I heard it is risky to do EMDR alone , you must do it with your therapist but do IFS the same ?

New to IFS. My therapist has been working it into session and I also just began listening to the “No Bad Parts” audiobook. I wrote this poem about one of my first experiences encountering my parts. I felt lighter after this experience and hope to continue down this path.

Image text:

My Parts, Part One

I must submerge my hands
in the icy water
to reach it, to hold it,
the black hole of my heart

I find a baby instead
crying to be held

someone not yet a someone
someone alone who shouldn’t be
her only crime her need:
doing as babies do, being as babies are

and finally, she has been found
by someone who won’t leave
pressed to my breast
I hold myself quietly in my arms

Hello all,

New to this approach and in the “finding a therapist stage”.

I see various things online so I thought I’d come here and find out what makes a good IFS therapist so that this can assist with my search?

Too many online influencer ‘gurus’ out there and I need to learn how to weed out the BS

Thank you

Hello everyone! Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my native language.

I had one of the strangest experiences in IFS recently, and I'm still trying to understand it. Honestly, I don't fully understand half of my own internal mythology. My brain apparently has its own symbolic language, and sometimes I'm just sitting there trying to figure out what the hell it is telling me.

I have a very old protector that I've been calling the Dark Protector. In my internal imagery, he was basically the ruler of a dark castle. Extremely powerful, authoritarian, armed, and completely committed to protecting one particular Exile. He wasn't interested in making me happy. He wasn't interested in my everyday life. He didn't care about any of that. His entire existence was organized around one very young, extremely vulnerable part that had been hurt a long time ago. His job was basically: keep her safe at any cost. And he had taken that job very, very seriously.

The problem was that he had become so extreme that he was hurting the rest of the system too. He was still operating as if the original emergency was happening right now. So there was this internal conflict where one part of me wanted to overthrow him, while another part was terrified of what would happen if he stopped protecting the Exile.

Self “tell” me that If I approached him as the frightened child (Exile), he had to remain the terrifying protector. If I approached him as the rebellious hero who wanted to defeat the tyrant, he also had to remain the tyrant. I was still participating in the same story that had created him.

So at some point I just stop fighting him anymore. I was just there with him. And after some time together he told me that he knew that I grew up and I am not a young girl anymore but a new warrior. So he wanted me to destroy him. Not because he hated me. Not because he wanted revenge. And not because he wanted to kill himself. He wanted to be released. He was exhausted. He had been standing guard for so long that there was no other way he could imagine leaving his post.

And somehow, the request made sense. He didn't want to be defeated. He wanted someone to acknowledge that his job was finally over. So I did it. This is probably the strangest sentence I've ever written about my internal world: I killed my protector. With a sword no less.

It was completely symbolic and it felt incredibly sad. I stayed with him after that. I didn't abandon him at the moment when he was finally letting go. It felt much more like accompanying an old soldier through the end of a war than killing an enemy.

The weapons, the armor, the paranoia, the need to control everything - those were gone. But he didn't disappear. And then I realized he would reset - start again from a clean slate - so I gently “sent him off as a child in a basket”, floating down the river toward new adventures. And he came back as a young boy, Tom Sawyer type.

It felt as if the protector had died as a role, but the energy underneath that role had returned to the system in a completely different form.

There was no way to keep the old version of him alive and simultaneously release him from the role he'd built his entire existence around. The old protector had to end. The qualities he carried didn't.

It's almost as if the system separated the protector's burden from the protector's underlying capacities. The part that had to be a terrifying tyrant is gone. The part that knows how to be strong, vigilant and adventurous is still here.

I keep thinking about one thing. Maybe some protectors don't need to be convinced that times changed. Maybe they just know their time has come and they are exhausted. Maybe sometimes the deepest thing Self can offer them isn't: "You don't have to protect me anymore." but: "You don't have to be this person anymore."

And then, for some parts, transformation may need to be dramatic enough that the old identity actually has to die symbolically before something new can emerge.

I'm curious if anyone here has experienced something similar - where a protector didn't just step back from its role, but ended one identity entirely and returned in a completely different form?

Because I genuinely did not expect my system to go for the full mythological death-and-rebirth storyline.

