Fostering Therapeutic Change in IFS

Jay Earley, PhD

Do your clients sometimes unburden an exile but not achieve the change in behavior or feelings that they want? Become a therapeutic change detective! Learn what is needed for change and how to get there. Learn what interferes with change and how to work that through. Understand how to follow up with exiles and protectors, so your clients develop full healing relationships with them. 

IFS is an extremely powerful form of psychotherapy. It has a protocol for effecting therapeutic change that involves healing underlying pain and trauma and changing behavior. I have been studying how change happens in IFS and what to do when change doesn’t happen as quickly or fully as you might expect.

Open-ended vs. Goal-oriented IFS Sessions

When your clients engage in an IFS session, they have two choices—goal-oriented or open-ended. A goal-oriented IFS session is one in which they have a specific kind of therapeutic change that they are aiming for. For example, a client is unhappy at being such a pleaser and not taking care of their own needs. Or a client might be feeling a lot of anxiety when they meet new people and would like to feel more confident.

An open-ended IFS session is one in which your client is just interested in getting to know their parts and seeing how they are related to each other. Or they want to heal a traumatized exile, and they aren't focused on what that will lead to.

Both are valid ways of doing IFS. Goal-oriented sessions are useful when you are looking to make a specific change in your feelings or behavior. Because IFS is so powerful in doing depth healing of trauma and pain, we sometimes expect change to happen more quickly and easily than is possible. We do a session starting with a protector whose behavior we want to change.

For example, Jan has a People-Pleasing protector that crops up when she is speaking to her boss or her husband. Instead, she would like to be more assertive. She accesses and gets to know the People-Pleaser. She gets its permission to work with the exile it is protecting. Jan goes through the IFS steps to heal this exile, and then re-accesses the Pleaser. It says that it is ready to let go of its pleasing role. However, the next time there was an issue with her boss, the pleaser still took over and Jan didn’t assert herself, even though she had a really good idea she wanted to present to her boss.

Why did this happen? Why didn’t Jan get the therapeutic change she wanted? What additional IFS work does Jan need to do to become assertive? And the same for other people with other issues. 

The Change Situation and Goal Capacity

There is probably an upcoming situation (or situations) in your life where your client is hoping to see certain changes in behavior or feelings. Let’s call that the Change Situation. This situation can be very specific, such as, “I have to make a presentation at work this week, and they may be critical of it.” Or it could be more general, such as, “When my husband criticizes me.” Or even, “When anyone criticizes me.” The desired change might be to let go of pleasing people in that situation and instead assert yourself. This would involve change in a protector.

When a protector is involved, it is helpful to identify the Goal Capacity—the capacity your client would like to have operating in the Change Situation. In the above example, the goal capacity would be Assertiveness.

Basic Child Needs

There are six basic needs that every child has.

  • Safety – Kept safe from harm or abuse
  • Belonging – Cared for and loved
  • Self-esteem - Seen and valued
  • Stability – Provided consistency
  • Autonomy – Support for personal power
  • Understanding - Support for understanding yourself and navigating the world 

If one of these needs is not fully met in childhood, an exile will be left with that need. In an IFS session, this need will need to be met by the Self for full healing. Therefore, one possibility why therapeutic change may not happen is that, in the session where your client unburdened the exile, one or more of its Child Needs were not met.

Why Change May Not Happen

There are many other reasons why therapeutic may not happen as much as your client is hoping for. You may have been leading from a Self-like part. There may be other exiles that get triggered in the Change Situation. The exile they have healed may have had an additional memory or burden that didn’t get healed. The relationship between the exile and the Self wasn’t complete and healing. They didn’t work with the right protector for the change they want. Protectors can’t change their behavior easily even if they intend to. They may encounter backlash or sabotage from a protector that is threatened by the change. Changes in their life may have made it difficult for the goal capacity part to handle the Change Situation.

After Unburdening

I recommend a series of steps to be taken after unburdening an exile, which will help with therapeutic change.

  • See if the protector is ready to let go of its role.
  • If it isn’t, ask what it is afraid would happen if it did. This will point to what needs to happen next.
  • If it is, find the goal capacity part, for example, the Assertive Part.
  • If helpful, have a dialogue between it and the protector, for example, the Pleaser.
  • Imagine the Change Situation happening with the goal capacity part.

After the session:

  • Follow up with the exile and the protector to deepen your healing relationship with them.
  • Track what happens in the real-life Change Situation.
  • If the therapeutic change didn’t happen as much as you hoped, become a detective to figure out what is needed.
  • In your next IFS session, figure out which part was there in the Change Situation, and ask it what happened. Its answer will help you know what is needed next.