IFS Growth Programs

Working with Anger in IFS

Jay Earley, PhD

Abstract

Anger can arise in a variety of ways in IFS sessions—in protector or exiles, as disowned anger, suppressed anger, acted out anger, and healing anger. This article discusses how to work successfully with anger in each of these different contexts.

Anger can arise in a complex variety of ways in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) depending on which part holds the anger and what function it serves. When a client’s anger arises in a session, it is helpful to understand the context and dynamics you are facing so you know how to proceed. This article discusses the variety of ways that I have discovered for working with anger as part of the IFS process.

The IFS Model

Internal Systems Therapy recognizes that our psyches are made up of different parts, sometimes called subpersonalities. Each part has its own perspective, feelings, memories, goals, and motivations. In the IFS model^[1], parts can be in extreme roles or non-extreme roles. Extreme parts are those that are causing us problems that bring us to psychotherapy. There are three kinds of such parts—managers, firefighters, and exiles. Managers are the parts a client usually encounters first in exploring him or herself. Their job is to handle the world and protect against the pain of the exiles. Exiles are young child parts that hold pain from the past. Managers protect against pain in a wide variety of ways—closing down feelings, anger, caretaking, pleasing others, avoiding situations that might evoke an exile, judgment of self and others, and a variety of defense mechanisms.

Firefighters also protect against exiles’ pain; I will discuss them in more detail later in the article. The term protectors refers to both managers and firefighters because they both protect against the pain of exiles. IFS helps us to understand the systemic relationships between parts—how some parts protect against others, some are polarized with other parts, and some are aligned with others.

IFS also recognizes that we each have a true self or spiritual center, which it calls the Self. The Self is compassionate, curious, connected, and grounded in its role as the agent of internal healing in the IFS model. The Self develops a relationship of caring and trust with each part, which allows to witness the origins of the pain of the part and heal it. The therapist functions as a coach to the Self during this process. The Self is also the natural leader of all the parts in a healthy psyche. It makes decisions and takes actions and advises the parts on how to deal with various situations in life. In this capacity, the Self also has qualities such as courage, creativity, and perspective.

Protector Anger

The most common form of anger we see in IFS sessions is the anger of a protector--a manager or firefighter--where it is used to defend against the pain of an exile. The protector uses anger as a way to avoid feeling the pain that the exile is holding. Because of this, such anger may arise in situations where it is inappropriate or be more extreme than is warranted. For example, let’s look at the case of one client, Marlene. Whenever someone acts controlling or dominant toward Marlene, or when she perceives it this way, a protector is activated who feels angry at the person. This anger is often more intense than is called for. It is an attempt to protect Marlene from the pain of an exile who feels trapped and powerless.

Protector anger may also be an attempt to protect the exile from a perceived external threat. For example, Marlene often expresses her anger to the person she feels controlled by and tries to prove to them that they are wrong. This is an attempt to protect her exile from the actions of this person, which are perceived as threatening. However, because Marlene’s anger is protector-driven, it tends to be out of line with what the other person has actually done, and as a result, it often offends people or makes them concerned that Marlene is out of line. They may respond with increased attempts to control her, resulting in exactly what she fears.

The protocol for IFS work on this type of anger follows the standard IFS approach as follows: The client accesses Self, gets to know the angry protector, and develops a trusting relationship with it. Then Self asks its permission to get to know the exile it is protecting. You never try to work with an exile until you have permission from all its protectors. The Self gets to know the exile, and asks it to show the childhood incident or family situation where it originally took on its burden of pain and negative beliefs. The Self witnesses this story and pain, gives the exile what it needs to heal, takes it out of that situation (if desired), and goes through an internal ritual of unburdening. This means releasing the pain and constricting beliefs that the exile has been carrying, so its role is no longer extreme and it can be what it truly is. Then the protector can let go of its anger (its protective role) because there is no longer a need to protect this exile.

