Ever felt so stressed you didn’t know what to do next? Try talking to your 'parts'

Have you ever felt so anxious in a tough situation that you didn’t know what to do next? That’s how Seth Kopald felt during his divorce. He worried that he’d lose connection with his kids.

“How much time will I have with them?” he recalls thinking. Would they be OK, he wondered. One night, as he was driving home, he struggled to catch his breath as panic took over. He pulled over to the side of the road, recognizing he needed help.

His therapist turned him onto an approach he’d never heard of called Internal Family Systems, or IFS, and recommended a book to get him started, written by its founder Richard Schwartz. “It was life-changing,” Kopald says.

At the center of IFS — sometimes called “parts work” — is the idea that each of us has multiple parts, kind of like sub-personalities. Getting to know them and treating them with compassion may help us manage our lives and our stress better, Schwartz writes in his book No Bad Parts.

Schwartz came up with the idea for IFS more than 40 years ago when he was a family therapist treating adolescents with bulimia. His patients told him about different parts of themselves that were interfering with their treatment, like “the critic” who would make them feel worthless and alone.

As the scientist in him mulled this over, he also looked inward. “I noticed them in myself. Oh my God, I’ve got them too,” he recalls.

The premise of the IFS model is that our minds are not one-dimensional. “We’re all multiple,” Schwartz says. We all have multiple perspectives within — for example, people often identify an inner critic, worrier, or striver. And some parts tend to dominate our lives, while others are more hidden. IFS teaches a process to embrace all your parts, bring them into balance and find a sense of wholeness.

Parts work has exploded in popularity recently — with a growing number of books, apps and social media accounts highlighting the system. There are now more than 6,000 IFS-certified therapists and practitioners. 

IFS is used by therapists working on a range of issues, from couples therapy, to coping with the death of a loved one, or other traumas.

Some therapists say the popularity has gotten ahead of the evidence base and are calling for more research. There are several small studies showing IFS can benefit people with specific problems, including symptoms of PTSD and stress; the pain, discomfort and depression from living with rheumatoid arthritis; and depression. And more studies are underway.

For Seth Kopald, parts work was key to taming his anxiety, as he began to recognize that it stemmed from fears of feeling unloved in childhood.

With IFS, he could now acknowledge the hurt child within, and begin to unburden from the pain and shame.

“There’s a big difference between, ‘I am the anxiety and fear versus I am here with the fear, I’m here with the anxiety,’” he says. And in that realization his natural state of “confidence, courage and compassion” resurfaced. “It's almost like I have a new operating system now,” Kopald says.

So, if you’re dealing with stress — around relationships, tragedy, or any life challenge — you may want to learn more about parts work. Here are highlights of how the IFS process works.

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1. Quiet your mind and look within

One way to begin to get to know your parts is to listen.

Sit still, as if you were about to meditate and notice any bodily sensations that arise. Do you feel a sore neck, a tight chest, sick to your stomach? Do you see scenes or images from the past? What comes up first are parts that may need your attention. Focus on one sensation or image — tune in and ask it what it wants you to know.

When Seth Kopald tried this, he sensed a nervousness throughout his body and he saw images from old movies in his mind — scenes of bad divorces, couples fighting over kids. He was getting in touch with a worrier part that was dominating his life at the time.

2. Start a dialogue with your parts

In IFS, the rule is that none of our parts are bad. Each of them can give us useful information.

Kopald started to realize that his worry and anxiety were what IFS calls “protector” parts, which help us get through tough situations. “They were trying to make me do something — to figure out a solution to help my kids,” he says.

But these parts were causing so much anxiety, he was stuck.

The worrier was telling him “do something.” Then there was a critic questioning what he'd done to contribute to the bad situation. And another part was jumping in to try to numb him from the pain.

These multiple parts were teaming up, a pattern that can happen to many of us in moments of crisis. It’s like noisy instruments playing out of tune, Kopald says, citing a metaphor frequently used in IFS.

If you find yourself overwhelmed by a cacophony, try to start a dialogue with your parts: What do you want me to know? What do you want to show me?

And the more you learn to work with your parts, you can start to become the leader, or the conductor, Kopald says, bringing up each instrument in harmony.

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3. Take some space

IFS teaches you to “separate” from the noise of these competing parts. Kopald recalls the moment he started to get some perspective on his anxiety about his kids, by seeing it as just one part.

“When it really hit me that the anxiety I'd been feeling was one aspect of me, but not all of me, I felt this calm come over me,” he says.

This was the beginning of a breakthrough for him.

If you want to try this, ask your noisy part: “Can you give me some space so we can talk?” For Kopald, instead of feeling like he was that scared, anxious kid, he got to the place where he felt he was sitting with that kid, helping to comfort him.

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4. Get in touch with pain from childhood

IFS teaches that we all have exile parts, which hold onto hurtful memories, many from childhood. Since it’s easier to bury negative feelings than deal with them, these exiles — as the name suggests — can stay locked deep within.

IFS founder Dick Schwartz says the exile parts can get triggered in times of difficulty. But he says, “these are often our most sensitive and loving parts.”

As a kid, Schwartz struggled in school, which frustrated his father — a prominent physician and researcher. “So he piled on a lot of shame,” Schwartz says. He could recall his father saying things like, “Dicky, you’re good for nothing,” and the hurt was buried deep within.

He allowed himself to relive those experiences from childhood. “I could actually enter that scene and be with” the hurt boy, Schwartz says. In doing so he could feel the mistrust and fear and shame lifting, what IFS calls “an unburdening.”

For Schwartz this opened up a playful inner child. “That was lacking in my life back before I actually unburdened that part,” he says.

This part can be tricky to do alone. Exiles will sometimes take you back to painful scenes, and show you traumatic memories. Kopald says if you feel the pain of an exile arise, you can say: “I know you’re there – I’m not pushing you away.” You can ask it to share its story, and if this gets too intense, you may want to contact an IFS therapist.

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Maria Fabrizio for NPR

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5. Take a U-turn

Kopald says his life is much better now. He has a loving relationship with his children and he’s remarried. Now an IFS-certified practitioner, he's written a book on IFS, Self-Led: Living a Connected Life With Yourself and With Others. But, he still has moments when life is very stressful or throws too much at him. When this happens, he uses a technique called a U-Turn. The U-turn is an exercise to gain perspective.

If you find yourself engaging in negative self-talk — or you are feeling like everything is falling apart, take a moment to notice what’s happening inside, look inward. Kopald says he’ll ask himself: “Wait a minute, who’s taking me over right now?”

In other words, you observe which part inside you is triggering your anxiety, fear or negativity. And then you can tell it, “Hey, I got it. Can you just trust me to be here?” Kopald says.

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Maria Fabrizio for NPR

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6. Uncover the light within

When you’re no longer dominated by the cacophony of parts, then your true self can emerge, according to IFS.

In IFS, Self is the parent or leader of your system, offering love and protection to all your parts.

Seth says you can think of Self as the sun, which is often covered by clouds, i.e., your parts. Remember the sun is always in its full power, even on a cloudy day. So Kopald says, like clouds parting, we can “remove the things that block our light.”

For Kopald, this has made a big difference. “I tend to live more in the light of myself," he says. And he feels more clarity, compassion, creativity and calm.

Stress Less editors are Carmel Wroth and Jane Greenhalgh
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