John Reacts to IFS Demo with Ace
John Reacts to IFS Demo with Ace
In this episode of Going Inside, I share my real-time reflections and therapeutic insights while reviewing an IFS demo session with a volunteer named Ace. With careful attention to pace, consent, and safety, I break down the many micro-decisions made throughout the session — revealing the internal logic and nuance behind the IFS model. Whether you’re a therapist seeking to deepen your client work or someone curious about what an IFS session really feels like, this episode offers a rare and compassionate behind-the-scenes perspective.
Key Takeaways:
The micro-decisions therapists make throughout an IFS session
How to prioritize safety, pacing, and consent with protectors
Why humility and self-awareness are essential for good therapy
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Transcript:
John Clarke: [00:00:00] 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. Thanks for tuning in. In this, episode, I'm gonna be reacting to an IFS demo that I did, so a real therapy session that I did as part of this show and this, YouTube channel. And so we're just gonna jump right into it. I'm gonna play a bit and then I'm gonna react to it and I'm gonna try to break down, , my decision points, what I was thinking in that moment, what I'm thinking now , things I may do.
May have done differently, which is always humbling to, to do this, , and [00:01:00] see my own opportunities for growth. You could call them my own growth edges. , But I do this because I. I hope it's helpful to some, whether you're a client wondering how does IFS therapy work and what is the therapist, what is the role of the therapist?
What are they trying to do in session? Or if you're a practitioner wanting to , yeah, improve your own work and deepen your own work with clients. That's, that's why I do this. So that here goes nothing. But before I hit record here, but um, just, yeah, let me know anything that , you wanna start with.
Ace: Um, I want to start with, um, a feeling of helpless helplessness in my body.
It happens to me very often and holding me back and also want me to hide and I've been doing some guided IFS meditation already, so Yeah, already have some experience.
John Clarke: Yeah, good. So we can definitely work on the helplessness today if you [00:02:00] want. , Let me know if the helplessness feels alive right now, or if there, or if there's something else that feels even more alive or more pressing inside.
Alright, so right off the bat, there's a bunch of decision points here, and one is how do you start a session as a therapist? Better yet as an IFS therapist, um, one way is just ask the client, where do you wanna begin? What do you wanna explore today? Some therapists will have the client do some grounding and say, can we start with some breathing?
Ground yourself into your body, into the moment, whatever. Do some somatic stuff to kind of ground the session and ground the work to develop some self energy. Otherwise you just jump right in. I like to just jump right in and see if there's a clear trailhead, uh, which is what IFS calls them and that's kind of like the thing that they wanna work on or the thing that happened this week or the stressful conversation they had.
I. Someone this week, or whatever it might be. Um, in this case, you know [00:03:00] what I'm hearing from her is she wants to work on the helplessness, right? Or there's a part saying I wanna work on the helplessness, whether that's the part that holds the helplessness, which gives me some kind of exile energy, right?
Um, and makes me wonder if , helplessness equals. Some exile energy. On the other hand, if there's, uh, a productive part saying, you know, pushing that helpless part to the front of the line and saying, help this one. Or, Hey, this is a good opportunity. I'm getting a free session out of it. I also know that this, this client has been listening to the show for a while and probably has some hopes and expectations around what this might be.
So , when you hear that. Kind of exile energy. You want to explicitly invite the protective system or invite any concerns or just kind of make a general announcement inside. Are there any other parts that want us to work on something else, right? Or any other parts that maybe don't want us to work with the helpless energy?
So yeah, let's, let's see what [00:04:00] actually happened.
Ace: Not so much helplessness today, but I feel, uh, tension in my lower belly, in my naval.
John Clarke: So in interestingly when we asked, is there something else? Um, and is the helplessness alive right now? 'cause in my experience, we wanna work with what's most alive. And if it's not feeling alive right now, we wanna make it more alive and kind of activate that trailhead.
Um, and she says, okay, maybe the helplessness not so much, but there's this, this other thing, other thing I'm noticing. So , that kind of takes the lead and we, we go with that, right? And it's important to let the client system lead to follow their parts. Right? And. If I would've added something to this and something I've done in future demos is let the client know to let their parts know that nothing needs to happen today in this session, at least not for me or for this demo. We can also check about concerns about this being on YouTube, this being [00:05:00] recorded. Again, any parts that feel pressure to like go deep today, let them know that nothing needs to happen, at least not for me, John, uh, and see how that registers. With her system. So really building safety and consent. Let's, let's see where this goes.
