Parts Work (IFS)
If you’ve ever said “part of me wants to go, and part of me wants to stay in bed,” Congratulations, you’ve already started doing IFS.
IFS stands for Internal Family Systems, and it’s the backbone of my therapeutic practice. The idea is that a mind isn’t a singular unified thing. It’s a committee. Its the philosophy that every person is born with an innate “True Self”, and when we are connected to it, we are able to see all of other different parts that make up the mind, such as:
- The overachiever who believes rest is never justified, when there is just too much to do.
- The critic who narrates your every move in the voice of a disappointed parent.
- The part of you who goes numb, scrolls, snacks, shops, and tunes out when things get too stressful.
- The child like parts that are highly sensitive and emotional, carrying hurts from many years ago.
Here’s what makes IFS more effective than more standard therapeutic methods: None of these parts are “bad”. We aren’t trying to find your negative thoughts and teach you how to rationalize real and valid emotions with logical suffocation. Every single part of you came from something, often from a painful or challenging experience that you had that it doesn’t want you to repeat. The critic thinks it’s saving you from embarrassment. The numbing one is mentally taking you away from something you can’t physically escape from. Many of them don’t even want to be in their role in the first place.
So instead of trying to silence them (you probably ’ve tried, how’s that going?), we get curious. We find out what each part is protecting, how it feels about other parts of you, and what it actually needs. When the most defensive parts start to trust you, your mind feels a little calmer. That’s when people say things like “the critic was present this week, but it wasn’t as loud.”
What this looks like in practice
Sessions are often conversations follow by extended IFS meditations and then a debriefing. I might ask what you’re noticing, where you feel it, and what that part of you needs from you right now. It sounds a little unusual the first time and feels surprisingly natural by the third. No trance states, no incense. Just an exploration of the inner systems that make up your mind.