Podcast Transcript

Episode 40: A Deep Dive into Internal Family Systems with Dr. Kim Daniels, PsyD

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley. And you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

Ashley: Have you ever heard people talk about parts work? Have you heard the terms protector, manager, firefighter, exile? Have you ever felt like there are moments when one piece of you wants to do one thing and the other piece of you adamantly wanted to do something else. Does it ever feel like you’re unable to move forward because of the pain of past experiences? If any of this feels congruent with you, then you’re in for a treat today. We’re going to spend the next hour doing a deep dive into Internal Family Systems. Our guest today is Dr. Kim Daniels, a psychologist who specializes in eating disorders in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Daniels is a certified level two trained IFS or Internal Family Systems therapist and a certified intuitive eating counselor with a particular niche in supporting both women and therapists who struggle with eating disorders and disordered eating. Dr. Daniels helps her clients in understanding why they turn to and away from food so that they can approach food with awareness, enjoy eating the food they love, address their emotions without food and feel calm while they’re standing in front of the refrigerator. She is also the host of The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) podcast, which we will definitely link to the show. Dr. Daniel, thank you so much for being here. We’re so excited to connect with you today about your work because we’ve heard so much about IFS and before we dive into all things IFS, we would just love to get to know you a little bit more and maybe hear what led you to the path of working in the therapy world and specifically in eating disorders.

Dr. Daniels: Thank you both so much for having me on. I’m really excited to talk about this. I feel like IFS is something that kind of exploded in the past few years and lots of people are talking about it and wondering what it is. So, I’m thrilled to be able to talk about that and how we use it with eating disorders. So, yeah, so, I mean, just a little bit me, I mean, you already kind of said who I am so that was wonderful. I have been a licensed psychologist for 23 years, which is hard to imagine.

Sam: Wow.

Dr. Daniels: It feels like, wow. I’m actually, like in the process of applying for the PSYPACT license to see people from various states and, like, I have to tell them the day I took the EPPP exam, which, you know, I mean, Sam, you know what I’m talking about with that?

Sam: Yes!

Dr. Daniels: And I’m like I don’t know, it was some day in 2001.

Sam: Right? I know I couldn’t tell you when I took it. It’s so interesting the questions they asked for.

Dr. Daniels: It’s ridiculous. So anyway, it’s been a long time. And I, you know, I wish that there was a really fascinating story behind this. I just kind of always knew I wanted to be a therapist going into my undergrad and which probably tells you something about my history. I think I really was drawn to eating disorders because I remember going to a workshop on eating disorders, like my very first semester in grad school. And I remember the presenter saying, and again, this is in 1995, this is a while ago, but I remember her saying, you know, men go to the gym to get bigger, and women go to the gym to get smaller. And I just thought, oh, what is happening here, right? And so, I feel like I was a feminist from the day I was born, and I have an older brother in a very sort of misogynistic family. And I was the kid that was always screaming like that’s not fair. How come he gets to do that, and I don’t? And so just always sort of looking at, I think I was always fascinated by eating disorders because so much of that, at least back when I grew up in the 80’s was directed at women, diet culture was directed so much at women. I mean, it certainly is directed at everybody now, I get that, but still so much directed at those of us who identify as female, and it just always seemed so wrong. I was always just fascinated by all of the cultural influences of that and wanting to work with people to just get out of it and just not care about it anymore. So, to me, it’s been sort of a, you know, let’s try to, you know, smash the patriarchy, empower people that sort of thing while we’re also just really healing our relationships with food and our body. And IFS to me was sort of the missing piece with just the healing piece of eating disorders. So, I started my training in IFS in 2015. There was a social worker that I was working in a hospital at the time and a social worker who was trained in IFS started working with us and started talking in the language of arts and we all thought she was a little weird. And then, you know, one day she was like Kim just like come to a session, just come to a session with me. And I said, okay, and it was really transformative. So, I was like, where do I sign up?

Sam: You know, I’ve heard so much about IFS and I love this idea that I read on your website that IFS and intuitive eating are like the heartbeat of what you do. And I was hoping you could maybe give an overview of IFS for our audience and how is it different from other therapeutic modalities? I think a lot of people are familiar with like CBT, DBT and they’re probably wondering what’s different and then what are these parts that you talk about?

Dr. Daniels: So, IFS was created by Dr. Richard Swartz, over 30 years ago, and he interestingly, he started, I don’t even want to say dabbling in because it even wasn’t even a thing, but started noticing, it started at the very beginning of developing the model back in the early eighties, working with clients struggling with bulimia.

Ashley: Really?

Dr. Daniels: Yes, yes.

Sam: I did not know that.

Ashley: I did not either. Keep going.

Ashley: Like I learned so much on our own podcast.

