My resistance to doing ifs and more

[Justmehere]

We used IFS this week and my daily functioning (and desire to continue in therapy at all) seems to be suffering considerably afterwards.

Argh. I’ll need to talk to her about this.

 

[ILoveLife]

Do you know the level of training she has? They really shouldn't be treating anyone with ptsd below level 3.
Either way, messing with parts is oh so messy.
We do need loads of self compassion and self care. Hope you're doing right for yourself.

 

[barefoot]

I’ve just started dipping a toe into looking at parts with my T. I’ve been hugely resistant to the idea for pretty much the whole time I’ve been in therapy (coming up to four years) - I don’t really know why I felt so anti it but I always had such strong, angry, defensive reactions whenever she even broached the concept of everyone having parts. I don’t know why or how but something has shifted lately. I think I felt more tangibly aware of a couple of different parts showing up in therapy and the patterns they had. It just made me more curious and more open to the idea of exploring them.

We haven’t labelled the approach/model (so I’m not sure if we’re doing IFS or something else. We’re basically just referring to “sub personalities”.) We’ve literally just started and I’ve been identifying some parts at home and last session I talked her through a couple of them. Will do a couple more next session.

Last session mostly felt good and productive but I felt totally spaced out towards the end and sort of floated to the train station, very nearly threw up on the platform and then really struggled to stay awake on the train home. Went to bed and was unconscious practically as soon as I was home. I was totally not with it the next day either and had a run of a bad recurring dream I have for four nights straight after the session and I’ve noticed a rise in anxiety and have felt a bit teary ever since. That was two weeks ago.

I don’t mean to hijack your thread by talking about myself! I just wanted to say, I get the resistance (though perhaps it might just shift for you at some point, the same as it did for me - and for no apparent reason!) Also, although I am right at the start of looking into parts, I can already say that I’ve experienced powerful somatic responses and some emotional responses too post-session. And the session didn’t even feel particularly hard while I was there. But it does seem to have jangled lots of stuff.

Definitely worth talking to your T about the fallout from your “parts” sessions, I’d say. I’m not sure whether it will be good for you to hang in there and keep pushing through the IFS or whether they are destabilising you to such a point that maybe you need to slow the pace or even pause it for now. A conversation with your T may be able to clarify what’s best for you at the moment?

I’ve noticed in other posts that you seem to be having a wobble with your therapist/with therapy in general at the moment. I don’t mean this at all critically but I’m wondering whether you’re looking for an out, for a reason to run at the moment. Im right at the start of the process in terms of looking at parts but I have already noticed it has quite significant impact and I’m not even diving into deeper, painful stuff with it yet. So, I am not dismissing your challenge with it because I believe it’s real and that parts work can be really tough. I think it also demands a level of vulnerability and that in itself can be terrifying.

Take care of yourself.

 

[Mach123]

We don’t use IFS in our trauma program. But we do a lot of Healthy Adult work. The gist is that we...

My wife and I were talking about 'what I was like with the kids." Happy Mother's Day where applicable, over Mother's Day lunch. I was like the worst one of them. I loved being with them, but got them all wound up always. Plus I overprotected them and spoiled them. To compensate you know for my non childhood. So I could never do this. We work on parts but IDK what to tell ya. Don't ask me what to do.

 

[Justmehere]

Do you know the level of training she has? They really shouldn't be treating anyone with ptsd below level 3.

She's got training in a lot of techniques, but I don't know for IFS. Doesn't strike me as much.

She's really good a traumatic transference, which is a skill set I need, and somatic work. But I'm kind of worried I need something else, a skill set she doesn't have.

I don’t mean to hijack your thread by talking about myself!

Share away! It's really helpful to read.

 

[hithere]

This resinates with me. The entire post did but this specificlly. I've felt a dread. A doo...

Yes I don't want to lose them either. They do change. I've experienced that and there is actually a little bit of sadness about that--yet I can compare it to graduating from a special place. "The Body Keeps the Score" describes it so well, "

We used IFS this week and my daily functioning (and desire to continue in therapy at all) seems to b...

I had so many "bad" "bad" "bad" "bad" days after doing IFS -- my therapist has no training in it-still parts trust the therapist so even though those days were so so so hard, eventually good came out of it. My therapist could put into words what I was feeling and understood it when I went back and said how bad the week went -- the whole thing needs to be from "self" and if going to fast-I would get hijacked by a protector part or an exile. Writing down the identified protectors and what they look like, how they act, what they are trying to do and trying to keep me from was super helpful, though. What helped me the most was when my therapist spoke "directly" to the part as a third person. As odd as that sounds it really clicked for me, it really got work done FAST. Like in 10 minutes--something I'd suffered for decades dealt with in less than 10 minutes by the therapist directly speaking to a "part" calling it by the name I gave it, For that I'm really thankful.

 

[Justmehere]

@barefoot and @hithere - it’s really helpful to read through your experiences with parts and IFS. The after effects of this last session might have been for a few reasons.

We stirred up what it was like to be traumatized at 4 years old. I’ve never faced that before. When my therapist reminded she was there to help me, my head left the room. I could not sit with it. I didn’t expect the after effects. It’s helpful to know I’m not the only one.

