I feel hurt,” “I feel bereft,” and “I feel scared” are
feelings.
You can include both feelings and interpretations in what you say, but
be clear about the difference. Your interpretation of your partner’s behavior
will often determine your feeling response to him or her and what parts of
yours get activated, so it is useful to mention your interpretation, but you
should own it as your interpretation rather than the truth. For example, you
might say, “When you look at me with sad eyes, I imagine that you are
feeling needy, and a part of me feels suffocated.” Here you are including
your interpretation by using the phrase, “I imagine that you are feeling
needy.” You could also say, “I believe that you are feeling needy.” When you
add your emotional reaction, “a part of me feels suffocated,” you are owning
your reaction. You are speaking for your part.
If you said, “When you are so needy, you suffocate me,” you are
telling your partner what he or she feels and blaming your partner for your
reaction. You are speaking as your part—your Judgmental Part. If you speak
in that way, your partner will most likely get defensive or angry because you
are acting out your anger and judgment. Or if your partner does give in and
accept your judgment, over time he or she may unconsciously build up
resentment, which will eventually come out in a burst of anger or Passive-
Aggressive behavior.
Once you have expressed yourself to your partner in a skillful way,
wait to see how he or she responds. If your partner gets defensive or
judgmental, first acknowledge his or her feelings and then explain that you
aren’t judging him or her. (Check to be sure that you really aren’t.) You are
just describing the problem and your reaction to it. Once your partner
understands this, he or she will likely be able to hear you. If your partner still
can’t hear you, it probably means that he or she doesn’t feel understood by
you. In this case, stop trying to express yourself, and instead focus on
listening to your partner and responding in a way that makes him or her feel
understood by you (see below). Once your partner feels understood, he or
she is much more likely to be able to hear you.
Exercise: Expressing Yourself
Choose a concern that you would like to express to your partner (or
someone else you are close to). Think through exactly what you would like
to say to him or her using the formula above. Imagine that your partner is
with you and practice saying it to him or her.
If you have a friend who will help you, ask him or her to role-play
your partner. Express your concerns to your friend and have him or her
respond as your partner. Continue the interaction and see if the two of you
can resolve the issue. If your friend starts responding in a way that doesn’t
match what your partner would say, stop the role-play and give him or her an
idea of how your partner would respond. Then continue.
Were the two of you able to resolve the issue in the role-play?
Listening
It is important to listen to your partner in such a way that you
understand his or her feelings, and he or she realizes that you do. When your
partner says things that hurt you, it is usually coming from a protector, such
as an angry or judgmental part, so it is helpful to understand that your
partner has a vulnerable exile in pain beneath that protector, even if you
don’t know what exile it is. This will help you to be more sympathetic to
your partner, even if he or she is saying hurtful things to you.
How to Listen
When your partner tells you what he or she is feeling, set aside your
concerns for the moment and concentrate on his or hers. The first half of the
job of skillful listening is to truly be interested in your partner’s experience
and feelings. Listen to his or her feelings with curiosity about what is
upsetting him or her, even if your partner is misinterpreting what you said or
over-reacting to you. Make your best effort to understand his or her feelings,
even if you don’t agree with them. Don’t try to psychologize your partner or
figure out why he or she is so triggered. Just hear him or her with an open
heart. Empathize with your partner’s feelings, if you can. This means
resonating with his or her feelings and the perceived reason for feeling that
way.
The second half of skillful listening is communicating what you
understand about your partner’s feelings so that he or she feels understood
by you. Reflect back what your partner said. You will probably want to
paraphrase it. For example, if your partner says, “I hate it when you judge
me,” you might say, “You are feeling angry at me because what I said felt
judgmental to you.” You can ask your partner questions to draw him or her
out further about this. For example, you might say, “What was it I said that
felt judgmental to you?” Keep feeding back what your partner says and
asking for more until he or she feels understood by you.
This is not easy to do and can only work if you are in Self. Watch out
for your parts getting triggered and interfering with your being able to listen
with an open heart. If you want to correct your partner’s perception of you, if
you want to defend yourself from his or her attacks, or if you want to tell
your partner how he or she is too sensitive and is overreacting, you aren’t in
Self. Work on returning to Self, and if you can’t do this quickly, call a time-
out so you can listen to your parts first and then separate from them to get
into Self.
Exercise: Listening to Your Partner
Find a friend to role-play your partner (or other person you are close
to). Coach your friend on what your partner might be feeling when you are
in the middle of a conflict and how your partner might express this to you.
Have your friend speak about his or her feelings as your partner. Listen and
reply as described above. If your responses don’t quite match what your
friend is feeling (as your partner), have him or her correct you and help you
understand what he or she really meant. Then try again to listen and reply.