Marlene worked with her angry part and developed some appreciation of why it felt such an intense need to protect her from being dominated. Then she accessed the exiled part behind the anger; this part felt rigidly controlled by her parents. She witnessed this situation and the exile’s feelings of being cornered and powerless, and then in her imagination she took the part out of that situation into one in which it had the freedom it craved. Then it was ready to go through an unburdening process to release the feeling of being trapped and powerless. Once this part was unburdened, then the angry part relaxed quite a bit. It still wanted to protect her, but the protection came out in a way that was simply assertive rather than hostile.

Protective Anger Being Acted Out

Sometimes protector anger is acted out in a destructive way in the client’s life. For example, Marlene had a tendency to flip out at work and yell at her boss. To handle this, we need to help the client get to know the angry part and develop a trusting relationship with it so that the Self can help the part to refrain from acting out. For example, after working on this issue for a while, Marlene got to know and understand her angry part as discussed above. Even though it was creating problems, Marlene appreciated its attempts to protect her. Therefore the part came to trust her to a certain extent. Before trying to work with the exile, Marlene made an agreement with the angry part that when it got angry at work, her Self could intervene before it yelled at anyone and take time out to cool down. This kept her from getting into trouble and actually reduced the reactions from her boss that were upsetting this part.

In this type of situation, it can also be helpful to teach a client communication skills that involve speaking for an angry part rather than from it. The client learns to speak for a part in making statements such as, “A part of me got angry when you said that.” This is as opposed to speaking from the part, where the client is completely identified with the part and acting out its feelings by saying things such as “Leave me alone, you controlling bastard!” It may be helpful to have the client practice this constructive communication of anger by role playing it in sessions.

Ultimately this kind of anger must be worked with as mentioned previously for it to be unburdened, but establishing this kind of Self-leadership may be necessary first. With Marlene, after she made the agreement that stopped the acting out, her angry part was able to calm down to some extent because she wasn’t triggering her boss with her anger. Then in her IFS therapy, it was easier to access the exile that the angry part was protecting and go through the healing process described above.

In some cases, it can also be helpful to unburden some of the anger before working with the exile. This is often the case when the anger is intense, bitter, raging, or revengeful. If this is called for, the protector will feel a need for the unburdening.

Intense Protective Anger Being Suppressed

Sometimes a protector has intense anger that is being suppressed by other protectors and therefore isn’t being acted out. Anger gets suppressed because of the danger (real or perceived) of the its being expressed destructively. This is common with firefighter rage. Firefighters are parts that protect against exile pain that is threatening to come into consciousness. This feels like an emergency and therefore firefighters act in impulsive ways to suppress the pain or distract from it. Rage is a common firefighter reaction to intense pain that is about to emerge. Firefighter rage often carries tremendous charge, which frightens other parts. This tends to cause a major polarization in the system between the raging firefighter and managers who stop the rage from being acted out.

For example, Bill would get enraged at people whom he perceived as not respecting him, but he didn’t express it to them. The anger was felt by a firefighter who wanted to express it, but it was suppressed by a manager who realized it could get him into trouble. So it ate away at him inside. To defuse this situation, I encouraged Bill to express the anger in a session by hitting a pillow and yelling in a controlled fashion. He was able to do this in such a way that he didn’t get out of control. This discharged some of the anger so that its intensity diminished. It also reassured the polarized manager that the anger wasn’t in danger of getting out of control, so it was able to relax. This made it easier to follow the regular IFS protocol with the anger and ultimately unburden the exiles underneath. This kind of physical work with the expression of anger has been pioneered by Gestalt therapy^[2] and bioenergetics.^[3]

In many cases, there isn’t actually any danger of the anger getting out of control, and the client just needs to discover this. He needs to find out that in a supportive situation such as a therapy session, he can express his anger without danger. This helps him to own the anger, discharge it, and recognize that he can contain it. This was the case with Bill.

In some cases, getting out of control is a possibility, so you need to work with the client while he is expressing the anger to help him have Self present and contain it. This way he learns how to express his anger safely. For example, I sometimes encourage a client to feel his feet on the floor or to keep his eyes open and focused while expressing the anger. If the anger starts to escalate, I might ask him to stop for a moment and take some time to access Self and unblend from the angry part. Then he can go back to expressing the anger in a way that is Self-led and contained.

