Kids and Parts Work: The Internal Family System

As a parent trying to do the best you can for your children, there is a jungle of advise, experts and books out there telling you what to do, what not to do and how to parent your children. Parenting is something for which we all have an instinct, but due to our own childhood pain, trauma, and the cultural burdens of our societies, we disconnect from that inherent wisdom in many ways, and thereby from ourselves and our children. Therefore, a lot of what we need to learn as parents is not about our children, but about ourselves and what the internal family system therapy method calls our burdened parts.

The Internal Family System (IFS) is a type of therapy that is non-pathologic, respectful, and can be deeply healing. It is a human view of our minds and inner workings that helps us understand ourselves and our children at a much deeper level, which in itself fosters healing, connection, compassion, and love. The reason the Internal Family System human view is so helpful  to know for parents is that it fits beautifully with what we know today about mental health, healing, child development, attachment, and the nervous system. This is why simply understanding ourselves and our children through the Internal Family System lens can change a lot inside of ourselves and in relationship to our children. Let’s dive deeper into how the Internal Family System works at a basic level.

1. We all have parts. The mind has often been described as many layered, with some layers being conscious, others unconscious, and some being more in charge than others. In the IFS perspective, we see the mind as naturally made up of multiple parts, and the different aspects of our mind are called Parts simply because this is a natural part of the language of most people when they describe their inner experience.

Parts are a normal aspect of the human experience; we do not have just one thought, one idea in life, or one way we want to do things. We are conflicted and messy, and we have feelings that don’t always make sense to us and reactions that we feel ashamed and angry about. This is because we react differently depending on what parts are present or activated at that moment. This is as true for our children as it is for us, and this is why our children can react very differently from one moment to the next.

Here is an example of different parts reacting differently to the same situation: “A part of me just wants the kids to sit down by the dinner table, eat the food I prepared, tell me about their day, and have a good time. But another part of me knows that when I feel like that, my children don’t have much wiggle room to be unhappy, to not like the food, to have a bad day, or to not want to talk to me right now.” Knowing about this inner family of parts we all have and responding appropriately will calm our children and our inner children (i.e. parts) and make connection possible even in difficult situations and conversations.

2. Parts take on burdens. As you might have noticed, even though our parts are trying to help, they are not always very helpful at all. Quite often they are actually the opposite of helpful, so learning about them and how to recognize the presence or attitudes of certain parts can help you communicate with them better. When the help of our parts is not very helpful at all, it is because they have taken on burdens from the past, and therefore taken on the reactions, feelings, and beliefs those burdens bring forth. This means that sometimes the reactions of our parts are not congruent with what is happening in the present, but are instead triggered by the present event.

In this way, when we have a part that has been hurt by past experiences, it can hold a belief like, “I am not good enough.” This part can then be triggered by social gatherings with peers, and in those moments we see the world and ourselves through the eyes of this part. Or consider a part that has been hurt by the anger of her mother in childhood. When another part gets triggered and overwhelmed in relationship to her own children, it does not know what else to do to get the control back than what it learned in the past. “Part of me swore that I would never be like my mother. But another part just gets so angry with my children, sometimes and my mothers voice flies right out of my mouth.
Another part then shames me about it.”

Or a part could long for the real and vulnerable connection that is possible with her romantic partner, but as vulnerability was not safe or welcome in childhood, other parts get triggered as soon as there’s the smallest hint of “not safe or welcome.” The part then tries to protect you by shutting down or attacking. All of these reactions and feelings make sense, but they are not congruent with the present. They are reactions and beliefs form the past, and therefore they disrupt the connection that we all long for deep down.

An important part of the IFS view is the distinction between our parts and their burdens. A part holds shame but is not the shame. A part holds anger but is not the anger. A part holds the solution of shutting off, but is not the wall it is creating, and so on. This is why we don’t want to get rid of, ignore, or fight our parts. Instead we want to get curious about them, and (in therapy) help them heal and release their burdened beliefs, thereby creating more felt safety and choice in reacting from a more grounded and present space.

3. Trauma is the cause of burdens. When parts are in their natural and free state, they do not carry burdens. We all have parts in these states that help us be in flow, feel connected, be joyful, playful, creative, assertive, vulnerable, and strong from within. But when trauma occurs, parts take on burdens to protect us, and by doing so, they very often stay stuck in the time and place of the past where the trauma happened. Other parts seek to protect them by keeping these parts, memories, sensations, and beliefs out of our conscious awareness as much as they can.

Trauma is a word that many of us do not identify as part of our lives. It sounds like war, extreme violence, and accidents — and sometimes it is. But childhood trauma can also be repeatedly not getting our needs met, not being seen for who we are, not being comforted when we need it, being shamed or bullied, being defined by others and told or shown who we can and cannot be, being left alone, or having our boundaries crossed in a myriad of ways.

Something being traumatic is not so much about what happens to us, as much as it is how overwhelming what happens to us is. When we are met, held, and witnessed in difficult situations, the pain does not stay stuck inside of us, but rather we are able to move through it and process it properly. When we are seen with loving eyes, met, believed, and comforted after extreme or difficult events, the pain can move much more easily instead of staying stuck as burdens. What is traumatic to one person therefore is not necessarily traumatic to another, depending both how they are met and held in and after the situation and how they have been met before, and if their outer and inner attachment is secure and strong or not. When we heal our pain from the past, we don’t pass it on to our children.

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services