| On your Mark |

Meet… Shira Fruchter

By Shoshana Gross | September 17, 2024

Shira Fruchter helps people access their past — and use it to move forward

Shira Fruchter: a therapist who is passionate about empowering people to look inward and improve their relationships, using the language of IFS.

Always Curious

I’ve always been curious about people. Sometimes I wonder if my parents’ divorce when I was 12 caused me to be more attuned to others’ emotions — or maybe my fascination is just inborn. Either way, I always knew that I’d become a therapist. My desire to love and connect with the people around me only increased as the years passed.

As a 22-year-old newlywed and the proud possessor of a master’s degree in social work, I flew to Eretz Yisrael, anxious to live my dream. My early clients were seminary girls who generally fell into the low self-esteem/social anxiety/rebellious categories. Armed with my shiny new methodologies and trusty college textbooks, I was eager to help them. My clients seemed satisfied, but I felt uneasy. Was I helping them? Why did I feel like I wasn’t doing enough?

On Top of the Mountain

Esther* was a typical client. A rebellious, angry teen, she marched into my office bursting with rage against her roommate.

“How does that make you feel?” I asked, validating her powerful emotions. “Let’s try to discover the root of your anger. Where did you learn that this is the way to deal with tough situations?”

After digging into her past and discovering that Esther’s childhood was dominated by her explosive father, I felt stuck. The haphazard process of figuring out the ‘‘why” of a client’s behavior didn’t lead to a “this-is-what-we-should-do” epiphany. My therapy felt wishy-washy. I felt helpless. More and more, I began to feel lost.

Even more troubling, I felt that everything I’d learned in school emphasized the therapist dispensing advice from her lofty perch atop the mountain of wisdom. There was a patronizing attitude toward clients and ridiculous unspoken rules about therapist behavior.

In certain modalities of therapy, if a client asks, “How old are you?” a therapist should reply, “What does that mean to you?”

Over ten years of frustration, I slowly realized that I wanted a clear map of how to meet my clients’ goals, and to learn an approach to therapy that positioned people as the experts on healing themselves. I didn’t want to be the wise sage; I wanted to be a humble guide and facilitator on the journey of therapy.

IFS or CBT?

As a therapist, I knew about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), and found its concrete approach was appealing. I considered specializing in CBT, but a friend advised me to explore IFS.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Internal Family Systems. It’s an organized therapy method that maps out a clear course of action, and it’s an incredible model for internal and external relationships.”

I didn’t know exactly what this involved, but it sounded intriguing. I enrolled in the first year of the intense IFS Israel course (founded and led by Einat Bronstein and Osnat Arbel), and went on to become certified in the second and third levels of IFS training as I dove deeper into a new reality. The instructors were incredibly compassionate and humble, and I felt like they embodied the principles they taught.

“We’re all in this together,” was their attitude. Their accepting, client-based approach resonated, and I was fascinated by the novel ideas I was learning. In IFS, we were taught to help people achieve internal harmony among the conflicting parts of their inner world, instead of just focusing on outer symptoms or how to change troublesome behaviors. With inner peace, clients’ symptoms and behavior tended to change naturally.

Soon I was implementing IFS in my personal life. I noticed a gradual improvement in my interactions with my children, my relationships with friends and family, and even the way I related to myself. I was finally able to concretize changes in my behavior. It was liberating! IFS didn’t feel like therapy, but a way of life.

Overflowing with excitement, I invited six friends over, explaining that I was going to change their lives. Sharing IFS with that first group, I tailored my classes to the untrained laywoman, and my friends soaked it in. Some were inspired to become therapists; all of them told their friends about what they’d learned, and almost before I fully grasped what was happening, my passion transformed into spreading IFS.

Managers, Firefighters, Exiles

I quickly internalized a core IFS premise: people avoid pain. We’ll do almost anything to prevent being hurt. In a (very limited) nutshell, IFS divides a person’s inner world into parts: managers, firefighters, and exiles. “Managers” and “firefighters” protect us, so we don’t feel the pain of our “exiles” — our triggers. But sometimes pain-avoidance mechanisms cause more pain. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy of someone who acts coldly to protect herself from rejection — and is therefore rejected.

When we understand the root of our pain and the automatic mechanisms that kick in to “protect” us, we can make choices based on a profound understanding of how we work. Using this knowledge, I guide couples, parents, and individuals to improve their relationships.

One woman, Shayna, complained that her husband, Avi, didn’t get her. If she was upset, he made things worse.

“What do you want your husband to do?” I asked. She couldn’t answer.

I advised her to connect to the dysregulated part of herself that was so unhappy. We realized that when she was a child, her parents were too busy with their divorce to set healthy boundaries, and we then explored how it felt as a child to have no bedtime and few rules. Shayna realized that the little girl part of her felt insecure and unloved.

However, IFS is not a blame game. Shayna took responsibility for her bad moods, and worked to heal and rewire her little girl part who was lacking love. She didn’t simply process her past, as in many therapy modalities — she moved on and taught her uncontained younger self how to have compassionate limits. Once she’d done so, she was finally able to interact with her husband with maturity. She no longer relied on Avi to be the “parent” in their relationship. Their marriage flourished.

Another woman, Miriam, forgot her keys, papers, passport, glasses — everything! Some curiosity toward her forgetful part revealed that this habit stemmed from her coddled childhood. Being completely taken care of by Mommy felt great (Miriam never had to remember anything), but left Miriam feeling incapable and helpless.

Miriam realized that her forgetful part wanted her to forget everything, since she associated forgetting with Mommy coming to the rescue and taking care of her. If she remembered things, maybe she would be unloved and unnoticed. The behavior was crippling her everyday ability to function, but instead of angry frustration, Miriam treated that forgetful part of herself with compassion. Finally, she felt empowered enough to begin taking charge of her life. It was an incredible transformation.

By the Book

When I first told my husband about IFS, he kept finding parallels between different tidbits and concepts with Torah hashkafah. For our 20th anniversary, he presented me with a mini book comparing IFS and Orchos Tzaddikim. Besides being the perfect gift, this was the catalyst for my decision to write a book. I wanted to share this incredible knowledge through a book written by and for the frum population.

One of my regular IFS courses was held at the house of writer Mindel Kassorla.

“I love this!” she told me. “Let’s write a book together about IFS.”

So began an amazing collaboration. We held long weekly discussions, which Mindel recorded, and then she skillfully transformed my ideas into words. Together, we created “Part and Soul,” a book replete with client stories and various situations where the IFS method is useful (Feldheim, 2024). Since IFS is all about relationships between people and within ourselves, it connects to so many relevant Jewish topics — parenting, emunah, connecting to Hashem, bechirah, and shidduchim (of course!). I was filled with excitement when we received positive feedback from Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller-Gottlieb and Rabbi Shimon Russell, both experts in human relationships.

Who We Want to Be

My mission is to give people the opportunity to access their past and use it to move forward. We all wake up in the morning wanting to feel good about ourselves, and if we don’t, anger and blame aren’t the answer.

The answer is curiosity.

The answer is a gentle, “Why?”

IFS helps us understand ourselves.

And when we know who we are, we can choose who we want to be.