[SPEAKER_00]: You've tried to change, you've done the work, and you still find yourself asking, why do I keep doing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, I want to give you a framework that might maybe finally answer that question, and it's called internal family systems or IFS.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it explains why you react so differently, depending on who you're with, explains why self-compassion feels impossible sometimes, no matter how many times someone tells you to practice it, and why you might keep choosing the same kind of person even when you know better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing's wrong with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might just be missing a map, so stay tuned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Relationships Made Easy Podcast, where I give you the exact steps to create connection, joy and ease, and all your relationships, whether it's with your partner, your family, your friends, or most importantly yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Abby Medkath, psychologist, bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and the bossy Jewish mom you didn't know you needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each week you'll get no nonsense, research back strategies, serve with humor and love, so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start having the relationships you deserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll always leave knowing exactly what to say and do to shift your relationships for the better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the podcast, you know who I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: This topic, IFS, and I want to be very, always transparent upfront, I'm no expert.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't something that I am certified to do or something, some sort of therapy, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've been around it for many years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've definitely done all the reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely use it sometimes to some of my clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of folks in my one-level collective on Substeck were asking about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: just felt like it was time to do an episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I said in the very beginning, you know, I know you've done the work, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is who it's for.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've done the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've read the books.
[SPEAKER_00]: You listen to the podcast, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe even sat across from a therapist or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know your patterns, you can name your attachment style.
[SPEAKER_00]: You understand at least intellectually why you do what you do and yet you still spiral sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When someone maybe pulls away, maybe you still shut down when you need to speak up, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You still find yourself somehow in a relationship that feels like the last one with you know a different face.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at some point, if you're honest, you've probably asked yourself, what is wrong with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, nothing is wrong with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing's wrong with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you might be missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to call it a map.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I said in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a, I have fast internal family systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a therapeutic framework.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was developed by a man named Dr. Richard Schwartz.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's in my tribe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's my guess, which of course, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's quite I think kind of quietly become one of the most important ideas in modern psychology.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to say that and you know I study everything so it's research supported.
[SPEAKER_00]: widely used in trauma treatment and couples work and it really offers something I think that most frameworks don't because not a way to fix yourself but a way to really understand yourself including the parts you've been probably trying to get rid of for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So today I'm going to give you a real introduction to IFS, you know, what it is, where it came from, how it really works.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: The three questions I hear from you, the most, okay, why you react so completely differently depending on who you're with, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why self-compassion feels generally impossible to practice even when you want to and why you keep choosing probably the same kind of person no matter how many times you promise yourself you wouldn't do that again or no matter how many times you think it's
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and like I said, I'm going to be honest, I've used IFS with clients to real effect, but when I was putting this up so together, it really reminded me that I probably should be using it far more than I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I thought I and I think by the end you're going to really understand why.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, where is, what is IFS internal family systems and where did it come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, Richard Schwartz's, Dr. Richard Schwartz, he, he didn't, he says he didn't set out to build a new model.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a trained family system's therapist working with clients who had eating disorders in the early 80s.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he kept eating.
[SPEAKER_00]: running into something his training had and prepared him for.
[SPEAKER_00]: His clients describe their inner world in parts, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd say things like, oh, part of me wants to binge, but another part's hate me, part hates me for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I know I should leave this relationship, but something in me won't let me go, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So at first,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, shorts was treating this like a metaphor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like all of us do is therapists.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was, you know, got bless him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was listening more carefully than a lot of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, the more carefully he listened, the more consistent he realized it became.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that these weren't just figures of speech.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're seem to be sort of distinct internal voices or states.
[SPEAKER_00]: each with its own perspective, each with its own emotional tone, its own agenda, and when he started working with those parts, the way a family therapist works with family members, you know, approaching them with curiosity rather than trying to eliminate them or pathologize them, his clients improved in ways they hadn't before.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the result.
