Integrating IFS Practices in Coaching with Richard Tashma
There is a core wisdom within us, always accessible, that knows how to heal and interact in the world. - Richard Tashma
Welcome to a great conversation with Richard Tashma, an IFS-inspired coach and founding member of The Mindful Coach Association.
An expert in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Richard and Brett explore the integration of IFS principles into coaching. Tashma shares his journey with IFS and how IFS can be beneficial for coaches in understanding their clients' internal landscapes.
The conversation includes an overview of the notion of "parts" within ourselves, such as protectors and exiled parts, and their impact on personal growth and relationships. Tashma explains the goal of IFS, which is to bring the core self and self-energy to the scene to heal the wounded parts. The episode also addresses the difference between coaching and therapy, with Tashma highlighting the importance of recognizing when a more therapeutic approach may be necessary. Overall, this episode offers valuable insights into the integration of IFS into coaching and provides a pathway for coaches to enhance their understanding and support their clients' growth and healing.
You can reach Richard from his Linked In profile and https://www.rockymountaincalm.org/
Mentioned in this episode:
The Mindful Coach Podcast
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Transcript
So welcome to this edition of the The Mindful Coach Association podcast. I'm your host, Brettt Hill, and I'm really excited today to have with me Richard Tashma. T-A-S-H-M-A. Tanjma. And oh my God, Richard is such a great guy. He's been around The The Mindful Coach Association Association since it started and he and I have had a really nice rapport. And one of the really fascinating things about Richard besides his incredible radio voice, which you'll appreciate here in a minute, is his fascination and passion for internal family systems. And I just had to get him on the show to talk about why he thinks internal family systems, which comes from a psychotherapeutic world in the world of therapy, what's the role of that in coaching and what his objective is and his passion to bringing that point of view and some of those skills into the coaching world. Did I get any of that right or wrong?
::Richard, you got that beautiful. You said that beautifully, Brettt, thank you. I really appreciate it and it's great to be here with you and your audience. I'm very appreciative for the invitation. Thank you.
::Well, you're more than welcome. I mean, the show is about helping coaches who are in the organization, The The Mindful Coach Association Association, to let the world know about the great stuff that's going on. I'm so excited when I sit around and I listen to the stories of the various professionals in that group. They're so exciting and people are doing such incredible work. They're out there working with challenged populations and neurodivergents and immigrants and LGTQ plus and all kinds of inclusive communities that need to be more included in the world. And then also we have areas, people who are experts in certain areas. We have people who are great with horses and we have horse people, we have people who do tarot and we have people who do astrology and they do all these things very well. And also they value mindfulness in their life and their work. And when you and I were talking about what you're up to and your passions and your expertise in internal family systems really shines out. So why don't for the people who may not have heard about internal family systems, why don't you tell us a little bit about what that is and what they oh, we got some sirens going on here, so pardon? So for people who don't know, sometimes it's called Ifs for short, internal family systems. What is ifs? And why should a coaching audience or even a therapeutic audience care?
::It's a marvelous question and I'll see if I can answer that in less than 3 hours. The basic principle in Ifs, which was created 40 years ago by a PhD psychologist named Richard Tashma, who is known in the community as Dick Schwartz, it's what he goes by. It's a model of the human psyche. And it presumes that our psyche is not monolithic, but rather is multiple in parts. And our parts play different roles in our life. Most of the parts are simply there doing their jobs. Like the part of me that knows how to turn on the computer and join you here for this conversation. And then there are other parts of us that because of experiences as a result of experiences that we've had at one time or another in our lives that in most cases were not fully processed or to use the word in the vernacular, digested, we have energy that's held in limbo. It's one way to put it that we don't know what to do with. And those parts are holding on to those experiences and those energies.
::Can you give me an example of what that might be like? Somebody shows up, how do you know if you're talking to somebody that they're coming from a place where they're talking about a part of them that's got, what do you say, holding on to this energy? How does that work?
