ADHD, Protectors, and Self-Energy: An IFS Q&A
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In this live Q&A episode of Going Inside, John Clarke answers some of the most common questions therapists have about Internal Family Systems, including how to recognize true Self-energy, work with protectors, and navigate diagnoses like ADHD from an IFS perspective. Along the way, he shares why slowing down, honoring hesitation, and building trust with the system are often the keys to deeper healing.
Inside this Conversation:
How can you tell the difference between a protector that needs more time and one that's simply blocking the work?
What does true Self-energy actually look and feel like?
How does IFS make sense of diagnoses like ADHD?
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Transcript
John Clarke: [00:00:00] If you feel like you're pushing in this work, you're doing it wrong. If you feel like you're pushing in this work, you're probably bypassing protectors or at least at real risk of doing so
Going Inside is a podcast on a mission to help people heal from trauma and reconnect with their authentic self. Join me, trauma therapist John Clarke, for guest interviews, real-life therapy sessions, and soothing guided meditations. Whether you're navigating your own trauma, helping others heal from trauma, or simply yearning for a deeper understanding of yourself, Going Inside is your companion on the path to healing and self-discovery.
Download free guided meditations and apply to work with me one-on-one at johnclarketherapy.com. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in
Hey, everyone. Welcome back. My name is John Clarke. I'm a licensed trauma therapist. I'm a group practice owner of the practice Calm Again Counseling. It's a teaching practice in San Francisco, and I am a consultant and supervisor for clinicians. Um, I run a weekly [00:01:00] consult group called Pathways to Self. If you're interested in being part of that group, you can go to johnclarketherapy.com/pathways.
If you like what you're hearing in this, uh, free Q&A, you would really love the closer work with me in my community. So, um, there you have it. I'm gonna dive right into the questions that were pre-submitted, but if you're here live and you wanna ask questions, just put them in the chat, and I'll pull them up one by one.
First question is from Jenny. Jenny says, "Every person is unique, but do you see common patterns in how many parts people tend to discover or how long integration typically takes in IFS?" Yes. In my experience, um, and the IFS answer is that we have, uh, 20 or 30 parts, and we're born with all the parts we'll ever have.
However, in my experience, I generally find that we tend to just work with kind of the key players of [00:02:00] someone's system. That tends to be anywhere between, uh, I would say four to 10 parts, depending on the person's background. When you have more trauma in their system, you tend to have more parts that have been polarized and therefore more work to do.
And then how long integration typically takes in IFS, again, depending on their background, anywhere from, uh,
a year to two years. Yeah, call it an average of 18 months if you wanna, you know, put a, put a number on it.
Jenny L says: When working with teens, how do you approach situations where parents want to fix a child's behavior or discover self-harming through something like a diary? Okay, this comes up a lot. We see a lot of teenagers at my group practice in San Francisco at, at Calm Again Counseling. Um, yes, parents are gonna bring their kid to therapy because they want you, the therapist, to fix them.
It's essential that in your expectation setting early on in working with a teen and their family, that you let them know, number [00:03:00] one, I'm not here to fix anyone because I don't believe anyone is broken. Number two, uh, all child and teen work is family work, so if I'm gonna work with your kid, then I require family involvement.
What I tend to do is say, "I'm gonna see your kid for the first 30 minutes, and then during the, the, the second half of the session, I'm gonna have one or both parents come in, and we're gonna talk to you about what happened in session today and how things went, and I'm gonna help be a bridge between the kid and the parents."
So ideally, I'm helping the kids say what they need to say to their parents and helping the kid tell the parents about, um, what happened in session and what they're working on and whatnot. Um, same thing if someone has discovered self-harm through something like a diary, then I wanna be a bridge for that conversation as well.
If I have a good trusting relationship with the kid, you know, I wanna help them [00:04:00] find a way to disclose that to their parents or to talk through the safety plan that we've created, uh, with their parents, et cetera. So I, I never want the family to kind of learn to just rely on me. I really wanna be that, that bridge.
Yeah. But this happens a lot that, yeah, k- the parents just wanna drop their kid off. So it's all about contracting, and if you're in Pathways to Self, you'll hear me talk about contracting a lot. There's three levels of contracting. The first is what the work is about. The second is what the session is about.
The third is what the moment is about and how you wanna be helped in this moment, and do you consent to all three? The work has to have a lot of alignment at all times, and we have to constantly be realigning the work
Corey says, "How do you help clients cultivate self-energy when parts step back but self doesn't emerge?
And how do you work with inner critics that masquerade as a client's spiritual or moral self?" [00:05:00] Okay, these are interesting. You guys are putting me through my paces today. Okay, how do you help clients cultivate self-energy when parts step back but self doesn't emerge? Hmm. Well, my first thought would be not all parts have stepped back, right?
