How "parts" therapy can help you heal
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Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. And I've got NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey with me. Hey, Allison. Hey, Marielle. Good to be here. So you're back for another installment in the Stress Less series, right? We've touched on a lot of strategies to deal with stress so far, but there's another layer to this. That's right.

That's right. You know, we've talked a lot about managing stressful situations, but some stress can be caused by the pain that is buried within us. And one way to get to the root of this is through a form of therapy that's known as parts work. So, you know, Mariel, a lot of times in life, we're torn when a big decision comes up, like

You know, we'll say part of me thinks, oh, I should take that job. But another part of me thinks, oh, I should back away. Does that feel familiar to you? Yeah, I feel like this can come up a lot in dating too. It's like part of me wants to be with this person, but they're triggering another part of me.

And I feel bad around them sometimes. I don't know why. Right. Yeah. I think we all have some version of this and it's normal. Well, okay. On this episode of Life Kit, Allison is going to walk us through this practice of getting to know our voices within and actually listening to them and learning from them. Research shows that this can help us manage stress and get through tough decisions.

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If you've ever felt so stressed by a tough situation, you did not know what to do or where to turn for help, you might relate to Seth Koppold's story. About 15 years ago, he was going through a divorce. For me, the most challenging thing about the divorce

was thinking about what will happen to my kids, how much time will I have with them, and what will happen to them when they find out. And I started to get very anxious and actually started almost having panic attacks. He recalls one night where he had a hard time breathing. He felt hopeless and scared. He was driving home and pulled over to the side of the road to call his therapist, who recommended an approach he'd never heard of—

It's called Internal Family Systems, or IFS for short, which he says led him to a powerful new way to understand himself and cope with his situation. I remember this moment when it really hit me.

that the anxiety I've been feeling, the intensity, was one aspect of me, but not all of me. And in that moment, I felt this calm come over me. Seth says it was the beginning of a big turnaround. I just remember having this, almost this big sigh of relief that, oh, I think I could actually get through this now. It really was a life-changing moment.

IFS may be unlike anything you're familiar with. It is a type of therapy, and there are studies to show it's effective. It's used in addiction counseling, couples therapy, and to help people cope with the death of a loved one. There's thousands of IFS therapists and practitioners or coaches. But you can also think of IFS as a life practice, a way to get to know yourself better and maybe find the best version of you. I spoke to the founder of IFS, Richard Schwartz, who says you can start to do this on your own.

IFS can help you understand where negative thoughts are coming from, or why you may be engaging in unhealthy behaviors, or why you're stuck. So this leads to takeaway number one. We all have multiple parts that are constantly interacting inside of us. IFS is a way to help these parts of you that drive you crazy in different ways actually

So this is, in some cases, a very quick way to actually change a lot of things inside. Seth Coppold's story is very relatable, Schwartz says. When we've been hurt or a relationship gets broken, we can feel vulnerable. The parts of us that are most hurt, we tend to want to get away from because we don't want to feel that pain.

We want to kind of forget about it and move on. This may help you cope. But when you do that, you're leaving parts of you in the dust just because they got hurt. And often those are our most

sensitive and loving and open parts. So in IFS, people are asked to lean into the painful parts, get to know them. I'm asking people to focus on and actually extend a lot of love and compassion to the parts of them that carry the pain, which can be intense at first,

But it can also lead to healing, he says. The idea that we all have multiple voices or little personalities got a lot of pushback when he first proposed it more than 40 years ago. I was in a department of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the prominent member of that department got up and said,

I was dangerous and I was fragmenting people and tried to get me fired. But here's why Schwartz believed he was on to something important. Back in the 1980s, Schwartz was a family therapist treating adolescents who had bulimia.

He thought he knew how to help them. So when his treatment failed, he was puzzled. In asking the kids why they weren't cured, they started talking this language of parts. And they would say, when something bad happens, it triggers this critic. That brings up a part of me that makes me feel totally worthless and alone. And then to the rescue comes this binging part that gets me away from all of that. When his patients described this kind of cacophony of voices or parts, Schwartz needed to make sense of it.

