I’m a little late to the party, but I just read through and did the exercises of The Self Therapy last week and feeling very excited about how many components of the model “clicked” with me. Reading this post gave me insights into why those components resonated with me, so thank you very much for taking the time to write up this supremely helpful post!
The one aspect of the model that I’ve been having a lot of trouble with, which I view as problematic since the entire model essentially hinges on this practice, is to have an “organic” conversation with different parts. After identifying a part that I want to work with, I immediately intellectualize that part and build a predictive model of what the part may possibly respond to some inquiries that I have in mind.
As a result, I don’t often have the sort of emotional catharsis that I observe in the myriad transcripts of how Jay Earley uses this model with his patients in the book. More often, the process goes like this for me: I identify some part A and try my best to personify it. I know the basic questions I will ask him, and I will think of his/her possible responses. Since part A isn’t an “organic” character that is independent of my thought process, I can’t spontaneously produce the “other side” of the conversation, and hence it feels more like I’m talking to myself than with another person. Thus, I am uncertain whether I will be able to uncover some deep, sub-conscious trauma through this process since I am heavily intellectualizing the process.
For example, the thought process behind trying to address the trailhead of procrastination goes as follows:
Is Procrastination its own part? Maybe so. I’ll give him a character. I had a roommate (“John”) who had a lot of issues with procrastination, so his visual image feels appropriate.
I’ll try talking with John. “Hey John, what are you afraid will happen if you stop procrastinating?”
No response.
Of course, there is no response; John only exists in my imagination! It’s foolish to expect a spontaneous response from a part of myself.
Let’s see. What would John possibly respond to a question like that? Why do I procrastinate?
I think I procrastinate because I am scared of commitments. If I am distracted and explore different topics on LessWrong, I will be able to avoid commitments. Okay, that seems like a reasonable response that John may have.
John: “I am afraid if I don’t protect you, you will commit to a career that you will end up resenting.”
Okay, good. Now I have to learn about the exile that John is protecting.
“Fair enough. I hear your concern. Would it be okay for you to step aside for a few minutes so I can get to know the exile that you are protecting?”
How would John respond? I don’t get any spontaneous reaction to the question, so I’ll think about this. Hopefully he will say yes. Since I want to help myself get better, John being an extension of myself, would also want to help myself get better.
John: “Yes, I’ll step aside.”
I visualize John getting up from his couch and walking away. Now, where would the exile be? Probably under the cushion that he was lying on. I lift up the cushion.
No spontaneous “discovery” of an exile hiding under the cushion.
Who could reasonably be hiding under the protection of procrastination? Maybe I had a childhood trauma where I felt a lot of anxiety over having to commit to a particular choice. Let’s see. My dad had to leave the country for a year when I was six years old, and I had to decide whether I wanted to stay with my mom or my dad. That was probably a traumatic experience. So, the exile is probably my six-year-old self. Okay.
I imagine a six-year-old Peter hiding underneath the cushion.
“Hey, Peter!”
No spontaneous response.
How would a six-year-old wounded child respond to this? Let’s think....
And so on… If anyone who’s been benefitting from IFT, I’d really appreciate a tip for me!
Even without the organic discovery of trauma and experiencing a spontaneous catharsis, it’s been very helpful to try to fit my experience into the IFS framework, but I would love to see if I’m doing anything wrong and if I can implement IFS better as I continue practicing it! Thank you.
After identifying a part that I want to work with, I immediately intellectualize that part and build a predictive model of what the part may possibly respond to some inquiries that I have in mind
First piece of advice: don’t do that. :-) I feel pretty comfortable saying that this approach is guaranteed not to produce any results. Intellectualizing parts will basically only give you the kind of information that you could produce by intellectual analysis, and for intellectual analysis you don’t need IFS in the first place. Even if your guesses are right, they will not produce the kind of emotional activation that’s necessary for change.
A few thoughts on what to do instead...
Is Procrastination its own part? Maybe so. I’ll give him a character. I had a roommate (“John”) who had a lot of issues with procrastination, so his visual image feels appropriate.
It sounds (correct me if I’m wrong) like you are giving the part a visual appearance by thinking of the nature of the problem, and choosing an image which seems suitably symbolic of it; then you try to interact with that image.
In that case, you are picking a mental image, but the image isn’t really “connected” to the part, so the interaction is not going to work. What you want to do is to first get into contact with the part, and then let a visual image emerge on its own. (An important note: parts don’t have to have a visual appearance! I expect that one could do IFS even if one had aphantasia. If you try to get a visual appearance and nothing comes up, don’t force it, just work with what you do have.)
