Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
We recently introduced you to a new kind of therapy we’re very excited about: Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy. (Read the post here.)
But what really is IFS therapy in Sioux Falls, and how does it work? Most importantly, how can it benefit you?
We’re here to answer all these questions and more.
What Is IFS Therapy?
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a comprehensive psychotherapy model that can be used to help any person with any mental health or personal development goal.
IFS is a model for everyone. IFS is a way of thinking and experiencing.
In the study of human psychology and psychotherapy, prior to IFS, psychotherapists tended to think that a person who cuts themselves is a “cutter.” IFS shifted this paradigm to identifying that a person who cuts has a part of themselves who cuts and likewise has many parts that don’t cut.
Parts pre-exist; we are born with the psychological capacity to contain multiplicity of mind, or internal parts. Trauma forces those parts into extreme roles. The role of IFS therapy is to create self-awareness, choice, and freedom around blending with a part while also being free to be in self.
While the model can be used for treating a variety of mental health concerns — most specifically, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — it can also be used as a means for simply understanding one’s self and living a more fulfilled and centered life. All human beings can benefit from undergoing IFS therapy.
The goals of IFS therapy are:
The liberation of parts to be who they were intended to be.
Restoration of trust in the parts to allow the self to lead the system.
Reharmonization of the inner system.
Self-leadership to the outer world; relating from self both internally and externally.
How Is IFS Different from Other Types of Therapy?
Dr. Richard Schwartz developed this evolving model over the past 20 years out of Bowenian Family Systems Therapy when he realized, after practicing family therapy and working with a family system made of individuals, that each person talks about their internal life as having a system of parts inside them.
Many clients ask: “Does this mean I have multiple personality disorder?”
The answer is no. Every person has many internal “parts.” That itself does not mean that you have a problem; it reflects the way our internal psyche is structured and functions.
In the history of psychotherapy, many concepts used in IFS have been found in therapies that predate IFS, including:
Freud’s id, ego, and superego
Object relations psychotherapy
Ego state psychotherapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy’s use of the concept of a schema
IFS utilizes these concepts, but it takes the therapeutic approaches a step further to provide systematic psychotherapeutic interventions that allow these internal parts to form relationships with each other and the person’s core self.
If you think about the dynamics of separate people in your family and the relationships between each person and the system of your family as a whole, you will start to grasp how your internal system of parts may look and function.
How Does IFS Work?
All people have parts that have different functions within their internal system to regulate the system.
Often, inner parts behave in a manner that is helpful to the system, but in the case of trauma, internal parts can develop that can be harmful to the system (for example, a part that has an addiction to alcohol or a part that self-harms by cutting).
Less destructive examples include parts that were formed in families of origin and play out unconsciously in relationships (for example, a part that likes to be in control).
The unique feature of IFS to utilize basic elements of universal human psychological processes allows us to utilize IFS techniques with anyone, regardless of the degree of psychological distress or clinical pathology.
Essentially, IFS is helpful to anyone by allowing them to learn more about themselves and developing a mindfulness-based approach to connecting to their true center, or self.
What Are the 3 Main “Parts” in IFS?
Learning IFS requires understanding specific language used in the model to describe common parts to all people. Dr. Schwartz identified common patterns after years of working with clients and classified three types of parts:
First, he found that all people he worked with had parts whose role was to protect the them; he called these parts managers. Managers seek control over internal states or external environments. They try to preemptively stop the exiles from coming out and strive to have us feel good about ourselves. They can have many useful skills, but they are burdened with having to function so we don’t feel bad. An example of a manager part may be an intellectual part that seeks to cognitively understand and communicate as a sole means of expression; meanwhile, other parts of a person are kept safe behind this role. Managers often appear useful in the system; due to this, people may not view them as a problem. Often, our role as counselors in Sioux Falls is not to reduce the functionality and usefulness of managers but to foster awareness in the client to be able to come from a self-led place, rather than being in a protective state.
Second, when negative or traumatic experiences happen, a person may not be able to process or tolerate the negative emotions associated with it. For example, a young girl who is sexually abused may not be able to understand what is happening or be able to fully feel the physical and/or emotional pain associated with the abuse, so this is “exiled” away in her inner system of parts. These emotions are therefore referred to as exiles. Managers will work very hard to keep these exiles out of awareness so the traumatized person does not have to feel them.
The third group of parts are known as firefighters. Firefighters emerge when managers are not able to contain the feelings of exiles. If exiles whose emotional and psychological content is outside the window of tolerance for the person and appear suddenly, firefighters will take over to either numb or override the experience of the exile. Firefighters don’t care what they have to do; they just want the feeling to go away. In this way, they swoop in when needed, like a firefighter. Examples include people who numb by dissociating or people who numb with the use of alcohol, drugs, and/or sex. For a therapist using an IFS model, anyone with an addiction will greatly benefit from understanding the role of their addiction in maintaining equilibrium in their system of internal parts.
