Overview of Internal Family Systems

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic approach founded and developed by Richard Schwartz based upon a mix of influences from humanistic and psychodynamic counselling, family system therapy, systems thinking and spirituality. The below is based on No Bad Parts and Internal Family Systems Therapy.

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The main premise of Internal Family Systems is that we are made of parts – psychic entities within ourselves – that are in conflicting pursuits to protect the organism they inhabit.

The purpose of IFS is to bring consensus and collaboration amongst those parts so they can be free of the pain and negative emotions they paradoxically hold on and protect themselves from.

Internal Family Systems foundations: The plural mind and systems thinking

IFS is formally made up of two ideas.

The plural mind vs mono-mind

The plural mind is the thesis that our mind is not one.

In the medical model, a healthy individual has a mono-mind. A mono-mind is experienced as a single – even if complex – narrative. It has one system of values, beliefs and goals – even if those evolve over time.

This makes intuitive sense because our inner dialogue is usually experienced as coming from one place, at once. We experience our mind as fairly consistent, especially if we don’t stop to observe.

Individuals who experience various personalities within themselves will be diagnosed psychotic or dissociative. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DSM-V) is a label by the APA to identify such individuals. It is considered a severe mental disorder and tends to correlate with severe childhood abuse.

The plural mind argues that experiencing various personalities within ourselves is normal, and that the difference between someone with DID and someone below the diagnostic threshold is one of quantity, not quality. In fact, the path to healing in IFS is about bringing those unconscious parts into consciousness to achieve harmony in the system.

Systems thinking

Systems thinking is an approach to studying complex systems – biological, social, ecological. It focuses on the whole system and the relationship between its parts, as opposed to using the traditional scientific method of isolating parts to study them.

Systems thinking influences IFS by paying attention to how parts within ourselves relate to each other and how their dynamics affect our experience and behaviour.

The inner world and family system

Influenced by the ideas of a plural mind and a systems approach to study it, IFS proposes the idea of an inner world, where the inner family system exists.

In IFS, we use techniques such as visualisation – common in Buddhist psychology and other forms of contemplative spiritual practice – to shape and enter the inner world.

In doing that, we get to know this inner community of characters – our parts – and understand how they are relating and why, and how that bubbles up to our conscious experience.

The process of entering the inner world is therefore one of travelling into the unconscious. This can be done with the help of a therapist and can be facilitated with practice in meditation, self-hypnosis or altered states of consciousness.

Although, plainly speaking, we are simply using our imagination to shape characters and stories out of the feelings and thoughts we experience “for real life”.

Parts

Parts – a conveniently simple word – is at the centre of IFS.

Parts is a great word because it makes intuitive sense. Whilst most people experience and believe in a mono-mind, it also makes sense to speak of a certain “part within me” when faced with a dilemma or conflict. Incidentally, dilemmas or conflicts are often caused by unconscious misalignment between parts.

There is a part in me that still hates him
Part of me wants to be done with this whole thing
Only a small part of me wants to wake up early and exercise.

We can understand parts as fragments of ourselves that got frozen at a time of overwhelming stress or despair.

For example, a child that was humiliated at school by a teacher will have a part that got stuck in that time and whose agenda is now one of extreme protection of the self. In this journal entry, I talk about my inner child being pressured to always be a top performer.

And the birth of this part will in turn create more parts over time, whose purpose is to protect this fragile part. Perhaps a part that wants to drink alcohol socially, to forget the uneasy feelings of being judged by others. Or perhaps a part that has high standards, so that nobody else can humiliate them.

Parts play roles, and this is why they exist. They are inspired by rigid, inflexible beliefs and the strong feelings associated with them (“people don’t respect you if you’re sloppy”, “only pretty girls get what they want”, “nobody likes a fat loser”).

Unless analysed and questioned, parts will continue to play their roles, based on the unsophisticated approach of the person they were at the time of the original injury.

Parts don’t really learn or evolve, unless they are engaged with at an unconscious level. So they stay young, naive, all-or-nothing, immature and in the emotional pain that got them stuck in our system of sub-personalities.

