Internal Family Systems (IFS) - How to accept your parts

[HealingMama]

So I'm trying to accept my parts. My T is great at being inclusive. I am not. I have a hard time accepting my protector parts because they hurt others and my life. I have a hard time listening to one of my EPs that just goes nonverbal and sobs in the fetal position. I have a hard time allowing all of these fragments of me to be here.

My T was describing how she does hypnosis where she invited the parts to all get involved and my inner family was really excited and happy about that.

It was obvious that I don't do a good job of offering the same mindset. I guess part of it is I'm often too dysregulated.

How do you accept your parts and listen to them?

 

[TruthSeeker]

I use core shamanic journeying (essentially the same as therapeutic clinical hypnosis) except I am in total control of the process and there are no suggestions from a therapist. MY UU church offers shamanic journeying once a month. I started there, and there is a small group of 6 of us. I set the intent for the journey, which can be in the form of a question, or in the case of parts, a meeting.


Since I journey to a sacred garden, which is a safe place I created in my head where all parts are welcome, I can invite all my parts to the sacred garden. It is the one place during journeying, that is assured to be safe for my parts. I personally find this to be a productive and positive way to meet parts and have meetings. If you travel to your safe space in hypnosis, or journeying, they will eventually make themselves known. All of my parts have not come to the sacred garden-two currently are exiled, and the parts I do know about, do not want to deal with the exiles. But as I communicate more, I have more control over my life in general and seem to be more successful.
That is the only way I have learned to effectively communicate with my parts-it really is focused, intended creative thinking.

 

[Sideways]

Be careful of Ts who offer hypnosis as part of ‘parts’ therapy or IFS. It has a really bad track record.

I’m not going to say “You have a negligent T”. If you have a lot of trust built up and they’re helping you? Go with your gut I think. But do your homework before signing up for hypnosis as part of parts work, or if you have high levels of dissociation.

 

[HealingMama]

Yeah, I talked to my T about that. @Sideways

She has a lot of training in dissociation, and has trained on a specific form of hypnotherapy that is supposed to help with internal communication. The particular type of hypnosis she is recommending is basically to help me work better with my protector and one of the exiles that came out recently.

What other questions should I ask?

I have not been working with this person for very long. But they do have lots of training and are well respected in the area for dissociation and trauma.

I don't ever lose time by the way. I'm fully co-conscious, occasionally unaware that switching has even happened because it's such a nuanced shift sometimes. I do go "unconscious" during some of my protector part episodes but I am still here for it, just not as fully present. I was co-conscious with the exile that came out sobbing and self-harming from overwhelm recently, but just had trouble communicating in my fully adult verbal way due to the intensity of the emotions. I might have OSDD-1B, BPD or CPTSD but I do not believe I have DID. In case that is relevant.

I think part of my T's idea with the hypnosis is to get a better sense of my internal architecture. She does EMDR as well and so far I've only done very slow BLS which is appropriate safety measures for working with someone of my complexity prior to knowing my inner architecture well. (I am also a therapist who works with trauma.)

 

[Skywatcher]

My child parts were the first to be open to communication. They trust my t, so that helped since she is kind of a mediator/guide. When I first started therapy I could feel the different parts and they started becoming more and more real. Some were harmful and my T would always advise me to show compassion towards them. My teen and protector parts have created chaos and have major trust issues, but they are starting to come around. I think this is due to my T telling me that it makes sense to her why they don’t trust her. We have spent a lot of time in therapy leading my parts to healing places, safe places. When parts feel safe and feel understood they communicate. We also realized in the process that the teen and young adult parts were taking care of the little ones. My T felt it important that we get personal care givers for all of them because caring for the littles is too much when the older parts need to focus on their own healing.

 

[whiteraven]

I have a hard time accepting my protector parts because they hurt others and my life. I have a hard time listening to one of my EPs that just goes nonverbal and sobs in the fetal position. I have a hard time allowing all of these fragments of me to be here.

I'm wondering how much communication you have with your parts? (I have DID and I understand some aspects are different, but communication is important, yes?) I have a couple of protector parts and they also were hurting the body and putting us in precarious situations. My then-therapist focused on that - on safety - before doing anything else. That's when I first learned about communicating with those inside.

I have a young part/insider who would just sob all evening. I could hear her and it made me crazy. On Christmas Eve that year, I started asking myself what I would do if it were an actual child who couldn't stop crying and decided to go to the toy store (on Christmas Eve, nonetheless). I walked up and down the aisles and found some bears that just felt "right." Brown or white, though? So I asked her. And she stopped crying immediately and said, "White one." Polar bears have been a big part of our lives ever since (and our communication got so much better after that).

