Creative Externalization: How Expressive Arts and IFS Bring Your Inner World to Life Part I: Art Therapy and Visual Form
By Alicia Dabney, AMFT, APCC, ATR-P, and Clinician at the IFS Telehealth Collective*
Internal Family Systems℠ (IFS) is not a “one size fits all” approach. Your life experiences, background, personality, and reasons for seeking therapy are among the many variables that warrant a tailored approach to your healing. Most notably, you have a uniquely individual internal system with different needs that will inform the way IFS therapy unfolds. Trained IFS therapists are mindful of all of this, and will flow between different IFS approaches to follow your internal system’s rhythm and pacing for healing. Although in-sight is the approach most associated with IFS, direct access and externalizing are equally valid and have much to offer. This blog is the first in a series of creative explorations centered on externalizing, one of the three main approaches to IFS therapy.
The Heart of the IFS Model
The IFS model holds that it is the nature of the mind to be subdivided into distinctive subpersonalities or parts. These parts might show up for you as thoughts, images, emotions, body sensations, impulses, or outward actions or reactions. There are no bad parts, and they can offer valuable qualities, capacities, and resources that enrich your life.
However, sometimes parts take on extreme roles in the inner system in order to protect the most vulnerable, wounded, exiled parts of us that have taken on burdens and beliefs as a result of difficult or traumatic experiences. Different protector parts use different strategies: managers will seek to pre-empt emotional pain by keeping things in control, while firefighters will react to emotional pain that has been triggered by trying to numb, distract, or otherwise douse emotions that arise in connection to painful memories and reminders.
An important aspect of IFS is that all individuals have a Self—a core, undamaged essence inside that carries qualities such as calm, clarity, compassion, curiosity, connection, courage, creativity, and confidence. This Self offers internal wisdom, guidance, and an inherent ability to heal from within. The goal of IFS therapy is not to eliminate parts, but to release them from extreme roles and restore harmony and balance to the internal system.
Making it More Concrete and Visible
Externalizing in IFS involves representing your parts concretely using a variety of approaches, materials, and techniques such as visual art, mapping, movement, sculpting, psychodrama, music, and writing. Through these processes, the inner world is made visible and tangible in a way that lends greater clarity and perspective or provides the opportunity to interact with a part in new ways. Let’s explore some of the benefits and unique considerations of externalizing.
This IFS approach is very accessible and many will find value in concretizing parts in their system. It is particularly well-suited for trauma, complex trauma, and highly rational people. For instance, sometimes highly protected internal systems—common with trauma or other deep woundings—will need a slower pace with more compassion and care before those parts will begin to trust the process, the therapist, the IFS model, and the client’s own Self.
Externalizing also bridges the many individual differences between visual thinking and verbal thinking. It can augment the IFS process for individuals with aphantasia, a word used to describe those who do not “see” any images in their mind’s eye. For any number of reasons, some individuals might not be ready to “go inside” to do the in-sight approach to IFS. The good news is that it is still possible to build trust, unblend from parts, and facilitate the development of a Self-to-part relationship in these other ways.
Regardless of the individual factors at play, externalizing carries many possibilities for deepening the healing of IFS. It aids both therapist and client and can support the work done both in and outside of a therapy session. Externalizing connects into many aspects of the IFS model and:
Builds trust in your internal system by getting to know parts in a different way
Aids in differentiation and unblending of parts
Facilitates access to Self
Develops and deepens Self to part relationships
Tracks sequences of activated parts around a circumstance or goal
Reveals relational dynamics, polarizations, and alignments among parts
Allows a part to express itself more directly through consciously blending with a part
Provides witnessing by understanding a part of its experience on a deeper level
Supports post-unburdening follow-up and integration
Creative as one of the 8 Cs of Self
Many externalizing methods fall loosely into expressive arts categories of visual art, writing, music, movement, and drama. There are so many rich and creative possibilities within each area that this topic will be covered in three categories beginning with a focus on visual art, mapping, and art therapy approaches. Future explorations will deepen into embodiment, movement, psychodrama, and giving parts a voice through writing, poetry, and music.
Externalizing through art can take many forms including drawing, painting, clay, collage, and photography. A skilled IFS therapist can facilitate and guide the process, even by telehealth. It is beneficial to have basic art supplies and paper at hand, whether or not it is utilized in any given session. Depending on the intervention, your IFS therapist may invite inquiry with your parts as you create or may allow for periods of silence while you listen in. The process is key, so your piece may be unfinished, or you may choose to spend more time to complete it later. Similar to in-sight, where you can choose the amount and depth of detail that is reported out to your therapist, it is also your choice whether to hold up your work to the camera to show your therapist—or to simply describe aspects of it, what it means, or what it represents to you.
