Hi everybody. It's Steve here again, and I'm back with my new course for Stimuli, which is a short course this time, and it's entitled The Multiplicity of the Mind. Now, my journey with this subject, actually, when I think about it goes way back, although perhaps I didn't know it then. Initially, it started with me becoming increasingly interested in how polarized my clients seemed, how conflicted in their perspectives, in their motives, in their interests, in their beliefs. And it got me to wonder more and more about how personality actually works. And it turned my attention inwards and to my own mind and my own polarized perspectives and beliefs. For example, I'm feeling quite hungry right now. There's a part of me that would really like to eat lots of carbohydrates. There's another part of me that would tell me not to do that and encourage me to go to the gym instead. Or, possibly even the same part, that would criticize me if I were to eat something that perhaps wasn't necessarily that healthy.

And I, I found that concept quite interesting. For example, which part is correct? What part holds the right idea, has the right perspective? Or are we all just made up of lots of different parts, that have different ideologies, have different beliefs, have different incentives and different motivations and goals. Or roles even? And the more I started to pay attention to this, the more I started to notice and witness how, actually, some of these parts could evoke changing states in behavior in my clients in the room. And this eventually led me into doing a lot of reading around ego state therapy. And, eventually that led me to discover something that I felt had been missing from my practice. And that's called Internal Family Systems Therapy, or otherwise known as IFS.

IFS was actually developed in the 80s by a very clever chap in the US called Richard Schwartz, who's actually a family therapist. And it was really through him paying very close attention to some of his more challenging clients and some of the problems that they faced. And it led him to start to take approaches with people where he would try to almost separate the parts, and try to work with the part that was causing a problem. Through trial and error he developed IFS therapy, which has become increasingly popular throughout the world. It's extremely popular in the US, but over here in the UK it's only very recently started to take off. I think one of the challenges that IFS potentially has in gaining traction and interest is that we have kind of been socialized to think that uh, the Multiplicity of the Mind or having different personalities equates to madness or dysregulation. In fact, there is a condition that used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder which is now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. Or it might get us to associate it with something like Borderline Personality Disorder or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. So it's often, I think, associated with highly dysregulated states.

But whilst I'm not going to talk about those specific disorders, really I've got no intention of doing that. My intention is, in fact, to focus on normalizing the concept of us having a multiplicitous mind. And encouraging our listeners and subscribers to grow in their journeys of self-discovery and understanding by looking further within. To explore yourself, and your motivations, and your actions, and your desires, and your interests. Through the use of this model, through the lens of this model. And as we always say at Stimuli, knowledge can lead to understanding, which can lead to acceptance. And acceptance can lead to personal growth, which I think many of us are striving for. Just the notion of even subscribing to Stimuli would indicate to me that you are interested in personal growth. And I think that's what's led me to develop this particular course.

IFS and the exploration of different parts of who we are might not feel directly relevant to ADHD. For example, there isn't any sort of strong available data or research done on this, to my knowledge. I just feel like the course could help us along this journey, or provide an alternative platform to understanding. IFS kind of see themselves as more of a movement, really. This sort of empowering paradigm of understanding, and a way of harmonizing the mind by exploring these larger human systems. Which they believe, and I believe, can lead to healing.

For those of you who don't know I'm actually a qualified IFS therapist, as well as an EMDR and CBT therapist. And whilst I've done a lot of reading before, I did the training, the training really sort of crystallized my understanding of IFS, and the concept of mind multiplicity. It's really helped me to understand myself and my clients, friends, loved ones better. And the people in my wider ecology, on a level which, I feel, transcends conventional sort of psychological models. So, I wanted to bring this course in for, more than any other reason, it's a passion of mine and I hope that it can help you in some way. I feel it's ideally listened to after many of the other audio programs have been listened to. And I really hope that you enjoy it!