[SPEAKER_00]: is was internal family systems IFS, which is now a widely studied and empirically supported therapeutic model.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been on!
[SPEAKER_00]: SAMHSA's national registry of evidence-based programs and practices for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And SAMHSA is the substance abuse and mental health services administration.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where those of us who believe in research go.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not getting funded by a drug company or something to say something or whatever to say something.
[SPEAKER_00]: their own entity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been on what we call the evidence-based programs list at programs or practices list.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so has research supporting it in a bunch of areas.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's research showing its efficacy and treating trauma, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, relationships out
[SPEAKER_00]: Schwartz has since written extensively on this model, and his book, there's a great book, no bad part, so that's what you're going to hear about, and that's the book I'm going to reference a lot, although some other ones too.
[SPEAKER_00]: It brought that book really brought IFS to a much wider general audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the title is actually the whole thesis, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no bad parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every part of you develop for a reason, and every part is trying to help you even the ones causing the most distress or the most damage, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the central premise is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mind is not a single unified thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of naturally multiple.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, we're not talking, we're not pathologizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't multiple personality disorders, something like that, which isn't really thing like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, it's really about that you contain many parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, that's pathology.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how humans are built.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the goal of IFS isn't to eliminate your difficult parts, or you know, silence your inner critic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to help all of your parts work together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's led by something shorts calls the self with like a capital S, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so what is the self in ISS and ISS?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, the self, again, capital S, that's the core of who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Distinct from all your parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shorts describes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says it's like, he says it's characterized by what he calls the eight seas, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: and connectedness, those eight, all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And my free download for today is related to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's two, it says, how much self-energy are you accessing right now, like using those eight seats?
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, we'll talk about that later, but it's a great free download.
[SPEAKER_00]: If all this is interesting to you, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not a spiritual contact concept, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Although, you know, definitely there's some people who experience it that way, but it's more, I want to say this really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more like your most grounded, clear-headed, open-hearted state.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I said that very well, just that, that was good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The version of you that isn't triggered, isn't defensive, isn't performing for others.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're in what he calls self-energy, again, with like a capital S, that self-energy,
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be with hard things without being overwhelmed by them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can hear criticism without collapsing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can feel sad, but not drown in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be close to someone without losing yourself, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's like you on the best of you on steroids, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most of us don't live from self, that self very often, sadly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and not because it's not there, but because it gets crowded out by our parts, which you're doing what they were designed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're protecting us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So understanding those parts,
[SPEAKER_00]: is really where IFS becomes, I think, genuinely useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, so the free download for this week is I'm calling it the eight seas, self-energy check.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how much self-energy are you accessing right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, then you can, whenever I talk about, there's a lot of research in today's episode, when I talk about the free download, or the therapeutic go-bottles or anything else, you can access all of that below the video if you're watching on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please like and subscribe if you are, and or leave a comment, say hi.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you can get it on the website, you'll find me episodes, go to this episode and all the goodies are there, including a full blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always do a full blog, which is not a transcript, it's a blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want, you don't want to take notes right now, you just want to listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go back later and you don't want to listen again to the whole podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine why with my melodious voice, but you can go back and just read the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if, you know, a lot of times I think people have told me that there's someone like maybe they have a partner who doesn't like to listen to podcasts, but will read a blog or a mom or somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is a great thing that you can send to the people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just send them the blog if they're not a podcast listener.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are your parts and what are they actually doing, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So IFS describes three.
