Below is my summary of the process from the book ‘Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Inner Wholeness Using IFS, a New, Cutting-Edge Therapy’ by Jay Earley, mostly quoting and paraphrasing the content.
See also Tori Olds - Internal Family Systems, Explained - Transcript about IFS itself.
If the part is not activated, imagine yourself in a recent situation when the part was activated.
Sense the part in your body or evoke an image of the part.
Check to see if you are charged up with the part’s emotions or caught up in its beliefs right now. If so, you are blended.
Check to see how you feel toward the target part right now. If you can’t tell, you may be blended.
If you are blended with the target part, here are some options for unblending:
If the part doesn’t separate, ask what it is afraid would happen if it did. Explain to it the value of separating and reassure it about its fears.
Check to see how you feel toward the target part right now.
If you feel compassionate, curious, and so on, you are in Self, so you can move on to P4.
If you don’t, then unblend the concerned part:
Invite the part to tell you about itself.
The part may answer in words, images, body sensations, emotions, or direct knowing.
Here are questions you can ask the part:
You can foster trust by saying the following to the protector (if true):
If necessary, ask the protector to show you the exile. Ask its permission to get to know the exile.
If it won’t give permission, ask what it is afraid would happen if you accessed the exile.
Possibilities are:
Sense its emotions, feel it in your body, or get an image of it.
If you are blended with an exile:
If the exile won’t contain its feelings:
Check how you feel toward the exile. If you aren’t in Self or don’t feel compassion, unblend from any concerned parts. They are usually afraid of you becoming overwhelmed by the exile’s pain.
Explain that you will stay in Self and not let the exile overwhelm.
Ask: What do you feel? What makes you feel so scared or hurt (or any other feeling)?
Let the exile know that you want to hear its story.
Communicate to it that you feel compassion and caring toward it.
Check to see if the exile can sense you there and notice how it is taking in your compassion.
Ask the exile to show you an image or a memory of when it learned to feel this way in childhood.
Ask the exile how this made it feel.
Check to make sure the part has shown you everything it wants to be witnessed.
After witnessing, check to see if the exile believes that you understand how bad it was.
Bring yourself (as Self) into the childhood situation and ask the exile what it needs from you to heal it or change what happened; then give that to the exile through your internal imagination.
Check to see how the exile is responding to the reparenting.
If it can’t sense you or isn’t taking in your caring, ask why and work with that.
One of the things the exile may need is to be taken out of the childhood situation and brought into a place where it can feel safe and comfortable. You can bring it into some place in your present life, your body, or an imaginary place.
Name the burdens (painful feelings or negative beliefs) that the exile is carrying.
Ask the exile if it wants to release the burdens and if it is ready to do so.
If it doesn’t want to, ask what it is afraid would happen if it let go of them. Then handle those fears.
How does the exile carry the burdens in or on its body?
What would the exile like to release the burdens to? Light, water, wind, earth, fire, or anything else.
Once the burdens are gone, notice what positive qualities or feelings arise in the exile.
Check if the protector is aware of the transformation of the exile. If not, introduce the exile to the protector.
See if the protector now realizes that its protective role is no longer necessary. The protector can choose a new role in your psyche.