So here's a good moment to back up. IFS stands for Internal Family Systems, which is kind of confusing until you hear why. Part of his training in family therapy was to evaluate dysfunction in families. And what he started to realize is that just as people play different roles or parts in their family dynamic, each of us also has multiple parts within us.

Some of our parts get along, some are in conflict, and some are triggered by each other. And this helped make sense of what he heard from his patients. So they would talk about these parts like they had little personalities inside.

As the scientist and him mulled this over, he also looked inward. I noticed in myself, oh my God, I've got them too. Some of mine are pretty extreme also. So this leads to takeaway number two, which is you can tune into sensations in your body to start the conversation with your parts.

And if you want to get to know them, one way to begin is to find some time to get still in a comfortable spot. When it's quiet, start to notice what kind of sensations you feel. Schwartz says you may feel something in your neck or your gut or your jaw. And if you're dealing with an intense situation, thoughts and feelings and memories may begin to arise.

Seth Coppold recalls a nervousness throughout his body and anxiety-provoking images. So I had parts showing me like old movies about divorce and TV shows and showing me like horrible situations that could happen. And I had other parts that would criticize me for anything I contributed to make this divorce happen. If you try this, what bubbles up first may be a part or parts that are dominant or

or taking over right now. In IFS, there are a few common types of parts that have all sorts of names. - So I had a worrier part, a critic part,

And they were all kind of like teaming up. And I think that's why the panic attack often would happen because this gets so loud. Now in IFS, the rule is that none of our parts are bad. Each of them can give us useful information. And what Seth Coppold, who is now trained as an IFS practitioner or coach, realized about his own struggles was that his worrier parts were trying to protect him. So it's like they're piling up and they're trying to...

make it so I'll do something to solve this or I'll figure out a solution you know to help my kids and and it wasn't until I could ask them to give me enough space that I could actually problem solve.

This is an example of what is takeaway number three. Sometimes a part can become so dominant, it stops doing its job effectively. For Seth, the worrier wasn't really protecting him. So when he learned to ask the worrier part to step aside, lots of other parts could show up to get things done. He realized he had parts that knew about child development and healthy relationships.

And they're all chiming in going, yeah, we could like do this with the kids. We could make sure they're feeling safe this way. And we could like set up the transitions this way. So there's a whole other team of parts that was helping me kind of figure out solutions. The idea is to see what parts of you are capable and are ready to step up to solve problems.

People turn to IFS during all kinds of conflicts and struggles. Dick Schwartz has counseled lots of couples, as well as executives or leaders, who often find they're dominated by a striving or kind of type A part. This part helps fuel success, but can also lead to compulsive long hours where you're constantly overworking and at risk of burnout. Like, if not for that part, I wouldn't be where I am.

And so it can be challenging to get them to see it as just one part of many.

and that there are other parts of them that aren't being addressed at all, aren't being taken care of, and are furious that this one part is dominating their lives so much. So acknowledging your parts, getting to know them, seeing what's dominant, those are the basic first steps. And often these dominant parts, say the striver, they're covering up other parts that we've buried deep within. In IFS, these buried parts are called exiles.

They carry hurt or pain, often from childhood. And the important thing to know about exiles, which is takeaway number four, is that you can unburden or release the pain from these parts.

For Dick Schwartz, his relationship with his dad was a struggle. I'm the oldest of six boys, and he was a very prominent physician researcher. And I was supposed to be that, but I kind of, I think I had undiagnosed ADD at the time, and I just wasn't a good student, and that drove him crazy. And so he piled on a lot of shame. And so I had parts that were stuck back in those scenes where he would say, Dickie, you're good for nothing, things like that.

This exile part was buried deep within, so the unburdening can take some time because relationships can be complicated. You know, there were lots of other times where he was very supportive and I'm grateful to him for many things, but those other parts are just living back in those scenes. And so when I started doing the model on myself, I would ask the part to show what happened and how bad it was.

