June 17, 2025
Internal Family Systems: The Path to Authentic Self-Healing
Send us a text Dive deep into the fascinating world of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy with Lizbeth De Sa, a writer, educator, and IFS practitioner who shares how understanding your "multiple mind" can transform your life. The concept sounds deceptively simple - we're all made up of different "parts" or sub-personalities. But as Lizbeth reveals, recognizing and working with these parts creates profound healing opportunities that traditional therapy often misses. "It's really about lovi...
Dive deep into the fascinating world of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy with Lizbeth De Sa, a writer, educator, and IFS practitioner who shares how understanding your "multiple mind" can transform your life.
The concept sounds deceptively simple - we're all made up of different "parts" or sub-personalities. But as Lizbeth reveals, recognizing and working with these parts creates profound healing opportunities that traditional therapy often misses. "It's really about loving all of who you are, even the parts that we usually don't really like," she explains, describing how IFS helped her navigate a traumatic divorce and custody battle when other approaches fell short.
What sets IFS apart is its focus on "self-energy" - accessing your authentic core self that naturally carries compassion, curiosity, and healing capacity. Through vivid examples, including her personal journey healing from racial trauma, Lizbeth demonstrates how IFS helps parts release their burdens rather than continuing to reenact painful patterns. The result? Parts that once carried trauma can reclaim their natural qualities of "playfulness, joy, and creativity."
Lizbeth also touches on her work as a laughter yoga leader, her writings about applying the multiple mind concept to everyday challenges, and practical tips for working with overwhelming emotions. For those struggling with intense feelings, she offers this surprisingly effective technique: simply ask your distressed parts if they could "tone down" their intensity just a bit. "When they've got your attention, they will tone that intensity down and then it's a lot easier to be with them and send them some compassion." Ready to transform your relationship with yourself? Start by exploring MultipleMind.com and discover how understanding your internal family system can lead to profound healing and integration.
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600
00:00 - Welcome and Guest Introduction
02:08 - Understanding Internal Family Systems Therapy
04:38 - Healing Racial Trauma with IFS
07:16 - Self-Energy and Creative Healing
09:40 - Spiritual Dimensions of IFS
13:10 - Laughter Yoga and Multiple Mind
17:56 - Final Tips and Website Information
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball, if you believe you can achieve.
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Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire.
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Where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire.
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Today we are joined by writer, educator laughter, yoga leader and conflict mediator, as well as internal family systems therapy practitioner, lizbeth DeSalle.
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She's going to be talking about her writings and teaching and how she talks about the multiple mind.
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So, liz Beth, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Thank you so much for having me Curtis.
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Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?
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Sure.
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So I'm originally from England, though of Indian descent, and now I'm living in South Carolina and I've always been interested in self-awareness.
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So I've been practicing meditation for a couple of decades and I went through a very traumatic divorce and custody case a few years back and I discovered internal family systems therapy at the time and it really showed me so much potential for integrating all the different parts of ourselves and bringing some healing in a way that I had just not found possible until that time.
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So I threw myself into it, got trained in it, started practicing it with clients one-on-one and teaching how to bring it into their everyday life, because it really is about loving all of who you are, even the parts that we usually don't really like.
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So it's really been quite transformative in my life and my clients' lives too.
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Well, what exactly is internal family systems therapy?
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So it's a model of psychotherapy that was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz and it's basically that we are made up of different parts or sub personalities and some of these parts of us carry burdens of trauma, often from childhood experiences, and often in therapy people talk about their experiences, they narrate what happened, but that doesn't often heal the part that experienced that pain.
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So in IFS what we want to do is to go back to the part who experienced the pain, with their permission, because we also don't want to re-traumatize the person by reliving it.
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So it's done in a very controlled and manageable way and we use the compassionate presence of self to witness that pain, and by self I mean your, your essence, who you are at core some people call it your higher self, the buddha nature, christ-like nature, and we use that that is within all of us to witness the pain of that part, so that they can feel understood, not alone, and then we help them to release it and then, through releasing it, they can take on the original qualities of playfulness and joy and creativity and they're not living with the burden of that trauma and act continually being enacted in their everyday lives well, let's say I wanted to go through internal family systems therapy.
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If I go through it, how can it transform my life?
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Well, I would say what do you want to work on?
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What is holding you back Are things that are coming up in your behaviors or patterns, thought patterns?
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Do you have beliefs about yourself or others that limit you?