The symptoms have been really hard to manage. The interesting thing is that when I can shift my self talk (in my head) for just a moment, to what I would tell a scared 4 year old kid, I go from very symptomatic... to grounded and ok, very quickly and easily. It doesn’t take much. Just “it’s ok, it will be alright, I know you are hurting, it will get better. Let’s go make breakfast”.... then I’m fine.

I’ve noticed in other posts that you seem to be having a wobble with your therapist/with therapy in general at the moment. I don’t mean this at all critically but I’m wondering whether you’re looking for an out, for a reason to run at the moment.

Yeah, you are right on, I think I might be.

I also realized, anytime I’ve touched on any of this issues, much more remotely, I’ve bolted or self destructed.

Time to try something new: staying put.

 

[ILoveLife]

I went batshit crazy on IFS. My T didn't have the tools to handle my crazy, and did a number of inappropriate things so I quit.
Doesn't strike me as the same situation.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

We stirred up what it was like to be traumatized at 4 years old.

Do you mind me asking how you and your therapist went about doing this? Was it just imagining being 4 and taking you through the experiences or just the emptions or how was that done? If you aren't comfortable explaining please ignore the question. Im just wondering how to bring it up to my therapist and also wondering how it may look if we went about it is all.

Just “it’s ok, it will be alright, I know you are hurting, it will get better. Let’s go make breakfast”.... then I’m fine.

Hmmm, that's very intresting. I've never tried talking to myself or that inner child self like I would talk to a scared child. I can see how this would work. Sounds like a pretty good coping stregey to me. I can also see my child self freaking and throwing me into a tail spin. That type of self talk does indeed sound grounding. Sounds awesome!

 

[Justmehere]

Do you mind me asking how you and your therapist went about doing this? Was it just imagining being 4 and taking you through the experiences or just the emptions or how was that done?

We didn’t use IFS to do this part. We just talked about it and she asked what I felt in mind and body.

 

[barefoot]

The interesting thing is that when I can shift my self talk (in my head) for just a moment, to what I would tell a scared 4 year old kid, I go from very symptomatic... to grounded and ok, very quickly and easily. It doesn’t take much. Just “it’s ok, it will be alright, I know you are hurting, it will get better. Let’s go make breakfast”.... then I’m fine.

For some reason I have been very resistant to talking to myself (or a part of me, I guess) compassionately and I don’t think I’m very good at self-soothing. So, I think it’s great that a) you’re able to do this and b) it has such a fast calming/grounding effect on you.

It does resonate a bit with me though as once when I was really losing my shit about an upcoming surgery my therapist explained that the reaction I was having was related to experiences in the past and not the here and now and she encouraged me to talk to my younger self who experienced that earlier trauma to reassure/calm her so that I could get through the surgery and then turn my attention to the earlier traumatic stuff later when I was feeling better. I had the usual resistance - didn’t want to do it, thought I’d feel stupid, felt quite angry somehow at the suggestion. I think I dismissed it by saying that I wouldn’t know what to say (and I didn’t want to do it anyway) and then my therapist started to say some things I could say. And it was so bizarre...the huge anxiety I’d been experiencing for days dramatically dropped very quickly and, like you, I suddenly felt very calm and grounded and the surgery suddenly felt much more manageable.

As time went on and the surgery drew closer, the anxiety started to rise again and the same panicky thoughts started to loop as before. And I still couldn’t find it in myself to talk to “her”. But I could sit and remember my therapist saying those things - I could hear her voice and picture what she looked like when she was saying it and pretty much “play that tape” on repeat whenever I could feel myself getting triggered and panicky. And that really did calm things down again. It was really quite amazing.

The fact that you are able to do that for yourself and have such a positive reaction to doing it is really awesome. What a brilliant tool to have! I am envious!

 

[Justmehere]

I heard someone talk on the radio this morning about what he was telling himself in an obnoxious restaurant patron situation. This patron bumped his wife and baby like 5 times. He talked about how he talked himself through leaving politely. It was curious to hear. I mean, I'm not saying a talk show host on the radio is the picture of mental health (ha! not at all!) but the incident ended well.

The numbness of the post-IFS session is wearing off, and I'm rather flooded today. I was walking between things, feeling crabby and stressed, wanting to quit everything in my life, including but not limited to therapy, and about to cancel a presentation at a conference... which is a very childish approach... instead of do what I do better, which is do the best I can with what I have got... I was having a pretty bad bought of panic and so frustrated to have to deal with it instead of everything else on my plate...

I told myself, "Take it down a notch. Watch your attitude. Stay steady. Easy does it. One step at a time." I tried to coach myself through it like I would a cantankerous teenager. I dropped all pronouns because I can't do the third person thing. I am me. This is all me. It was different than a positive affirmation, because it was like I was really thinking of what it would be like to coach a teenager, and then said the same things to myself. I don't really think this is full IFS at all. Which is ok. I'm not sure I'm really super ok with full IFS to do it again, but I am so damn desperate to find a way to change my thinking and not self destruct.

I've done a lot of work on cognitive distortions and positive affirmations. I guess I've never just flat out coached myself through something recently. What the heck?

Well, it worked. My anxious frustration settled.

Kind of having one of those moments wondering: is this what other people do?