So the process of unburdening is to give love and support to those hurt parts of you. So when a painful memory comes flooding back, one that was buried, it can feel like you're reliving it. And this can get really intense. So it can be helpful to have a therapist for support. So it wasn't until I actually invited those parts to really let me feel how bad it was, that I got how bad it was. And then I could actually enter that scene and be with

the boy in the way he needed. This can feel very cathartic, he says, with the unburdening, the mistrust and fear can lift. That exiled part can find its voice and is listened to. Instead of just seeing a scared little child, it's possible to be with that hurt child. You could almost give that part of yourself a hug. It's still young, but it's not stuck in that time, and we've unloaded the shame. So it's now this kind of playful inner child.

so to speak, who gives me all kinds of playfulness and creativity. And that was lacking in my life back before I actually unburdened that part. This might feel a little abstract, a little woo-woo, but Schwartz has seen this unburdening be very effective for people. He says many people have lots of parts that need unburdening, so there are ongoing insights or revelations as you go along.

There's also something IFS offers up that can be more of like a daily practice or as needed to help you feel like you're in control of your parts or that you're the conductor of your parts.

And this is takeaway number five. Take a U-turn. The U-turn is an exercise to gain perspective. If you find yourself engaging in negative self-talk or there's just a cacophony of voices or something triggers you, that's when you can take a moment to have a conversation with yourself. Like whenever we're looking out at the world and thinking people are against me and everything's falling apart and people are mean or whatever, that if I could turn inward and go, wait a minute, who's here?

Who's taking me over right now? And we start to kind of slowly go, oh, there's this one who's like pointing at others. And there's this one who's feeling scared. You know, once I can get some separation from all that and just say, I see you, I'm here.

then the U-turn allows me to go, who do I need to be with in this moment? The U-turn allows you to get some separation and clarity. You can even just say to yourself, hey self, let's make a U-turn away from the noise and negative thinking. And you start trusting your parts to show up as the leader to handle stressful situations because tough moments will come. So when somebody is full of rage or if I'm full of anxiety or worry, which still happens,

Once I notice I'm fully blended with this worry, if I can have just enough of me to say, "Hey, I'm here. Can you give me a little space?" The U-turn is a way to say, like, "I got it. Can you just trust me to be here?"

The more you do this, the more practice you have, the more you can start to become the leader or the conductor, bringing up each instrument in harmony. Seth Coppold says taking that U-turn can help him feel calm again. There's a big difference between, like, I am the anxiety, I am the worry, I am the fear, versus I'm here with the fear, I'm here with the anxiety. And in that separation, there's more

All of the tools of IFS, the U-turn, the unburdening, the knowing your parts, it's all in service of a larger goal.

which is to see your true self-image. In IFS, and this leads to takeaway number six, you are sunshine. The self is described as the essence of your being, which can feel a little abstract. Seth Coppold says you can think of self as the sun. It's always there. So on a cloudy day, you might sense, oh, it's so gloomy and it's so dark. And some people actually get depressed, you know, when it's that kind of weather.

And our parts are like the clouds covering the sun. And he says as people ask these parts to give them a little space, it's almost as if the clouds start slowly separating. Imagine that person who's really affected by a cloudy, gloomy day and how one beam of light comes through and hits their face and how like, oh, that's so nice.

So that's like our self behind the clouds. So in my work with people, in my work with myself, I'm often like, let's remove the things that block our light. This process has made a big difference, he says. He's remarried, has close, loving relationships with his children. It's almost like I have a new operating system now. Like I tend to live more in this light of myself now.

So let's recap. Takeaway number one, we all have multiple parts or little personalities within. Takeaway number two, start a dialogue with all your parts. You can begin by tuning into sensations in your body. Takeaway number three, see what parts tend to become more dominant for you. Are they running your life?

Takeaway four, unburden yourself from the pain of exile parts. Takeaway five, when you see negative thinking on the rise, make a U-turn. And takeaway number six, you can be self-led. And that may feel like a sunny day.

That was NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey. You can read more of Allison's reporting on stress and resilience at npr.org slash stress less. You can also sign up for a special newsletter on stress management there. And if you want to share your tips for coping with stress, write to us at thrive at npr.org.

For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on managing stress in your daily life and another on climate anxiety. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Gareeb. Megan Cain is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Claire Marie Schneider and Margaret Serino. Engineering support comes from David Greenberg.

I'm Mariel Seguera. Thanks for listening. This message comes from NPR sponsor Rosetta Stone, an expert in language learning for 30 years. Right now, NPR listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership to 25 different languages for 50% off. Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR.

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