Making Guesses
Sometimes your partner isn’t talking about his or her feelings or is
focused entirely on blaming you rather than expressing him- or herself. This
makes it harder to listen and understand your partner, so you must help him
or her express his or her feelings first. A good way to do this is to try to
guess what your partner is feeling and experiencing. What might you have
done that upset him or her? What emotions might your partner be feeling?
What needs your partner’s aren’t getting met? How might your partner be
interpreting your behavior that is upsetting him or her?
Communicate your guesses by asking your partner questions. For
example, “Are you feeling hurt because you think I don’t care about you?”
Even if your guess is wrong, your partner is likely to feel better because you
are showing that you want to understand. This may prompt your partner to
tell you what he or she is feeling. When he or she has, you can reflect back
what your partner said.
Make sure that your guesses are about what your partner is feeling on
the surface, which usually means protectors. This way, your partner will be
consciously aware of the feelings you are asking about. Your partner is more
likely to agree with surface feelings. For example, if your partner is angry at
you, you could say, “Are you angry at me because you feel that I’m distant
from you?” Don’t say, “Are you feeling deprived and needy when I am
distant?” Your partner may not be aware of these deeper feelings, and he or
she may feel judged by you if you suggest them.
Your guesses should also be about feelings that your partner would
feel OK about having. For example, if your partner would be ashamed to
admit being frightened, don’t ask if he or she is scared.
Don’t guess about your partner’s underlying motivations or deep-
seated psychological issues. Most people don’t like being psychologized in
this way. For example, don’t ask, “Are you really trying to push me away by
being judgmental?”
Don’t ask your partner if he or she is upset about something
completely different from what he or she says is the reason for the upset. For
example, don’t ask, “Are you upset about what your daughter said and
taking it out on me?” This is more psychologizing, which your partner will
probably resent.
Did your friend correct your guess so you could understand him or her?
Therapist Note
If you are working with an individual client on listening, you can
role-play the partner. Have the client prompt you on how the partner
communicates and then role-play it. Make it just difficult enough that your
client learns something but not so difficult that he or she gets discouraged.
You can switch out of the partner role and facilitate the client whenever that
is needed.
Degrees of Self
It isn’t easy to be in Self, especially in the middle of a confrontation.
So in exploring how to do this, let’s look at possible degrees of Self when
you are in the midst of a conflict and what to do about them.
1. You are so solidly in Self that you won’t be triggered very easily no
matter what your partner says. You are prepared for skillful
communication.
2. You are in Self enough that you can communicate well, but you
could still be triggered. You may continue with the interaction, but be
aware if a part of you gets triggered that takes you out of Self.
3. You are aware that you are having a communication problem and
are mildly triggered. You need a moment to gather yourself, return to
Self, and decide what to say. Then you can communicate skillfully.
4. You are aware that you are having a communication problem, but
you are so triggered that you can’t communicate skillfully. You need a
time-out in order to calm down and access Self before it makes sense
to continue with the interaction.
5. You are lost in the conflict, highly triggered, and not aware of it.
You are contributing to a nasty fight. First you must become aware of
your condition and want to change it. This brings you to 4.
Therapist Note
If you are working with an individual client on communication
problems, you can role-play the situation. Ask your client to imagine that he
or she is in the middle of an argument with his or her partner, and notice
what that triggers in your client. Then work with your client to get back into
Self. After that, your client can practice communicating from Self with you
playing the role of his or her partner.
How did you ask your friend (as your partner) to hear you?
If your partner had reservations about talking about it, how did you deal with
them?
• Explore what parts got triggered in you and explain this to your
partner.
• Ask what your partner needs from you to be able to connect again.
You can try repair in the middle of a conflict situation, or if one ends
badly, you can try it later. Exactly what you do to repair your connection is
less important than the fact that you are attempting to repair things. Even if
your partner doesn’t respond well to your first attempt at repair, don’t be
discouraged. Try guessing what your partner is feeling that makes him or her
unwilling to reconnect and offer that as empathy. If that doesn’t work, try
again later.
If your partner reaches out to you to repair things, make sure to
respond to his or her repair attempt, even if your partner doesn’t do it in the
most graceful way. Try to recognize when your partner is trying to reconnect
with you and reciprocate.
If you don’t feel ready to reach out for repair, or if you don’t feel like
responding when your partner reaches out to you, this means you are
triggered and not in Self. Take a time-out and explore what part of you is
triggered using IFS. See if you can get that part to relax and allow you to be
in Self. (See the section above on Accessing Self.) Then you can reach out to
your partner for repair.
