Session Fatigue, Grief & Couples Work
In this live Q&A episode, trauma therapist John Clarke answers some of the most common questions therapists have about practicing Internal Family Systems (IFS), from working with grief and couples to avoiding over-intellectualization in sessions. Whether you're new to IFS or learning how to integrate it into your existing therapeutic approach, this episode offers practical guidance on staying grounded in self, trusting the process, and helping clients move beyond insight into genuine healing.
Key takeaways:
Why IFS sessions should feel natural, not exhausting, and what fatigue may be telling you.
How to help clients shift from analyzing their parts to truly being with them.
Practical ways to integrate IFS into CBT, somatic therapy, and other therapeutic approaches without losing the heart of the model.
Resources & Offerings
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Transcript:
John Clarke: [00:00:00] When we're really doing IFS, it should flow naturally. It should feel pretty good. It should feel therapeutic. I would argue it should feel cathartic. So if it's not, if it's feeling really exhausting, I'm just curious what else might be going on
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. My name is John Clarke. I'm a licensed therapist. I'm a group practice owner, and, uh, I work with clinicians to help them become, uh, better trauma therapists and also better business owners who can [00:01:00] be in it for the long haul without burning out. So, uh, I'm here to do a live Q&A as I do from time to time.
You can also catch this, um, on, uh, the audio version, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, um, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Um, a quick reminder, the way to work with me one-on-one is by going to Pathways, uh, to Learning About Pathways To Self, which is my weekly consultation group. Um, you can learn more at johnclark.ther- johnclarketherapy.com/pathways.
That's johnclarketherapy.com/pathways.. So if you're here live, then you have the chance to ask me your questions live. If not, um, I've got some, uh, questions that were pre-submitted that I'll pull up, but I'll prioritize the, um, the ones that are live. So yeah. Uh, Em is saying, "Love that you're doing these." Yeah.
Thank you for being here, Em, and, um, I like doing these as well, and, um, I find it a lot of fun. I also like doing live consultation. If anyone is [00:02:00] ever brave enough to, you know, come on to, uh, come on screen with me and do some live consultation, that's, that's also quite fun. So yeah, if you're here, you can ask your questions, um, in the chat on YouTube.
Otherwise, I'll start knocking these out. Martin says, "What's your take on doing IFS with couples? Do you approach anything in a different way than you would individually?" Um, I don't do a lot of couples work, but what, what I will say is that the institute has their own, um, their own form of couples therapy that is IFS couples therapy, Intimacy From the Inside Out.
That's an option to do that program for your level two training. So if you've already got level one, then for level two, you can typically pick like a specialty training to do, like addiction or whatever. Um, but in this case, you can do the Intimacy From the Inside Out, um, uh, IFIO, and, uh, you can [00:03:00] learn to do this, you know, IFS with couples.
Long story short, yeah, I think of it as kind of the same. I mean, what you're really trying to do is helping the each partner learn to unblend, to notice blendedness in the moment, to be more self-led, to speak more from self, to practice listening to one another and really taking each other in. Um, so that's really what you're doing.
Um, uh, but certainly you could also kind of help a client unburden a part with the other partner there. That could be really nice. So, uh, I think it's both the same and different. So if you do a lot of couples work, I would say it's definitely worth, um, worth looking into and getting that training. Uh, Marie says, "How does grief work look like through an IFS lens?
Is there a grieving part or is grief more like something that moves through the whole system?" Um, my guess would be kind of both, right? And the reality is I could give an answer, but it's really whatever you find in the system. So you [00:04:00] may notice, for instance, there are, that there are certain parts that are grieving or certain parts that are in different stages of grief.
Uh, certain parts that have, uh, where the grief is affecting that part more than others. We just want to go inside and check with the system and again, let the system, uh, lead, right? Yeah. And for self to be with the parts that are angry or in denial or sad or what, what have you. Yeah. Good question. Okay, we have a live question from Em.
Em says, "Is exhaustion/fatigue a common IFS symptom at the beginning at least?" Um, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Um, when we're really doing IFS, it should flow naturally. It should feel pretty good. It should feel therapeutic. I would argue it should feel cathartic. [00:05:00] So if it's not, if it's feeling really exhausting, I'm just curious what else might be going on.
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For added peace of mind, Jane includes privacy and security features like two-step verification, role-based access levels, and HIPAA compliance [00:06:00] so that you can feel confident in your practice and knowing that your client data is protected. Practitioners know better than anyone a little connection goes a long way.