[SPEAKER_00]: categories of parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: He talks about managers, firefighters, and exiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those three managers, firefighters, and exiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always hated that word exile.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, let me explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And each one has a job in each one developed that job for a reason that made sense at some earlier point in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem isn't the parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is when those jobs stop
[SPEAKER_00]: but you know, your parts haven't come in the memos, so they're still operating, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what are manager parts, and why are they running so much of your life, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Managers are your proactive protectors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their job is to keep paying away before it has before it even has a chance to hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do this by controlling, planning, achieving, pleasing, and critiquing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're the parts that keep you functioning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get you out of bed in the morning that make sure you don't say the wrong thing,
[SPEAKER_00]: Managers often show up as a bunch of things though.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I see in my practice is managers will show up as that inner critic, the voice that tells you you're not good enough, not thin enough, not tall enough, not successful enough, not smart enough, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's harsh because it believes that if it keeps you small,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you won't try things that could get you rejected or hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it kind of goes after you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the perfectionist, that part that can't submit work until it's exactly right, that you know, replace the conversations looking for what you did wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sets standards that no human being can consistently meet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it believes that if you're perfect enough, no one can criticize you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your people, please, there's also part of this, the part that monitors other people's moods and adjusts you accordingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It learned early that keeping others happy keeps you safe, so that's why that's there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the controller, my favorite part, what do I call myself in a control enthusiast?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the part that needs to know the plan, have the exit strategy, stay in charge,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your part that it, it believes that if you stay in control, the thing you're afraid of can't happen to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's going on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course you, part of this is also your achiever, the achiever, the part that keeps you busy and productive and proving a worth right through your output, you know, the contingent self worth, it believes your values contingent on what you do, not who you are, I did an entire episode of contingent self worth, I'll link again to that and I did one on controlling, being controlling what to do if you're controlling enthusiast like me, all that, so I'll link to all those in the show notes on the blog, I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't really have to show notes anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and you want to notice that every single one of these is trying to help you, the inner critic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, it's, it means just for the fun of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your people, please, are isn't weak?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's strategic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The achiever isn't just ambitions.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's again, like, protecting something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And shorts describes, has he say, he describes managers as essentially running the system so that the more deeply wounded parts, what he calls the exiles, never have to be felt.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's happening there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the day-to-day management team, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Keeping the operations running smoothly enough that no one has to open the door to the basement, we're all the scary, ugly's live.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and here's the thing about managers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're exhausting to live with.
[SPEAKER_00]: If your inner critic is running your daily life, you're in a constant state of low grade self-attack, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If your people, please, are at the helm.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're chronically scanning your environment for other people's emotional states instead of your own, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So these parts were built for crisis situations, not for a lifetime of daily operation, but unless something changes, okay, they don't stand out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not gonna stand out.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so that's one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two, this is the firefighter parts, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they often act in ways that you later regret.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if managers are proactive, firefighters are reactive, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: When your exile pain, sorry, my nose isn'tching, when exile pain breaks through the manager's defenses, which is gonna happen sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the thing you've been holding back, finally forces its way to the surface, firefighters show up fast and hard to put the fire out and they will do it by any means necessary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Firefighters don't care about consequences.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will burn your house down.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't care what your manager thinks about the calorie count or the morning after regret or the text you shouldn't have said.
[SPEAKER_00]: They care about one thing, stopping the pain right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So firefighter behavior looks like my favorite, you know, drugs and alcohol, binging on food, or really any substance shopping, screens, all, you know, electronics, all that, anything that creates a fast neurochemical shift away from what you were feeling gambling, all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh, explosive rage goes here that the disproportionate blow up that comes out of nowhere, um, scares you and everyone around you and leaves you feeling, um, let's see, ashamed is not always fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dissociation or numbness lives here too, the part of you that just, you know, goes away when things get too hard, you know, you're in the room, but you're not there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, impulsive romantic escalation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also here, that sudden intensity with someone new as a way to feel something different or to feel something at all, that's why you're on those apps all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, going back and forth or just dating compulsively.
