The power of dialogue with our parts in the Internal Family Systems

Have you ever wondered how it can be that, being apparently rational beings and skilled in the use of structured thinking, human beings are so contradictory?

For example, the vision of a doctor who goes out to smoke in his breaks after treating several patients is not rare, but if we stop to think, it is surprising. The same happens with people who reach the degree of commitment enough to go to join the gym and pay all the monthly payments and, at the same time, they hardly go to exercise.

In Psychology there are several explanatory models that address this tendency to inconsistent or inconsistent behaviors. They are guided by contradictory motivations, and one of them is the Inner Family Systems model. Let's see how it is.

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What are the Inner Family Systems?

The Inner Family Systems model is a psychological intervention and analysis approach developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s.

It is an integrative therapeutic proposal that combines approaches and strategies typical of different models of psychological intervention, but as its name indicates, it is especially influenced by the General Systems Theory, and more specifically, by its expression in family therapy systemic. If something characterizes it, it is the adoption of ideas and interpretative frameworks of systemic family therapy, but applied not to families, but to individuals.

The objective of this is to understand the psychological elements that, relatively independently of each other, are behind the behavior and the way of thinking and feeling of the person and mobilize it through very different logics, or even apparently contradictory.

Thus the model of the Internal Family Systems understands that in the functioning of the psyche of each person there are several independent parts involved, which can be equated to members of a family, with their own motivations, interests and personalities. Said parts can be classified into three types.

On one side are the exiles, which are the parts that remain in us as a result of a more or less intense psychological trauma and that because they harbor emotionally destabilizing elements, they tend to act on the fringes of the rest of the family.

On the other hand we have the firefighters, whose presence stands out when exiles take an active role and destabilize us emotionally; in such situations, they adopt a short-term logic and trigger impulsive reactions to "Cover" this discomfort, through actions such as pulling hair, biting nails, eating without hunger, to smoke…

We finally have the managers, which also try to maintain stability and the status quo but not in specific and emergency situations, but constantly through prevention strategies. They are behind the avoidance habits of anguish, stress, sadness, shame ...

From the Internal Family Systems model, it is proposed not to totally repress or eliminate any of the specific parts, but to work to make the dynamics of interaction between all of them take the person to a state of relative emotional balance and the ability to manage experiences emotionally painful In other words, it invites us to adopt a holistic point of view from all parties, without seeking “local” but rather systemic solutions.

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Examples of application areas of the Internal Family Systems model

To better understand how to work from the Internal Family Systems model, let's see several examples of its application in psychotherapy, although these do not fully show all the problems that can be addressed through this.

1. In cases of complicated grief

The emotional reaction to the death of a loved one can lead some people to develop what is known as complicated grief, a psychological disorder in which feelings of discomfort overwhelm the person, who suffers much more than usual after these kinds of losses and is unable to function normally for many weeks or months.

In such situations, the Inner Family Systems allow these patients to adapt to a reality in which that person is no longer by their side, adjusting both their expectations and their habits and management of emotions to that absence that is at least material, although the memories about that loved one are still there.

What is involved is that the parts of the person's mind return to a balance in which it is not necessary to adopt extreme measures of secrecy denying the death of that person, nor do we enter into a dynamic of constantly feeding the pain, delving again and again into how tragic that death.

Thus, from the balance between the parties, the acceptance of this loss and its integration into the own life story, making those memories (and by extension, the trace that that person has left in the patient) become part of their identity and the narrative of their existence.

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2. In cases of trauma

Trauma arises when there are memories that have not been stored in a functional way in the memory system of the person, among other things because they are associated with a strong negative emotional charge, which produces an intense discomfort. That is why traumas usually arise after going through experiences of extreme physical or psychological violence.

Through the Internal Family Systems, people are helped to approach those memories without letting one of their parts be too much more involved than the others, so that they can be re-encoded in a more neutral and balanced way, without denying any of their facets, but without letting a few of these totally catch the person's attention focus and start tormenting them from that position.

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3. In cases of anger management

Everything related to impulse control constitutes a type of possible emotional problems that can be dealt with effectively by the Inner Family Systems.

For example, there are many people who find it difficult to modulate their anger and prevent it from being projected outward through a hostile attitude or directly from attacks on others.

And this many times is because the way in which situations that generate anger are interpreted is highly biased towards pessimism about the intentions of others: manager or exile-type parties can trigger attacking responses that are actually a form of defense about what might happen if we don't "make ourselves to worth".

Thus, through Internal Family Systems, people are helped to take a step back from interpreting social interactions and not to see everything through the lens of someone who always looking for signs of a confrontation or a threat, coming to internalize an interpretive framework richer in nuances thanks to the harmonious and balanced participation of all parties.

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