[Music] foreign [Music] to welcome back cease Sykes she first spoke with us a few months ago and introduced our group to an internal family service or systems sorry uh today she's returning to continue that exploration and to tell us about her new book and it's entitled internal family systems ifs in parentheses therapy for addictions which was just released last month sees it's really terrific to see you I can hardly wait to hear what you have to say um please go ahead thank you and welcome and I might have to look at it thank you Susie and thank you Patrick for inviting me in you know I have to say I'm already just moved a little bit just to sit here with you to look around and see a couple familiar faces and uh uh and of course some new ones and just to set aside prayer I love to set aside prayer um I don't know if I know the set up aside prayer but I need to know the set aside prayer don't we have to set aside every day I I do so I'm very touched by that um also I feel like introducing myself this way to you to say I am a grateful not current but a former member of Al-Anon I went to 12-step for eight or nine or ten years very regularly had a beautiful sponsor I stayed in touch with for 30 years and um I needed it um needed it bad um and so it's a super accident that I became a psychotherapist just the fact that everyone in my family was filled with addictive processes everywhere I looked at my extended family has nothing to do with the fact that I became a psychotherapist in my profession um that's of course sarcasm uh edits maybe not finest uh so I come to this um I come to this meeting I come to this work I come to discuss what my thoughts and the ifs model and the book with you with great humility it's taken me you know my life in a way to continue to to form my own thoughts sort you know heal my own heart around what I think will help me and others when we love someone and they are suffering and hurting themselves and this central question has really been the issue of my life so uh there's the issue of how do I love myself when I'm hurting myself and I'll discuss that too uh but um I suspect that for everyone here you have had your own Journey around healing uh your own with your own relationship with substances or other practices and I suspect you might know one or two people and have loved one or two or ten people who also have suffered in certain ways and so in a sense are holding both your own journey and then your journey with the people that you know and love as they do or do not pursue healing and Recovery so what what I'm um here to discuss today is uh the internal family systems model and how I've applied you have some ideas about how to apply that model to working with people who are impacted by addictive processes um you know I mostly teach other therapists uh but we therapists um and again have our own Journeys in different ways and so I always invite every therapist to think about this so when I begin out and I'll say it to you guys too I begin most of my workshops and trainings by saying what happens to you inside when I say the word addict you know and I just invite uh even in this moment if you're up for it just to notice the reaction in your own system um and maybe some recoil some like by the way I don't use that word word professionally I say it to trigger us because it's powerful and because it it attaches to the stigma that's out there around that and so guess what that stigma's in us and around us so when I'm working with therapists I want therapists to sort of feel into their own reactions which is often based on their own story and experiences and I invite all of us here in this space who are have chosen to pursue a healing process you know for yourselves to just notice you know what goes on for you around them so and this is what I think the internal family systems model this is what I want how I want to use the internal family systems model when I'm working with clients and when I'm training other therapists which is I want to help us look at the complexity of these issues and I don't I'm not here to endorse someone who's using I'm not here to encourage it of course but I'm here to build a relationship with the parts of someone engage in this Behavior and you know as well as I do there is more to all of us than what we're doing when or how we're using or how we're using people places and things or how we're using practices and substances so let me show you a little bit about ifs do you guys you can either wave at me or send up a little signal or something because I think the chat is off how many of you guys know something about ifs just if you if it's a yes wave at me okay a decent amount and so let me see do I have more than one screen up yeah I do is there more than one screen sure there is I'm a few any more waves yeah okay well everybody's got you're an iron out on the camera so that's good so all right well I'm going to do some Basics and just tell you the basics and then why I think it's really useful and then I want to hear your comments and your observations okay some of you guys are ifs people beautiful uh okay I'm gonna share the screen uh as I share the screen I'll tell you that this the internal family systems model it's originally developed as a Psychotherapy model here in Chicago by Richard Schwartz and he is trained his PhD is actually in family systems so he was doing a lot of work with family systems which is really about how to work with families so that parents don't polarize and staying in battle with each other over a child the basic core Assumption of family systems meaning if in a traditional hetero family if Mom says a and dad says b what does child do c whatever they want and while doing it they're both neglected by the battle while these two battle and they often scapegoated so the child does so many of