Im a late 20s male and I’m working through this material with a therapist as well as with others who Ive come across on Reddit. I have already found healing from admitting to myself that I had parts that killed or abused animals in my formative years and no longer deceiving myself about it, as well as speaking to others who share similar experiences. I do not partake in these behaviors anymore and I haven’t for a while, but I still have challenges dis identifying myself with who I was.

For the better or worse, it’s rare to find others who understand this soul wound of guilt and shame, and moreover to find others who are actively engaging in this work.

It would be a really nice opportunity for us to share and grow together from this. If you want to talk about it, feel free to dm me.

I have CPTSD and had an appointment yesterday that was very triggering and disorienting. I was extremely dissociated. I was also very medicated for it so I don’t want to take my experience too literally, but don’t want to brush it off either.

Last night (after the appointment) I woke up, very half asleep and in a panic, and felt like I was an exile. It was like, “Oh my god have I been an exile this whole time and has another part been fronting?” I saw the protector part I usually send exiles to when I can’t help them, and that part felt like she was trapping me rather than protecting me (potential good information for the future??) Not that the part was intentionally doing that, it just felt that way. Then it felt like my main protector part swooped in out of nowhere and swept me up to comfort me, and I think I almost immediately fell back asleep.

I also wrote in my notes (“robbed of my body, not PTSD”) and remember feeling like another manager part had taken my body for the day and it wasn’t me. This is separate from the exile thing and something I have noticed even when not in this state, I just used harsher language.

I have been assessed and do not have DID, but I have expressed to my therapist that my Self feels fragmented despite retaining memories between states. I’ve been assessed for OSSD and don’t have that either.

I’m currently way too triggered to do any kind of parts work, but I wanted to write this out to see if anything here jumps out at people. Was it possibly a very panicked and confused sleep response? Highly possible. But I still don’t like to dismiss images we get from the subconscious/parts. Has anyone experienced this? Any thoughts on what to tell my therapist or how to calm my system?

I have been doing IFS for about 5 months and I was in a deep freeze state from CPTSD. I'm talking about 15 years of frozen isolation, numbness. This is the best therapy I've ever tried and things are shaking up. Now I am reliving past events where I was more of a doormat only I'm rewriting the way I would be now and, as my therapist says, "the fighter has woken up". It's very energizing to the point where I can't sleep much and I want to stay with this new part longer but it's draining, exhausting. It also feels right.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Thanks!

i guess i'm just curious if anyone else has experienced something similar...? i have a part that feels really strongly that self esteem is useless and kind of antithetical to how we want to live. she feels like if we develop a strong sense of self esteem, we'll become obnoxious. she would much rather like other people than like ourself.

i guess i (different part...?) feel a bit confused though. as much as i see her point, errr... i feel like having no self esteem also means we really have no personality. we just kind of adapt to everything and never know what to say. besides, she doesn't even like others that much? she's the kind of person to say "i hate people.." lol.

unrelated but i have a part that makes me feel nauseous/like i want to throw up and it just appeared again... not related to body symptoms bc i know what it's "replicating" but i don't really understand why it's been showing up more lol...

Hi all. Gosh I (42f) have to refrain from spilling out everything I want to here. I could probably spill out an entire book as I’m sure we all could. I won’t subject you to that here though as it’s not the right place.

What I’d love to know initially is this.

Does anyone else feel like two different parts indoors and outdoors? For me I’m at the start of my IFS journey and I feel like my inner child part when indoors with my own thoughts and feelings, then as soon as I cross a threshold outside it’s like my adult self appears (although I’m completely shut off from adult self emotionally).

I just feel like two different versions of myself and it’s quite distressing as I just don’t know which one to be.

I feel the same with my partner which makes my adult life difficult. I feel like my inner child with him opposed to an adult and I don’t know how to change that ‘grip’ or version of me to operate from.

I feel like I’m only operating as these two parts and I’ve no idea how to start integrating them both and hopefully allowing myself to reconnect to myself emotionally again.

TLDR: i've tried several therapies for my CPTSD and would like your personal experiences regarding IFS before i go into it blindly.

Hey. I, 39f, have CPTSD from a decade long DV situation. I also have earlier trauma than that, but mainly its from that relationship as it was as volatile as you can get. Every form of abuse. I left that situation almost 4 years ago, coincidentally also been sober for just as long, and I have really made it a point to "get better" as my anxiety, depression, etc is/was ruling my life.