[SPEAKER_00]: What else is here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of the blurting, you know, blurting things out, saying something that blows up a situation, you've been like kind of carefully managing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The firefighters sometimes decide the controlled approach isn't working and try something more drastic is basically what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: They aren't reckless because they're bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're reckless because the pain they're responding to feels that bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: The exile material they're trying to contain, it's just so overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_00]: that extreme measures, they feel proportionate believe it or not from that place, from the inside, the binge or the blow up or the shutdown, it's not irrational.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the only available exit from something that feels so intolerable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And firefighters for this reason really in my experience, or I guess even from the research, tend to generate the most shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: The behavior is visible often disruptive and it's really hard to explain afterwards.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know because you come into my office and try to explain to me it doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, boy, is almost always a firefighter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime you've said that, I can't believe I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so ashamed that I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sad I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually firefighter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be clear, understanding this doesn't excuse the behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what we're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps you stop treating yourself like a broken person and start addressing what's actually happening underneath.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and then this third category are the exiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so exiles are the parts of you that got hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: usually early, usually by something that happened in your family of origin, they're not always.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they carry the emotions, the beliefs, the body sensations from those experiences and it's like they're frozen in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still waiting for something to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: When something painful happens to a child and the adults,
[SPEAKER_00]: in that child's world aren't equipped to help them process it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The system does the next best thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seals it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: The exile goes underground into that scary basement.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the managers organize the rest of the personality around making sure that the wound stays hidden and protected.
[SPEAKER_00]: The firefighters stand guard, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: and exiles often carry beliefs like, what do I see the most?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm not enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm unlovable.
[SPEAKER_00]: If people really knew me, they'd leave, or they wouldn't believe me, or they would ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm alone and no one's coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: These aren't beliefs you choose.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're really,
[SPEAKER_00]: Their conclusions, a young underdeveloped nervous system drew from experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: It couldn't fully make sense of.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what makes them so powerful in adult life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exiles don't operate on logic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can cognitively know in your brain, you can know your levelable.
[SPEAKER_00]: While an exile is generating the felt sense that you're fundamentally not levelable, that you're flawed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the two can coexist and often do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you that right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exiles also carry what IFS calls burdens, the specific shame, fear, grief, worthlessness, they've been holding.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the goal in IFS isn't to eliminate those parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to help them unload those burdens so they don't have to keep carrying something that was never theirs to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one more thing we're saying, let me just say this, exiles aren't just painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're also where some of your most alive qualities live.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your capacity for joy, your creativity, deep, deep feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when exiles are heavily locked down, life can really feel, can feel really flat, even when nothing is technically wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you that right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: releasing exile this burden, releasing exile burden doesn't just reduce pain, it often brings back the parts of yourself that felt most real that's what is amazing and that's what I have seen over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, so how does this explain your life, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So nice Abby, five writers, managers, exiles, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understanding managers of firefighters and exiles in the abstract obviously is useful, but where to me, IFS becomes genuinely illuminating is when you apply it to the specific things that confuse you most about yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here are three questions I hear constantly and what IFS has to say about each one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, question one, I hear a lot, you know, why do you react so differently depending on who you're with, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're, I don't know, Joe Shmo says you, your hair looks great and you are like, Oh, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then your mother says your hair looks great and you're like, Oh, my gosh, it hates my hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's always so critical, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or why should you notice in my hair, don't comment on my body or whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We can have a different reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this one trips people up because you can be calm and grounded and again, relatively untriggered with one person and feel like a completely different human being with another, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe you're patient and self-possessed at work and then reactive and shut down with your partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're relaxed with friends and suddenly, young and defensive around your parents, you know, what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in IFS terms, different relationships activate different parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: So some people, through their behavior, their tone, or
[SPEAKER_00]: Or even just their resemblance to someone from your past, they activate your exalt material.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when an exalt gets activated, the system mobilizes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So managers get louder, firefighters go on standby, and the version of you that shows up in that relationship isn't your self with a capital S, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a coalition of protectors trying to manage and activate it hurt and activated wound.
[SPEAKER_00]: This really maps directly onto what, of course, attachment science tells us about how our nervous systems respond to close relationships, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Your attachment system is essentially your brain's monitoring system for relational safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we scanning for cues about what the other person in front of you is about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they available?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they reliable?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they emotionally present?