So I would suggest doing something like this:
Think of some concrete situation in which you usually procrastinate. If you have a clear memory of a particular time, let that memory come back to mind. Or you could imagine that you are about to do something that you’ve usually been procrastinating on. Or you could just pick something that you’ve been procrastinating on and try doing it right now, to get that procrastination response.
Either way, what you are going for are the kinds of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations that are normally associated with you procrastinating. Pay particular attention to any sensations in your body. Whatever it is that you are experiencing, try describing it out loud. For example: “when I think of working on my project, I get an unpleasant feeling in my back… it’s a kind of nervous energy. And when I try to focus my thoughts on what I’m supposed to do, I… my attention just keeps kind of sliding off to something else.”
The ellipses in that example are to highlight that there’s no rush. Take your time settling into the sensations. Often, if you start with a coarse description, such as “an unpleasant feeling”, you might get more details if you just keep your attention on it and see whether you could describe it more precisely: ”… it’s a kind of nervous energy”.
You’re not thinking about parts yet. You’re just imagining yourself in a situation and then describing whatever sensations and thoughts are coming up.
If you find yourself describing everything very quickly, you are probably not paying attention to the actual sensations. If you find yourself pausing, looking for the right word, finding a word that’s almost it but having an even better one lurking on the tip of your tongue… then you’re much more likely doing it right.
Sometimes you don’t get bodily sensations, but you might get various thoughts, mental images, or desires. That’s fine too. Describe them in a similar way.
If you find yourself being too impatient to do this properly, working with a friend whose only job is to sit there and listen often helps. You can think of yourself as doing your best to communicate the experience to your friend.
Once you have a good handle on the sensations, you can let your attention rest on them and ask yourself, “if these sensations had a visual appearance, what would it be?”.
Don’t try to actively come up with an answer. Just keep your attention on the sensations, ask yourself the question, and see if any visual image emerges on its own. If you get a sense of something but it’s vague, you can try saying a few words of what you do manage to make out and see if that brings out additional details.
“Ask yourself” here doesn’t mean that you would need to address any external entity, or do anything else special. Rather, just… kind of let your mind wonder about the question, and see if any answer emerges.
The image doesn’t need to look like anything in particular. It doesn’t need to be a human, or even a living being. Though it can be! But it can be a swirling silver vortex, or a wooden duck, or whatever feels right.
If no visual image emerges, don’t sweat it, and don’t try to force one. Just stay with the sensations.
At this point, you can see if you could give this bundle of sensations and (maybe) images a name. Again, don’t think about it too intellectually, just see if there would be anything that fits your experience. If you had a nervous energy in your back, maybe it’s called “nervousness”. If the mental image you got was of a swirling silver vortex in your back, maybe it’s “silver vortex”.
Now you can start doing things like seeing if you could communicate with this part, check how you feel towards it, etc.
When you are asking the part questions, its answers don’t need to actually be any kind of mental speech. For instance, if you ask it what it is trying to do, you might get a vague intuition, a flash of memory, or a mental image. The answer might feel cryptic at first. If so, you can again describe it out loud, and wait to see if more details emerge.
If you think you have a hunch of what it’s about, you can try asking the part whether you’ve understood correctly. Asking verbally is one way, but you can also just kind of… hold up your current understanding against the part, and see whether you get a sense of it resonating.
If the part tells you that you did understand it correctly, you can then use the same approach to ask it whether you’ve understood everything about this, or whether there are still more pieces that you are missing.
Generally avoid the temptation to go into intellectual analysis to figure out what this is about. (You can ask any intellectualizing parts to move aside.) Often there’s an emotional logic which will make sense in retrospect, but which is impossible to figure out on an intellectual level beforehand. If you—say—get a particular memory which you recognize but don’t understand how it’s related to this topic, just stay with the memory, maybe describe it out loud, and see whether more details would emerge.
It’s okay if you don’t figure it out during one session. Let your brain process it.
You might arrive at something like a “classic IFS” situation, where a part has a distinct anthropomorphic appearance and you are literally having a conversation with it. Or your parts might be nothing like this, and be just a bundle of sensations whose “answers” consist of more sensations and memories coming to your mind. Either one is fine.
Throughout the process, the main thing is to work with that which comes naturally, and not try to force anything. (If you do feel a desire to force things into a particular shape, or guide the process to happen in a particular way, that’s a part. See what it’s trying to do and whether it would be willing to move aside.)
That makes a lot of sense. I think I need to focus on working with my “impatience” part before I can truly get into the kind of patient and tolerant Self that you are describing.
I think I might have gotten a bit derailed due to my experience training for memory competitions. I had to come up with 2700+ very specific visual images of characters each corresponding to a pair of playing cards, and so I’ve developed this sometimes-annoying habit of quickly making a tenuous association between any information I process and some figure familiar to me.