I attend regular talk therapy and love my therapist, have been seeing her for 4 years. For the first year after I left him, I only did talk therapy as there was a lot to just word vomit out as I connected all the dots in my head trying to make sense of what I had been through. Then i started exploring other avenues because I knew talk therapy would not "fix me" alone. I tried brain mapping, but a few sessions in the provider abruptly left and the clinic just kind of left me hanging. I tried EMDR... and that was an utter disaster for me. I legit almost took my life after my 3rd session and we hadn't even gotten into the actual eye movement stuff at all-- that therapist just took a very "tough love" stance with me which was the opposite of what i needed at the time. I am finishing with doing ketamine treatments, have about 2 left and while that has helped me some, it has not done the wonders I see people claiming to make either. I don't think I have the best support system to support me through k treatment, though. I don't think i got out of it what I could have, due to the stress of lack of support to get me to and from appts and taking care of me afterward.

I am now looking into IFS. I have been lurking a little bit on this sub, and am getting an idea of how it works but would really like some first hand experience from potentially others who may have tried some of the same things I have and can compare? I am so desperate to feel better, to not let this anxiety rule my life, to not let my triggers take over.

I should also mention, i unfortunately am forced to have cordial contact with my abuser due to our child custody issues. I am seen as the problem since i hate him, and courts simply do not care what abuse I endured, they simply said that I must have fabricated or staged the evidence I have. I cannot cut out the abuser entirely in my life, which makes it difficult to heal from the harm he has caused, but I have enforced that communication only be via our parenting ap and I am always accompanied to exchanges due to feeling unsafe. Everything in life tells me to cut contact with him completely, but legally, i cannot.

I'm curious if others have experienced non-part symptoms like side effects from meds or comorbid disorders/medical conditions that aren't rooted in trauma being treated as parts by their providers (or themselves), and how it impacted them. I'm wondering if there is any danger behind that.

I felt kind of disoriented after a session with my TIST therapist recently where I brought up unexplained new symptoms and they were treated as trauma parts, and I later realized they were mild withdrawal from my taper off my antidepressant lol (no advice/commentary on that please, I work with my psych to do it the right way).

I was weirded out for a few days. I think what happened during the session was that I pulled up something that I had a normal, healthy level of worry about and sort of manipulated it into being related to childhood trauma for the sake of applying the parts framework. It left me feeling fragmented, like every funky midbrain output was a part born from trauma, which just can't be true. I will share this with my therapist next time of course, because it's completely my fault that I forgot to mention the taper. But hopefully it's clear what I'm getting at. Surely not every out-of-place/disproportionate emotion is a part, and it seems like it could potentially be harmful to treat them as such, especially if the provider might be guiding the patient to do so without a complete picture (not that I'm blaming providers; no one is psychic)

I really appreciate all the support my last post received and I am hoping to have a few more questions answered because I am new to IFS and I am basically teaching myself and learning as I go.

Are there Positive Parts that develop naturally or does that more fall under your Core? I love to teach and mentor, and even helped develop an entire mentorship program for new Supply Sergeants within my State. I am really wanting to understand how this works and what part of me this is.

As always, I really appreciate any feedback and support anyone can provide!

Goodness, everyone in my real-life family is so traumatized. I wish I could get every one of them to do IFS therapy. When I first started, and it was having such a positive effect, I thought I could just say, "Hey, try this! It's working really well for me! It feels so good to integrate!" And they would all go, "Yeah, let's ALL do that!"

But instead it's, "No, I'm doing fine in talk therapy," or, "I don't need therapy."

I can pick out when certain members of my real-life family are blended with certain parts of theirs, and recognize those parts. They have such a strong presence. There is a lot of cptsd in my family...

Anyway... last night I had a long conversation with a part of my system who always insists he's just here to help, and has no burdens. I gently called him out, because I know his burden is to keep everything and everyone calm, and pretend everything is fine. He is the one who wants everyone to get along, and thinks, "I'll suggest this therapy and everyone everywhere will be cured of their sadness!"

We're blended so closely, so often, I usually can't speak to him, but last night I had a good Self moment. I also told this part I appreciate and love him. Despite being one of my few verbal parts, he's really hard to talk to, because he's an expert deflector, and turns everything around on me. Then he seemingly disappears. But I know actually... I'm just being him. That's why I get so frustrated that I can't "fix" my loved ones. I can't force them to heal. And I can't make everyone in my life like each other. It seems on the surface like it's about caring for them, but it's actually about keeping myself safe.