[SPEAKER_00]: So when someone's behavior,
[SPEAKER_00]: old learning, you know, old understanding, your system doesn't respond to what's actually happening right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It responds to the pattern.
[SPEAKER_00]: It recognizes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we react not act, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We, again, we're acting again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's old.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, let me let me talk about polyvagal theory for just a minute here, but you know, have talked about I've talked about polyvagal theory a lot, you know, developed by Stephen Porge's and because it's another layer here, I think, is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your nervous system runs a constant background process called neuroception, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: where it's detecting, safety, and threat below your conscious level of awareness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a particular tone of voice a look, a feeling, a moment of distance, you know, not responding to a text right away or something can shift your nervous system into a defensive state.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before you're thinking brain has any idea what happened before it has not, your conscious brain is not even there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in, if we were to translate this to IFS language, an exile got activated and a protector took over.
[SPEAKER_00]: See that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So in polyvagal terms, basically, your system moved out of the ventral vagal state of social engagement, you know, we like our ventral vagal state.
[SPEAKER_00]: We like that, that's when we're all like, hey, how you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel good, let's chat, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when we're in our, a self with a capitalist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it shifts it into fight flight of freeze.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, so these aren't separate phenomena.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm going into it because I talk so much about your nervous system here on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's describing the same thing from different angles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why it's evidence-based.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you wonder why you're so different in different relationships, the answer isn't that you're inconsistent or says, I'm something's wrong with you or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that certain people in certain dynamics are activating specific parts of you that have
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of old unresolved business attached to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the person in front of you isn't always who you're reacting to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And probably is rarely who you're reacting to.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is also why reassurance rarely, if ever, solves relational anxiety for more than a short time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I always talk about how reassurance is never the answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I should think never, almost never the answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting reassured works like a drink works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very short term, very short term.
[SPEAKER_00]: reassurance is directed at your thinking mind, but it's an exile operating through the body and the nervous system that's generating the anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why you're going to the conscious, but we have something happening to the subconscious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another way of saying why reassurance doesn't work, the manager
[SPEAKER_00]: seeking reassurance, they get, sure, they get temporary relief, but the exile does not change, which is why you keep having to ask for the reassurance, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You keep having to ask again and again and again, that's why.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's enough on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other question I hear a lot, people have such a hard time practicing self-compassion consistently, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It just feels impossible
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, how many times have you been told to be kind to do yourself, just by me, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: To treat yourself the way you treat a good friend, soften the inner critic, practice self-compassion, and how many times have you sincerely tried and found it doesn't really land that it feels sort of fake or disingenuous or like toxic positivity or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: IFS has an answer for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: right it does that because and I think something that most self compassion frameworks miss I will say that you can't access genuine self compassion.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of manager part is blocking the door to your like self with a capital S, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, you know, you can't talk about self-compassion without talking about Christian Neff, who's research on self-compassion is foundational, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: She was really one of the first ones to operationalize self-compassion, so we could study it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when she talks about self-compassion, which I've talked about before, I'll link to my old episodes on this, but she talks about, she defines it with three components, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, the research on the benefits of self-compassion are extensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think what,
[SPEAKER_00]: What IFS saloon mates are really brings to light is that the internal architecture, I'm going to call it, that makes self compassion feel either natural or impossible, depending on your, you know, your systems configuration, right, that that's where this comes from.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what's actually happening to you when you can't be kind to yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your inner critic, which is again a manager part, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe self-compassion is dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has an unconscious bias thinking theory that something like this, if you stop being hard on yourself, you'll become complacent.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll lower your standards.
