Self-Therapy Journey as an Adjunct to IFS Therapy

Self-Therapy Journey (STJ) is an interactive online tool that enables you to systematically classify, explore, and transform your psychological issues. It is the first general-purpose web application for psychological work. It is based on IFS.

If you are currently working with an IFS therapist or counselor, this page explains how STJ can be a useful adjunct to this work.

Discovering Your Parts

Of the parts that can be affecting your life, some are more obvious than others. For example, you may know that it is hard for you to leave a relationship even though you can see that it isn’t good for you, because you feel dependent on your partner. Each type of part corresponds to a pattern in STJ. This is clearly the Dependent Pattern, and you can work on it using STJ.

The Pattern System and STJ can help you to identify a pattern that you might otherwise miss. For example, you might have a Passive-Aggressive Pattern, which involves appearing to be a pleaser but actually causing people frustration and pain through unconscious and indirect aggression. You might discover that you have this pattern by taking one of the STJ quizzes or by studying the Pattern System.

Insight into a Protector and Its Motivation

Once you choose a pattern to work on, STJ takes you through a series of pages where you explore your unique version of this pattern, which is usually a protector. You learn about your feelings and behavior when the protector is activated and the circumstances under which it tends to get triggered.

STJ provides information about the typical kinds of motivations for each protector you may have. You can look over the list and check off those that intuitively fit. For example, if you are working on the People-Pleasing Pattern, you might realize that you are afraid of being judged if you don't please people. Or you might be afraid of being abandoned if you assert yourself.

At the Change or Transformation Level of enrollment, STJ also provides a guided meditation for each pattern which takes you through part of an IFS session where you get to know that part experientially and finds out what it is protecting you from and why. This gives you even more reliable information about the motivations for this part.

Click here to learn more about the STJ enrollment options.

Working with Exiles

At the Transformation Level of enrollment, STJ helps you discover the exiles that underlie each motivation. As with patterns, this is also done in two ways. For each motivation for a pattern, there is an associated wound (type of exile, actually a type of burden for an exile). For example, if you have the People-Pleasing Pattern because you are afraid of being abandoned, then it is protecting an exile who was abandoned as a child, which has the Abandonment Wound.

You can choose to go through a series of pages to explore your Abandonment Wound, including what happened in childhood to cause the wound. In addition, you can engage in a guided meditation that takes you though the steps for healing and unburdening this exile.

Therapy Sessions and STJ Sessions

When you work on a certain part in a session and the work is not yet finished (as is often the case), you can continue that work on your own with STJ. This empowers you and gives you a greater sense of being in charge of your own work. And because of the structured nature of STJ, it keeps track of everything you do, so your therapist can know exactly what you have done and where to go next.

You can also choose to work on issues that you are interested in using STJ and then continue the work with your therapist afterward. If you get stuck in your STJ work, your therapist can help you work through that block in a session so you can continue successfully on your own.

STJ is especially useful if you can't afford to see your therapist every week. You can work on yourself in those weeks when you don't have a therapy session, and in this way enhance the effectiveness of your therapy.

Healthy Capacities

IFS tends to focus on difficult protectors and painful exiles (as do most forms of therapy in their own way). However, clients often feel empowered by recognizing the healthy capacities they can develop. For each problematic pattern, STJ helps you to explore the healthy capacity that can transform and replace that pattern and exactly which aspects of that capacity you want to have more of. For example, if you have the People-Pleasing Pattern, it is helpful  to know that Assertiveness is what transforms it and what Assertiveness consists of.

If you choose, you can work on developing a healthy capacity without exploring the patterns that block it. This is the way it works at the Shift Level of enrollment for a capacity and it is an option at the Change and Transformation Levels.

Real-Time Practice

STJ can help you do homework practices in a consistent, structured, and helpful way. At the Change Level or Transformation Level of enrollment, STJ helps you create a detailed, structured real-time practice for replacing each pattern with its corresponding healthy capacity. It also provides tracking pages to help you track what happened as you did the practice. This makes it more likely that you will follow through with the practice and make improvements so it will be more successful.

More

There is even more. STJ also contains guided meditations for working through polarization and for negotiating with a protector to let you lead from Self in a particular situation that is coming up shortly in your life.


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"Change" Enrollment Level

Provides
  • Psychological insight
  • Behavior change
  • Experiential (IFS) therapy
For people who want to…
  • Engage in experiential therapy for more complete behavior change
  • Augment their coaching or psychotherapy with self-therapy
  • Learn how to use IFS
Click here for more information. 

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"Transformation" Enrollment Level

Provides
  • Psychological insight
  • Behavior change
  • Experiential depth (IFS) therapy
  • Personality transformation
For people who want to…
  • Dedicate themselves to personal growth work
  • Engage in depth therapy for full transformation
  • Explore and heal their childhood wounds
  • Augment their psychotherapy with self-therapy
Click here for more information. 

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"Shift" Enrollment Level for a Capacity

Provides
  • Quick simple behavior shift
  • Clear goal
For people who are…
  • Busy, after quick results
  • Just starting to work on a capacity
  • Coaching clients 
Click here for more information.