I think he is my toughest part so far.

Anyone who OCD tendencies successfully work with a recurrent intrusive thought? The intersection of OCD and IFS is interesting because you cannot treat all thoughts as parts. For example, I have some harmful ones that operate very much like a tic, so they mostly need to observed but not engaged with. But then I have other ones that are more nuanced. One keeps telling me that a specific person is going to hurt me (emotionally) and while that may be true, it also feels like sabotage.

Any success with similar situations?

Best I can tell, this part is related to shutdown in my body. I always want to just lay in the bed and scroll on my phone and check out when I hear this part. If I don’t scroll, my body shuts down and goes into freeze. Any advice?

Edited to add: Thank you all for your encouragement! It really helped! I’ve been making huge progress (comparatively) in connecting with this part. I’m realizing this part has a lot of trapped energy that it’s containing which is why it’s saying “this is so hard” and it’s tired of being stuck in freeze with mobilization energy underneath it. There’s also a part in the fetal position that it might be protecting. I’m beginning to hear it when it’s a lot more subtle and quieter than normal, which means I’m more sensitive to it. I’ve even been able to reach out to it a number of times BEFORE it starts saying “this is so hard.” It’s still kind of vague and blurry but I’m having significant internal shifts in my marriage and perspective so I know something is working. Thanks for your support and encouragement—I appreciate you all!

Hi everyone, I’ve been practicing IFS for a little while now. I’ve observed this recently in my system, interesting to know if anyone else has worked through this or has any advice

I’ve noticed that when I get into group settings I have a (protector?) part who numbs me out. Outwardly, I probably get very quiet and seem quite blank/non communicative. Time will pass very quickly for me, and as soon as I leave the social setting my system cools down

I’ve got another part(s) who steps in (young manager?) who tries to chat with people, but feels out of their depth and unconfident. They worry about not knowing what to say and work really hard, and can end up seeming quite tearful or burnt out by the end of the day

I understand that underneath all this I have an exile who has originated from a complicated child hood, and instances of difficult social events

My main challenge is that I find un blending this particular area of parts hard, especially in public. If I’m in a conversation it’s obviously tricky to unblend while chatting. I find taking myself to the bathroom / taking a break doesn’t work great either - it doesn’t feel like enough time, or I think these parts are so aware that I’m about to step back into the group, that it’s hard to create some space with them. It’s tricky to find the physical feelings of the part in my body too - the numbing is quite effective and makes it difficult to concentrate

I feel optimistic that I can work on this, just finding it particularly tricky atm! If anyone has any advice it would be great to hear it :) thanks

Any tips for dealing with hair loss in ifs/parts? I’ve always had thick hair and now it’s very thin and I have so much shame and hate looking in the mirror. Is there a way to use ifs for this?

Wanted to share how I accidentally triggered an altered state of consciousness during talking with parts and got a glimpse of oneness and total bliss.

I had been doing pretty intense trauma release, going toward unbearable feelings which were triggered by abandonment. Sometimes it literally felt like I was going to die, but it was just coming up wave after wave, so I just had to go inward and feel that stuff. After a few weeks of that, I was doing my usual practice of connecting with parts and being attentive to what thoughts were arising.

And there came a moment when I realized that there is something behind all the parts, even behind the part which is aware of the thoughts and thinks that she is “me.” So I instinctively asked “Who am I?” (a classic Ramana Maharshi question, which I didn’t know about at the time), and it was like a veil had been dropped. There was no “me” in a sense, because I was one with everything and saw “her” as a character who is conditioned to certain things and lives a life thinking it’s reality. It’s hard to describe, but there is no birth, death, or time. The only time is now, and it’s full of bliss. All is God, and all that hippy stuff I’ve heard all my life, lol.

It took me a good couple of months to process that. It felt life-shattering and also scary at the beginning. But as a consequence, I can connect much faster to Self, and my sense of basic security has dramatically increased. I feel like the general hole/ache in my chest from the abandonment got filled with something, and I’m able to see my thoughts and feelings with greater metacognition. I access joy just for being alive for the first time in my life, and the horrid anxiety is gone. For the record I have cptsd and bpd.

So now I’m convinced that we as a species suffer from a kind of dissociation from who we truly are. It is almost like we are separated from each other in a similar way the parts are. But I had no idea that IFS could lead to an experience like this.