Paying careful attention to the relatively-reliable physical sensations that are triggered with particular trailheads and starting from there sounds like a great idea.
I’m a little late to the party, but I just read through and did the exercises of The Self Therapy last week and feeling very excited about how many components of the model “clicked” with me. Reading this post gave me insights into why those components resonated with me, so thank you very much for taking the time to write up this supremely helpful post!
The one aspect of the model that I’ve been having a lot of trouble with, which I view as problematic since the entire model essentially hinges on this practice, is to have an “organic” conversation with different parts. After identifying a part that I want to work with, I immediately intellectualize that part and build a predictive model of what the part may possibly respond to some inquiries that I have in mind.
As a result, I don’t often have the sort of emotional catharsis that I observe in the myriad transcripts of how Jay Earley uses this model with his patients in the book. More often, the process goes like this for me: I identify some part A and try my best to personify it. I know the basic questions I will ask him, and I will think of his/her possible responses. Since part A isn’t an “organic” character that is independent of my thought process, I can’t spontaneously produce the “other side” of the conversation, and hence it feels more like I’m talking to myself than with another person. Thus, I am uncertain whether I will be able to uncover some deep, sub-conscious trauma through this process since I am heavily intellectualizing the process.
For example, the thought process behind trying to address the trailhead of procrastination goes as follows:
Is Procrastination its own part? Maybe so. I’ll give him a character. I had a roommate (“John”) who had a lot of issues with procrastination, so his visual image feels appropriate.
I’ll try talking with John. “Hey John, what are you afraid will happen if you stop procrastinating?”
No response.
Of course, there is no response; John only exists in my imagination! It’s foolish to expect a spontaneous response from a part of myself.
Let’s see. What would John possibly respond to a question like that? Why do I procrastinate?
I think I procrastinate because I am scared of commitments. If I am distracted and explore different topics on LessWrong, I will be able to avoid commitments. Okay, that seems like a reasonable response that John may have.
John: “I am afraid if I don’t protect you, you will commit to a career that you will end up resenting.”
Okay, good. Now I have to learn about the exile that John is protecting.
“Fair enough. I hear your concern. Would it be okay for you to step aside for a few minutes so I can get to know the exile that you are protecting?”
How would John respond? I don’t get any spontaneous reaction to the question, so I’ll think about this. Hopefully he will say yes. Since I want to help myself get better, John being an extension of myself, would also want to help myself get better.
John: “Yes, I’ll step aside.”
I visualize John getting up from his couch and walking away. Now, where would the exile be? Probably under the cushion that he was lying on. I lift up the cushion.
No spontaneous “discovery” of an exile hiding under the cushion.
Who could reasonably be hiding under the protection of procrastination? Maybe I had a childhood trauma where I felt a lot of anxiety over having to commit to a particular choice. Let’s see. My dad had to leave the country for a year when I was six years old, and I had to decide whether I wanted to stay with my mom or my dad. That was probably a traumatic experience. So, the exile is probably my six-year-old self. Okay.
I imagine a six-year-old Peter hiding underneath the cushion.
“Hey, Peter!”
No spontaneous response.
How would a six-year-old wounded child respond to this? Let’s think....
And so on… If anyone who’s been benefitting from IFT, I’d really appreciate a tip for me!
Even without the organic discovery of trauma and experiencing a spontaneous catharsis, it’s been very helpful to try to fit my experience into the IFS framework, but I would love to see if I’m doing anything wrong and if I can implement IFS better as I continue practicing it! Thank you.
Happy to hear that the post was useful to you!
First piece of advice: don’t do that. :-) I feel pretty comfortable saying that this approach is guaranteed not to produce any results. Intellectualizing parts will basically only give you the kind of information that you could produce by intellectual analysis, and for intellectual analysis you don’t need IFS in the first place. Even if your guesses are right, they will not produce the kind of emotional activation that’s necessary for change.
A few thoughts on what to do instead...
It sounds (correct me if I’m wrong) like you are giving the part a visual appearance by thinking of the nature of the problem, and choosing an image which seems suitably symbolic of it; then you try to interact with that image.
In that case, you are picking a mental image, but the image isn’t really “connected” to the part, so the interaction is not going to work. What you want to do is to first get into contact with the part, and then let a visual image emerge on its own. (An important note: parts don’t have to have a visual appearance! I expect that one could do IFS even if one had aphantasia. If you try to get a visual appearance and nothing comes up, don’t force it, just work with what you do have.)
So I would suggest doing something like this:
Think of some concrete situation in which you usually procrastinate. If you have a clear memory of a particular time, let that memory come back to mind. Or you could imagine that you are about to do something that you’ve usually been procrastinating on. Or you could just pick something that you’ve been procrastinating on and try doing it right now, to get that procrastination response.