In either case, after expressing the anger (and learning how to contain it if necessary), it may be useful for the client to unburden some portion of the anger before working with it in the way discussed above. Discharging the anger through physical expression helps to release some of it and a partial unburdening can help to release more. With the charge reduced, the rest of the work is easier.

Disowned Anger

In IFS there are two types of exiles. The usual one is an exile that is in pain from some incident or repeated situation from childhood; it has been exiled to protect against this pain. The second type is exiled because its feelings or behavior are seen as unacceptable. Originally this behavior wasn’t acceptable to the family (or culture) and then it became unacceptable to other parts of the client as well. I call this a disowned exile. This is similar to the concept of “disowned selves” from Voice Dialogue^[4]. For example, Donna’s parents were judgmental and shaming whenever she got angry. They gave her the message that she was supposed to be a nice girl and not be aggressive or make waves. As a result, her anger got exiled, and this was enforced by managers who believed that anger was bad.

Anger is probably the most common kind of disowned exile. My approach to disowned anger is to encourage the client to release it from exile when the disowning parts will allow this, to welcome it back into consciousness. Since this is a disowned exile, it may not carry a significant burden that must be released. The important thing is for the anger to be welcomed back from exile. (If there is a burden caused by the way the anger was rejected in the family, this will need to be released.)

Often a disowned exile holds a positive quality that can be integrated into the client’s psyche. For example, sexuality might be disowned or spontaneity or caring. These are all positive qualities that a client would like to embody in life. When the disowned part is welcomed back, it allows the person to reown this positive quality. When anger is exiled, it isn’t the anger itself that is the positive quality, but there is another quality that gets exiled along with the anger. When we exile our anger, we also exile our strength and our healthy aggression. Along with losing our anger, we also lose a portion of our aliveness, our personal power, and our ability to assert ourselves. We may lose our ability to take risks, take a powerful stance in the world, and feel a zest for life. In the Diamond Approach^[5], this set of qualities is called the Red Essence or Strength, and it is understood that when anger is blocked, the Red Essence is also blocked. Gestalt therapy2 also recognizes healthy aggression as a positive goal for therapy.

By welcoming back disowned anger, we open the possibility of reclaiming this positive quality of strength for ourselves. This is especially true if we welcome back the anger in an embodied way that includes feeling the new strength and aliveness in our bodies. Here the focus is on fully expressing the anger, not on containing it or communicating it in a constructive way. This is not practice for real life communication. It is a way of expressing aggression in a therapy session that leads to reowning a client’s disowned strength.

Let’s look at Donna’s process: She first allowed herself to feel the emotion of anger that had been exiled. When this felt reasonably safe to the protectors who had disowned the anger, I encouraged her to notice how the anger manifested itself in her body in the moment—clenching of her jaw, power in her arms, deeper breathing, upright posture. At some point she wanted to express the anger. One session involved hitting a pillow, another twisting a towel. This allowed the anger to be fully embodied in a vibrant way. I encouraged to feel the strength and aliveness that was awakened in her by owning and expressing her anger. She felt this as hot, streaming energy in her arms and a feeling of potency in her trunk. This gave her substantial access to her personal power and ability to assert herself in healthy ways.

Working with Protectors that Block Healthy Aggression

In the course of welcoming back anger, protectors may be activated that are frightened of the anger or of the strength and aliveness. When this happens, we need to pay attention to these parts. When a protector blocks the client from reowning their anger, we first ask it if it would be willing to step aside so that the therapy process can continue. If it won’t, we ask what its fears are and reassure it about those fears. A protector like this is often afraid that the client will do dangerous things with the anger or will be attacked by others for expressing it. We handle this by encouraging the client’s Self to reassure the protector as follows: The anger will only be expressed in this overt form in therapy sessions, not in the client’s life. Or if it is expressed, the Self will remain in charge and not allow any destructive acting out. The client will express the anger constructively and will choose situations where it is safe to do this.