Hey, if you're a therapist, I want to help you deepen your client work, help them get better results without burning yourself out. You can do all this by learning to harness the power of IFS. So I want to tell you, we've got a free IFS resource library that you can download. Now, this is full of resources like my Quickstart Guide to IFS, the full IFS protocol, a bunch of demos of me doing IFS.
With real people and, extra self-care practices for therapists. You can get all this for free in the link in the description, and I hope you enjoy.
Okay. So see what happens if you just focus in on that tension in your lower belly, and if you just shift into a posture of just [00:06:00] listening. Mm-hmm. You mentioned you work very somatically, you're also a breath worker. Um, you might practice kind of listening with your hands and just see if you can. I start to hear from many parts.
So in this alone, I'm already working through some of the Fs or at least offering some of the Fs find focus on flesh out. I. Even feel toward right? Can you take a, uh, a posture of listening and just listening to that tension in the belly and see what happens? Or see what you hear, right? See if that tension in the belly , talks back and has something to share with you, et cetera.
So giving her kind of a handful of options here with, with the questions to see perhaps which one lands might even just let them know that you're open to hearing from them in this moment.
Ace: Um, there's a tension tightness in my navel, and now can feel also in my stomach area and all the way [00:07:00] pulling from my heart. So this frontline here is tight and this body sensation happens to me very often, especially when I feel helpless. I want to really hide.
John Clarke: Yeah. So again, so much data coming forward right now. First of all, she has already told me, she told me before the session, she's, she is a breath worker. She experiences her parts very somatically, so I. I already know that. And I wanna use that, right? That's kind of like the language of her parts and the way that she experiences her parts is very somatically.
So that gives me a bit of a headstart in understanding that that's , part of her internal landscape and her internal. Language. Right. Um, and she's even noticing this sense of, when I experience that helplessness, there's, um, I feel the part wants to kind of collapse and collapse in, which is a very classic trauma response, right?
This kind of [00:08:00] collapsing. The opposite of that would be this kind of expanding right, expansive, open to life's experiences, open to what happens next , versus this, this collapse. And. In the somatic experiencing training, uh, that I, uh, am, am going through, we talk a lot about these different nervous system states, right, that are connected to parts that hold trauma.
Right. But you're seeing some of these nervous systems states play out right here in front of you. So again, I'm hoping to just work with whatever is available, right? And just to follow her system. And let's see how, how I did with that. Yeah. And yeah, so may maybe ask inside if there's any parts that want to hide right now.
You might also just acknowledge inside
and if you're not already, you might choose to do this in your native language. Whatever feels right. Alright, so I'm [00:09:00] gonna be pausing a lot. We might only watched three minutes of this, but. This just shows you how many choice points are happening throughout a session. We're only a couple minutes into this session.
I already have gone through many, many choice points, right? And so you notice that I kind of invite the protective system in explicitly, which is a good thing to do. So I'm happy that I, I did that right? Any parts have concerns about doing this session? Any parts have concerns about any parts? Feel the need to hide right now.
In this moment here and now as much as possible, this work should be in the here and now. This is something that is, I learned from Yalom, Irv Yalom. And so working in the here and now is essential. I wanna know what parts are here right now and how are they reacting to. Me into this session, into this, this very moment.
Right? And I'm also using her language, right, or the language of her parts. So [00:10:00] this language of like wanting to hide, I'm just asking are there any parts that wanna hide right now? Some therapists, and this drives me a little nuts, will. Do too much reflective listening when they're doing IFS and they'll kind of rephrase it in their own words and go, okay, so there's a, it sounds like there's a part that wants to kind of pull away, that wants to retreat, that wants to run away or whatever.
And this is kind of how we're taught to do therapy initially is listen, understand and validate. Right. So, and do reflective listening. So I'm reflecting, what I'm hearing is there's a part that wants to run away or whatever, right? And instead, I'm just checking, right? Are there new parts that feel like they wanna hide right now?
In other words, is there a protector response happening right now that I should know about? So I'm doing my best in this moment to get protector consent and to keep it as safe as possible. That is the essence of the model and the essence of what the, IFS therapist is there to do is to keep the [00:11:00] work.
Safe and slow and steady and titrated. Now this other piece about her language, so I know, and she had, uh, we had talked about in an email that her native language is not English. And so she had already told me that. And because of that I wanted to check in and give her that permission that if it makes sense, and if she's not already doing it, to communicate with her parts in her native language.