::Well, the way it usually manifests for most people is I'll see if I can unpack this in a few words through a collection of parts that are acting as what we call protectors for the parts that are wounded. Or injured that are holding onto that painful energy or those painful I'm going.
::To slow you down just a little bit, if you don't mind, just because it sounds like we're talking about parts that come to the defense of other parts. Right?
::Actually, it's a great question, and I'll clarify it like this, that the parts that are protecting are actually parts that generally drive our outside, our outward behavior to prevent those other parts that are carrying those painful experiences from flooding us with emotions that we're not prepared to or really in a place to deal with.
::Okay.
::An example of that can be anger. Expressions of anger that are beyond what seems appropriate for a context or people being overreactive. Exactly right. So when we see those types of behaviors where they're like an outsized response, for example, put it that way, with respect to a stimulus, I don't want to say trigger, I'm purposely not using the word trigger stimulus. It's not unusual that that is a clue that there's a part acting there. Now, all we need in the world of ifs is any one of these clues. When we're tuned into it, trained for it and tuned into it, all we need is one of those clues and the person's willingness to at least show up with a bit of curiosity to begin to deconstruct and unpack that process. And there's a flow for that.
::Yeah. So what I heard you say, if I can restate this just a little bit, just because I need to for my own brain, that you said like this unresolved kind of energy in a way. So it's like one way you can know about that is whenever there's too much energy like someone says something to you or someone says something to somebody else, and the result is, well, how could you say that? It's like over the top kind of comeback, like, well, that ain't right. You don't get to say that to me. It's like suddenly they're acting out and it's disproportionate to the situation beautifully. Extra energy that's kind of flowing out of you all of a sudden, or someone all of a sudden comes from this reserve store that's associated with this part. Correct. And the work that you're talking about is understanding the relationship of what part of you is holding on to that energy and what's it trying to protect. Right. Because there's the part that's like lashing out to kind of push away the experience. And then there's another part that's actually the wounded part that needs to be protected.
::Yes. I would say that's a good recap of what I've outlined so far.
::Okay, beautiful.
::Then there is one more in ifs there is one more very important element to the psyche that warrants mention, and that is a core wisdom, I would say is one way to put it. It's a core wisdom that we are all born with, all of us that knows how to heal the system and knows how to interact in the context in which we exist and show up and function. I think of it as in my way of describing it. I think of it as the drop of God or the drop of the universe that animated me at my moment of conception.
::Wow.
::Yeah.
::That's intense.
::That is always available. It's in my system. We usually think of it as being in our heart. It's in my system and it's always accessible to me.
::Right. This reminds me okay, so going back just a little bit, we're talking about the part that's overreactive, that's defensive in this particular scenario, and then the part that's wounded and then a deeper part that has the knowledge about how to be whole.
::Yes. With one caveat. That last element that I'm referring to, we don't see that as a part. We see that as our core. And we refer to that in the vernacular of ifs because we use pedestrian language, it makes it a lot easier. We refer to that as self with a capital S-E-L-F with a capital big.
::The big self.
::The big self. Yeah.
::This reminds me of a principle I studied in Hakomi. And so these are related systems. Dick Schwartz and Ron Kurtz were colleagues and both of these ron Kurtz was the creator of Akomi, well, one of the creators of Akomi, but primarily given credit with them being the main founder. And in that system, which is a mindful. Somatic psychotherapy is based on several principles, and I'm going to read one of them here because I just happen to have it at hand. And one of the principles is called organicity. And it sounds a lot like what you were talking about. So it's sort of like one of these universal truths that you can use. And so I'm a fan of language. I listen to these people who are using these principles because I want to hear how they say it, because love it when it's well said. And this is a pretty good one. Now, organicity is a principle that means that assumes that when all the parts are communicating within the whole of a person, we are naturally self directing, self correcting, self actualizing with our own innate inner wisdom. In Hakomi, rather than imposing our own agenda, we support our clients organic, unfolding towards wholeness and trust that this is the direction that their system will naturally seek. Now this is taken from Heiko Weiss, I believe it was the one who wrote this in one of the Hakomi manuals. And it has within it the fundamentals of the kinds of things you were talking about. If I got that right, which is that within us there's this inner wisdom about how to unfold and as facilitators and people who are trying to help other people in the world, a big part of our work is simply to support that and not try to impose it.
