Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, A New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy

The job of protectors[1] is to protect you from feeling pain.

Parts provide a lot. They offer you the capacities and insights you need in any particular situation—spontaneity, humor, organization, perseverance, for example. But on their own, they lack a larger sense of direction. The Self provides that.

Exercise: Identifying the Parts at a Trailhead

Every part of you is trying to help you feel good and avoid pain.

Some protectors help you be successful or popular to build up your confidence and self-esteem. They see a hole deep inside you where you feel deficient, and they want to compensate for it with accolades from others.

Exercise: Learning about Protectors

When you crave that piece of cake late at night, it isn’t just a desire that comes up from time to time. There is an entity inside you that repeatedly needs a sense of sweet fullness. It has reasons why it feels it must have that dessert. It might need to push down anger or fill an unbearable sensation of emptiness. This part has memories that driv

Some try to make you into a loveable person so people will like you; that way they won’t hurt or abandon you.

Exercise: Learning about Exiles