IFS Therapy

What is IFS Therapy?

IFS Therapy, or the Internal Family Systems model, is based on the premise that, instead of being single-minded with a single personality, our brains are actually multiplicitous, with many different subpersonalities. At the time of its conception, IFS Therapy founder Dick Schwartz, who at the time was working as a family therapist, realized that his clients would think and behave in a way that reflected the influence of their family members, regardless of whether or not the family members were actually physically present. Dick eventually came to understand that his clients, (and we as humans), will naturally internalize our caregiver and family’s feedback and treatment, as if it were subconsciously conditioning our own thoughts, feelings, and self-perceptions over the course of our developmental years. The result is that we come to essentially carry the messages, beliefs, and opinions of our family members within us, giving way to the name of the IFS Therapy model, Internal Family Systems, because we have, in essence, internalized our family system.

About IFS Therapy

The basic idea of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy assumes that you’re actually made up of multiple personalities, in the sense that you have autonomous little parts that are like little minds inside of you. These parts are what you may usually refer to as thinking. Your parts have different desires, ages, emotions, and opinions, so they’re like little inner people, and because most are quite young, they’re more like inner children. They’re often behind the overreactions that may seem mysterious to you and leave you perplexed as to why certain small things hit you so hard.

To better identify and understand your parts, you can simply focus on one of them; in doing so you are separating, or unblending, from it. When you can discern that there is both a you who is observing and an it that is being observed, you are creating distance from the part, instead of operating from a place that believes those criticisms, anxieties, or urges to be destructive (to name a few examples…) are the capital-Y You at your core.

How IFS Therapy works

IFS Therapy can transform your life, allowing you to better manage extreme thought patterns and moods, access self-compassion and self-acceptance, improve self-esteem and self-confidence, and increase an internal sense of calm and self-trust. In addition it allows for the release, or unburdening, of old hurts and traumas.

By learning and practicing the observation of your thoughts, emotions, and impulses from a distance, you can learn to do so from a place of acceptance rather than resistance. When this happens, when you are able to be curious about them without any ulterior motive to change them, they will usually share their secret history, including how and where they came to be, why they do what they do, and what is keeping them stuck in that role. Oftentimes you will tap into something from very early in your life, perhaps a memory from first or fourth grade, in which an innocent and pure child version of you lived through a traumatic experience that was damaging, freezing this part of you in time, in the timeframe of the trauma. This can help to explain why these parts of you may act out in moments when you feel out of control, operating from an early life perspective in which it’s young and stressed out, feeling afraid and powerless.

What to expect with IFS Therapy

IFS Therapy can lead to transformation in your life in a few ways:

First, because parts have qualities and resources that aren’t accessible while they’re tied up in protective roles (ex. your Inner Critic and Inner Procrastinator being in an internal war), once these parts are listened to, heard, embraced, and loved, they can then heal and transform into holding roles that better utilize their inherent qualities and strengths. Examples of this could be your Inner Critic becoming an Inner Advisor, while your Inner Procrastinator transforms into a Nurturing Part that reminds you that it’s okay to slow down and make time for self-care.

Secondly, when your inner protective parts are relieved of their burdens and self-sabotaging behaviors, space is opened for your Self to emerge. Your Self is something you have always possessed, it may have just gotten a bit lost beneath your more vocal and dramatic parts. Often when your parts are quieted (a natural response to feeling heard, seen, and understood), your Self will come forward spontaneously and suddenly. Your Self can intuitively play the part of a loving and caring parent once it’s given the space to lead; your Self will say ‘no’ to impulsive parts firmly but from a place of love and patience; when your parts do take over (which they still will from time to time, you are human after all), your Self won’t shame them, but will instead get curious about what is driving those overwhelmed parts that needs to be healed. Once you have experience leading your parts in a loving yet discerning way, welcoming all parts including the most vulnerable and shame-filled ones, your system of parts will know that it’s safe for you to lead, and will start to build trust in you as the powerful and strong leader that you are. A consequence of this is that you will become more attuned to the moments that a part, and not your Self, is captaining the ship, so that you can notice and shift back into Self energy sooner, spending more time leading from Self energy overall.

Lastly, your relationships may transform due to the work of IFS Therapy. Because Self energy promotes Self energy in others, you may find more harmony in general in your relationships. In addition, when you’re more skilled and practiced in appreciating and having compassion for your own parts, even the ones that you might consider to be troublesome or problematic, you’re better able to extend that practice towards the skill of holding space, having compassion, and even appreciating those parts that you witness in the people around you.

What to expect in an IFS Therapy session

As an IFS Therapist I will meet you where you’re at. Generally IFS Therapy, or parts work, includes either the observation of your various parts and Self energy, or the experience of dropping in. Dropping in can be a new experience for most people, in that I will guide you through the exercise of identifying and separating from your various parts that show up in an IFS Therapy session. This usually looks like closing your eyes, focusing inside, and trying to identify through your thoughts, emotions, or bodily sensations where a particular part is, in or around your body. After that, there are a number of different avenues to take, which largely depend on the attitude and willingness of your system to engage in the process on any given day. Some days your parts may be very responsive, which can look like having a spontaneous conversation with a person or group of people inside of you; other days your parts may not be as wiling to participate, which is okay too. On the responsive days work can be done together in session to unburden, or relieve, a part frozen in time that has communicated through one form or another that it needs healing. On days that parts may not be as willing or responsive, time can be spent getting to know any parts that are resistant or reluctant, starting to build with them a foundation of open communication and trust.

There are no right or wrong ways to respond to parts work, and it can help to view any exercise that takes place in an IFS Therapy session, whether it’s observation or dropping in, as practice in gathering information about your various parts and your system as a whole.

IFS Therapy visual

Here is an illustration of the different parts that are commonly identified and worked with in an IFS Therapy session: