parts therapy that's NOT ifs

[Blueberry]

This is a long possibly rather disjointed post. It started as a response to dollyvee on the cptsd vs. osdd "Parts" thread, but maybe got a bit off-topic so I'm moving it over here to its own thread.

I'll preface this by saying that my impression is IFS is the go-to method atm in the English-speaking world but parts therapy pre-dates it. So other methods may well exist, just not talked about so much.

blueberry - ... As an aside, I wonder about your response to NARM. Not in a bad way, but I think it's curious as NARM is very much about giving agency, or building a sense of agency within the self. I take it from your comment about helpful how tos, which I also find difficult at times, though am sure I have also been guilty of as well, that agency, and letting your parts do their thing, is important to you. This is actually one of the things that drew me to NARM. Not a sense that the therapist "knows better," but uncovering and encouraging that part(s) of ourselves that do know what is best for us.

I'd be interested to hear more about this:

Tho where I live the ideas behind Parts comes from some other place other than the therapists/psychologists/science behind IFS.

Something I read today reminded me of this thread and our conversation here.

There is Parts work from before IFS and other than Narm. Gestalt therapy is something mentioned a lot where I live, whether for those traumatised or not. It includes exercises like switching chairs to speak from the pov of different people for instance. The first time I did it, it was a dialog between my M and the counsellor. I was speaking as M from her 'chair', of course M wasn't there IRL and whether I was responding true to M or not is irrelevant. It was a tool to help me out of my fear and anxiety of M. (I can even remember laughing a bit when my counsellor asked 'M' if it would be okay for me to react the way she does in anger - throwing things around - and  'M' grumbled through me "So long as she doesn't break my dishes". Counsellor: "so it's OK if Ms. BB brings her own??". Totally took the wind out of 'M' 's sails    I could feel that within myself at the time). I do well with these types of exercises. Not everybody does. I've noticed that before when people have done 'stand-in' for me in feeling parts/Parts. 

I also do well with therapists who mix different types of therapy into what they offer and/or allow me to do so. The therapists who first introduced me to cptsd and Child Parts would all have worked with Gestalt therapy before. Then there's PITT imagination therapy, which doesn't really exist in the English-speaking world because never translated, but that can involve Parts too, and these same therapists were all trained in that. I used those methods in group settings in a way where I latched on because it felt right and I could grasp it in a non-intellectual way, absorb it, do it. I do less well when I have the feeling I have to learn some new method, possibly fairly cognitively as well, which is the way I feel about IFS presented in a video or book. Something else to try and understand, sigh. Try and figure out which of my Inner Parts might be fire-fighters, or not. That's all just ways of labelling to try and help us with what's going on in our minds and hearts and bodies anyway. Some of it theories, no matter how well-founded and researched they may seem. What if some of my stuff doesn't seem to fit? I'm wrong? I need to work harder to understand and fit myself into their categories? No thanks. That doesn't mean I think IFS is a bad treatment method or useless or ... It's just: let me stick to what I have, to what I know. Same goes for NARM.('you' is not directed at you personally, dollyvee.) NARM hardly even exists in the country I live in, so why chase it? otoh there are methods here hardly in the English-speaking world which do me good, in fact some of them deemed /used to be deemed 'not appropriate' for cptsd but these therapists (the therapists who first introduced me to cptsd and Child Parts) taught me trauma-informed ways of doing them and I'm fine, e.g. with a particular type of breathwork, which helps integrate what you've been working on and flush out the metaphorical dust bunnies and wood-shavings you no longer need.

Idk if I've added anything substantial I didn't have in the cptsd vs. osdd thread. Oh well.

[NarcKiddo]

https://2024.sci-hub.se/6329/609856ee0d8bd84ed35f06481a9d2b5a/healing-the-fragmented-selves-of-trauma-survivors-2017.pdf

I was looking for a precis of Janina Fisher's Book "Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors" and may actually have found the entire text! I listened to it recently and it struck a chord with me. You may find it interesting. I don't at all feel comfortable with the rigid structure of IFS and I found this book much more approachable. It is aimed at both clients and therapists and is not a method so much as an approach.

[Armee]

Dunno if this is helpful Blueberry but I've often felt the same as you about the IFS categories. I think maybe partially at least because well for me it seems that each "part" also has its own parts. So it makes no sense to label say my 6 year old part who denies everything as a protector because that part also has other "IFS" type parts....exile, protector, firefighter etc. I use IFS with my therapist but don't really use that type of conceptualization. It's just more about getting parts to share with me and for me to form connections with trauma parts. Of which, there are many..