us may have been that child and may have been one of those parents um but the idea being that when you go into the system you want to help the parents not polarize not one be sofa and be hard but work together and from that joint place not having to agree on everything but from that joint Place uh welcome the child and make space for the child and their needs if this is going on the child's needs are neglected that basic idea is being translated into the inner world and I want to describe to you uh what that what I mean by saying that all right what the heck what do I want no I want this close that okay open this all right okay all right so uh these are the most boring sides in the world they're filled with mostly words uh just to say um if that bothers you just you know turn off your you know you don't have to watch them um in the model there are a couple basic assumptions and it rip it's really important I'll describe them to you through the work of healing and working with people with addictive processes um it's the idea that everyone has a self that what does that mean it means that everyone has the capacity maybe not in any given moment but the capacity to find a place of Serenity for instance uh to sort of witness ourselves to be calm and observant of our own process um and to have that little inner voice of wisdom it doesn't mean that we're listening to it it doesn't mean that we even want to always listen to it but we I believe that no matter how much trauma someone's been through no matter how long their story is how crazy their family still is how their life is still chaotic I hold within them that they have the essence of the ability to heal inside and the desire to heal inside parts of them aren't ready got it but I believe that the desire to be whole and heal uh is is in every person I mean um the second place is multiplicity which leads to that second idea which is that we are all made up in this model called sub personalities or parts by that we mean that um what you think what you say to yourself when you wake up in the morning what you do um how you get through the day the way that you sue the resource yourself and your vulnerability vulnerable feelings sensitivities pains uh trauma past memories good memories bad memories it's all we think of these as just different aspects or parts of Who You Are and what we the reason we call them identify them separate from one another is because in the model what we do is we learn how to connect to each one that doesn't sound as overwhelming as it is although occasionally of course you can feel overwhelmed but we learned that there's patterns and the ways that we operate when we begin to notice our patterns and how our parts fit into a pattern where there's a lot of healing involved with that and the main thing that's good about what we believe about Parts is that every part has a positive intention even if it's engaged in a negative or not helpful or a very fragile state we know that it's trying to accommodate to something and so we start from how are you trying to help and what are your fears in not helping in this way the third piece of this is that the inner world of a psyche is a system any entity whose Parts relate to one another in a pattern that's a that's a systems definition not an ifs definition what that says is that you and me uh where we we have inner sort of alliances and inner polarities like a part of me wants to do more workshops and a part of me things I have to work less a part of me uh is very worried about my daughter who moved to Brooklyn who's seeing her former husband who I hate just to say a little bit I hate him um no maybe a lot I mean I have a part that hates and another part of me says stay in it say say something I'm another part of me says she's an adult leave it leave it be I hold them both right so this these both of these parts are part of me right am I and underneath all that is my vulnerability my fear my fear for her my fear for what could happen Etc so uh when we work in ifs we work with all different parts of the system but the idea that we can build a relationship with them self is sort of like the sun behind the clouds you know uh how some days you think there is no sun now right now in Chicago there's no sun and it went from 80 to 30 and it snowed today but the sun is that doesn't mean they're weak it's because we can't see the Sun and we cannot feel the sun does not mean it's not there and just because I can't see or feel that wisdom and that inner desire to heal I can't see it in this moment with my client I still know it's there and I always I always know it's there and my invitations to help them begin to receive that and take that in as well um in the addictive system if you will sometimes the waste self shows up is just the desire someone comes in chaotic angry frustrated missing their appointments forgets to pay all the chaos that goes on life is chaotic like do they really have a self really cease I'm not seeing it um I'm not feeling it but where that really shows up is in the desire to behold and behold anybody who shows up at a meeting and anybody who shows up at achievement and anybody who shows up in a psychotherapist's office at least has parts of them that want something different even if other parts of them are you know practically drove away uh and were late because they're sitting in their car and they don't want to come in that's there too no problem but I'm always listening for the for both right not just one I don't they don't someone doesn't have to be I'm all in in order to get better that's not really how we work um also even when people are very high or they're living a very very altered life most days are not really very present they're kind of tranced out with whatever they're into there can be real wisdom in those words and it also means