INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS
Internal Family Systems (IFS), currently as one of the fastest growing therapeutic models has been developed by family therapist Richard Schwartz in the 1980s. Richard Schwartz strengthened this model over the last few decades by collaborating with other trauma experts and incorporating various aspects from other approaches. IFS is currently recognised as an Evidence Based Modality in the U.S.
It has become increasingly popular over the last two decades as a clear, easy to grasp, non-pathologizing and empowering method for understanding our inner world. Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk sees it as ‘an approach to personal therapy that is popular because it breaks down complex human experiences into digestible parts that can be addressed in a systematic way’.
IFS places an emphasis on supporting a relationships between your ‘Self’ and the many parts that make up our system or we could say our internal family. We all have a core or essential ‘Self’ that we are born with, it includes qualities such as openness, clarity and curiosity. It’s our ‘essence’ or some might call it ‘higher self’ that has the ability to remain calm, stand back and just observe challenging situations without being overly triggered, ‘blended’ with strong emotions or activated in some way.
However over the course of life this ‘Self’ gets obscured or ‘burdened’ by difficult unprocessed emotions that we experience as a result of challenging situations and previous traumas, such as anxiety, depression, deep seated sense of unworthiness or being unlovable, and we lose access to our calm and courageous qualities. Within IFS we call these painful parts ‘the exiles’, as the rest of the system would do anything to keep the unbearable pain of these parts away.
In order to accomplish that, we have two types of parts that protect us from this pain. In IFS terms, the protective ‘managers’ are the parts of us that can work really hard, be perfectionists, constantly evaluate, analyse or judge and criticize – as they believe that through achieving, overcompensating and control we will try even harder and it will protect us from the exiled pain of not being ‘good enough’. Other managers might live in denial and block any uncomfortable emotions or significance of wounding in the past.
Nevertheless if they don’t succeed, we might get ‘flooded’ by underlying sense of sadness, emptiness or brokenness (feelings that are carried by our exiles) and that’s when the ‘firefighter’ protectors kick in in a form of soothing, numbing or distracting behaviours. These can often be various binging and compulsive behaviours in relationships with food, alcohol or other substances, but also compulsive working, shopping, activity addictions or just scrolling through social media for hours. Firefighting protectors can also bring balance back to the system through physical symptoms such as dissociation, sense of numbness of even migraines to name just few.
To summarise, the managers are proactive in their protective roles, trying to prevent and the firefighters are reactive, often out of our control and trying to bring the balance of the whole system back. Bringing more curiosity and compassion allows us to more clearly identify the coping strategies and defences that have built over time as a result of earlier challenging and traumatic experiences. In IFS, we do not pathologize activated states such as panic, rage, or shame but we believe that every part has a positive intention and belief, and by increasingly getting to know those parts’ innermost motives, we can reduce their intensity and relieve some of the inner conflict.
As a therapist, I lead from a place of openness and curiosity. I believe that IFS is a gentle, respectful and compassionate therapy that enables our parts to safely reveal themselves. As this approach is integrative in nature, a number of different techniques can be used, such as exploring our system and its various parts’ complexity within specific triggering situations, ‘going within’ and connecting with our parts and their painful experience through bodily sensations, emotions and limiting beliefs.
Clients often find helpful to journal their part’s journey, create parts’ maps or connecting with them through guided visualisations between the sessions. My aim is to explore together what works for clients’ unique system of parts – everything is an invitation, and what might work for one client might not work for another.
Lately, I have been drawn to somatic expression of parts on the paper with the use of pastels, which goes even deeper by accessing subconsciously held information in our body, helping clients to ‘untangle’ from often complex relationships within the system and creating much needed resources. It provides an accessible technique for clients to connect with their parts on a deeper level outside the sessions, to bring clarity and reduce overwhelm when needed.