[Blueberry]

I think maybe partially at least because well for me it seems that each "part" also has its own parts. 

tbh I don't think I've noticed anything like my Parts having Parts of their own. Maybe that's a difference between DID and OSDD?

It's just more about getting parts to share with me and for me to form connections with trauma parts.

Yes, I think that's the most important thing with Parts work - well at least mine too and obviously yours. Might be different for other people. So maybe also less about the exact method of getting there? IFS is one theory, but there are others that might work better for other people? Just musing.

I had intensive contact with Inner Child Parts who contained strong 'positive' characteristics. They didn't seem to be holding trauma. Earlier attempts of mine (or therapists' attempts with me) to 'contact' Inner Children had brought up far too much - like inner children out of control. It was just too early. Later after intensive work with these ICs - often just letting them be, allowing myself to observe them in my mind, but also following their actions with my own adult body, like dancing around in a circle and then lying down to rest (because physically so exhausted) while my two partners in this small group work sat there watching me, holding a safe space.

And if anybody asks: What? Where? How do I find this type of therapy? I don't think it exists anymore. It developed through the work of 2 and then 3 private therapists who ran retreats in my country. They never wrote a book about it or taught it to other practitioners (though I think their work and experience did 'rub off' on fellow therapists who were loosely connected to them professionally). I remember one of the 3 was invited to speak at a trauma therapy conference and she asked various of her clients like me if we could write about various impressions of her work so she could let us speak from practice at the conference. I can't remember her exact questions but I was delighted to be able to help in this way. And then her participation in the conference was cut out at short notice, so we weren't actually ever heard. It was a shame, but also maybe 'good' to know good methods and good works in any field go under the radar if somebody doesn't have the time, energy, money and/or connections to promote them. The other speaker at the conference was (is still) well-known here for her trauma work and for her methods. But for whatever reason her work is only just being translated for the English-speaking world but whether anything will come out of it, whether practitioners will want to use it and develop it further - there I have no idea.

People with IFS background might say that those out of control seeming ICs were firefighters or whatever and their role was xyz but I suppose my point is: I don't need to learn another classification system and differing theories since I've experienced a different one multiple times in intensive group therapy and moreover one that makes sense to me. Possibly also  one that went far, far deeper since body work came into too. Body work in a re-parenting nurturing kind of way. Plus other.

Those 2 original private therapists emphasised how much children learn with and through their bodies, they meant in a positive way for the reparenting, nurturing work, but they knew quite well how many of us had learnt a lot of bad stuff through our bodies too, and even if that meant 'only' spending years in Freeze in addition to ... That connection just occured to me while writing. During the actual retreats on inner child work they wouldn't have spelled out that duality because they were providing a safe space for us to heal. For anybody reading, the message might be - be open to spaces and places of healing that you might come across even if they're not the ones everybody 'knows' or the accredited ones - so long as you can feel and sense that it's a good place. Reminder just as much to myself atm for continuing what I know to be helpful even if psych doc doesn't understand.

[Desert Flower]

Hi again Blueberry,

I just wanted to tell you a little bit about my 'parts therapy' that was not IFS. I've actually felt a little bit like you, where I thought IFS was a little bothersome with the firefighter-parts and all that. I've not had IFS but I did read the book.

So the therapy I had is called 'schema-therapy'. In my opinion, it is a lot like working with parts, even if they're not called exactly that. The 'parts' are pre-scripted but in very rough strokes. So it seems to me, any part would fit in somehow. They are actually called 'modi'. They are sides of ourselves, that consist of thoughts, feelings/emotions and behaviours that become active when they are triggered. There are child modi (such as the vulnerable/sad/lonely child, the impulsive child, the angry child etc.), disfunctional coping modi (such as protectors, attention seekers, control freaks etc.), disfunctional parent modi (they are much like the inner critic, demanding and punishing), and functional adult modi. We can learn to recognise them and then f.i. give the sad child what it needs: recognition, love, security etc. so the child will be satisfied and stop acting up, and we can move on to what the functional adult would do. It has worked pretty well for me.

Well I hope that's helpful. If not, please disregard.

Take care dear Blueberry, and everyone.

 

[wooboyattachmenttrauma]

Thanks for bringing this up. Structural dissociation theory is a parts therapy that's not IFS. It's more sort of like, if we are in parts it's because of trauma, and there are a fixed set of parts, not like infinite ones with their own histories etc. Someone above recommended Janina Fisher's book and I highly recommend that, and her flashcards for CPTSD!