CSL and the IFS Community

Is the Center for Self Leadership a corporation or a faith community?


This is the question I heard myself ask aloud in the last workshop session of the 2010 Conference as we were considering the relationship between IFS and Christianity (Mary Steege, Sunday morning). I can say without hesitation that for me this is a community of faith and I know that to be the case for many others who see themselves as part of the IFS Community.

At the same time I remember that at the workshop on using IFS with Groups (Tracy McNabb, Friday afternoon), one newer member of the community (only four years), who is someone nearly everyone at the Conference knows by name, tearfully acknowledged a part that feels like an outsider. When Tracy invited others in the fishbowl group to check and see if they had similar parts, every hand went up. This may just mean that we all have parts that feel like an outsider, but the fact that this arose so immediately in the demonstration group suggests this is a common fear that the community is not addressing as well as it might and as well as I would like it to.

My perspective on these matters is informed by my role as an ordained minister and pastoral counselor who incorporates the distinctions and practices of IFS into all of my work. Some of that work is as a consultant with local congregations and faith-based organizations about team building and conflict resolution. From that perspective it seems to me that the mission of the Center for Self Leadership can be greatly enhanced by clarifying the nature of the relationship between the corporation and its employees on the one hand, and the community and its members on the other. How these two entities (corporation and community) envision themselves and their relationship is starkly different. This difference was highlighted for me at the Town Hall Meeting when Jon, bombarded by suggestions about what might be done, responded that we don't have enough resources. Many around him reflected back that we are awash in resources. The difference is whether "we" are the Center and its paid staff, or "we" are the community of IFS proponents and practitioners.

There once was the Internal Family Systems Association (IFSA). It functioned as a membership auxiliary to the Center. A couple of years ago IFSA went away with the promise that its functions would be picked up by the Center. Two new activities of the Center that seem related to the identification of and support for community are the implementation of a credentialing program and the erection of a forum on the web site. The credentialing program actually has nothing to do with community building but, in the absence of anything else, it appears as the only way to get to be "in." This may be one of the reasons for the resistance to the program.

I will say more about our web presence in a bit, but the forum is too low on features and too high on central control to really be a good platform for community development. I know of groups on LinkedIn and Yahoo which have sprouted and I have started groups on Google. The longing for connection within the IFS community is bursting forth spontaneously because there is insufficient outlet for this impulse within the programs of the Center.

I know nothing about the staffing of the Center, but I suspect that no one on the Center staff has responsibility for community development. This probably just falls to Jon along with everything else that no one else has on his or her list. I joked to a friend at the conference that the Center needs a chaplain. She thought we would do better to find a different label for that role but agreed that it would be nice to have someone identified whose responsibility it is to nurture and support the relationships between the various aspects of the community. This is not to say that we don't already have some folks with crazy mad skills in this area. It is only to say that none of them has the authority to act to do community resourcing.

Because the Center exists virtually, I suspect that most of the juices for community building are absorbed in creating a strong sense of "we" among the staff.

In Stephen Greene's excellent workshop (Friday morning) on IFS and neurobiology, we were reminded of the distinctions that Dan Siegel makes about chaos and rigidity and their relationship to differentiation and linkages on the way to integration. All systems can become chaotic or rigid but the place where there is the greatest flow is a region between the two where integration lives. We construct integration through a balance of differentiation (distinguishing this from that) and linkages (connecting this with that). Chaotic systems lack connections. Rigid systems lack distinctions. We need both for integration.

It is my sense that, to the Community, the Center looks rigid. To the Center, the Community appears chaotic. To move toward integration we will need to differentiate and build linkages.

When at the Town Hall Meeting we began to discuss concerns that the vision statement was too broad and that we need a more specific mission statement, we were moving toward greater differentiation. We were seeking to identify some measurable objectives. We tend to be better at distinctions than connections. I noticed this also in the formula of the vision statement. I don't remember the words, but what I got was that we are trying to support the awareness in the world that there is such a thing as "being in Self" and to encourage everyone to become able to be there and to hold that awareness and energy.

When I first started working with the model, it took me a while to "get" what it means to be in Self. But once I had the distinction [both knowing the theory and embodying the experience] and gained proficiency with the awareness practices that are able to reliably build that awareness, I found that I can pretty much be in Self any time I want. Any time, that is, when I am alone. It is much harder to do when others are around. When I am with others I find it much harder to hold Self energy. The real trick is to be in Self with others.

Thus, it seems to me, the loftier vision is not just to be in Self, but to be able to be in Self with others such that they are able to be in Self. And more than that, to, in the context of the relationship we create when we are both in Self, be able to witness together the parts we each have that carry burdens such that those burdens are eased.

My vision is that the Center and the Community may both become able to be in Self with each other such that those parts of each that are pushed to extreme positions are witnessed and their burdens eased. While I absolutely believe we have the will and the wisdom to do this, we are not there yet.

The harder part for us is not the making of distinctions, but of building healthy relationships. We need to focus more on the creation of new linkages and we need a mechanism for creating and sustaining those connections.
 
In the absence of these linkages we miss some great opportunities to promote the mission of the Center and the Community. We have persons and small gatherings of IFS practitioners who are committed to the model and the mission and who want to make things happen in their communities but feel either unsupported or actually discouraged in doing things on their own without direct support or direction from CSL. The net result is that the Center is seen as anxious to maintain control. Such control makes good sense as there is a very understandable wish to protect the purity of the teaching and that it be offered in the best possible light. Nevertheless, this control feels as though it is coming from a manager. It doesn't feel like Self energy.

One of the ways we can strengthen and clarify relationships is through the use of social networking technology on the Internet. I don't mean to suggest that online tools will do everything we need, but the Internet offers many robust options. I have written a second post that spells out in detail what I know to be possible and what I hope we will agree to in terms of social networking for the IFS Community.

Whatever the medium, I deeply hope we will create the mechanisms by which we can maximize the power of this great community.