[SPEAKER_00]: People will stop taking you seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like you doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: The critic doesn't back down because it's mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doubles down because it's scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's often an exile underneath the critic carrying, oh, the deep, shame, the deep worthlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the critic's actual job is to preemptively attack you before anyone else can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the internal version of I'll say the worst thing about myself first, so it can't be used against me later.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's self-attack as self-defense.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you try to offer yourself compassion, this manager sees as a threat to the entire protection strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's really why affirmation soft and don't work, you know, you say oh, I'm enough and a part of you says no, you're not and that second voice isn't it's not just negativity again, it's a part doing it's job and it will keep doing it until it feels safe enough to stand down I know I'm giving you a moment to absorb that so what
[SPEAKER_00]: instead of trying to override or silence the critic, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It really offers a different approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's why it's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to get curious about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask it what it's afraid, what happened if it stopped?
[SPEAKER_00]: That curiosity coming from, again, the self, the capital self,
[SPEAKER_00]: can and usually will begin to shift your relationship with the manager rather than just fighting it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not trying to defeat your inner critic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to help it trust that it doesn't have to work so hard anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I know, so great.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I have a great therapy to go about it all for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if this is all hitting hard and you're thinking, oh my God, I want to do some work around this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have that, but I'll talk about it later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the third question I said, I think this answer is really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one I hear a lot is, you know, when you keep choosing the same kind of person, you know, you're asking yourself, why don't I keep choosing the same kind of person?
[SPEAKER_00]: If I had a penny for every person who's married, someone who has a substance abuse per hour has been in a relationship with someone with a substance abuse problem over and over and then tells me later, they didn't, they weren't drinking when I met them or it wasn't a problem when I met them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: not a coincidence, not your fault, either.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be clear, but not a coincidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or just, you know, they were so nice when I'm, are they seem so different, but you end up with the same kind of person over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's probably, you know, now that I think about it, probably the question I get asked more than any other, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: because you've been there, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been through a painful relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: You did some therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You did some journaling, though reflecting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're sure you've learned the lesson and then you find yourself in something that feels exactly like before, but with a different face on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: IFS offers, I think, one of the most cogent, coherent, thoughtful, profound explanations.
[SPEAKER_00]: for why this happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really starts with understanding that it isn't your conscious self-led mind doing the choosing, hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: When exiles carry wounds around love, usually things like abandonment, unavailability, conditional acceptance, those exiles become organized
[SPEAKER_00]: poor longing, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: A longing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They want desperately the thing they didn't get.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the system unconsciously, again, this is below your conscious level, it's unconsciously scans for people who feel like they might finally deliver it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why you're with someone substance abuse problem over and over and you come from a family where there was a substance abuse problem with some kind or mental illness or something real close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's enough there familiar enough to feel like I didn't get it from my dad, but I could get it from this guy or this woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously there's a really painful irony here, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The people most likely to feel familiar and compelling often feel that way because they resemble the original, you know, attachment figures who created the wound who created the problem not not because you're not drawn to suffering that's not why because you're nervous system recognizes that emotional template.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like chemistry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you tell me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like magnetism.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying sometimes it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, sometimes it is, but often what it actually is is a match between your exiles, longing, and a person who fits the pattern well enough that the system believes this time might be different.
[SPEAKER_00]: This time might be the one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, of course, consistent with what, when we talk about attachment research, when I've had those episodes before, which I'll link to, this is what those attachment researchers call earned security patterns, where adults with insecure attachment patterns histories tend to,
[SPEAKER_00]: inadvertently subconsciously, we create relational dynamics that mirror their early experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the club.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: The brain is a prediction machine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've said this a hundred times.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks for what it knows.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what it knows includes that relational landscape of your childhood, it includes that, again, which is kind of encoded below your level of conscious reasoning.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your subconscious at work.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is also why generally healthy relationships can feel at least initially kind of boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost boring to someone who has, if you have significant exalt wounds, then it probably does feel a little boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no spark, Abby.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just no spark.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just no, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't feel it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's probably the best person for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: A person who is reliably kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: available, not particularly dramatic, they don't activate that familiar urgency.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no chase.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't recognize it as the thing it's been looking for because it doesn't match the template.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't match the history.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doing the IFS work on this doesn't mean
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be clear that you resign yourself to relationships without, you know, depth or feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means it really means helping the exile understand that what it's been looking for, the repair of that original hurt can't actually come from another person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can only come.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is hard to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can't come from another person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can only come from your own self with a capital S. Your own self relating to that part with the compassion and attention it needed and didn't get.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the exile starts to trust that, the poll towards the familiar, painful pattern
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's wrap this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you about again about the free download and the great therapy to go about it all today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is all sounding like, oh my God, Abby, this is amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do a little work here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to learn more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to wrap up saying this, IFS is not a quick fix, it's a framework, it's again, a map for understanding the internal landscape that you've been navigating without a map, right, without one, and so maps don't solve the territory, but they change what's possible when you're moving through that territory.
