From Burdened to Blossoming: Transformation Through IFS
So here we are: surviving a global pandemic, marking our place in a collective racial awakening, living with unresolved hurt, and attempting to show up as a functioning person on Zoom. We know there is healing to be done, but healing can feel so elusive and slippery. What are we healing from? Where do we even begin? What happens if we fail? Who might we be on the other side? Will we be recognizable?
These were the kinds of questions from clients that inspired Mariel Pastor, IFS Telehealth Collective co-founder, therapist, and lead trainer for Internal Family Systems℠, to create the Unburdened Internal System mandala, a visual tool illustrating the transformative power of IFS therapy.
As she tells it, “It was the early 2000s when an adult male client of mine was finally coming to terms with his addiction to opiates. He had successfully hidden this problem from everyone, including me, and his wife was threatening to leave him if he didn’t go to treatment. He was really down on himself and feeling hopelessly stuck. We had been working together for a while and I could see how his parts were embattled around his use, and that the emotional pain the drugs had meant to numb was now feeling much worse. I showed him a visual aid we use in IFS trainings that depicts the internal system when parts are extreme, stressed and constrained by the painful burdens they carry. He easily recognized his parts on that page and was willing to accept my assurance that those were good parts in bad jobs and that healing them meant transformation. I suspect more than one hopeless part prompted him to ask, ‘But what will I look like after these parts of me heal?’ That question really struck me and after considering all the healing I had witnessed through my work, personally and with others, the Unburdened Internal System mandala was born.”
What does it mean to “unburden,” you might ask? To answer that question, we will begin with what it means to be burdened.
The Burdened System
IFS asserts that there are three major aspects of our personality: the parts of us that that keep our internal and external lives in control, known as managers; parts that work hard to repress painful memories and beliefs, referred to as firefighters; and parts that have been rejected and relegated to the unconscious mind due to painful experiences, which are called exiles. These parts of our
personality carry varying degrees of burden depending on their function. Managers are burdened with a lot of responsibilities: to control, judge, plan, care-take, analyze and generally keep our lives afloat, and to prevent any kind of vulnerability. They help us feel secure by controlling people, events, and other parts of our inner system. They work HARD to keep us functioning. Though these parts often manage our lives with perceived ease, they can become unhelpful when their function is too extreme or when they are in opposition to other parts.
Like managers, firefighters are also burdened with responsibility, albeit more frantic. These protective parts jump into action whenever vulnerable feelings, memories, beliefs, and experiences come to the surface and destabilize the inner system. Firefighters may present in extreme ways, such as with addictions, self-harm and dissociation. While these parts hold the responsibility to quench our emotional overwhelm, their frantic, reactive, impulsive, and destructive nature can ultimately backfire and make things even worse.
Both managers and firefighters exist to help us function and remain unconsumed by exiles that carry terror, pain and shame. Exiles are often the most sensitive parts that hold feelings of unworthiness, shame, and fear from having been rejected, devalued, marginalized, or traumatized. Exiles bear the burden of being wounded.
Imagine how these parts of you might present without the heavy, burdened load they have always carried. Who might we become once our parts are unburdened? Or perhaps more specifically, what might we reclaim? Consider this: IFS therapy offers access to and action from a state of deeper consciousness. As curious as that might sound, accessing this kind of presence for ourselves and for others is simply transformative.
IFS in a Nutshell: The Unburdened System
When parts of us are extreme, they can hinder the health of our relationships and obstruct our access to Self energy or self-awareness. Spending time with the overly critical part of us or the part that must speak to fill empty space can be exhausting or even intolerable for others. Moreover, when parts that are extreme are in the driver seat, we distance ourselves from our wise and compassionate core. To unburden means to liberate parts from their extreme or burdened roles. For example, the part that once worked day and night shifts to ensure that you are measured, organized and in control of your life can take on a more balanced approach and collaborate with other parts so that it can lessen its responsibility. Or the part of you that once lashed out in rage at your partner can still advocate for fairness, but without being burdened with the fear of abandonment.
