How IFS Parts Work Helps Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents Heal
IFS therapy, also known as “parts work” is a type of therapy that focuses on working with different parts of yourself. You may have heard of an inner child or an inner critic, but there are other types of parts, such as an avoidant part or an anxious part. We all have parts and there are no bad parts. In this blog, I will be focusing on the three parts that typically show up the most for my clients who have emotionally immature parents:
The Helper Part: A part of you that learned to work hard in order to gain your parents approval or be a dependable person. Other names for this part might include: the people-pleasing part, the giver, the peacekeeper, or the codependent part.
The Boundaried Part: A part of you that resents your parents criticism or neglect and wants increased protection from their hurtful behavior. Other names for this part might be: The angry part, the fighter, the resentful part, the inner hard-ass.
The Inner Child: A part of you that carries a burden, such as “I am not enough” or “I am unworthy of love.”
In IFS therapy, these are parts that typically cause the most distress for adult children of emotionally immature parents. Our work is to deepen our understanding of these parts in order to offer them support. We can teach your Helper part not to work so hard for approval, work with your Boundaried part to improve your response to your parent’s behavior, and help your inner child sincerely believe that you are worthy of love.
How do these parts of us develop?
Children depend on their parents for survival, so parts typically develop at a young age in response to how our parents treat us.
The Helper Part: Emotionally immature parents don’t offer unconditional love. Instead, they only offer their children praise, connection, or approval based on their accomplishments. This is especially true if those accomplishments reflect well on the emotionally immature parent. For example, an emotionally immature mother may laud her daughter who gets a part on a TV show, and the very next day start a weight loss plan for her daughter. This communicates to the child, “Your body is not good enough” and “I only love you when you accomplish things that make me happy.” So, of course, a young girl in this position is going to lose weight in order to make her mother happy and earn her mother’s love. That is how she develops a Helper part. She thinks she is helping to make her mother happy by losing weight.
In a different scenario, an emotionally immature father may never say the words “I love you” to his son. Imagine this child is a soccer player. The father name-calls or yells in the car after his son’s team loses. The son is experiencing neglect, as well as emotional & verbal abuse. If the son develops a Helper part, it will be in response to feeling unsafe with his father. He will learn that winning games is a way of helping his father regulate his emotions. If his father is regulated, he is safe. This is why some adult children of emotionally immature parents become extremely talented in their chosen profession, sport, or art form.
The Boundaries Part: If this part develops around your teen years, you may have been labeled “the rebel”. The same daughter who acted in a TV show may begin to resent her mother’s mistreatment. As a teenager, she may fight back, telling her mother: “leave me the hell alone!” As an adult, she may feel that anger inside and not know where to channel it. She still wants boundaries, but she often ignores this desire because she feels hopeless about the prospect of being treated with respect by her mother. The Boundaries part is usually pleading with this woman to change something - don’t pick up the phone, cancel a visit, tell mom, “no.” - and this is usually in conflict with the Helper part who feels guilty about the idea of boundaries.
Alternatively, the soccer player son may act in alignment with his Boundaried part. As he ages, he may withdraw almost entirely from the family. He may stop answering texts or calls. He may feel a mixture of both resentment toward his father and fear of facing his father after a long period of low-to-no contact. In this scenario, the Boundaried part has learned to deny the Helper instincts. Even though this is probably a healthy boundary between the son & his father, the behavior might become unhealthy if it spills over into the son’s social relationships. For example, the son may fear becoming close with a romantic partner or exploring new social situations if he continues to carry the fear of being unsafe into adult relationships.
The Inner Child: This part is unique in that it has no “job” that it does for us. It does not try to protect us from unhealthy caregivers through helping or through boundaries. Instead, this part carries a burden. The words for this burden may differ from person to person, but they often resemble one of these four:
I am unsafe.
I have no control.
I do not belong.
I am not good enough.
You can imagine based on each of these that different types of circumstances would lead us to believe one or more of these narratives. I often ask my clients to become curious with their inner child: “Where did you learn this about yourself?” There are memories from childhood that surface in response to this question. Our goal in IFS therapy is to connect with the inner child in those memories and relieve it of the burden it carries.
How To Navigate Parts That Are In Conflict About How To Manage Your Emotionally Immature Parents
You might resonate with one of the above examples and favor either your Helper part or your Boundaried part. In IFS therapy, we use something called “Self” to best understand and support each of these parts. Self is the way we feel in our most centered, calm, and confident state. It is the energy we feel when we travel to a wonderful place, listen to our favorite music, or connect with a best friend. This is the energy that we use to support different parts of ourselves. We all have parts and we all have a Self.
