69 [Healing Series] Internal Family Systems
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/69
Haley Radke: This show is listener supported.
You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee.
Today we are going to learn about a type of therapy called the Internal Family Systems Model. I know it's a mouthful, but it's so helpful for adoptees, so let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Marta [formerly Drachenberg]. Welcome, Marta. So, Marta is a fellow adoptee. She's also a licensed mental health counselor who is trained in Internal Family Systems, a model she believes to be especially powerful in helping adoptees learn to love and welcome all their internal parts.
So today you are here to teach us what Internal Family Systems means. But first I'm going to ask you if you would just briefly share with us a little bit of your story.
Marta Isabella Sierra: Sure. I was adopted at two weeks old from Bogota, Columbia. I grew up in Connecticut, middle white class suburbia. I reunited with my birth mom just over a year ago through a private investigator.
So it's been a big year and I don’t know what else to say about that. Of course, a long story, I could say a lot more, but those feel relevant.
Haley Radke: Okay, thank you. And so, do you want to just tell us your decade of age? I'm just curious because you said it's just been a year ago.
Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes, I'm 31.
Haley Radke: Okay. Wow. How long did it take for the private investigator to find her?
Marta Isabella Sierra: So I did all the DNA testing first, which is people's general first line of defense these days. It's a long shot, though, for internationally adopted people. The DNA testing and everything came back reaping nothing. So I hired a private investigator on a Friday afternoon and he found her Sunday morning.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Wow. Okay. That is quite the story and maybe we'll hear more of it someday, but I like to give people just an orientation of how you're coming to this work with adoptees. And I know you work with other groups as well.
But why don't you start out and just explain to us, I’ve never even heard of this Internal Family Systems. What is that?
Marta Isabella Sierra: So Internal Family Systems was created by Dick Schwartz. He discovered it really organically. The basic concepts are that there are multiplicities inside of us and actually anciently, historically, this was always our way of thinking about ourselves. We lost our way somewhere along the way and have become kind of mono-minded. Meaning that we think all of our actions and thoughts and emotions and everything that we do is a reflection of who we are in this really singular way.
So we have to become really black and white and decide all of these things, instead of honoring that we're all walking contradictions and we have so many different parts of ourselves that feel so many contradictory things and irrational things, and that all of that is really human and really welcome.
And so we talk a lot about parts. Of course, parts of self may be an easier way to think about it. That's a question I get pretty early on from clients. What is a part? And it's varied, people's experience of their parts. It can be an emotion, it could be a feeling, it can be a sensory feeling, a thought stream.
Some people have really strong visuals of their parts. Some people really do experience them mostly in the body. But we have a multitude of parts. That's also a question I get early on. How many parts do I have? When people are starting to get to know their parts. And it's endless. And all I can say is that I've been doing this work for about six years now and I just met a new part in my therapy session this week.
So we have a multitude of parts and that's okay.
Haley Radke: I've heard some therapists, even on this Healing Series before, talk about, oh, maybe you're going to talk to your younger self or your childhood self. Is that an expression of something you're talking about?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes. That is an expression and a lot of people have talked about that. It's really just opening that up, that's the entire lens, that's the entire language that we have all these parts.
Yes, certainly we have younger parts. And a lot of our parts are certainly created in childhood, but it can be even more open than that. Like, I have a part of me that gets angry at this. I have a part of me that judges this. I have a part of me that feels afraid when…. You could just fill that in over and over in so many different ways.
And a big mantra in the IFS world is “All parts are welcome.” That’s the work. How do we welcome all of our parts in a world where our parts are very often not being welcomed externally? How do we do that work internally to welcome our parts?
The cultural view, especially in America, is that we can shame our parts into being different, right? Whatever change we're talking about. But an easy one to go to is of course the diet industry. If we have a part that wants to eat, then we should try to control, shame, hate, disconnect from that part of ourselves, instead of what if that part of us needs the most love, the most compassion, the most TLC out of all of the parts.
And so how do we turn towards the parts of us that we hate or feel ashamed about or struggle with and open our hearts to them.
Haley Radke: Before you go too far down that, I just want one more clarification question for you. What is the difference between saying we have different parts versus we have different personalities? We don't call it this anymore, multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder. Can you make a distinction of that for us as well?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Sure. That is also an early concern sometimes from clients. What does this mean that I have all these parts? Does it mean that I have? Yes, exactly.
Clinicians say DID but most people still say multiple personality disorder. DID is really very extreme, it's when someone's system has had such an extreme reaction or been through such an extreme trauma that their parts have become essentially independent. So that's the extreme. But we all have parts.
