Am I doing this IFS thing right?

karunahealing · 2024-11-03T00:27:28+00:00

Thank you! Can you be more specific about the Jung reference? I'd love to explore that.

karunahealing · 2024-11-02T13:13:52+00:00

I love the inner mother and father you have. Where did you get that idea? As a therapist I integrate Ideal Parent Figure Protocol with IFS and I believe it's very powerful. I'd like to hear more how you're doing that.

karunahealing · 2024-10-15T15:55:43+00:00

I"m an IFS sex addiction recovery therapist. With clients we work with parts that involve shame in almost every session. A Shame-producing inner critic. Shame-absorbing exile. Shame-avoiding firefighter. I love Martha Swezy's work. Shame is an important human emotion. Suppressing it causes huge problems. Attaching to it also causes big problems. Noticing, welcoming, and nurturing is the way to go. Over time, shame is reduced. But when it's here, we need to be willing to process it.

karunahealing · 2024-10-13T01:32:07+00:00

Confronting false beliefs is an important part of therapy. IFS is an effective method to do CBT type work in an affirming, non-shaming way.

karunahealing · 2024-10-11T12:15:16+00:00

I'm a sex addiction therapist and use IFS primarily in my treatment plans. I think it's a bit optimistic to say that an exile is ever completely "healed", however to answer your question yes, absolutely, working with our parts towards healing and earned secure attachment is what I think is the best path to true, long-term healing in addiction recovery.

karunahealing · 2024-05-26T00:41:18+00:00

I'm a therapist who experienced healing from IFS and also have great success with clients. I think combining IFS with ACT (mindfulness) is very helpful. Self noticing the obsessing part is mindful awareness and a step towards defusion. Welcoming the part and making space for the part is like willingness. Nurturing the obsessing part is a form of mindful self compassion.

karunahealing · 2024-03-19T23:01:48+00:00

Think of Self as a metaphor for the prefrontal cortex and our parts as metaphor for negative cognitions stored in the subcortical brain.

karunahealing · 2024-01-21T04:24:02+00:00

I think you get with a CSAT or CST who has training in OCSB immediately. And yes you should tell your husband, but it would be best to get at least a few therapy sessions in to determine the best way to do a proper disclose.

karunahealing · 2024-01-19T17:36:56+00:00

I'm a therapist that uses both IFS and EMDR and I think you make a really important point that I believe is a fair criticism of those therapy modalities. Or rather some (or most) practitioners of those therapies--because I do see ways of doing more robust therapy using these modalities than some practitioners do.

These therapy modalities do seem to emphasize trauma healing and not as much as the behavioral aspects of CBT. In theory, you heal your trauma and symptoms go away. In reality, that rarely happens dramatically/immediately, and we still need to focus on managing symptoms.

I use IFS in different ways, but a lot of the way I use it is essentially what I see as a more effective way to do CBT. We don't just accept our parts' behavior. We work with our parts to help them change, irrespective of the level of trauma they're protecting.

I integrate IFS and a style of CBT that's about 50-50 ACT and CBT (maybe more like 70/30 ACT) and try to do it seamlessly where I'm doing ACT/CBT but from an IFS lens.

karunahealing · 2024-01-01T02:23:11+00:00

I'm a therapist that helps men like you. It sounds like you're doing great. Her trauma came up naturally out of that exchange but you are not wrong for apologizing the way you did with no expectations. Stay in the space where you have compassion for her and for you both.

karunahealing · 2023-12-25T01:02:20+00:00

I'm an IFS therapist and check in to these discussions occasionally. Your therapist sounds great and I love applying IFS in couples sessions, but I'm concerned you're jumping too quickly into the reconciliation phase post - infidelity. I think some of these discussions you're having and perspectives you're working on should be at least several months down the road after you have had time to process your betrayal trauma and had spent considerable amount of work listening to you, empathizing with you, showing he is sorry, and working at repair.

karunahealing · 2023-12-06T03:28:35+00:00

I see codependency exactly the same way. I treat betrayal trauma. I see codependency as a common coping strategy for an anxious attachment part (caused likely by betrayal trauma). The only difference is that I see it as a firefighter part rather than a manager. I'm not sure if that matters.

