Does Being Flexible With the Protocols of IFS Work?

In my experience, Financial Therapy combined with IFS is one of the more effective methodologies in helping clients resolve money issues. The power of the IFS protocol was demonstrated in my recorded conversation with Helen E. Lees, PhD, Editor of PARTS & SELF, the international voice of the IFS Foundation. Because this was a type of interview with me, the session was not a normal IFS Session and did not follow the standard IFS protocol. It was more of a coaching session for Helen to showcase to the readers of PARTS & SELF what financial therapy in an IFS context looks like, or to discuss what it is. However, even without the normal IFS protocol, the session highlights the powerful impact of applying the IFS process to money issues. [See accompanying Curiosity Conversation video part 1).

The issue Helen chose to focus on as a way of exploring how IFS could be applied to a money issue was a pattern of buying art supplies and tools that she stockpiled, but never or rarely used.

While I’ve seen clients make progress much faster in resolving their money issues when financial therapy is combined with IFS, it still is normal that the process will take several months or longer.

As with most therapy, there are not many “quick fixes.” That said, I was impressed with how quickly Helen worked through the whole process of realizing that the part of her buying the supplies was protecting an exiled young part of her for whom art supplies were a proxy for receiving her parents’ love; a love which, whilst very present in so many ways, in other ways needful to Helen as individual, had been absent. She discovered that she could show love to that part now by connecting it to herself, eliminating the need of the tool-buying protector to continue to buy tools and freeing it to look for opportunities to use the stockpiled tools instead.

See the story, by Helen, of her transformation following the sessions with Rick, here.

Even more impressive were the days and weeks following our session. Two days after the session Helen emailed me: “I just went out to the supermarket and was another person. I believe this is connected to our talking with the tools part – I find that completely bonkers. I also did look online at something to buy, and I didn’t buy it. No intention. Just an internal discussion between parts.”

Two weeks later she wrote me: “I continue to not buy tools! I can’t really explain it but there’s been a shift since our session – subtle but with real world outcomes.” Two weeks later she wrote: “I’m great! This is A MIRACLE. I have increased my savings due to having bought no new tools and only a very few cheap books since we spoke.”

For the past two years, since becoming a Certified Internal Family Systems℠ Practitioner in addition to my qualifications as a Certified Financial Planner and a Certified Financial Therapist-1™, I have worked with my financial therapy clients using an approach I have named IFS Informed Financial Therapy™.

My experience is that clients not only gained understanding around their financial issues, but also made measurable, specific changes in their financial behavior. One client who had been unable to save began and maintained consistent monthly savings; another client began to invest for retirement; others became able to make conscious choices and take action around giving, spending, and employment in areas where they had been frozen in indecision.

A typical IFS Informed Financial Therapy™ session is different from the usual IFS therapy process, in that it combines Financial Coaching and IFS protocols. Typically, there are specific financial concerns that bring the client to financial therapy. This is usually a financial issue that isn’t being resolved by gaining more knowledge. The client often understands the problematic behavior, but hasn’t had success in altering the behavior, no matter how hard they try. Generally, they feel “stuck”.

With new clients, I usually send questionnaires on their specific financial situation, along with various financial exercises, assessments, and evaluations. For example, prior to our interview, I had sent Helen the KMSI-R evaluation that helps to uncover specific money burdens, or trailheads. These can greatly inform the IFS Informed Financial Therapy session.

Unlike normal IFS protocol where giving advice is not encouraged, it’s not unusual for clients to ask for financial advice during a session, and it’s often quite appropriate for the financial therapist to offer additional knowledge. The financial therapist also notes any resistance, dissonance, or money burdens that arise during the financial portion of the session and may also check in with the client as to what they are noticing internally. Clients may become aware of conflicting beliefs, polarized parts, difficult emotions, or thoughts that might impede progress on financial action steps. By checking in with the various messages, thoughts, or emotions that arise from various parts of themselves, the client may then select trailheads for further exploration with the IFS process. Knowing when to offer additional knowledge and when to abstain is a critical reason why the IFS Informed Financial Therapist™ needs to be unblended from their financial and analytical parts and Self-led when facilitating a session.

These might be addressed during the balance of the session or the entirety of a following appointment dedicated to a full parts session. The latter is what Helen and I did (See accompanying Curiosity Conversation video part 2). Two weeks after that session she wrote: “I just don’t know what the hell has happened to me. I do feel like I am a me I don’t know very well (which is a bit frightening although acceptable) but I get a sense of it all being just fine and healthy and there’s no resistance. I have had a couple of days this week that weren’t so easy due to difficult things occurring, but I took it all in my stride and was calm. I feel generally connected. I feel confident like never before. I’m not brilliantly calm but I am calmer. I do feel clear headed for sure. I don’t think the full extent of the outcome is over either.” 

One of the more powerful aspects of IFS Informed Financial Therapy is that clients tend to respond very positively to learning that the parts behind money beliefs or behaviors that appear to be “bad” or “illogical” are motivated by good intentions,

and that once they discover the intention then the behavior makes perfect sense. Understanding the protective purposes behind the behaviors is especially powerful because of the high level of shame associated with money issues. Shame around financial burdens often stems from some type of trauma, which can- but does not have to be -financial in nature. Because money is so integral to all aspects of our lives, distressing or disturbing financial experiences can overwhelm our parts and become traumatic. A wide variety of financial events and circumstances might qualify as either one-time or complex trauma. This includes events and circumstances that could appear insignificant to others but still be traumatic for the person involved.

Learning that problematic money behaviors are not character flaws that define them but are responses to trauma that were developed to protect against emotional pain, does a great deal to reduce clients’ self-blame and strengthen their belief that change is possible.

Understanding the roles and positive intentions of internal parts, combined with awareness around specific money issues, sometimes help clients make connections and gain insights more rapidly than the IFS Informed Financial Therapist might expect. This can be the case even when clients are not fully familiar with the full IFS process, and the therapist provides the Self energy and talks with a part directly.

The first “session” with Helen was an abbreviated form of the full IFS process, yet it serves as a vivid demonstration that there are times in IFS Informed Financial Therapy™ sessions when it may not be necessary to go through every step of the IFS protocol, as clients may leap ahead to essential insights. If this should happen, the therapist’s role is to follow where the client leads, having the flexibility to focus on the outcome rather than checking off every step of the protocol. The intent is to use the proven tools of IFS to help clients make lasting changes.

Helen has reported to me that the conversation and then the session we did has continued to subtly but continually support Self-leadership and that this has made her life much easier in many ways, not just in respect of her attitude to finances.

She is very surprised that work with a focus on finances can touch her inner world so widely and so deeply.

She reports being now convinced and impressed by IFS without any doubt about it as a way to improve one’s life and live better. Helen underscores that the flexibility I showed as she flew through the protocols (such that they didn’t particularly show themselves in any formal way) was key to her healing and new relationship with parts and Self. Quite simply, she says, her parts were hungry to change, and change they did—change they were able to do, she says, because I was not rigid in my approach to how to support her via IFS as a model. A flexible approach, she contends, was key to the success of the work we did together.