November 2024 – Internal Family Systems and Depression: The Self
In this month’s article, I continue the depiction of how the Internal Family Systems (IFS) “plural mind” model intersects with the phenomenon of depression (you can find the previous article on Protectors here, and Exiles here), with a focus on the Self, what IFS considers the central organizing principle and force of the psyche. Essentially, the Self can be thought of as the archetype of the ideal parent, but one that can and needs to be installed in the middle of our psyche for all the various parts to calm down and collaborate. Arguably, this installation is both what heals depression, and what psychotherapy itself is ultimately about.
IFS is a very rich model which these last articles are only sketching, so if you get interested and want to go further, you can check out the popular version of IFS, No Bad Parts, and the clinical manual, Internal Family Systems Therapy, both by Richard Schwartz.
May your late Fall be full of the richness of darkness, both in its quietude, and in its opportunities for contemplating losses and change.
Describing the relationship between IFS’s “Self” and depression.
Looking, observing, listening, heeding, understanding, feeling with, communicating, loving—we can do all this with our parts. But who is doing the looking? The listening? The loving? Esoteric spiritual traditions have various names for the seat of consciousness. Quakers call it the Inner Light; Buddhists call it rigpa, meaning Buddha mind or Buddha nature; Hindus call it Atman or the Self [etc.]….[But] the key to mental balance and harmony is to access [this] seat of consciousness, which we [IFS] call the Self. The plural mind revolves around the Self, and when parts lack access to its centrifugal force, they get into tugs-of-war and threaten to fly off in all directions. In contrast, they center like clay on a potter’s wheel once they have access to the Self. (Schwartz and Sweezy, 2020, Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd ed.)
The Nature of the Self
Internal Family Systems is a model of the human mind that centers on what IFS calls the “Self.” Although the Protectors and Exiles (as described in previous newsletters, here and here) are central elements, the Self is understood to be the structural hub of the psyche, that which holds (when activated) all the pieces together. This Self has eight core qualities (the “8 C’s”), being: curiosity, calm, confidence, connectedness, clarity, creativity, courage, and compassion. These qualities are detailed (in Schwartz and Sweezy, 2020) as follow (as I paraphrase or quote below):
- Curiosity: The Self embodies an agenda-free engagement with the inner parts and the outer world, with genuine interest in the experience of the parts (and people), regardless of the outward presentation or behavior.
- Calm: The Self conveys an even-keeledness and resilience in the face of stress and experience in general (in the neurosciences you would say “a wide window of tolerance”).
- Confidence: “The Self has an infectious air of confidence, conveying to protector parts that it is safe to relax because…injuries can be healed,” conveying a sense of groundedness and solidness.
- Connectedness: The Self itself does not strive for connectedness, because in a way it is the field of “already connected,” as well as the force that encourages us to connect more.
- Clarity: “Clarity is the ability to perceive situations without the distorting effects of extreme beliefs and emotions (burdens). Our vision is clear when we see through the eyes of the Self, and it is distorted when we see through the eyes of extreme parts.”
- Creativity: The Self, by addressing the needs of the various parts, engenders a safety which allows for creative thinking, since when we humans feel safe, we play.
- Courage: The Self, as well as the receptive and nurturing qualities, also has the capacity for forceful protection, in addition to conveying the courage and confidence to approach the scary parts of our psyche without fear that we’ll be destroyed.
- Compassion: “Whereas empathy involves feeling with another person, compassion involves feeling for another person, which motivates concern and the desire to help,” allowing us to be equanimous with parts and people who are suffering.
It’s important to highlight that the Self is not a part per se, but rather is the integrative function of the psyche; that is, the parts (Exiles, and the two Protectors, i.e., the Managers and Firefighters) are coordinated and related to each other by the Self, harmoniously rather than contentiously (which is the state of the psyche without the Self activated). The Self exists in a curious way, both above and also within the individual personal psyche. It is roughly analogous to what might be designated in spiritual traditions as the “personal Divine.” The Self is the force which, when present and related to the parts, allows them to put down their particular burdens because the Self takes over their protecting roles. When this happens, the Protectors do not then disappear but rather become consultants to the Self, whom they now trust to both do what were previously their jobs, as well as take up a nurturing role that the Protectors could never do.
Although the Self cannot be destroyed or modified—it is the “seat of consciousness,” the sky in which the clouds move—the parts can detach from it, making it seem to have been pushed out of the psyche. This can happen in a number of ways (religious apostasy, effects of trauma, lack of modeling in the environment, etc.), but the essence of all of them is that the person’s model of the inner and outer world does not include a force like the Self. Said another way, the mundane and painful overcomes the sacred.
Depression and the Self
As described in past newsletters (e.g., see here), depression pivots on the condition of “ungrieved futility,” that is, situations where there has been loss which cannot or will not be grieved. The reason for the “ungrieveableness” is that the loss (e.g., of a parent, a philosophy, an image of self) is so core to our self-worth that to grieve that loss is essentially to lose our core self. When this happens, the survival injunction to protect the personal self clashes with the survival injunction to let go of the futile (non-generative, energy consuming) attachment, and a Protector is then manifested who uses depression to shut the system down (see here for more on the Protector).
