any experience with Internal Family Systems?

[FirstSteps]

Hi.  I've stepped back in recent months as I started to get real clarity on my life, and I just got overwhelmed with anything but learning that self-compassion.

Anyway, I wondered if anyone here had experience with their pwBPD and IFS therapy.  We are on couples therapist number 4, and I have been sleeping in a separate room and living a largely independent life for months now.  I have also refused to travel with her this summer, which has been a flashpoint and way for her to control things in the past.  I'm standing up for the kids and relating to them directly better.  Everything was pointing towards me leaving.  After several false starts, I felt really ready to move on.

But my uBPDw has made remarkable progress at the same time.  At the beginning it seemed like a calm love bombing but it seems more stable than that.  I do not trust it as she is still not transparent about what she is doing, though I know she has seen a trauma therapist, other therapists and at least seen a psychiatrist.  

This last couples therapist has started talking to us about IFS therapy, which is focused on people addressing different "parts" within themselves.  I've found some articles on how it's useful for BPD but nothing here.  My wife has taken to it like nothing I've ever seen, and is independently reading books, etc.  And becoming progressively more regulated, apologizing for moments when her "protectors" take over and making an effort to receive me.

I think she's also doing some form of DBT but nothing intense.  Anyway, it's all hard to trust but the progress seems so real, I'm thrown off.

For us to really work, there is an ocean of hurt I still would need to work through and I think our family system is still too closed to be totally healthy.  I'm not sure she's up for any of that as she is still demanding that I meet her halfway, which is impossible for me as I feel I've been the victim of long-term emotional and verbal abuse and I need that to be dealt with first.  I am allergic to what I see as false equivalence, while also staying open to my responsibility for things.  But, anyway, I just wanted to see what the thoughts were about IFS.  Thanks!  

[livednlearned]

FirstSteps,

It sounds like things are at least temporarily stable, and that's good to hear.

What you describe sounds a bit like schema therapy, which I think was developed specifically for working with BPD (could be wrong).

It's been interesting learning about different approaches here and there over the years. The fact your wife is willing to engage says a lot. Most people on this particular board don't have partners who were willing to acknowledge they had problems much less do therapy for those issues.

Maybe your wife finds it safer to attribute blame to *parts* of herself than to feel the weight of full accountability. I mean, we all sort of do that, no? Like being tired and hungry. We can recognize how that influences our patience and makes us irritable. It's not too big of a step to give that self a name and make it take responsibility for being irritable.

I'm not sure I know what you mean about your family system being too closed to be totally healthy? Definitely understand the part about the ocean of hurt. Are you seeing an individual therapist while doing couples counseling?

[zachira]

I had a therapist who wanted to do IFS with me, when I had orignally hired her to do EMDR with me. The EMDR went well. I did not care for IFS at all. From my perspective, it is a cognitive therapy which does not emphasize either feelings or body sensations which I think are essential to access to make real progress in any type of therapy whether it be individual, couple, or group. The current thinking is that it is the relationship between the therapist and client that matters the most for postive outcomes, and therapists should use a variety of modalities not just one, to give their clients the best chances to make long term positive changes. IFS is supposedly very succesful in treating disassociation which people with BPD often have a lot of. I personally can not imagine a client with BPD benefitting from IFS because of their lack of self awareness, and then again it is an aspect of IFS that I know very little about.