Internal Family Systems Therapy: Becoming Your Own Best Friend

What is Internal Family Systems?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic approach developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz that views the mind as having multiple sub-personalities or "parts."

If you’ve ever felt inconsistent about how you show up in the world, this blog will speak about the multi-faceted nature of our inner world. This theory affirms how we have different parts within us that can be stronger than others.

This approach sets the stage for “parts work” in my sessions to promote a greater sense of internal wholeness and balance.

I have an affinity and appreciation for this work as it can enhance self-leadership through building more awareness of your different parts and their associated roles, integration of all your parts in a balanced fashion, and releasing heavy emotional burdens carried by the wounded parts of yourself.

These different parts, some wounded and some wiser, are thought to interact within a person's internal system similarly to how members of a family interact. Think of your internal environment as a home to a family of many you’s who each serve a purpose and play a role in your ability to respond to life’s challenges and stressors.

What is “Parts Work?”

The core idea is that people are made up of various parts, some of which may be protective or reactive, while others may hold burdens of trauma or pain. IFS therapy helps individuals to understand and harmonize these parts, bringing them into a balanced state with the help of a core self, often referred to as the "Self" with a capital "S."

Parts work, within the context of IFS, refers to the therapeutic process of identifying and working with these sub-personalities or parts.

In IFS, the goal of parts work is to help individuals access their "Self" and heal wounded parts, transforming them from extreme or destructive roles into balanced ones.

At the core of IFS is the belief in the existence of a wise, compassionate, and centered Self. This Self is distinct from the parts and has the capacity to heal and lead the internal system. This part carries more compassionate and loving qualities to foster a greater sense of wholeness through understanding less empowering parts rather than experiencing yourself as “broken.”

When it comes to parts work, the main categories of parts we experience are referred to as exiles, managers, and firefighters. Exiles are the parts that carry pain, fear, and trauma and are often pushed away because the associated emotions are too overwhelming.

This points to your inner child and high anxiety that is most likely rooted in painful childhood experiences that can easily show up as an adult. For example, someone who experienced emotional neglect or felt abandoned as a child may harbor these exiled versions of themselves connected to feelings of deep loneliness and anxiety.

Managers are our protective parts that strive to keep you safe by controlling the environment keeping exiled parts at bay and reducing levels of pain that are connected to an exiled part.

This speaks to your defense mechanisms that could show up as avoiding someone, ignoring your deeper emotional needs, or worrying about what other people think as a way to control other people’s reactions.

The firefighter acts in moments of crisis to suppress the exiles’ pain and avoid feeling it. This can be done through impulsive, numbing, or addictive behaviors like substance use or excessive distraction through social media use.

Through IFS, the therapist helps the client differentiate between their Self, who holds a capacity for healing, and their unhealed parts, through the Self compassionately witnessing all parts. Once the Self is engaged, the parts can be unburdened, leading to healing and internal harmony.

Why Self-Talk Matters

Self-talk is a cornerstone of having good mental health and an important component of distinguishing what part you may be operating from or experiencing in a given moment or situation. It’s part of the human condition to be negative and inclined to focus on what is lacking or not how you would like rather than focus on a part of a situation or a perspective that aligns with what is in favor of your goals and ultimate desires.

This manifests as a negative dialogue with yourself. You may hear yourself consciously or just get cues of the unconscious level berating you in tricky or “less obvious” ways. For example, you may often tell yourself you’re not doing enough even if you are incredibly spread thin.

This may sound like criticizing your efforts, feeling guilty about doing something for yourself, or not hearing anything explicitly yet just feeling constantly uncomfortable and anxious, and self-soothing by continuing to spread yourself even thinner. You may not hear this voice at all yet the signs are evident in the way you feel and the behaviors you continuously repeat. Soon you may even get sick or feel extremely drained from all the continuous energy expended outwards to pacify the self-talk directed by what is called the inner critic or an exiled part.

Your response to take on more is a coping technique and anxiety response led by your inner manager to offset the nagging and relentless feeling of “not enoughness” or insecurity driven by a negative core belief or an overactive, critical mind.

Time Traveling

Parts work is incredibly valuable when it comes to promoting greater self-understanding and helping you to better recognize when you’re what I call time travel. Time traveling means you’re responding to a present-moment situation based on a past moment experience.

A past self or part is surfacing and taking the lead in a given situation. There’s nothing essentially wrong with that, but there might be some insight you gain into what’s going on beneath the surface and what part of you is running the show or making choices that are directly impacting your present and desired future.

For example, you may find yourself often negatively internalizing someone’s feedback towards you. It may feel like an extreme threat when someone criticizes your writing or performance. You find yourself personalizing their input and then making them an enemy in no time.

This extreme emotional response is pointing at a part of you being activated that’s perhaps unprocessed and unhealed, or even just triggered at that moment as it feels similar to a past negative experience like the time your grandmother ripped your English papers apart every time you brought them for her to edit.

Yes, that’s me! Unintentionally, my grandmother’s harsh criticism during my grade school years led to me being on defense as an adult when feedback came my way. I struggle to receive it in a way that’s rational and valuable despite being a growth-oriented person.

This shows that I’m time traveling each time I receive some form of what I deem “negative” feedback to when I was my younger self, a part that I’ve exiled to some degree, and has an unmet emotional need. My response is strongly influenced by my past and I am struggling to see the present with fresh, new eyes like my mature, wiser, or higher Self would like.

My Self would invite me to consider how to pave a new pathway forward that validates what I’ve been through yet makes room for something different. Being able to hold both at the same time and contradictory emotional experiences, for example in this situation like feelings of rejection and curiosity is a massive step towards doing the “work” and understanding your parts.

The Value of Self-Understanding

When we gain more clarity on what part we’re operating from there’s power in that.

The power lies in our ability to better understand ourselves - all parts and their associated drivers and “history.” To not time travel in a way that compromises our opportunity to be more mature and wise or operate from an integrated or whole Self, we need to gain self-understanding, and exploration of where these parts and patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior originated.

Without first identifying, and having an understanding of the part of you that is activated regardless of it being a positive or negative response, we are unable to make a new choice from a place of “wholeness” where we welcome all parts of us.

We’ll remain unaware or disconnected from the wounded parts playing a role in our present-day reactions and choices. When this is overlooked, we strip ourselves of an opportunity for growth and maturity by choosing a new, wiser response to life’s inevitable present-moment stressors.

Become Your Own Best Friend

My message to you is to consider this idyllic integrated, whole Self as a process of becoming your own best friend. Through doing the parts work by examining your self-talk, you get very familiar with the ways you’re unkind and hard on yourself.

Sometimes too familiar with that negative, hypercritical voice that you may be convinced that is who you are.

I promise you that couldn’t be farther from the truth and encourage you to consider how you can cultivate that more mature, kind version of yourself.

This looks like each time you repeatedly witness a negative voice or feeling trying to drive your response, either before, during, or after, to consider “What else is possible?” or “What would you tell your best friend right now?”

These are all powerful considerations to help pause and give the power back to a more whole Self that understands your past pain and present trigger yet also chooses to pave a new path forward - one that is built and celebrated each step of the way to help honor how each past step has supported you and provided an opportunity for more profound healing to take place not for more pain to accrue.