IFS - why I work with parts

a little intro into IFS (Internal Family Systems), a highly effective and innovative therapeutic model for working with complex trauma and related psychological struggles

We were in London a few weeks ago. After living in a much quieter place for the last decade, big city life activated so many parts in me. The extreme planner that wants to make sure we're organized and optimal, the hypervigilant one that looks out for dangers, be them cars or people that might in some way do us harm, the explorer that gets a kick from traveling and being in places she loves.

They are all familiar parts, all belonging to my system, parts that are useful and great, and have skills and gifts and that help me lead a good life. They manage, they plan, they enjoy, but if life gets too much for too long they get forced into more intense states that are less self-aware and lead to overreaction. The planner gets into overdrive and wants to plan every single minute at the expense of consuming too much of my energy. The hypervigilant one instead of just being aware of the environment and keeping me and the family safe, starts imagining all sorts of potential scenarios that edge towards catastrophic. The explorer wants to basically head out into the world or feels sorry that she's not more free to explore 100% of her time.

All these parts in their extreme roles recruit others, elsewhere in the system. Those, too, usually carry real skills and gifts - but in this state, they don't help. They add to what's already too much.

you are not one thing

Most of us were raised on the idea that a healthy person is a unified one - a single, seamless self - and that if we have conflicting voices inside that's a problem to solve. IFS starts somewhere else. It takes the ordinary experience of being of many minds, or many parts - the part of us that wants to rest and the part that won't let us, the part that reaches for closeness and the part that pulls back - and treats it as the actual structure of the mind, not as a flaw.

You are not one thing. You are a system of parts.

If you've seen the film Inside Out, you might even get a visual of it: a set of inner characters, each with its own agenda, taking turns at the controls. IFS says something similar - that inside each of us is a kind of internal family, and like any family it has its histories, its alliances, its members who have been carrying too much for too long, its younger parts and its more grownup parts.

The model was developed in the 1980s by Richard Schwartz, a family therapist who kept noticing that when he asked clients about the opposing voices inside them, the voices answered - each with a role, a fear, a reason for doing what it did.

protectors and exiles

IFS sorts parts into a few kinds, and the sorting is governed by the jobs a part has assumed throughout your life.

Some parts are called protectors, and they are of two types - managers and firefighters. The managers work ahead of time, proactively, trying to keep you safe by keeping you in control: the inner critic, the perfectionist, the one that plans and anticipates and never quite rests. The firefighters come in after the fact, reactively, once something painful has already broken through, or once there is overwhelm in the overall system - the part that numbs, that reaches for a drink or the screen or the food, that dissociates, that flares into anger. From the outside these can look like the problem, and are often the ones that bring a person to therapy. Inside the logic of the system however, they are the emergency response. Our first aiders, extremely important.

What they're ALL protecting is a third kind of part: the exiles. These are the young, wounded parts that carry what IFS calls burdens - the beliefs and feelings laid down at the moments when things in our lives were too much - I'm not safe. I'm too much. I'm alone. Something is wrong with me. The protectors' whole purpose is to keep these parts, and the pain they hold, out of reach.

Self, and the one move that changes everything

Underneath all of it, IFS says, is something that isn't a part: the Self. Not a role, not a voice with an agenda, but the steady presence that can turn toward any part with curiosity rather than fear. Schwartz describes it through qualities that tend to arrive together when it's present - curiosity, compassion, calm, clarity, courage, and a few more. You've felt it: the moments you can be with your own difficulty without being swallowed by it. And even be compassionate towards it.

For me this changed everything. The NO bad parts. Not the critic, not the addict, not the part that goes cold and leaves the room. Every one of them, however destructive it looks from the outside, is trying to protect you with the only tool it ever learned. You don't heal or fix anything by defeating them. You heal or reclaim wholeness by getting to know them - by asking what they're afraid would happen if they stopped. Usually the answer is a beautiful one, if we've got the space inside to really receive it.

why I use it

I've used IFS as a client for more than 7 years by now. Because my way of trusting something has always been through reading and research, I've probably read all the books out there on it, read all the scientific articles I could get my hands on as well. The experiential part was supported by my curious, in-need-of-proof mind. I needed to know not only that it works - which I could feel in my sessions, but also how it works.

At one point my system relaxed into the experiencing of IFS, and it felt almost like magic - I could integrate my parts easier, I could sit with them longer, I felt that I could be like a self-led CEO at the roundtable of my inner system with everyone present. It felt like there was more space and more trust inside. I found myself more often in a place from where I was over-reacting less, was getting less tired in periods of intense work, and was able to hold a calmer and kinder space for my family at the end of the day. I'd tried other modalities before it, and none of them got me this far. That's what made it clear for me a few years back - that I wanted to train in it.

I use it because it's gentle, non-pathologizing, open and welcomes what is present. And it works on a huge spectrum, from unlocking more freedom and joy in one's life to supporting trauma and mental health struggles, even ones deeper than depression.

Since I also started using it with clients I've been in awe of how efficient it can be for anyone's system. It's a delight to work in this way - curious and compassionate towards everyone's inner worlds. It's an honor to witness parts presenting themselves and opening up and trusting their system's Self leadership.

Lastly, it also sits, for me, right alongside the nervous-system work I'm trained in and working with. A firefighter part - the one that numbs, or flares, or disappears - is almost always a nervous system in protection: a dorsal shutdown or a sympathetic surge with a story attached. Somatic Experiencing, which is my other modality, works with the charge in the body; IFS builds a relationship with the part that's carrying it. Two lenses, one system. Everything I've written before - the impala that freezes, the body that dissociates to survive, the nervous system that once needed an exit - says at the level of the body what IFS says at the level of the psyche: this was never a defect. It was protection. And this cracks open a little door into what can seem like a dark room - understanding ourselves better.

what IFS isn't

It isn't positive thinking, and it isn't getting rid of the parts you don't like. It isn't a five-minute technique. It's slower and more relational than that - closer to learning to sit down with everyone at the table than to clearing the table. And usually, at least at first, it's done with someone else, because the protectors don't relax on command. Oh no, they are strong and stubborn and almost by default trust no one, not even you. They relax when they come to trust that the pain they're guarding can actually be met.

IFS is also not Family Constellations work. People often confuse the two, but they're different worlds - even though both, in their own way, draw on the dynamics of a family.

I'll definitely be writing much more on IFS and will do my best to make it as pragmatic and applicable as possible, but for now, just wanted to draw its outline.

Until next time,
Alexandra