When people come to psychological therapy of any orientation they are expecting change. Therapists who practice from an Internal Family Systems (IFS) framework know that client’s "Manager" parts usually bring them to therapy, desiring or demanding change. The "Manager" will view some other part or cluster of parts as a problem, and they want those parts to go away, be controlled, or calm down. Clients soon learn that in IFS we seek change, not be managing parts away, but bringing both the parts that are causing problems, and the managers who don’t like them, into connection with the person’s Self. So, the paradox of IFS is that parts inevitably do shift or change in some way in connection with the Self, but not by making them or asking them to. So, change happens but not by seeking it. It sometimes takes people a bit of time to get their heads around this, and opens up a bigger question, what type of change are we seeking in IFS (and other cutting-edge progressive therapeutic models)?
There has been much written on levels of change in psychological therapy, so I’ll summarise my understanding of it. A lot of people come to therapy with an external problem (often a relational or situational one) that they are trying to solve, and first order change has the person attempt to change something externally so they feel different about it. For example, someone may be in a romantic relationship that isn’t working, and a first-order change strategy would be breaking up with the person, or changing that relationship in some way. Changing the external environment has some use, but attempts to change other people generally doesn’t work and has limited to no utility when seeking personal transformation.
Second order change goes further in that we seek change by seeking to come into a different relationship with the underlying rules from which we are living, or in IFS terms, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of our parts. Parts have been co-opted into extreme roles and made adaptations to our early family environment and life experiences, and their behaviour “makes sense” in terms of our own individual personal histories. By inviting these parts into a relationship with the Self whereby they are listened to from a place of curiosity, it opens up possibilities for enduring second order change to become possible.
Third-order change fully recognises the solution to a problem as a solution in and of itself. The part of the client involved in the problem is taking a “pro-symptom position” as a way to keep underlying danger at bay, or attempt to make certain that a historical trauma doesn’t repeat itself in the client's life. For example, if the primary way a child got attention from a parent was through caretaking or excessively pleasing them in some way, an adult may present with an extreme caretaker part that put everyone else’s needs before their own, or a people pleasing part that is excessively flexible to the whims and desire of others. By allowing these parts to have a relationship with the Self, this opens up the possibility for fourth-order change, where these extreme parts become oriented towards the Self and the present, allowing for the idea of a reassessment of the roles they are in and if they are still applicable given the person’s current life. Fourth-order change then allows someone to basically reevaluate the very rules by which they have been living, open up opportunities for transformation of parts into something more optimal and relevant for the person’s current life.
In this way, IFS works from what is often referred to as a “constraint-release” model, as opposed to many therapies (such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) which are “counteractive” in their mechanism of change. What does this mean, exactly? In the counteractive method, imagine your challenges all exist in a long dark tunnel where distressing thoughts, emotions, and body sensations all reside. You’ve been down that tunnel many times and it’s pretty hard in there, so the counteractive (In IFS terms, “Manager-led”) modalities, instead of trying to understand how that tunnel got so hard, and the function of what’s in the tunnel, you spend time building a new tunnel next door that is easier to get through.
Alternatively, in a constraint-release model therapy (like IFS) we would still walk into the first tunnel, but we would invite the Self of the client to be curious as we go through it, trying to understand and appreciate how it go so difficult in that tunnel, and by doing this from a place of Self-leadership, our relationship with the tunnel can dramatically transform. By doing this over and over - going into the tunnel and seeking to understand and genuinely appreciate what’s in that tunnel (because whatever is in there was probably necessary in our survival at some point) - one's relationship with what’s in the tunnel changes, and the tunnel quite quickly gets wider and larger, and easier to walk through. People often tell me that they experience more “space” or “calm” inside themselves and in the relationship with what they have previously framed as their problem (i.e. their extreme parts). Furthermore, this new spaciousness allows extreme parts to consider taking on new roles that are more consistent with the client's current life.
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