Firefighters can become managers if that function becomes a way of managing things. How we define the part depends on the way it is being used in the system.
What’s All This About a “Self”?
One of the foundational aspects of the IFS model is the concept of self. In IFS, the self is known through the experience of eight universal attributes:
Calmness
Curiosity
Clarity
Compassion
Confidence
Creativity
Courage
Connectedness
Dr. Schwartz refers to this as self-leadership, or when a person is interacting with the world or with one of their inner parts from this place.
At their core, everyone has a self that is not a part. The idea of an ideal, internalized self is universal and found throughout all spiritual traditions. IFS is a “peel-back” model, where there are parts that are usually operating in our lives that we are blended with, and if we were to relax them, these qualities of self would emerge.
The goal of IFS is not to eliminate the parts; it is to be with them. IFS therapy teaches you to speak “for” your parts, rather than “from them.” For example, you call tell someone, “A part of me is very frustrated with you,” rather than, “You are completely frustrating.”
Through a series of guided sessions with an IFS therapist, a client understands the structure and function of their internal system, how to be a witness to their parts, and ultimately for their own self to be in relation to those parts to heal wounded exiles. In IFS, this is referred to as unburdening, which is the release of extreme pain and emotions that are carried by the exiles.
Can You Give an Example of What IFS Looks Like in Practice?
The language utilized in IFS can often be confusing to clients because it is asking the client to not only intellectually understand the meaning of the terms used in IFS, but what it feels like to experience them. A familiar example to illustrate how parts can occur within a system and be helped utilizing IFS is the following:
Amy, a woman in her mid-thirties whose parents divorced when she was 12 years old, has recently discovered that her husband of eight years has had an affair with three different women throughout the course of their marriage. She has many parts that are activated by the news of the infidelity — anger, sadness, shock, denial, loving him, and hating him — and has been coping by binge eating after work and at home alone.
When utilizing an IFS model, Amy learns that her denial and wanting him back often co-occur when she re-engages in sexual activity with him. Likewise, her anger and hating him often co-occur when she thinks about him betraying her and the many lies he told. The presence of these opposite parts represent a polarization of parts. When Amy is not connected to him through these polarized parts, she feels a sense of deep loneliness.
Utilizing IFS, Amy discovers that these polarized parts are protecting her from an exile of loneliness and the fear of being alone that stems from childhood abandonment. Likewise, when she is alone at home after work and is not interacting with her husband or in conflict with him, her exiled lonely part is being managed with binge eating. IFS teaches Amy to get into relationship with these parts and eventually in relationship with her younger part in exile that holds fears and trauma about being abandoned when her own parents divorced.
An IFS therapist working with Amy may ask her to close her eyes and focus on what she is experiencing. If Amy reports she feels anger, her ISF therapist may ask her to try to separate from the anger part to be able to see it at a distance. Then, an IFS therapist may ask how Amy feels toward that part. If Amy is able to say she is curious about why the anger part is there, Amy is working from a self-led place and thus in relationship with her angry part. Once this occurs, the IFS therapist can then ask Amy if she can ask her anger part to step aside or what it is afraid would happen if it stepped aside. In doing so, Amy can learn more about what part of herself her anger is protecting, which will lead to an exile that can be worked with to ultimately unburden Amy of the need for anger.
IFS therapy is a sophisticated and rich model, and this is a small sample of what is actually possible with IFS. The best way to understand IFS is to undergo psychotherapy with an IFS therapist.
How Is IFS Different from Other Types of Therapy in Sioux Falls?
IFS therapy is different from other forms of counseling and psychotherapy in the sense that the relationship between the Sioux Falls mental health counselor and the patient is not the primary instrument of therapy.
In IFS therapy, the client is guided to have a relationship with themselves through therapist-directed IFS meditative experiences. This is quite unique, as it fosters a healing relationship with one’s self rather than the therapist being the caregiver, teacher, confidant, and support for the client.
Most people who enter IFS therapy have little experience with actually knowing their true self and often are blended with parts. IFS therapy is incredibly freeing and produces joyful results.
So Does IFS Therapy Actually Work?
IFS transforms lives. We know because we’ve actually seen it happen.
The psychotherapists at Kimberly Keiser & Associates have participated in Dr. Richard Schwartz’s online and video training Circle Program since 2018 and will attend a workshop titled “Negotiating Relationships with IFS: Self-Leadership for Healing” at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to learn from Dr. Dick Schwartz himself.
Many of our clients have already experienced incredible change with IFS, and we are eager to see what the coming months bring.
IFS therapy works for everyone, regardless of what you’re going through. While it can be most beneficial for trauma therapy clients, anyone can benefit from the IFS model. As our founder, Kimberly Keiser, says, “IFS helps you be a better human.” We all want to be better humans, don’t we?
If you’re interested in learning how IFS could help you, reach out for more information. We can incorporate IFS into any of our Sioux Falls therapy services.
2101 W 69th St, Suite 103
Sioux Falls, SD 57108
(605) 740-6557
(888) 201-2128