What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?
The Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) model (https://ifs-institute.com/) is a non-pathologizing approach to psychotherapy that applies systems thinking to work on inner relationships among parts inside an individual’s psyche.
IFS holds the perspective that every person’s mind is made up of relatively distinct sub-personalities, a little bit like what was portrayed in the Pixar film Inside Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRUAzGQ3nSY). IFS also asserts that every person has a core Self, the true natural leader of the inner system. Self is the healing agent, and restoration of relationship between parts and Self is the goal of IFS.
Internal Family Systems is an evidence-based practice. IFS is used effectively to treat mental health disorders, trauma, and addiction. The goal of IFS is to restore inner wholeness, through reconnecting parts with the client’s Self, empowering Self to guide and harmonize the client’s inner world.
No Bad Parts
IFS was developed by a family therapist, Dr. Richard Schwartz, in the 1980s. The model has evolved since the early days, but it retains a core premise reflecting a revolutionary insight.
Schwartz’s insight was that all symptoms and behaviors, even the most destructive and damaging, are manifestations of an internal part that has positive intentions for the client. As the title of Dr. Schwartz’s latest book asserts, there are “No Bad Parts” (https://ifs-institute.com/nobadparts).
Schwartz asserts that we get further in therapy with an attitude of curiosity and acceptance towards all symptoms, instead of picking sides or battling “bad” behavior. Only once we understand the positive intention of an extreme adaptation can we begin to shift dynamics of the inner system.
How Parts Become Extreme
In the face of danger or threat, Parts take on extreme roles to help protect the inner system. Extreme roles can save a person’s life, but they carry burdens: painful emotions, somatic postures, and negative beliefs.
The pain of a role is not the same as the part itself. Parts wouldn’t naturally think negative thoughts or behave in self-destructive ways, but if they learn that it’s necessary for survival, they may take on these roles.
A way to understand this piece is to ask the question, “How might believing this painful thought, feeling this painful emotion, or performing this extreme behavior have helped me survive in my original environment?”
For example, as adults we may rail against our habit of eating too many sweets. One concerned or critical Part of us wants us to stop overeating, but we find we can’t, because another Part, different from the Part that wants us to stop, is doing the overeating. We can stay locked in an inner power struggle, one Part pitted against another.
But if we are willing to explore how the behavior of eating too many sweets helped us survive our original life circumstances, we may open up a series of discoveries that leads us to compassion and understanding of why we behave the way we do.
By asking the sweets-eating Part, with genuine curiosity and respect, how she is helping us respond to life adaptively by way of that behavior, she may give us a revealing answer. She might tell us that eating sweets helped us soothe bad feelings when we were small. Perhaps it wasn’t safe to have normal child emotions like sadness, fear, or anger in our home, so using food to numb emotions was adaptive. Or she may say that being a little bit overweight helps us feel safer from unwanted male attention.
We can’t know ahead of time what a Part’s answer will be – we have to ask.
Through open exploration, we may come to recognize that the sweets-eating Part, and other Parts like it, are still trying all these years later to help us be some version of us that was helpful once upon a time, when maximizing survival in our home environment.
Once we connect extreme behavior, beliefs and emotions and to a young Part of us that is doing her best in a difficult role, we tend to soften towards ourselves. That softening is the beginning of being able to heal the inner system.
Resolution comes when we give ourselves the kind of help now, Self-to-Part, that we actually needed then. Healing encounters happen organically in relationship among Self and Parts, once the burdens of false belief and painful emotion are recognized.
Self may spontaneously say to our little Part, Of course you were sad, of course you felt lonely and angry sometimes. You’re just a little girl! Those are normal, natural feelings for a child. For anyone! You don’t have to hide any of your feelings from me. That’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong! Let me put my arms around you, I love you so much!
Through IFS, Parts are given the opportunity to “unburden”, or be released out of extreme roles. Released from a certain role, a Part no longer has to hold extreme beliefs or act in extreme ways. These changes have ripple effects throughout the whole inner system.
Internal Family Systems Therapy and Addiction
In IFS, addiction isn’t considered bad, per se. Addiction is viewed as an extreme behavior, coming from a Part trapped in an extreme role. Although the negative impacts of addiction are acknowledged, IFS makes a distinction between impact and intention. The intention of the Part within that uses substances is actually positive – to stop emotional pain from taking over the client’s inner system.
