IFS and me

I needed to make this thread cause people are trying to tell me my Sally is my DID alter. She aint. Shes different. Maybe if I tell you about my therapy you'll see there are different kinds of alters. I got some that are DID and some that aint.

IFS is what my T and are doing. the long name is Internal Family Systems Therapy.

its strange and hard doing it. harder than just talking with my T. Sometimes my DID comes out, then we stop cause this kind of therapy you supposed to stay here not dissociated like. My T takes notes like in school. She says this is to remind us to start each session where we left off and its "mapping" my IFS and DID systems. like making a family tree.

ever session we do one of the meditations in the workbook we use. then she asks me to pick a trail head.

I think that name is funny. makes me think about one of the mountains I like to climb and at the beginning it has a trailhead sign saying the trails name and how many miles it is. what to do going up the trail.

the book says trail heads are the problem that we are working on.

after you gots a problem in mind you answer the questions in the workbook about the trailhead.

like the "trailhead" that we worked on was getting feelings and thoughts when I am in crowds.

after you got the trailhead you find the parts. the feelings, thoughts emotions for why you have that problem. the feelings, thoughts emotions that stuff is called parts.

when I am in crowds I feel like I want to be there and I feel hateful and scared.

the feeling like I want to be there that feels like I am calm, feels like I am interested,want to know whats going on, curious wanting to do what everyone there is doing. having fun. IFS calls this being in "Self" being my core self, being who I am with out all the problems.

but in crowds sometinmes I hear hateful thoughts, get to feeling hateful, acting kind of scare and hateful like saying something mean to someone and looking all around like somethings going to hurt me.

these two things dont match my being myself and the hateful scared stuff.

In IFS the hateful scared feelings is called a part because sometimes it changes how I think, how I behave. like being a different person but being aware that its happening. when Im the hateful scared part Im not being calm, not being curious, not being everything the book says "self" is.

this aint a DID part cause it dont match up with what DID diagnosis stuff is. I aint losing time, I still know whats happening Im not feeing any dissociation things like numb far away floating. Im just feeling hatefully scared. feeling things like hate and scared are normal everyone does it.even my momma sometimes feels like she wants to punch someone or throw something sky high, and she aint got no mental disorder at all.

after my T and I found the part we had to answer some questions. its called Accessing the part.You got to think about when you are feeling that part and answer the questions

first we got to name the part. I named her Sally.
then I had to say and write what activates Sally. what makes me turn into Sally. that was easy being in crowds of people
then I had to think about Sally and and being in crowds of people then answer how she was feeling. when the Sally part is near I feel hateful and scared.
then I had to think about Sally and being in crowds of people and think about what she would look like. what I got was the image of a big sharp toothed crocodile that they had at this animal place I saw.
then I had to answer what Sally would feel like in my body. When Im feeling Sally close like or switched into being Sally I feel hate and scared I feel tight in my neck and my hands clenched like ready to punch someone.
then I had to answer what does Sally say. she says hateful mean things, she thinks hateful mean things.
then I got to answer the one about how being Sally or feeling Sally makes me behave. it makes me mean and say mean hateful things and I want to punch someone.
Then I got to answer the question what does Sally want. She wants people to not hurt us, she wants to hurt others before they hurt us.

IFS teaches after finding the part learn how to unblend with the part. thats just fancy talk for knowing how to take a step back, how to breath, get nice and calm again so that your in "self" but can still work on the feelings. like in school where they teach use your words instead of being emotional fighting.

take a step back when Im in a crowd of people, take a deep breath, calm myself down so that Im not feeling Sally so hard.

then after unblending with Sally talk to her in my mind. Hi Sally I can feel you are hateful and scared but everything is ok now. Ant no one going to hurt us. we can leave any time we wants to.lets stay 5 more minutes then we'll go home. Are you willing to step aside and let me take care of this?

sometimes I get the feeling that no I got to go home right now, those sally feelings stay. that in the gut feeling that something aint right, feelings normal people get when they is around someone with shifty eyes.