Depression has its classic cluster of symptoms—low energy, low motivation, disrupted sleep and eating, hopelessness, helplessness—all of which are dependent on a particular “depression story.” (If you are feeling tired and lazy, but actually believe that the world is your oyster, then you are not depressed.) The essence of the story the depression Protector tells goes like this: “You are worthless as a person and in the world, and the world itself is inherently painful and rejecting. Therefore, face the truth of your valuelessness, stop thinking you’re a good person and that you can belong in a world that wants to reject or destroy you. Know that the best option to be safe is to stay small and hidden…so do that.” Every depression has some iteration of this narrative, as it is what binds all the symptoms together and keeps the depressive state going.
In the world that is conjured by depression all of the eight core qualities of Self are muted, absent, or negated. Effectively, this means that the depression world is (by degrees) a world without Self. It is not that the Self has been exiled or destroyed—by definition, neither is possible—but rather that the depression Protector has entranced the exiled part or parts into believing, and more importantly feeling and embodying, that there is no “goodness” in their world. The felt-sense of this is that life has been seen clearly, and the bleak and nihilistic world that is revealed is just true. Alternately, or additionally, we can experience ourselves as having been abandoned by Self because of our own shameful badness, i.e., Self exists, just not for us. In this depressed mode, the Protector prevents the Exiles from contacting Self, or if an Exile tries, it is batted down, shown the bleak “reality” that proves “small equals safe.” But whatever the particularities of our experience of depression, the essence is the same: in this bleak world, Self is absent or inaccessible, gone altogether, or gone for you.
Resolution
The path out of clinical depression often requires multiple approaches (medication, behavioral change efforts, grief work, etc.), but without addressing the concerns of the Protector, it is very difficult to progress and heal. Because they are safeguarding our survival, the Protectors are very powerful (weak Protectors couldn’t do the job), and although we tend to start with attempts to manipulate or overpower them and may get some temporary gains, the effort that it takes to, as it were, protect against the depression Protector generally wears us out and leaves the opening for the Protector to take the reins again. This “dominate depression” strategy is particularly problematic because when our control efforts inevitably fail, the Exile not only gets returned to their confinement, but they go back with an added level of despair (which then makes suicide seem that much more reasonable).
Since the “ungrievableness” of loss boils down to a person having an insufficiency of support to do the necessary grieving—if we could tolerate grief without feeling threatened, we would flow through the process—an increase in support is necessary to heal depression by reactivating grief. However, while conventional supports like contact with friends and family and the support of meaningful work are necessary, they are not sufficient. Since the core human need is to feel that we are “valuable participants in a meaningful universe” (what Terror Management Theory has seen in its research), conventional supports are not enough. They do address the “valuable participant” side, but not the “meaningful universe.” We can stand in our life of increased connections, but still look up into the heavens and say, “So what?”
The Self is essentially the answer to the need to be valued by a valuable universe, without which the depression Protector will not back down (proximate gains will eventually fall apart if there is no ultimate sense of personal and universal meaning, what Alcoholics Anonymous shorthands as one’s “Higher Power”). So, it is a great irony that in this current age of medical ascendency, in which depression is typically viewed as “mere brain chemistry,” a spiritual component is utterly necessary for full healing.
So, this reinstalling of the Self (this quasi-spiritual, quasi-personal entity) is necessary for the healing process, as it is the most potent answer to the depression Protector’s fears. Once it is clear to that Protector what the Self is, and that it does the Protector’s job much better, the Protector will trust the Self and start standing down from its always-on guardianship. It’s as if each Protector has encoded into itself the image of Self such that it can recognize the Self when it appears. An author referred to this through the last image in Golding’s Lord of the Flies: after the chaos and darkness of the abandoned children (parts) struggling to survive, the adult rescuer (Self) shows up and they all calm down and approach being children again.
Again, many responses are often necessary to depression, but one can think of these as preparing the terrain for the emergence and centralization of the Self in the psyche. But when there is overwhelming social and internal chaos, it is very difficult to focus on the Self, and one’s adult self is typically “blended” (the IFS term) with one of the Protectors and/or Exiles, who are struggling so hard to survive that they do not have time or trust to look up. By addressing the overwhelm (by shoring up the “window of tolerance” through the things like increased social contact, thought challenges, etc.), the Protectors become less inflamed because they feel less threat, such that resources are freed to look at the deeper needs. Sometimes this can happen quickly, especially in a therapeutic session; but more often it takes time to address the Protector’s fears. Regardless of pacing, the Self is utterly necessary for a full healing (rather than mere symptom management) of depression and for a reorganization of the psyche such that Self becomes the center of our identification, progressively dissolving the vulnerability to endless rounds of depression.