If the protector still won’t step aside, then we turn our attention to it and give it a full IFS session that involves accessing and unburdening the exile it is protecting. This usually leads to the relaxation of its protective stance, and then we can proceed with integrating the anger and strength into the client’s psyche.

For example, when Donna first expressed her anger, a protector came up that was frightened that she would be criticized for being angry and strong. It stopped her by making her go blank so she couldn’t feel the anger any longer. She reassured this part that she (in Self) wouldn’t express the anger inappropriately and that she would be there for the angry part. Then the protector was willing to step aside and allow Donna to embody her anger. If this reassurance hadn’t worked, we could have done a session with the protector that included witnessing how her parents had shamed her when she was angry.

In some cases, it isn’t a simply matter of welcoming back the disowned anger. There may be parts that block even the experience of anger, so the client can only get in touch with sadness or fear. If you notice that a client’s exiles consistently feel only pain and never have anger about what was done to them, it would be wise to ask the client to check if there is a protector blocking their anger.

In other cases, the exile may experience the anger and show it internally but show no desire to express it outwardly. Outward expression isn’t always necessary, but if the client has chronically disowned their anger and strength, then expressing it internally is usually not enough. The person must express their aggression outwardly and embody it to gain full access to their strength. Therefore you may need to ask the client if the exile would like to express the anger outwardly, or ask how it feels the anger in its body. If it repeatedly says No to this or if it doesn’t want to feel the anger in an embodied way, then I ask if this is because there are protectors who won’t allow this. This usually uncovers those protectors who don’t think it is safe to show anger, or in some cases, to be strong. You then have a chance to work with them to allow the full embodiment and expression that will foster the client’s strength.

For example, as a child Diane had made an unspoken pact with her father that if she deferred to him and didn’t develop her strength or competence in the world, he would always love and protect her. Diane’s father reneged on this pact, and she is now in her fifties and her father is dead, but one of her parts has kept the pact nevertheless. As a result, it has been hard for Diane to become powerful and successful in her life, and she has had difficulty asserting herself.

As we explored this in her sessions, this part expressed anger about the pact and the father’s reneging on it quite a few times, but always silently through imagery. When I suggested that she might want to express the anger out loud, Diane said the part didn’t need that. However, eventually I asked if there were protectors who didn’t want her to express this anger outwardly, and she immediately realized there were. As we explored this, we uncovered protectors who were protecting exiles who were frightened of being punished if she were strong and successful. As we worked with these protectors and exiles, they gradually relaxed and stepped aside, allowing Diane to embody her anger and aggression by feeling powerful in her arms and back with deeper breathing and fire in her eyes.

The next step was to express the anger through her voice, and this involved working with more protectors who blocked outward expression of aggression and strength. They were protecting a deeper set of exiles who were terrified of abandonment and death. As we unburdened these parts, she was able to fully express her anger in an outward, embodied way. This work has given Diane increased access to her personal power, allowing her to assert herself in ways that have made a substantial difference in her life.

Exile Anger

Parts that are exiled because of childhood pain may also be angry even if the anger itself isn’t exiled. Exiles frequently feel angry at the way they were treated in childhood. For example, Sally’s older brother made fun of her whenever she tried to play with him and his friends This caused an exile of Sally’s to feel shame, and that exile also felt angry at her brother. This is different from protector anger because that would be an attempt to avoid feeling the shame, while this exile of Sally’s felt the shame along with the anger.

For this type of anger, the exile should be encouraged to feel (and possibly express) its anger with the Self as witness. In Sally’s case, after the shame was witnessed, the exile needed to internally express its anger at the brother. This was another part of the witnessing that needed to happen before the exile was ready to unburden. Then it released the shame and the belief that she wasn’t lovable that it had taken on.