To learn more about how Jane can support you, your clients, and your business, head to jane.app/demo. And if you're ready to give it a try, you can use my code JOHN, that's J-O-H-N, for a one-month grace period on your new account. Again, that's jane.app/demo. Use the code John for a one-month grace period on your new account Or if there's too much efforting, you know, then is there something else going on? It shouldn't feel super efforting, super effortful by either the client or the therapist. At the same time, certainly sometimes like as a client, an IFS session can take it out of you a bit. So yeah, maybe some tiredness is, is normal, kind of like after you get a good workout in.
But hopefully it's not [00:07:00] like a distressing fatigue. So maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but, you know, if it's feeling, if you're having a lot of exhaustion or fati- fatigue, especially in the beginning, I think there's probably too many thinking parts going on. You know, the client or the therapist is in thinking parts to the extent where those thinking parts are exhausted by the end of it.
This is not a, uh, a cerebral, you know, model. This is not an intellectual model, so it shouldn't be, uh, shouldn't be exhausting. It should flow. Yeah. Good question. Josephine says, "How do you handle it when a client's part gives you information that contradicts what they've told you in earlier session, like a memory or detail that doesn't line up?"
Well, I guess I would check with the whole system to see what other, um, perspectives are here. So one [00:08:00] part says it was this way, another part says it was this way
Can we hear from other parts that, um, may remember it differently? And the reality is, you know, some disagreement is not necessarily bad per se, right? Some discourse in the system is not bad per se, right? Again, if you're leading a team and one person says it's this and another person says it's that, um, tolerance and building our capacity for tolerance is, uh, is important and is a good thing and is, I think, a, uh, a signal of self
Yeah, so I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. I just, when in doubt, I just approach absolutely everything with insatiable curiosity
One more question and then that's all I've got for today unless there's more questions for those of you who are here live. Chris says, "I notice that when a client starts analyzing their own parts instead of just being with [00:09:00] them, I catch myself doing the same thing back instead of witnessing." Yes, this is a funny observation.
Parts beget parts and self begets self. Uh, a lot of times our clients come in and they're very much in their intellectual parts, and that is going to activate and resonate with our intellectual parts that love chewing on stuff and pontificating and feeling safe in our heads 'cause we're really smart and analytical.
So yeah. You wanna notice for yourself, if you notice that blendedness for yourself, how do you notice when you're blended with those more intellectual parts of yourself? Yeah. And how do you unblend, right? How do you invite clients into a deeper, um, experience of themselves, a deeper sense of heartfelt energy and being with and compassion and relating...
IFS is simple but not easy. [00:10:00] On the surface, it's about parts and self. But when you're in the room with a client, things can get complex fast. Helping someone meet a protective part or wounded exile, that takes skill, and most importantly, it takes safety. My name is John Clarke, trauma therapist and IFS therapist, and in this free webinar for therapists and practitioners, we're going to explore the subtleties that make IFS so powerful and how to navigate them with more clarity and confidence.
You're going to learn why safety is everything and how to do it well, what trips therapists up when applying IFS in practice, and a simple tool that you can begin using right away. If you want to go beyond theory and truly embody the work, then this is for you. Join the free webinar today. Link is in the description.
How are they relating to themselves and their parts versus how much can they figure out about themselves and their parts? It is not insight-oriented therapy. Now we call, uh, the in- we call insight, you know, the going inside, we call it insight, but [00:11:00] IFS is not an insight-oriented therapy. It's a constraint release model, right?
We're relieving parts of their burdens, and by doing so, more self emerges, more healing just happens naturally. But the healing doesn't happen from figuring stuff out. So the invitation, something I talk a lot about in "Pathways to Self," is yourself and your clients, how do you go from figuring out to being with?
Figuring out the anxiety versus just being with it, right? Figuring out the grief versus just being with it. Can you just be with it? We're actually not very good at this. So this is where a lot of practice needs to, to happen, right? This is where we can do, do a lot better. Yeah.
Yeah. You're helping clients resist their [00:12:00] urges to do what's not working, right? Which is, uh, be in their heads and distract themselves and over-intellectualize and, and avoid and, and whatnot. Yeah. Um, okay, another live question. M says, "Is there an effective way to combine talk therapy with IFS for clients who feel safe/resolved via external processing?"
Well, yeah. I mean, I think just starting with using parts language is a wonderful way to embed IFS in your talk therapy. Um, being in your self energy and thinking of yourself in parts and in terms of self energy is a way to, quote, "do IFS" with clients. So again, ju- just the conceptualization, right, the, the lens through which you see the world, if that has to do with IFS, then you're, quote, "doing IFS."