Either way, what you are going for are the kinds of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations that are normally associated with you procrastinating. Pay particular attention to any sensations in your body. Whatever it is that you are experiencing, try describing it out loud. For example: “when I think of working on my project, I get an unpleasant feeling in my back… it’s a kind of nervous energy. And when I try to focus my thoughts on what I’m supposed to do, I… my attention just keeps kind of sliding off to something else.”
The ellipses in that example are to highlight that there’s no rush. Take your time settling into the sensations. Often, if you start with a coarse description, such as “an unpleasant feeling”, you might get more details if you just keep your attention on it and see whether you could describe it more precisely: ”… it’s a kind of nervous energy”.
You’re not thinking about parts yet. You’re just imagining yourself in a situation and then describing whatever sensations and thoughts are coming up.
If you find yourself describing everything very quickly, you are probably not paying attention to the actual sensations. If you find yourself pausing, looking for the right word, finding a word that’s almost it but having an even better one lurking on the tip of your tongue… then you’re much more likely doing it right.
Sometimes you don’t get bodily sensations, but you might get various thoughts, mental images, or desires. That’s fine too. Describe them in a similar way.
If you find yourself being too impatient to do this properly, working with a friend whose only job is to sit there and listen often helps. You can think of yourself as doing your best to communicate the experience to your friend.
Once you have a good handle on the sensations, you can let your attention rest on them and ask yourself, “if these sensations had a visual appearance, what would it be?”.
Don’t try to actively come up with an answer. Just keep your attention on the sensations, ask yourself the question, and see if any visual image emerges on its own. If you get a sense of something but it’s vague, you can try saying a few words of what you do manage to make out and see if that brings out additional details.
“Ask yourself” here doesn’t mean that you would need to address any external entity, or do anything else special. Rather, just… kind of let your mind wonder about the question, and see if any answer emerges.
The image doesn’t need to look like anything in particular. It doesn’t need to be a human, or even a living being. Though it can be! But it can be a swirling silver vortex, or a wooden duck, or whatever feels right.
If no visual image emerges, don’t sweat it, and don’t try to force one. Just stay with the sensations.
At this point, you can see if you could give this bundle of sensations and (maybe) images a name. Again, don’t think about it too intellectually, just see if there would be anything that fits your experience. If you had a nervous energy in your back, maybe it’s called “nervousness”. If the mental image you got was of a swirling silver vortex in your back, maybe it’s “silver vortex”.
Now you can start doing things like seeing if you could communicate with this part, check how you feel towards it, etc.
When you are asking the part questions, its answers don’t need to actually be any kind of mental speech. For instance, if you ask it what it is trying to do, you might get a vague intuition, a flash of memory, or a mental image. The answer might feel cryptic at first. If so, you can again describe it out loud, and wait to see if more details emerge.
If you think you have a hunch of what it’s about, you can try asking the part whether you’ve understood correctly. Asking verbally is one way, but you can also just kind of… hold up your current understanding against the part, and see whether you get a sense of it resonating.
If the part tells you that you did understand it correctly, you can then use the same approach to ask it whether you’ve understood everything about this, or whether there are still more pieces that you are missing.
Generally avoid the temptation to go into intellectual analysis to figure out what this is about. (You can ask any intellectualizing parts to move aside.) Often there’s an emotional logic which will make sense in retrospect, but which is impossible to figure out on an intellectual level beforehand. If you—say—get a particular memory which you recognize but don’t understand how it’s related to this topic, just stay with the memory, maybe describe it out loud, and see whether more details would emerge.
It’s okay if you don’t figure it out during one session. Let your brain process it.
You might arrive at something like a “classic IFS” situation, where a part has a distinct anthropomorphic appearance and you are literally having a conversation with it. Or your parts might be nothing like this, and be just a bundle of sensations whose “answers” consist of more sensations and memories coming to your mind. Either one is fine.
Throughout the process, the main thing is to work with that which comes naturally, and not try to force anything. (If you do feel a desire to force things into a particular shape, or guide the process to happen in a particular way, that’s a part. See what it’s trying to do and whether it would be willing to move aside.)
Thank you so much for your detailed response!
That makes a lot of sense. I think I need to focus on working with my “impatience” part before I can truly get into the kind of patient and tolerant Self that you are describing.
I think I might have gotten a bit derailed due to my experience training for memory competitions. I had to come up with 2700+ very specific visual images of characters each corresponding to a pair of playing cards, and so I’ve developed this sometimes-annoying habit of quickly making a tenuous association between any information I process and some figure familiar to me.
Paying careful attention to the relatively-reliable physical sensations that are triggered with particular trailheads and starting from there sounds like a great idea.
Thanks again!