Dr. Frank Anderson joins us on Adventures Through The Mind to explore the Internal Family Systems model of therapy and its perspective on the nature of mind, trauma, “triggers”, and the symptoms of mental illness. We also talk about the transpersonal context of the self, choosing to grow up in the face of our own traumas, IFS’ application to psychedelic therapies, and how to use IFS to navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

--LINKS-- For links to Dr. Anderson's work, full show notes, and to watch this episode in video, head to https://bit.ly/ATTMind120 ***Full Topics Breakdown Below***

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************** Episode Breakdown

• What is Internal family systems therapy? 
• Systems thinking and the multiplicity of the mind
• Everybody is born with 'self-energy' and we don't need to build it or cultivate it
• We all have multiple personalities, IFS calls them 'parts' 
• The problems of parts taking on extreme roles 
• The different types of parts and their roles 
  • the two types of protective parts: mangers and firefighters
  • the wounded parts: exiles
• All our parts have positive intention - even if those intentions have negative results 
• How IFS is different than conventional therapy insofar as how it addresses 'problematic behavior': e.g. Cutting, addiction and suicide 
• How important therapist authenticity of affect is during the co-regulation process between client and therapist
• The difference between managing symptoms and healing wounds 
• What an IFS session looks like and the vital importance of 'getting the permission of the protective parts' before doing any healing work 
• The client does the healing, the therapist is an adjunct
• Healing happened through the internal relationship between the self and the parts 
• Self-energy: what is it, what does it feel like, what is its role and how do we connect with it 
• How trauma impacts our relationship between the self and our parts 
• In the IFS context of trauma, what does it mean to be an adult
• Growing up and healing trauma is a choice we need to need to make, even when our capacity to choose is different in different contexts (e.g. Systemic disenfranchisement) 
• The metaphysics of choosing our trauma before being born as a spiritual process 
• We all have the capacity to heal our trauma
• How does IFS understand psychedelic therapy, generally and specifically: MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine
• There is such a difference between low dose and high dose ketamine insofar as doing therapy 
• Low-dose ketamine psychotherapy using IFS protocol, compared to MDMA protocol 
• The exciting potentials of how different psychedelic therapies can be optimized through IFS 
• The impotence of differing between recreational, therapeutic, spiritual and harmful use
• An IFS interpretation of the imperial ACE psilocybin model 
• Should therapists experience psychedelics before providing psychedelic therapy 
• How does understanding IFS as a paradigm for living help us with or without trauma 
• How to use self-facilitated IFS processes to deal with the trauma/pain/fear of the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Unblending from our past so we can show up to what's actually happening right now

 

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