Sometimes that hateful scared feeling stops and I dont get that normal in the gut feeling about anyone in the group of people im with, thats when I know that I have stopped being in Sally and stay.

my T and I do the other part of this too called working with exiles.

exiles are normal parts not DID parts. its like any emotion thats really really strong and you cant stop thinking about it. you just keep pushing it away. and pushing it away. not dealing with it.

if Sally were an exile I wouldnt have talked with her in my mind. I would have said go away Im busy with my friends and stayed with my friends and keep pushing away when I felt hateful and scared.

working with exiles means facing your problems my T says. instead of pushing away the crocodile find out whats behind the pushing away. do everything that I already wrote with every emotion in the way between the "root of the problem" until we get to the bottom where we know why being in crowds of people make me feel hateful and scared.

like its ok to deal with sally and all but why does Sally feel hateful and scared in crowds. whats under those feelings. what caused those feelings.

you keep finding parts like being in a lab or a cop. you keep tearing things apart until you get down to the roots. the roots is called the exile. the buried part of the problem.

after you get down to the exile you do everything I already said then you have to let your self feel the hate, feel the scared, feel the the tight neck, feel the clenched fists. look the problem right in the eyes. in your mind see that crocodile with every thing you have and answer some more questions.How old are you, where do you fit in with my system, when were you born. what do you want from me. what hurt you.

then after you got to know the exile you do something called re parenting. that IFS speak for doing things for yourself when you are feeling the exile things.

like if Sally were the Exile which she Aint but if she were I would leave the people Im with and go home and listen to music cause music makes me feel not so hateful and scared.

then you got to do the retrieving the exile chapter. this is sitting quietly, thinking about being hateful and scared but not feeling it all at once. like not being blended with it. then you talk in your mind to that part like I had to talk to my feelings of hate and scared, imagine the hate and scared talking to me too. what they would say. telling them everything was ok. when everything was calm pretend Im taking a walk with Sally walking her through my life from her time to my time. like those time movies walking along imagining things that happened in my life at times imagining walkng Sally past those flags until she and I were in the same day, year and time.

in IFS speak thats called rescuing the inner child, Retrieving the exile.Integrating the exile.

Sally is IFS part. she's different than Carol. Carol takes over and Im not here with Carol. Carol came with her own name, I didnt name her. with carol I have dissociation stuff like feeling far away, feeling floating, with Carol I have time loss and memory problems. I have DID stuff with Carol I dont have DID stuff with Sally.

Sally is IFS part.

The book we use for therapy is called Self Therapy Workbook an exercise book for the IFS Process.

When my D.I.D. was first diagnosed my T did not have any experience with D.I.D. She went and did a ton of reading and speaking with other T's to learn how to hep guide me in my healing.

There were two trains of thought she found:

IFS and D.I.D. training through the ISST website.

These have felt very different to us in our healing. When we were doing the IFS we were trying to make us as alters either: exiles (trauma holders), fire extinguishers (protectors/defenders), and managers (anps/host). IFS therapy asked that everyone inside speak through me as I was to come up with their feelings and what they mean through me. IFS is very much about parts, but not alters.

With D.I.D. therapy I am learning to really start communicating with the other alters. The others have as much right in therapy as I do. They are full people with all the emotions as I have. For us this road to healing has been much more respectful for each of us.

Yes, I as an alter have parts within me. I am saying this as in I have an angry part, a sad part, and many other parts. These are not alters they are ego states.

For us if we are in the process of wanting to heal all of us. IFS would have to be applied to each alter. That is not how it works.

All that being said there has been a time or two that my therapists says she can explain something better from the IFS lens. It is for me as _I_ and I get it for that example.

I have not caught up on the other thread you are talking about, but wanted to throw my two cents in. Doing IFS for the beginning of my D.I.D. therapy was not helpful. If it works for you and you are making progress that is all that matters.

I do think that "Sally" sounds like an alter. Just because you named her doesn't mean she isn't an individual. Sometimes it takes time for them to name themselves or to identify themselves. You said she doesn't match yourself with the hateful scared stuff .... maybe it is because she is not you but another alter as you.

hbodhi,

You said pretty much what I said on the other thread, and I appreciate it because we get triggered by this IFS stuff and I was hesitant to post a reply here in a way that was reactive and not well thought out.

The reasons you laid out are why IFS is considered by most DID experts to be contraindicated in treating DID, but I agree with you that if a person finds it helpful, then that's what counts in the end.

My T uses the ISSTD approach, so I've never had to deal with someone trying to do IFS therapy with us, but even reading about it makes some of us feel invalidated. I have many alters with whom I'm co-conscious, and I don't ever lose time when someone else fronts--at least not in a way that affects my daily life. So I don't have alters that I'm not "here" for. I always know what we're doing--the basic comings and goings of my day. They are still alters that are part of my OSDD/DID. They are not ego states. There is no "Self" that is more important than any other parts.