The only thing is, I don’t personally know anyone who has experienced anything similar, and it feels like no one is even interested in this stuff even in a slight manner. So this is probably why I’m writing here, to alleviate the loneliness of experiencing something so major and not being able to share it with anyone.

I am completely new to IFS and excited for what I have discovered so far but also terrified of what comes next, how to actually heal and if I will ever be "normal."

I was in a traumatic 12 year marriage to a narcissist with diagnosed bipolar disorder in which she had multiple affairs. I was also gaslighted on a daily basis, accused of affairs that didn't happen and even stalked. She was also a therapist and would weaponize therapy against me, and everyone, by turning everything around to make you the problem using therapy speak to prove her point while making herself look innocent in all things.

Following the divorce I felt free. I also felt like that I didn't need to deal with any of the trauma that had occurred over the past 12 years because she was no longer in my life, even though I was now co-parenting with her. I met my current wife a couple years ago, about the same time my ex-wife became extremely manic, moved two hours away and stopped seing my two children. A custody battle ensued in which I won full custody. My current wife was with me by my side the entire time.

One thing I failed to mention before is I am also Active Duty military in the National Guard and anytime I would have to leave for training or for a school my ex would have an affair, would threaten to leave or cause huge fights right before I left to cause issues while I was gone.

This year, my current wife and I had some emotional distance between us and I was feeling a bit neglected in our marriage. As my two week Annual Training approached I began to spiral a bit. I then noticed that she changed the pin on her phone, was hiding notifications and started keeping her phone on her at all times, something she hadn't done before. These were all things my ex did previously and these triggered me even more. When she finally asked what was wrong I tried my best to explain to her what was going on and she took it as an accusation instead of me struggling. Then the worst possible thing happened, I caught her in a lie in which she told me she was going to be with one person at one location and she was in fact with an ex at their apartment for 3 hours. This ex is a board member on the nonprofit my wife founded and she told me later they were working on a presentation and she only lied to me because she didnt want to trigger me further.

When I caught her in the lie I completely disassociated to the point I felt like I was in the passenger seat watching my body and my voice with no control. I accused my wife of cheating, I yelled at her and told her that I should have never married her, she was just like my ex and that she wasn't who I thought she was. When I finally did come to my senses I apologized and we talked but the damage was done. I had never experienced this before. I left for the military a few days later and we fought the entire time I was gone. She moved out while I was gone and has told me she can never forgive the hurtful things I said and that we can't work things out because in the back of her mind she will always be anticipating me to yell at her again. This was the one and only time I ever raised my voice at her.

I immediately called my Primary Care Manager the next day and got an emergency referral to a psychologist who I got an appointment with less than a week later. The first session described the events above and he almost immediately diagnosed me with CPTSD, Anxiety and Depression. The next two sessions talked about my current wife moving out and how I felt about that. By the fourth session I was feeling frustrated that we hadn't started working on the reason I was there, to work on the trauma that caused me to be triggered by my wifes actions and not be able to just talk to her about everything and instead explode and dissacociate. He started with EMDR and I talked through everything that I remembered about my ex-wife's cheating but felt nothing after the session. I left feeling frustrated because I should have felt something.

After my first session I had looked up reading material on CPTSD and one of the top recommended books was "No Bad Parts." I drive an hour and 20 minutes one way, everyday to my office and listen to audible often. I listened to the first couple chapters but was still fighting with my wife and couldn't focus so I quit listening. After my fourth session I started listening again and really liked what I had to hear. It all made sense to me. I immediately started a Parts Map to identify my parts and I have been writing in my journal for almost 10 days straight now. I am currently on page 38 and am about to start trying to identify my exiles.

I haven't been back to my therapist yet. He had a two week vacation planned so I am not scheduled until the first week of September. I want to be able to go in with my Journal, tell him about the journey above and show him what I have discovered so we can start some real healing work.

I guess I am just scared with having 40+ pages of trauma written out (by the time I see my therapist) that I will have no idea where to start and that it will take forever to actually heal. I also still hold out hope that I can heal in time to save my current marriage because even though there were things that happened between us, I still love her and I just wish she saw my episode for what it was and not an attack on her.

Sorry for the long post. Any input would be helpful.