Therapist Note
The issues in this chapter come up frequently in working with
couples. It can be useful to teach them how to communicate skillfully, but
this doesn’t mean they will be able to do it very easily in the heat of the
moment. If a couple gets into an argument in a session, you can apply the
ideas in this chapter in helping them get back into Self and then
communicate with each other in a skillful way.
Summary
This chapter has discussed how to use IFS to communicate skillfully
in the midst of a conflict. This is one of the hardest things to do. The more
you work on yourself, heal your exiles, and transform your protectors, the
more you will be able to communicate skillfully. We looked at how to listen
to your partner so that he or she feels heard, how to express your feelings
and concerns so your partner is likely to hear you, how to get into Self so
that you can communicate in a skillful manner, when to bring up a concern,
and how to repair your relationship when things have gone badly.
You can learn more about communication skills and practice them in
an experiential, ongoing Interactive Group.60
Chapter 10
Conclusion
I hope that this book has enhanced your ability to use IFS to
transform your psychological issues or to help your clients do so. Keep it
handy to use as an adjunct to Self-Therapy and Self-Therapy, Vol. 2. Many
people have found the Help Sheets in Chapters 1 and 6 to be especially
useful.
IFS has transformed my life, both personally and professionally. It
has been wonderful for my clients and students. Those who take to the IFS
process find themselves moving forward quickly in understanding
themselves, healing their parts, and transforming their behavior. I hope that
IFS does the same for you (and your clients, if you are a professional).
Further Learning
There is more to teach than I could fit into Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, so I plan
to publish more books in the Self-Therapy Series. Vol. 4 will cover advanced
techniques for working with exiles, and Vol. 5 will present techniques and
insights that are primarily relevant for therapists and other helping
professionals.
Self-Therapy, Vol. 1 was based on the IFS Basic Course and the
Exiles Course that I have taught for many years. Recently I have also been
teaching Advanced IFS Classes for both professionals and the general
public, which form the basis for the subsequent volumes in the Self-Therapy
Series. If you would like to learn the material in the Self-Therapy Series in
an experiential way in a safe, connected group, consider joining one of these
Advanced IFS Classes,61 which are taught by videoconference. These are
experiential classes that include group exercises and demonstration IFS
sessions with volunteers from the class. You also pair up with other class
members for practice IFS sessions for homework. These classes are for both
therapists and the general public, and some classes are exclusively for
therapists and coaches. They are exciting to me because they combine
personal growth, professional learning, and heartfelt community among the
participants, which is growth enhancing in itself. And for therapists and
coaches, the classes give you a chance to become part of a vibrant
professional community dedicated to IFS. See Appendix D for further
resources for learning about IFS.
Appendix A
Help Sheet and Graphic from Self-Therapy
This is a summary of the steps of the IFS procedure that were
covered in Self-Therapy, for easy reference.
Check to see how you feel toward the target part right now. If you can’t tell,
you may be blended.
If you are blended with the target part, here are some options for unblending:
• Ask the part to separate from you so you can get to know it.
• See an image of the part at a distance from you or draw the part.
If the part doesn’t separate, ask what it is afraid would happen if it did.
Check to see how you feel toward the target part right now.
If you feel compassionate, curious, and so on, you are in Self, so you can
move on to P4.
• If it does, check again to see how you feel toward the target part, and
repeat.
• If it still won’t, make the concerned part the target part and work
with it.
The part may answer in words, images, body sensations, emotions, or direct
knowing.
Possibilities are:
• The exile has too much pain. Explain that you will stay in Self and
get to know the exile, not dive into its pain.
• There isn’t any point in going into the pain. Explain that there is a
point—you can heal the exile.
• Do a centering/grounding induction.
• Explain that you really want to witness its feelings and story, but you
need to be separate to do that.
Conscious blending: If you can tolerate it, allow yourself to feel the exile’s
pain.
If you aren’t in Self or don’t feel compassion, unblend from any concerned
parts. They are usually afraid of your becoming overwhelmed by the exile’s
pain or the exile taking over.
Explain that you will stay in Self and not let the exile overwhelm.
Ask the exile to show you an image or a memory of when it learned to feel
this way in childhood.
Check to make sure the part has shown you everything that it wants to be
witnessed.
After witnessing, check to see if the exile believes that you understand how
bad it was.
5. Reparenting an Exile
Bring yourself (as Self) into the childhood situation and ask the exile what it
needs from you to heal it or change what happened; then give that to the
exile through your internal imagination.
If it can’t sense you or isn’t taking in your caring, ask why and work with
that.