In IFS, all the "parts" are supposed to feel like aspects of yourself--parts of a central "Self." Someone named Sally doesn't sound like she's just your own scared feelings.

But anyway, I'm glad it works for you. Maybe you can talk about the treatment that does focus on your DID, rather than this other stuff, and maybe Carol and your other "DID alters" would like to post on here also.

I couldn't put my finger on the reason why, but yes, reading thispost left mefeeling scared and with a pounding heart. Maybe because my new T seems to work with a similar approach, but by Janina Fisher (so it's not IFS).

After some conflict we settled on calling dissociative parts "parts" and normal parts "modes". A mode for me would be the "yes, but!" mode. I always seem to worry/feel scared. That doesn't feel like a part at all.

But I do worry a lot whether the T will realize how dissociative parts are. That they do need different things.

This sounds more like an ego state treatment to me than did/alter treatment.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:hbodhi,

You said pretty much what I said on the other thread, and I appreciate it because we get triggered by this IFS stuff and I was hesitant to post a reply here in a way that was reactive and not well thought out.

The reasons you laid out are why IFS is considered by most DID experts to be contraindicated in treating DID, but I agree with you that if a person finds it helpful, then that's what counts in the end.

My T uses the ISSTD approach, so I've never had to deal with someone trying to do IFS therapy with us, but even reading about it makes some of us feel invalidated. I have many alters with whom I'm co-conscious, and I don't ever lose time when someone else fronts--at least not in a way that affects my daily life. So I don't have alters that I'm not "here" for. I always know what we're doing--the basic comings and goings of my day. They are still alters that are part of my OSDD/DID. They are not ego states. There is no "Self" that is more important than any other parts.

In IFS, all the "parts" are supposed to feel like aspects of yourself--parts of a central "Self." Someone named Sally doesn't sound like she's just your own scared feelings.

But anyway, I'm glad it works for you. Maybe you can talk about the treatment that does focus on your DID, rather than this other stuff, and maybe Carol and your other "DID alters" would like to post on here also.

I (carol) have and am posting here too we just dont sign our names and we do not put everyone in signature lines. like first explained we were looking for online places where we did not HAVE to be this one or that one. or any if we were not at that moment an alter when posting.

I have read posts here before joining and saw others posting about IFS and about having personalities and sub personalities so we feel there is no reason why we should limit our posts to just DID. if others can post that they are doing IFS and have both alternate personalities and sub personalities we feel we can do so too.

If there is a rule that we cant talk about having sub personalities and IFS please let us know.

andiKirkwood wrote:I (carol) have and am posting here too we just dont sign our names and we do not put everyone in signature lines. like first explained we were looking for online places where we did not HAVE to be this one or that one. or any if we were not at that moment an alter when posting.

I have read posts here before joining and saw others posting about IFS and about having personalities and sub personalities so we feel there is no reason why we should limit our posts to just DID. if others can post that they are doing IFS and have both alternate personalities and sub personalities we feel we can do so too.

I don't think anyone cares if you sign your post or not for which one of you guys are posting. If you are a D.I.D. system then whoever writes is always an alter (just to be respectful). I am the main person fronting, but I am also an alter in our system.

I think the problem with IFS therapy is it is based on the thought everyone has a central "self". If I am understanding right you are saying "Sally" is not her own person but an ego state of you as _I_.

I am glad this was not a thread when I was first learning more about our D.I.D. IFS is very confusing when someone is going through their own D.I.D. crisis.

What I don't understand is why you are adding a second name to yourself? Instead of just saying you are angry, sad, or whatever this other ego state is to you.

If it is working for you like I said before great. Yet, if someone new comes and reads this I hope they have a T that is an expert with D.I.D. or they will ask their T to make sure they look into ISSTD too.

I am sure some of this comes from a place of being triggered. Yet, we have experience with both therapies and know this just confused us and made many of us feel invalidated and flooded.

After the retirement of my first DID therapist, I went to two different therapists who happened to be specialists in IFS. The first one was so ensconced in it that even though he seemed aware of the DID diagnosis, his assumptions about how I should interact with other known alters, as mere subpersonalities of me, just felt wrong, so I decided to move on.

