Why Your IFS Sessions Don't Look Like Demos (And Why That's Okay)

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:01]All right. So, Robin, the [clears throat] question is, do your sessions with your clients, with your regular clients, do they look like the demos that we um see on YouTube and out there?

[00:00:17]>> Definitely not. Um, and this was a big learning curve for me because when I first learned IFS and I was just starting to apply the model, I thought my sessions were supposed to look like the demos that I had been seeing, which is find a target part, get the protectors to soften back, get to know the protector, visit with the exile, unbburden the exile, and integrate. So it was very very um there was a lot of pressure in my own system my part saying like this is what IFS is supposed to be and how it's supposed to look and then um in my level one training with Chris Baris he named something that really changed a lot. So Chris Perez talked about how there are two important ways of working in IFS. The first way is typically what we see in a demo and that's vertical. We meet the target part. We get to know the target part. It leads us to an exile. we witness the exile. And then there is a equally important second way of working with an IFS which is horizontal.

[00:01:20]And this is a lot more parts mapping and a lot more getting to know many many parts. And what I have experienced is that most of our clients start in this horizontal plane where we're listening and getting to know many parts at the same time.

[00:01:38]Um, and the second piece of the teaching that was so helpful was that when we move towards this vertical, when we're visiting with a target part and getting to know it and finding the exile, it takes a lot of self- energy already in the room to start in that vertical one-on-one getting to know a part. Self- energy to part, right?

[00:02:01]That's the condition of insight. And Chris has also named that it takes a lot of self- energy for someone to raise their hand and say, "Yes, please. I'd like to be the subject of a demo. I'd like to be recorded for a demo."

[00:02:18]Uh Chris named this as ready to heal.

[00:02:20]Like these posts are ready to heal.

[00:02:21]They'll prime. They've done so much work already. There's so much self- energy in the room. They get started and it just kind of unfolds in this really easy way.

[00:02:30]Um, so often when I teach this, I ask students, I'm like, "If you don't believe me, take a moment and think about the client you feel like you're struggling with the most right now." Like the client you feel most stuck with, the one you might consult on.

[00:02:44]And then ask yourself, what would it take for you to convince this client, namely their parts, to raise their hand and be recorded for a demo for teaching purposes?

[00:02:56]And of course, everyone laughs because they know that they can't do that because their protectors don't yet feel enough self- energy, enough safety.

[00:03:06]So, there you go.

[00:03:08]>> Mhm.

[00:03:09]>> What about you, Gavo? Your uh sessions look like demos.

[00:03:14]>> So much comes up for me around this.

[00:03:16]Well, I definitely have those sessions that I'm like, "Oh my god, I wish I had recorded this because this would have been a great demo, right?" But they are I mean it's not what happens all the time every day because when we are looking at a process right there is the therapeutic relationship that's happening here. Um, and usually in demos we are really highlighting insight.

[00:03:39]And so insight happens in a specific way, but with my clients a lot of the time I'm having to do a lot of implicit direct access.

[00:03:48]And that means like working on the relationship and then just like stopping and saying, "Hey, how are we doing here?" Right? And then just going into that and going into whatever parts are up around that. Um, and [clears throat] when I took Stepping Stones at the time, we didn't really practice with exiles. And so I didn't I I didn't get to do an unburning in my stepping stones training. Uh, but I remember that like a couple of weeks later, I did have an opportunity to do an unburning with one of my clients because like I had that idea, right? I had seen the demo.

[00:04:23]So like like that was like let me get to that. And so I got to it and so I was really excited about it and then I was anxious all week waiting for the next week to make sure that it had worked.

[00:04:33]But then okay so unburdenings they start happening more often for me. But then I get to these clients and there were some clients that I had been working for months and those sessions that we see in the demos they they were not happening with those clients, right? And so at some point the switch that um happened for me was going like okay we've been doing some witnessing so let's try to do some unburdening here like even if it's partial and let's see how that goes and actually it's been really helpful for clients that like to the extent that we have uh witness something I make the invitation right I say to the client client check with the part right we're not finished with this But see if it feels ready to let go of some of it even if it's like half of a percent.

[00:05:26]And sometimes they get a no sometimes it's like no come back witness some more and sometimes they get a yes and then shifts happen because we are doing partial and burdens. Um I think one thing that we have learned in the in the in the exile practice that we do for our module three of stepping stones and module four stepping deeper is that it doesn't matter how like even if it feels complete the unburdening we can still go back to that exile and even go deeper with the witnessing and go deeper with the unburdening. So it's not binary really the unburdening right that it's like oh it's unburdened or it's not unburdened. It's like we can unburden to deeper levels. Um yeah. So um so I think that uh demos are great because they set like this is what the full framework looks like when it's like when all the stars are aligned.

