After several years of IFS trainings, including some “masterclass” learnings with seasoned experts, I’m surprised that I have not heard more emphasis on what is an under-appreciated aspect of the IFS process: the Update.

This step, which has been overlooked by several other therapists I’ve worked with, seems to me to not only be an essential aspect of this method, but deeply healing in an of itself. And if it is missed, it can cripple and prevent any depth of healing from happening.

I suspect that if you understand it fully, you would never miss an opportunity to do an update again, and both you and your clients would be grateful for it.  I’m assuming in this article that those reading this have already a basic understanding of the IFS process.  So in this short article I’m just going to talk about what the Update is, in the context of Internal Family Systems therapy, and hope that we can bring it into focus for everyone’s benefit.

In IFS the update is something that may or may not be required in the path that is traveled from meeting a part, all the way through to the healing of unburdening.  So because it is not part of the essential “6 F’s” or the unburdening of the Exile, it can be glossed over or missed.  Within the process, the Update actually would happen somewhere in Step 4:  Feel Towards.

In this step, we have already suspected that there is at least a bit of unblending of the part from the Self, so we check now basically two things:  is there actually some unblending/ separation, which we will deduce from a relationship from one thing to the other; and if so, then what is the quality of that relationship: is it part to part, or Self to part?

The classic question that we ask in Step 4 is:  How do you feel towards this part?  For example, let’s say we are working with a client and we are helping them to look at an Anxious part of themselves.  Having done the first 3 steps of IFS:  Find, Focus, Flesh out, we are ready now to start relating to this part as an objective entity.  We ask, How do you feel towards this part? And let’s assume for this example that the client reports back some quality that suggests Self energy (usually something like curiosity, care, or compassion).  As the facilitator or therapist, this is a great!  Finding Self energy, and a relational stance towards an unblended part is a major chunk of the process, and something that is not at all easy or fast with some people.  So often we get this hint of Self energy towards a Part and feel like it is a major green light. But it might not be!

Before you rush on to suggesting questions that the Self would ask the Part – which is the natural progression to the process – there is something very important that I think should be very much emphasized as part of the core process of IFS.  Once we have asked the question “how do you feel towards this part?” then the essential next question ought to be “ok, and how does the part feel towards you?”

I really don’t know why this is not considered a fundamental question in IFS.  To be fair, for some trainers, it is.  But in the major texts and Level 1 teachings, it is not!  Yikes!  This is essential and here is why:  if we do not ask this question, we fail to measure to what degree (if at all) the part is seeing Self.

Why is that crucial?  Because no matter how purely and completely you are meeting the part from Self Energy, none of the proceeding dialogue with the manager or protector or exile will be truly connected to the source of healing if the part itself is not perceiving that it is being met from Self.

Think of it like this: a loving, parental adult walks into a room and notices a hurt child sitting in the corner.  The adult, with profound compassion and care, lets the child know it is present and open to helping it.  But the child, in its hurt and confusion, looks up at this adult and sees only the smiling mask of his or her abuser.  What happens then?  No matter how loving and kind the adult then proceeds to act, it may only be interpreted negatively.

How you meet your parts is just one half of the story.  The other half is how the part meets you.  After establishing Self energy towards the part, we must check the Part to Self relationship.  How does the part feel towards you? Or, here are some other question you can ask that will gauge this dynamic:

• How does this part feel towards you?
• How would this part describe you?
• What age does this part think that you are?
• Does this part feel that you are coming from a loving energy?
• Do you have a sense that this part is seeing your true Self?
• Ask this part / child if it is seeing your Self, or if it is seeing another Part?

From these types of questions, we should be able to get a sense of how the part is seeing whatever it is that is meeting it.  Sometimes this reveals that the person is not actually meeting the part from Self energy, so there is some further unblending that needs to be done.  But if we are sure we are meeting the part from Self, but it is seeing us as fearsome or incompetent, it could be that the part needs to get an essential update.

This is very often the case, especially early on in therapy, when parts are meeting Self energy for – possibly – the first time in life.  It is usually the case that parts are stuck in the age/ time in which they were created.  And so they perceive the system as such.  Protective parts that were born out of difficult events at age 12, will often see Self energy as also aged 12.  Or, it might perceive Self energy to look like their parents looked when they were 12.  All of this needs to be clarified.  And this is what we do in the Update.

One thing I’ll mention though, is that if the part sees Self as loving, but suggests that it “does not trust” the Self – this is not necessarily suggesting that it does not see true Self energy.  It very well may.  However, just as we cannot expect a child to instantly trust even the most wonderful adult or parent, we should not expect or demand that parts trust us instantly.  We may be meeting a part from pure Self energy, and the part may see that fairly well, but it might just take a couple meetings before that part can really trust that this is not going to be yet another loving adult that, well intentioned as they may have been, also ended up leaving them or abandoning them when they needed it most.  Trust, as always, with all of us, needs to be earned.

It is up to you to figure out whether this is a healthy lack of trust, or a mistrust born of fear and confusion.  I would suggest that you do some updating in either case.

So if the part does not see Self clearly, the update itself can be a fairly easy step.  The update is just about taking time to let Self fully introduce and show the Part who and what it really is.  It is an invitation to the part to see more clearly what Self is.  Just like if we were meeting a person and they mistook us for someone else at first, we are really just taking some time to introduce our Self.

