How Does Internal Family Systems Therapy Help You Heal?
A Deep Dive into Internal Family Systems (IFS) and its process with a IFS Trauma Therapist in Connecticut and Virginia
IFS-based trauma therapy offers an approach that goes a little deeper than “just talking.” But what does that actually mean? It’s kind of like looking at you as a story with several tangled characters: your characters have had to relate to each other in a certain, intricate way to make the incredible story you are today. Together with the therapist, you get to unpack that story, and string it together in a way that offers growth for all the characters within you and your story as a whole. IFS-based trauma therapy is founded on non-judgment and compassion. But how does it unfold?
Every part of you is welcome, exactly as you are.
In the real world, you’re successful, perfect, taking care of everyone else, on top of the world. In secret, you’re having meltdowns. You want to scream and cry. You feel intolerable. You don’t want anyone else to see your anger and sadness. At the same time, you resent everything and everyone for not seeing those very things. There’s no space for your feelings because it feels like no one cares.
But here, with IFS-based trauma therapy, every part of you is welcome. Ooo yes even the ooey gooey bits that bring you shame and disgust. Even the ones you have spent so much careful, thoughtful, exhaustive time HIDING from everyone else. Your closest friends. Your partners. Your most successful, charming self. They are all welcome because at some point in time they were needed. You needed some way to manage and survive in an environment that made it tough on you. But now, they’re not serving you in the same way. Now, everything is getting to its tipping point. Those parts of you need compassion and support and the space to grow new skills.
There are probably parts of you that bring up lots and lots of shame.
Maybe you have divided the world into good and bad. Maybe you have divided the way you cope with your feelings into “good” and “bad.” Maybe when you do something “bad” you spiral into deep shame. That shame feels like it could suck you into a vortex.
Maybe you have a LOUD critical voice in your head.
Your critical voice criticizes you. It judges others too. You recognize you can be pretty hard on yourself and other people. You have got some high standards, after all! Sometimes those high standards feel like a trap. You look around, and there is a freeness, an ease with which other people move. But that critical voice in your head? It keeps things tight, restricted. That ease does not feel so accessible to you.
With IFS-based trauma therapy, we get curious about the roots of that critical voice. Who does it sound like? When did it become important? At its core, has it been protecting you? When does that shaming, critical voice get the loudest? Is it during moments of potential vulnerability? Sometimes, we have ways of protecting ourselves that do not look like protection in the beginning. In fact, they are so good at covering up and hiding our other, deep emotions exactly because they are so loud and so mean. Man, how’s that for interesting protection and a reframe, huh? Through IFS-based trauma therapy, we learn to build compassion, to unburden the critical voice from the job that it has had for so long and safely uncover what you may need to release what is underneath.
And what exactly is underneath? It may be some hurt you have really wanted to stay away from, for a long time, and for some good reasons.
But with a witness, and by co-creating safety, IFS-based trauma therapy allows you to explore and release what has been stowed away.
IFS-based trauma therapy creates space for a witness. Maybe you never had a witness before.
Every time you had a need, reached out for help, had a feeling (big or small), what was the response? Were your needs and feelings tuned into? Was there an opportunity for that? Maybe you had to turn inward. Perhaps there was no initial witness, so you came up with other strategies, the things you call “good” and “bad” coping strategies now. In the therapeutic process, we revisit the parts that needed help. We rewire the parts that need help now. We restore power to the parts that need it, lifting all of you up collectively. Through witnessing, there is unburdening, there is uncovering of what has been hidden, and ultimately, there is release and deep healing.