Will the Real You Please Stand Up? - Brittany Ertz, LPC
How Internal Family Systems Can Help You Be Your True Self
By Brittany Ertz, LPC
You go for that unhealthy snack, you yell at your spouse or children, you purposefully don’t text your friend back, you doom scroll for hours on end when you said you’d go to the gym. We all do these things that we don’t want to do but we end up doing.
Romans 7:15-19 “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
Paul gives us such a key insight to the world of our flesh and our spirit. The part of us that knows what we do and wants to stop, but just can’t. Or the part of us that knows what to do we brush it off and don’t do it. Now of course this passage is talking about the law and sin, and it’s important to understand the hermeneutical exposition of this text so we don’t get ahead of ourselves, but I think we can all relate to this passage regardless of its inherent relationship with sin and law or not.
Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a psychodynamic theory developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. In his book, No Bad Parts, Schwartz explains the aspect of “part theory” and how it can radically change the way we look at ourselves and our behaviors. There are three main parts of this theory:
Exile: The part of us that has our inner most narrative, typically developed in childhood, wherein we experience complex emotions and painful thought processes begin.
Manager: The part of us that proactively tries to help the exile be productive against the exile’s feelings and beliefs.
Firefighter: The part of us that reactively tries to allow the exile to experience relief or avoidance from the feeling or belief of one’s self.
IFS uncovers our exile burdens, introspectively becomes aware of the manager or firefighter that is active and will attempt to soothe, comfort and assist the true self from acting in a way that is harmful or not helpful. So you went for that unhealthy snack after work, could it be perhaps that your firefighter part is coming out to cope with the stressful day that made you feel like a failure? You yelled at your spouse or your child, could it be that you have a critical manager telling you that you are really overwhelmed or perhaps you feel unnoticed in your efforts? Maybe you’ve looked at pornography and you feel deep shame and so you find yourself escaping from the loneliness by indulging in more and more videos. Through IFS we become aware and notice all of these things and learn how to dialogue with these parts with compassion, curiosity, connection and much more.
If you keep reading Romans 7, you come along to Romans 8:1-2. I’d encourage you to read the whole chapter but for now, this verse will suffice: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” Read that again and let it soak in, you are now no longer in condemnation, in bondage, in shame, you are set free from the stronghold! What this verse does is it gives us the ability to live in a space of pure freedom from the very thing that so deeply ensnares us. The very thing we don’t want to do, we are free from it! That is good news! We can do this when we bring things to the light, for they are now no longer in the dark. Ephesians 5:13 says: “But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.” The more we become aware of the things of darkness, the more they are in the light, it is now visible, it is now uncovered and can be brought to the feet of the Father with kindness and love, repentance and joy. We can bring Jesus into the conversation of our deepest parts of self and let him take our burden and offer us true deep relief and peace.
If you are interested in more of IFS and what it looks like, take a listen to this week’s podcast of The Work Within where Laura, Paul and John dive deep into aspects, examples, and nuggets of wisdom by IFS.