::Correct?
::Yes. You're always very affirming. Correct. So how did you get involved with this whole world of internal family systems and then how did that turn into an interesting coaching?
::Okay, well, again, trying to keep this to less than 3 hours, it's a circuitous story that begins 40 years ago for me, and I won't tell you the whole tale for 40 years, but the beginning.
::And on behalf of our listeners, we appreciate that.
::No doubt the audience just let out a big sigh of relief and didn't reach for the stop button.
::Hold on, he's got a Cliff Notes version. It's worth hearing.
::Yeah, if it's not short enough, Brett will edit it. Anyway, when I was in my twenty s, I graduated from university with a degree in biology and I had already started a small business and was really enjoying the work that I was doing, which was not in this field. It was technical work. I was a professional technician because I also have deep interest in engineering. So I had this small business and as a person I was miserable. Even in my mid twenty s, I hated the person I had become.
::In my heart mindfully, I'm sad to hear you say that.
::I was arrogant and obnoxious and difficult to be around and really socially incompetent.
::Wow, that's hard.
::And I was miserable and I thought, I can't live like this, so I've got to do something about it. Fortunately, a friend, somebody who cared about me, turned me on to a workshop organization in California where I lived at the time. And that was the beginning of my journey. And that organization doesn't exist anymore. But for anybody who might be old and from california and know anything about this, they might remember something called The Mindful Coach Association and a fellow named Paul Larson. So anyway, I joined Summit and participated there in different capacities for several years, did a lot of growing and aspired to being able to bring that kind of transformational work to other people someday, but I knew I was incompetent at doing it at that point in my life. So I went on and did what I did as a professional until about ten years ago. And I'm in my mid sixty s now, so I was in my mid 50s.
::But you were happier then.
::Much, yeah. I just continued working on myself over the years. And when I would see places where I could continue to improve myself or my dear spouse of now more than 30 years could point out to me that this was a place where it would help if I would do something, if I would show up differently. I got good at making these changes for myself pretty easily without a lot of distress. And about ten years ago, to make it long story short, I started to get a calling to do something different, to leave my engineering life, because the skills that I was really good at were becoming obsoleted in the computer space. And so I didn't want to start again from scratch. I thought, well, maybe it's time for me to put the stuff to use. And one of the core places where that led me and grounded me was with a person named Russ Acoff. Russell Aikoff, who was one of the founders of what's known as systems thinking. And Russ gave me a really important insight in his teachings when he said, because I'm a systems guy, I'm a biologist and I'm a systems guy.
::Exactly. A technical guy.
::Right. And I heard him say that a system is not the sum of the parts, it is the product of their interactions. It is the product of their interactions. And that was a beginning of a turning point for me in my journey, was recognizing that distinction, which I knew intrinsically. And so I found my way into studying energy healing and spent a year studying a modality known as Psych k. Psych k, which some people know. And at the end of that year, I started to think about coaching work, and that led me to bessel Vanderkolk's really well known book, The Body Keeps the Score, which is a book about yep. And I was captivated by the body keeps the score and in the body keeps the score. There's a whole chapter about internal family systems. That's how I found out about it. And when I started paying attention to Dick Schwartz as a result of that, and he started talking about internal family systems and was talking about it in the same way, roughly, that Russ Aikoff talks about systems. I was I've never and I've stayed here and haven't veered away since.