So: if the part is not seeing Self clearly, we give the part an update. We say to the part, ok, take a closer look at my energy, my heart.  Notice that I am such and such an age (an adult, or even timeless).  Notice that I have no agenda.  We show the part aspects of the current life – our partners, our jobs, the current year, our current and actual relationship to our parents perhaps.  Sometimes showing our parts our achievements, age, children, bank accounts – this can be utterly mind blowing in the best possible way for these parts.

That is the essence of the update.

And if you do an update and the part is shocked, surprised, and a bit destabilized:  that is AWESOME.  I love when that happens.  It is actually a very, very good sign!  It means that the part is seeing something for the first time.  And anything new in this direction is healing!

You might need to take a breather after this.  Sometimes, this may need a long pause, or even the end of the IFS session. Sometimes the part has further questions about Self, or about the life that has transpired between its age, and the current time.  It may have missed that whole chunk of life, still assuming that the system is, essentially, 12 years old (or whatever age it is fixed in).

One thing to mention before we talk about why this update is so essential.  I have been asked:  What if we are doing Direct Access?  That means, what if it is the clinician/ friend/ counsellor that is speaking to the part, rather than the person using Insight to talk to their own parts?  In this case, an update can still be viable, but it would have some variation.

In DA, it means for example, that I would be talking to your part directly, since you could not easily unblend from it.  As I go through the same steps of IFS, I must always be asking myself, silently, how do I feel towards this part?  Assuming that I’m anchored in Self, then I would also go ahead and check how that part is perceiving Me.  Do they perceive that I am coming from Self energy?  Do they perceive me as coming from a caring place where I have no agenda or pressure?  If not, this is where a sort of update can happen:  we introduce ourselves (meaning we introduce our Self) in a way that might help the part see more clearly where we are coming from.

Consider that in DA, we are not introducing our personal self – ideally we are introducing the part to impersonal Self energy.

This is certainly less easy and less clear than an Insight-based update.  However it is still useful.  For one thing, it models for the system what it is like to meet and be met by Self energy, which can assist in moving the person towards better unblending.  This part may never have consciously met Self energy before, since it could ostensibly have just been projecting onto every person another projection of their own beliefs.  Secondly, this sort of DA update is useful because if we are to move further with the dialogue with this part, it will be hugely important that it is seeing the therapist as a source of true love and understanding.  Parts want to be met by true openness – not by a therapist, not by a coach or a teacher and maybe not even by any version of a parent that it has known.  We all want to be met by unconditional love.  Always.  That’s a truth in life, and an axiom of IFS.

Which brings us to greater clarity on why the update is so essential, especially when done internally, via insight, with a client’s own parts and Self.  As I suggested, the ‘Part to Self’ questions that I listed above will reveal the way a part sees whoever is meeting it. And this will flush out and reveal if the part is either not being met by Self energy, or just not seeing that Self energy.  Either way, the clarification of the update ensures that we are meeting the part with as much clarity as possible.  So one of the big benefits here is also that it can reveal Self-Like parts.  In other words, the person may seem to be meeting the part from Self, but upon investigation, we notice that the part can tell that it is not actually being met by Self energy.  Is it projecting and not seeing the Self that is there?  Or is it seeing accurately that it is actually being met by a Self-Like part that has an agenda, contains pressure for it to heal or change, or is an agreeable/ people pleasing part that will go along with any suggestion from the therapist, but actually is not authentically connected?  If we are paying attention, this can and should be revealed in this stage.

If we rush through this step #4, and the part is not being met by Self, or doesn’t really know it is being met by Self, then it is unlikely that it will feel comfortable giving us accurate information.  Or, if it gives us good information, it then may not permit contact with the exile.  Or, if it does permit contact with the exile, then exile will either not feel comfortable opening up, or be simply unable to heal. So you may be able to tell now how very important this is.

And that is by far the most important reason for all of this.  All of this is about making sure that the part is consciously being met by Self energy.  If we get to the exile and that is not the case, the healing will be greatly limited.  In the IFS community it is common knowledge that we often seem to have to come back to do several rounds of healing on a single part, with a single burden.  We help it, we help unburden, only to find out that again and again, it seems to be back.

Now, there can be many legitimate reasons for this, and most commonly I would suggest that healing is happening each time, but we are working on different facets of the burden, and it could be that an exile has many duplicates, and many dimensions of the burden it carries.  For example, we may help a 5-year-old part unburden a feeling of guilt, and it feels much better.  But the next week, we seem to arrive at the same 5-year-old part, with what appears to be the same guilt again.  Likely they are actually not the same thing, but there are minor differences and we might have to do this with several layers of this hurt.

However, it could also be that the healing is only happening superficially, or not actually happening at all, because the exile is not actually being met by real Self energy, and the person is just going through the motions due to our suggestion, or based on what the parts “know should happen”.  Or if it is getting met by a Self-like part, it is almost like the energy is just not strong enough to go all the way.

All of this is clarified by the further clarification of the Part to Self perception, and the correction of this via the Update.

There can be many theories to this question of when and why healing does not really happen, even when it seems like it has.  But one thing to emphasize is that, in both my internal personal experience, and in my work with others – when someone has plugged into deep, true Self energy, and the protectors and the exiles can actually recognize that?  Almost miraculous-level healing can happen.

I adore experiencing this in myself, and one of my favourite things in all of life is being present to watch and facilitate this happening in another.

Healing the world, one atom at a time.

 

Questions?  Comments?  Think I’m missing something?  I’d love to know.

Find me on Instagram @wisepathcounselling

 

And just to note: this article was NOT written by an AI.  🙂