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.
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/
One that I come back to time and time again, is neural networks in the brain, as well trodden paths.
If we’ve been used to feeling, thinking or acting in a certain way, based on what made sense to us when we were much younger, we might very easily (likely without awareness) just always feel, think or act in that way, because that “way” has a well rehearsed pattern, very literally wired into our chemistry.
We might begin to recognise that that response is unhelpful but even then it can be really hard to catch it before it plays out in our reality.
Well trodden paths are much easier to walk. Even when they don’t feel good, or cause us problems in the longer term, they are our automatic response and while we might dislike the route, it’s comfortable, like a smelly old shoe.
In therapy, often my work is to help someone identify that old pattern.
Importantly we explore and understand why it began – because there is inevitably an entirely sensible function, even to the most complicated “patterns” and responses.
Then we spend some time spotting it together as it happens, perhaps between sessions, or perhaps between us.
We work out how someone might want to swap their old patterns, for newer, more helpful ones. Responses that are more appropriate to how life is now.
Then we practice walking the new path. This can be so hard because the path is far less accessible. There may be brambles and bracken, nettles and fallen down trees. Initially it takes MUCH more energy than the old path. In this work you are literally creating new neural pathways, but they are far less automatic. This is the hard work of therapy.
A client recently created his own twist on this idea by talking about making new paths in the snow. He said that therapy was like someone holding a hairdryer ahead of him 🤣.
I loved that. It can get a bit sparky 🔥 but mostly I hope, the experience is one of someone walking alongside you, helping to navigate, and guide you back to your goals when you are inevitably distracted by the old.
Your stress response is working for your safety but for many of us – the pressures of everyday life can feel like “stress” is the constant state.
Ever feel like you’re caught up in old patterns of thinking, feeling and doing with no clue how to escape? Here is a helpful analogy we use often in therapy:
What if what underlies these distressing experiences was less often understood as a mental illness, and more often recognised as an adaptive response to adversity, social inequality and the associated stress and trauma?
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