::That's really an amazing story. And I just want to say, as I'm listening to you, the thing that catches my attention is we're talking about this organicity and this part of us that helps us to know how to be more whole. And early on, you had become somebody who you were not a happy person, right? And you made a decision, I'm going to change, I'm going to change, and then acted on that. So there's that part showing up like, I know this isn't working. I know I want to be better. That's that part of us that I always use in my own method, the The Mindful Coach Association method about what is it that there's an assumption that there's something in us that wants to be whole and wants to thrive and wants to grow, that there's this innate knowledge and urge to be more whole, integrated, and alive. What I'm trying to say in a long winded way is thank you for listening to that and doing the work, because it really matters, and it stayed with you. You were like, doing the original work. Then you kept following that thread and going deeper and deeper the whole time. And that takes a lot of courage. So there's a lot in that. We have sort of very similar stories in a way, in the sense that I've also been the benefactor of so many great teachings, and I'm a systems guy, and I have a technical background, so there's a lot of similarities there.
::The overlaps are interesting.
::Now, I wanted to ask you about your inspiration to do more in terms of because internal family systems traditionally has been taught to therapists. As I understand it, you're not a certified therapist. And I'm not saying that as a judgment in any way. It's just a fact. And so consequently, you're doing coaching. And so what is your hope, intent, thoughts around internal family systems and coaching?
::There's probably two parts to that answer. The first is that Dick Schwartz himself, after decades of Ifs being used in therapy, which it still very much is, it's very popular at this time, and there's a huge waiting list for people to get into formal trainings. Dick Schwartz wants to bring this beyond the therapy space and into coaching and into a broader awareness because it ultimately is a way of life. It's not just a therapy. It's a way of living. That's part of the answer. Another part of the answer is my choice and my journey. About ten years ago, in a conversation with a friend who was a psychologist, a child psychologist, that person suggested to me that I might want to return to school and either get a master's degree or perhaps even go on to becoming a Psy. D-P-S-Y capital D. It's doctor of Psychology.
::Right?
::Which is about practice. That's not about psychological study and research. That's purely practice. And I looked at that at the time, and I thought, I don't want to do that. And the reason I chose to not do that was not only because of the yeah, there's the time and the money, but beyond that, I did not want to be in the position of having to diagnose people, air quotes and tell them, well, here's your psychological diagnosis, and here's how you're broken, and here's how we're going to fix you. Because about using the 80 20 rule, there are about 20% of the population who have people who need assistance, really need the assistance of a trained therapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist, let's say, right? Because their troubles are really interfering with their activities of daily living or they are behaving in sociopathic ways or something like that, where they're a danger to themselves or to society, let's say. Right, and those people need really professional help. And what about the rest of us, the other 80% of us who are walking around in some level or another of injury or distress or tumult from experiences that we had usually when we were kids? Right. Primarily before ten and commonly into or before adolescence.
::So childhood wound.
::Yes, exactly. And pretty much that has happened to every one of us. It doesn't mean that we were abused many times. Many of these things are a result of unresolved or unrepaired confusion or just an experience of being humiliated or embarrassed in a context of, let's say, peers. And we don't know how to process that.
::Yeah, stuff happens in life.
::Exactly.
::That you're just kind of unexpected. Like, I remember one of the big ones for me was an innocent situation but still is with me today. I had a friend just in a very tight nutshell when I was in first grade and we were tight, man, and we were really good friends. And then one day he said he was moving and I didn't even hear it, didn't even hear it. And two months went by and I just couldn't hear it. And then one day at the end of the thing, we're getting on the bus and I'm saying, okay, I'll see you later. And he's like, Brett, you don't get it. And I'm going, what are you talking about? I've never had anybody talk to me that way because I'm never going to see you again. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I had completely tuned out this reality and it was the first time I'd ever experienced as a little boy the people you care about can just disappear from your life and it really shook me. So there's an example of something that's nobody's fault.
::Exactly. But it still has an important because.
::Now there's a part of me that's like, oh, I don't want to get close to anyone because they can go away without and for me it's like suddenly they can go away.
::And that's a really excellent thank you for sharing that, Brett. That's a really excellent example of the kind of injury or wounding, to use the words lightly in air quotes, right. These feel traumatic to us in the moment as adults. Looking back on it from an adult perspective, I don't want to say this, we would be like, well, yeah, this stuff happens and so why do we get so upset about it? Why can't I get over it? Why am I still affected by it? And the answer to that largely is in the moment when he said that to you and that shock of the reality of that came upon you, you didn't know what to do with that experience. And the energy I'll use the word emotion in a psychological sense, right, and the emotional energy, which in my vernacular, when I talk about emotion, it's very tied into physiology. And this is part of the reason why I like the The Mindful Coach Association method, because it's somatic all right for listeners.