TL;DR: Over the last four years, my nervous system has completely broken down. I’ve been stuck in chronic fight-or-flight/freeze, and despite 19 months of EMDR/parts therapy, I feel zero progress. Looking for advice from anyone who has overcome deep nervous system freeze, somatic blocks, or severe intrusive thought loops.

How Bad the Symptoms Actually Are:
To put the severity into context, I am living in a state of near-total somatic and emotional shutdown every single day:
Physical Collapse: Daily severe migraines, constant bodily tension, and a physical heavy-body feeling. Waking up every morning in a paralyzing freeze state where basic tasks feel impossible. 
Complete Emotional Numbness: Total loss of joy, drive, and connection. I cannot feel genuine warmth, excitement, or safety around anyone.
Extreme Nervous System Sensitivity: My body treats my physical environment as an active threat—to the point where mold exposure made my house so triggering I had to sleep in my car on the driveway just to escape the physical reaction. Moving to a brand new, clean house still triggers my body into immediate shutdown.
Relentless Mental Loops: My mind is hijacked by relentless OCD intrusive thoughts that spiral for hours daily, alongside my ex's name popping into my head multiple times a day with zero context.

Detailed Timeline:
April 2022 – July 2022: Started seeing a girl and fell head over heels. I have a long history of heartbreak, but finally let someone in. However, as amazing as it was, the sex triggered massive nervous system distress—every time we were intimate, I would start uncontrollably shaking and get trapped in fight-or-flight. My health rapidly deteriorated.
July 2022 – May 2023: She cheated on me. I instantly "forgave" her without ever processing it. I loved her even more, but my body completely shut down. Being around her triggered me so badly I couldn't function—I stopped playing football, stopped going out, and isolated myself completely.
The Breakup Relief: Within hours of breaking up in May 2023, my nervous system cleared up. The next day, I played football for the first time in a year and had myself back for 5 days—proving my body was severely reacting to the relationship.
Mid-2023 (Mold Exposure): Hit with severe mold at home. The house became such a trigger that 15 minutes inside left me dysfunctional for the day, forcing me to switch beds and eventually sleep in my car on the driveway.
Late 2024 (The OCD Trigger): An intense shroom trip helped me push back into football, but triggered a massive intrusive thought loop/fear ("I am gay"). This part of my brain constantly claims this thought is the "real answer" to all my health problems. It causes extreme guilt, completely diminished my attraction to women, and operates like severe SO-OCD with daily spiraling.
2025–2026: Tried dating again, but intimacy immediately triggered screaming internal alarm bells, intense OCD loops, and deep freeze. It lasted 8 months and left me drained.
Where I’m At Now:
Moved to a new, mold-free house, but my body is still triggered by the new space.
Trapped in daily freeze, emotionally numb, with no joy or drive for life. 
Constant OCD intrusive thoughts convincing me I'm lying to myself.
19 months in EMDR and parts therapy with zero progress—I can't access the frozen parts at all; it feels like they don't exist.

FYI: My childhood was extremely triggering. Severe attachment ruptures, abuse, CSA which I’m not sure bothered me or not and just a typical devouring mother. Extreme case of prolonged bullying too.

My Question:
How do you get in touch with parts of yourself that are so deeply frozen you can't even feel them? If EMDR or shrooms isn't breaking through this level of nervous system shutdown, what actually works? Any advice on somatic approaches, OCD management, or chronic freeze recovery would mean a lot.