Yes. And we all have, if you want to say it, multiple personalities. That's fine too. We all have multiplicities. And there is a stigma about that, and that's part of how we've gotten away from welcoming all our parts is that we have created this stigma about having multiplicities.
Haley Radke: But the difference is that in this level that would be considered disordered they're independent.
Marta Isabella Sierra: Correct. They're acting on their own, essentially, versus being in connection with them. But that's its own spectrum of being present with your parts, and that actually moves me perfectly into the next piece, which is the other really hugely different thing about IFS from other models of therapy is that we believe that everyone has a healing force inside of them.
IFS calls that self-energy. I don't always use that term with clients. I usually let clients define that on their own. My personal definition is pure non-judgmental love. But I have clients that define it as divine light. I have clients that define it as authentic self. Really, that we all have this innate ability to do our own healing.
And some people may have lived their whole lives never learning how to access that energy. And so it's a tool to access it. So we have the eight C’s in IFS of self-energy which are Calm, Creativity, Compassion, Curiosity, Courage, Clarity, Connectedness, and Confidence. But really, I always go back to that non-judgmental love piece, first and foremost.
And so the idea, the goal of IFS therapy is to get the parts of yourself in touch with that self-energy, in connection with it. How do we, again, I would say in my layman's terms, how do we open our hearts to the parts of us that are struggling, that are stuck in time, that are in pain, and help them do some healing?
And that we are most aptly equipped to do that ourselves. So the role of the therapist becomes helping you build relationship with your parts, helping you open your heart to the parts of yourself that you're struggling with the most. I'm not doing the work, I'm just helping you figure out how to open your heart and figure out how to help you when you get stuck and when there are other things in the way, essentially, between you and your parts.
Haley Radke: So you said that you really think this is powerful in helping adoptees, and why specifically would it be so great for working with adoptees?
Marta Isabella Sierra: So IFS is an experiential therapy, and what that means is that it's not a talking therapy. Most models of therapy would go under the genre of talk therapy but IFS is an experiential therapy.
And so one thing that means is that it's difficult for me to describe and give an example of, but I'm going to try. So I typically use the analogy of a guided meditation. That's not quite what it is. It's just my best analogy. 90% of my clients work with their eyes closed. That's not mandatory. But it's essentially an attunement process that I lead you through.
Clients more familiar with IFS need less guidance, right? The more familiar they are with their own system, with how they work and how this work shows up for them, which is different again for every person. I can't say that enough, that everyone experiences their parts differently.
But essentially through that work, I guide people through how to do that healing, and it involves a lot of internal ritual, which we call unburdening. Unburdening the pain and the beliefs and the wounds that have been being carried around by these parts that they're really overworked and trapped and they're doing their best. They need our help.
Haley Radke: And something we talk about a lot with adoptees is adoption as an infant or a very young child is preverbal trauma. This would be, because it's not talk therapy, this sounds like it would be powerful in that respect.
Marta Isabella Sierra: Exactly. Typically how I run my sessions is about 10 minutes of talking and then going and doing the internal work, and then I typically bring people out about 10 minutes from the end of the hour so we can do a bit more verbal processing.
But the trigger or the trailhead or whatever someone's coming in with might be like, I got in a fight with my husband this week and this is what I felt. And just slow that down. Okay, where did you notice that in your body? I might ask something like that. And then we go into that process and it would shock you how much that kind of surface content leads us right to where we need to go, which is typically parts that need our help and those can be preverbal parts.
So I started with an IFS therapist in 2012 and that work was very powerful and I still viscerally remember everything about this session where I met my infant part who was in a complete state of terror, crying, wouldn't even look at me for a little while, but eventually I got her to look at me and I held her in my arms and sobbed. And it was so powerful to comfort her myself. And yes, I had a witness in the room, but I don't know how much time went by. It's this other world sometimes when you're doing this work and it feels timeless.
It felt like I was with her for 10 hours, but of course it happened within the context of the therapy hour. But I got to say to her in that first session, and I say to her all the time, “I'm not going anywhere.” “I will not leave you.” And our traumatized parts as adoptees need to hear that more than anything in the world, and other people can offer it to us, but it probably isn't true.
People die. People leave. Things change. People move. People have other people in their lives. We're never fully sure and we can't ever fully be sure that other people won't leave. But we get to support our parts in this way, and this is so specific to adoption trauma. I get to say to my little parts, “I'm not going anywhere” and I get to mean it.
And I get to know that I will always show up for them and I get to give them that safety that they're not going to get from anybody else.
