IFS therapy is a relatively new form of psychotherapy, emerging from the field of Family Systems therapy through the work of Richard Schwartz in the 1980s. It proposes that we are not actually one person, but consist of different parts or sub-personalities. And just as every family consists of individual members who are best understood in relationship to each other rather than individually, so human beings should be seen as a group of parts interacting with each other, trying their best to get along, but often getting into conflict, leading to many common psychological problems ranging all the way from dissatisfaction or mild depression to PTSD and various personality disorders.
Multiplicity of mind
This view that the mind is multiple rather than unified and unchanging has been a key feature of psychotherapy models since the time Freud and Jung. But its application is greatly expanded in IFS. Individuals may consist of many parts. They tend to originate in traumatic life experiences, often when we are young. If the right kind of support is not available from our parents or other caregivers, we cannot process and move through these experiences; they remain stuck inside us, even as we continue to grow and live our lives in the outside world.
Around these wounded young parts an ad hoc system of protectors arises to manage their distress or pain and to keep us functioning as best we can in everyday life. And beyond all these parts is something that IFS calls ‘Self’ – a deeper place in each person, a core state of being, where each individual, no matter what trauma they have gone through, exists in their original, undamaged and self-sufficient form. This state of Self has all the resources that are needed to bring the system into order.
What IFS does
The role of IFS is first to help each client to discover these parts – all the wounded passive parts and all their active protectors – and second to bring them into connection with Self so that they can get the support, healing and guidance that they needed and sought all along, but were unable to reach by themselves.
IFS can be seen as a holistic psychotherapeutic approach that brings harmony to conflicted systems of parts in individual clients, and in doing this it has the potential to greatly increase their sense of happiness and freedom as well as their personal direction and fulfilment.
Click here to schedule an IFS therapy intro session (25 mins; no charge)