I find this is really important and just a natural way to help, make the work more smooth and safer, right? Because sometimes if clients are translating things for their parts or for me, et cetera, it can get clunky or lost in translation. And I generally find that parts respond best when self communicates to them in, uh, in their native language.
So that's what I'm offering her here. Let's see what happens next. But just acknowledge inside for all parts that it's, it's actually okay to hide. And especially in this setting of [00:12:00] doing a demo that's gonna be online, we don't want to discourage the hiding if it's happening for good reason. Whether that reason is now or, and or historical.
Okay, so I'm kind of looping back here. I already did. You know, call out this potential protective concern of doing this. For this demo or this thing that's gonna be online, et cetera. And I'm acknowledging that there could be really good reason to hide whether there's good reason in the here and now.
Even parts that don't quite trust me and are like, what is this dude up to? Um, or parts that just have historical reason to hide. Right? In other words, trauma in the system. So whether or not that is the case and the reality is, I don't know a lot of her history, right? This is the first time we had met and this is part of the .
You know, the risk of doing these demos is not knowing people's history. And so I'm trying to do my best to go slow and [00:13:00] to, um, really honor the pace of her system and get lots of consent along the way. So again, like we're only a few minutes in, we're, uh. Three, three and a half minutes in, and there's already a lot that's happened and, uh, there's already a lot of choice points that I've made that are gonna influence the session, right, that are gonna influence this kind of dance that we're, that we're doing together.
So, let's see where it goes next. And also keep in mind, in this demo. Parts can also share with you, uh, things privately, so you don't necessarily have to Yeah, share them with me as well, as long as you're clear on what you're getting. That's, that's all we need.[00:14:00]
So trying to just keep, give her space, giving her space here, there's a part saying, I don't wanna do this. I. Okay, good. So it's a voice. Yeah. Let's focus on that, that part, that voice that, that says, I don't wanna do this.
See if you can gently ask for the part to tell you more about why it doesn't want to do this, or what could be bad about doing this. Just inviting protector concerns here.[00:15:00]
And again, just trying to give her plenty of space to work. I'm realizing that. Her system moves a little more slowly, or at least her getting information from parts happens more slowly. So there's lots of space in between words here.
I get a sense that things are relatively safe still, so I'm again letting her work. She doesn't seem disregulated or flooded or dissociated from, from what I can tell. And again, I don't know her system yet, so I'm getting a feel for what it's like to work with her system. She still hasn't responded and I'm letting it play here.
Ace: It's, um, body sensations now happening in my heart center,
John Clarke: Uhhuh.
Ace: It feels like sadness and the voice is saying nobody really cares.
John Clarke: Okay. Is that true?
Ace: Mm-hmm.
Um,[00:16:00]
that's pretty much how I feel, actually.
John Clarke: Okay. Again, there's so much happening here. Hopefully this gives you an idea of all the things your therapist is thinking about, you know, if, if they are helping you do IFS. So this feeling that no one cares, right? And again, a flag that goes off for me is around kind of exile energy, right?
Exiles hold pain and shame and fear and helplessness, right? And the, the pain of no one cares. And I am checking for self energy by asking her. Is that true? To, and really what I should have said is like, to what extent does that feel true right now that no one cares about me in, in other words, I'm checking to see how blended she is.
Right? Because if she goes, yeah, it's true. No one cares about me. Right? I might assume or wonder if she's [00:17:00] more blended than unblended, right? Again, it's a range. It's a spectrum. It's a scale. So I'm just trying to get a sense right. How true does that feel right now? If she feels fully blended with that part, then it's gonna feel really true, right?
Like no one cares, or I deserve to not have love or whatever it is. Right? So let's see what she says.
Ace: From my past experience, yes.
John Clarke: Okay. What about right now, in this moment, do you care about this part?
Ace: Yes.
So does my cat.
John Clarke: So does your cat. Yeah. How, how could you let it know?
Ace: Um.
John Clarke: [00:18:00] So, again, letting her work a bit here. I know she's experiencing her parts very somatically. She's hugging herself now, so trying to regulate a bit, maybe trying to be with that part.
Ace: And I just want to give myself a, a, a squeeze hug.
John Clarke: Yeah.
Ace: Mm-hmm.
John Clarke: See if that part of you can feel that squeeze hug.