that I may see them after they've drank or used I may see them for their Psychotherapy session I mean if it's too much I won't but I'm I don't this whole thing about you have to go home because you're in your symptom uh I'm I don't tell the Press people to go home when they're when they don't want to talk I don't tell like totally anxious over Rock people to go home because they're a little too nervous today so they're just into their thing so sometimes it doesn't work of course and we have to make some boundaries and we have to change some things but I want to just start with this idea that the person who's struggling and suffering by using substances and practices is really is just another way to cope and I want to look at them psychologically and not so differently from someone else um I think some of our reactions are quite punishing as clinicians so I'm with as a cell I'm always listening as a self-detector I'm listening for the desire to be whole even though parts of them are sabotaging them and getting them in their way I don't have to say too much about this other than that every part has a positive intention by that I mean my part that wants to reach out to my daughter and tell her what to do has a positive intention uh to be helpful to save her from more pain etc etc it has a helpful intention for me doesn't want me to wants me to be the best parent in the best possible mother etc etc and my part is to stay out of it this is her life she has not asked you for any help about this who wants to respect to apologies wants to uh you know respect my own inner World which is just a little disregulated around that at times and doesn't want me to unload my stuff onto her so I kind of need both I need parts of me that help me reach out at times and in new parts of me that help me hold back and be more circumspect at other times we need both I'm not trying to get rid of either part of me I just don't want one part if I go with one part one day and one part the next I'm making everybody crazy myself most of all so by listening to both I can maybe make a decision that feels right for all of my system so multiplicity is normal so all having all these multiple ideas having a polarity inside do it don't do it Reach Out Hold Back work hard indulge yourself all of these polarities are very very stressful they're normal it's normal but it's stressful but here's where ifs I think offers us a lot of clarity I like to chunk things down to the lowest to the simplest common denominator in this model we chunk the entire Human Experience if you will all the aspects of the psyche all of our different operations into three big categories and their names are a little bit easy you know managers parts of us who create stability even in the midst of heavy duty you guys know using uh just practices just being involved craziness gambling whatever pornography we have Parts most of the time the continue in some way to function perhaps not at our best but I don't want to ignore all the ways in which someone's still trying to hang in and live life and do something normal or right at the same time there are other parts are acting out so as a clinician I want the people I'm working with to invite both sides of that person the parts working well as well as I don't want to take an assessment what is your drinking history but it's interesting information it may be information you need to have that will be useful but there's other history involved and not just trauma also the ways in which this person has tried to get better before and the ways in which this person is still functioning well so in ifs we want to look at the managers who do okay as well as the soothers who are struggling as well as what we call the other piece side of the third part of this triangle which is Exiles they're called Exiles because it's the parts that we sort of repress or Exile from our everyday consciousness but to me it is our shared Humanity we all have parts of us it's normal it's healthy it is Humane to be sensitive to be trusting to be carefree I mean how many of us were told you're too trusting you're too sensitive right this is what our message is to to children well no we were not too trusting the wrong people peop adults exploited us or exploited our trust or worked untrustworthy that is not the child's fault to trust being sensitive which means to know what we feel and care how other people feel is the essence of our Humanity so and to feel when other people are hurting to feel our own pain is the essence of what helps us stay in humanity so what happens to those sensitive open-hearted trusting parts of us if someone has neglected us if there are attachment wounds and losses due to divorce due to people leaving because they're imprisoned people leaving and just disappearing to other kinds of trauma and exploitation abuses what happens if those parts end up starting believing certain things about themselves like this must mean I'm bad you know you try to make sense of it the best you can and most of us children make that sense of it by blaming ourselves so we become burdened with negative ideas about Who We Are and this all of us have some of those nobody can escape childhood having been perfectly attuned to doesn't happen in addition to which we can be heard in schools you know people who are in marginalized communities they're people of color lgbtq Community you know anybody who's marginalized English isn't differently first language neurodiversity all of these things you can get hurt in schools you can get hurt in the culture you can get hurt in the justice system uh you can be uh just discriminated against bullied any kinds of difference if you will these are all any kinds I mean any kind of marginalization that we've experienced also makes us more susceptible to getting involved in addictive processes