Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: For Therapy podcast, we are your hosts, Courtney Dohmen, Am F T and Celeste Webster, MSWI back with another episode of Voices in the Field where we host Q&As with new and seasoned therapists to learn from their expertise, specialties and experiences.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: As a disclaimer, while we are therapists, we are not your therapists.
This podcast is intended for information and entertainment purposes only. Does not constitute therapy, clinical supervision or medical advice. Opinions expressed are our own and subject to change as research evolves. We do our best, but we are human and that means we may make mistakes.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Okay, so today we are talking about ifs. So we'll jump into that. You've probably heard about the term parts work floating around social media or therapy spaces, but today we're going to dive into what that means and understand how that can help us heal with anxiety, trauma or daily stress. So.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: So to answer some of our questions, we are joined with Rich Reynolds, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in internal family systems theory or ifs.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Okay, so I know Courtney knows Rich, but for me and our audience.
So tell us, Rich, a little bit about yourself. How long have you been practicing and where do you work?
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Sure, I, I have been practicing for about seven years as a therapist.
I work currently at Hope Therapy.
I have offices in Orem and Spanish work. And yeah, like Courtney said, I do a lot of IFS therapy. That's kind of like the main thing I do to work with a variety of presenting problems. Trauma, addiction, relationship issues, depression, anxiety, all the things. So, yeah, and you're quite good at.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Conceptualizing it like doing therapy in ifs. How did you like come to learn about ifs?
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Maybe.
[00:02:08] Speaker C: How did you decide that IFS was a good fit for you as a therapist? Gravitate towards that over other models?
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I happen to, I, I just feel like I got lucky, honestly. In grad school, there was a good friend of mine that was in my cohort that I think she had had an IFS therapist or something. Anyway, so she knew about ifs and she told me about it and it immediately resonated both in the sense that, you know, it's this idea of internal family systems idea that systems theory, what we learn about as medicine, family therapists, was relevant inside as well, really appealed to me. But also I think ifs is the idea of like your true self and the way that it kind of just invites a much more kind of open, self compassionate way of relating with yourself.
I think also really kind of saying to me early on, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into with that. I just kind of started diving in. Of course there's been a lot of training and read books and just a lot of hours of doing therapy with clients since then. But.
But yeah, there's some of those things. Like I just really like, um.
Yeah, that, that like self compassion piece I think was kind of the first thing that like really stood out to me.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: But yeah, that's awesome. I love that. Honestly, self compassion is huge in a lot of different models. And so having that kind of be the tie and kind of the pole and then diving a little bit deeper. So let's do that today too. Let's dive a little bit deeper. What is ifs? So Courtney.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I. And since like a lot of our audience is brand new therapists, like either just starting grad school, just finishing grad school, some. Some programs, I feel like, kind of touch on the basics of ifs, but some programs don't cover it at all. What would you say is like the basic rundown of what ifs is or the basic framework of ifs?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah, great question. I know, yeah, it wasn't covered in my grad school program.
So IFS is the idea that rather than kind of thinking of human consciousness as kind of a monomind. Right. That we instead decided that we have parts. We use that word parts a lot, but just by us or like subpersonalities I think is maybe another way to think about that. So the idea is all of us have.
And from an IFS perspective, that's innate, that we're just. That's just how we are. We're wired with parts. And so we have the dynamic of getting to know and understand it's internal family systems that we have this internal family of parts and different parts have kind of different jobs.
And in the case of most of us in our parts, some of those jobs are not jobs they wanted. These are like burdens. These are ways to survive.
All kinds of difficult things we go through in our lives. The traumas, the.
I mean, all the dynamics of being a child raised by adults.
We can talk more about that maybe, but so the idea is we have these different parts of us that I guess to kind of connect it back to what we do with like diagnosing or anything. Right. It's the symptoms that we talk about that a client has, like depression or that still may be kind of general, like shame, like self criticism. Right. We would say that there's a part of the client that does this job is like an inner critic.
And then Those different parts then have, like, an E system. There's relationships between parts.
Some parts work together, some parts work against each other.
That gets really helpful with understanding, like, why an unhealthy behavior would persist, even though a client would say, I hate this. I hate that I do this. I don't want to do this. But then they keep doing it. It's like, well, one part hates it, one part thinks it's useful.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: And you've got that inner conflict.
