IFS and Time Travel
In some of his novels, Kurt Vonnegut describes our experience of time as if we were on a vehicle moving across a landscape. Our head is encased in an unremovable and unmovable sphere with one eye hole, welded to which is a six foot pipe. As he writes in Slaughterhouse Five, “Whatever poor Billy saw through the pipe, he had no choice but to say to himself, 'That's life.’” When, as Billy did, we become ‘unstuck in time’, it’s as if the sphere is removed and we can see that all of the elements of the landscape that had passed by are still there, along with all of the views that we had not yet reached. Past, present, and future all exist now. In the same book, Vonnegut describes a being who, when he sees a corpse, “all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.” Can we use the ability to become unstuck in time to further our therapeutic ends?
In the IFS model, we recognize that much suffering and psychopathology is caused by parts that are stuck in the past. What does that mean to us? Is it just a metaphor? The first question I ever asked Dick Schwartz was, “Do you see parts as real or as a metaphor?” (Now, when someone asserts that parts are metaphors, a part of me takes offense and retorts, “You’re a metaphor!” I think it has a point.) Anyway, the most practical answer to that question is to suggest that holding parts as ‘real’ produces better results in the therapy. I suggest that holding time travel as ‘real’ does the same.
As someone with strong logical and analytical protectors, I used to get frustrated with ‘irrational’ people. Now, whenever someone says something that my parts deem to be irrational, I assume they are truthfully describing the experience of a part that is stuck in the past. Since whatever they are saying or doing totally makes sense for the scene they are living in, I prefer to respond to that part to validate and witness whatever experience it is having in the past. (Trying to help with a rational response is usually not appreciated, as depicted in these New Yorker cartoons.) Holding the current existence of that past timeline as ‘real’, I actually communicate directly with parts in the scene, as no conversation will be effective without first witnessing and validating their experience.
Of course, the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are largely generated by this same experience of parts who are stuck in the past. But on a sub-clinical level, parts are infusing us with their experiences from other timelines all the time. Any time we are ‘triggered’, we are hearing from a part stuck in the past. As another example, when we fall in love or feel infatuated, aren’t we influenced by very young parts who think they’ve finally found the permanent solution to their dependency needs?
Regarding these parts, Hendrix and Hunt’s Imago theory posits that they choose a partner who will recreate childhood wounds in order to have a reparative experience, thereby healing their old attachment trauma. But isn’t trying to heal past trauma in the present sort of like the guy searching for his keys under a street lamp because the light is better there, even though he dropped them somewhere else? Recently in one of my process groups, a member did a great job of asking for what she needed, which was to have the other members comment on things that they liked and appreciated about her. Somehow, I felt that this would not really scratch her itch, because if she believed those things already, she wouldn’t need to hear them, and if she didn’t, she would discount their comments. Instead, we time traveled into her childhood when she was disregarded and maligned, enacted the scene with other group members, and then had her direct the reparative experience, all in the childhood timeline. The little girl stuck in the past got to receive positive feedback in the timeline in which it was needed. This approach seemed to help her parts let go of their negative self-beliefs.
The juiciest part of the IFS model for me is when we ask an exile to show us a scene from the past where it is having a difficult experience. This is our opportunity to time travel! Being unstuck in time, we can enter that scene and provide a reparative experience for the traumatized part. Of course, just the fact that we are there to witness is immensely helpful, as most traumatic memories are characterized by a lack of Self-energy in the scene. But we can also offer to intervene in any way that the Exile wants us to, keeping in mind that we have magic powers to make anything happen that we choose. This part of the IFS protocol is sometimes called the ‘do over’.
According to Bruce Ecker, developer of Coherence Therapy, therapeutic change in treating trauma is either counteractive or transformational. The former is intended to help clients deal with their trauma-based reactions, while the latter can actually neutralize the traumatic memory by reconsolidating it, providing permanent cessation of symptoms. This reconsolidation is effected by pulling the memory from long-term storage into working memory, and then pairing it with a contradictory experience, which is what we are carrying out with the ‘do over’. Keeping in mind that our target is the emotional memory stored in the amygdala rather than the episodic memory (the account of what happened) stored primarily in the neocortex, how do we maximize the erasure of the trauma? It would seem that the more vividly we drop into the experience, the more fully we bring it into working memory, potentiating a deeper erasure of the trauma. Time travel where we fully inhabit the scene would accomplish that.
Carrying our culture’s legacy burden of individualism, I used to invite the Self of clients to undertake the travel in time. But now, I suggest that we go into the scene together. Ultimately, perhaps all that is needed is Self-energy, and it doesn't really matter where that comes from. In other words, Self-energy is fungible.
When we invite an Exile to leave the scene, the model suggests they can go anywhere they would like. Though I will follow their lead if they wish to hang out in a nice place in their timeline, I am biased towards inviting them into the present. While they can effectively be removed from the scene either spatially or temporally, my sense is that Self resides in the present, so parts need to be in the present too in order to remain connected.
Once we have retrieved a part into the present, we need to stay in touch with it on a regular basis for a while. (I’ve heard Dick recommend anywhere between three and six weeks of daily check-ins.) Otherwise, it tends to drift back into the past timeline, where it has spent such a long time. Because of their need to connect with Self, I believe that Exiles will unconsciously direct us into situations that will trigger them if we aren’t initiating contact with them from Self.
If you like to geek out on time travel stories, you know that we can visit the future as well as the past. Might we also want to retrieve parts stuck in the future? Sure! Often we find anxious parts stranded in the future without access to Self-energy in the present. Anxious Protectors can be like scouts behind enemy lines, sent there to give us advance warning of bad stuff that might happen. But they can also do their job effectively by being stationed in the present and simply looking into the future to anticipate trouble. I wonder about the Exiles that they are protecting – will they always have some energy in past traumas as well? What do you think? Either way, they can still be witnessed in the imagined future events, and then retrieved from the future into the present.
As a final point about future parts, consider the common issue of self-defeating behaviors. In these scenarios, we usually we find a should part, which tells us what we should do, what we’re supposed to do, what we have to do, or what we need to do. As a child, this part is the internalized representative of the external dictates of our parents, as well as teachers, clergy, coaches, etc. Because the child's brain has not developed the areas needed to host future parts, these people are often advocating for what they believe is best for the child’s future.
As we get older and crave autonomy, we develop a rebel part to free us from this control, and the should and rebel parts become polarized, battling for dominance and preventing Self-leadership. As an adult, when we no longer need to satisfy external demands to survive, what does the word ‘should’ even mean -- who is the should part actually representing? That would be the future parts, who want to be healthy, financially sound, loved and respected by others, and living in an environment free from uncompleted tasks. And isn’t the rebel part speaking for parts that want to maximize pleasure and minimize discomfort in the present moment? Since the should voice inevitably activates the rebel, why not let it retire and let the future parts speak for themselves? For example, when a present moment part says, “Let’s have another drink,” instead of the scolding voice responding, “You shouldn’t do that,” the future part can simply ask, “Please don’t make me go through tomorrow with a hangover.” Since the future and present moment parts share a mission -- to optimize our good feelings over time – they can depolarize. Being on the same team, they could let Self choose actions that balance their particular agendas, eliminating self-defeating behaviors.