Ashley: I do too. (laughter)

Dr. Daniels: Right. Exactly. So, yeah, he was trained in Marriage and Family Therapy and so was very much like back in the eighties, it was all about like systems theory, so very much trained in family systems. And so was working with clients, struggling with bulimia from a very sort of family systems perspective. So, you know, the parents are doing this and when we shift with the parents are doing that changes what the kid is doing and all that kind of stuff and having some success but not totally successful. And so, in preparation for the podcast, I was brushing up on this last night because I feel like I’m talking about somebody else’s child, I don’t want to get it wrong. So, you know, looking back at kind of the books on how this all got started and he was talking about like, you know, I finally got to the point where I had to sort of cross the line where fair family therapists never go like internal, like into someone, sort of, you know, the inters psychic world of someone. And he just started noticing these clients talking about all these different kind of voices that they were hearing. You know, part of me wants to stop purging and part of me feels like I’m terrified to give that up. You know, part of me wants to stop binging, but part of me is like, I can’t, I feel out of control. So, he just started noticing this language apart. And we’ve all, I mean, all of us have said part of me wants this, like in your intro, Ashley, you’re saying that part of me wants this and part of me doesn’t. And so just really started noticing that commonality amongst people and he’s just sort of built this over the years, this whole way of work. I mean, that the fact that we’re multiple, I mean, that’s kind of the basic tenant of IFS is that we don’t just have one personality, we have multiple sub-personalities that’s not new, like he didn’t make that up. But like he, it to my knowledge anyway, has just developed this whole model based on that premise in a way that I don’t know, I don’t know if other people have. Right. So, again, that’s one of the core tenets is that we’re all multiple, we have these stuff and there’s not like that’s not multiple personality disorder or DID. We all like, we would look at that as there’s a continuum, right? And like someone with DID is sort of at the far end of the spectrum, right? Where parts don’t know each other and there’s more sort of, you know, compartmentalizing. But the other core tenant and we’ll talk about kind of what the parts are here in a second, but the other core tenant, which is unique to IFS is that we all also have a self, we have this coarse self and we talk about the self with like a capital “S” and because he started noticing again, he would sort of say, you know, oh, you know, let’s get curious about that part and people would say, yeah, that’s, I don’t think that’s a part though. I think that’s me. And so, it’s like, again, he was really wonderful at just learning from his clients. And just noticing that it seemed like we all had this core self that all had very similar qualities and all conveniently started with the letter “C”. So, when we talk about the eight C’s in IFS we’re talking about the eight C’s of self, which are: compassion, curiosity, calm, courage, confident, creative, clarity and connectedness. I can’t believe I got all those. But I wrote them down because I usually always miss one. So, we all have this core self that is available to all of us. So, one of the differences with IFS therapy is that we are not teaching our clients how to be calm or compassionate or confident. We believe that our clients all have that within themselves. And our job is to help parts kind of step back and get out of the way to allow that to be more present and embody that more. Does that make sense?

Sam: It does. So, the eight C’s are part of the self?

Dr. Daniels: Those are qualities of the self. Yes.

Sam: Okay and the therapist’s job is to sort of get their client to reconnect with the self.

Dr. Daniels: That’s a great way of putting it. Yes. So, the way it was explained to me is like the self is like the sun, right? The sun is always there, whether we can see it or not, it might be dark out, there might be clouds, but it’s always there. So, all of us, we all have this inherent, and some people call it their authentic self, their essence, whatever but we all have that within us. It’s just that for some people, 100% of the time parts are the ones running the show and they’re not what we would necessarily call self-led meaning they’re not really embodying any of those eight C’s in what they’re doing. They’re just trying to get through life, right? So, what we’re trying to do is that’s a great way of putting it kind of connect with that, what we would call self-energy or helping clients to be more quote unquote in self. Because when we are those like, life is amazing when we’re calm and curious and confident, like who doesn’t want to be those things. Right. And so again, it’s a shift in what we do. We, I’m not here to teach you skills. I’m here to sort of teach you how to get your parts to step back so that you can just connect to that authentic, all that authentic goodness that you already have. So that’s a very, very different approach than I would say, probably most other therapies.

Sam: That sounds lovely. It’s like, let me help you kind of let’s move these parts out of the way so you can feel the sun again.

Dr. Daniels: Yes!

Sam: Oh, I love it. Okay, so the, the parts… Ashley had mentioned in the intro about they have like different names. I would love to learn more about that. There’s like a firefighter there. I don’t know it was really like, I don’t know, I, I would, I would love to hear about all these parts and what they do. Like what are their jobs? What do they do?