6. Retrieving an Exile
One of the things the exile may need is to be taken out of the childhood
situation and brought into a place where it can feel safe and comfortable.
You can bring it into somewhere in your present life, your body, or an
imaginary place.
7. Unburdening an Exile
Name the burdens (painful feelings or negative beliefs) that the exile is
carrying.
Ask the exile if it wants to release the burdens and if it is ready to do so.
If it doesn’t want to, ask what it is afraid would happen if it let go of them.
Then handle those fears.
What would the exile like to release the burdens to? Light, water, wind,
earth, fire, or anything else.
Once the burdens are gone, notice what positive qualities or feelings arise in
the exile.
See if the protector now realizes that its protective role is no longer
necessary.
Blending. The situation in which a part has taken over your consciousness
so that you feel its feelings, believe its attitudes are true, and act according to
its impulses. Blending is a more extreme form of activation.
Concerned Part. A part that feels judgmental or angry toward the target
part. When you are blended with a concerned part, you aren’t in Self.
Criticized Child. An exile who believes the judgments of the Inner Critic
and feels ashamed, worthless, not valuable, guilty, self-doubting, or
inadequate. It is both harmed and activated by the Critic.
Direct Access. A form of IFS therapy in which the therapist speaks directly
to a part, and the client is blended with the part and responds to the therapist
as the part. This also can involve two parts speaking to each other as you
blend first with one and then the other.
Disowned Anger. A pattern in which you ignore your anger or don’t allow
yourself to be aware of it.
Exile. A young child part that is carrying pain from the past.
Foggy Part. A part that causes you to lose conscious awareness of yourself,
your thought process, and your connection to your body. You may feel
spaced out, sleepy, dull, dissociated, confused, or overwhelmed.
Guilt Tripper. A type of Critic that attacks you for some specific action you
took (or didn’t take) in the past that was harmful to someone, especially
someone you care about. It might also attack you for violating a deeply held
value. It constantly makes you feel bad and will never forgive you.
Healthy Role. A role that is the natural, constructive function of a part when
it has no burdens and no exiles to protect.
Indulger. A protector that eats too much food or indulges in drugs, alcohol,
or other potentially addictive activitiesin order to distract you from and
soothe young exiles in pain.
Inner Champion. An aspect of your Self that supports and encourages you
and helps you feel good about yourself. It counteracts the negative impact of
the Inner Critic.
Inner Critic. A protector that judges you, demeans you, or pushes you to do
things. It tends to make you feel bad about yourself.
Inner Defender. A protector that tries to argue with the Critic and prove that
you are worthwhile.
Inner Mentor. The healthy version of the Critic. It encourages you to look
at yourself with humility to see the ways in which you need to change how
you operate in the world, and it helps you make these changes in a
supportive, encouraging way.
Judgmental Part. A part that is critical of other people or of your own parts.
Molder. A type of Critic that tries to get you to fit a certain societal mold or
act in a certain way that is based on your own family or cultural mores. It
attacks you when you don’t fit and praises you when you do.
Polarization. A situation in which two parts are in conflict about how you
should act or feel.
Protected Child. The exile who is being protected by the Inner Critic. It
may be the same as or different from the Criticized Child.
Protector. A part that tries to block off pain that is arising inside you or
protect you from hurtful incidents or distressing relationships in your current
life.
Rebel Part. A protector that defies other people or your own parts.
Reparenting. The step in the IFS process in which the Self gives an exile
what it needs for a corrective emotional experience.
Restraint. A healthy capacity that involves being able to choose to not act
out your anger in destructive ways.
Retrieval. The step in the IFS process in which the Self takes an exile out of
a harmful childhood situation and into a place where it can be safe and
comfortable.
Role. The job that a part performs to help you. It may be primarily internal,
or it may involve the way the part interacts with people and acts in the
world.
Self. The core aspect of you that is your true self, your spiritual center, and
the observer of events. The Self is who you are when you are not blended
with parts in extreme roles. The Self is relaxed, open, and accepting of
yourself and others. It is curious, compassionate, calm, and interested in
connecting with other people and your parts.
Target Part. The part you are focusing on to work with at the moment.
Taskmaster. A type of Critic that tries to get you to work hard in order to be
successful. It attacks you and tells you that you are lazy, stupid, or
incompetent in order to motivate you. It often gets into a battle with a part
that procrastinates in order to avoid work.
Unblending. Separating from a part that is blended with you so that you are
in Self.
Unburdening. The step in the IFS process in which the Self helps an exile
release its burdens through an internal ritual.
Updating. An IFS technique that involves helping a protector see that you
are a competent, independent adult, not a dependent, vulnerable child, and
you have more external support than you did as a child.