She's working directly with her body Here. I'm gonna give myself a hug. I'm still doing IFS with her and doing some somatic IFS. Right? See if your that part can feel that hug. Can that part feel some of that hug? So again, that, that part, that worries, um, that no one cares. [00:19:00] All that matters is, does self care not right?
Self is the attachment figure for our parts, right? Not me, the therapist, not her mom or dad, not her partner, whomever. Right? What we're doing is fundamentally focus on internal attachment and repairing internal attachment. So I'm asking her again and, and again, really just checking here for self energy.
To what degree you know. Do you feel like this part is, um, that you care about this part? And if so, can you let it know? And are you feeling that you care about it right now in this moment here and now? Because to me that that's all that matters is, is the here and now. So let's see what happens next. See if you can send that, squeeze to that part.
Ace: I guess yes, just the feeling in my heart center soft and I really wanna cry.
John Clarke: Okay. Would that be okay?
Ace: Yeah.
John Clarke: Yeah. [00:20:00] Okay. What else do you know about this part? How do you experience it? Does it, do you get a visual? Is it like a voice, a sensation?
Both.
So, yeah. Again, I'm here. I am fleshing it out a little bit more. I want to get a clearer sense of how she experiences her parts so that I can piggyback onto that medium, that way of communicating. With her parts. So getting more information here, trying to flesh this one out a little bit more. I'm also seeing if she has experienced this part before or has an existing relationship with it, and I'm just trying to be slow and steady and curious, and again, follow her system as best I can.
Ace: Um, normally I'm quite a visual person, but today I only hear voice and body sensations.
John Clarke: Yeah. And that, that in itself is something interesting, right.
I. Usually I'm quite visual, but right now I only get these voice and body [00:21:00] sensations.
So I'm kind of thinking here, is that more of a protector response, right?
More parts that are hesitant to move forward or to go deeper here to do this session. Right. Um, did any parts get bypassed by her volunteering to do this session with me and have it. You know, put online and all that. So I really wanna try to be careful here. And even though people volunteer for these sessions, I, I, I really don't take it lightly and try to get as much contracting with them as I can around.
I. Are you sure your parts feel okay about doing this and having it out there? Right. I give them the choice after we do the session. I say, if you change your mind and you've got parts that don't want this to be out there to let me know and we will take it down so they have that option as well. But I, I both really love being able to show the model in this way and teach.
In this way, but also, don't take it lightly, you know, that it's intense to, to do this and have this out there. So I have so much compassion for her and her parts for, [00:22:00] for doing this and, um, and yeah, wanna make sure that it's safe. And just gus often and mm-hmm. Can you tell me more about what it sounds like?
How do you know that it's different from you?
Ace: It's just a voice. Just a one sentence and that's finished.
John Clarke: Yeah. Okay. Could, could you ask the part if it could give you a visual so that you can strengthen your connection? So the part said it gives one sentence and then it's finished. I should have asked, what is that one sentence?
Or are you clear about that sentence or So something like that. I kind of missed it. With it a little more. Is this part willing to be seen by you today? So the model's about self part connection and part to self connection, right? How are you feeling toward the [00:23:00] part? How's the part feeling toward you?
Right? How connected are you feeling toward the part? How connected is the part feeling toward you? So we're just trying to see here, like is there a solid two way street? Something that we can, we can work with.
And let's see what she says.
Ace: Yeah. Um,
it's helpless. Helpless part is always hiding in a, in a bathroom. Yeah. It looks like when I was a young girl, super young, yeah. Around 6, 5, 6 years old. And I, the part was always like curling and like doing this. Yeah. Sitting on the ground into the corner of the bathroom, which happened to me before. And, um.
And two days ago, I kind of set this part free from the bathroom.
Now if I tune [00:24:00] in, I can still sensing that this part, and it is out of the bathroom already
John Clarke: Uhhuh,
Ace: but I cannot see clearly where she is right now.
The, the little girl.
John Clarke: Okay. Again, yeah, tons of data here. There's so much to break down here.
So again, I'm, I'm thinking in this moment, some exile energy. Probably working with an exile here, right? This helpless young girl in the bathroom curled up, squeezing her knees like the client is doing here. And so I know we're kind of in exile territory and again, I want to tread lightly and be careful and
yeah. And so she says, well, I kind of was with this part and I unburdened it, or I brought it out of that bathroom, and now I'm like, not sure where the part is. Right. Or, and maybe that part is not totally wanting to be seen in this session, in this moment. Right. So there could be reasons why, that part is not so easily accessible.