Despite the fact that most parts are buried in our unconscious, they can however take control of the whole system.

Let’s say a young adult isn’t invited to a dinner party. A very young part within them, scared of social neglect may awake to very strong feelings. An older part, whose job is to avoid those feelings may in turn kick in to rant about the dinner host to anyone who would listen, followed by yet another older part who encourages the person/system to go to bed with an icecream – or go to a nightclub with some cocaine.

At no point in this example, did the system consider the problem rationally. Perhaps the dinner host didn’t have enough space, perhaps there was a theme to this party. Perhaps they are organising the next party to invite them.

Instead, the three parts (an exile, manager and firefighter) followed in turn, taking the wheel of the metaphorical bus and robbing the person/system from the agency to feel those feelings constructively and applying curiosity and creativity to the problem.

Burdens

In IFS, we talk about burdens as the cause of why the parts were formed and frozen in time.

A burden is an all-important job the part if focused on, despite the fact that this job is misguided and counterproductive to the system as a whole.

Burdens come from various levels.

Legacy burdens such as racism, patriarchy, individualism and materialism isolate people from each other. They are passed on generationally and through cultural influence.

Personal burdens relate to our own experiences. They occur when we have experienced fear, abandonment or isolation without the emotional maturity to remain calm and confident. They overwhelm our resources, diminish our capabilities and polarise our sub-personalities.

But before we can free parts from burdens, we need to understand the different types of parts that live in the inner world inside our unconscious mind.

Exiles, managers and firefighters

In the IFS model, we talk about three types of parts.

Exiles are the youngest parts, who suffered the original attachment injuries. They were overwhelmed, confused and despaired with their experiences. And because they were never soothed appropriately or could not soothe themselves, they developed big, destructive and unproductive feelings.

Exiles become a nuisance for the overall system and are sent away by protective parts. With exile parts being repressed, we don’t have to face these big terrible feelings and the harsh truths they contain (“my parents are horrible”, “the world is a scary, unkind place”, “I am only loved if I prove myself”).

For the most part, exiles remain in exile thanks to the protective parts and only rarely bubble to the surface. But when they do, they make us immature, selfish, destructive and self-sabotaging.

Managers are one set of protective parts. They manage exiles pre-emptively through control tactics.

Managers build the systems that protect exiles from what they’re scared of. They can develop a brilliant professional career, an arresting appearance, high standards, robust discipline, productive habits, pro-social attitudes and a can-do attitude.

Managers are best seen as parentified children. They are emotionally immature, acting out as grown-ups and quickly losing their shit when things don’t go their way. And when they do, exiles bubble up, leading to firefighter activity.

Firefighters are the second type of protective part. Whilst managers preempt threats to exile feelings, firefighters react when the feelings come up.

Firefighters develop self-soothing alarm tactics: leaving, quitting, complaining, drinking, taking drugs, taking up obsessive hobbies or projects, shopping, travelling the world, going on a meditation retreat. Anything that distracts and escapes from the feelings.

Managers and firefighters working together.

Managers and firefighters may share tactics, collaborate and learn from each other.

Say a firefighter discovers that spirituality practices can calm the anxiety. A manager may join in the project to wake up the system to meditate every morning and learn the ins and outs of, say, the teachings of the Buddha.

The same can be applied to heroin addiction, entrepreneurship, shopping or anything where a soothing activity can become a productive system to avoid exile feelings.

Of course, they can also fight and polarise the person. A manager wants to study and a firefighter wants to quit. A manager wants to exercise and a firefighter wants to eat 6 donuts. Etc.

The Self

The self is in IFS the core of the human being.

It can be experienced in two ways.

On one hand, it is experienced as a specific aspect of our experience that is grounding and uniting of our raw, wild experience. It is the aspect of ourselves that can learn about, communicate with and unburden our parts.

A person that is grounded in this state of self and can maintain a good relationship with its parts is said to be “self-led” and in control of themselves.

