There's a model in therapy called... | Georgia Telehealth Therapy

Welcome to the deep dive. Um, today we have a really fascinating set of source materials to explore. We really do. It's uh it's some heavy but amazing stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's from coping and healing counseling and it includes this incredible text called the overgiver internal family systems and the protective self, which is such a powerful title. Honestly, it really is. But um before we get into the weeds of all that, let me just ask you a question. Like you, the listener, when you picture your own mind, do you feel like a lone captain standing at the helm of a ship? Right. Like you're just standing there steering the wheel. Exactly. You know, you make a

decision, your hands turn the wheel, and your life just goes exactly where you direct it to go. I mean, we culturally reinforce that idea constantly, right? We praise this idea of singular willpower. Oh, big time. We like to believe there is just one unified um you calling all the shots logically and consistently. It's a comforting thought. I mean, it makes us feel like we're in the driver's seat at all times, but then you actually look at human behavior. Yeah. Reality sets in, right? You look at how you act when you are stressed or, you know, exhausted or triggered by some casual comment from a co-orker and suddenly that lone logical captain is nowhere to be

found. Oh, completely gone. You find yourself acting in ways that completely contradict your own goals and you're just sitting there wondering like why did I just do that? Which is really the perfect entry point into the framework we're dissecting today. Yes, let's get into it. So, the therapeutic model we are looking at is called internal family systems or IFS. Yeah, it was um developed by Dr. Richard Schwarz. Right. And what's crucial to establish right up front is the clinical weight of this model. You know, this isn't some fringe new age theory. Yeah. We're not talking about like crystal healing here. Exactly. IFS is a rigorously evidence-based practice. I mean, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health

Services Administration, SAMHSA, they actually listed it as an evidence-based practice. Oh, wow. That's a big deal. It is. It has a massive and a growing body of research proving its effectiveness in treating things like complex trauma, profound depression, and severe anxiety. Okay, let's unpack this because our mission for this deep dive is to use that evidence-based framework to fundamentally change how you view your own mind, which is no small task. No, it's huge, especially if you happen to be someone who um constantly puts other people's needs before your own. We're going to look at why you actually do that and more importantly how to find some real relief. And doing that requires a radical philosophical

shift. I mean the text asks you to completely throw out that idea of the lone captain. So bye-bye captain. Yeah. Exactly. The central premise of IFS is that you are not one fixed singular self. You are um a multiplicity. A multiplicity. So, I was thinking about this and to make it tangible, imagine your mind isn't a ship with one captain, but rather it's like a massive, slightly chaotic corporate headquarters. I like that analogy, right? So, you have a boardroom filled with different department heads, and sometimes one of those department heads just decides to stand up, slam their hands on the table, and completely hijack the meeting. They just take over. Yeah. They grab the steering

wheel of the company. And the wild thing is they genuinely believe they are doing it to save the business. What's fascinating here is that um we need to clarify a common misconception immediately. The word parts can sound really alarming to someone newly exploring their own psychology. Yeah, it sounds a little intense. It does, but we are not talking about dissociative identity disorder. We aren't talking about fractured personalities. Okay, that's an important distinction. Very. According to the IFS model, having a boardroom full of different parts is the completely natural healthy state of the human mind. We are literally born this way. So every single person has them. Every single person. They are simply normal aspects of

your personality. You know, discrete neural networks that took on different roles to keep you safe. And that usually happens very early in your life. So they're basically just doing their jobs. Exactly. But okay, if our minds operate like this bustling corporate headquarters, we really need to understand exactly who is sitting at that boardroom table. We need an organizational chart. We do. And the source material categorizes the psyche into three main departments. Let's start with the first group then, the managers, right? The managers. Think of the managers as your company's highly anxious riskmanagement department. They are proactive protectors. Proactive being the key word there, right? Their entire job is to scan the horizon, control your environment,

and you know, manage your relationships to prevent you from ever feeling emotional pain. They want to stop the crisis before it even starts. Yeah. These are the parts of you that manifest as the relentless perfectionist or the chronic people pleaser, the caretaker, or even that incredibly harsh inner critic. Oh man, the inner critic. We all know that guy, right? And the inner critic might seem mean, but its logic is entirely protective. It's thinking if I criticize you harshly before you leave the house, you'll fix your flaws and then the outside world won't be able to reject you. Wow, that is twisted, but it makes sense. Yeah, managers are always planning, always scanning, always trying to