Dr. Daniels: Yeah, I love it. So basically, we have two different kinds of parts. We have what we call exiles, and we have protectors and there’s two different protectors which are managing firefighters. So, we’ll get to that in a second. Let’s talk about exiles. So, exiles are the parts of us that are carrying like the feelings and the memories of past traumas and past attachment wounds, things like that. So, they tend to be young parts because of course, we’re much more vulnerable when we’re young. But these are the parts that are carrying shame that are carrying feelings of not good enough, sadness, grief, beliefs about I’m not lovable, I’m not worthy. You know, all those kinds of things that result from various traumatic experiences that probably most if not all of us have had. So, those are exiles. And we call them exiles because the rest of the system, so again, another difference, we refer to people as systems, so the system kind of tries to quiet the exiles for their own protection because they don’t want them to get hurt again. But also, because when exiles take over, they tend to flood the whole system. You know when your shame parts get triggered, you go on that shame spiral. So, the system is kind of trying to keep them quiet, keep them kind of, you know, pushed out of awareness again, not because we don’t like them, but because when they get triggered, they can flood the whole system. And we don’t want them to get reinjured by, you know, like current day things. So those are exiles.

Sam: Would you be able to give an example of when an exile maybe tries to come out and what and what the other parts might do, like, what would that look like in real life?

Dr. Daniels: So, I can give you a personal example that just happened the other night and this is by far not on any major extreme, but like Sunday night was one of those nights when no technology was working for me. And so, we were trying to like to register my car at the DMV online and it’s telling me there’s a problem with your address and like just nothing was working and then this other thing wasn’t working. So, I had a part, I had parts that were just overwhelmed and feeling like I can’t do anything right. So, it kind of triggered this exile and again, this is kind of small potatoes given what our clients are dealing with but you know this exile of, Oh My God, nothing goes right for me, life is so hard, you know, which again, it’s not, but to this little part it was like this is so hard. Why isn’t this working? And I literally had parts that said, well, you know what, we have to go to the grocery store, and we are getting ice cream and we are eating all these feelings, like we are doing something enjoyable because this sucks. So, I mean, I can give you more sort of you know, eating disorder stuff once we talk more about the parts. But I mean, that’s an example of something is happening in life and an exile kind of gets triggered. You know, it could be like a relationship break up, and a part gets triggered of, oh, see, I’m not good enough. This person is dumping me. And so that exile kind of breaks through the surface. And so, we have our protector parts, we have manager parts and we have firefighters. So, our manager parts are the parts that just kind of keep us going. They are very proactive, they’re very organized, they’re very hyper vigilant. We sort of say that their motto is never again, like they’ve seen an exile kind of flood the system and they’re like, okay, I got a plan that’s never going to happen again. And here’s what we’re going to do. We have lots of manager parts and lots of our parts just to say are just kind of keeping things going. Everything’s great. So not all parts are extreme, not all parts are, you know, doing anything that we would consider to be diagnostic. They’re just kind of keeping us, we have our mom parts or therapist parts or, you know, whatever. But our manager parts in sort of uh you know, maybe food and body issues might be parts that are stepping on the scale every day, following that diet plan to the letter, you know, doing the food prep, weighing and measuring food. And so those parts might be protecting a part that feels like an exile that feels not good enough like my body is not good enough and so the way to feel good is to maintain a certain weight or to lose weight or to whatever. And so the manager has all the steps in place of how we’re going to do that. So those are managers. Firefighters are the parts that took me to the grocery store to get ice cream. They kind of come in once in exile has like, again, kind of broken through the surface. So their motto is like when all else fails and their job is to just numb the system for the most part and to distract. So we think of firefighters as being like binge eaters, substance users, parts that are, you know, self-injurious, suicidal parts like those are parts that are just like we got to just shut it all down, we got to numb it out. Again or we have to distract or, you know, we just, we need to make these parts feel better by doing XY or Z. And so again, with kind of food and body issues, again, those can be the binge eaters, those can be parts that turn to purging again as sort of this extreme response to, again, maybe a relationship breakup. So I’m not good enough, you know what I need to go, I need to purge I need to start that because clearly it was because of my body, you know, or whatever it is. And so they tend to engage in more extreme, reactive, impulsive behaviors. So, again, it kind of all starts with that exile. And how we have kind of like these different levels of protecting the exile. And I don’t, to me, I always look at it as like a funnel. So everything that we consider kind of a behavior or even a symptom is at the top and it all just funnels down to parts that feel shame, parts that feel not good enough, parts that feel unlovable. Like I, I don’t know that there’s anybody out there that doesn’t have those parts.

Sam: Right.

Dr. Daniels: Everything kind of in the DSM is our parts way of protecting that. I mean, even depression, like I don’t have to experience a world that doesn’t like me if I’m kind of at home on my couch. You know, anxiety is one. If I can think of everything that might go wrong, I’ll be safe.

Ashley: Can I ask a question? Just kind of like a follow up question. I think I was reading this, I totally like went to the IFS webpage and was like, I want to know everything you know, like I’m so interested, and I want to be prepared. And so I read, and I think that this is worth mentioning for folks who maybe have not, you know, heard this before, but there are no bad parts, like every part exists and is serving a function. And, with that respect, like no one is, is made inherently bad or is like shameful for having certain parts show up at certain.

Dr. Daniels: Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re absolutely right. In fact, Dr Schwartz’s latest book is called No Bad Parts.

Ashley: Okay. Well, there you go.  

