How internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy works and benefits you

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Blog Series - Part 1 of 3

This is the first post in a 3-part blog series on IFS, a therapy that helps you understand and heal those parts of yourself that hold pain and keep you stuck.

We all have different parts of ourselves that we struggle with—an inner critic that constantly finds fault, a numbing part that uses substances to avoid pain, an anxious part that anticipates the worst, or an angry part that reacts quickly and intensely. What if I told you that only befriending them will help them heal. I know, I know … that sounds counter-intuitive, right? Aren’t we supposed to defeat, dominate, or avoid these ‘bad’ parts. Won’t befriending them simply reinforce their bad roles and land you in deeper trouble or worse jail?

These parts can feel overwhelming or even seem like the enemy, but in reality, they often serve important protective functions. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy helps you understand these parts, not as obstacles to eliminate, but as parts of yourself that need understanding, attention, care, and balance.

IFS offers a way to explore and heal these internal parts so they no longer have to take on extreme roles; so you can develop a healthier relationship with your parts. In this blog I will provide an introduction to IFS and discuss the top 3 benefits of IFS therapy. To do this let's look at John's story.

Why Trying to Get Rid of, Fight, or Dominate Your Troublesome Parts Doesn’t Work: The Case of John

Clients coming to see me for the first time will often start their therapy session by telling me how much they hate or fear or just don’t understand a part of themselves that keeps ruining their lives. One divorced dad, John (who grew up feeling ‘not good enough’ because he could never seem to meet the perfectionistic standards of his parents) talked about his Critical Part that bullied him when he made mistakes at work and criticized him for a failed marriage and not being with the kids enough. It denounced him as an imposter that would soon be found out at work and blasted him for ruining his kids’ lives. Logically, he knew he wasn’t a complete failure at work or a wholly bad father, yet deep down he believed this part’s harsh voice that played like a broken record in his mind.  

Parts War And The Feedback Loop

The Critic loomed over John during the week, making him anxious and insecure at work and causing him to withdraw when his kids were around on account of his guilt. When Fridays rolled around and he couldn’t take it anymore, another part of him would step in … the “Happy Pig,” who loved feasting on baked goods, sweets, chips, and alcohol to push away all those bad feelings.  This would really “piss off”  the Critic, who would rage and shame him on Saturday mornings when he woke up with a food and alcohol hangover, calling 'a pathetic and lazy good for nothing’ (well that’s the clean version he said). This diatribe only worsened his sense of worth and confidence as an employee and dad, which in turn inspired even more criticism from the Critic when he continued to not meet its expectations during the week. More recently, he noticed that the more the Critic attacked his inner child who bore the scars of unworthiness from his childhood, the more, the Happy Pig ramped up on Fridays. He seemed to be caught in a vicious cycle, that was leading to increased distress for all his parts, creating a loop of escalation.

Critic (Manager)

Happy Pig (Firefighter)

Negative Feedback Loop

Inner child feeling unworthy (Exile)

Escalating Feedback Loop vs. Befriending your Parts

I totally related and empathized with John, can’t you? He urged me to give him tools to shut up this Critical Part as it was causing such collateral damage in his life. He mused, “You know maybe I need to exercise more to distract myself from it or learn more strategies to stop my mind from thinking, or do more CBT thought records (he had a pile of thought records on his night table showing him the evidence against his negative thoughts).”  He was surprised and downright skeptical when I suggested that this Critic may not be bad after all; It may have positive intentions and work hard to protect him. I said, “That’s right the Critical Part that says mean things to you may have good intentions and really believe it’s helping you! Befriending it may be what transforms it. After all, you’ve tried avoiding it, numbing it, reasoning with it, and none of it has worked; it was just creating an escalating vicious cycle with other parts of you and no one is winning.” John raised an eyebrow. He reluctantly agreed to hear more. I had my work cut out for me.

Multiplicity of Mind

Internal Family Systems (IFS) as developed by Richard C. Schwartz holds that everyone has various parts inside their mind, as illustrated in common thoughts like “one part of me wants to go to a party, while another part of me wants to stay home.” These parts have their own beliefs, feelings, sensations, motivations, and personalities. So your mind isn’t a single entity, but a diverse community of inner parts (who exist as an internal family within you), each with its own story to tell. And like real families, these parts develop alliances and get into conflicts with other parts.

Three Types of Parts

We can categorize parts into 3 types:

• Exiles

These are the wounded and vulnerable parts, who carry all the pain and hurt from past experiences. They are often young and frozen in the past when the wounding happened. They carry the pain of unresolved emotions and past trauma. They long to be seen, heard, and healed, but often remain hidden from view. They can grow extreme from abandonment, desperation and neediness and when we’re hurt in a way that’s similar to the original event.

For example, some exiles carry the memories and emotions of shame, unworthiness, fear, or grief from past abuse, neglect, abandonment, or rejection. Their feelings are behind the ‘overreactions’ that seem mysterious to us and leave us perplexed as to why certain small things hit us so hard. They long to tell their stories and be cared for.    

A Wounded and Abandoned Exile

• Managers

These parts have no tolerance for the emotional pain of your exiles. Their main job is to lock up your exiles for their own protection or to protect your system from becoming overwhelmed by their painful feelings. They strive to always keep you in control and to please everyone.  These hardworking managers use different strategies to avoid situations and interactions that might trigger your exile’s pain.

For instance, an Intellectual manager may obsessively push your exile’s difficult feelings away by focusing on facts, logic, and work tasks. A Worrier manager may constantly flash worst-case scenarios in front of you when you contemplate risk to shield your exile from experiencing more failure or rejection.  A People Pleaser manager may be focused on pleasing others for fear of activating your exile that fears being abandoned and hurt again.

