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Therapies

Dr. Millia is a certified Level 3 IFS practitioner (institute-trained) with over 24 years of experience in addressing stress, adversity, and trauma-related conditions. Here, she provides a brief explanation of IFS therapy.

What is Internal Family Systems (IFS)?

IFS is a cutting-edge therapeutic approach that is powerful in accessing and healing deep psychological wounds. It also helps clients with everyday life issues and with spiritual development.

What are the key principles of IFS?

IFS believes that our mind (the inner ecosystem) has several dimensions/aspects or ‘parts’ relating to each other, just like interactions between family members in our outer system. Every ‘part’ carries the true essence of who we are: sensitive, innocent, playful, joyous, courageous, adventurous and so on. And ‘parts’ relate to the ‘Self’. The ‘Self’ is our inner core capacities that relate to parts with curiosity and compassion and offer parts of connection, calmness, wisdom, and perspectives.

What are these distinct sets of parts?

The three distinct sets of parts are Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters. Our exiled parts hold our pain and vulnerability, and the Managers and Firefighters are our protectors who were forced into protective roles.

Our Exile parts have no intention or role but to express our deeply held emotions when they are finally triggered.

What sorts of pain do our Exiled parts carry?
Exiles are the parts of us that hold our deepest pain and vulnerability. They may hold shame, fear, sadness, hurt, aloneness, or beliefs of being unlovable, unworthy, unacceptable, defective, undeserving, or unwanted. Exiles are often hidden and remain out of our conscious awareness. When triggered, their feelings and beliefs resurface, and the person re-experiences the emotional baggage.

Who are our internal managers?

Managers are protectors who pre-emptively and proactively manage, control, cover-up, and bury our exiles, preventing them from reaching our conscious awareness.

Manager parts are proactive parts that maintain internal stability by managing and controlling the outer environment, our relationships and situations by pre-empting, planning, and strategically navigating our lives.
Their motto is to “never” wake up our exiled feelings and to prevent them from resurfacing. Below are a few examples of these managers, but often the list is endless in any system.

  • A people pleaser – is a part who does everything for others, fixes everyone else’s worries and concerns and caretakes everyone. They may protect exiles that carry shame, fear of being alone, feel like they don’t belong, are insignificant, worthless or not valuable.
  • An anxious overthinker is a manager who plans for the worst-case scenario to control situations pre-emptively. Often, these overthinkers protect exiles who feel anxious in social situations, fear getting things wrong and failing, and fear of bad things happening.
  • Internal judges and inner critics are parts of us that shame, criticise, condemn, and berate us and others. The exiled parts they protect often hold shame, fear, hurt, etc.
  • An overworked, overachiever manager strives to extremes and is oriented toward bringing us success, pride, worth, and self-esteem. They dislike failures, setbacks, or losses.
  • Our avoidant managers may avoid emotions, feelings, social situations, proximity of relationships, etc. These managers hold beliefs that protect exiles who have been wounded, hurt when they expressed emotions, or hurt in relationships and by early attachment figures.

Who are our Firefighters?

Firefighters are reactive protectors that soothe or calm when our exiled parts surface or leak into our conscious awareness. Firefighters react when pain arises and intend to minimise pain and suffering through distractions, indulging or escaping.

Firefighters are often (not always) teenage or pre-verbal parts that are impulsive and reactive to exiles’ pain and suffering. A common firefighter is a rage, distractor, or dissociative part that takes out feelings, thoughts, memories, body, or awareness. Parts that engage in impulsive self-harming and suicidal parts. Other firefighters bring superficial normalcy by indulging in substances, food, sex, and many ways of procrastination to avoid dealing with the underlying pain.

How do our parts get forced into these roles?

Parts are born with natural attributes, untarnished and in their authentic self-states. The qualities of joy, playfulness, adventurousness, loyalty, curiosity, and affection are what we are born with.

Negative, traumatic or confusing environments during childhood bring pain, and our parts hold the pain of those personal experiences. We also take messages that become a pain, constraint and burden from legacy, generations, lineage, society, culture, racial inequalities, and other systems.

How does IFS help?

In IFS, we believe that everyone has Self, no matter how terrible our lives or our suffering. Self does not need to be cultivated, as other therapies believe. It is inherent and exists in all of us. The IFS process is gentle and helps clients establish trust between parts and the Self. IFS aims for clients to become Self-Led. It is an inner relational work aimed at creating a harmonious internal world.

What is the goal of IFS?

The primary goal of IFS is to gain insights from these parts, particularly to heal our exiles. Achieving harmony within promotes overall mental wellness, reduces internal conflicts, and contributes to a coherent self-understanding.

IFS enables our managers, firefighters, and exiles to unburden themselves from their extreme roles and pain so that the system can lead from the core and authentic Self.

Dr Millia
drmillia@firstpsychiatryclinics.com
www.firstpsychiatryclinic.ae
Mobile – 0553557855
First Psychiatry Clinic
975 Al Wasl Road
Dubai


For more information on these therapies, please watch my videos:
What is Internal Family Systems (IFS)?