Dr. Daniels: You were on it! And so I think that is one of the things that is a huge difference between IFS and other and other therapies, it is completely de-pathologize because these are all parts that are trying to help the system. And to me even like, I don’t even love the phrase eating disorder because I think the way our parts are using food and the way our parts are responding to our feeling about our bodies makes complete and utter sense. Given the world we live in.

Sam: Survival strategies.

Dr. Daniels: Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. And so, we vilify the binge eaters, the emotional eaters, the, you know, the, the, the restrictors because, uh I mean, just because we do, um but in IFS we really, again, we just see that this is a part that’s really trying to help you and it’s done a good job. Let’s face it. It works.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Daniels: And so important.

Sam: So important. In recovery, you know, to one of the first things is to identify what, what does your eating disorder do for you? I mean, that you’re using it because it’s working.

Dr. Daniels: That’s right. That’s right.

Sam: You have to, you have to go there, and a lot of clients are like, what do you mean? I’m supposed to come up with good things. I thought we’re supposed to trash my eating disorder here and it’s like, no, you know, it was doing something for you, we need to figure out what it was doing.

Dr. Daniels: That’s right. That you’re absolutely right. And so, you know, I think IFS would say, I think a lot of therapy sort of say, like the eating disorder itself is just a part and IFS would say there’s sort of a whole cluster of parts that kind of lead to lead to the behavior and respond to the behavior because of course, you have parts that feel ashamed because of like the binge eating or the purging or the restricting or like, there’s a whole sort of system of parts that we kind of are working with, but you’re a right. It is such a mind shift for people to be like, wait a second, like I should be thankful to this part for, you know, for protecting me the way that it did and people do get to that. I mean, as I’m sure you’ve seen in your work that people again, it’s a very foreign concept in the beginning but once they get to the fact of like, oh my gosh, like this part really has really gotten me through some really terrible experiences and it’s a good thing I had it, which I know in the beginning people are like, are you kidding me? But it really is. It really is. So I think that’s a great, that’s a great point to me. And so many food and body issues start when we’re kids because food is one of the few things that we have as a resource to us. That can kind of distract, pull us out of the chaos, be this enjoyable thing while I’m sitting in my room by myself, while my parents are screaming and fighting in the other room. Like it is one of the few things that we have and so many of our parts are stuck in the past. This is a great point and just in terms of other pieces of IFS, especially our exiles, they tend to be young parts that are stuck in the past. So, one of the things that we, that we do is what we call like an update and just getting parts and we get to know parts. We asked them how old they are. Many of them are, are young. And we ask them, how old do you think I am. And very often they’ll say the same age and we can kind of go, that’s actually not accurate. So they’re doing this job that they figured out how to do that worked at the time, that was kind of the only thing they had and they’re still doing it because they’re still stuck in the past and they think they’re back there. And again, they think that mom and dad are still fighting in the other room. And, you know, this person is actually like in their fifties and mom and dad aren’t even here anymore. So sometimes even just sort of updating the system and saying like you’re not back there anymore. There is a grown up here is incredibly. I’m just thinking like I had one client who um really just grew up in this very chaotic household, so even people responding to her needs just in terms of food was like, well, maybe, maybe not. So as a little kid, she had to really fend for herself. So she had all these little kid parts that were taking on the job of cooking food and meal prep and all that kind of stuff. And still in her sixties, we’re still kind of doing that job. And so when we were able to sort of say you have this self here, you have this grown up here, like literally, it just shifted the whole thing. And, you know, she came back in the next week and she’s like, I’ve been looking at recipes and I’ve been cooking more, and it’s been great and you know, all that. So, it, it can just be even that simple of this update to these little kids don’t have to take care of this anymore. Why are they taking care of a grown up? They shouldn’t be taking care of a grown up, but they don’t know that there’s a grown up here. So, when we can kind of get to them and sort of say you don’t have to do this anymore. And that’s one of the goals of IFS is shifting parts out of their extreme roles. And Ashley back to your point, like we believe that again, every part has valuable, it is valuable, it has resources and part of what we’re trying to do is sort of shift that part back to who it was before the bad stuff happened. So, um, so it’s, I you know, I thought what might be helpful is kind of talk about what a session might look like and IFS session look like because it’s pretty different, I think. I tend to work more with kind of people that would describe themselves as binge eaters, emotional eaters, that sort of thing. So that’s kind of the example that I’ll use. Say somebody comes in and, they say I binged last night and so we’ll just say, okay, so let’s get curious about what happened and so basically, we kind of decide on what we call the “target” part we’re going to work with. So, in that case, it would be the binge eating part. We start off by asking the client like where is that part in or around your body because we want to make it a little bit more real for them, you know, if they can say, oh it’s like this feeling in the pit of my stomach or it’s, I don’t know, it’s kind of behind my eyes or it’s my throat or whatever, then it just helps them to be a little bit more focused on it. Some people, the way people experience their parts just runs the gamut. Some people can see them, like when I do my own parts work, they all look like little people. Some people, it’s just sort of shapes and colors and things like that. I have one client who it was like, always just sort of a form of nature, somehow her parts kind of showed up for her in that way. Some people aren’t visual, their system isn’t very visual, they just kind of hear them or have a felt sense or whatever. So, there’s no wrong way of parts showing up for you. So if you’re trying this and you’re like, but I don’t see anything like that’s ok. So again, we sort of start with, where’s the part in or around your body. Some people might say, well, it’s kind of like