top of page
Mother Tree_edited_edited.png

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

What is Internal Family Systems (IFS) / Parts Work?
(Adapted from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/internal-family-systems-therapy)

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an approach to psychotherapy that identifies and addresses multiple sub-personalities, or "families", within each person’s internal system. These sub-personalities consist of wounded parts and painful emotions such as anger and shame and parts that try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded parts. The sub-personalities are often in conflict with each other and with one’s core "Self," a concept that describes the curious, compassionate, whole aspect at the core of every individual. IFS focuses on healing the wounded parts and restoring mental balance and harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the sub-personalities and the Self.

IFS was developed by psychologist Richard Schwartz. In his work as a family therapist, Schwartz began to observe patterns in how people described their inner lives: “What I heard repeatedly were descriptions of what people often called their "parts"—the conflicted sub-personalities that resided within them."  Schwarz began to conceive of the mind as a family, and the sub-personalities or "parts" as family members interacting with one another. Exploring how these components functioned with one another was the foundation for IFS.

According to the IFS model, parts often play three common roles: 

 

Managers: Manager are protective parts that function to control people’s surroundings and manage emotions and tasks to navigate daily life.

​

Exiles: Exiles are parts that hold hurt, fear, or shame from early painful experiences, and often carry the burden of painful emotions and beliefs they developed as a result of those experiences. Managers aim to keep exiles contained and hidden from conscious awareness to avoid distress and pain.

​

Firefighters: Firefights are activated when exiles produce overwhelming, painful, or threatening emotions. Firefighters aim to inhibit those difficult emotions by any means necessary, such as substance use or binge eating.

For example, an exiled part may hold a belief that their feelings and needs don't matter as a result of earlier emotional neglect or abuse. This can lead to deep feelings of sadness, loneliness and despair.  These emotions are typically suppressed by manager parts.  But these feelings can erupt in the system when something in the present triggers the earlier painful experience.  Then, a firefighter part kicks in to try to distract from or numb the feelings through strategies such as alcohol or other substance use, compulsive eating, shopping, sex, etc. in an attempt to keep the person from having to face or re-live those painful beliefs and emotions.

​

Polarized Parts: Often these internal parts are in conflict with one another, creating a sense of being at war with oneself.  For example, someone may have a part that wants to exercise and another part that would rather have a root canal than exercise; or one part may want to stop drinking because of negative consequences, whereas another part experiences alcohol as their best friend and would never want to give it up, etc.  

​

IFS holds that everyone has a core "Self," an aspect of their being that is unharmed by trauma, abuse or neglect.  Many people intuitively understand this aspect of Self and have different names for their experience of it, including: Genuine Self, True Self, Soul, Higher Self, Adult Ego State, etc.  This IFS Self can identify, compassionately observe, and help the firefighter, manager, and exile parts become less extreme, more productive, less burdened, and can facilitate them to coexist in a more harmonious way.

​

The Self in IFS has many positive traits, including the eight Cs and the five Ps.

The presence of these traits can help identify how much of the Self is available at a given time and how much of the Self may still need to emerge.

The eight Cs are:

  1. Confidence

  2. Calmness

  3. Creativity

  4. Clarity

  5. Curiosity

  6. Courage

  7. Compassion

  8. Connectedness

 

​The five Ps are:

  1. Presence

  2. Patience

  3. Perspective

  4. Persistence

  5. Playfulness

​

How It Works

According to IFS, the undamaged core Self is the essence of who you are. A person's parts can be healed, transformed, and better managed by the Self by achieving three goals of IFS:

  1. Free the parts from their extreme roles

  2. Restore trust in the Self

  3. Coordinate and harmonize the Self and the parts, so they can work together as a team with the Self in charge

Mother tree cradling a crescent moon

IFS RESOURCES

Below are some of my favorite videos about IFS therapy by Dr. Terri Olds, a psychologist who I believe is particularly gifted at explaining the healing process, and in particular, the use of IFS for psychological and emotional healing:

If you're interested in exploring how we could work together, please click on the button below:

bottom of page