My next therapist felt comfortable and kind and I liked her demeanor. She said she had worked with some clients with DID. She described her approach as eclectic but later she acknowledged her primary training was IFS. Our sessions quickly became confusing and invalidating so we left to find a DID specialist. The assumption that I should look for my central Self was the most off the mark for me.

referring to hbodhi's post,

TheGangsAllHere wrote:The reasons you laid out are why IFS is considered by most DID experts to be contraindicated in treating DID, but I agree with you that if a person finds it helpful, then that's what counts in the end.

I agree with this completely.

The only issue I see with posting about subpersonalities (using the IFS meaning) is that unless you identity it somehow as IFS-related, most people will assume you're talking about alters. IFS has been used as part of some people's DID therapy and it's fine to talk about. There will be members here who haven't had good experiences with it so that may come up.

Similarly, some therapists have done EMDR work with DID clients early in treatment and it went all right. But there are members here for whom EMDR was introduced too early and had a highly destabilizing effect. So members who experienced that may reply with their negative experiences.

There were posts here several years ago dealing with the theory of structural dissociation, which identifies alters as ANP (apparently normal personality) or EP (emotional personality). Some posts made assumptions based on this theory and led several members to feel invalidated. So mods at that point required that posts include the fact that there was discussion of ANP/EP. Interestingly, Kathy Steele, one of the authors of The Haunted Self, has stepped back from certain aspects of this theory.

I think it's a good idea when talking about aspects of IFS to label them as such. IFS was designed to address parts of a person, but was not designed specifically for dissociated parts.

hbodhi wrote:

andiKirkwood wrote:I (carol) have and am posting here too we just dont sign our names and we do not put everyone in signature lines. like first explained we were looking for online places where we did not HAVE to be this one or that one. or any if we were not at that moment an alter when posting.

I have read posts here before joining and saw others posting about IFS and about having personalities and sub personalities so we feel there is no reason why we should limit our posts to just DID. if others can post that they are doing IFS and have both alternate personalities and sub personalities we feel we can do so too.

I don't think anyone cares if you sign your post or not for which one of you guys are posting. If you are a D.I.D. system then whoever writes is always an alter (just to be respectful). I am the main person fronting, but I am also an alter in our system.

I think the problem with IFS therapy is it is based on the thought everyone has a central "self". If I am understanding right you are saying "Sally" is not her own person but an ego state of you as _I_.

I am glad this was not a thread when I was first learning more about our D.I.D. IFS is very confusing when someone is going through their own D.I.D. crisis.

What I don't understand is why you are adding a second name to yourself? Instead of just saying you are angry, sad, or whatever this other ego state is to you.

If it is working for you like I said before great. Yet, if someone new comes and reads this I hope they have a T that is an expert with D.I.D. or they will ask their T to make sure they look into ISSTD too.

I am sure some of this comes from a place of being triggered. Yet, we have experience with both therapies and know this just confused us and made many of us feel invalidated and flooded.

I think you are mixing things up

Sally is not Andi being scared or angry.

Sally is Andi's "sub personality.

I carol am not a sub personality under andi's personality.

Andi is not an alter (personality) she is flash and blood human. She HAS a personality but she is not a personality. (alter) She has a Heart, Lungs, Arms, legs. There is no way that she is going to call herself an alter when she is not an alternate personality. She is the owner of the body not a host or alter.

a sub personality is like a DID personality but different. its a personality UNDER a personality that has its own memories, behavior, thoughts, perceptions. But it is not a alternate personality like Dissociation. no dissociation required.

I have met and talked with a good many people with DID that have both sub personalities and alternate personalities. most that we know call them the same thing because they are so close but we do not. we have been taught they are two different kinds of alters. one requires dissociation and the other does not.

-- Mon Oct 14, 2019 10:25 am --

Johnny-Jack wrote:After the retirement of my first DID therapist, I went to two different therapists who happened to be specialists in IFS. The first one was so ensconced in it that even though he seemed aware of the DID diagnosis, his assumptions about how I should interact with other known alters, as mere subpersonalities of me, just felt wrong, so I decided to move on.

My next therapist felt comfortable and kind and I liked her demeanor. She said she had worked with some clients with DID. She described her approach as eclectic but later she acknowledged her primary training was IFS. Our sessions quickly became confusing and invalidating so we left to find a DID specialist. The assumption that I should look for my central Self was the most off the mark for me.

referring to hbodhi's post,

TheGangsAllHere wrote:The reasons you laid out are why IFS is considered by most DID experts to be contraindicated in treating DID, but I agree with you that if a person finds it helpful, then that's what counts in the end.