So maybe it seems like some parts have unblended, and so self should emerge more, but there are more parts here or there are self-like parts that are involved. That would be my first instinct. My second instinct would be I would work with the client more on just conversationally what self-energy is and their experience of it, their unique experience of it.
What does it feel like in your body and inside when you're more in self-energy? How do you connect with that? Is it a, is it a sensation? [00:06:00] Is it, uh, an image? Are there proxies you can use to access self-energy, like thinking of the love you have for your kids or your pets or for this, uh, walking path that you love to be on or whatever it might be?
How do you work with inner critics that masquerade as a client's spiritual or moral self? Well, I, I first of all just hold all the time that all parts are good and they're doing what they believe to be the best thing they can do for the system. So there's some sort of part in here that's gotten involved and thinks, um, what I'm doing could be good.
I'm gonna do a little unblending or checking for blendedness here to see, um, to what degree, uh, is this client fully blended with this part, or to what degree do we have some, some actual genuine self-energy here? And then, you know, if you can [00:07:00] befriend this self-like part, then you can at some point ask it to unblend so that you can continue the work.
Or it just might naturally unblend if it feels like it has been seen and heard and understood and, and witnessed. So all, all parts need our help and all parts need love
Okay. Jenny Lee says, "Can you talk about diagnoses in IFS? For instance, someone-- with someone who has ADHD, is there an ADHD part or are parts reacting to the ADHD?" Yeah, we, so we talked about this t- a little bit in Pathways today, and I'm gonna give you just my answer, my understanding of it all, my, my theory of it all.
Diagnoses in IFS, you know, IFS is not super keen on diagnoses, and IFS is inherently a non-pathologizing model. Now, for someone who has ADHD, is there an ADHD part? [00:08:00] I don't believe there's, like, a part just bouncing around being the ADHD part, and I don't believe the other parts are, like, reacting to the ADHD.
So if there's a true biological chemical difference in my brain as someone with severe ADHD compared to someone who doesn't have ADHD, or if you could see my ADHD, so to speak, on a brain scan, you know, does that have to do with parts or is that more just part of the fabric of who I am, the same way that I have, uh, brown eyes and dark hair?
I think it's more of that, right? I think in my experiences that my brain just works differently, right? It's like for people on the spectrum, you know. Like, is autism a part? No, I don't think so, right? It's part of their DNA. It's part of who they are. So if we say, "Okay, ADHD is, is real and is a way that our brain works differently," then it's more of a brain thing than a [00:09:00] psyche thing.
Again, these are just one guy's thoughts You know, one guy with severe ADHD. What's important is that you are discerning about diagnosis and you help your clients decide to what degree do I want to accept or deny this diagnosis that's been given to me? And how did one arrive to that diagnosis? Was it their primary physician said, "You have ADHD, so here's some Strattera"?
Or did they have a two-day battery with a neuropsychologist that very thoughtfully and carefully arrived at that diagnosis through a series of empirically validated assessments?
Okay. And someone from Los Angeles says, "I understand the concept of unblending, but in the moment I often can't tell if my client is actually in self or if another part has just taken over. What are some signs you look for?" Well, self is inherently calm, so I look for calmness If I'm staring at [00:10:00] the client, does the client look calm or do they look keyed up or a bit of both?
I'm looking at muscle tone and I'm looking at the breath. I'm watching the chest rise and fall and noticing is there a good bit of regulation here? And then I'm checking in with my system and just sensing into my system and my intuition and going, as I'm connected with my self-energy, am I noticing and experiencing or even benefiting from their self-energy?
What's the vibe like Yeah. And then of course, you could also just ask their degree of blendedness and how they know Okay, next question. George, or more likely Jorge, says, "I've been trained in EMDR and somatic work alongside IFS. [00:11:00] How do you decide when to stay with the parts and when to bring in another modality?"
That's a great, great question and just such a hard one to answer because the reality is I also work eclectively and integratively, and so sometimes if the client has asked for it, I will do pure IFS or pure EMDR. But more likely than not, I'm naturally working from an integrative standpoint, and that's just how I'm doing it.
That's how I like to kind of flow. That's also just the kind of therapist I am, is I like to flow and I like to riff, and I like to just follow the session and follow my own instincts. I find that that's where I'm doing my best work. Again, the whole thing is improv, and so I think of it more like jazz than like a meeting with an agenda
All that matters is that the client is on board and they're benefiting from what you're doing, right? So if we did some integrative work today or some somatic IFS, "Hey, how was that for you to do that [00:12:00] somatic IFS? How was it for you to integrate the body? Is that feeling okay or do you want a different approach?"
So again, it's, it's all about contracting. I can't stress it enough. Maddie says, "How do you know when a protector genuinely isn't ready to step back versus when another part of the client is trying to rush the process?" Well, if you have a sense that there's a part trying to rush the process, then you're probably right, so you might as well slow down.
