Self-Therapy
Cognitive Therapy and Internal Family Systems are both effective self-therapy. The good thing about self-therapy is you can take what you find effective from each.
Self-Therapy
When I refer to Cognitive Therapy, I specifically refer to Albert Ellis’s Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), but it overlaps a great deal with Aaron Beck’s Cognitive BehavioralTherapy. (CBT)
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
REBT deals with beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and feelings as self-talk. Therapy consists of modifying self-defeating beliefs through understanding, disputing, altering, and acting against their self-talk. With REBT you dispute your irrational beliefs.
Ellis offers an example of disputing the irrational belief (iB) that you must always pass important job-related tests. You question yourself, “Why must I always pass important tests?” You vigorously(and often) reply, “I don’t have to do so! I’d love to pass and will work hard to do so. But if I don’t, I don’t! I definitely want this job, but I never, never need it. I can be happy if I don’t get it, though not as happy perhaps as if I do. I can pass other tests and get other jobs even if I fail at getting this one. I will only be a person who failed this time, and clearly not a hopeless failure!”
Internal Family System (ITS)
IFS anthropomorphizes beliefs, attitudes, opinions, feelings, and emotions as selves. Selves can show a thought, feeling or sensation. Some people hear their selves, some see their selves, and others feel their selves emotionally or physically. The IFS “credo” is “All parts are welcome.” You treat each part with respect, compassion, and even love.
The Self with a capital “S” is the guide and leader within all of us. The Self is our core essence untouched by life’s traumas. It is our inner therapist, a source of untapped qualities, that can lead our inner and outer lives. It will show us how to love every aspect of ourselves in a specific way.
With IFS, you relate to even your most shameful emotions or impulses with curiosity rather than judgment and with caring rather than disgust. When you relate to your selves in this way, you find that these selves are not what they seem. Schwartz says, “They are valuable inner resources that have been distorted by difficult life experiences.” Relating in this way you can “reverse the atmosphere of your inner worlds from one of self-loathing to self-love and self-leadership.
The protectors of selves resist, get angry and critical, become dependent, talk incessantly, become dangerous, vulnerable, narcissistic and self-centered. Schwartz says, “The ability to regain a compassionate presence in the face of a client’s extreme protectors or exiles is the sine qua non of a good IFS therapist.”
Protectors do not need us to point that out that their attempts at warding off pain are always costly failures. They know it. Instead of dwelling on the effects of their job, we ask our protectors about their goals. What do they want for us? And we appreciate their positive intentions as well as all their hard work.
Generally, I prefer the structure of REBT. But it is not effective with my anger and so I work with IFS for anger that is a considerable chunk of what I need to work on.
It is not possible to sum up CT and IFS in a blog post. For REBT, I recommend Ellis’s “How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything–Yes, Anything!” For IFS read Schwartz’s “Introduction to the Internal Family Model.”
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