Haley Radke: That's pretty amazing. I have chills. Goosebumps. Wow. What a moment. So you have that moment comforting yourself as an infant. That powerful thing, is that what led you to decide to become a specialist in IFS, an IFS therapist?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes. I signed up for Level 1 training, really to keep doing my own work because it was so powerful and it was changing my life so quickly. But the first day of my Level 1, I knew in my bones, in my gut, this isn't just about my work, this is about my future, this is everything.
The lens of IFS feels so aligned with how I already saw the world. It felt also very aligned with my graduate school training which was in expressive therapies and dance movement therapy. It felt really aligned with the somatic work that I had already been grounded in and it just already felt like my language.
Some people that are doing trainings have been working for years in the field and they have a lot of unlearning to do, and I started my training right out of graduate school and really dove right into this world. And I believe it's very powerful.
Haley Radke: So you also work with people who have disordered eating. That was your primary focus for a while, is that right?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Correct.
Haley Radke: And what are some of the things that you've worked with that population for a while, and what are some of those things that translate into the adoptee world? Is there anything? Is that a fair comparison?
Marta Isabella Sierra: I don't know about comparison. I will say that I work with eating disorders because I had an eating disorder.
I prefer the term active recovery, so I would say I'm in active recovery. And I believe now firmly that was a tertiary expression of my adoption trauma. I think that my adoption trauma set me up to develop an eating disorder. Like so many of us struggle with eating disorders, addictions, suicidality, all the things that you've already talked about in a multitude on your show.
And so just as a result of that, I've always had some percentage of my caseload that is adoptees. And so I've been going deeper and deeper into that work. But I do believe that our perfectionism, our really deep craving for worthiness can sometimes, of course, express itself in an eating disorder and our need for control.
And if eating disorders are about anything, they're certainly about control, being in control or being out of control. But there's a big theme there about control that I think makes sense, that an adopted person might be more susceptible to an eating disorder.
Haley Radke: And you mentioned that after your experience comforting your infant self that you felt some big changes right away. I think that's the wording that you used. Can you just talk a little bit about that? What changed for you?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Just my way of relating to myself. I just listened to the Healing Series episode earlier today, the most recent one. And I loved the way that I think it was Pam was talking about how do we speak to ourselves?
How do we speak to ourselves with kindness? And that's very aligned with IFS, with opening our hearts to these parts of ourselves. Everybody has critical parts, shaming parts that come in in moments of vulnerability and say that we're doing it wrong, that we should have reacted differently. And how do we say, Oh, hi?
How are we welcoming to those parts? Instead of, Oh, you're here again. Go away, or, I don't need this right now. Or, again, all of that kind of kicking our own butts, like shaming ourselves into change-energy. How do we shift towards, Oh, hi. Even just a hello. If you can't be kind to your parts that are showing up, just saying hi. There's some Buddhist themes in there, too, of just welcoming what is, but that shifts very quickly. That’s the first shift I invite clients to make is just to notice and say hello to their parts.
Oh, that's a part of me. There's a part of me that shows up in this situation. There's a part of me. Oh, that's a part. Once you start noticing, it's like we stay in training. It's like popcorn and you start noticing your parts, other people's parts. It just becomes your lens of how you see things.
And the first step is just saying, hello. Hi. Okay. You're a part of me. I'm okay with that. You're a part of me, or I'm trying to be okay with that you're a part of me.
And the other piece of “all parts are welcome” is that all of our parts have positive intention for us, even if we can't see it. Even parts that do really destructive, dangerous things, there is a positive intention in there.
It's trusting that there is some positive intention that even the shamers and the criticizers up through self-harm and suicidal parts have positive intention for us. And so when we say, shut up, I don't like you, go away. I don't wanna think this way right now. When we push them aside, we don't get to learn why are you here? Why are you doing this? What are you afraid would happen if you didn't do this right now? And we don't get to the healing.
Haley Radke: So, in order to work in this way, do you need to go see an IFS therapist? It sounds like there's a lot of guiding even in that first 10 minutes of the appointment, you said, to find where you're going in that hour.
And it also sounded to me like that's the kind of work that you wouldn't want to do on your own. I'm picturing you holding yourself as an infant. That is an incredibly vulnerable position. And you're opening up a traumatic wound, and so you don't want to do that stuff by yourself. Am I correct in saying that?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Absolutely correct. And the longer you do it, the more you can do on your own. And the goal is that the hour that you spend, or two hours a week even, in therapy becomes just this touchstone, and that you're really learning, again, how to build this relationship with your parts on your own and support them on your own and move through triggers and all of those things.
