Internal Family Systems Therapy

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy

What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy was developed by psychologist Richard Schwartz in the 1980’s.

IFS has been shown to be effective in treating various mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance abuse.

IFS is based on the idea that we all have many different parts of ourselves working together and coexisting inside of us, each with its own personality, thoughts, and feelings, like members of a family.

The parts interact and influence each other, taking on different roles to protect us in the ways they have learned to do over time. Often, parts have been stunted from past traumatic experiences, leading to extreme emotions and beliefs. When our parts are at odds with each other, we experience unwanted feelings and behaviors.

In IFS, the parts are divided into categories; managers, firefighters, and exiles, with the core “Self” at the center. Different parts take on different roles.

IFS aims to understand the individual roles of our parts and the relationships between them in order to heal ourselves from the inside out. Healing begins by understanding how our past and present experiences impact who we are now, how we treat ourselves, and how we behave towards other important people in our lives.

The goal of IFS is to non-judgmentally identify and move parts away from their extreme roles, restore trust in the Self, and achieve inner balance, harmony, and coordination between the Self and parts.

How does IFS therapy work?

It’s not uncommon to feel like a part of you wants one thing, while another part wants the complete opposite. This is our parts fighting with each other.

IFS looks at our internal world as a system that generally wants to achieve a sense of peace and balance and tries its best to do so. Overtime, often due to life circumstances and events out of our control, the balance will inevitably be thrown off and unhealthy, unbalanced, and extreme patterns develop.

The goal of IFS is to restore a sense of peace and achieve inner balance, harmony, and coordination between the Self and all of our parts, by moving parts away from their learned extreme roles and restoring trust in the Self.

This is accomplished by first identifying and understanding the different parts in the IFS system, accessing and healing the fragile wounded parts, and ultimately developing a strong sense of self-leadership and inner harmony.