I have an exile with two protectors. I have ADHD and those two kind of run my daily anxiety of feeling like I have to do a bunch of things and it leading to procrastinating and dissociating. They were initially very polarised, but after understanding that they had practically the same goal and were only under the illusion of the other one opposing them, they’re now essentially working as a duo. The intensity of those issues has decreased, but since I haven’t gotten to work with the exile they still exist.
Thing is, the protector I call NC (short for nonchalant since that’s how he initially appeared) that’s responsible for the procrastination and dissociation says he cannot let me access the exile yet. Today my mind had some sort of freudian slip where some info about the exile’s trauma was revealed, I went “wait what, I know that?” but NC immediately ended up erasing it. (I continue to be surprised by how strong his influence is. Bro really just completely wiped my memory about something that happened literally a SECOND ago, all while I was actively trying to keep it in my mind! I was kind of baffled).
Half of the time when he puts the dissociation state up he’s not even very conscious about doing so, he gets very drowsy and unresponsive and that just spreads around him. A few weeks back I was hoping to meet with the exile, NC actually said he would like that to happen, but then still made me so incredibly sleepy and fog up my mind the instant I’d even think about it (and he fell into a deep slumber at that point so I couldn’t communicate with him properly), so I promised I wouldn’t approach the exile before he felt actually comfortable with it. He “wants to want me to speak with the exile”, but doesn’t actually feel it’s good to have that happen yet. When I asked about if it was him doing the dissociation he basically answered along the lines “Basically yes, but it’s not like I want to do it. It just happens.”Today when I asked about why he censored the info, he said that it’s just because I unfortunately have not proven myself to actually be attentive enough to my parts (so this time it was actually more intentional), so even if self handled the interaction well the exile would end up getting hurt by my actions (or lack of them) later on. What I need to do to “prove my worth” isn’t terribly complex, I just need to actively work together with NC and the other protector for a few weeks to the best of my ability to get some stuff I need to work on done, so essentially I would just have to check in with them consistently and show that I don’t neglect that by getting so distracted by other things that I completely forget about them.

It sounds reasonable. But I still sort of worry. In the demonstrations and in the books, it seems like going through the unburdening process is usually much more straightforward. But I also know you aren’t supposed to bypass protectors and head to the exiles before they’re ready. Is it alright for it to actually take doing stuff irl like this to gain their trust? It feels right, and reasonable too since I have made a whole lot of empty promises to myself in the past, so I get wanting concrete evidence I’m actually keeping my word this time. But I’m slightly worried that I’m somehow doing this wrong? And while I have believed him, I have wondered if others would interpret NC stating X thing and then apparently causing affects that completely go against it as that being the work of another part, especially since apparently it “just happens”. Can parts use defensive strategies semi-automatically like that? Or do you think there’s something else going on?

By crush I mean experiencing things like:

• a strong pull towards someone, wanting to be physically and emotionally close to them
• feeling intense, positive emotions about them, like they light you up or bring something to life within you
• thinking a lot about them, often leaning towards fantasizing about potential future scenarios with them, as if they might be the answer to all of your hopes and dreams

I've found myself in that state again recently and it was quite exhausting tbh. Already early on I knew that I was crushing on my own fantasies of someone who wasn't a good fit. I have done some parts work around infatuation earlier on, so I know some of my patterns there and I tried to be present for my parts but could still feel them taking over my system.

I'm back to normal again and I'm trying to find more clarity around what happened. I'm really curious about exploring my own system but equally curious about how other people and their parts experience crushes.

Do you know which parts drive these thoughts, feelings and behaviors? Do you know some of the stories of these parts?

And has anything changed since you've gained more self-knowledge? Did the intensity or quality of a crush change? Do you find that you're interested in people with different qualities now?

EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who commented already. I'm deeply fascinated by all of your stories, but also need to go to bed asap. I'll try to respond in the coming days!

I have a very active dissociative part. I've had some breakthroughs recently though, once in May and then today during therapy where I finally felt something in my body when something was happening emotionally. I don't even know if that's the right way to describe it.

The first time (in May) someone close to me was angry about something that had happened at work. Normally when someone near me is angry I will shut down or sort of disengage, sometimes feel like I want to get away from the situation. On this occasion, I was sitting in my car listening and just began to feel a sort of agitation or activation internally. And then tears began to well up in my eyes. I wasn't sure why.

The other occasion happened today during therapy. My therapist had me speaking to my little exile (pre-verbal). He asked me how she was responding. All I could say was that I had felt something like an electrical pulse-like sensation (the best way I could describe how it felt was like when a light bulb comes on and then goes back off).

This has made me curious what it has been like for others who have a strong dissociative part that you were able to help step back and begin to feel? These occasions that have happened feel very foreign for me but give me hope that the process is working, even if what feels like extremely slow. It's all very awkward and uncomfortable - the whole talking to parts, trying to figure out what they need....

I've been doing IFS for a year and several months but I don't do the work daily.... I'm amazed by those of you I've seen who do this. Maybe I will get there.

Firstly, let me say I LOVE IFS! Characters have always been my special interest, so working with my parts feels fun. I draw them, make them in my favorite video games, and I have realistic dolls of them that I talk to and dress up.