If the client has access to strength and healthy aggression along with the exile’s anger, this can help in the healing process, especially when the original childhood situation involves harm of some kind. During the step in the IFS process that involves witnessing a harmful childhood scene, the exile or the Self may want to rework the scene in a healing fashion. The client imagines protecting the exile from the harm that happened in the past, by stopping the parent (or other person) who perpetrated the harm. This makes the exile feel safe and is therefore good preparation for retrieving the exile and unburdening it. This protection is much more effective and healing if it is done with embodied, expressive healthy aggression.

For example, Walt had an exile that was intensely activated whenever he was judged in an angry way by his wife. In working on this part, he realized that it went back to a childhood scene in which he was physically abused by his mother. The first time he worked on this, I encouraged Walt to come into that scene as Self and see what the exile needed from him. It wanted him to stop the mother from hurting the exile, which he imagined doing. Then the exile went through an unburdening process that seemed to be successful.

However, during the next week Walt still went into a lot of pain whenever he had a conflict with his wife. When we explored this in a second session, it turned out that Walt’s exile was still frightened of his mother. This time he felt a desire to stop the mother in a much more overtly aggressive way. With my encouragement, he stood up, repeatedly yelled at her to stop, and executed a series of karate-like kicks. This gave him an embodied experience of the power of being able to protect the exile, and the result was that the exile felt safe enough from harm that its fear greatly diminished. This produced a spontaneous unburdening that lasted; Bill was much less reactive to his wife after that. The physical expression of Walt’s anger was crucial to his being able to fully unburden the fear. Somatic Experiencing^[6] has a similar understanding of the value of healthy aggression in the renegotiation of trauma.

Expressing Anger Outwardly

There have been discussions in the psychotherapy field about the value of expressing anger in psychotherapy sessions and potential problems with this. These have usually involved black-or-white positions about this issue: It either is or isn’t a good idea to encourage clients to express anger. As you can see from this article, this is not a simple question. Sometimes outward expression of anger is valuable and sometimes it is dangerous.

The distinctions made in this article can help us to understand when it is advisable to encourage the outward expression of anger and when it is not, how to express the anger, and what purpose this expression might serve. Let’s review the possibilities:

1.  Protector anger serves a defensive purpose. It needs to be understood, but usually expressing it will only strengthen the defense. This is especially true with anger that is being acted out in the world; expressing it might encourage more acting out. However, a client can benefit from practicing how to communicate anger in a constructive way.

2. With intense anger that is being suppressed, it can sometimes be useful to express this in a session in a contained way to learn to discharge it appropriately with the help of Self. This reduces polarization and eases the rest of the work.

3. Exile anger needs to be witnessed. It may be expressed or not depending on what the exile wants. In some cases, expressing anger can aid in reworking a harmful childhood situation as part of the healing process.

4. Disowned anger usually needs to be expressed outwardly, as a way of accessing and developing the client’s strength and healthy aggression. This expression should be as full and embodied as possible.

Conclusion

This article contains some initial thinking of mine on how to work with anger in IFS. It shows that anger comes up in a wide variety of contexts and needs to be handled differently in each one. In some cases it needs to be witnessed, in some cases discharged. In other situations the client needs to learn to contain it and express it constructively. In still others, the client needs to express it fully as a way of developing strength. And sometimes anger is an aid in the healing process.

I welcome feedback and discussion from others to further elaborate ways to work with anger successfully

^[1] Schwartz, R. C. Internal Family Systems Therapy. New York: Guilford, 1995.

Goulding, R. A. and Schwartz, R. C. The Mosaic Mind. Chicago: Trailhead Publications, 1995.

^[2] Perls, F., Hefferline, R. F., and Goodman, P. Gestalt Therapy. Bantam, New York, 1951

^[3] Lowen, A. Bioenergetics.  Penguin, 1994.

^[4] Stone, H., and Winkelman, S. Embracing Our Selves. New World Library, San Rafael, CA, 1989.

^[5] A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price, p. 206-215, Diamond Books, Berkeley, CA, 1988.

^[6] Peter A. Levine, Healing Trauma: Restoring the Wisdom of the Body, Sounds True., 1999.