I agree with this completely.

The only issue I see with posting about subpersonalities (using the IFS meaning) is that unless you identity it somehow as IFS-related, most people will assume you're talking about alters. IFS has been used as part of some people's DID therapy and it's fine to talk about. There will be members here who haven't had good experiences with it so that may come up.

Similarly, some therapists have done EMDR work with DID clients early in treatment and it went all right. But there are members here for whom EMDR was introduced too early and had a highly destabilizing effect. So members who experienced that may reply with their negative experiences.

There were posts here several years ago dealing with the theory of structural dissociation, which identifies alters as ANP (apparently normal personality) or EP (emotional personality). Some posts made assumptions based on this theory and led several members to feel invalidated. So mods at that point required that posts include the fact that there was discussion of ANP/EP. Interestingly, Kathy Steele, one of the authors of The Haunted Self, has stepped back from certain aspects of this theory.

I think it's a good idea when talking about aspects of IFS to label them as such. IFS was designed to address parts of a person, but was not designed specifically for dissociated parts.

Thank you

Reading this is making me think twice again about going to a specialist. I thought by now they would have a set way to treat not options. So it looks like they still are not sure what they are talking about.

The naming of parts having roles seems ok, I don't think I fit into a role name, I feel like if I had a role it'd be "stabiliser" because mostly I'm out when life needs stabilization and I lack emotions to an extreme where I think I'm probably fitting ASPD because I have rage and shame at weakness but not much else. So I wouldn't say I'm ANP other than I can do all "normal" stuff without trauma or life stress effecting me. And I can definitely see other parts have and hold many more emotions than I do but they're not just emotions, like a mixture of functions and emotions and wants and needs - I'd say they're more ANP. Plus there are suppressed emotions here that are seperate from parts, don't have a function and were just seperated off like an emotional cloud and if not kept an eye on will latch onto vulnerable alters - maybe they're EP but part I wouldn't call them.

Ego state ideas I'm not convinced on because different parts have ego states of their own, are aware of ego states and know what ego state they're communicating in because we did alot of therapy and courses and studied psychotherapy. So I don't think for us putting parts as being one ego state applies.

So now not only am I gonna have to seek specialist therapist of which there are only 2 specialist centres in this country, now I'm gonna have check in what way they're going to want to play with the brain. Feeling like I can't trust the experts theories again. But we don't like to read too much because we don't like to get caught in "oh maybe we're this" which is what happened before we heard of DID and were convinced we might be narcissistic or BPD or neurotic etc etc. We've gone over Bipolar about 5 times since coming out of hospital because that is yet another diagnosis and it's not helpful trying to convince yourself you have something so we can fit into what they're saying so we want to avoid reading too much DID stuff because then we might try to fit into that. We just know there's more than one of us and I have to make sure I remember that or it all gets a bit overwhelming when they start coming back.

We call it body amnesia. You're in the body too long and you can't remember the internal world, forget there's other parts and think you're a whole person. At the moment the only things keeping me from forgetting is that 1. I miss my sister, she's internal and playing games in Terra Magica. She came in the body once in years and only because the twins tricked her and told her "go out there, you're robbing a bank in Paris" she thought it was an area of one of there games. Then thought "this isn't Paris. Oh B. I'm in the body. Ok. Guess this is work" and then the second day she didn't go to work and went shopping. So she's unreliable and does what she wants, stays internal and I miss her. We spent alot of time together the last few years but she won't come out here. 2. Coming here helps me remember. I actually read stuff here every day, more than once a day and don't reply just to make myself think "oh yeah DID" otherwise I'll forget. 3. The bf, he reminds me because he knows. So instead of what usually happens when I'm here all the time and I say to whoever "go away, I don't love you, I've never loved you" because I haven't I have been able to speak to him more honestly - he asked me one thing, when I just got here into the body and wasn't caught up on all the daily life stuff I'd missed and only Patrick would be able to answer him "sorry the person you are trying to contact is currently unavailable" which has actually made it a bit better. I'm not just fobbing someone off saying "I don't love you, go away" I can actually have a convo so it's holding off the amnesia a bit.

Sorry that I'm going on. Ignore me. Paul.