Internal Family Systems Therapy

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Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is an evidence-based form of psychotherapy that aims to help each person gain a better understanding of themselves, identify past wounds and restore mental stability and wellbeing. It is a model that identifies and addresses multiple fragments of personality within each individual’s mind. These fragments make up a family, with each fragment being important to the whole and playing a useful role. However, due to negative experiences and past hurts, these fragments are also usually made to be at odds with the person’s core self, an idea describing the confident and flourishing whole person at the heart of every individual.

Background

Internal Family Systems therapy was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, who has since published various books on it, including No Bad Parts in 2021. He was a systemic therapist who identified relational patterns in his clients’ descriptions of various parts of themselves. He also saw that when these parts were allowed to relax and feel accepted, his clients would become much more assured, expressive and kind. He named this state the Self and found that his clients often knew how best to heal their parts when in this state of Self.

IFS has been tested scientifically by NREPP and found to have promising effects on mental and physical health conditions.

How IFS works

IFS is a form of talk therapy where our therapists work with you to recognise and understand the parts of your personality that constitute your internal mental system, which may be performing extreme actions. These parts constitute a family of sorts, each playing their own role to keep the mental system running. According to the IFS model, each individual’s personality parts often play three different roles:

Managers

Parts that manage the daily life of the individual, attempting to keep the individual in control of situations or relationships so that other parts of the personality will not feel hurt or pain.

Exiles

Parts that have experienced trauma in the past and end up isolated from the rest of the personality so that the individual does not feel the negative emotions associated with the trauma.

Firefighters

Parts that react when Exiles are triggered in order to extinguish the negative feelings that arise, in a number of ways that are often unhealthy, such as substance abuse, self-harm, or binge-eating.

According to IFS, the main essence of a person’s identity is their undamaged core self. This self, when properly differentiated, is competent, secure, and able to listen to and learn from feedback. Ideally, it should lead the person’s internal system. There are three goals of IFS such that the person’s self can better heal and manage their parts:

• Identify and release the parts that are functioning in extreme manners
• Restore the individual’s trust in their core self
• Harmonise the self and the parts of the personality such that they can function as a cohesive unit, with the self at the helm

To better illustrate, during a session where IFS is used, your therapist first looks at how you go about your daily life and deal with small problems. These are parts of your personality referred to as managers. Your therapist will then look at habits or behaviors which you are fearful, ashamed of or do not like to talk about, which we call exiles. These could be inculcated from childhood or even traumatic adulthood experiences. Finally, when these exile parts are triggered, we look at firefighters, which are habits, behaviors, or even relational communication styles that are developed to defend against the hurt of the exiles or avoid confronting the pain. These can take the form of clamming up, emotional repression, or unhealthy/destructive habits like substance abuse or self-harm.

Uses of IFS

IFS therapy can be used to treat individuals or families. It has been used to treat a variety of conditions including:

• Depression
• Anxiety 
• Phobias
• Panic Attacks 
• Trauma
• Substance Use

The IFS model focuses on the person’s strengths and gives them the language and tools to see themselves and others in a different light. These tools also encourage the person to take responsibility for their own behavior, meaning that it is a good way to work with people who are resistant to or unaware of their emotional issues.