2023-01-03 Tue 12:48 PM ![[moses_a_young_firefighter_carries_a_heavy_burrden._pixar_c47fafd9-c27b-462d-ba0f-873aff8921f8.png]] # What are burdens? - In the [[Internal Family Systems (IFS)]] model, a "burden" is an extreme belief, emotion, or energy that a [[Part_IFS|part]] carries, which drives that part to what appears to be irrationally self-destructive and aggressive behavior. - When a part carries a burden, that part is in the [[State_IFS|state]] that IFS calls "[[Burdened]]". - Burdens need to be unloaded. That's how parts heal. It's what allows them to move into new, more easeful, harmonious roles in the internal system. # Why are burdens important in the IFS model? - The critical idea is that [[Parts are not their burdens]]. Parts are good ([[All parts have good intentions]], [[All parts are welcome]], there are [[No bad parts]]) and they must be loved; burdens trouble the parts and must be released. - Parts are integral to the whole; burdens are superfluous, extra, contaminants, detriments. - Etiologically, it locates the problem in the burden, not the part. - This focuses that curative energy in the right place. Don't change the part, change its burden. Don't get rid of the part, get rid of the burden. - Without this concept, parts and their burdens are unified as one thing. And it's very easy to think that a part is the problem, and the solution is to deny, kill, or excise a part. Sometimes parts do extreme, aggressive, apparently-harmful stuff. It's not at all uncommon to feel hatred for a part, and to think that if it would just die or go away everything would be much better. "Most psychotherapies and spiritual traditions mistake parts for their burdens and, consequently, go to great lengths to try to throw the baby out with the bathwater." [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 55) - Burdens are key to health in the IFS model. IFS's picture of health (which is a picture of [[Full-spectrum flourishing]]), is a picture of the internal family system operating in harmony, led by Self. Burdens are what keep parts stuck. Keep them inflexible. Keep them doing old jobs that aren't necessary in the new world. - "One of the most important discoveries of IFS is that extreme parts who appear irrationally self-destructive and aggressive are not what they appear to be. Instead, extreme parts have a rationale for their behavior and they feel driven to extremity by beliefs, emotions, and energies that enter our systems from trauma or attachment injury" or are inherited from others. [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 55) - The notion of burdens allows us to separate the parts from their baggage, so that we can cure the baggage and not have to think the part is bad. This just turns out to be critical. It's an ecosystem. Parts are doing jobs. They are here to protect the person. You can't just go in and excise them. There are [[No bad parts]]. - It's important in IFS to distinguish the *part* from the *burden* it carries. - >"The importance of distinguishing between parts (who are valuable) and their burdens (which need to be unloaded) cannot be overemphasized. Most psychotherapies and spiritual traditions mistake parts for their burdens and, consequently, go to great lengths to try to throw the baby out with the bathwater. From the IFS perspective, for example, our brutal inner critic isn’t merely grandmother’s internalized critical voice that we need to drown out or expel. Instead, it’s an 8-year-old who is using Grandmother’s shaming voice, image, and energy in a desperate attempt to prevent further injury. When the 8-year-old critic trusts that it’s safe to unburden—to release that shaming energy out of the inner system—it will transform."-[[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 55) # Can the Self carry burdens, or are burdens just for parts? - The Self cannot be burdened, - But the Self can be overwhelmed or occluded by parts. - It is sometimes said that the "system" is burdened — this just means that the parts that make up the system have a lot of burdens. # What is the functional role of burdens in the psyche, according to the IFS model? In the IFS model parts are functional — they're here to do a job. I'm still not totally clear on the functional role of exiles, but the function of managers and firefighters is more clear. - 2023-10-31 Tue 19.45pm IFS says that [[A part without a job is an exile|exiles don't hvae jobs]] but from like an evo psych perspective I'd expect to be able to characterize the evolutionary adaptiveness of anything that exists. My current model of the function of exiles is basically the [[Trauma]] story: they're there to hold on to a record of some dangerous thing, and to steer the organism away from that area. [[Related notes]] [[Ref. Kaj Sotala 2019 - Building up to an Internal Family Systems model]]. So to think about the function of burdens, we'll have to start with the function of parts. Hm. So we could focus in on one of the part types, like let's say [[Firefighter part]]s. And then we'll probably get into a taxonomy of kinds of burdens this kind of part might carry. # Why are these visualized as "burdens" rather than...an outdated map, alexander techniquey residue? - There's something nice and simple about the burden visualization. - It makes it clear that the burden is not part of the part. It's something else, something other. - It makes it clear that the thing that should happen is unburdening. - it makes it clear that the process is kinda simple... it's not like a big complex operation, like rennovating your kitchen or refactoring your codebase...it's just ... stepping out from under. shrugging it off. Seeing that it isn't necessary. - Burdens can also be called "constraints" - "Note that the therapist did not have to use this session to explore what happened between Frances and her coach. If Frances had said she was not yet ready to speak up or needed to think through what she wanted to say, they could have used another session to role-play the upcoming conversation with her coach. But in any case it would be important to return to exploring the constraints (burdens) that caused Frances’s compliant manager to stop her from being assertive, and this would point in the direction of an exile." [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 78). # Are burdens the same as trauma? # Can all three kinds of parts carry burdens? (firefighters, managers, exiles) ## Exile burdens "Exiles routinely cite one or more of a few comprehensively condemning beliefs about their value. At the top of the list are worthlessness, unlovability, and being too much or too little. Less often but still not infrequently, young parts come to believe they are bad or evil." [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 59) ## Protector burdens (managers and firefighters) - "Protectors have burdens, too. First, they believe the negative press about the