over here it’s like out in front of me. And so then we always ask, are there any parts that have any fears or concerns about getting to know this part? And some parts will say, yeah, I’m afraid if we talk to this binge eater it’s just going to start binging and never stop. And so we can sort of say, well, actually when we get to know parks, they calm down, they don’t ramp up, they calm down because again, we want them to be in the presence of self and self is very calming. So, if we have no fears or concerns, then we actually start the process of what we call developing a self to part connection. So, as a therapist, I’m not the one who’s getting to know this part, I want the client’s self to get to know the part. I want the part to know that there’s a self there. Because this is a resource that is always available to the part. So, we do that by getting all the other parts to step back because as you can imagine, you have parts again, with the example of a binge eater, you have parts that can’t stand that part, you know. Oh My God, we just binged again, I can’t even believe this, we’ve been working on this, what the hell, you know, or, you know, here we go, we’re going to start gaining weight and, you know, so there’s going to be parts that don’t like that part. So, we kind of do this whole process of how are you feeling towards that part? I hate it. So, can the part that hates it can that part take a step back? I’m really frustrated by it. We hear that, can the part that that’s frustrated take a step back now, sometimes they don’t take a step back and we have to do a little bit of work with them first. But let’s just say, since we’re going to paint the picture of an amazing therapy session all the parts step back. And so we know that all the parts step back when we hear the client say things like I’m feeling really open to this part or I’m feeling really curious toward this part. Or I’m feeling a lot of compassion towards the part again, kind of coming back to the 8 C’s. And so then my job as a therapist is just facilitating a discussion between the self and the part. So, you know, I always start with like, so does the part know you’re there and does the part know who you are because lots of parts have never met self. So that’s another goal of IFS is to get parts to really meet self and know that there is a self. And so does it know who you are, doesn’t know you’re, there doesn’t know who you are and if not, then okay, so just introduce yourself like I am Ashley and you’re a part of me and I’m here because I really want to get to know you better. And then usually I kind of start with a just ask the part to tell you whatever it wants you to know about itself and that could be like anything under the sun, you know, I, and say a binge eating part would probably be like, I’m, I was just trying to help like I was just trying to help. It was a bad night. I was just trying to help. Um, so, yeah, so let’s get curious about that. Like, how did you get this job of being helpful? Um, you know, and just asking questions about what do they like about the job? What do they not like? What do they not like about the job? How old is the part again? How old are you? And how old do you think I am? And then we always ask, what are you afraid will happen if you don’t do your job anymore. And that’s what takes us to the exile because they’ll say I’m afraid we’re just going to be sad all the time. So when we hear that we know it’s protecting an exile. Or, uh, or, I mean, again, it could be anything, it could be. Um, Yeah, I, you know, I just wasn’t, you know, such and such happened and I wasn’t feeling good enough and I just wanted to eat because I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. So, depending on how the part answers that question, we can kind of see that it’s protecting somebody. And so then we say, you know, so it sounds like you’re protecting a part that’s feeling sad or a part that’s, you know, whatever and you know, it’ll respond with yes. And then we will ask if the part is willing to introduce us to the part that is protecting. Sometimes it’ll say no because it doesn’t know really know self yet. It doesn’t trust self. It’ll say, I don’t really know who you are. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt that part or I’m going to, I’m afraid you’re just trying to get rid of it. And so we have to provide a lot of reassurance about that’s not what we’re doing. And we actually have this way of really helping that part feel better. And, you know, this could be this, this could take the whole rest of the session, the next session, the next session. Like so again, another difference with IFS is we don’t go to that exile until we have permission for the protector. So we are not trying to get in there and get to all that, you know, let’s talk about shame and let’s talk about all that kind of stuff until all the protectors are okay with that. So it’s a very like we are really getting permission the whole way through. So again, say the part says, yes, you can meet this part that’s, that’s feeling really sad. So, then we kind of go through the same thing with this part. Where do you notice it in your body? How are you feeling toward it? We want to make sure that there’s self-energy there and then we start asking that part questions, you know, tell us about tell me more about yourself. Well, I’m just feeling so, so I’m sad all the time. I’m by myself all the time. I don’t know anybody, you know, I’m always alone. And we’re kind of checking in with the client and asking, does that make sense to you? Because a lot of times, you know they can go, yeah, I remember, you know, when I was four, I was in my house, I was in my room all the time and nobody move me and I didn’t have any friends. And so again, how old is this part? How old do you think I am? We don’t go down the line of questioning about what’s your job? Because exiles don’t have jobs. So again, they’re carrying those beliefs and those feelings. And so once we, we really slow things down, we’re working with the exiles and we want to make sure that the self, the client self hears everything that that part needs someone to hear. We want to make sure they are absolutely witnessed, absolutely validated. And so, you know, we just kind of keep asking what else would the part like you to know? You know, what else would the part like you to know until there’s really kind of nothing left. And then we sort of have a phrase in IFS that, you know, we’re sort of, the therapist is a hope merchant. So, you can sort of say, you know, we have this way of helping you to let go of this sadness or again, this belief that I’m not good enough what have you, are you interested in that? I’ve never had a part say no. Well, that’s not true. Some parts will say no because they’re because it’s, it’s become their identity. I’m the part, that’s sad. So if I let go of that, who am I? So they’ll say, I don’t know. Who I am without it. And the answer to that is who do you want to be? So once we let go of sadness, we’re going to ask you to take in whatever qualities that you want.