Other managers are the Critic, Intellectual, Pessimist, Procrastinator, Controller, Planner, Avoider, Trainer, Perfectionist, Organizer, Dependent, Judge.

A Hardworking Manager

• Firefighters:

These are the parts who jump into action when despite the best preventative efforts of the managers, your exile’s emotional firestorm is set off; they react to surfacing exiles. They are like the emergency responders of your mind, who rush to put out fires and deal with crises. Firefighters can be highly impulsive and resort to extreme fixes if the first and mildest firefighter activities don’t work.

Although firefighters have the same goal as managers—to keep your exiles out of mind—their strategies are different and are often in conflict with those of managers. While managers are highly rational, planful, and preempt activating situations, firefighters react to your triggered exiles in a way that is unthinking, impulsive, and reactive to soothe them. The impulsivity and extremity of firefighters inspire a barrage of criticism from managers and from people around you as they have no regard for your body or relationships.

Firefighters React to Activated Exiles

Let’s look at an example of a Binge Drinking firefighter. Let’s say you have an exile that holds feelings of inadequacy due to past bullying and rejection, and despite your Overachiever manager’s best efforts to put your exile in a position of power by striving for career success and wealth, the inadequacy overwhelms your exile after you fail to get a promotion at work; This firefighter will sense your exile’s distress and quickly step in to offer relief with a bottle of alcohol and shots of tequila. Other firefighter behaviors are: Excessive shopping, sexual risk-taking, binge-eating, gaming, drug or alcohol abuse, numbing activities like self-harm or suicide, dissociation, workaholism.

The Self

According to IFS, everyone has a “Self.” The Self isn’t a part. It’s who you truly are. You are born with it. It does not have to be developed or cultivated. It can’t be damaged by trauma or hurt. The Self is characterized by the 8C’s: Curiosity, Compassion, Confidence, Calm, Clarity, Courage, Connection, and Creativity; and the 5P’s: Presence, Patience, Patience, Persistence, Perspective, and Playfulness.

That said, your Self can be obscured when you are overwhelmed and dominated by, and so Blended with a part’s perspective, sensations, emotions, and memories. In IFS we call the extreme beliefs  (‘I’m unlovable,’ ‘I can’t depend on others’), and intense feelings (shame, rage, fear) and physical sensations or visions (flashbacks, physical pain, numbness) that a part carries Burdens.

In short, the Self has all the qualities of an effective leader and like the captain of a  ship it can guide, lead, and heal your internal family. Under Self-leadership you have the capacity to hear, understand, and care for your parts. In so doing, burdens can be released and parts who are liberated can be transformed. For example, your exiles (youngest parts) may just want to be spontaneous and play. Other parts may want to advise, problem-solve, lend their talents or generally help. Each part will have a different, valuable role, and set of abilities once they are unburdened by the Self.

Also, if conflict arises between parts, the Self has the ability to mediate and heal inner conflicts and tugs of war, bringing balance, harmony, and integration to your internal family of parts. Essentially, the goal of IFS is to help you connect to your Self to help you heal and transform you parts.

The 3 Ways Understanding Your Parts (and Their Positive Intentions) Can Support Your Healing:

1.        You can better identify your triggers

Obtain clarity, make discoveries about triggers

Identifying your parts, such as Exiles, Managers, and Protectors can increase self-awareness of Triggers. You can start to identify the triggers that activate certain reactions or behaviors.

For instance, you may start to recognize that a Raging Firefighter emerges when you get sick and tired of feeling like a doormat in response to a People Pleaser manager part that works hard to get you the attention and acceptance your exile lacked as a young child.

You may start to recognize that your Weed Firefighter emerges when you are so exhausted of just working, accomplishing, and doing in response to an Overachiever manager that works hard to put you in a position of power to compensate for the lack of powerlessness and control you felt growing up in a volatile home.

2.       You can start to identify healthier ways to cope

Understanding your parts can also help you identify healthier ways to manage stress in the future. If your People Pleaser manager provokes your Raging Firefighter than you might have to find an alternative way to get attention and connection for your exile that doesn’t require you to abandon yourself completely.

3. You can have greater self-compassion

Understanding that your parts have positive intentions and are trying to protect you in their own way can allow for empathy toward yourself. For example, understanding that an exile holds wounds can help you approach yourself with greater understanding and self-compassion and help you begin to address its underlying needs in a way that can truly heal and transform it.

Summary

In summary, the next time you have the urge to label your parts ‘bad,’ remember there are “No Bad Part” and that each part is trying to serve a positive function to protect you in some way. This perspective helps foster curiosity, understanding, compassion and healing within the internal system.

Up Next … How Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy Helps You Embrace Your Hardest Parts

In Part 2 of 3 (https://centreformindbodypsychotherapy.ca/what-is-emdr-anyway/how-internal-family-systems-ifs-therapy-helps-you-embrace-your-hardest-parts) we’ll explore the 6F’s—6 ways to better understand and build compassion for the parts you struggle with most, using client John’s journey as an example.

To Learn More About IFS Core Concepts and Parts

IFS Institue: https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/internal-family-systems-model-outline

What is Internal Family Systems Therapy? IFS Explained Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzevlBt5HUA

References 

Herbine-Blank, T., & Sweezy, M. (2021). Internal Family Systems Couple Therapy Skills  Manual: Healing Relationships with Intimacy from the Inside Out. United States of America: Pesi Publishing.

Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness With the Internal Family Systems Model. Colorado: Sounds True.

Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). New  York:The Guilford Press.