control the uncontrollable. Wait, hold on. Because I'm struggling to see how a manager and the next group in the text, um, the firefighters are on the same team. Okay, I see where you're going with this because the perfectionist manager looks like a model citizen, right? They keep the house perfectly organized. But the firefighters, at least how the text describes them, look incredibly destructive. They do. We're talking about things like binge eating, substance use, explosive rage, severe dissociation. How are those destructive behaviors considered protectors in the same exact way a perfectionist is? The contrast is jarring from the outside. I totally agree, but it makes perfect sense when you look at their underlying motives. Okay, walk

me through it. It all comes down to the difference between proactive risk management and reactive emergency response. Let's extend your analogy. Your managers are like the fire inspectors going through a building, making sure everything is up to code. Exactly. They make sure the smoke alarms are tested. They ban open flames. They mandate fire doors. Their methods are highly socially acceptable and preventative. Right. Nobody hates the fire inspector. But when the fire inspector's defenses fail, you know, when a massive emotional trigger breaks through and a fire actually starts, that's when the building's firefighters rush in. And they aren't worried about the building codes anymore. Not at all. I mean, real firefighters showing up to a burning

building don't care about your delicate furniture or your expensive hardwood floors. No, they're just breaking things. They will take a literal axe to your front door, shatter your windows, and flood your entire living room with thousands of gallons of water. Their methods completely destroy the house. Oh wow. But their singular desperate goal is to save you from burning to death. In your psyche, that fire is unbearable emotional pain. That is such a heavy visual, but it clicks perfectly. Yeah. So, a binge eating episode or a sudden outburst of rage, that's your internal firefighter shattering the windows to distract you or numb you or fight off the threat before the emotional pain consumes you. So, the

firefighter really doesn't care about the collateral damage to your life, your health, or your relationships. It just needs to stop the burning right now. Exactly. Immediate survival. Which brings us to the third category on our organizational chart, the exiles. The exiles. This is where it gets tough. Yeah. If the managers are the risk assessors and the firefighters are the emergency responders, the exiles are the ones locked in the company basement, right? The exiles are the parts of you that actually hold the unbearable pain we just mentioned. They're the ones carrying the trauma. Yes. They are usually very young, highly vulnerable parts of your psyche carrying the trauma, the deep shame, the profound grief, or even

the terror you experienced in the past. So, the managers spend all of their exhausting energy trying to keep those exiles permanently locked in the basement so you never have to feel their pain. You've got it. and your firefighters only if an exile accidentally escapes and starts crying. It is just a relentless 247 operation going on inside our heads. It really is. It's exhausting. But here's where it gets really interesting because the text outlines one more figure in the boardroom and it's the most important one. Oh, yes. It's not a manager. It's not a firefighter. And it's not an exile. It is what the IFS model calls the self with a capital S. The self. Yeah,

if the parts are the department heads, the self is the actual CEO of the company. The self is the core, you know, undamaged consciousness behind all of these protective layers. And honestly, the most hopeful tenant of the entire IFS model is the belief that the self cannot be broken. Wait, really? It can't be damaged? No, it cannot be corrupted or damaged. No matter what trauma you have endured, it is always intact. That's incredible. It might be completely obscured by a panicked riskmanagement team or a chaotic firefighting crew, you know, but it is always there waiting to lead. And the source material provides this brilliant diagnostic tool to help you identify when you are actually operating

from your true self rather than, you know, a protective part. Oh, the eight C's. Yes, the eight C's. When the CEO is sitting at the head of the table, you experience these specific qualities. curiosity, calm, compassion, courage, clarity, confidence, creativity, and connectedness. Notice the profound physical and emotional difference in those words compared to the parts. It's a completely different vibe. Yeah. I mean, a manager operates from a place of rigid anxiety and control. A firefighter operates from panic, impulsivity, and desperation. And an exile operates from sheer agony. Exactly. But the self operates from a grounded place of calm, curious compassion. The self doesn't want to lock anyone in the basement. It wants to listen, connect,

and heal. So, having mapped out the entire corporate structure of the psyche, I really want to zoom all the way in. Let's do it. Because our source text puts a massive spotlight on one very specific manager part, and it is arguably the most common proactive protector running the boardrooms of high functioning adults today. We see it everywhere. The overgiver manager, uh, the quitessential people pleaser. the part that keeps the peace by sacrificing the host. Sacrificing the host. That's exactly what it feels like. So, as we run through the specific traits of the overgiver manager detailed in the text, I want you, the listener, to mentally check off which of these hit uncomfortably close to home.