Sam: I love that question. Who do you want to be?

Dr. Daniels: Who do you want to be?

Sam: I really love that. It’s just what’s coming up for me. It reminds me a little bit of reparenting.

Dr. Daniels: Yes, absolutely.

Sam: I’m seeing a lot of similarities where it’s sort of like this younger version of you, the inner child. And now you can approach this child with compassion and love and validation.

Dr. Daniels: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, and sometimes we’ll even ask the part like if, especially if they’re stuck in the past, which most of them are, is there some unfinished business like, like how can I be with you back in that scene in a way that you needed somebody to be back then? And you know, is there, you know, is there anything that you need to say to So and so from back then, and I am willing to say that with you to be next to you, whatever it is. So, we can even invite that process to, you know, literally imagine the self back in that scene with that little part and whatever they need to do or say. And it’s, I mean, it’s just really a lovely experience. We sort of call, I don’t think I mentioned this, but we call like the feelings and um the beliefs burdens. So exiles are carrying these burdens. So then we offer them, we can help you let go of those things and we call that an unburdening. And so it, I mean, this sounds like how could that possibly work but it does. We invite them to, how would you like to let this go? Would you like to let it go? We tend to use the elements. Would you like to let it go to the air, to water, fire? Would you like to bury it in the earth? Or anything else you can think of. And little kid hearts get super creative with this. They’ll be like, I want to send it up in balloons or, you know, I want to put it on a rocket ship and send it to the moon or whatever. And so we just say, okay, so once they figure it out how they want to let it go, we invite them to just scan their body and just literally almost like pull out those emotions, those beliefs, those feelings and however they want to let it go, they can let it go and that process can take a split second, it can take five minutes. And then we invite them to take in either whatever qualities you would like to take in, or again, whatever qualities you had before this thing happened. So they, you know, they create that themselves, they take that and then, you know, we check in and see how they’re doing and sometimes they’ll say, yeah, I think some of it’s still there. So, we do the process again and then we make sure that they’re not still stuck in the past. We bring them to the here and now with us, we sort of say, hey, where would you like to hang out? Like, hello, this is my house. This is where I live now. This is whatever. Lots of parts just want to go play, they want to go hang out at the beach, they want to, you know, do whatever. And so we let them know they can do that. We have the client make a commitment to check in with the part you know, at least for the first, two, three weeks just to make sure that they still, you know, have that connection. And then lots of times parts, it’s like they just go off on their way, they go skipping off into the sunset, we don’t hear from them again because they’re just doing their thing. And then we kind of end the session by going back to like the binge eating part, so that was the protector. So, hey, did you see all that happened? And it’s like, oh yeah, I’m so happy that, that, that little part now feels great. And so, then we have a discussion with that bingeing part about the fact that, like, you don’t have to binge eat anymore because that sadness has been let go. So how we sort of change the behavior is by getting to the exiles and unburdening what they’re carrying and then those parts don’t have to do those jobs anymore that most of them are sick and tired of doing anyway. And so then that then also becomes what do you want to do now that you don’t have to do this anymore. What would you like to do? And some parts are like, I still want to be helpful. I want to learn how to cook French food or whatever. I want to, you know, some of them can be um when we work on like body image issues and things like that, some of them get to be very sort of um empowered parts that are like, I want to talk about like body diversity and I want to you know, and they’ve really become like amazing uh champions for us. But again, it’s like, what would you like to do? And some of them go, I don’t, I, again, I want to go sit on the beach. I don’t ever want to do another day’s work in my life and it’s like, great go, like I got this, it’s all good. So again, it’s showing the whole system that there’s a self in here that can take care of all of this. You don’t have to do this anymore and it’s unburdening those exiles. And again, that’s, that’s the ideal kind of session. That’s what we’re looking for.

Sam: I mean, so freeing, I’m thinking the freedom and the relief that must come from that. And it, it makes perfect sense to me. We talk about eating disorders on this podcast a lot, being emotionally driven and its sort of this process of, well, it is this process of validating those emotions that you don’t want to feel. Validate yourself. And it takes away the need to, to numb out then.