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And you would bring those to a session and we would find out the roots of those beliefs or thoughts, feelings or actions and we would witness the original pain that caused the part to behave in that way or take on that belief and then help them release the pain that caused it.
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Well, how is IFS relevant to healing racial trauma?
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So I can talk about my own personal experiences of racism, own personal experiences of racism.
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I have acted out beliefs of inferiority, carried pain because of racism.
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That I experienced especially when I was young.
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And let's see, I was on a meditation retreat and I realized we were doing walking meditation, which is when you walk very slowly and you practice just being present in the moment, just walking, not get going anywhere.
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And I started to experience some flashbacks.
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While people were coming towards me, even though they were quite far away, I found myself getting really angry and kind of belligerent, like I'm not going to move out of the way, and I was like where is this coming from?
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Because there was absolutely no aggression from anyone and, as I said, they were quite far away.
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And I realized, just by going inside and being present with that anger, that there was a part of me who was reacting to experiences of being shoved off the sidewalk, being physically assaulted, when I was young and had this idea of like never again, but it was acting it out as if it was still happening at a retreat center.
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So I, through IFS, I've been present with these parts who are still living out that trauma as if it's actually happening Now I'm not denying that racism still exists and I'm not saying that by healing these parts we condone any experience of racism.
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But if we can heal the child parts of ourselves who have experienced it and let it go, then they are not acting out in fear, still paralyzed by the pain of those experiences in everyday life, and it actually empowers me to deal with racism in my current life more effectively.
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Well explain why IFS is so much more than parts work or working with the inner child we focus on the healing potential of self-energy.
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So we don't just work with the parts and listen to them.
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We take it further and we use the power, the compassionate presence of self to heal these parts and help them release our burdens.
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And we all have self within us.
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It's when you feel really yourself, your authenticity, and it's that place that is full of compassion and curiosity that really lets healing happen.
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So in my sessions I don't heal anyone.
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I just facilitate conversations between a client's parts and their self so that they can do the healing parts and their self so that they can do the healing.
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Well, talk about how people can use the creative process to help in healing.
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So I would say, for me, this is not just a therapeutic modality.
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I would really love for people to develop relationships with their parts and to realize that they have a multiplicity within them.
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We are not a monolithic mind.
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People are naturally made up of many, many parts and it's pretty evident because people use this language in their everyday lives.
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Already they might say a part of me wants to do this and a part of me wants to do that, or I have mixed feelings.
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So I think bringing awareness to their own multiple mind is the first step and realizing that it's normal it doesn't mean that they have multiple personality disorder or anything like that and then to just turn their attention inwards whenever they can and say what's going on with me right now?
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How can I listen to the conflicting voices inside?
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Because I think often we suppress them, because the inner conflict can be quite painful.
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Just that alone can go so far in easing the conflict inside, bringing some hope to parts that we can listen to everyone who's got a desire or a wish for a certain outcome and we can make decisions from a more centered and a place of more collaboration inside.
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Well, talk about the spiritual aspects of IFS.
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So I do see IFS as a spiritual practice, but it works if you don't.
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So I mean, I see clients who are atheists, agnostic, and that's fine too, who are atheists, agnostic, and that's fine too, and I see self as being that of the divine within all of us, because it has these qualities that go beyond words, that we have categorized them into some of these characteristics like compassion and curiosity, but there's a certain presence that when we do feel really authentic and who we are at core, it almost feels timeless beyond ourselves, like a connection that, um, that connects all of us even.
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I mean, I think it's different for everyone, but when we can use that presence, tap into that, immense healing really does happen.
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So I practice meditation and meditation really was, has been a wonderful tool for me, but I found that it didn't go far enough.
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So it was great to be aware of what was going on inside, but it was kind of painful sometimes to notice what was happening inside and then move on.
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And then IFS seemed to take that a step further, because it gave me something to do with these parts recognize that they were parts, they had feelings, they had experiences and then bring compassion to them, bring the healing presence of self to them and work with them instead of just moving on from them.
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Well, you're also a laughter yoga leader.
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I have.
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Yeah, I've interviewed somebody on the show about laughter yoga, but for those who might not know, explain to listeners what that is.
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Sure.
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So I first heard about laughter yoga when I was watching an Australian TV show and it was set in a park and a bunch of people just came up and joined the circle and started laughing and it looked incredibly awkward to me but I really wanted to try it.
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So I found a local laughter yoga group and I went along and it was much easier than what I had seen on TV.
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It was a bunch of exercises some of the movements, some sound word related, imitating animals or miming things, all sorts of things but there was a lot of breathing involved.