I'm sure a lot of people will be nodding along. Oh, definitely. So, your internal overgiver is the department head who um always volunteers first for the task nobody else wants. Y they anticipate everyone else's physical and emotional needs before even recognizing your own. And they constantly try to keep the peace at all costs, even if it means swallowing your own opinions. We also see this part manifest in the preemptive apology. Oh, saying I'm sorry for literally everything. Yeah. Saying I'm sorry before there is even anything to apologize for. That is a classic riskmanagement move. It really is. It's an attempt to disarm potential conflict or anger before the other person can even formulate a critique.

Wow. And the list just continues. The overgiver is the part saying yes when your body is literally screaming no. Like taking on that extra weekend project when you are already running on, you know, 3 hours of sleep. Exactly. It's feeling personally responsible for the mood of every single person in the room. Like if a co-orker seems quiet, your overgiver immediately assumes you did something wrong and scrambles to fix it. And finally, having an incredibly difficult time receiving help or care from others, which is so common, but when you lay it all out like that, it doesn't sound like a nefarious mental block. It just sounds like a part of you that is intensely chronically exhausted.

If we connect this to the bigger picture, we have to examine the origin story. This part, where does it come from? Well, the overgiver is not an enemy. It's not a weak character flaw that you need to be ashamed of. It is actually a brilliant, highly adaptive survival mechanism that work incredibly hard to keep the younger version of you safe. The text focuses heavily on this. But safe from what exactly? Like what environment forces a child to hire an overgiver to run their life? Basically any environment where simply being your authentic, messy, needy self was dangerous. Okay, that makes sense. Imagine a child growing up in a home with a highly volatile, unpredictable parent or

perhaps an emotionally immature parent who um treats the child like a therapist, right? Where the roles are totally reversed. Exactly. That child learns very quickly that the only way to avoid the parents explosive anger, you know, the only way to secure the attachment necessary for physical and emotional survival is to become hypervigilant. So they have to read the room constantly. Yes, they learn to read micro expressions. They learn that being useful or invisible or perfectly compliant is the absolute only currency they have to buy safety. So, the child's mind creates the overgiver manager to navigate a literal minefield. That's a great way to put it. It grabs the steering wheel and says, "Don't worry, I

know how to handle this. I will just monitor everyone's mood constantly, make sure everyone else is perfectly happy, and then we won't get yelled at or abandoned." That is precisely the mechanism in trauma literature. This survival strategy is known as the fawn response. Fawn. We usually hear about fight, flight, or freeze, right? Yeah. But fawning is just as prevalent. It is appeasing the threat to survive the threat. And as a child, it worked beautifully. It got you through. It did its job. But the tragedy is that you are an adult now. You might be living in a physically safe environment, working in a normal office, but that overgiver part is still operating as if you

are eight years old and in mortal danger. Oh wow. It doesn't know the war is over. No, it doesn't. So, it just keeps managing your co-workers, managing your partner, managing your friends until your physical body hits complete systemic burnout. So, what does this all mean? If this overgiver isn't, you know, a bad habit we need to aggressively eradicate, but rather an exhausted protector trapped in the past, how do we actually deal with it? It's a completely different approach because living in a state of constant burnout and resentment isn't a sustainable option. Mhm. How do we practically apply this IFS theory to actually change our lives? The practical application is beautifully counterintuitive. In a lot of

traditional aggressive self-help culture, the goal is to wage war on your bad habits. Right. You see stuff like crush your inner people pleaser or kill your inner critic all the time. Exactly. But in the IFS framework, if you try to forcefully fire or silence the overgiver, you are basically just employing another harsh manager part to bully the first manager part. So, you're just fighting yourself, right? It just creates massive internal gridlock. You can't hate a protector into relaxing. That's a perfect way to phrase it. The goal of IFS is to build a relationship with it from that core calm, compassionate self. you know the CEO, you approach the overgiver manager with genuine curiosity. Okay, so

what does that look like? You literally turn inward and thank it. The internal dialogue might look like acknowledging its effort. You might say, I see how hard you have worked to keep us safe for the last 20 years. I see how exhausted you are. Oh wow, that is powerful. It really is. Yeah. And then very gently you update it on your current reality. You let it know that you are an adult now. You have resources. You are no longer that trapped, vulnerable kid. So you show the risk management department that the company is actually financially stable now and they don't need to panic over every single email. Exactly. And the text notes that when that

protective part finally feels seen, appreciated, and safe, something amazing happens. It naturally relaxes. It does. It willingly steps back from the boardroom table. And when the overgiver steps back, it creates space for the other parts of you. you know, the parts that have actual wants, needs, creative desires, and strict boundaries. They finally get a turn to speak. This is the core reason the text highlights IFS as such a profound tool for people stuck in the fawn response or chronic peopleleasing. It is a completely non-pathizing framework. It's just so refreshing. It is. We are not labeling your overgiving behavior as a sickness or a disorder or personal failure. We are engaging that behavior as a one's

