Our inner system of managers, firefighters, and exiles and the dynamics of their relationships

I have an early childhood memory of crying about something or rather and my father taking a camera off the shelf, taking a picture of me, and telling me with disgust: “I will show you how ugly you look when you cry.” I was confused by what he was saying, but he showed me exactly what he meant when he developed that picture and began pulling it out whenever he saw me cry. I absorbed the message that you are ugly and unlovable when you cry and stopped crying. Once that pattern was established, it was very hard to break. It required me to reach out to that upset and confused three-year-old, comfort her from the perspective and wisdom of my older self, and encourage her to release her burden.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy postulates that each of us tends to take on three main roles in response to danger, trauma, or social pressures. One group, the managers, tends to be highly protective, strategic, and controlling to keep things safe. A second group contains the most sensitive and vulnerable members of the system. When members of that group feel injured in some other way, managers banish them for their own protection and the good of the entire system. They become exiles. This is how we bury parts of ourselves that we cannot accept. The third group, the firefighters, tries to stifle, numb, or distract from the feelings of exiles and rebel against managers by acting recklessly and dangerously without concern for consequences. They are called firefighters because they fight the flames of exiled emotion.

Using the framework of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, we can analyze my internal conflict and resulting consequences through the interaction of these inner parts. The sensitive and vulnerable part of me that expressed sadness or frustration through crying was exiled because it was not accepted by the person whose affection I needed (my dad). It was kept locked up by my inner manager, who encouraged me to be easygoing, upbeat, and positive instead and keep my problems and worries to myself. This is how my manager thought I would be lovable again. When my problems and worries became too much to bear, they would spill out as rudeness, irritation, and increased interest in boys (because I could find love there, too). Those were my firefighters at work.

Here is how Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS Therapy, describes these three groups:

Exiles “are the parts that have been exploited, rejected, or abandoned in external relationships, and then subjected to negative judgments from other parts of the system. […] While exiles are frozen in the past and left behind, they are actually less vulnerable to alarming events of the present. But exiles, like any oppressed group, grow extreme over time. As they look for opportunities to break out of prison and tell their stories, their desperation and neediness become ever more of a hazard. They may dull and weigh the body, mind, and heart with their chronic unarticulated misery, or they can overwhelm emotionally with flashbacks, nightmares, and sudden fleeting tastes of pain, fear, and shame that cause protectors to panic and overreact. Like the abandoned children they are, exiles want care and love.” (1)

Managers want exiles in prison and out of mind. “In general, managers have no tolerance for fear, shamefulness, and emotional pain. To them, injured parts are defective, weak, threatening, and pitiful. […] Having locked up exiles, managers live in fear that they will escape. Various managers adopt different strategies to avoid interactions and situations that might trigger an exile.” (1) Managers can force you into many roles, including:

A perfectionist about appearance and behavior, convincing you that you must be agreeable and pleasant to avoid being abandoned and hurt.
A caretaker who will push you to sacrifice your own needs for the sake of others.
An entitled narcissist, encouraging you to get whatever and whenever you want.
A hyperaroused worrier who is on continuous alert for danger.
A dependent victim who needs to appear helpless and passive to ensure that other people take care of them.

The manager’s role is to keep the exiles locked up for their own protection and the protection of the entire system because if those unwanted feelings spill, they threaten the person’s ability to function. Managers come to believe that they alone are responsible for the whole organism’s success and safety. This is a heavy burden to bear, and managers, too, can feel neglected, overwhelmed, and scared.

Firefighters “react to surfacing exiles as if an alarm has gone off, doing whatever they believe is necessary to distract from or suppress the exile’s emotional firestorm with little or no regard for consequences to the client’s body or relationships.” This usually happens if the exiles break through the defenses erected by managers, particularly when we are tired or sick. “Firefighter techniques include numbing activities like self-mutilation, binge eating, drug or alcohol abuse, dissociation, and sexual risk taking. A firefighter will usually try to take control of the persona so thoroughly that he feels nothing but an urgent compulsion to engage in some dissociative or self-soothing activity. Firefighters can cause a person to be self-absorbed, demanding, and insatiably driven to grab material things. Their activities can also include the inflating satisfaction of rage, the exhilaration and indulgence of stealing, or the comfort of suicidal thoughts or attempts.” (1) Firefighters’ strategies include dieting, workaholism, obsessive exercising, or binge-watching TV.

The impulsiveness of firefighters drives everyone mad. These parts get criticized by the people in the person’s external environment and attacked by the internal managers. “The typical dynamic between managers and firefighters is a vicious cycle that repeats and escalates, with managerial shaming activating exiles, which energizes firefighters, which alarms managers, and so on. As a result, managers and firefighters are strange, uncomfortable bedfellows who are often in conflict.” (1)

The heavier the burden of the exile, the stronger the reaction of its protectors, leading to a deeper internal conflict. But even without severe trauma, each one of us has parts of ourselves that we refuse to accept and send into exile because of what we think is expected of us by the people whose approval we want. “We need not to suffer capital-T Trauma in order to pick up burdens. When a vital part of a child is rejected and the child feels unlovable, protectors who are desperate to win approval often take on some of the worst qualities of the person who is stealing the child’s self-esteem and safety. […] Our goal is to release parts from the constraining influences of their burdens and enable them to pursue their preferred, constructive roles. Rather than pushing them to change, we’re helping them to let go.” (1)

Every single person has a seat of consciousness at their core that is curious, compassionate, accepting, confident, clear, and an excellent leader. This is our True Self. The Self can become obstructed or hidden, usually for the purpose of self-preservation. When we are not Self-led, other parts become polarized and extreme. When Self-leadership is restored, other parts will do what they need to do (advise, remind, problem-solve, lend their talents, and generally help) without becoming extreme. They will cooperate. “Once the system is operating harmoniously most of the time, each individual member will be less noticeable, and we become less acutely aware of our parts. In short, when we are in a Self-led state, we have a sense of continuity and integration. We feel more unified—because we are.” [1]

What is the job of a therapist, then? Do we help the client connect to their inner Self? Do we bypass the other parts? Do we try to broker peace between them? And why do sometimes our efforts fail, and our clients return to self-sabotaging behavior?