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So hence the connection to yoga, and it was all about turning the out breath into laughter, because we really don't have enough laughter in our lives and we don't have a lot of unconditional laughter too.
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So I found that when I practiced laughter yoga my days were much happier because and physiologically it was great for me too it just felt so wonderful to have those deep belly laughs for no good reason, because I was choosing to have them, not because I was waiting for an opportunity for it to arise.
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So I really wanted to integrate laughter yoga and IFS and in all honesty, I haven't found a great way to do it yet.
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Sometimes my sessions they are, you know, all about healing and that can be a really joyful and creative experience and I do try to bring laughter in.
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But the original impetus was because therapy is often seen as something that's very dreary and depressing and I wanted to integrate laughter with that self-energy.
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So it's still something I'm working on how to do, but I see it as having incredible potential with IFS and especially in healing generally.
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Okay, you're also a writer, so talk about your writing, you know.
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Talk about where we can get it and check it out, or what we can expect when we read them said, this isn't about just a therapeutic modality that you go see a therapist for.
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It really is about how to bring it into our everyday lives, and I use writing as a medium for teaching about how to do that.
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So I write a blog on medium and I often write about the multiple mind and how to write about the multiple mind and how to, how to be aware of it, how to use these principles in our everyday lives, and it might be about um food, like how to avoid mindless eating, how to bring more gratitude into our everyday lives, um, all sorts of things.
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So you can find me on Medium.
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It's a forum for writers with multiple publications on it, and my username is at Lisbeth MultipleMind, and you can also find it through my website, which is MultipleMindcom.
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Okay, give us your definition of multiple mind.
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Okay, give us your definition of multiple mind.
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So the multiple mind is that we are made up of lots of sub personalities or parts, and some of them carry pain.
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Some might be that you really want to keep your body trim, work out excessively, make sure that your body is perfect so that you don't get criticized or frowned upon.
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That protector, that part, they can be really useful, these protectors, because they also keep us motivated and in shape.
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But when it goes to extremes, that part could be working really hard to make sure that the other part, who's carrying the pain that we call an exile, doesn't get activated.
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And unfortunately, as hard as those protectors work to make sure that that pain doesn't get reactivated, it often does Because there's only so.
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There's a limit to these strategies and other strategies might be workaholism, drinking, food, binging and, and really the best way is to, as I said, go to the heart of the problem, go to where the exile is carrying that pain and then use the self to heal that pain.
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So the multiple mind is this system and it's a very interconnected system of parts who carry pain, protectors who want to protect those exiles from being activated, and then lots of other parts who just keep us functioning in our lives and the self and I see it like an orchestra.
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We want a symphony, beautiful harmony of sounds rather than a cacophony.
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And we have that with an orchestra conducting instruments and using their sounds and their roles in the best possible way.
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Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.
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So I am hoping to write some video courses.
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I am hoping to write some video courses Again.
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This is all about applying the IFS model to things like how to give and receive feedback, which is such a hard thing to do sometimes.
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How to apply the IFS model in your dating life so that you can deal with some of the ups and downs like rejection, emotional unavailability in your partner and, you know, just get some support around all of that.
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So I will be I'm hoping to work on a relationship support app that supports people in their relationships, and also just ongoing writing, of course and also just ongoing writing, of course.
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Okay, you already answered the website question, multiplemindcom.
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That's right.
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So close us out with some final thoughts.
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Maybe, if that was something I forgot to talk about, that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.
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Sure.
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So I wanted to give a couple of tips that might really help people.
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I would say that when people are experiencing intense emotional emotions and experiences, often it can feel very overwhelming.
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And I often say to my clients ask your parts if they would tone the intensity down a little bit.
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And you can always say, say, if it's a nine or a 10, can you tone it down to just a seven or an eight?
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And surprisingly, parts will often agree.
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When they've got your attention, they will tone that intensity down and then it's a lot easier to be with them and send them some compassion.
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So I'd like for people to know that they really can work with their parts.
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They don't just have to be at a whim of the emotions of these parts.
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They can really communicate with them and work with them.
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All right.
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Ladies and gentlemen, be sure to check out multiplemindcom, check out Liz Best's writing and everything that she's up to.
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Please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform.
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Visit wwwcurveball337.com for more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast.
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Thank you for listening and supporting the show and, liz Beth, thank you for all that you do to help people heal and thank you for joining me thank you so much for having me Curtis for more information on the living the dream with curveball podcast, visit wwwcurveball337.com.
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until next time, keep living the dream.
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