adaptive ally. So when you stop fighting your own mind and start understanding the protective intent behind your actions, the shame just completely evaporates. And reducing shame is the absolute fastest way to accelerate healing. The ultimate goal of this therapy is self leadership. Self leadership. I like that. Yeah. Where your core self with all its calm and clarity sits confidently at the head of the boardroom. It listens to the concerns of the managers, calms the firefighters, and finally unbburdens the exiles in the basement of their long-held pain. You know, what stood out in the text is how accessible they've made this kind of specific, nuanced therapy. We aren't just talking about abstract theories today, right? They're

practical steps you can take. Exactly. The sponsor of our source text, Coping and Healing Counseling, or CHC, they actually specialize in this exact work. They have clinicians on staff who are specifically IFS informed which is vital. Yeah. Meaning they are explicitly trained to guide you through this delicate process of identifying your boardroom parts and building that self leadership. The logistical details provided in the source are highly practical for anyone recognizing their own overgiver. Right now CHC isn't just a single practitioner. Oh, they're a big group. Yeah. They have built a robust diverse team of over 15 licensed professionals. We're talking about licensed clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors, and licensed marriage and family therapists. And

the text specifically highlights their commitment to being a culturally competent team. Right. Yes. When you are unpacking deep trauma and examining how your protective parts were shaped by your specific family dynamics, having a therapist who genuinely understands your cultural background and environment is absolutely vital. Absolutely. And they also remove the massive friction of commuting or like sitting in a clinical waiting room. CHC operates entirely via teleaalth which makes it so much easier. It really does. They serve all 159 counties in Georgia. It is 100% fit IPA compliant which means you can do this incredibly vulnerable inner work from the safety and privacy of your own couch. That's a game changer. and they offer individual therapy,

couples and family therapy, teen therapy for ages 13 and up, and life coaching. Their specialties are perfectly aligned with the burdens these protective parts carry. You know, anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD, grief, and chronic stress. We also really need to highlight the financial accessibility because mental health care is notoriously cost prohibitive. Oh, yeah. It can be incredibly expensive. It can. But CHC has structured their practice to actively combat that barrier. For clients utilizing Medicaid, they offer a Z co-pay. Wait, really? A Z co-pay? That's amazing. Yes. They also accept a wide range of major commercial insuranceances, including Etna, Sigma, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, and Humanana. For those using commercial insurance, sessions typically range between

$30 and $40. So, they have made the logistics as easy as possible so your overgiver manager doesn't have an excuse to avoid it. Exactly. No excuses. If you are realizing it is time to update your internal boardroom, you can reach out to them directly to see if an IFSinformed therapist is the right fit. Their phone number is 404832102. And their website is great, too. Yes, you can browse their team and services at sheet theapy.com or email them your questions at supportet theapy.com. We just want to ensure you have the exact tools needed to take that next step. Taking that step is an act of profound self- advocacy. I mean, you do not have to be

driven by an exhausted, panicked protector for the rest of your life. Which perfectly summarizes the core aha moment of this entire deep dive. If you are someone who constantly puts everyone else first to the point of your own absolute detriment, it is not a character flaw. No, not at all. You aren't broken. You simply have a deeply exhausted protector part that kept you alive when you were young. Now it just needs your gratitude so that your true calm self can finally step forward and take the wheel. This raises an important question though, a final thought to leave you with as you reflect on your own internal boardroom today. Okay, let's hear it. If our protective

manager parts like the overgiver were originally born out of unsafe, volatile environments in our childhood past, um how might our modern culture be secretly keeping them trapped in the present? Ooh, that is a heavy thought. Think about the modern workplace. Think about corporate culture. We constantly praise, promote, and financially reward chronic people pleasers and overgivers. Oh, absolutely. We call them team players, right? We praise them for having no boundaries and answering emails at midnight. So, we really have to ask ourselves, you know, how much is our modern society secretly exploiting these exhausted, traumatized protector parts, keeping them trapped in their roles and preventing us from ever truly accessing our authentic bounded self? Man, that is

a profound and slightly unsettling question to chew on. Like, are we doing the work to heal our parts or are we just putting our childhood trauma to work for someone else's bottom line? It's definitely something to think about. It really is. Well, it has been an incredible deep dive today. Thank you so much for joining us and exploring the multiplicity of the mind. It was a pleasure. As you navigate the rest of your day, I really encourage you to approach your own inner overgiver with a little bit more curiosity and a lot more compassion. Give that exhausted department head in your mental boardroom a break. You've certainly earned it.