Max Littman, LCSW
May 22, 2026
As an IFS therapist, I am given the unusual opportunity to be invited into another person’s psyche. That invitation comes with power, responsibility, and a kind of privilege that can be easy to take for granted. To be allowed in proximity to another person’s internal world, let alone inside it, even briefly, is no small thing.
It has the possibility of inflicting harm. Not only through obvious misuses of power, poor boundaries, or misattunement, but through subtler forms of harm that can still happen in the presence of benevolence, respect, and sincere therapeutic care. Depending on the client’s internal system, personal history, and relational history, there may be a security team inside that is vigilant for too much exposure, too much closeness, too much knowing, or too much movement toward places that have not yet given permission to be approached.
Sequences from the film Inception regularly run through my mind as a metaphor for an inner world under threat from an invader.
Much of Inception takes place in dream worlds built inside a person’s psyche. In one sequence, the protagonists enter the mind of Robert Fischer, played by Cillian Murphy. Their goal is to plant an idea that will lead him to dissolve the company he inherited from his father. In some ways, it is a heist. They move through his psychic architecture trying not to be noticed. In the logic of the film, once the inner world detects an intruder, the dream becomes unstable and the psyche begins to attack.
For a little while, the intruders pass as part of the scenery. They sit in a restaurant. They speak. They observe. They try to convince Fischer, through direct conversation inside the dream, that they can be trusted. They blend into the environment they have entered.
Then the psyche’s security system detects them.
The anonymous background figures in the dream, Fischer’s inner security team, start turning toward the intruders. A hallway rotates. The physics of the inner world, which have been mirroring the external world, begin to reconfigure. The space becomes more abstract, unstable, and unpredictable.
A client may come to therapy with what seems and feels like real willingness. They may want help. They may have chosen me intentionally. They may have read about IFS, felt moved by the language of parts, and felt relief that their symptoms might be understood as protective rather than defective. A part of them may feel eager to turn inward. A part may feel hopeful. A part may want me to understand everything as quickly as possible.
This willingness is real, but does not represent the whole client.
Some parts may not have consented to connecting with a therapist. Some may not have been told. Some may not trust warmth. Some may not trust the language of compassion or believe it can be offered freely and genuinely. Some may not trust the invitation to notice what is happening inside. Some may not trust my interest in parts, burdens, protectors, exile, attachment wounds, trauma, grief, or the body. Or simply my human and respectful interest in them. Some may not trust the client’s own hope, because hope has led to disappointment before.
In moments like this, internal protection can take on an Inception-like quality. The system begins to defend against the intruder, whether that intruder is the therapist, the therapeutic process, the client’s own Self energy, or the sudden movement toward a place that has not agreed to be approached.
Sometimes this protection is obvious. A client becomes irritated, shut down, distracted, or suddenly unable to continue. Sometimes they say, “I don’t know,” and the words carry a weight beyond ordinary not knowing. Sometimes their face changes. Their voice becomes flatter. Their answers become careful. The room feels less spacious. My own body tenses. I may sense that something has shifted, even while the content of the conversation still appears calm.
Other times, the shift is more subtle. The client may become very insightful. They may start speaking fluent therapy language. They may understand the model quickly and perform the sequence well enough that I feel encouraged. They may name parts, locate burdens, explain family history, and offer elegant interpretations of their own system.
And still, something feels off.
This is where the images from Inception become useful. The inner world is not always responding to my stated or implied intention, or to any therapist’s intention. It may be responding to the felt sense of exposure to an unwelcome presence, with emotional safety questionable at best. Something inside may register my curiosity, focus, confidence, or sequence as moving toward highly protected material. A client’s system may also be primed to detect the presence of my own parts, whether or not those parts are leading. I may feel kind, careful, and attuned. A protector in my client may still feel its inner world is under threat.
Some clients have lived through environments where people entered without permission. Some intrusions were obvious. Others were more subtle. A parent who demanded emotional access to them as a child. A family system that treated privacy as rejection. A partner who asked questions as a way of controlling the narrative. A religious, medical, educational, or therapeutic authority that claimed to know what was best. A culture that studied, judged, named, or corrected the person without first knowing them.
In those contexts, being understood and accompanied was not always safe. Being seen was not always a relief. Having someone get close did not always mean help was coming.
So as a therapist, I can become a confusing figure. A part of my client may want to be known from the inside out, while another may not want me there. They may want relief and also not want anyone entering the very system that has helped them survive. They may want my steadiness and also distrust the power that comes with being known. They may crave attunement and fear the cost of needing it.
This can be hard for some therapist parts to allow. Part of us may want to defend the model or the broader psychological concept being used. We may want to explain our intention, repair quickly, or reassure the client that nothing threatening is happening. Other parts of us may feel embarrassed and move into hyper-competence. Another may worry the session is going nowhere. Another may become extra gentle, with a hidden wish that the protector will soften.
A client’s protectors can often detect all of this, usually on a barely conscious level, if it is conscious at all.
They can sense us trying to be good. They can sense when attunement that has become a strategy. They can sense a question that is technically respectful but inwardly impatient. They can sense our attachment to depth, breakthrough, access, or a clean piece of IFS work. They can sense the moment we begin to relate to the protector, the internal security system, as something blocking therapy rather than as a team worthy of patience, respect, care, and even love.
The more this can be noticed and respected, truly respected rather than used as another strategy, the more room there may be for a corrective experience in the person’s system. Something different can happen from what the system has learned to expect through harmful, intrusive, or misattuned environments. A protector that expects pressure may encounter patience. A part that expects persuasion may encounter choice. A system that expects the outside figure to keep advancing may find someone actually listening for, inviting, and respecting the boundaries of the internal world.
I keep my antennae up for these Inception-like moments: the subtle sense that the inner world has turned toward me, that something inside has begun to shake with vigilance, that the architecture is becoming less stable in the name of protection from an unwelcome intruder.
When I sense this happening, I try to turn inward first. I check for my own agenda, including any attachment to depth, access, repair, reassurance, or a particular kind of therapeutic progress. Sometimes I then name what I am sensing with the client. Sometimes I slow down and share, carefully, that something in the system may be responding to me as a threat. I want the respect I show toward that response to become part of what the system can feel.
More may become possible from there: in the therapy, in the therapeutic relationship, inside the client, between the client and their parts, and eventually in their relationship with the external world. The security system may still be watching vigilantly. But it may also be registering that this particular outside presence is willing to notice the alarm without trying to force its way in.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide consultation and therapy for therapists.
Purchase my new book IFS Therapy for Gay and Queer Men here.
