Presley, Author at Parts with Presley

Why you don’t need more willpower

If you’re considering coaching, it’s probably because you do things you wish you didn’t do. Well, that’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, you’re the boss of you, right? Why do anything you don’t want to do? Stop hitting yourself!

Just kidding. Your plight makes perfect sense if we rephrase “you do things you wish you didn’t do” as “the subconscious parts of you do things the conscious parts of you wish they didn’t do.” When you think about yourself, it’s your conscious parts doing the thinking, so it’s easy to confuse “yourself” with just “the conscious parts of you.” That leaves the actions of your subconscious parts as this annoying mystery:

“Why do I waste time on the internet when the task in front of me is really important?”

“Why do I turn down a job interview that would be a great opportunity?”

“Why do I agree to do a task that isn’t my job even after telling myself I’m going to stand firm this time?”

Internal Family Systems

Witness and Offer Options

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

This is the last post in my IFS Practice 101 series. I spent five posts explaining how to get to know protective parts of you and get their permission to work with the hurt, exiled parts of you that they protect. But I’m going to cover working with these vulnerable exiles in just one post, and I’m doing that to make a couple of points.

First, because this isn’t a manual for working with exiles. You can start listening to the protectors that are chatting away in your head anytime. But working with exiles is delicate, and it’s really helpful to have a feel for your Self-energy before you attempt it. We don’t always get that luxury, of course—our exiles come out when they come out! But it wouldn’t be responsible of me to suggest you try following my directions based only on a blog post. Get some live experience with parts work first! What I hope this post will be useful for is understanding what the heck IFS is, and helping people who are learning IFS to understand this part of the process from a new angle.

Second, because I hold the IFS process for unburdening loosely (and so does official IFS, in fact). I think it’s helpful to think of it less as a series of steps and more as a menu of options you can offer your exiled part, who can take any of those options in any order they please, or come up with something new. That’s why I’ve boiled a classically 6-step process down to just two steps: witness and offer options.

Internal Family Systems

Address concerns

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

Now that you’ve built a relationship with a part of you and learned what would make things easier on that part, you can find out if it’s ready for you to go ahead and facilitate that change. Throughout the rest of the process, parts may pop up at any time with something to express (verbally or otherwise).

Our first goal is to distinguish between information and concerns.

Hearing Information

Sometimes parts just want to be heard:

“This will never work!”

“I really hated when that happened!”

and even “Remember to take out the trash later tonight!”

And that’s totally fine. The only action needed in these cases is to hear them and let them know you did. When parts of you feel heard, they tend to relax.

Internal Family Systems

Build a relationship with your part

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

Now that you and a part of you have an open line of communication, use it! The goal is for you to get to know the part and for the part to get to know you. These can happen in either order, and you can go back and forth between them. This step is usually taught as a grab bag of questions to ask, but I have teased out the goals of this stage in order to help you learn it and practice it more easily.

Let the part get to know you

Letting the part get to know you is about building trust, and that’s a three-part process. It pains me a bit to realize these are the same three steps referred to in marketing: know, like, and trust. I guess marketers have strong incentives to get relationship-building right!

Internal Family Systems

Establish a two-way connection

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

If you’ve done the first and second steps of the parts work process, you’re ready to establish an inner connection. One of the defining features of parts work and especially Internal Family Systems is the two-way relationship between your parts and your core Self. Outside of parts work, we often try to have one-way relationships with our parts, by doing things like telling ourselves to think differently (talking to a part without listening to it) or feeling for subconscious associations (listening to a part without talking to it). Imagine how hard it would be to problem-solve with a friend if only one of you were allowed to talk! Parts work makes things easier by allowing us to have dialogues.

The fact that this is a dialogue doesn’t mean it has to come in verbal thoughts. Parts can communicate in different ways: through mental imagery, physical sensations, by guiding you to move in a certain way, or by giving you intuitions. Sometimes people can’t tell what a part is saying until they try drawing. The key is just that you are aware of the part and the part is aware of you.

Internal Family Systems

Distinguish parts and Self

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

The next step in the IFS process after connecting with a part of yourself is to sort out where all your different thoughts and feelings are coming from. Once you know who’s who, you can separate out:

your Self (your awareness/presence)
the part you’re trying to get to know (the target part)
and any other parts that are jumping in (the concerned parts)

Separating parts from your Self allows you to embody your inner wisdom and stay calm even while thinking about upsetting things. Separating parts from each other helps you get to know each one more deeply than you normally can. So let’s see how to do this!

Internal Family Systems

Connect with a part of you

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

The first step to doing parts work such as Internal Family Systems is to connect with a part of yourself. For those of you who are familiar with the “6 F’s” process for getting to know a part, this post corresponds to the first 3 F’s, but I break things down a little differently based on the kinds of questions I’ve seen people run into.

Get ready

Many people like to do parts work sitting with their eyes closed. Closing your eyes helps you focus on your internal experience. But it’s also possible to do this other ways. I often connect with my parts while taking a walk. I find that looking at the sky and the trees brings out my Self, and then it’s easier for me to connect with my parts as a result.

Internal Family Systems

Types of protectors: What are managers and firefighters?

In the story of Alma, she has two protectors, Clara and David. IFS distinguishes between these types of protectors: Clara is a manager, and David is a firefighter.

I didn’t give these terms in the IFS Theory 101 series because I find that distinguishing between types of protectors is one of the top causes of stress and confusion among learners of IFS, and one of the least important things for IFS clients to do. The distinction is mostly there to help practitioners.

But people do refer to managers and firefighters quite often, so if you’d like to know what they are, read on!

Internal Family Systems

Parts are like muscles

One day when I came to my physical therapy appointment, I overheard a physical therapist telling her patient to do an exercise one way instead of another way “so it’ll hit the right muscles instead of the wrong ones.” I noticed that all she meant by “the right muscles” was “the muscles you need to strengthen,” and all she meant by “the wrong muscles” was “the muscles that have been compensating for the weak ones.” It wasn’t a judgment about the muscles themselves being good or bad. That’s so obvious when it comes to muscles, but so hard to grasp when it comes to parts of our personality.

In parts work, we often want to isolate one part of ourselves at a time so we can understand it more deeply than we usually do. Everyday life is sort of like asking a classroom of kids what they did over summer break: the extroverted kids all talk at once, the introverted kids don’t even try, and all you hear are little snippets of “ice cream” and “summer camp.” But if you ask each child individually about their summer, you can learn their whole story. Similarly, if you ask a person how they feel about a big decision, their head will spin with snippets of their louder parts’ opinions: “it’ll be great!” “but I’m scared!” But if you can isolate each part and listen to it fully, you can find out the reasons behind the different stances, and discover latent opinions too.

Internal Family Systems

How much do I need to know about IFS?

Very little! But I keep a blog on it because some people do want to understand it, and I find them running into the same misconceptions over and over again, so I’m working to present the material in a way that avoids those pitfalls. Also, people will occasionally ask for written material on IFS that’s more digestible than a whole book, and free. And finally, many of the books on IFS frame the concepts in the same way, so I’ve tried to go back to the drawing board and find new ways of presenting the ideas, because different perspectives help different people. My IFS Theory 101 and IFS Practice 101 series are good ways to get familiar with parts work.

If you find information about IFS overwhelming, though, there’s no need to power through! Knowing all the ins and outs is my job, not yours.

What I recommend people go in knowing is simply this:

Hearing Information

Let the part get to know you

Get ready

What's Your Procrastination Type?