Unpacking Internal Family Systems, a nonpathologizing approach to therapy

We speak about different parts of ourselves all the time without thinking about it: “A part of me wants to go out tonight but another part wants to stay in and watch this movie.” Or: “One part of me really loves this person and wants to stay in this relationship but another part of me wants to run for the hills.”

We often grapple with thoughts, feelings and behaviors that conflict with one another. Yet most of us in the West have been raised to believe that everything we think, feel, imagine and desire comes from a singular, unified self — and any parts of ourselves that don’t align with that view are seen as sick or damaged. And so we become ashamed of those parts.

An increasingly popular approach to therapy, called Internal Family Systems , is turning this belief of the unified self on its head. “The IFS Model … views a person as containing an ecology of relatively discrete minds, each of which has valuable qualities and each of which is designed to — and wants to — play a valuable role within,” wrote its creator , Dick Schwartz. “These parts are forced out of their valuable roles, however, by life experiences that can reorganize the system in unhealthy ways.”

For example, many people have a part of themselves that wants to drink alcohol excessively. While this behavior can create real problems in someone’s life, the part driving it may view drinking as a way to protect a person from difficult or scary feelings. This drinking part may also come into contact with a self-critical or self-loathing part that wants to control the drinking. Both parts have the same goal: help the person feel safe.

Alanis Morisette wrote about her own experience in IFS therapy in the foreword of Schwartz’s book, “No Bad Parts”: “In my internal world, I encountered my own murderous rage, my shame, terrors, depression, aches and yearnings, humiliations, and grief. In addition to these ‘dark’ or ‘bad’ parts that seemed to want to doom me to repeated patterns and painful habits, there were equally ‘light’ or ‘good’ parts that also required my courage to open to the visionary parts; the generous parts; the intelligent parts; the leadership parts; the gifted, sensitive, empathic parts. Some parts seemed easier to dialogue with than others. Some felt riskier and downright threatening to embrace … [yet] each part, however harrowing its acting-out, however hidden, confusing, or painful, had the best of intentions and held helpful messages for me.”

One of our readers asked us to unpack the IFS approach to therapy, and that’s what we’re going to do in this newsletter. We’ll explore the framework for understanding the human psyche, how it diverges from the prevailing models of psychotherapy and why it so deeply resonates with clinicians and therapy clients.

About the Internal Family Systems approach

Schwartz began his career as a family therapist. As he started clocking more and more hours with clients, he noticed that people often described various parts within themselves. He zeroed in on the relationships among these parts and saw patterns to the way they were organized, similar to the patterns he saw within the families he counseled.

Schwartz also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and seen, his clients experienced confidence, openness and compassion that he came to call the “self.” It was in this state that clients were able to heal their parts with the nonjudgmental support of a therapist.

IFS has evolved into a comprehensive approach over the 30 years since Schwartz began developing it, and is now one of the most intriguing and popular models of psychotherapy. There isn’t yet a robust body of research on it — or at least not the kind that exists for approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is focused on very specific goals and results, making it easier to measure — but the studies that exist are promising.

One 2021 study found that Internal Family Systems therapy can be effective in helping people with post-traumtic stress disorder, especially PTSD caused by childhood trauma.

But how does it work? How do these parts show up in our lives?

This newsletter will serve only as a primer. But here is a brief breakdown of the common roles that parts play within us, according to Schwartz’s “No Bad Parts”:

Exiles: These are the youngest and most vulnerable parts of us, more commonly referred to as our “inner children,” a concept first coined by psychologist Carl Jung. They’ve often experienced some kind of trauma and then taken on the burden of those emotions, leaving them frozen in time. “When you’re rejected, traumatized or hurt by a caregiver, for instance, these parts pick up the burdens of worthlessness, powerlessness, emotional pain or terror, and become not so much fun to be around. So we try to lock these parts away inside,” Schwartz said in a 2021 interview. Exiles can be playful and trusting, but they’re also often highly sensitive and prone to being hurt.

Managers: This kind of part is known as a “protector,” which is responsible for our day-to-day safety. They protect the exiles and tend to be the voices we hear the most often.

“Managers” look after our daily functioning. They’re proactive, often wanting to protect us or other parts of us. This may look like controlling everyday situations or relationships in an effort to protect parts from feeling any hurt or rejection. This can appear as perfectionism, people-pleasing, care-taking, overthinking and self-criticism.