[SPEAKER_00]: shorts as model is what it actually asks of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, not self-improvement in the sense of becoming something or not, not again, the suppression of parts of you that you don't like, it asks for my favorite thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It asks for curiosity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It asks you to approach the most difficult
[SPEAKER_00]: shaming, confusing parts of yourself, and ask them what they're trying to do for you, what they've been protecting, and what they need to feel safe enough to stand down, to finally stand down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a different project.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's different than like fixing yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a lot of people, I have to tell you, it's the one that actually works.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really does.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If any of this resonated, you know, whether, you know, the inner critic that will quit or patterns that keep repeating or reactions that make you question who you are, I've put some things together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so this week's free download, as I said, is the eight seas, self-energy check, how much self-energy are you accessing right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that'll really help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my therapy to go bundle, I have these for every episode if you wanna go deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: the therapy to go bundle for this episode includes, there's a, it always includes the free download by the way, so you have to download that twice if you don't want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to get the free download and then, you know, see if it's, if you like it and then you would always come back and get the bundle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a bunch of stuff in here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a parts inventory worksheet to really help you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's at like a, like a bird's eye view of where your parts show up across your whole life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So work,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an exiled beliefs worksheet, which really helps you identify the core beliefs, your exiles are caring and tracing them to their origins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always have journaling prompts because boy, such good work happens with journaling prompts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is for the parts work, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like sentence completions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to explore your different parts, origins and fears, what they need from you, all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, what else is there's a manager and firefighter track pattern tracker.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like a a practical log for noticing when specific parts show up and what activated them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a self energy access script sheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk to there's a lot in this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's basically language and prompts for helping you begin to relate to your parts from a place of that capital
[SPEAKER_00]: blending in with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of that, the therapy to go bundles are $10.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, if you're working with a therapist and want it maybe go down this road, this is great to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're just working on your own, you don't do therapy, whatever, this is meant, again, it's therapy to go, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's meant to help you get deep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my stuff, the reason I do it and don't send you, because you could read.
[SPEAKER_00]: shorts is book you know it's a great book just a lot of times people want me to kind of hand you you know here you can here here it is in an hour instead of reading the whole book and you can do the worksheets and really get some work done you know it's sort of a could be a quicker way to try to get where you try to go but as I said this isn't a quick fix this is something you would practice over time and really do the work but I'm hoping you know it would get you started.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that is it for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, thank you so much, that's and thank you for your great ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so inspired for the, as you can tell, I think usually.
[SPEAKER_00]: by the topics you all bring to me in the questions you bring to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel as always, eternally, eternally grateful to be here with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I love you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: If no one told you today, you know, you are loveable.
[SPEAKER_00]: This could be some great work to get to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe what's been elusive for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hoping to give you yet another tool, another way to sort of get to where you're trying to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have an amazing week and we're going to talk real soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for spending time with me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're loving what you're learning here, come join my one love collective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my private community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be take these conversations even deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get a ton of bonus content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Live Q&As with me, guided visualizations, journaling prompts, scripts, and an incredible community of like-minded people ready to support you as you create more ease and joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: in all your relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all waiting for you at AppieMedKev.com or right on Substack.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next week.