You're never gonna do harm by slowing down. You're never gonna hurt things by just slowing down. So when in doubt, I would encourage you to slow down, go slower.
Yeah. And then I guess the other answer would be just ask, right? How do you know when a protector genuinely isn't ready to step back? Like, just ask and make sure that you're connected to the part that you think you're connected to. And if you are, and you're in enough self-energy, the client's in enough self-energy, and you [00:13:00] ask the part, typically the part will tell you the truth.
The Dick Schwartz answer is that parts don't lie. Do with that what you will
Uh, Mark says, "What helps you distinguish between a protector that's blocking access to an exile and a protector that's accurately sensing the system isn't ready for the deeper work yet?" Well, they're kind of one and the same, right? Because the protector would only block the work if it felt that the system isn't ready for deeper work yet.
And all that means is that the protector doesn't yet fully trust self and/or doesn't fully trust the therapist. So they're, they're again kind of one and the same. I just honor all hesitance, right? And I've eliminated the word resistance from my vocabulary a long time ago. So if and when parts are hesitant, I honor that and get to know that, and then we just work with the hesitance until further notice, and we just don't try to [00:14:00] push.
If you feel like you're pushing in this work, you're doing it wrong. If you feel like you're pushing in this work, you're probably bypassing protectors or at least at real risk of doing so. Yeah. Wow, I just answered all those questions in 14 minutes. I think I deserve a cookie or something. Uh, someone said recently on a podcast that w- the most violent word in the English language is not cookie, but deserve.
Think about that. Deserve. That someone may be inherently more or less deserving of something or deserving of love Hmm, interesting. Okay. My friend Jenny says, "Have you seen IFS work translate well to a group setting?" Definitely, and I've done it in a group setting. We just did our digital detox group for therapists a while back.
That was [00:15:00] basically group IFS. It works very well in a group setting. If you wanna know the guy for this, it's Chris Burris. He's the guy for, you know, basically teaches what he calls healing circles for IFS, and he wrote a book on it. If you wanna know basically what it's about, it's about the facilitator kind of doing IFS work with someone in the group setting and then having people notice their resonance to that work happening and comment on it, so connecting through that.
But yeah, you can absolutely do it in, um, in, in a group. Works really well. You just wanna have some experience or tr- extra training with group work because it can be very sensitive and, you know, managing just one client in the room is one thing. Managing two, like if you do couples work, is another thing.
Managing like seven or eight and keeping all those people safe is, um, is, is harder. It's a lot of people [00:16:00] in the room. You have to tend to all those people in the room. So I would recommend if you are doing a group, especially for the first time, that you have a co-facilitator. In a perfect world, you would also have a co-facilitator of, of like the opposite sex If it's like a, if it's a co-ed group, something to think about Okay.
ChrisIsAlive says, "Solid insight." Thank you. I think that warrants a second cookie, in my opinion
Like I said, um, if you're interested in this type of work or working with me in a capacity that's like this, but richer and more personal, then joining Pathways to Self is your next step. In Pathways, we have an online community. It's like a Facebook group, but it's not on Facebook. It's on a private platform.
But then more importantly, we have our weekly consult group, where every week, uh, there was nine people there today, where people come and sign up for a hot seat, where they can bring a [00:17:00] case to me, or we'll do a demo. We also did a role play today where someone role-played as if they are their client, and then I did the therapy and worked with them, and then we all debrief it and kinda deconstruct what happened.
So I teach a lot of theory. I teach a lot of technique. It's not just IFS. It's everything from IFS to, um, to SE to EMDR to psychodynamics to Gestalt therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, mindfulness. Um, it's really, um, it's really a group about being a better therapist and being an effective, uh, trauma therapist.
So if you're interested in that program, you can always join at any time, and you can always leave at any time. Not that I want you to. At johnclarketherapy.com/pathways. That's johnclarketherapy.com/pathways. If you are a person in California and you need therapy, you can always check out my group practice, which is calmagaincounseling.com.
It's [00:18:00] me and a group of clinicians that I oversee for the board. It's a, it's a teaching practice where we're focused on trauma work, IFS, EMDR, SE, et cetera. So, um, those are some insights for now. Thanks to our sponsor, Jane. We really appreciate Jane being a sponsor. If you are looking for an EHR, Jane is, uh, a great place to look.
Go to jane.app, and, uh, you can book a, a demo. We'll have links in the description. So thanks for doing this. I'll do this again next week. If you wanna submit questions ahead of time, you'll get an email if you're on my email list, um, or you can show up live, same time, same place, and we'll, we'll do it again.
So thanks everyone for your questions. I'll see you in the next one. Take care. Bye-bye
Thanks for listening to another episode of Going Inside. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching and share your favorite episode with a friend. You can follow me on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok at johnclarketherapy and [00:19:00] apply to work with me one-on-one at johnclarketherapy.com.
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