Right. And again, it could be another part that's kind of pushing this exile toward. [00:25:00] The front. Right. Or a manager saying, be a good client for John. Be a good demo participant for John, whatever. Give him some real stuff to work with. And so I want to be careful that that's not happening, right? Some bypassing protectors unintentionally.
In fact, something good to do here would've just been to ask for protectors, right? Ask again, just ad nauseum. Any protectors, uh, or any other parts have concerns about us trying to locate this little girl? Right. And have them come forward, have them speak out about, how they feel about what we're doing right here in this moment.
So, um, yeah, there, there's so much to break down here, but, um, it's interesting for me to watch these back and again, as a therapist, you're both in the moment and also, you know, you're with the client and being present with the client while also conceptualizing the client. So it's kind of like when you learn to drive, you know, you're really aware of both, like the road and also the fact that you're shifting with your right hand.
[00:26:00] And if it's a manual, you know, uh, the clutch with your left foot or whatever it is, right? And over time, that becomes more automatic, right? I. To have that dual awareness. But as a therapist, this is really a hard skill to develop and all the clinicians I supervise at my practice and the teaching I do there, this dual awareness is, is something that we work on a lot and something that.
It takes time to develop right, for it to be a little more automatic and it's not perfect, right? There's little things that I would do differently or feel like I'm missing here. And so it's super valuable to watch it back in this way, but, in this, you know, in these few minutes alone that we've watched 10 and a half minutes of this session, there's so much that's happened, right?
So many choice points that I've made that are gonna alter the course of the session, right? And the depth of the session. But the key is trying to go slow and. Keep it safe. Right? And not just 'cause you see an exile doesn't mean you go for it and make that the target part necessarily. Right? We never just wanna assume safety, we really wanna check for safety [00:27:00] and, and create safety.
So that is essential for this, this model and for, for doing trauma work in general. So, I usually assume there's some level of trauma in everyone's system, right? Including my own. And so, um. When you have trauma in the system, there's gonna be greater polarizations, right? Further exiled exiles, further, protective protectors, et cetera.
And so I just wanna know that, right? And even though an exile kind of comes out, I. Right at the, the, the get here. You just want to be really, really careful with this, and this is really why the model can be dangerous and you can do damage with the model if you just go in and bulldoze and start trying to unburden excels left and right and, um, assume it's all good and then you can really mess people up and really mess up their systems.
So, um. You have to try to go into people's systems with a lot of respect and a lot of reverence and as much of your own self-energy as you have. So I'm also in this moment, you know, during the [00:28:00] session, really checking with my own self-energy, noticing if I'm feeling blended or less blended with parts, right?
Noticing if I have a part that wants this session to go somewhere or go deeper or whatever. Noticing my parts that react to knowing it's recorded, right? Or wanting to show the model or wanting it to be a good session and trying to. Have those parts soften and unblend as much as possible. So yeah, gosh, it's not an easy job that we do and uh, this model is, as my martial arts instructor would say about Muay Thai.
You know, IFS is simple, but not easy. And I think about that a lot when doing this. This model, simple but not easy. It's simple to understand the model, but to do it well and smoothly and gracefully. And is actually really hard. And again, you can see that by the a hundred choice points that I've already made in the course of 10 and a half minutes.
Right? And then you think about doing an hour of this, how many choice points you've made, and then you think about seeing six clients in a day and how many [00:29:00] choice points you've, you've made. And, facilitating an IFS session. So, um, yeah, maybe we'll push pause for now. I always want your feedback if you found this helpful.
Or unhelpful, please let me know. We do lots of different types of episodes on the show. We do interviews, I do demos. There's some meditations. I do these kind of reaction videos, both reacting to interviews I've done and then reacting to demos like this. I wanna know what you find most helpful. The numbers do help me in terms of downloads and stuff, but I always wanna hear directly from you all what you like and what you wanna see more of.
So. If you're open to giving me your feedback, please email me john@johnclarketherapy.com or dm me on Instagram at John Clarke therapy, and I would love to hear from you in any way. Um, yeah, we'll leave it there for now, but I hope this was helpful and, um, thanks for being here. Make sure to subscribe, share this with a friend if you found it helpful, and I'll see you in the next one.
Take care everyone.
[00:30:00] 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 apply to work with me one-on-one at johnclarketherapy.com.
See you next time.