Internal Family Systems Therapy
“Parts are little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe.” - Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Have you ever felt the inner conflict of two very opposing thoughts? Maybe a family member drives you crazy, but you also can’t imagine cutting them out of your life? Internal Family Systems (IFS) would label these as two separate “parts” of you. IFS is built on two ideas:
1. We are each made up of many parts.
2. There are no bad parts.
Meaning, it’s okay to feel like someone is driving you crazy because a part of you might be trying to communicate that you need stronger boundaries. It’s equally valid to feel pain at the idea of not speaking to this person because another part of you is trying to communicate how deeply you care about the relationship. Other therapies might try to identify which of these thoughts is the “truest” version of you. IFS creates space for both parts to exist and guides you toward greater self-acceptance and deeper exploration of your inner world.
How Does IFS Support Healing?
We are all born with an inner “knowing” or intuition that represents our most authentic Self. This “Self” is truly who you are at your core and ideally is in the driver’s seat of your life. However, each of us develops different “parts” from a very young age that tend to jump into the driver’s seat and take over navigation. For example, a young girl may find she no longer enjoys ballet, but doesn’t want to quit for fear of disappointing her parents. Her true “Self” no longer loves the art of dance, but her people-pleasing “part” steers her toward continuing ballet so she doesn’t disappoint her parents.
Trauma and adverse experiences can leave us feeling fragmented and lost about how to pick up the pieces. Many of my clients describe feeling like “a completely different person” before and after these types of events. When we suffer through painful experiences, parts of us start to show up that we may have never encountered. A part of us may feel distrust while building new relationships because it could end in another heartbreak. A part of us may feel broken or damaged and push people away so we don’t become a burden to anyone. Even another part may feel resentful of ourselves for ignoring all the warning signs and we may punish ourselves through harmful behaviors like substance use or disordered eating.
It’s possible to heal with the help of an IFS therapist who can guide you to work with each of these parts. Once we get to know each of our parts, we can understand the roles that each one has to play. A typical IFS session appears like a meditative experience. We start by noticing thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that act as signposts that lead us directly to our parts. Then we create compassion for each of our parts which helps them to start working with us rather than against us.
FAQs
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We all have an inner wisdom that IFS calls the “Self”. When we lead from this wisdom, we make choices that align with our values. IFS helps the Self to be in the driver’s seat while the different parts of us remain in the passenger seats.
We also all have parts. Examples of parts are an inner critic, an inner child, or an inner people-pleaser. There are no bad parts. Each part has a role to play and can help serve our navigation of life. The problems occur when a part jumps into the driver’s seat and our inner wisdom gets thrown out of the car. IFS helps us stay in touch with our inner wisdom by keeping Self in the driver’s seat while our parts continue to help us navigate from the passenger seats.
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Relationships with narcissists cause certain parts of us to develop. For example, the child of a narcissist may develop an inner people-pleasing part. This part drives in childhood in order to manage the narcissistic parent. It helps with anticipating the needs of a parent or managing a dysregulated parent. It did a lot of hard work to prevent or protect you from the narcissistic parent having mood swings, tantrums, or fits of rage.
The problem is that this part never should have needed to drive. Children should be able to rely on parents who can anticipate their needs and regulate themselves. By acknowledging your inner people-pleaser as an adult, you can start to support it from a Self-led place and relieve it of the responsibility to support you. You can honor the ways in which it helps you navigate being a reliable friend and family member while also allowing it to loosen control over how you are perceived or how others respond to you. This same intervention can be applied to other parts, such as an inner critic or an inner perfectionist.
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IFS therapy sessions start by using a grounding exercise to help you get in touch with Self energy. Then we find a focus for the session. For example, if you feel stressed about a narcissistic parent, we search for the parts of you that surface when you feel that stress. We might find an inner people-pleaser, a worst case-scenario detective, or a wounded inner child. We collaborate with parts to understand the protective role each of them play and where they might need support. For instance, a worst case-scenario detective might need acknowledgment that we understand it feels worried and wants to avoid disaster. By offering this part compassion, we can start to support it rather than having it feel like it has to protect us. We can move through this process with each of your parts with the goal of integrating your system and making you feel more whole.
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Hypervigilance
People-pleasing
Anxiety
Flashbacks
Depression
Self-doubt
Perfectionism
Rebuilding trust in self
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CBT and traditional talk therapy can be helpful in understanding where our issues come from. These therapies tend to focus on the connection between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. However, most of the clients who seek out my services have already done this work, and still carry the unhealed wounds of their past experiences.
EMDR and IFS are both somatic approaches, meaning they allow us to move out of our heads and into our bodies. Our body holds onto the debris from our adverse experiences, even when our minds have figured out the significance of those experiences. We have to go inwards and “feel it to heal it”. EMDR is a structured approach that uses eye movements to help clients keep one foot in the present while processing adverse and traumatic memories from the past. It allows us to safely process memories so that we can stop feeling stuck re-living the past. It also alleviates the disturbance of past trauma that causes present discomfort.
IFS sessions feel like a guided visualization or meditation. While EMDR may focus on one memory for several sessions, IFS offers more flexibility to focus on any stressors that are occurring in each session. In IFS, we trust your system to guide us toward the parts that feel activated and in need of healing. We start by learning how you experience your parts - through images, words, body sensations, feelings, etc. Then, we get to know these parts and the roles they play. We can alleviate these parts of the burdens they carry by acknowleding their presence, showing curiosity, and offering compassion.
IFS and EMDR complement each other well and are sometimes viewed as feminine and masculine approaches, respectively. Often, clients prefer one or the other, but these approaches can be combined in sessions.