Men in IFS Therapy
I have much respect for men who are willing to do this work. It requires men to go to vulnerable places in their psyches and be willing to get in touch with their core wounds and feelings. It’s not easy, and it goes against all of our male programming.
Most have heard the phrase Toxic Masculinity. Growing up in my family, an immigrant, Italian family in upstate NY, I like to say that our family culture was like The Godfather without the guns. Men were supposed to be strong, tough, athletic, smart, confident, proud, and take no bullshit. If you fuck with me, you’ll pay, kind of sums it up. I was raised to be a bread winner, a protector, and an alpha. Size didn’t matter. It was about how strong and tough mentally you were, and, if aggression was necessary, so be it. If not physical aggression, then verbal aggression. And intelligence was used as a weapon, too. Everything was used as a weapon. Not all the time, but when needed. The Godfather was strategic using violence at the most poignant times to gain control through fear. That’s my form of Toxic Masculinity learned directly from my father. What’s yours?
The problem with these expectations is that I don’t get to have my feelings. As a young boy, I was under a ton of stress in my family, and I would break out in tears at the most inconvenient of times, watching Disney movies like Heidi, Dumbo, and Bambi. My mother was in and out of my life during childhood, and I reacted to these movies with uncontrollable sobbing.
When I hit teen years, I knew that I had to put these tears away. Sound familiar, men? I had to become that tough, confident male that I was expected to be. It was survival. And I did. Now, this wasn’t conscious, but it played out like a script. I excelled at sports, got good grades, and looked all the confident young man that parents would be proud of. I also drank and smoked pot every weekend and controlled myself through exercise and healthy food and trying to be perfect in every way. Barbi might be the female architype for this behavior, so maybe I was a Ken.
My emotional life was stunted. There was no place to feel insecure or sad or lost. I couldn’t process those emotions. Hence, the substance use and the control of my own behavior.
Learning to have emotions that are habitually repressed is a process. In IFS therapy, or parts work, we learn to explore the parts that were repressed, called exiled parts, and the parts that do the repressing, protector parts. There are generally 2 types of protector parts. The manager, my Ken part, that learns to control behaviors and focus on outcomes outside of us, and firefighters that control through acting out behaviors like drinking, overeating, or pornography. The ideal is to help the protectors to relax a bit, so that we have access to the exiled parts. Then, these repressed parts can release pent up emotion and trauma, and the system experiences an unburdening or relaxed response. The parts start to grow up, adapt more effective coping and jobs, and navigating life becomes easier and more effective.
Parts work, or Internal Family Systems, is a powerful way to transform inner experiences that have felt stuck. If you’re interested, send an email at chris@chrisfenarolimft.com. I love working with any adult that wants to improve their lives through therapy.