“Managers are often trying to make sure we are following the rules and that we’re behaving in socially acceptable ways,” said Sand Chang, an IFS and somatic psychotherapist based in California. “They often care a lot more about image than our other parts.”

Firefighters: These are the other kind of protectors. Both managers and firefighters are protecting exiles and develop their strategies based on painful experiences — they just have different ways of going about it. Firefighters tend to be reactive; they may try to protect us through alcohol and drug use, binging, cutting or lashing out at other people.

“Firefighters are usually less concerned with the consequences of their actions,” Chang said. “Their motto and way of approaching things is ‘by any means necessary.’”

Firefighters and managers have the same goal — to protect the most vulnerable parts of ourselves — but use different strategies. These parts can often conflict, which is called “polarization” in IFS. For example, a person may have a part that yearns for meaningful connection with others, while another part fears rejection and holds back. This internal battle can lead to feelings of being stuck, overwhelmed or torn between opposing desires.

According to IFS, we also all have at our core a “self” that can’t be damaged and is able to hold all of our parts with empathy and patience. It embodies the qualities of creativity, commitment, caring, compassion, calm, curiosity and clarity.

Physiologically, when we’re in this state of self, our bodies may feel lighter, our minds less crowded, our thinking more peaceful, our face muscles relaxed, and we may feel a sense of expansion in our chest area, writes IFS therapist Alessio Rizzo.

All our parts have self-energy that can shine through when they’re unburdened from the need to protect our exiles, said Derek Scott, an IFS psychotherapist in Canada and founder of the Internal Family Systems Counselling Assn.

“Working with hundreds of clients for more than two decades, some of whom were severely abused and show severe symptoms, has convinced me that everyone has this healthy and healing Self despite the fact that many people initially have very little access to it,” Schwart wrote.

When someone is accessing “self” energy, a therapist can help the parts step out of their extreme roles. This is the goal of IFS: to liberate parts from the roles they’ve been forced into, restore trust in the “self,” re-harmonize parts that are in conflict with one another and empower the “self” to lead in all parts of life.

How IFS is different from other kinds of therapy

IFS asserts that none of our parts should be labeled as abnormal or bad, or something to be fixed — even the parts that create the most pain and confusion for us.

Instead, these parts are given the space to be witnessed and understood. “In IFS, we say, ‘Slow is fast and fast is slow,’” Chang said. “The more we push an agenda, the less likely it is that a part will change behavior.”

This approach is notably different from the prevailing model of psychotherapy, Scott said, which for over a century has operated from a framework of pathology. Most therapies ask: “What’s wrong with you and how can we fix it?”

“As an eating disorder therapist, for many years, I operated in spaces where there was a very pathologizing model and way of personifying the eating disorder, something akin to: ‘My eating disorder is out to kill me,’” Chang said. “I don’t believe that at all about eating disorders or any other conditions. A part may use disordered eating behavior as a survival strategy and may be unaware of any problems it may be creating.”

Stigmatized diagnoses like eating disorders, personality disorders and many other conditions carry the extra baggage of shame that our culture assigns to them. IFS aims to connect to the parts — which may present as what we call symptoms — rather than shun or fix them.

“What if nothing needs to be fixed, and we just need to give some attunement and care to these different parts of us?” Chang said. “Belonging and connection are so core to being human and our well-being, and it’s the same for our parts. When they feel cared for, they start to realize that they don’t have to be completely alone or responsible for taking care of us. Then, a lot of times, things that look like symptoms will shift.”

Through this patient care, parts can eventually take on roles that are better for us in the long run, Schwartz wrote in “No Bad Parts.” Inner critics can become cheerleaders or safe advisers, exhausted caretakers can help set boundaries and rageful parts can help with discerning who is safe.

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If you’re interested in finding a trained IFS clinician, check out the IFS Institute’s therapist directory. I’ve also included some resources below that will help you learn more about your internal system on your own.

Sending light to you and all your parts,

Laura

A quick programming note: we’ll be off next week for the holidays. See previous editions here. To view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

More perspectives on today’s topic and other resources

If you want to learn more about IFS, I recommend this podcast episode of “Therapists Uncensored.” Host and therapist Sue Marriott speaks with Frank Anderson, who has spent decades studying internal parts and sharing his findings to help others use built-in resources like their “self-energy” to navigate their traumas.