why because they're trying to sue their pain so all right uh this is just a map we wanted to get into the whole thing but the idea being that we it's okay to have parts of us that help us Escape uh firefighters and distractors just have too much to escape from because there's too much underneath it's painful we need managers that stabilize and improve us but sometimes we also become very hard on ourselves I don't know if I've ever worked with anyone in recovery who didn't have critics judgment contemptuous part toward themselves toward the parts of them that acted out we don't say I hate myself we get in ifs we break it down we say okay your critics and your judges hate the parts of you that have been into porn and drinking or food and drinking or drugs and drinking and sex they hate those parts and the Exiles they listen like look at the child listening to two parents fighting there's something wrong with you though there isn't the Exiles inside just start to feel more and more shame as that battle goes by the battle between managers get better get back on track get over yourself firefighters I need a break I need to get out of here this is too much for me and I deserve this that's another part of us firefighters sometimes watch for what we are you know what we've lost in some kind of way they're trying to fill those caps they call them Richard Schwartz he called him fire first he says they put out the fires of Shame and that's what their real intention is and their heroic in the sense that they get a lot of negative feedback from managers and outside the world in the outside world uh what do I want to say I'm going to skip some of this and just to say well I'll go to uh definitions um for me I don't usually use the word Addiction very much I mean I do because we need to know what we're talking about but I think of it as a process not really a state a process that took a while to develop in the person and it's okay for it to take a while to heal so for me it's an addictive process and in a definition to me of an addictive process is a actually a chronic polarity meaning a battle an internalized battle between two teams of extreme Parts critical controlling managers Because by the time we're using every day we also hate each hate ourselves every day and avoidant soothing firefighters who are getting more and more needing to take to take more or do more to escape and it's Escape control uh soothe get on track this polarity goes on and on and when I and they're both trying to keep us from feeling what's underneath old trauma new trauma uh attachment wounds feeling alienated this kind of stuff that if we don't we need help we've always needed help to process it children are supposed to have someone help out in that process and if we don't if I say if no one else is making you safe and protecting you you will find your own protectors you will protect yourself managers protect us in a certain kind of way doing good and also criticizing ourselves in a certain way to try to stand track firefighters protect us by giving us some soothing in a way out they both protect but in sort of opposite ways so for me when I'm the clinician I'm not just working with I use too much I have to work with all that perfectionism all that inner hostility all the contempt that managers have as well as make creating some safe ways to connect to Old pain so I'm working that triangle I'm working all the way around with every person because each part of that person benefits from healing you know every treatment program says and many many are good I'm not trying to say they're not they're good but everyone says we treat the whole person of course of course of course I like ifs because it gives us it says the whole person is complex and there's a lot to look at and I like that we have a way to look at that who I'm sure you've heard of says basically uh addictive addiction and addictive processes are pain medication they're coping with trauma he's done a good job of getting out in a sort of a global message of connecting people who've been very very stuck and very very uh in very very extreme straights with using various kinds of processes and substances and connecting it to very very extreme kinds of trauma and what I want to say is I don't want it to have to be extreme for us to say that to use is still to take care of pain maybe it's this much pain and this this much pain maybe your story has you did sort of a functional family and everybody's sort of okay and of course people are mean sometimes and then there was that divorce later on but there wasn't anything totally chaotic but that doesn't mean that there still isn't some pain and some loss uh so sometimes I say that some people say to me well here's a polarity you know on the one hand we have to look for the trauma and on the other hand we don't know what my clients client story is so I've had clients who've never been asked about their trauma and have a clients say I'm sick of people asking me if I was sexually abused because I feel even worse because I wasn't and I'm St and I'm still out there life is still out there doing stuff right so that's a polarity which is the way to go the thing is to stay curious we don't know there's a doctor in the states some rock he's worked with 25 000 people recovering from opiates he says addiction shouldn't be called addiction it should be called ritualized compulsive Comfort seeking you know and he believes in you using medication to help people he believes in helping people look at their stories from them when they were young as a way to normalize how they ended up using uh PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder he says to be reactive to in to to severe trauma is not a disorder where we all would react and do react to trauma and stress so it's not distorted to react to it we just need