But yes, absolutely I think being with someone who has been trained in this is crucial because what I haven't talked about is our protective system, because I could spend so long talking about that, but it links to what I was just saying about honoring that our parts have positive intention for us.
So most of our parts are trying to protect us in some way or another. There's kind of two classifications of those. I won't go into it here, but essentially one is proactive and one is reactive. Our protectors will jump in, especially in the internal work. So if I'm moving towards a wound with a client, I trust that their protectors will show up. Their protectors will show up, and the work will only go as safe as the system says.
I don't say how deep we go or how fast, the client's parts say how deep we go, how fast, and because of that I have never had a client come back and feel overexposed, even through some very deep trauma work because I'm not saying if it's safe or not. The client's system is saying if it's safe or not.
Haley Radke: So are there any exercises that are safe to think about this, practice on our own in some way?
I guess I gave that example earlier of saying some kind things to your younger self if you're in a moment of fear or triggering or something. Is there anything like that or are we specifically saying this all needs to start in an IFS therapist’s office?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Again, I think the starting point is what I was talking about, which is just saying hello. Just noticing your parts is a huge, huge, huge piece of work that can be months long of starting to notice your parts and just say hello.
If you can say something kinder or something more loving, that's great but it's not necessary. It's enough to say hello. I think everyone has an experience of being in a room or talking to someone and feeling invisible. And how painful that is.
Some of our parts that have been neglected for years, for maybe our entire lives, the power of just saying hello to them, of acknowledging that they exist and they are a part of us, and that we care a little bit, even just we care that they exist can be hugely powerful. And that's something that everybody can do starting whenever they would like. Because the goal again is that we are the primary caretaker of our parts and that's the goal to move towards.
And that the therapist, again, is just a facilitator in that. What can be dangerous for adoptees, I think, in a traditional therapeutic relationship is that there's often a reparenting or a mimicking, right? I will be this love and compassionate mother maybe that you didn't experience, and that can feel really healing.
But that's one hour a week, and then all of the other hours of the week if I become your safe base, then you're dysregulated the whole rest of the time. That's a lot of hours of the week to be dysregulated and have this one hour of comfort a week. So yes, it's still a therapeutic relationship and of course we still develop attachment and bonds with our clients that are important, but I'm only being that self-energy in the room if the client has access to none of it at all.
Ideally, I'm in a witness role, mostly witnessing and guiding and keeping my own heart wide open, attuned to what's happening for the client.
Haley Radke: Okay. That sounds really interesting. I'm curious, how does somebody find an IFS therapist?
Marta Isabella Sierra: The website will be in the show notes. There's an IFS website and you can look for an IFS therapist on there.
Not all of us are on there. I'm actually not even on there because I've moved around a lot in the past few years and have been in and out of private practice. I have a small practice right now. So even to reach out to the ones that you find on there, they may know other IFS therapists in their area that they can refer you to.
It's a difficult choice. I know you talk on the show a lot about finding an adoption competent therapist. I could not agree more. And I, myself, am in this difficult position often. Am I going to find somebody who specializes in adoption or is it more important to me to have an IFS person? Because the IFS therapist specialized in adoption is definitely an emerging subgroup of us. I am not the only one.
Haley Radke: Marta, I was just gonna say, are you the only one?
Marta Isabella Sierra: I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one. And it's important to me to continue to educate my community of IFS therapists so that they're more attuned. But that piece that I was saying about the work goes only as deep and as fast as the system wants.
Any skilled IFS therapist is attuned to that, and I think there's this piece where, again, it's really about your parts and you and you validating your parts’ experience. So yes, do we still need safety and compassion and empathy from a provider? Of course, but I'm the one saying to my parts, I know that was really hard or I know that was traumatic or I know that left a deep impact on you.
I trust any skilled IFS therapist to work with adoption even without specific training, though, of course, that's ideal.
Haley Radke: I was going to say, because so much of it is yourself doing your own kind of work with you present as a therapist, it's like they're learning from you as well, right?
So it's not like traditional therapy where they're not supposed to give you advice but, you know, you're having a conversation and they may steer you in a different direction if they don't realize that adoption is a trauma.
Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes. And we emphasize so strongly in training space, so strongly, that the most important thing when providers are learning this model is to be in their own IFS therapy, to be doing their own work.
We learn it by doing our own work. Half of training, if not more, is them doing their own work in a safe space and learning this really by doing it. And so part of the training, too, is us being in touch with our parts, noticing them.