Witnessing. The step in the IFS process in which the Self witnesses the
childhood origin of a part’s burdens.
Appendix C
Introduction to the Pattern System
The Pattern System, which I developed, is a comprehensive way of
understanding and diagnosing personality that is oriented toward
psychological healing and personal growth. The Pattern System also helps
you understand other people—why they respond as they do, what makes
them tick. It gives you a more detailed understanding of yourself than other
personality systems.
Once you understand the Pattern System and explore yourself
according to its model, you will come away with a comprehensive map of
your psyche. You will be able to see…
• Your strengths
• Your defenses
For more information, see my book The Pattern System, the Pattern
System website,62 or the Pattern System wiki.63
Appendix D
Resources
Websites
Audio Products
Inner Champion Meditations. Each healthy capacity has a
corresponding Inner Champion that supports you in developing and
manifesting that capacity. For each Inner Critic, there is an Inner Champion
that supports you in the face of that Critic. There is a recorded guided
meditation for activating each Inner Champion.
Pattern Meditations. We have a guided meditation for working with
many of the Pattern System patterns using IFS.
Demonstration IFS Sessions. Recordings of IFS sessions with
explanatory comments.
Recorded Courses. Recorded versions of the IFS Basic Course, IFS
Exiles Course, IFS Polarization Course, and Beyond Eating Course.
All of these audio products are available in our online store.73
https://selftherapyjourney.com/Pattern/Description/Procrastination_Pattern_
Description_Marketing.aspx
27
Using the IFS steps described in Chapters 10–14 of Self-Therapy
28
As described in Chapters 3 and 4 of Self-Therapy, Vol. 2
29
See Chapters 11–14 in Self-Therapy.
30
http://personal-growth-programs.com/products/product-
category/courses/beyond-eating-audio-course/
31
https://selftherapyjourney.com/Pattern/Description/Eating_Issues_Descriptio
n_Marketing.aspx
https://selftherapyjourney.com/Members/Questionnaire.aspx?
32
Questionnaire=30
33
See Chapter 1 for how to work with Inner Critic parts.
34
https://selftherapyjourney.com/Pattern/Description/Perfectionist_Pattern_De
scription_Marketing.aspx
35
See Chapters 4 and 5 in Self-Therapy.
36
See Chapter 6 in Self-Therapy.
37
See Chapter 7 in Self-Therapy.
38
See Chapter 8 in Self-Therapy.
39
See Chapter 10 in Self-Therapy.
40
See Chapters 11–14 in Self-Therapy.
41
See Chapter 15 in Self-Therapy.
42
See Chapters 11–14 in Self-Therapy.
43
https://selftherapyjourney.com/Pattern/Description/Depressed_Pattern_Descr
iption_Marketing.aspx
44
See Chapter 3 in Self-Therapy, Vol. 2, for an explanation of the difference
between firefighters and managers.
45
See Chapters 4 and 5 in Self-Therapy, Vol. 2.
46
This is a type of Inner Critic whose job is to keep you from engaging in
destructive activities such as addictions or rage. See Chapter 1.
47
Voice Dialogue has a primary focus on this type of part, which it calls a
"disowned self" as opposed to a "primary self."
48
In the Diamond Approach, this quality is called the Red Essence or
Strength, and it is understood that when anger is blocked, the Red Essence is
also blocked. Gestalt therapy also recognizes healthy aggression as an
important goal in therapy.
49
Somatic Experiencing has a similar understanding of the value of healthy
aggression in the renegotiation of trauma. See Waking the Tiger: Healing
Trauma by Peter Levine.
50
https://selftherapyjourney.com
51
See Chapters 4–8 in Self-Therapy.
52
See Chapters 10–14 in Self-Therapy.
53
Here are short descriptions of some of these concepts. The Controlling
Pattern involves being dominant and demanding, and expecting to have
things your way. The Rebel Pattern involves rebelling against other people’s
power in an attempt to preserve your autonomy. The Cooperation Capacity
involves the ability to be receptive and work well with others.
54
https://selftherapyjourney.com/Pattern/Description/Passive_Aggressive_Patt
ern_Description_Marketing.aspx
55
See Chapter 6 in Parts Work by Tom Holmes.
56
A wound in the Pattern System corresponds to a type of exile in IFS, or to
be more precise, it corresponds to a type of exile burden.
57
Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg.
58
I am aware that in NVC, “abandoned” would not be considered a true
feeling because it may imply that the other person did this to you, but I don’t
agree. Words like abandoned can be used to own one’s experience, and
avoiding them can become awkward and misleading.
This idea comes from the work of John Gottman, The Seven Principles for
59