more options um I like this definition dependence or commitment to a practice habit or substance to the extent that cessation causes trauma that gives me respect I'm not just going to jump up here if I I always say the therapist I'm gonna take away your cell phone everybody for like an hour and a half you know now what happens to you when I say that um you know I'm gonna take away the your favorite food right now never again you know everyone's like what you know when we go in and tell someone this is you know I'm going to tell you what you have to do to get better I understand that it doesn't look like they know what they're doing and I get that but there is a re if I believe there's a reason why this person is engaged in this Behavior I really am not here to take it away without offering something else instead anything we lie about that's anne-milson I love that one now it can be anything how much should those boots cost these oh I got them on sale um whatever we're lying about it relates to some kind of process we have a part that did it we have a part that does wants to hide it and then we have a part that has some kind of Shame even if we shouldn't or why am I don't even know I have shame there's some shame in there so always looking around a lie takes three all three parts of the system Every Lie the thing that we did the thing that doesn't want it to be parts that don't want it to be seen and whatever shame we had that may have or pain that may have caused us to do it and shame around exposing it all right I think I'm gonna put compulsive then without thinking compulsive I felt like I had to ignoring consequences and I just want to say this is my last slide then I'll pause I know I don't have to show you a scores you guys know you you know how much is going on out there all right this is the shortened triangle blaming flaming out and shame keep it simple and my last thing I'm going to say so when I'm trying to view this when I'm looking trying to talk to therapists about it and talk to the people that I work with about it my whole goal and the book that I wrote the intention is to get out of that polarity between controlling and fighting with the using or fighting with the using fighting with the addiction or fighting with the person with the addiction instead building a relationship with my goal is to build a trusting relationship with my client that doesn't mean I hear I'm here to encourage I'm here to you tell me what's your vision what do you want one party wants this Vision one part one something else all right let's listen to your visions but there's some reason why you're coming coming here let's go let's go back to that so I say to people I'm not here to take what you're doing away from you you're telling me that you want to continue to not use or you're telling me this is my goal I support your goal uh but I don't even I don't have that kind of control anyway so just to be honest but what I am here to do is support you achieving your goals which I can do so I'm not here to change you although you may be able to change different behaviors that you have through our work together um I always say when a client like my woman yesterday her part when she found her uh the part of her that and was able to connect to the woman in her 30s early 40s who drink um I needed to drink we asked about how have you tried I said ask her how she has a sense of how she was trying to help you and her answer was profound she said well she was trying to help me because she was worried about you know about my worries about being a mother I'm worried about was I a good my I didn't know how all my anxiety about being a wife um the shame and the wound around my birth some of what happened in my childhood and I'm not even saying it just half as eloquently as she did I mean but this what I always say is the parts of us that are using have wisdom in them they're creating chaos there's a lot of pain there I'm not questioning that but when we really listen they I say they know what's happening in the rest of the system they know that our manager parts are caretaking every day and totally ignoring our own needs or work over working just to get somebody's approval and all we do is approval seek and that's painful they know their Exiles have never really been tended to when I say to people sometimes you know when you were little someone someone saw a sad look on your face you're supposed to follow you to your room and sit down with you next to you on your bed and look you in the eye and talk to you until the until they found out how sad you were and what was going on for you and I'm like well that never happened to me one time in my life I'm like I know but in ifs we go back to those places where that we can still connect When someone tells me a story like that I say can you see that little one on the bed no when no one came yes we can go back and listen to those parts so it helps us understand developmentally how we were neglected or as lonely or holding shame for many years and then when we finally found something that made us feel better uh it we wanted more of it people say I had when people tell me a story like well I had my first drink and I felt so much better I say who wasn't feeling good before that who wasn't feeling good when I when I started using I have finally turned off my brain what was your brain saying to you before you turned it off right so we're just looking at the different parts and how that all works together there is far more to the parts of us that have been involved in using practices using substances that meets the eye and I think as clinicians I think we can do better to help people to listen to hear the complexity of those stories and um and I think that we can do more to respect the inner knowing of each and every person around how they got here [Music]