And so that's. I mean, the really short answer is, like, the movies, you know, Inside Out. Inside out, too, are kind of the things that I always bring up, because that's kind of. That it's more complicated than the movies, but.
But just this idea that we have different parts of us that have those different jobs and that we can work with those parts.
[00:07:07] Speaker C: Yeah, that was fan. No, that's fantastic. And I. I loved what you were saying, too, about there's a part of that. Maybe there's a part that doesn't want to do this behavior or do this thing, and then there's another part of it that it's useful maybe. Not that that part likes it either.
But I think one thing that IFS does exceptionally well is kind of bridge the gap between, like, if you're looking more at, like, CBT or motivational interviewing, people are coming in saying, oh, I want to quit smoking. I don't want to quit smoking.
And so bridging the gap between there's a part of you that does want to quit smoking, and there's a part of you that doesn't, or there's a part of you that has found this really helpful or goes to this when other parts or other things happen.
And so I think it's a really good way for people to smoke, not feel so distressed that they can feel things that seem conflicting.
Yeah, I think that you explained that really well.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Using inside out is a good visual. People. Everybody's seen inside out, so that's awesome.
So we talk in, like, so far, we've talked a little bit about, like, those parts and kind of. That the self is maybe different. So what does the self look like? This is me, intern. You know what? Tell me a little bit more. How do people start to recognize the self?
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm glad you brought that up, because I totally left that out of the description, because there are parts, and then there's a you that is not a part.
Your true self, they call it an ifest. And the idea there is that everyone has a true self. That is inherent. That there are some inherent qualities that all of us have our true self. And in the ifs, they describe those. In the eight Cs, I always have to be lists of letters, but yeah, like passion, creativity, courage, connection, these kinds of things. Right. And.
And so that's a lot of, you know, so there's that way of thinking about it that, like, self is the one that has the compassion and the curiosity and things like that.
But I think one of the really fun things about doing ifs therapy is helping people kind of figure out, well, who are they if they're not their parts? Right? And just kind of that process of elimination kind of like, oh, got it. So there's the part that wants to smoke, and there's the part that doesn't want to smoke.
And then there's someone else in there who can see and talk to you. Both of those parts, like, who's that third person who. You know, And.
But yeah, so I think there's those inherent qualities. There's the.
But then there's something to be said for, like, that's just something you kind of get to know with each person. Person. I don't know that everyone's self is exactly the same.
But ideally, in the model, the idea is that self would be moved from the one that all the parts are, like, trying to protect all the time to the one who is leading the parts. And we talk about in ifs, the concept of self leadership. Right. That self is able to kind of be the one to help the parts and help parts heal. That's a huge component in all this. But then, yeah, I think that's. That's it. And there are. I don't know, we could talk a lot more about that. That learning to feel the difference between what is what itself and what a parts. So if you have more questions, we can definitely go into that. But it's the first crack at it, at least.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: Yeah, The. The image that's coming to my mind when we talk about, like, inside out. I think the one slight difference would be if inside, you know, Riley is like the. The girl that, you know, everyone. The inside out characters are in her head.
If there was like another small version of Riley in the control center, like, as the self. Because I think that's like the one thing, at least for me, when I think about explaining it to people, that it's kind of missing where you have this image of. There's this control center that every. All these parts are fighting over. And if there, you know, is.
Is Riley, that Higher self that can see all that, that can be there for those parts and then can ultimately say like, I see, I see you, I see where you're coming from, I see why you want this. I can show compassion and curiosity and empathy and all these things and still ultimately be the one to make the decision of, you know, whatever that is.
So yeah, I really love that. That learning to differentiate between the self and your parts, I think can also be a really good way for people to start practicing self compassion in maybe ways maybe it would be more difficult. Instead of imagining like just a part of you that you can start to practice empathy for and then another part of you that you can start to practice compassion and empathy for.
I think it's really good for people in that way too.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
So with this, how does ifs approach like anxiety and depression? Like the, the basic ones that we see all the time, like, how do you approach ifs with those?
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah, so the way that would work is that you, you know, if a client came in and said, I'm anxious, I mean of course there's all the follow up questions about anxious when anxious about what?
[00:12:40] Speaker C: All those good assessment questions.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Yeah, we're assessing all of this.
But you're gonna, as an IFS therapist, you're gonna start kind of learning to identify like, oh, there's a part that is, yeah, really anxious about like social stuff.
