How to Use IFS Parts with PACT

Dayna Mullen, MSc, R. Psych

PACT Level 2 Therapist

As a seasoned PACT therapist, I have used this model for over a decade to transform couple relationships. I’m intensely passionate and loyal to PACT and never thought I would even glance in the direction of another model.  Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the method that eventually piqued my interest and has been able to compliment PACT with some very inspiring outcomes.

I recall a conversation with my best friend, a fellow PACT therapist, about how many roles we have to maintain: wife, mother, therapist, self. We got into a great huddle talking about our roles and how many times we feel controlled by them, as though our nervous systems are hijacked, and we are made to act as if we are nine years old again. We started to play around with language and realized that by simply speaking from parts, i.e., “A younger part of me feels abandoned when you invite other people over without asking me...

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Couples in Distress: Working With Bottom-up Interventions

by Inga Gentile, MFT, PACT faculty, Bardu, Norway
Website: www.ingagentile.com
Email: [email protected]
“Nothing is more revealing than movement.” — Martha Graham

Despite our conscious narratives, which are formed in the brain’s left hemisphere, much of what we do is driven by fast-acting processes and affect-regulating capacities encoded in the right hemisphere as part of procedural memory. Our early repeated relationship experiences not only create a psychological blueprint for how we view ourselves and others, but also determine how we will operate in future relationships. They also influence the development of brain structures responsible for affect regulation later in life. These memories (when manifest in psychobiological reflexive behaviors\micromovements in the body and face) can either refute or support our conscious narratives. They also influence how we move toward and away from people and how we get people to move toward and away from us,...

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No Pain No Gain

by Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT,
stantatkin.com

Therapy is only useful for changing people who are experiencing sufficient distress. This is not to say that education, consultation, or brief counseling will have no effect. People often benefit from couple counseling for premarital or other short-term work. However, as a matter of therapeutic stance, the PACT therapist assumes the presence of a sufficient level of distress that can only be relieved by pressuring couples to go down the tube of secure functioning. The PACT therapist thus takes a stand for secure-functioning principles. For insecure partners, this requires a big leap of faith.

That leap of faith can be viewed as a metaphor for neuronal action potential (AP) and long-term potentiation (LTP). AP is basically a charge that is sufficient to fire a neuron. LTP is a cellular mechanism related to learning and memory. LTP involves the building up of synaptic strength between neurons, whereby several weak synapses repeatedly fire...

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