Parts mapping can provide a way to connect with parts, reveal relational dynamics among parts, or track sequences of activations. Sandtray can be used to gently invite parts to unblend by allowing the part itself to pick an object that represents itself. Sandtray can also be used to create a 3D parts map, create an entire scene, or share a story that the part wants to express. SoulCollageⓇ, an intuitive form of collage making, is often adapted to support parts work. No matter the choice, these options are adaptable and flexible, and a wide range of art media can be utilized to suit your parts’ preferences. The process is valued over the product, and no art training or skill is necessary to benefit from externalizing techniques. Think of externalizing as a tool that provides alternate ways of connecting to, exploring, and accessing your parts and Self.
Trauma, Neuroscience, and Art Therapy
Current understanding in the areas of trauma, neuroscience, and art therapy provides context behind externalizing through art. In his book, The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk skillfully presents scientific research to articulate the nature of traumatic memory—sometimes encoded as speechless terrors—which can block neurologic pathways in the Broca’s area of speech production in the brain. Van der Kolk further describes the ways trauma reshapes both body and brain and explores innovative treatments, including IFS, that offer new paths to recovery via neuroplasticity.
Connecting into this, art therapy research has shown that visual and creative expression can access implicit memories stored as images, emotions, and sensations. This happens through somatosensory information processing and is augmented by the tactile qualities of the art media. Those tactile qualities impart kinesthetic and sensory input that, according to research by Lusebrink and Hinz, activates these multiple brain areas and functions. Creative expression through art is also more generally understood to bridge both hemispheres of the brain in a way that supports nonverbal processing of implicit and explicit memory, thus allowing individuals to better connect with and explore their emotions.
Art making is both a form of creative embodiment and a bottom-up process that utilizes mechanisms of nonverbal expression. Bottom-up processing describes taking in sensory information and integrating that into meaning, while top-down processing describes the way cognitive information is used to interpret sensory information. The IFS model can be approached as a top-down or bottom-up process with its three main approaches of in-sight, direct access, and externalizing. There is an added dimension of outside in, or inside out, with the externalizing approach. Creative expression can help individuals tell a story or relate an experience that they would otherwise be unable to verbalize. And the IFS model provides a beautiful framework for guiding this work in a way that does not bypass your protectors.
Bringing Art Therapy and IFS Together
Art therapy is an integrative mental health and human services profession that utilizes active art-making, creative process, applied psychological theory, and human experience within a psychotherapeutic relationship. Elinor Ulman, a pioneer in art therapy, stated that the artwork is said to be the meeting ground of the inner and outer world. When combined with IFS, it provides an external, visual perspective that might allow you to better see, hear, experience, or connect to parts in the internal system. Externalizing gives voice to a part simply by listening in for how it wants to be seen, known, mapped, or otherwise represented. The process of engaging parts as they appear strengthens the connection to them and builds trust in the internal system. Externalizing techniques can also support the follow-up and integration of healing done in IFS therapy sessions. As this work unfolds, you are likely to become more attuned to what needs to be expressed.
The field of art therapy also incorporates a follow-up practice that is referred to as processing. It can impart perspective and invites an element of the witnessing that is done in IFS. Once an externalized piece is completed, hold it out in front of you. Notice what you feel as you reposition yourself in relation to the externalized piece, or by moving the artwork closer or farther away.
Where do you find yourself most wanting to sit in relation to it?
Reflect on what thoughts, emotions, or sensations arose as you created it.
How do you feel inside now as you view the finished piece?
What part(s) or aspects of its experience are present in the piece?
Check to see how you feel toward the artwork or any element within it.
Regardless of what part of your internal system has been externalized, notice what new understanding has come to you from creating this piece. Is there something that part wanted you to know about it, or its experience? Note any parts that might arise in addition to the openhearted compassion of Self.
Externalizing through art, mapping, and visual form carries the abundant potential for deepening the healing that is possible with IFS therapy. Allow yourself to connect with your creativity and the many qualities of Self as you open to the many possibilities of getting to know your internal system. No art skill is necessary to do powerful externalizing through art. Listen in, and trust that each part will know how to communicate, even without words.
IFS Experientials - Try it!
Externalizing provides alternate ways of connecting to, exploring, and accessing your parts and Self. The process is valued over the product and no art training or skill is necessary to benefit from this. These options are adaptable, and flexible, and a wide range of art media can be utilized to suit your parts’ preferences.
More in-depth instructions and additional externalizing exercises can be found in the IFS Tools Library.
Who’s Here? Parts Check-In
Goals:
To increase awareness of your internal system.
To gain a snapshot of which parts are present at any given moment.
To aid in unblending from parts.
Develops and deepens Self to part relationships.
Tools:
Paper, markers, or other dry art media of choice
Steps:
Fold a sheet of paper to create 8 divided panels, then unfold and lay flat.
Take a moment to listen inside. Which parts are present at this moment? Who’s here? If it helps, you are invited to relate to thoughts, images, emotions, sensations, and impulses as parts that may be present.
Take 1-2 minutes per panel and represent each part with lines, shapes, colors, objects, and symbols—however, they want to be depicted.
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*Alicia Larsen Dabney is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #119864, Associate Professional Clinical Counselor #8016, Internal Family Systems Level 3 Trained, Registered Provisional Art Therapist #20-261. Supervised by Andrew Pflueger LMFT #86223.
