In this article I am going to focus on those protector parts that we call “Managers”. If you are familiar with protective parts and with IFS, please carry on reading. If you are new to IFS, I suggest you first read my article that introduces protectors (managers and firefighters) by clicking here.
Protectors that prevent danger - Managers
These protectors have the main task of protecting from encountering danger.
We call these protective parts “managers” because they plan in advance and apply clear strategies to make sure certain (bad) things to not happen again.
It is important to remember that the majority of out parts do an excellent job at helping us have a satisfying life. I will give you here an example of a “healthy manager”, and of a “burdened manager”.
Scenario
Imagine that a teacher at school was particularly strict and, one day, you received a harsh comment from this teacher. You felt quite embarrassed by it and said to yourself “I will never allow anyone to have that judgement of me”.
Whenever the behaviour of a part of you is motivated by a “I will never do/act/go through this again”, we are in the presence of a Manager part.
Healthy Manager
Since that experience happened to you, you started planning ahead what you say in presence of that teacher, and, once you noticed that this new behaviour worked out, you extended it to other people. In IFS we say that a manager part took on this role at this particular time of your life to help you deal with this difficult teacher.
This manager of yours does not stop at dealing with the teacher, but takes on the role of preparing what to say beforehand to people with authority, and becomes quite successful at making sure that people have a good impression of you and consider you smart.
With time, this manager part becomes so skilled that allows you to succeed at interviews and you have a successful work life. At times, you can let yourself be spontaneous and speak freely with people. You can tolerate that sometimes people do not take you too seriously and what others think of you is not a huge deal for you.
Burdened Manager (response to trauma)
Imagine now that, when that teacher made that harsh comment, you were going through a very difficult time. For example, you were struggling to make friends with your peers in class and, after that tough comment by the teacher, your classmates started to tease you and make fun on you.
This experience was particularly painful to you because you did not have anybody to support you and, as a result, it traumatised you.
Notice that the event of “the teacher making a harsh comment” is the same as the example above, but, in this case, the experience was overwhelming. The consequences of trauma are that protectors take on extreme roles because they need to take you out of an overwhelming situation. This manager will take on the task of making sure you never get that overwhelmed again in addition to the task of impressing people with how smart you are.
Notice here how the manager not only takes charge of behaviour to make sure you do not receive bad comment from others, but also that you do not get overwhelmed. Manager parts are generally not well equipped to deal with painful emotions and these emotions remain inside your system. They get “exiled” to remote corners of your inner world so that they are never experienced again.
We call these managers “burdened” because they have to constantly worry about the exiled feelings. Burdened managers tend to be over-vigilant and apply their protective behaviours all the time, even when it is not needed. A burdened manager might not be able to accept a joke or that it is natural to not be super-smart all the time.
Using IFS to unburden managers
The presence of burdened managers is undesirable because they make you behave and think in rigid ways. Also, the exiled feelings are never dealt with or released.
IFS helps you get to know the manager and establish a relationship with the manager part itself. The part will be able to give you all the information needed to support the manager take on less extreme behaviours.
Also, once the manager part becomes less extreme, IFS helps connect to the exiled feelings and heal them. This process is precise and delicate, and I strongly recommend that you are guided by an IFS therapist.
One final note…
I hope this article has given you some insight into the IFS method. I personally write these articles and they are freely available on my website. I kindly ask that you reference them by quoting this webpage if you use them for personal, professional or educational purposes.
If there are topics you would like to know more about, please let me know.