Last weekend, I spent Wednesday evening through Sunday night in Chicago (St. Charles, IL to be exact) at a retreat center for my second of three long weekends of IFS Level 1 Training. You may be asking yourself, “What is IFS Level 1 Training?” Good question. This explanation is taken directly from the IFS Level 1 Training website:
The IFS Level 1 Training is more than just a foundational course; it’s a transformative experience that immerses you in the practice of Internal Family Systems (IFS) in a deep, personal way. This training is your gateway to truly understanding and embodying the IFS model, both in your own life and in your work with others.
An Immersive, Supportive Learning Environment
Over approximately 90 hours of intensive training, you’ll be guided by a select group of experienced IFS trainers. The program is structured so that there is plenty of time for supervised small practice groups, with a participant-to-staff ratio of about 3:1. This setup allows you to practice IFS in both therapist and client roles within small breakout groups, providing you with the opportunity to hone your skills in a safe, supportive environment.
I am now over halfway through the training and I have to report that this training is life-changing! Sitting in the client chair for the practice sessions is amazing to work on personal stuff and see parts within myself that still need to be attended to. I often say to all my clients that if you have a pulse, you have issues. That’s all of us, me included!
In my opinion, counseling is so much more than seeing someone and learning a bunch of techniques and strategies to quickly employ when anxiety strikes or depression sinks in. Counseling is a mysterious and truly spiritual process where two individuals (or more if it’s a couple or family) come together to discuss aspects of their lives, their psyche, their past wounds, and their future aspirations. Counseling with individuals who trust me with their stories—the deepest parts of themselves they don’t share with anyone else—is an enormous honor that I do not take lightly. I am humbled to do this work!
Oftentimes, people enter therapy because they feel disconnected from their True Self. They are confused because life has not turned out the way they had anticipated or traumas have happened that they feel powerless to work through.
Many times, different parts of their psyche don’t trust or can’t connect with their core essence. Maybe their primary relationships with their mother or father were difficult when they were young. As children, we don’t have the brain power to fully protect ourselves in the world, regardless of how much our own parts allow us to be Self-led. When we are young, we are often helpless to understand why our caregivers do what they do. Our connection to our core Self is mostly defined by our interactions with our parents since we are still developing our own psyche. Borrowing from our parents’ ego-Self relationship may prove to be healthy for some, but looking around at our society we can see that is not the case for most (Case in point: We all have issues).
The founder of IFS, Richard Schwartz, said it beautifully when he said:
People disembody for any number of reasons, but trauma tops the list. When you face a particular trauma, your parts mistakenly believe that they need to protect your Self, so they push your Self out of your body, which is why so many trauma survivors describe watching themselves being hurt from outside (and usually above) their bodies. Thereafter your protectors come to fear re-embodiment because they remain frozen in the trauma scene and often think they’re protecting a very young being. And then, the burdens you accrue from the trauma seem to be dense energy in this inner world and they take up a lot of space inside, so not only is the Self disembodied but these other kinds of energies make it harder for you to re-embody. As a result, most of us live in a less than fully embodied way, which means we aren’t bringing optimal levels of Self-leadership to our inner and outer worlds.
I have been working on myself for decades, trying to understand what makes me tick, why I respond the way I do in certain situations, why I get extremely stubborn in some moments and completely relaxed in others. I have been in my own counseling since 2001 and have been eager to learn more about why I am the way that I am. Initially, I had many internal parts that were disgusted with myself, so changing for the better was a large motivator. But as the years went by, and the counseling led me to deeper parts of my psyche, I became more intrigued and quite in awe of myself. I don’t mean that in any kind of prideful way. I am a spiritual being having a human experience, and this human experience is nothing short of mysterious and beautiful.
I haven’t met a single person that has gotten to know themselves better who ends up hating themselves more. On the contrary, as we get to know ourselves deeper, and connect intimately with ourselves, we actually learn to have compassion for ourselves and love ourselves even more. When we learn that the reasons why we do what we do is because of things that were outside of our control in childhood, it gives us the opportunity to see ourselves through a new lens—a more loving lens. This is what connecting to Self is all about.
Many of us have been taught that at our core we are bad, wrong, sinful, or deprived in some way. The journey of self-healing involves awakening, unveiling, or reinstating our True Self as the guiding force of our consciousness. As we shift our focus inward, instead of seeking external salvation, we realize that we have possessed the power to heal ourselves all along. Said another way (also the title of a book I recommend to all couples), you are the one you have been waiting for!
Our painful wounds, especially those from our formative years, leave deep scars within our psyche that plague us for a lifetime if left unhealed. Instead of developing into our authentic selves—the individuals we’re meant to become—we’re compelled to construct an artificial identity merely to survive. In our interactions with others, it is this fabricated persona that we present to the world in order to be more accepted, gain love, or not be humiliated.
Sorry, I digress. Back to my training: Anytime I have the opportunity to go inside and learn about another part within me that I wasn’t aware existed in my system, I am eternally grateful. Last weekend I spent several practice sessions with other trainees learning more about my inner parts, and more about their inner parts as well when I was the practicing counselor. IFS is truly spiritual work and I always walk away feeling like my true personality–my unique Self–is what emerges anytime I do this work.
Anyway, I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say about my training, but the main thing I wanted to portray is that I am still in awe from last weekend. I told people this week that I feel like I have been sliced open and gutted, but in the best way possible. Connecting with young, lonely, traumatized parts within my psyche and curiously offering them connection, compassion, and loving awareness is the most healing thing I have ever encountered. The words of Carl Jung ring true for me here, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
It is way too much to unpack in one simple blog post, but when I utilize IFS to help a client heal, the overall goal is to establish a Self-to-part connection. That starts with offering my own Self-energy to the client, and then allowing that energy to flow from the client’s own Self to their parts inside. Sometimes we go back to scenes from childhood and have a “do-over,” or, if the young part wants to leave that scene altogether, the client takes the young, lonely part by the hand and goes to a different location of the young part’s choosing.
This morning before writing this piece, I was reminded of what a “do-over” might look like in the movies. After watching the scene (and wiping away my tears) I instantly knew I needed to share it with you. The movie Scent of a Woman centers on a blind, cynical retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, Frank Slade, and a young, naive prep school student, Charlie Simms, who takes a job as his caretaker during a Thanksgiving holiday trip. Charlie gets himself into a sticky situation because he witnessed something his friends did before the Thanksgiving break, but he was unwilling to snitch on them. Lieutenant Colonel Slade surprises him at the hearing and stands up for him in a way that he couldn’t stand up for himself. This is a perfect example of how we might go inside and advocate for younger parts of ourselves and offer a “do-over” in an IFS session.
Hopefully you enjoyed the clip. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It’s a good one and Al Pacino won an Academy Award for his performance.
I have so much more about IFS that I plan to share with you, but for now this feels like a good place to pause. I will leave you with this thought: going inside and learning more about yourself is the best gift you could ever give—or receive.
Peace my friends,
~Travis