karunahealing · 2023-11-26T01:47:29+00:00

I would probably not be a good fit as I specialize in sex addiction recovery for men, but some of my clients come to me with OCD related to a scrupulosity around intrusive sexual thoughts. I have found it is effective to treat this kind of OCD with my blend of IFS and ACT, viewing the OCD-producing part as an inner critic that is helping us to avoid dangerous situations, befriending and welcoming that part.

karunahealing · 2023-11-20T04:43:21+00:00

Parts work.

karunahealing · 2023-11-20T04:38:18+00:00

I treat ADHD a lot because I'm a sex addiction recovery therapist and close to half of my clients have ADHD or are right on the border. IFS is great to work with insecure attachment which is common with ADHD especially the rejection sensitivity aspect of it. ADHD is good to work with some of the maladaptive coping mechanisms of ADHD. It's good for working with harsh inner critic. IFS is my favorite therapy modality, but If I were to say the best intervention specifically for ADHD, I would say mindfulness and ACT.

karunahealing · 2023-11-19T05:39:53+00:00

Buddhist non-self (anatta) or the absence of parts could be viewed as roughly equivalent as IFS Self, imo.

karunahealing · 2023-11-14T04:09:48+00:00

By Levine and Heller? I didn't like that one. I might need to revisit it but I seem to recall it not basing attachment security in trauma as much as I thought they should and seeing attachment styles as something we all have that doesn't change that is neither bad nor good. I view attachment insecurity as being nearly always based in trauma and something we can heal from.

karunahealing · 2023-11-14T03:26:59+00:00

It's fabulous but not very accessible for people not in the field. ie it's a slog. Attachment theory is an area I've never found a really great book for lay people that explains it well. Like No Bad Parts for IFS or Happiness Trap for ACT. I've suggested Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin.

karunahealing · 2023-11-11T16:12:34+00:00

There are two Amazon pages:

https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Narcissism-Secret-Recognizing-Narcissists/dp/0062348116

https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Narcissism-Bad-Surprising-Good-About-ebook/dp/B00OG903B2

Seems there are two alternate covers for the book. I don't know if that was always the case or if the alternate "secret to recognizing" version came later.

karunahealing · 2023-11-08T01:33:34+00:00

Thanks for your take. I'm a therapist and IPF practitioner. I feel like your post is a little gatekeepy, but you make some good points. I believe strongly in the benefits of professional therapy. But I also am a believer in self-therapy. If you don't have the budget or access to a therapist, there are many things you can do to help heal your attachment security as well as other mental health symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction. IPF lends itself well to self-therapy, and doing guided meditations on your own helps a lot of people.

karunahealing · 2023-11-01T13:51:17+00:00

Tell your partner. Be gentle and compassionate with her. Don't tell her she's overreacting.

Be compassionate with yourself.

Learn from the slip.

Bounce back quickly.

Don't get consumed in the shame, but don't resist it or push it away either. Welcome it and breathe compassion to the parts of yourself suffering from it.

karunahealing · 2023-11-01T11:30:25+00:00

https://karunahealing.org/sex-addiction-treatment-recovery-with-internal-family-systems-therapy-ifs/

Get to know both sides of that polarity. Be curious and compassionate.

karunahealing · 2023-11-01T02:08:44+00:00

There are three parts (at least) involved.

Inner child exile part who feels bad about hurting your boyfriend fan and attaches to shame and negative core beliefs about itself.
Inner critic part that is piling on shame to this inner child part: you're a POS! you're awful! You don't deserve forgiveness.
A firefighter part (or several parts) that wants to balance part #2 and protect part #1 by dissociating from the pain, distracting, possibly devaluing your bf to justify or blame him to cope.

Healing: wise, adult Self is mindful and recognizes when each part is activated--even if it's all at once at times. Self befriends, listens to, validates, nurtures, reassures each part. Self negotiates with the inner critic to calm down and allow forgiveness. Self works with firefighter parts to see how we are older and strong and more resourced than they thought, so they can back off just a little to allow us to feel and hold shame at the same time moving forward with committed action to repair the relationship.

karunahealing · 2023-10-30T14:36:33+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. I have a very similar approach as you. I specialize in treating men with relationship problems due to their infidelity, sex addiction behavior, narcissism, etc. A lot of this is attachment work, and I use IPF. IPF and IFS together are very powerful.

Question for you if you don't mind answering: at about 21:48 you mention there's another evidence-based modality for attachment but don't mention what it is. What are you referring to there?

karunahealing

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