3 Hacks to help MAXIMIZE your IFS sessions with your clients
Fun fact:
If you regularly see your client for 2 hours a month, your client has 478 waking hours a month when they are not in your office with you. Kind of astonishing, right?
What are they doing with the other 478 hours a month when they are not with you?
Our time with our clients in session is beyond powerful. Without a doubt, you are a rock star practitioner and are doing incredibly healing work in the world. AND we have all seen it; if you’re a client yourself, you have experienced the power of getting to do an IFS session with an IFS practitioner. However, it is also important to acknowledge the very REAL importance of the 478 hours in-between sessions with our clients.
Here are three reasons I think the in-between session time gets missed:
1. I don’t highlight the importance.
Face it; we all have done this. I know I will have a session with my therapist and have the best of intentions to connect with my system in-between sessions, and the reality is, well, life happens.
2. I don’t make time for this piece of the process.
I know I can get caught up in “doing the work” in a session and run right up to the last 30 seconds of the session because the work is so incredibly enjoyable to do.
3. It takes too much coordination.
“Doing the work” outside your sessions can feel like a full-time job with resources spread out to the ends of the earth. It can feel very overwhelming and confusing to know what to do sometimes.
Here are three hacks I am using to help my clients maximize the 478 hours in-between sessions.
1. Highlight the importance of the 478 hours
As practitioners, we are a guide for our clients on their journey of self-transformation. If I don’t let my clients know the importance of this, they won’t intuitively know. If I don’t also connect with my system in-between sessions with my practitioner, I won’t be able to really “sell” them the level of importance that needs to be considered here. I certainly have gotten better at this and still have room to grow.
2. Make time for the process and ask for the needs
Giving myself five or so minutes at the end of the session to start to wind down and specifically ask about the need. Practice using this script “So as we start to come to the last 5 minutes or so of the session… I am wondering, as you are with your system right now, what you might notice it has as a need or a request between now and the next session.” Ask for the need in BOTH directions. Not only from part to Self. Ask specifically from Self to part what does Self need from the system or from the part?
3. Help clients set reasonable, agreed-upon intentions for connection
Pulling this one from the good old business handbook. Remember somewhere hearing about the idea of setting SMART goals? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals are essential to getting closer to achieving our goals.
For example, in my journey of healing, I would say generally, I just want to “feel better.” Well, that is nice, but if I don’t have any of these tools to help me get there, the likelihood that I will get wherever “feel better” is quite bleak.
I intend to make sure the needs of both the system and the Self are something that feels ridiculously achievable. The reason I use this word “ridiculously achievable” is that in order to continue to foster this Self to part relationship if I underpromise and overdeliver (just like in business) I get a better Self to part relationship than if I overpromise and underdeliver, I have seen it actually backfire.
For example, if a part asks me to connect with them for 30 minutes a day for the next 30 days, I know that given my season of life right now, I cannot keep that promise. Alternatively, saying that I can give you 30 seconds in the next 30 days will feel dismissive to the part and not foster the connection. So, I make a negotiation with this part that feels “ridiculously” achievable, which is to have three 10-minute conversations with it between now and the next 30 days. I check-in with the part and make sure they are ok with it, and my Self is ok with it as well.
Ok, hack #4, even though I said I would only give you 3 :).
4. Give them a fun, engaging, easy-to-use tool that will help foster their growth in those 478 hours!
This is how Sentur was born. Out of my frustrations of seeing my clients for that time in-between sessions, I had to set timers on my phone to remember to check in with parts or my system. I was having to access this exercise from this book, listen to this MP3 from yet another place, journal in yet ANOTHER place and all the while having to figure out what to do next. It was just too much. And I felt like we were all missing out on a HUGE opportunity.
Sentur is ONE place for everything in your journey of self-transformation to live.
Parts cards to keep living observations of their amazing and beautiful transformation journeys.
Trailhead tracking to start to see how going from flooding to freedom happens on your journey to wholeness.
Self-energy assessments to track in-real-time access to the POWERHOUSE of healing stored in you.
IFS-specific meditations from leading IFS practitioners in the field.
Curated programs for parts to enroll in to help you foster their continued healing and integration.
A support chatbot to walk you through challenging times that ultimately will not come at convenient times.
AND MORE!
Here is what one of our users has to say about Sentur, specifically for her time between sessions.
“I don’t have a good way to capture notes in therapy sessions to track progress and remember the next steps. I see my therapist once a month, and we forget where we landed last time. This app offers me much support in between sessions.”
You deserves to thrive.
We’re here to help.
Comprehensive, accessible Internal Family Systems resources for your journey of self-transformation.