::The The Mindful Coach Association method is a course that I wrote about mindful. Somatic coaching, which involves a lot of the things that we're talking about in terms of hacomi and internal family systems, is even there to a certain degree. So just so people know that that's what you're talking about.
::So in that moment, if you can put yourself back in that place for a moment, you can conjure up and reconstruct and reassemble the physiology for how that landed on you or landed for yeah, and no question about that.
::No, it's absolutely true.
::And so that's an indication to me, Brett, that there is a part of you that still feels the impact of that loss and that part in order for you to avoid in the moment when that happened because you didn't know what to do with it and there wasn't anybody there to help you process that. You needed to do something with that energy, which is the way your body was configured in that moment, right. Your physiology. And so some part of you held that in the expectation that, A, you would recognize a risk like that again someday in the future and hopefully avoid it, and B, maybe someday have an opportunity to process that and discharge the energy and find calm around that so that you can say, yeah, that happened, and it's a bummer. And I'm sad about that, but I'm not at the effect of it.
::Right? Well, that's the AB scenario there. The B is like the healing process, the integration process and that takes work. You have to kind of get present with your experience and go, what's this all about? How crappy does this feel? And what's really true for me in the more immediate moment, like what happens is the organism know, little Brettt has to adapt to this new reality, right? And that's where these parts happen. That's where this part of me psychologically kind of splits off and says, well, I'm going to make Darn remember we started talking about the overprotective part, the part that's reactive. So that's where that part is born. It's kind of like, oh, I can feel someone getting close to me and I'm going to resist that now because that's going to be painful later.
::Right. So in Ifs, generally speaking, in the model, if your system follows the general pattern, what that would be is two parts. One part is the part that is holding on to that initial shock and pain and has been sidelined in your system. And we refer to that in Ifs as an exiled.
::Right? Right. John Eisman used to call that the spirit in. So that's the part that gets into the body gets into the soma.
::And then there's the other part that in order to keep that injured part from springing up and taking you over and maybe overwhelming you at times when you really don't want to do that, have that happen, we create these corollary parts that we refer to in Ifs as Protectors. And the job of the Protector is to keep that wounded exile contained, or in some people say locked up. Right. But at least contained.
::Right.
::And the work of Ifs, in short, is to bring the self, the core wisdom of us that's always there and always available and matures along with us, to bring that core self and that self energy to the scene. And first request and receive permission, because that's very important, to request and receive permission from the Protector part, for the Protector to give us space to go and interact with that exiled part and help to heal that exiled part so that that part doesn't feel that wounding anymore. And when all of this happens and it all works normally, those parts can resume their normally valuable roles in your system or in our system, which is usually these are usually the parts of us that are really carrying. Our juice of life our love and our interest and compassion and the things that really light us up that we've set aside or locked away. And that's a sad thing when that happens.
::No, totally. Now, all this sounds amazing and I've seen this kind of work happen beautifully, just a slightly different frame in Hakomi. But my question to you though, is how do you distinguish between this and is that work straight up coaching or is that work therapy or do you have a philosophy around that? How do you differentiate someone using ifs in a therapeutic mode versus a coaching mode?
