Genesis of Internal Family System

Excerpt from Richard Schwartz in “No Bad Parts”

I did an outcome study with bulimic clients and discovered with alarm that they kept binging and purging, not realizing they’d been cured. When I asked them why, they started talking about these different parts of them. And they talked about these parts as if they had a lot of autonomy—as if they could take over and make them do things they didn’t want to do.

 I asked the clients to describe their parts, which they were able to do in great detail. Not only that, but they depicted how these parts interacted with each other and had relationships. Some fought, some formed alliances, and some protected others. Over time, it dawned on me that I was learning about a kind of inner system, not unlike the “external” families I was working with. Hence the name: Internal Family Systems.

Clients would talk about an inner critic who, when they made a mistake, attacked them mercilessly. That attack would trigger a part that felt totally bereft, lonely, empty, and worthless. Experiencing that worthless part was so distressing that almost to the rescue would come the binge that would take clients out of their body and turn them into an unfeeling eating machine. Then the critic would attack them for the binge, which retriggered the worthlessness, and they found themselves caught in these terrible circles for days on end.

I suggested ignoring the critical part or arguing with it. This approach just made things worse, but I didn’t know what else to do than encourage them to fight harder to win their inner battles.

 I opened the door to our next session and my client had a big gash across her face. I collapsed emotionally at that point and spontaneously said, “I give up, I can’t beat you at this,” and the part shifted to and said “I don’t really want to beat you.”

 That was a turning point in the history of this work, because I moved out of that control in place and took on a more curious approach.

 “Why do you do this to her?”

The part proceeded to talk about how it had needed to get my client out of her body when she was being abused and control the rage that would only result in more abuse.

I shifted again and conveyed an appreciation for the heroic role it played in her life. The part broke into tears. Everyone had demonized it and try to get rid of it. This was a first time at it had the chance to tell it’s story.

 I told the part that it made total sense that it had to do that to save the woman’s life in the past, but why did it still have to cut her now? 

It spoke of having to protect other highly vulnerable parts of her and it had to control the rage that was still there.

 
So I started trying to help my clients listen to their troublesome parts rather than fight them, and was astounded to find that their parts all had similar stories to tell of how they had to take on protective roles at some point in the person’s past. 

When I asked these protective parts what they’d rather do if they trusted they didn’t have to protect, they often wanted to do something opposite of the role they were in. Inner critics wanted to become cheerleaders or sage advisors, extreme caretakers wanted to help set boundaries, rageful parts wanted to help with discerning who was safe. It seemed that not only were parts not what they seemed, but also they each had qualities and resources to bring to the client’s life that were not available while they were tied up in the protective roles.