Dr. Daniels: That’s right.

Sam: So, this all really resonates to me.

Dr. Daniels: Good. You’re absolutely right. And, and very often the system again is so terrified of those exiles taking over that. It’s like we’ll do anything to keep them quiet because again, you probably heard this a million times, I know I have my, if I start crying, I’ll never stop. And so when we, and we really, again, here’s another thing about IFS that’s amazing, like we really talk about getting space from ourselves and our part. So, part of what we’re teaching our clients how to do is to be able to notice the part without being what we call blended with the part. Like when the parts taking over, we’re blended with the part, like we’re feeling what they’re feeling like. It’s like, right on top of us.

Sam: Like enmeshed.

Dr. Daniels: It’s exactly that’s a great way to put it. Absolutely. So we’re sort of saying you can have space because there’s a self in there that doesn’t feel those things. And so we’re just asking that part that’s feeling really sad to just maybe take a step back so that I can see you and I can have a conversation with you and I can help you. Whereas if you’re just making me feel sad, there’s nothing I can do for you. I kind of always use the metaphor of if someone’s drowning and you can’t swim, not helpful for you to jump in because now there’s two people drowning or I’ll say to clients, you know, like if you come into my office and you’re crying and I start crying, not helpful, right? It is my job to make sure I am sitting here in self with self-energy so that I can be helpful to you. So, we’re teaching our clients how to have some space between their self and their part so that they don’t have to be kind of like what we call hijacked by them. They don’t have to be flooded by them. So, you know, we don’t do, I mean, I’m sure plenty of IFS therapists do other sort of emotion regulating kind of things. But with straight IFS, we don’t have to because we’re really just working on the unblending. You know, when I can get some space from my parts, I’m not feeling that anxiety, I’m not feeling the sadness. I can see that it’s here and I have space from it and I can have a discussion with it instead of it making me feel all the things. So again, it’s like, you know, again, Sam to your point, like once we can kind of get in there and help those parts let go of that intense emotion, there isn’t a need for the eating disorder behavior anymore, It just kind of falls by the wayside. And parts just take on different jobs that are more authentic to who they are and what they want to do. So, that sounds super simple and for some people it is and for some people it takes a long time. But yeah, that’s kind of the goals and how it works and what we do and what it looks like.

Sam: That’s amazing.

Ashley: So I would say, yeah, this is, this sounds just absolutely beautiful and like the, the word that I’ve been holding on to is like catharsis just like the release of, of the, of the young one like holding on to that, you know, I forget what you called it, the behavior, the..

Dr. Daniels: The burden.

Ashley: The burden the burden that they’ve been holding on to for so long and, and all that they’ve known. And, so I just love, I love that like they can have a voice too and they can release it and they can come up and they can see the sunshine and. So kind of a question around this specifically for our folks with eating disorders and I know that there probably isn’t like a standard thing but is there like a timeframe? Like how does the, yeah, somebody that might be, you know, experiencing an eating disorder and maybe something else like I, I was reading that IFS is great for trauma or perhaps there’s grief there too, like is it really just dependent upon the person that you’re working with?

Dr. Daniels: Yeah. Yeah. And it, and honestly, it, it is dependent on how easily their system kind of drops into this kind of work, you know, like I, I have somebody now that we’ve been doing, I wouldn’t even necessarily say we’ve been doing IFS, we’ve been trying to do IFS for like a year now and she just, it’s for some people, it’s very hard to, to even think that they have a self, let alone experience it, right. So sometimes we do what we call direct access and I’m the self and I’m asking the part questions. So sometimes we do that and that’s still IFS and it’s still totally valid. For some people, it really, their system is so sort of protected that it’s kind of like we are not going there. And so it, it, it can just take a while to get somebody even into what IFS kind of looks like. But some people just drop right into it like it’s, they’ve been doing it their whole lives. It’s really amazing. So again, it’s one of those, it takes as long as it takes and we kind of say an IFS like slow is fast. So we really, you know, I think when I started like IFS training, I was like, Oh My God, like, because you can probably tell I tend to be a bit of a talker. I’m kind of a fast talker. I’m kind of like a, you know, I’m a and I don’t dawdle in any way, shape, or form so to learn to really just slow that down and to just kind of sit with people that was hard for me and that can be really hard for a client. But, you know, they don’t tolerate that very well. A lot of times. But once they get it again, it’s like that’s where the work is. Just sitting with those exiles and just listening to what they have to say and just letting that go and again, you know what we talked about, like what we talked about today could absolutely happen in one session. It could absolutely not. But, you know, again, depending on the person and it can, and I would imagine not that I have, like, thought about this or even seen research on it. I would imagine trauma history plays a lot into that. Previous therapy plays a lot into that. You know, for some folks which can also kind of cut both ways because sometimes it’s very hard to switch people as you can tell and IFS session is very different than other types of talk therapy. And for some people it takes a long time to get them kind of adjusted to that. But for a lot of folks, they’ve done some really good trauma work in the past and so they can kind of drop into it a lot faster. So again, it really, it, I think it runs the gamut. I’ve had clients that it’s like they’re probably farther out from their eating disorder with just, you know, a few things that they’re dealing with and that could be, you know, 10 sessions and they’re like, yeah, I feel like, I feel like I’m good, you know. And it can make just a big shift if we really get to even a handful of exiles that don’t feel good enough or carrying that like that in and of itself can make a huge shift. So I think you can see a change pretty quickly with people when we can get in there and really work with the exile.