::Let me think about that for just a moment when we are properly trained in Ifs. Right. I've been learning Ifs for, I think it's about seven years now. So I'm not new to this. And I'm also bringing other skills with me that I learned a long time before that. And that matters because I need to show up in a particular ifs is not much less a protocol than it is a flow. And there are hard points to it, of course, but in order for us to do the work well, we need to do the work on ourselves so that I can show up with sufficient self energy myself to hold the space. Now, in saying that, to help answer your question, what Dick Schwartz recommends for us is to even as coaches, it's perfectly fine for us to get to know the protector parts and to befriend them and to get to understand them and what their story is. It's doing the next deeper stage, which is really accessing the wounded exiled parts that gets more into a domain that might be thought of as therapy. And for coaches who are really skilled with Ifs and who are well trained in it, we can do that because we understand the whole flow and the proper ways to access those more wounded parts and allow them to express themselves in a safe context and maintain that container of psychological safety. So it depends roughly, really, on the degree to which the person my answer to your question, I think, is it really depends on the degree to which the person is being their activities of daily living are being impacted negatively by the intensity of these experiences. So it's not a cut and dried answer exactly. Pardon me?
::No, I understand what you mean. Okay. It's like if someone comes to you, it's almost like what their intent? Are they coming to you with the intent to have you help them be more skillful in interviews or not choke up whenever they take quizzes or exams or whatever their thing is? Or are they coming to you with something a little more fundamental like, oh, I'm deeply depressed and I need a way out.
::Right.
::And so it's sort of almost like in one world you're clearly waiting in the swamp of woundedness, and in another case, you might be able to help somebody. Like working with what you mentioned I liked in terms of helping people explore the protectors provides a doorway to this more what you call the exile part, this exiled spirit. And the relationship between the coach and the client at that moment is a coaching decision. Do you dive into the more wounded part or do you stay in a more resourced part?
::Right.
::To me, that's how I make a distinction. And in the knife method, the approach is to bias, if you will, or have a preference for facilitating towards resourcefulness. That's just my own spin on it.
::It is available for well trained coaches to flow through the whole ifs protocol. It doesn't require a therapist. My the distinction for me really comes in an initial conversation with a person to find out how impacted as another way of saying what I've been saying, how severely impacted are they? So you give the example of a person who is seriously depressed and can't get out of bed and can't live their life, or that. Kind of an issue that really calls for an experienced therapist or even a psychiatrist, even though there are plenty of Ifs therapists who will take that on and use Ifs in those contexts. That's not a place where I feel qualified to bring my skills.
::Sure, I understand what you're saying. I'm just trying to kind of frame this in because it's a really big question in terms of what's the difference between coaching and therapy. We could talk about that for a billion years and then particularly when we're talking about because you're talking about bringing Ifs practices and principles into a coaching context in a similar way, like I've been bringing Mindful somatic work from Makomi and other methods, as I've said it, into a coaching context as well. And so helping clarify all that, I think, is just serving the greater good for the coaching community everywhere. So how do people connect with you to explore, like, what's this about? How's this working for them? How would they find you?
::Well, people can find me at my website, which is Rockymountancom Calm rockymountancom.org. Or, if you want to find out really what my story is, the greatest information about me, the most information is actually on my LinkedIn page, which you can find at either LinkedIn look up Richard Tashma, or you can go to LinkedIn and it'll link you there.
::Perfect. That's so great to have that out there. And I would encourage people to check in. I know from some people who have worked with you and they love the work. So I just would like to say thank you so much for showing up and for your support of The The Mindful Coach Association Association and for the work that you're doing. I really appreciate it. And this has been a really fun conversation for me personally, and I hope people out there will reach out and explore their own inner family system.
::It's really a delight being here with you, Brett. I very much appreciate it. I thank you for inviting me and I'm honored to share this with the audience.
::Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll talk. And to those people out there, if you want to actually hang out with me, Richard and others, other coaches who are skilled I don't want to say I'm amazingly skilled, but I know a lot of coaches who are. And if you want to hang out with them, join The The Mindful Coach Association Association and come to our community meetings because that's where we are and it's a really good time.
::And, you know, that brings up a good point that I'm really proud of my profile at The The Mindful Coach Association Association. I really thought about that. So that's another place where you can find out about me, is that's right? You can go to The The Mindful Coach Association Association and it'll take you to my profile.
::Oh, that's nice. Nice reader.
::Yeah.
::So you go to The The Mindful Coach Association Association and just type in Richard and his profile will come right up there.
::Excellent. Thank you, everybody.
::Thank you.
