What is IFS (Internal Family Systems)?

Parts Work

IFS has been affectionately referred to as “Parts Work” by many who work with it. IFS has affinity and connections with Voice Dialoguing, Grendlin’s work and a few other trauma therapy models that consider the client and their various persona facets and qualities with compassion and welcoming curiosity.

In IFS, rather than having various parts of a person vie for domination, parts are met with compassion, natural empathy and curiosity and given enough safe space to be seen beyond the role they are playing in the individual. When seen in this way the parts of the individual begins to find a freedom to live with healthy natural purpose beyond the roles they may have felt obligated to take on, thereby increasing the capacity and inner harmony of the individual.

Parts work, or IFS offers a non-diagnostic, dynamic and dependable model for working with the many parts or facets of an individual in a non-hierarchical manner. Because it is non-diagnostic, it can be utilized beyond the bounds of traditional therapy to reach a broader clientelle. IFS in fact presents a way of living more resourced and compassionately every day.

How did IFS come about?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) was discovered by Dr. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. a vested family systems therapist who went on to establish the IFS Institute. Dr. Schwartz has written extensively about his discovery of IFS from working with clients who were challenged with addictions, e.g. eating disorders, and trauma.

What he found when he stopped trying to control outcomes and listened with more depth and curiosity to the client, was that each client had parts that were striving to keep the person alive, even if it was in ways that were not immediately apparent AND each of these nobly intentioned parts was not the totality of the client even if they presented as if they were.

There was also a natural healing energy present in the individual no matter what had happened in the client’s history. When these struggling parts were brought back into relationship with that natural healing energy, “Self Energy” as it is called in IFS, the parts were naturally able to heal and return to a state of harmonic existence within the individual's system.

It was a miracle.

The IFS Hype

It’s real. IFS has been researched heavily by the trauma therapy community and has been featured in the pivotal book, “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. This research based book regularly tops various bestselling lists. IFS has also caught the attention of H.H. The Dalai Lama, who invited the founder, Dr. Richard Schwartz to speak at a conference in Belgium a few years ago.

In addiction recovery communities, IFS is quickly spreading as more and more folks are finding hope in this model. The IFS Institute is also involved in developing programs for K-12 classrooms with the intent to create more harmonic school environments and directly reduce the epidemic of violence that has had little ease or abatement in the U.S. over the past few decades.

IFS Everyday

IFS is interesting to talk about and even read about…how do you practice IFS everyday, and why would you want to?

IFS interestingly not only offers a path to more inner harmony, it also offers a path to more outer harmony. I’ll go more into depth on this in a follow up blog post. For now, I’ll leave you with the hopeful correlation that IFS researchers, therapists and practitioners often find for themselves, a surge in inner harmony generally results in a surge in outer harmony and capacity, and once found, it is natural for an individual to choose this harmony daily.

Please feel free to reflect on that until next time.

-Empowered Wellbeing October 8, 2019