In IFS, there are different kinds of Parts. Some Parts protect the inner system, and other Parts carry the wounds and feelings of what happened to us. Protector parts act to keep wounded Parts and their pain out of conscious awareness, so that we don’t get overwhelmed and can carry on the tasks of daily life. Protector Parts can be either preventative, or reactive.
Preventative Parts protect us by making sure we behave in ways which reduce the likelihood of the bad things from our past happening to us again. Their motto is “Never again!”
Our Preventative Parts dedicate themselves to getting us to behave in ways that minimize the chances of getting triggered or hurt again. Preventative Parts have many ingenious strategies to keep our vulnerabilities shielded. Some examples of Preventative Parts include Perfectionist, Inner Critic, People Pleaser, Overplanner, Controller, Hypervigilance, Hardworking, or Caretaker Parts.
But no matter how hard our system works to prevent our pain-carrying Parts from getting triggered into conscious awareness, sometimes they do. When that happens, Preventative Protector Parts hand the job off to our Reactive Parts, whose job it is to manage pain once it has been triggered.
Reactive Parts kick into gear once the pain of a wound has gotten too close to the surface, and swift action is needed to soothe or suppress the feelings. Typical Reactive Parts include all the behaviors we might do that numb or modulate feelings: Substance Use, Eating Disorders, Self-Harm, Shopping, Internet/Phone Addiction, Binge Watching, Suicidal, Risk-Taking, Sexually Acting Out Parts, and so on.
How Internal Family Systems Therapy works for Women with Addiction
IFS maintains that we cannot expect our Reactive Parts to stop doing their jobs, until we have shown both the Preventative Parts and the Reactive Parts that the wounded Parts are ok now. And for those wounded Parts to actually be ok, they need to be retrieved from where they have been frozen in scary moments of the past, and brought into relationship with our core Self in the here and now. The Self is one within us who can be loving, kind, and wise.
IFS provides a pathway for Self-Part reunion to become a reality, by providing wounded Parts a chance to tell their stories to us. The healing for those wounded Parts comes through a restored relationship with us, which is a little bit like adopting our own little orphaned inner children from the past, to come live with us now in the present. Once those wounded Parts are healed through a restored relationship with Self, who helps the wounded Parts release their burdens of extreme beliefs and emotional pain, then Reactive Parts are freed from having to resort to extreme behaviors to soothe the wounded Parts’ pain.
While stabilization of destructive addiction behaviors is in progress, therefore, IFS actively pursues the underlying wound healing that will make the Substance Using Part (a Reactive Part), redundant in her role.
Convincing the Substance Using Part that she no longer needs to do her job for the client’s inner system is a process. A big portion of the therapy involves befriending the Substance Using Part as the protector that she really is. Befriending needs to be genuine, from Self-to-Part. The kind-hearted, wise Self within us befriends the Substance Using Part.
Befriending means that rather than shaming, judging, criticizing and blaming the Substance Using Part, we allow Self to fully acknowledge the Part’s adaptive role in helping us survive until now. This process of making friends with the Substance Using Part involves asking Preventative Parts that shame and judge us, such as the Inner Critic Part, to step back, to take a break from their job of trying to control our behavior through judgment.
Once fully thanked and understood, the Substance Using Part reveals which overwhelming experiences of the past she is protecting the client from reliving. When that “target” wounded Part is unburdened through restoration of relationship with Self, the Substance Using Part sees on her own, that her services are no longer necessary for survival.
Internal Family Systems Therapy at Villa Kali Ma
At Villa Kali Ma, we integrate Internal Family Systems Therapy methods and mindsets into our holistic residential and intensive outpatient programs for women healing from trauma, addiction, and mental illness. With its emphasis on each person having a Self, and its insistence on unconditional compassion for all Parts, we find it to be a natural fit with our philosophy!
If you’re curious to find out how IFS and other trauma healing modalities could help you recover your birthright to live freely and wholly, we warmly invite you to check out our many programs for women recovering from mental illness, addiction, and trauma (https://villakalima.com/).