Our parts that are more extreme don't become unburdened overnight. Instead, we listen deeply and compassionately to their stories, attend to their fears and concerns about our well being, allow them to negotiate with opposing parts, and offer choice in how they would like to protect us. Depending on the part, they may need to be updated to the here and now — to the parts of us that are capable, resilient and self-sufficient. They might also choose to relinquish wounding memories and unfreeze from scenes in which they experienced injury.
The goal, however, isn’t to rid ourselves of these parts, as they have invaluable and necessary functions. The goal is rather to restore parts to their true nature so that their innate and positive attributes can run our lives instead of their fears.
“‘All parts are welcome” is the reassuring IFS credo. But when parts are extreme, they’re hard for us to embody and hard for others to tolerate, let alone welcome. Even in therapy, some parts get asked to step back more often than others and may never get their day in the sun. Yet, we do mean to welcome them all — and not out of resignation, simply because we know we can’t get rid of them. Hardly. The stunning reality is that they are each valuable parts of our being with their own consciousness. As holons, all parts have at their core Self energy and are wanting to be restored to, and recognized for, their true nature — something the IFS process can offer. Even the most encrusted parts of us, full of intensity and mistrust, hold qualities at their core in the form of Self energy.”
-Mariel Pastor, IFS Lead Trainer and Telehealth Collective Co-Founder.
Excerpted from the Unburdened Internal System
The unburdening process in IFS not only invites parts to return to their natural state; it also restores trust in Self leadership. Self energy is our innate calm, connected, intuitive, creative, and compassionate inner leader that can tend and heal the system when our parts are less burdened. Even when we feel hopeless or without purpose, IFS assumes that all people have access to Self energy that is understanding and accepting. As IFS developer Richard Schwartz and IFS clinician Martha Sweezy explain, “Self exists, cannot be damaged, can often be accessed quickly, knows how to heal, moves to correct inner and outer injustices with an open heart, and becomes the good attachment figure for parts and people.” Imagine that leading our lives instead of our inner critic or “Numbing Nancy.”
In honoring multiplicity, we recognize each part as essential to our wholeness, trusting that their inherent gifts will benefit our lives in real and tangible ways. Many grow up with the idea that therapy is self-indulgent, selfish, and self-serving — all terms that have given the word ‘self” a bad name. Yet with true healing, the opposite is more likely. Awakened and liberated parts often want to bring their contributions to others in ways great and small. The more Self-led a person becomes, the more they bring themselves to relationships, to their communities, and to the world.
Hold the Vision Lightly
However, trusting our Self energy doesn’t always come with ease, especially when our parts believe that they protect us best. The goal isn’t for our Self energy to disown our parts into a diffused existence, but rather to incrementally increase awareness of our parts’ manifestations and impact on our internal and external systems. Our parts will know when it feels safe to renegotiate their roles and allow their inner wisdom to lead instead.
“There’s one small caveat with the unburdened mandala,” Pastor continues, “it’s really an ideal. And it should more accurately be called the Unburdening Internal System because humans are never static, but that title sounded awkward. For all of us, it’s often two steps forward and one step back, with some unburdenings having a huge impact and others more refined. ‘It’s the journey, not the destination’, right? So if you’ve got a ‘spiritual manager’ who has certain expectations about how far along your healing you should be by now, make sure it remembers to hold this vision lightly. It means well, at least!”
To be fair, with IFS we’re hoping for increased access to Self energy, and are not expecting complete transcendence. Cece Sykes, IFS Lead Trainer puts it perfectly: “Tapping into Self energy, especially for someone with an internal system that has been ground down by years of toxic attempts to fix emotional problems with compulsive behaviors, is a process rather than a destination.”
And so who might you be on the other side of healing? Perhaps a person with more balance, harmony and wholeness — a person who has all of the innate resources to transform your life. To discover your most authentic you, contact our Client Care Coordinator or call 503-447-3244 if you live in California, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon or Michigan to be matched with a trained IFS clinician. IFS Telehealth Collective is the place for your healing and Self-transformation.
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