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internal family systems therapy

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Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that finds (and seeks to heal) the causes of harmful behavior in conflicts between different subsystems or “parts” of the mind. Where family systems therapy is a systems thinking approach to resolving conflict within families, IFS takes a similar approach to resolving inner conflict.

The human mind isn’t a unitary thing that sometimes has irrational feelings. It is a complex system of interacting parts, each with a mind of its own. It’s like an internal family—with wounded children, impulsive teenagers, rigid adults, hypercritical parents, caring friends, nurturing relatives, and so on. That’s why this therapy approach is called Internal Family Systems Therapy. (Jay Earley in Self-Therapy)

Key Concepts

  • Parts is the generic term for the forces within us that seem to push our thoughts, feelings, and actions in a certain direction. It’s exactly what you mean when you might say “A part of me really wants to finish this project but another part of me keeps procrastinating.”
  • Exiles are parts that are in pain, often resulting from some kind of trauma, which other parts (called “protectors”) try to hide from us because to acknowledge these would hurt too much. Even while hidden, exiles continue to affect our behavior.
  • Protectors are parts that try to either protect a wounded exile or protect us from an exile. They might make us seek comfort through addiction when an exile is in pain, or make us angry or or even violent when an exile that’s been hurt feels vulnerable.
  • There are no bad parts. An essential insight of IFS is that all our parts are trying to help us, however misguidedly at times. The answer isn’t to get rid of the parts we don’t like; indeed, the suppression of hurting, exiled parts is often a cause of problematic behavior. Rather, it is to discover what a problematic part is trying to protect us from and to meet its need for safety and healing.
  • The Self is who we are apart from our individual parts. It can be a source of the clarity and energy we need to heal parts and solve problems, but we lose access to our self when we identify too closely with a single part, which is called blending. When protector parts “go into action” they can cause strong emotions to commandeer our thoughts and behavior in order to protect us
  • Unblending is the process of recognizing each of our parts, especially the troublesome ones, as separate from the Self so that we can form a relationship with them instead of blindly identifying as that part. This is the first step in IFS therapy.

Further Reading