Intro to IFS
Just in case you’re not already familiar with Internal Family Systems, I’ll add a brief post about the model and how it works.
In IFS we believe that our personalities are not singular and cohesive but rather made up of many subpersonalities. This is why we talk about ‘parts’ of ourselves.
If you’ve ever struggled over a decision, you can probably recognize different parts involved, i.e. I want to eat a cookie vs. I need to watch what I eat. In this example, a part of you wants the satisfaction of sweetness, chocolate, or just the sensation of eating, whereas another part of you is seeking to monitor your diet, your weight or body image, your health, etc. And in some cases, as we go deeper into the IFS model, we learn that you can have many parts involved, and that you could have multiple parts on each side of the polarization.
In terms of our parts, we have managers and exiles. Exiles carry pain such as grief, shame, sorrow and are usually deeper in our subconscious. Managers are typically closer to the surface of our consciousness, regularly activating in our daily lives to keep us from awareness of our exiles and from feeling those strong painful feelings. These managers take over proactively to keep us from connecting with our deeper pain held by the exiled parts. When exiles do surface, oftentimes more extreme managers have reactive responses to bury those exiles back down below our consciousness.
Examples of proactive managers would be procrastination, mild dissociation, self-effacement, self-doubt and countless others. Examples of reactive managers would be binging/purging, drug and alcohol abuse, strong dissociation such as might include dizziness, blackout, migraines, etc.
Underlying these parts are innate qualities of the human mind for compassion, curiosity, clarity, connectedness, courage, creativity, calmness and confidence. These are attributes of SELF. And our aim in IFS is to develop relationships with our parts, bringing Self qualities to them. Through Self, managers can learn to trust us with conscious awareness of our exiles and no longer take over our systems to avoid those feelings. Through Self, with the managers allowing us, we are able to bring the compassion and calm that the exiles need to be healed of their deep pain. Through this process of bringing our conscious awareness to our parts, soothing and healing, and in being able to access our Self qualities in daily life, we come to be Self-led. Parts that are healed, transformed and connected to Self are referred to as ‘healthy parts’.
I don’t wish to write too much about this (and probably wrote much more than I intended) because there are great resources out there which detail this already.
I Recommend 2 books (1 in print or audio) and 1 audiobook to get started with which I can link below:
Also a few free videos for basic IFS principles:
Dr. Richard Schwartz – What is Internal Family Systems (Youtube)
Derek Scott – Introduction to IFS (Youtube)
Karen Locke – Part 1 (of 4) How Can IFS Help Me
Derek has a few other good intro videos in a 3-part series. Karen has a 4-part intro series. I hope these resources are helpful if you’re just getting started learning about IFS.