Seeing them as a collection of parts governed by core self that is good, and seeing yourself the same way, right? [00:13:00] And again, even seeing... So for instance, if you're doing CBT with a client, you're doing-- Your, your manager is doing CBT with their manager, right? What do you fear would happen if X, Y, and Z happen, right?
What's the evidence that, um, that thought is true? What's the evidence that it's not true? Is there another way of thinking about this, right? If your fear came true, how would you handle it? You know, fear setting. If you're working somatically, you know, y- you are perhaps doing somatic work with their exiles, right?
When you notice that burning in your chest, can you just be with it, right? So again, you can hold that lens, and if you think of a camera over the lens, well, o- over which you can put many lenses. IFS may be a lens that you hold. You may also hold a feminist lens. You may also hold an attachment lens. So you have a lens, right?
And then you also have modality, which is kind of like, [00:14:00] um, how you think about change, right? How you affect change. And then you have technique, which is the, the things you do from the modality that create the actual change or help create the change or the experience in therapy.
So there's many ways to kind of, quote, "embody IFS." So that's why it's both a really good lens and a good model and a great technique. And you could use it as all three or one, you know. If your philosophy, if your way of walking through the world is, quote, "IFS," right, that's a way of walking through the world.
If you just like the IFS technique, you know, like unblending, that's also okay Take, take from IFS, you know, what works for you and what makes sense. Um, and, you know, the research says most clinicians become eclectic after seven years, and it's about seven years that it takes to, quote, "master something or have some degree of mastery over a [00:15:00] skill like therapy."
So seven years or 4,000 hours or whatever it is. And, uh, you know, but most therapists are pulling from a number of theories all at once at any given time in a single breath. On the other hand, if it makes sense, and especially when you're learning the model, to operate from a puristic standpoint, that makes sense to me as well to do that.
That's how I tend to operate when I'm learning a new model like IFS or EMDR or whatever, is to, quote, "just do that," or even in a given session, like just do IFS. And then over time, when I have more fluidity and, and fluency with the model, I can integrate it seamlessly on the fly without efforting, uh, with other models like EMDR Yeah.
You have to understand the ethos of the model, right? I m- you have to imagine, like, could you explain it to a third grader, right? Same thing with EMDR. Can you explain it to a third grader? What is the medicine inside EMDR? Is [00:16:00] it the eyes moving? Is it the cognition piece? Is the ex- is it the exposure piece?
Is it all of it? Same thing with IFS. Like, what is the medicine of IFS? And that's just a question for you to, to think about and explore. 'Cause when you really understand it and it's kind of in your bones, then the technique comes, you know, it comes to you, comes more fluidly
Who knows what I'm talking about at this point? Em asked one thing and then I went on a rant. But I guess that's what this is, right? I guess that's what a podcast is, right? You guys have signed up for a rant. Bless your hearts, as my mom would say Yeah. I like a good rant. Um, hopefully you do too. Em says it's all helpful.
Well, that's really nice. Or you're just, you know, reassuring me, but either way I'll take it. Yeah. I love talking about this stuff. I mean, obviously I'm like a technique nerd. [00:17:00] I just, uh, you know, when I was in counseling techniques in grad school, I just loved it, ate it up. Same thing with theories. I just love this stuff and I just like, I'm a very technical clinician and I, I love talking about technique as well as theory.
So I love like deconstructing therapy and talking about the nuts and bolts, you know. And we do it a lot in grad school and we do it less as practitioners in the field, but I think it's important to keep like talking shop and deconstructing things 'cause your learning evolves and you're learning new models and you also have to learn how to, um, uh, you know, deconstruct those, right?
Taking the engine apart. Yeah.
Okay. I hope that was helpful. Um, maybe I'll push pause there for now. Um, we will be back doing this again on, um, do, do, do
Next week. Had to check with my producer. Next [00:18:00] week we'll do this again. So feel free to join me here on YouTube next week if you want. If you like the show, do me a favor and share it with people. We had a good interview last week talking about narcissistic abuse. Um, but yeah, you know, just, just, um, if you like the show, share it with people.
That really helps me grow it Yeah. And if you're interested in working with me, johnclarketherapy.com/pathways is the place for you to go to find out more and to join our program. Join at any time. You can also, um, uh, pause at any time, so. Okay. Thanks for being here. Have a good week. I'll see you soon. 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 @johnclarketherapy and apply to work with me one-on-one at johnclarketherapy.com.
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