I will speak for parts in session, but it's very clear. I will say a part of me just felt this. I don't know if that's mine or that's yours or, does that resonate? It might be my part just reacting. So we use modeling in that way. We use transparency in that way, even up through a rift or something that can go awry.
I've had repairs with past IFS therapists that have been extremely powerful. When I come back the next week and say, this didn't feel good to me, and the therapist says, I'm so sorry, I definitely had a part come in that wanted to rescue you or wanted to caretake you, or whatever the thing was, and then we get to do this repair around it, which also shows the power of this in relationships, and there's so much safety in that.
And I'll give you another example of what you were just saying, which is I recently started with a new IFS therapist. A big fear that I have is that my therapist will align with my adoptive parents. I think that's a fear that a lot of us carry when starting with someone new.
Is it going to be safe for me to unpack these really complicated feelings that I have about my adoptive parents? And he got it within the first session. I was describing this sensation in my body and he reflected back to me: It sounds like she's really dangerous to you. And just this wave of calm went over my whole body.
Okay, I don't have to worry. He doesn't have any parts that are aligning with them. I'm safe here and I can say the really difficult stuff and I can be honest about what's happening inside of me.
Haley Radke: I could tell there could be this pressure to pretend otherwise. And you can't do the work if you're pretending. Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes. Right. Exactly.
Haley Radke: Okay. Wow. Thanks Marta. That was really in depth and I think I got a really good picture of what IFS is and can do. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you really feel is important to tell adoptees in particular?
Marta Isabella Sierra: I'm gonna think about that for one moment.
I think that you can do it. That's from a cheerleader part of me. You can do this, you can do this work. You can reparent yourself in a way that you weren't parented and you are capable of doing your own healing.
You have this force inside of you that's capable of facilitating the healing. You may need a little help learning how to do that, but you are capable and all of your parts are positively intentioned and beautiful and welcome.
Haley Radke: Oh, that gave me a nice feeling. Thank you, thank you. I think that was really helpful. I think that people who this kind of speaks to, I'm sure there's gonna be a few that this really speaks to, can go check out the website. As you said, it's going to be in the show notes to find an IFS therapist, but how can they connect with you?
Marta Isabella Sierra: Those links will be there as well. My personal email as well as my professional website. And I'm available for therapeutic work and consultation. Also, if there's any therapists that don't specialize, I do that work a little bit, as well, educating other therapists. I'm available for that. And the other thing I would just say about looking for an IFS therapist, there's a bookstore on there.
And if you want to start your reading about IFS, if you're curious about this, my strongest recommendation is to start with You Are The One You've Been Waiting For by Richard Schwartz, the creator of IFS. It's technically about couples work, but it was my first IFS book and it's what I start all my clients on because I think it's a really great mix of layman's and clinical terms and examples. I just think it's a really nice starter roadmap and whether you're in or out of relationship, I think it's really useful.
Haley Radke: Okay. That sounds like a great resource to check out. And just even if you're wanting to dip your toe in and you're not quite sure if this might be right for you.
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks so much Marta. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks for teaching us about Internal Family Systems.
I wanted to let you know what's happening for the next few episodes of Adoptees On. It's almost like a little mini-series. So today Marta talked to us about IFS therapy.
Next week I have an adoptee coming on who is married to an adoptee. So we're talking about their relationship and the special connection here is that she already does IFS therapy and her husband does as well.
So we talk a little bit about how that has impacted their relationship and the things that they've learned through IFS. That's a really cool connection.
And then after that, I've invited Marta back and we talk about romantic relationships through the lens of IFS. But also just romantic relationships as adoptees. The things that we struggle with and things that we can work on with our partners.
So that's what's coming up in the next couple weeks for the podcast. And I also just wanted to let you know that I have a monthly newsletter that you can sign up for to stay connected with me and for news about the show. Adopteeson.com/newsletter has the details for that.
And the very last thing for today. Would you consider partnering with me financially to help cover the production costs of the show? It is such an honor to be able to do this work for you, and I'm so thankful for all of you who are already partnered with me and supporting the show monthly or with one-time gifts.
You are making it possible for me to carry on this work with you. So if that is something that you have been thinking about, oh yeah, I should sign up for Haley's Patreon. I'd love to join the Secret Facebook group, or I want access to the extra unedited versions of the show.
If that's something that you've been on the fence for, I'd invite you to consider signing up today. Adopteeson.com/partner has the details for monthly support. And if you're able to give a one-time gift, adopteeson.com, right in the homepage, has a little spot for one-time donation. Both of those things help sustain the show, and I'm so grateful for your support.
Thank you so much, and thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
