Ch. 1: We’re all Multiple
Ch. 2: Why Parts Blend
Ch. 3: This Changes Everything
Ch. 4: More on Systems
Ch. 5: Mapping Our Inner Systems

Ch. 1: We’re all Multiple

Because this willpower ethic has become internalized, we learn at an early age to shame and manhandle our unruly parts. We simply wrestle them into submission. One part is recruited by this cultural imperative to become our inner drill sergeant and often becomes that nasty inner critic we love to hate. (9)

Listening to, embracing, and loving parts allows them to heal and transform as much as it does for people. (16)

If we can appreciate and have compassion for our parts, even for the ones we’ve considered to be enemies, we can do the same for people who resemble them. On the other hand, if we hate or disdain our parts, we’ll do the same with anyone who reminds us of them. (16)

If, on the other hand, you believe that the part that seeks drugs is protective and carries the burden of responsibility for keeping this person from severe emotional pain or even suicide, then you would treat the person very differently. (18) #addiction

IFS operates from the radically different assumption that each part—no matter how demonic seeming—has a secret, painful history to share of how it was forced into its role and came to carry burdens it doesn’t like that continue to drive it. (20)

the Self possesses its own wisdom about how to heal internal as well as external relationships. (22)

And for me, these emotions, sensations, thoughts, impulses, and other things are emanations from parts—they are what we call trailheads. (23)

You might be familiar with the onion analogy used in psychotherapy—you peel your layers off and you get to this core and then you heal that and you’re done. Well, in IFS it’s more like a garlic bulb. (25)

Now I want you to look at the parts again and explore how you feel toward each of them. When you’re done with that, think about what this system needs from you. Finally, take a second to focus inside again and just thank these parts for revealing themselves to you and let them know again that this isn’t the last time you’ll be talking to them. (26)

Ch. 2: Why Parts Blend

Protective parts blend because they believe they have to manage situations in your life. They don’t trust your Self to do it. (28)

When we’re in Self, we see the pain that drives our enemies rather than only seeing their protective parts. Your protectors only see the protectors of others. (29)

Thus, finding blended parts and helping them trust that it’s safe to unblend is a crucial part of IFS. (30)

Some people spontaneously feel a vibrating energy running through their body, making their fingers and toes tingle. This is what some people call chi or kundalini or prana, but in IFS we call it Self energy. (32)

The Four Basic Goals of IFS
1. Liberate parts from the roles they’ve been forced into, so they can be who they’re designed to be.
2. Restore trust in the Self and Self-leadership.
3. Reharmonize the inner system.
4.Become more Self-led in your interactions with the world. (33)

parts are typically mistaken for the extreme roles they are in. As a consequence, we just end up fighting, shunning, or disparaging them. (34)

It turns out that parts aren’t afflictions and they aren’t the ego. They’re little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe and to keep each other safe and to keep it together in there. They have full-range personalities: each of them have different desires, different ages, different opinions, different talents, and different resources. (35)

Indeed, most of the syndromes that make up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are simply descriptions of the different clusters of protectors that dominate people after they’ve been traumatized. When you think of those diagnoses that way, you feel a lot less defective and a lot more empowered to help those protectors out of those roles. (38)

In addition, there was a point where I talked directly to a protector, a practice we call direct access. (46)

Ch. 3: This Changes Everything

At first, this was mind-blowing! Parts having parts? But after I calmed down, it made a kind of aesthetic or spiritual sense that we would have parallel or isomorphic (same form) systems at every level. It’s like those Russian stacking dolls—similar systems embedded within bigger systems. Another analogy would be fractals. While it was disconcerting at first, there’s something beautiful about this nested, parallel systems phenomenon for me, although I don’t know how far it goes. I’ve actually worked with subparts of a part and came to find that it had parts too. (49)

Really, it’s the same approach I use when working with a couple. I listen to one, then listen to the other, and in so doing, I make a connection so they both trust me. Then I bring them together, make sure they’re respectful, and have them talk in this different way. (53)

When protectors aren’t ready, they feel like they’ve got to distract you or take you out in some way that makes it more difficult for you to do the exercise. Don’t fight them on it. My advice is to just get to know the resisting ones from this curious place—find out what they’re afraid of and honor their fears. (53)

Ch. 4: More on Systems

Systems thinking focuses on the ways members of a system relate to one another. When you approach symptoms through that lens, you often find that they are manifestations of problems in the structure (the patterns of relationship) of the systems in which the person is embedded (family, neighborhood, work, country, etc.), as well as the system that is embedded within them (that is, their internal family). (58)

Applied to human relations, there is ample evidence that our negative expectations of others have a strong negative impact on their behavior or performance.4 This can easily initiate vicious reinforcing feedback loops in which negative expectations become self-fulfilling prophesies that further reinforce the negative views, and so on. This is one reason why racism is so pernicious. (60)

We need a new approach based on no longer trying to kill the messenger and instead listening to the message—no longer going to war against nature or human nature. (62)

One reinforcing feedback loop that is common in all kinds of systems is called success for the successful (63)

In contrast to reinforcing feedback loops, which result in escalations of a variable, those that restore homeostasis are called stabilizing or balancing feedback loops (63)

If you are dominated by your brain and neglect the rest of your body, you will get sick and your brain will go down with the ship. (65)

The goal is to take your parts as seriously as you take your literal children, if you have children. The good news is that your parts don’t need nearly as much maintenance or nurturance as literal children do—they often just need to know about this connection you’re building, just to be reminded of it. (67)

Ch. 5: Mapping Our Inner Systems

I’ve had clients who, when their exiles took over, couldn’t get out of bed for a week. (70)

So managers are one class of protectors. These parts carry heavy burdens of responsibility for which they are ill-equipped because they are young too. (73)

Other managers don’t want us to feel good about ourselves for fear that we’ll take risks and get hurt. They protect us by tearing us apart. They are the self-hating parts of us who will sabotage anything that might make us feel good. (73)

firefighter parts are activated after an exile has been triggered and desperately (and often impulsively) try to douse the flames of emotion, get us higher than the flames with some substance, or find a way to distract us until the fire burns itself out. (74)

Unlike managers, firefighters love going into the higher realms and losing control (75)

Unfortunately, many spiritualities don’t know what to do with people’s traumas other than to help them bypass them. (75)