Co-authored by Martha Sweezy and Roberta Omin
Imagine you are a therapy client arriving for a session. You watch your therapist walk across the room with a limp. He seems to be in pain; he looks tired and preoccupied. Part of you feels concerned and wants to ask if he’s okay. Another part admonishes internally, “It’s none of your business! That’s how it goes in therapy.”
Now imagine being the therapist. Your limp is a big tell. You’re not sleeping well, you feel exhausted, and it’s no wonder – you just got a troubling diagnosis. You are scared, and when you woke up this morning, you felt overwhelmed. You are aware of being deeply vulnerable. No part of you wants to share this information with clients. As you sit down, you hear some inner reassurance, “Don’t worry. We don’t have to talk about it.”
A Therapeutic Dilemma
Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) maintains that the mind — the arena of subjective experience — is peopled with parts, or subjectively experienced individuals of all ages who live in an inner community but, just like people, are motivated by different perspectives and concerns. In IFS therapy, we get curious and question the parts who show up. Each one has a backstory. Take Sabra, the client in this example.
Her parts are in an uproar:
- What if this is serious? What will I do if he’s really sick? And I can’t even ask him.
- I’ve been noticing little changes, but this is clearer today.
- Look, he’ll tell you if he thinks it’s important. Trust him!
- Yeah right! Whenever anyone gets sick, I’m the last one to know. Secrets are always kept from me.
- Why does this keep happening to me? As usual, I’m always treated like the baby.
- Let’s get a new therapist.
- If we can’t trust Daniel to be honest, who can we trust?
- Why should we trust anyone?
And so on. Meanwhile, the therapist, Daniel, is also hearing from many parts:
- Sabra is noticing my walk. I thought I could keep it hidden. What do I do now if she asks me about it?
- I can’t bear to talk about what is really happening to me right now. I’m so vulnerable. I’m terrified and overwhelmed.
- You buck up and do your job.
- And besides, this is strictly private. You don’t owe your clients explanations about your health, and you have to maintain professional boundaries.
- Right, it’s not her job to take care of me.
- Be realistic! This isn’t going to go away. We don’t even know if you’ll be able to go on working. Everyone’s going to know at some point.
- Oh, so you’re ready to talk about this?
- Look, just take care of yourself like you always do. You’ll find a way to handle this.
While going through the ritual beginning of a therapy session, Sabra and Daniel are experiencing parallel inner hubbubs. Over the next few weeks, as they don’t talk about it and he remains visibly symptomatic, the hubbubs grow louder. The elephant is in the room. How does this affect therapy? Everything changes. Rather than exploring, they both inhibit, each for their own reason. Without conscious intention, they call their protective parts to the battlements and send their vulnerable parts to the castle depths.
Who Are These Vulnerable Parts?
Sabra’s vulnerable parts were infantilized, uncherished, unsafe, and over-and-under-protected from the behaviors of authority figures who did one thing and said another.
Daniel’s vulnerable parts don’t want to be exposed. They feel inadequate and shamed, particularly compared to smarter, more valued people at home and in school.
Do Therapists Need Privacy? Do Clients Need to Know?
Yes.
If the therapist wants privacy but believes the client needs to know, whose needs come first?
When it gets complicated, the therapist needs a therapist — and supervision — to sort it out. Though painful, this process is their opportunity to engage in what IFS calls a U-turn — a pivot to their inner world, their vulnerable parts, and seminal experiences of early shaming. The best guide through the Minotaur’s maze is the one who has already gone through it — if they’ve paid kind attention to the experience their parts had in the maze.
Sorting the Personal and Professional
Therapists are taught to be cautious about sharing personal information with clients for good reason. Therapists also prefer to keep what is personal out of their professional realm. It’s the job of therapists to model good boundaries. We can’t mean “yes” or “no” without clear boundaries. A genuine “yes” and a genuine “no” are essential relational tools. At the same time, life requires flexibility. Generalized rules can’t cover every contingency.
Boundaries Essential Reads
When an illness or accident disrupts our personal lives, it will likely affect our professional lives. Since therapy is a “relationship” profession, the illness of the therapist puts self-disclosure on the table, sometimes of necessity (due to medical treatment, absence, abrupt cancellations, or forced retirement), and sometimes because the illness is noticeable.
How we handle that disclosure can have a profound impact on the therapeutic relationship, especially when it touches on a client’s traumatic past or current problem. Sabra’s mother, for example, died of cancer when she was 12 years old. Beyond informing the client, disclosure is often a therapeutic opportunity, a potential for a corrective relational experience, and a chance to help the client with their fear of loss and abandonment, inhibited grief, and penchant for self-sacrifice.
Do the Right Thing
In IFS, we build relationships on multiple levels at once, both inside and out. Therapy is a co-creation, carefully nourished and tended by relational attunement. The goal of IFS therapy is to come to parts from the zoomed-out perspective of the Self, the “I” in all of us that’s characterized by compassion, courage, curiosity, and love, among many other fine qualities. When therapist and client can both access these resources, they find their way to doing the right thing.