[00:06:21]But, you know, like all the people here, like my friends and my family, they love my homemade mayonnaise and I like I have a recipe and I like it it comes out great a lot of the time, but it doesn't come out like brilliant all the time, right? And this is like me making mayonnaise. When we are dealing with humans that have agency and that we want to have more and more agency with us, the process actually doesn't look as linear all the time because like we are human beings, right? We are like we require different things at different times and in a session where a client comes and they're like it's fresh grief.

[00:06:59]It's not going to look like that. I'm just going to sit with them.

[00:07:03]Um, and any clients that come in and they're not ready to go inside yet, it's going to look different.

[00:07:09]>> It's such a helpful, um, it just feels in my system as like such an expansive, softer, um, approach for my parts that worked really, really hard to get it right, to hit all the marks, to do whatever they could to align the stars, and this feels uh, a lot softer, a lot more expansive.

[00:07:31]>> Yeah. The last thing I want to say around this is what I have actually found is that the things that in the beginning when I had less experience with FS that I took to mean that I was doing something wrong in the process that I was making a mistake actually I was bumping into the most important moments of the session that like something really important was coming up and meeting those moments in the way that they are the way that they show up which means like me not knowing what's going to happen next but just being curious about it really has allowed uh a for a lot more healing than my manager having this idea of this is how I should do the session and pushing for that idealized version of what ifs is supposed to be >> um as you were naming that what came to mind was this moment where I felt like my IFS really deepened was a moment that happens for me in every session where I am actually completely lost.

[00:08:40]I feel totally in the dark. I have no idea where we're going, where we're supposed to go, what's going to happen next. And before this used to stir my parts. My managers would get so activated of trying to figure it out and trying harder to map. And everything changed the moment I felt calm in the face of completely not knowing.

[00:09:02]And uh this has come become like a little bit of lore for students when I do a demo. Now I promise them that I will highlight in my notes that moment where I felt completely lost. And in the face of feeling lost, of course, there was enough self- energy. That's the switch. There was a calm. There was a there's just an okayess. Like there was a trust. There's like I know we'll get where we're going. I leave with curiosity. Whatever happens next, but there's this feeling of okayness in the face of being lost.

[00:09:30]>> Yeah. I I try to summarize it to my students by saying, you know, really when you're lost, there's only a couple of things that could be happening, right? Either there's a protector that has a concern and you need to find out what the concern is or there's a part sharing something that wants to be witnessed. So just ask yourself which which is it like >> or witnessing [laughter] Uh yeah, and I know you have a list of things. I [laughter] don't want to like I don't want to throw you under the bus here, but >> Okay. So, how I actually Okay. How I actually got through that moment was when I noticed I tracked this moment. My parts would really react. So, I got to know these parts and I was like, "What are you worried about? What do you need from me?" So, I listened to these parts, but I really hated this feeling of being completely lost. And then I wrote this list of to say in IFS when you don't know what to say. [laughter] And it works every time. And so knowing that my parts had this this list, I knew I could say any one of these things and the process would continue to unfold.

[00:10:26]And each one of these things either either elicits more self- energy or another part, which is really very simple. We're either going to be with a part addressing a concern or witnessing or the client's going to feel more self- energy. And I certainly know what to do with that.

[00:10:43]>> My favorite one is, so what's your sense of what's happening here? [laughter] I certainly don't know.

[00:10:50]>> I certainly don't know. But [laughter] >> my favorite one on that list is from Dick Schwarz and it's to the client and what do you say to that? Which is so brilliant because either the client's in self- energy and they say the most amazing thing that I otherwise wouldn't have thought of or they're in a part like I don't know and we can be with that too.

[00:11:15]>> Great. So I hope that this conversation um helps folks relax a little bit around like what the idealized version of IFS is uh and really turn towards their own innate creativity and and really wisdom and how to be with their clients because what I have found is that in those moments where I was lost that was actually something me that knew >> how to be with that in that moment. And it wasn't really like sometimes of course we can develop new skills and that's helpful but a lot of the time it wasn't really about skill. It was really just about like trusting the process, trusting the client uh and trusting myself uh and and us that we would get through this um even if we felt lost in that moment.