And maybe there's another part that is really annoyed with the anxiety and exhausted and maybe that's the part that got the client into therapy in the first place.
Right.
And so you do that initial step of just trying to kind of like map out if that's called mapping out the different parts. So you're just trying to identify like, okay, what are all the parts up to here?
And usually there's going to be again like the symptoms of anxiety or depression that's there and you identify. Okay, so like with depression, in the case of like suicidal ideation, right, there's a part that's doing suicidal ideation, there's a part that's doing shame and self criticism and you start to identify the parts. And then the work of ifs is always about we're trying to do something called, I guess it's a good time to introduce this, the concept of blending or unblending. So when we're blended with a part, it feels like the part is us and we're the part.
And unblending is when we're able to kind of get that sense of separation of like, oh, I have the sense this is A part of me, not all of me. It's part.
And then the part can be aware that self is there with them as well.
And so all we're trying to do is identify who are these parts, what do they, what do they all do around here?
And that unblending of can we start to get that separation that itself is in there too. And then having these conversations where the therapist, or as the therapist, we're directing kind of a conversation between.
In some ways it starts to feel a little bit more like couples therapy in those moments where it's a lot of. Or like eft, you know, if anyone is familiar with eft, that's more commonly taught, at least in grad school, at least for marriage and family therapists especially.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: Yeah, for mfts, I think.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: But this, this kind of back and forth between, you know, having the client self, you know, asking the part questions to get to know that part of how did they, how did they get this job?
Like, if it's the inner critic, right. How do I get this job? What was it? What's it hoping for when it's being all critical and drill sergeanty inside? You know, how is it trying to help there?
What is it worried will happen if it doesn't do that?
And, and all that. So you ask all these questions, get to know these parts, and then you start to get into the longer term thing of some parts that are protective in nature and some parts that are what in the model they called exiled or wounded parts.
And so the long term goal is, we understand, okay, the protective parts and their jobs. And then can we get their permission to go take care of the parts that are just hurting from life and pain and trauma and all the things. But is that making sense yet?
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, 100%.
What would you say are some of like the common parts that you come across when you're seeing clients?
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah, good question. There a lot that are pretty common or almost universal in some ways.
I feel like almost everyone has an inner critic that I've come across. Right. Part that is critical and shameful.
Think some level of avoidance that comes up. Right. Parts that, and maybe that's not fair to say that's like specific parts or that generally that's kind of what parts are up to. Right.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: Is there. That's what they do.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: They're trying to avoid having to feel stuff in various ways. And so another big one would be like thinking parts, like logical parts that are like trying to figure everything out all the time. That's a, that's an interesting One in therapy, right. Where you're trying to invite this relationship between self apart. And then sometimes there's a thinking part that's always like jumping in and trying to analyze everything and make sense of everything.
And that can be a way to not have to feel as much.
So kind of thinking or overthinking parts.
What else?
I had a list in my head of like 10 before we got on.
That's always, I mean, some, some level of like anxious parts often.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: Right.
Come across like a part that feels the need. I mean, inner critics for sure.
Parts that avoid, like, you're talking about, but also parts that like, want to make everything go right or they feel like there's a very like, specific way that things have to be done. Whether that's like, to help keep things organized, whether that's to like complete tasks.
And that might work with the inner critic. Like, if you're not doing these things and you'll criticize yourself, kind of like starting to map out some of those interactions.
I'm also curious, Celeste, what has your exposure to ifs been so far?
Like in your grad school, like, how familiar are you with kind of parts or ifs so far?
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Honestly, in my, like, programming with master's level of social work, like, it's. It's very brief overview. Like, we went over it at least, but like it was, it was maybe 10 minutes in a whole lecture.
[00:18:34] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, super brief.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Very brief, very big, like, overview. So, you know, it's just a good little intro to like, okay, that's interesting. But it wasn't enough to like, okay, yeah, I can totally practice this.
So 0% that.
So with that it brings so many questions, which we have plenty of.
Yes.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: So we're actually going to end part one of our interview with Rich here.
Thank you to all of our Zest for Therapy podcast listeners for joining us today. If you have thoughts you want to share with us about our topic, please let us know on our substack. The link, as always, is in in our description, where you can give us feedback, episode requests and be the first to know when a new episode comes out, including part two of this interview. See you next time.
