My parts are good therapists.

..or am I stretching the model?

My wife sometimes accuses me of projecting wisdom onto IFS that she feels was never there, that I should give myself more credit for the way I interpret the model. It is a wonderful dynamic between the two of us, she is a master at detecting how a model is being misused while I seem to instinctively focus more on the power and potential of an approach. I’m often unaware I do that, so I am glad she can point this out. This has led to some inspiring discussions about interpretations of the model and I would like to share an insight from one those discussions that may seem less obvious to you if you are new to IFS:

It is ok to be blended with your parts.

If you have spent some time in the IFS community you may notice that it is easy to get seduced into the stance that parts are not where we want to be. That we should be in Self, or at least try to be. And IFS offers many solid insights that can easily be weaponised against parts. So the idea that is is ok to be blended with a part may not be so obvious to all of us in the community.

IFS teaches how effective it is not to think of ourselves as having a singular, monolithic identity. An important set of problems many of us struggle with stem from this limiting perspective. Approaching ourselves instead as a collection of different parts can help us see new possibilities and get unstuck from many of those problems. There is a wonderful book about the value of parts thinking called ‘Your Symphony of Selves’ written by James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber. They point out an interesting pitfall for IFS practitioners; that we start to think we should really identify ourselves with the Self, not our parts. But by this we end up exchanging one singular identity for another and we trap ourselves in the same old mindset. If we really want to enjoy the benefits of a parts approach, we need to embrace being multiple. We need to embrace that we are our parts, not only our Self.

Perhaps another way to see the issue is that we cannot value parts less than Self without doing this from a part. That is not really a Self thing to do, right? Not one of the 8 C’s as I understand them. Yes, only Self can be the true source of healing but we need to appreciate that this does not mean that parts are less than Self.

We cannot control our parts anyway. This is part of basic IFS knowledge and such a key principle for me because the true consequences of this are not obvious. I believe that one important consequence is that we must be completely ok being blended. Not just my client but also me, as an IFS therapist or practitioner. In other words; it is ok if I do therapy from my parts. By the way, my parts are pretty good at it. They were there with me through all the trainings, workshops, PA’ing, they have been practicing, have sat through all the sessions with my clients and through my own IFS sessions. They have learned a hell of a lot. Like me, they are far from perfect and will not hesitate to admit that. But they are doing a good job, at least in my humble opinion (I use ‘they’, but it really is ‘we’. Sorry, this is where I struggle with the language).

Another consequence of the fact that we cannot control our parts is that it forces us to accept that the only reliable strategy we have is: relationship. We cannot control them so we have to work with our parts. I fear we may have to accept that any step we take against our parts will set us back too. I do not see any way out of that. It forces us to learn to respect them. Because we can never win, I don’t think. And we don’t have to! Our parts are a part of us so they want the best for us. They do, it is in their own interest. And IFS offers us powerful tools for approaching this work relationally.

I accept that for true healing we can only rely on Self but I feel the way to this state is by embracing our parts, not by trying to dodge them. All this trying not to be blended is such a guarantee to get caught up in our parts. So: it is ok that we do therapy from our parts. Doesn’t that feel liberating? That feeling is parts relaxing a bit and Self emerging, I think. Seems like one of those beautiful paradoxes; if we can allow our parts, Self happens naturally.

So; let’s see what happens when we allow ourselves to be blended with our parts.

Just to be clear; I know the model quite well but I am not an IFS trainer. So the above may or may not align with the current ideas of the IFS institute.

By the way, you can also read this post on my Substack: https://substack.com/@coendekoning