When a parent tells their kid “It’s okay to cry” or “It’s okay to feel sad” - this is Self energy.
When a teacher tells a student “It’s okay to feel frustrated” or “Wow, you’re really getting it!” - this is Self energy.
When your best friend hears you broke up with that loser who didn’t deserve you and says “Rock on bitch, who needs him?!” - this is Self energy.
You can imagine that your Self is driving a car with all of your parts in the passenger seat. Everyday stressors are something your Self can navigate easily on the road. However, a part of you may jump into the driver’s seat when a trigger comes along… Let’s imagine you have an emotionally immature parent who texts “You better be at the family Christmas party. If you’re not there, don’t expect an invite ever again.” Suddenly your inner child is having a meltdown, screaming things like: “This is my fault!” “I don’t belong!” “I’m a burden!”
If your Helper part jumps into the driver’s seat: You may find yourself texting a quick response, such as “I’ll be there.” Your helper part is trying to calm the inner child & resolve the situation quickly to avoid an argument with your parent.
If your Boundaried part jumps into the driver’s seat: You may not answer at all. This is the strategy your Boundaried part is using to keep the inner child safe and calm. You may have learned that withdrawing from the conversation helps by pushing it off until later. This part may also feel resentful that your parent is bossing you around and doesn’t think a response is warranted.
These parts are doing their best to help you based on their experience. However, each part has drawbacks to their strategy:
The Helper Part: This part might make impulsive decisions that you regret later on. Agreeing to a holiday party that you don’t actually want to attend is going to set you up for even more resentment in the long run. You’ll go home wishing you had said “no” in the first place.
The Boundaried Part: This part may help you in the short-term by choosing not to engage with your parent, but it doesn’t stop the same resentment from occurring when your parent texts later on. It also doesn’t stop other family members from getting involved and coercing you to respond. If you have not clearly communicated your boundary, this part will continue to feel suffocated and silenced. The other potential risk is that if you develop a pattern of withdrawal, it might cause you to keep other loved ones at arm’s length.
Self Energy Allows Us To Help Parts When They Cannot Manage The Situation
In IFS therapy, we help your Self get back in the driver’s seat while inviting your Helper and Boundaried parts to the passenger seats. We learn how these parts are helpful and where these parts feel limited in their efforts to manage stressful situations & relationships. Spoiler alert - Parts of us that work hard (like the Helper and Boundaried parts) often feel exhausted by their repeated, failed attempts to resolve long-term issues.
Offering Self energy to these parts is like being a manager and having a meeting with the best members of your team. You want them to know they excel at their jobs, but you don’t want them to over-function and burn out. Good leaders help take the load off their teammates through attunement, compassion, and solutions that actually meet the team member’s needs. When parts feel understood and unburdened, they will stop over-functioning when a trigger occurs and trust that Self is at the wheel to help guide the whole system forward, including the Inner Child.
When trust is established, parts will permit Self to attend to the Inner Child who has been having a meltdown. This allows us to really explore the memories and limiting beliefs that the Inner Child has held onto for so long. We’re able to visit that child from a calm, curious, and confident place of Self energy. When the Inner Child feels supported, it’s finally able to release heavy burdens, such as feeling unsafe, out of control, or unworthy. We are truly able to take our learning from IFS into any situation with our parents once this core trauma is healed:
When your inner child believes you are good enough, your parents cannot make you feel unworthy of love.
When your inner child believes you are safe, you will protect yourself from potential dangerous situations with a parent.
When your inner child believes it wasn’t your fault, you will no longer take responsibility for managing your parent’s emotions.
IFS is a Gentle and Effective Therapy for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
What I love most about IFS is that it empowers you to do healing work with your Self, but there’s no pressure to do it all by yourself. As a therapist, I can offer my clients my Self energy (calm, curiosity, compassion) when they are struggling to connect with their own Self energy. This work really heightens your self-awareness and slows down to work at the pace of your system.
IFS therapy is especially helpful for adult children of emotionally immature parents because of how many parts went unseen by your parents. Children learn to reveal the parts that earn praise and conceal the parts that receive mistreatment. Many parts of adult children have been invalidated from a young age. The practice of IFS helps every part of you to feel validated and allows you to become your most authentic Self.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your healing journey, I offer IFS therapy to clients in Massachusetts. I offer free consultations to get introduced and answer any questions. Reach out for a free intro call if you’d liketo get started!