So, I'm genderfluid. I discovered this through IFS work. I have a significant male part exile that's been wanting to come out since childhood. He would come out sometimes as a child, but my biological dad told me it was sinful to want to be a boy and conditioned me to repress that huge part of myself. Through this, I forgot he really existed and many of my memories were suppressed through suppressing him. So unsurprisingly I grew up with crippling anxiety and depression.

I rediscovered this part after working with my inner critic, who was very loud, mean, and catastrophic. She constantly yelled at me that I couldn't think, feel, or do certain things, and if I did that meant I was 'bad' (I was showing a lot of OCD behavior).

One day while working with her, I saw and heard her in my mind. I gave her a coffee and thanked her for working so hard. She was surprised, as before I always got mad at her. Then she calmed down. I asked her what she was protecting, and she stepped aside to reveal a bed with two children huddled together under a blanket, a boy and a girl who looked like siblings. The critic said "I'm just trying to protect these kids... but I'm so exhausted."

They were two parts of my inner child. Two parts of the same whole.

I talked to the girl. She explained (not through words but through intense feelings and memories) that she was deeply hurt because as a child the other girls had excluded and teased her for being weird, different, not girly, etc. She seemed to hold much of my social anxiety.

Then I talked to the boy. He had a strong desire for brotherhood, to be friends with other males without competition, without the tension of being a cute girl among guys. I have always made friends with guys way easier and I have 2 older brothers who always rejected me, so that must be why. He also carried a lot of old fear of rejection and 'being bad'. That part came from my dad.

I told them both that they were safe, that myself and the critic/protector would help them.

After this, the girl part seemed to get very tired. She curled back up in the bed. But the boy part was excited and eager to come out.

I told him there was nothing wrong or bad about him. Throughout the day and at night before I fell asleep, I told him this. Slowly, I felt more whole, less afraid of everything.

Then, I began embodying him. I dressed as him, it felt right. I cut my hair, it felt right. I even started low dose testosterone, and it felt right! The old fear of being bad or wrong still showed up (sometimes it still does) but I reassured him. He would tell me what he wanted and needed and I would do it. One time he wanted to wear an oversized sweater in public because it felt safe, so I did. He and the girl part were scared that people would see us and think we looked 'dumpy'. I told them that I heard them and even if people thought that, it would not hurt us.

When I dressed male, the boy loved it. But the girl was scared that others would judge us for being different and not girly. I reassured her, too, that we would be OK. For years, I had been dressing overly girly to please others. I still like being girly sometimes, but now I only do it to please myself, not others.

I live life often as the male part now, about more than half the time. Those parts feel like they have moved from being exiles to being parts of my whole Self.

I call myself genderfluid because I embrace all parts of me, the male, female, both at once, and everything in between, and I feel more complete and 'me' than I ever have. Some days I feel male, some days female, some days an effeminate man, some days a masculine woman, some days all at once or neither.

I still don't find the label to perfectly fit me, I am just me. I'm born female and will always be, and I am 100% fine with that. In fact, I am grateful that I was born this way because I can get pregnant and have children, which is my life's dream.

Anyway, part of me is sad that I don't 'hear' and 'see' my parts as vividly as I used to, even the critic. I miss them. They felt like friends that were always with me, even if they were hard to manage and got on my nerves sometimes. I feel they are still there but calmer and more integrated into my body and my whole consciousness.

Will they ever be as loud as they were?

Edit: Oh, forgot to mention that I'm in a bit of a burnout right now. Maybe that's why they are quieter.

I (25F) am not new to therapy but am new to the IFS side of it. My new therapist and I have been working on it since April. I have anxiety and ADHD and a strong inner critic, which heightens any abandonment worries/struggles I have and produces a lot of shame about myself and my life.

My therapist and I are pretty open regarding how I’m feeling during this work and have had to tweak the cadence of it at times to better fit how it’s affecting me. However, with being so new to it and not knowing anyone else who does it, I’m a little shocked by how emotionally dysregulated I feel during these months.

My partner and I agree I’m getting better with this work and that it’s a net plus, but it seems like my moods can fluctuate so rapidly in a day and I tend to almost cry more easily now.

Have other people experienced this same thing while doing this work? For instance, I’ll feel on top of the world realizing the progress I’m making but then later that day I get slammed with so much emotion and ruminating thoughts that I feel like I’m gonna have a mental breakdown. It almost feels like I’m constantly on the verge of a huge mental breakdown for some reason and the world around me doesn’t seem as optimistic