Sam: Oh, yeah. I imagine even just one exile can be so powerful, you know, to be, to validate that, that part of yourself. You know, IFS is blowing up on social media, especially TikTok. There are so many people who have lots of opinions about it and there’s lots of interest around it. I was hoping we could do a quick like fact or fiction because as we know, social media isn’t always the most accurate place in the world to be. So, this might be helpful for some people who maybe are spending too much time online, not speaking from experience or anything. But okay, so uh we did a deep dive into some of the platforms and what people have been saying. So, fact or fiction, um new parts will come up as you start the therapy process.

Dr. Daniels: Okay. Fact and fiction. It depends on what you mean by “come up”. So, parts are either present or what we say in potential at birth. You don’t develop parts as you’re going along. Parts may take on new jobs. But you don’t see parts, therapy does not create parts and it doesn’t get rid of parts.

Sam: I see.

Dr. Daniels: So, you might find new parts as you’re going along in therapy, but they are not being created. And again, I mean, that kind of speaks to we aren’t creating parts that are now confident. We’re trying to get parts to step back to get to those eight C’s, but we aren’t creating parts of therapy.

Sam: I see. Okay, good to know. Let’s see is IFS work is another way of saying that someone has multiple personalities or dissociative identity disorder. I think you covered this a little bit in the beginning.

Dr. Daniels:  Yeah. Again, we would see that on a continuum. So DID  would be like way at the far end again, where parts have no access to self, no awareness to others. They are really doing their own thing. And that’s very extreme and of multiplicity.

Sam: Right.

Dr. Daniels: Most of us are just kind of hanging out on the other end of the polarity. And it’s like, again, we just have all these different parts and lots of them know each other, some of them know the self, some of them don’t. And that’s normal, that’s just the normal state of the mind. We would look at that as just the normal state of the mind.

Sam: Okay. That makes sense. How about the firefighter part is the part with the eating disorder?

Dr. Daniels: So probably, yes. So again, those binge eating parts, the purging parts, the severe restricting part, those are probably firefighters. Yes. But again, IFS would not say there’s one part with an eating disorder.

Sam: Right.

Dr. Daniels: We would say there’s lots of parts that are kind of contributing to it. I tend, I use the phrase eating system. That’s not an IFS phrase, Dick Schwartz did not create that. But to me, it’s kind of like, what are the parts in your whole system that have anything to do with your relationship with food and with your body? So, I kind of refer to it as an eating system. And so, you know, as you kind of see with the example we were talking about it wasn’t just one part. Right. And very often not very, pretty much always, if you have a binge eating part, you have a restrictive part. If you have a restrictive part, you have binge eating parts. So we tend to have these polarization that our clients are constantly bouncing back and forth between, restrict, restrict and then eventually that other binge eating firefighter is going to be like I can’t stand this anymore. So that’s a whole other part of ifs. But um, so we wouldn’t say I would, the things that most of us would consider sort of eating disorder symptoms are probably firefighter parts, but there’s more than one.

Sam: For sure. Right. And it’s, and there is likely an exile with very distressing emotions at the root of it.

Dr. Daniels: Absolutely, always.

Sam: Okay, last fact or fiction with the support of your therapist, integration with all parts is possible and attainable.

Dr. Daniels: So, we’re not interested in integration, you will never hear the word integration in an IFS training.

Sam: Okay.

Dr. Daniels: Again, we just accept the fact that our minds are multiple. So why are we integrating? Right? And we, we truly believe again that all of our parts have something to offer us. You know, we were talking about, you know what you read on the IFS website, they all have value, they all have different roles and different jobs. They all bring us, they all have different talents and gifts. We are not interested in combining everybody into one. First of all, that doesn’t work, but it’s not a thing. But secondly, we don’t want to do that because that’s taking away each individual parts inherent goodness and inherent value. So, we do not talk about integration. Whoever posted that does not know IFS.

Sam: Okay, we might have to leave a comment on their vide thank you so much, Dr. Daniel. This was so informative, so fascinating to me. I’ve learned so much. I really appreciate you being here.

Dr. Daniels: Well, thank you. Thank you again. And, and I really appreciate just both of your enthusiasm about it. It was so nice to be talking to people that are like responding to it and you know, really resonating with it. So, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

Sam: Thank you so much and hope to see you all next time on All Bodies. All Foods.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies All Foods presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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