 

[HealingMama]

That is a very sweet story @whiteraven

I have been trying to improve communication. I don't hear words just whispers and notice perceptual shifts when different parts are closer to the surface. Each part has its own emotional tone. I have been trying to find out from my protector what it needs. Because I don't hear words, it's hard to get good information.

@Wilbur
I have actually done journeying before but never thought to use it for this. I'm wired to be more sensory oriented than visual so that can pose some challenges to adapt for this purpose but I like it.

I have also started writing in a notebook, giving parts names/roles etc. The more I think about it the livelier they all seem to be.

@Skywatcher
It makes a lot of sense to me that older parts would be taking care of younger ones. My parts seem to really like my therapist so I am hopeful that I can continue to make some progress. The angry parts and the way they can behave destructively to help me not collapse into a non functional space has been the hardest bit to manage so far. I understand that they are trying to help but it is exhausting.

 

[Mach123]

Well, first I had to deal with being a girl who the therapist says has been running everything all along and "she's too young."

Since I was so distinctly two different people and my whole psycho sexual thing is so wrapped up in it, the idea of parts was easy.

Doing the work is something else we never talked about it as IFS which the therapist says she doesn't like. She always talked about my parts and we did hypnosis and we do EMDR.

I just got an article on parts which is my therapy homework this week. I haven't gotten to it yet? I'm so busy.

Putting the Pieces Together

Ok I read it. It's interesting, now I feel like I understand a lot of things my therapist says to me. We will see if she does anything about it? I didn't think it was about parts so much. I'll have to let that sink in a bit lol.

 

[HealingMama]

Thank you! Great article. No it wasn't about parts but it speaks to the type of trauma therapy I do professionally. It's all quite different when you're the one whose amygdala is taking over.

I have tons of maleness to me as well. I always thought I was bi or a lesbian who wasn't fully self aware but maybe I have parts or ego states or inner family members that identify as male. I believe there is a Big Brother of some kind in there.

 

[Skywatcher]

I was so embarrassed about having parts when I started recognizing them. Once I accepted them, it has really helped me accept that this is just how my brain has decided to organize my trauma experiences and keep me from being too overwhelmed. I did research on structural disassociation and it seems to fit best. My therapist seems to keep an eye on lots of different models and she has done many of the advanced trainings on emdr, since that is her main method. I’ve noticed that emdr also focuses on parts work. We had to take a step back from trauma work and focus on parts and resourcing so that I can function better and so that I could build more trust with my T (which has been 1 part at a time).

 

[hithere]

this is a good question. I have a traumatised part that I keep locked up and do not like as she has caused me so much grief with other people. The last therapist just detested and had such disdain for her as well. That didn't help me accept that part of me that dealt with that crazy traumatic situation in my past. I see why I separated myself from myself, and let that part just deal with all that shit. Brilliant idea actually. I can start by saying good job on that! From the outside I looked A-ok, and carried on quite well! Yet, the distaste for this part of me I have not overcome. I'm trying to just say over and over, "you did the best you could, " but that makes me go into this deep deep crying internal pain -- so I just don't want to think about it anymore. Really Good question. One day I did some doodling without thinking, just free association doodling, and I doodled "her" and there she was staring back at me from a piece of paper, in black ink. That was a start of acceptance actually, but I'm no where any further than that.

 

[Sideways]

I have a traumatised part that I keep locked up and do not like as she has caused me so much grief with other people.

Did this. Actually did worse - locked her up and set the dogs in her. She did a lot of very damaging and shameful things.

Really made everything worse. For her? Not so much. She can take anything and everything of the worst, so she survived it.

For me? It fed into my shame and self-loathing big time. Because I wasn’t doing anything to another person - I was doing it to myself. She’s still me. Locking her up and trying to destroy her I was just doing that to part of myself.

Tough to accept those parts. At some stage though it’s gotta be done. Because it’s really just stock standard ‘self acceptance’. Which we all have to do.

Ultimately that was really helpful. It brought me round to confronting forgiving myself for the first time ever. Realised that I can do that (which was a big surprise). I’ve done things I’m ashamed of, but it figures given what I’ve been through.

When you come to accept this part? She’s pretty much bulletproof, I’m thinking? Having that working with you? So much confidence can come from that place.