exiles; second, their jobs are burdensome. One of the terrible ironies of emotional abandonment and abuse is that a child’s protective parts mimic abusers, be they adults or other children. Approval-seeking managers and reactive firefighters are capable of repeating, internally, virtually any extreme behavior that has been perpetrated on a child, from perfectionism, criticism, and moralizing to physical attack, all in the mistaken hope that a perfect (or punished) child will be better loved. The job of mimicking a perpetrator is, of course, nasty and makes the part unpopular in the system. Protectors need our help to let go of the extreme parental energies that constitute legacy burdens." [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 60) ### Manager burdens "They also carry their own burdens. Managers often believe, for example, that we have something vile hidden inside that would repulse anyone else who saw it, that we are too defective to succeed so we shouldn’t try, that we have to be perfect or no one will like us, and that we truly are unlovable. They can be very young. And they get frozen in traumatic scenes, often believing that we, too, are that younger age." [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 88) # What's the difference between a legacy burden and a personal burden? IFS distinguishes between *personal* burdens and *legacy* burdens. > Burdens develop in many ways: vertically between generations in a family or due to the behavior of other influential authority figures such as teachers, coaches, or priests. Burdens can also develop at the hands of strangers, horizontally with siblings and peers, or by chance of nature (fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, etc.). Legacy burdens develop in families and can back go many generations. Personal burdens develop in response to events that are personally traumatic. When a child is injured, the qualities for which she was attacked or that she believes got her in trouble are viewed by the internal system as a liability, so parts who lead with those qualities (e.g., naiveté, sweetness, spontaneity, excitement, courage, anger, sadness, frustration, sensitivity, compassion) will be banished, which makes those parts feel unwanted and desperate. From their place of exile, they long for rescue and redemption. Meanwhile, protectors are constrained by what they believe about exiled parts. All in all, the burdened system is a portrait of restriction, constraint, rebellion, and frustration. And this is the way most of us expend most of our energy. > -[[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 61) Legacy burden example: the maybe-apocryphal story of the study of chimps, who were sprayed when they went for the bucket of bananas, and then switched out so that none had experienced the spray. Or, Garetto legacy. Don't follow your dreams; take care of... But the source of burden doesn't even have to be a major big-T trauma event like an earthquake or sexual abuse. For example, in the documentary [[Ref. Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous 2017 - The work (documentary)]], one man relates a story of the time he confided in a friend about a sexual experience he had, and then the next day found out that that friend told a bunch of people at their shared workplace about it. When he confronted the friend, the friend called him a "pussy" [I think]. He vowed then to never let himself feel that way again. Thus a burden was formed. If this kind of experience can produce burdened parts, then life must be full of this. # Why does the distinction between legacy and personal matter? - This currently isn't clear to me. - I think it's because different methods of unburdening are useful depending. - If it's a legacy burden, it's more like: just see that, choose to not carry that other person's burden. - If it's a personal burden, it might not be simply shrugged off # How are burdens relieved? - General idea is that Self does the healing. Primarily this is the client's Self coming into contact with parts. But therapist's Self helps too. - There might be a bit of a dependency puzzle to work through. Maybe the metaphor of a knot is useful — a little loosening here enables a little loosening there, which enables a little loosening elsewhere, etc, until gradually, bit by bit, sometimes with smaller steps and sometimes with larger leaps, all the burdens are relieved - It's a picture of the parts in a certain kind of configuration. An ecosystem, that has found a certain equilibrium. A homeostasis that it will tend to return to. - The [[0-priv/Neural annealing]] metaphor seems useful here — since there my be interlocking dependencies, you might need a bunch of parts to change at the same time. Helpful then to kind of raise the temperature, hold that focus, bring them all into the room, get them all seeing one another. # How long does it take to relieve burdens? - Legacy burdens: "When they are ready to let go, the unburdening can be accomplished quickly. Sometimes, however, a part (or a cluster of parts) is reluctant to let go of a legacy burden. The most salient sticking points tend to be loyalty to family, ethnic group, or country; the belief that the burden is the only way to stay connected to someone important; or the belief that someone they love will have to carry it if the part lets it go. Whatever the reason, we explore concerns about a legacy burden as we would explore them about a personal burden. [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 58) - "The length and difficulty of treatment in IFS are governed not by symptom severity but by degree of inner polarization, distrust in Self-leadership, and the client’s level of burdening."" [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 60) - "When exiles are highly burdened, therapy takes longer because protectors are more extreme and polarized, and the system has little trust in the client’s Self. We keep in mind that protectors are burdened too, but are unlikely to release their burdens until the exiles they protect have been healed (unburdened) and the system is less vulnerable." [[Ref. Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy 2019 - Internal Family Systems therapy, 2nd edition]] (p. 61) # How far can you go — can you relieve all your parts' burdens? What happens then? - [[Full-spectrum flourishing]]; [[Goleta theory]]; [[Hub. Thing-to-be-minimzed]] - "the burdened system is a portrait of restriction, constraint, rebellion, and frustration. And this is the way most of us expend most of our energy." (p. 61). [[Most of us spend most of our energy on the war within]]. So the picture is, if we were to fully unburden our system, we'd have more than twice as much energy. because it wouldn't be spent on all this internal tension. - "when parts unburden, we feel warmer, more grounded, and more alert as well as clearer, calmer, and more acutely aware mentally." (p. 64)