Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a model of therapy which understands the human psyche as an “internal system” made up of multiple parts, very much like an external family or system. The Internal System includes a Self, Protective parts, and Vulnerable (or exiled) parts.
It’s helpful to know a little bit about what EMDR is before deciding whether or not it could be the right therapy for you. In order to understand what kinds of presentations/problems EMDR is most suitable for, first it’s important to discuss some of the basics about how traumatic experience gets stored and stuck, according to the theory underpinning EMDR.
What is IFS-informed EMDR?
Hopefully you arrive at this blog with a basic understanding of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapies, separately. If not, I warmly invite you to read both prior blog articles to access these individual introductions.
Campaigns working to reduce stigma (whose aims I wholeheartedly support) have likened mental health problems to a broken arm, arguing that mental and physical health should be seen as equal. It’s a totally reasonable idea. However recovery from a physical injury is, often like the cause, a reasonably straight forward, individual, process. The same is not true of mental distress and so the analogy, while well intentioned, is not really accurate or helpful.
How developing awareness of the mind-body connection will help you manage stress
Your body has one simple response to threat. It doesn’t differentiate between physical or psychological/ emotional danger. Your “threat response” might be triggered by an obvious threat, like a dangerous animal, a knock on the door, or the dark silhouette of a stranger, or it might be activated by an email notification, a to-do list, a bill or bank statement, a look from a loved one, an Instagram scroll, a memory, an emotion, a smell or a bodily feeling. The list is personal and endless.
Any of these situations, often before you’ve even registered them as a threat, set in motion a cascade of physiological processes.
You scan your area for allies or support in numbers. In the modern world this often looks like reaching for your phone. We pay extra close attention to what’s happening in our social environment, and thanks to the feedback we receive, we either feel reassured or even more at risk. An absence of secure connection or safety here trips us into the next level.
Your body prepares you to fight or run from the threat. The brain goes into super-scan mode, your body gets pumped and strengthens, hormones and chemicals surge through your system. You’re ready as you’ll ever be. But what if the fear remains? If your body experiences the threat as persistent and unbeatable, it has another, more drastic option.
The nervous system perceives the danger as so great that the only viable option is to give up and protect what’s left – a little like “playing dead” in the animal world. In modern life this can look like exhaustion, depression, isolation, low motivation, dissociation. If your body gets used to retiring to this response, it can become stuck there.
This whole system is working, mostly unconsciously, for your safety, but for many of us – the pressures of everyday life can feel like activation is the constant state.
Your body copes well with short bursts of stress as long as that stress is generally resolved and the system can return to balance. In this place – you can be relaxed, productive, happy and primed to connect and take nutrients from loved ones and the world.
If stress is relentless (chronic) it can start to have a really negative impact on your whole mind-body system. The chemicals, intended to be useful in short bursts can damage the circuits they’re designed to work within. One of the most significant consequences of this is inflammation, a significant contributor to many mental and physical health complaints.
Here are some simple ways you can learn to catch this process and sometimes remedy it.
👉🏼 First get yourself safe. You can’t “hack” your way out of danger, so if you’re living in an environment where the threats are real, focus all your efforts on finding physical safety first.
👉🏼 Look after yourself in those critical basic ways (sleep, movement, nutrition, connection) and you are much less likely to find yourself hypervigilant to stress or to interpret benign situations as dangerous.
👉🏼 Prioritise real and genuine time to rest. Those times when you are completely calm and consumed by something enjoyable (reading, yoga, arts, music, films) allows healing to occur in your body. Think of these practices as they are: vital times for physiological repair, rather than woo-woo privilege.
👉🏼 “Time-in”: Use awareness/ mindfulness skills to regularly stop and tune into what’s happening in your body at any given time. When and where do you hold tension?
👉🏼 Feel into your body. Learn, especially if difficult experiences have taught you to disconnect from your body, that you can connect safely with yourself. Eat something completely mindfully. Take a warm shower and feel it. Use warm and gentle touch.
👉🏼 Learn to communicate safety to your system: one of the quickest languages for this is via your breath. Imagine while slowing down the rhythm of your breath that you’re really saying “it’s ok body (buddy?!) I’m safe here, thanks for getting ready to protect me, but I got this”
See breathing blog for some simple exercises to bring you into present calm state when activated, and sign up to my newsletter to receive future blog topic roundups and other exciting developments in the Body in Mind community.
Uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, sadness and anger generally get a pretty bad press. We’re not keen (understandably) so we often work hard to get rid of them when they show up.
So you and/or the people you work with already have an Internal Family Systems informed (IFS) practice, and you have become blissfully aware that you are made up of not one, but many “parts”, all of whom ultimately have your needs in mind.
One of the greatest blessings of your IFS practice includes acceptance that you have wide ranging and sometimes conflicting beliefs, thoughts and feelings. You have come to understand that many of your parts, even the ones who can cause you distress (like the parts who drive unhealthy behaviors, anxiety, anger or depression) are in fact acting in defense of pain and intensity, which at one time was intolerable.
Even though you are learning to “un blend” from your parts, and seek more support from that growing well of “Self-energy” within you, you still HURT sometimes, and feel stuck in patterns that don’t serve you.
You want to deepen your practice further and involve the whole-body mind system in your healing.
Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) is the practice of understanding and connecting with the different phases of the menstrual cycle, and be empowered to live in harmony with your cyclical nature. It involves paying attention to physical, emotional, and mental changes throughout each phase and with this knowledge, to make informed decisions about daily activities, self-care, and overall well-being.
As a woman with many years of practice tracking my own cycle, and a Clinical Psychologist and IFS therapist with a special interest in the role of the body in therapy, I have come to learn how beautifully these two healing modalities complement each other.
Just as you might already track your parts, notice when you are blended versus in a state of Self-energy, witness your parts’ fears, and identify areas for healing by attending to your internal family, MCA supports you to notice which parts are more likely to be activated, and how much access you have to Self-energy in response, according to the phases of your cyclical body.
Cycle tracking provides a guide for following and understanding the two key energy shifts that many people experience throughout the menstrual month; while your IFS practice makes sense of why you are more likely to blend with protector parts, versus younger, and more vulnerable exile energies, in the respective cycle phases.
Adding MCA into your IFS practice will give you a theoretical framework for:
If working in this way appeals to you, then you can request a free consultation to consider what it might be like to work 1:1, guiding your therapy from a genuine place of mind-body integration.
I have developed this framework in partnership with Dr Lara Owen, who is recognised internationally for her pioneering and continuing work on menstruation. Together later this year we are offering a 4-day training retreat, where we will present these ideas and concepts publicly for the first time, to a small group, in a beautiful unspoiled countryside retreat. The workshop sessions will be supported by a range of optional activities including swimming in the pool and lake, walks in the surrounding woodland, and restorative yoga, insuring that learning and self-discovery can occur in an optimal rested state. You can read more and book your space here: https://laraowen.com/trauma-and-the-menstrual-cycle/
So you and/or the people you work with already have an established cycle tracking practice, and you have become blissfully aware that you have different needs and gifts at different phases of your cycle.
One of the greatest blessings of a cycle awareness includes acceptance and validation that we are not supposed to be the same all the time, and that its natural and actually helpful to experience these changing states throughout the menstrual month.
Having maintained a practice of tracking my own menstrual cycle for many years, and learning to pay closer attention to the cyclical experiences of the women and people in my therapy room, it became apparent that the issues that bring people to therapy are often more extreme and distressing in the luteal phase, between ovulation and the bleed. This observation is supported by research which shows that women in the mid-luteal phase of the menstrual cycle experience stronger emotional memories than women in other phases.
What is Trauma?
Through my many years of study and practice across a broad spectrum of emotional distress and mental “disorder” in NHS and private settings, I have come to hold a very broad concept of “trauma”. You can read more about my position, and the associated complexities here: https://thebodyinmind.co.uk/2023/01/26/can-i-call-it-trauma/ but to summarise, it is my belief that in fact, we all hold the imprint of traumatic and adverse events occurring perhaps years or moments prior to, during and/or post our births into this world. These events shape us into complex and interesting individuals. Navigating adversity is part of the human experience, and whilst often difficult and sometimes devastating, traumatic experience also offers up rich opportunity for growth, resilience and hope.
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