On the other hand, it is experienced as a boundless estate that is spacious, mystical and healing energy – it is a state of mind of the highest quality. In spiritual traditions, it has been depicted from Buddhism and Hinduism to mystic traditions

Richard Schwartz explained this duality in quantum terms. Just like light can exist both as a particle as a wave of possibilities, so can the self fluctuate between “self leadership” and “self energy”

The self – whether in its wave, boundless form or its in self-leadership form is characterised by the 8 C-words

Curious
Clear
Calm
Courageous
Creative
Compassionate
Confident
Connectedness

The goals of Internal Family Systems

The overall goal of IFS is to remain “in Self” as continually as possible – both as system leadership as well as boundless energy.

To do this, we need to work to accomplish four process goals through practice.

Unburden parts

The first objective of IFS work is to unburden parts – to free them of the responsibility and unprocessed feelings from past attachment injuries.

Unregulated emotions or behaviour “out of Self” – ie that doesn’t show the C-qualities (can use an image here) shows that a part has taken control. A rude remark, criticism, gossiping, manic behaviour, depression, detachment – there are many paths to find burdened parts.

IFS recommends that we start by identifying managers, who are usually in most control of beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that we can mistake for the authentic self.

Managers build and manage systems (such as the “workaholic”, “people pleaser” or “tough guy” systems). They would have formed some time after the exile they still protect.

When we speak to managers, we can take an interest in their “job” (the things they do that are no longer serving the authentic, here-and-now self). We can discover the exile they protect and propose solutions so they stop influencing the system. We need to help them find a new way of being and let the self be in control. We can work in the same way with firefighters.

Once we have formed a relationship with managers and firefighters and they trust us, we can approach exiles. Exiles will often be children. Exiles can react very well to the presence of self and thrive from love, acceptance and compassion. They can speak of their fears so we, the self, can understand them and take them into account.

Examples

A manager can be a teenager who became passionate about sport as a way to avoid being fat and protect an exile from feelings of rejection and fear of marginalisation. This system can adapt well, but when it becomes an adult and opportunities to exercise become harder to come by, the manager can become irritable. The Self will need to listen to the manager’s concerns and persuade them to become more flexible about fitness goals.

A firefighter can be a young adult who is making the most of the system’s professional success to constantly buy things online to always have exciting things to look forward to. If the habit becomes a concern, the Self can investigate what feelings are being protected or avoided, discover Exiles and free them from the burden of having to distract the system from feelings.

An exile can be a neglected child who only received attention and praise through obtaining good grades at school. They may have developed a fear of failure. They may be protected by a workaholic manager and a firefighter who loves stimulants and alcohol. The Self can offer unconditional love to this child and assure them we would love them, even if we don’t achieve the success we want as a system.

Instil trust in the leadership of the self

Speaking to parts from the Self helps unburden parts and release unprocessed feelings. As we do that, we start to develop trust, which is key in the development of a healthy inner world and system of parts.

The Self is the only aspect of ourselves that corresponds to our biological reality. It is the only one that has lived our whole life and knows of the features of our present moment. This is the way to kindly persuade parts to trust the Self.

When parts trust us, they don’t jump in to take control of the system

In neuroscientific terms, instilling trust in the self strengthens our Orbitofrontal Cortex to inhibit inappropriate emotional responses – and buy time – when dealing with something complicated or arousing. This means the Self has more time to find an appropriate response, and the experience of this helps build a stronger case for more Self-leadership.

Embodiment

Much IFS work is done through visualisation and imagination. However, as most trauma frameworks, there is a strong emphasis on embodiments.

Embodiment is the practice of feeling our own body and grounding our experience through this feeling. It can be practiced through movement, breathing, meditation, creative therapy, dance and other practices.

Embodiment can help us experience the Self in its energetic form, provided we are experiencing healthy dynamics in the inner world and all parts are happy in this activity.

Become Self-led

The final goal that justifies all goals in IFS is to be Self-led.

This simply means that we can remain in the 8 Cs: Curious, Clear, Calm, Courageous, Creative, Compassionate, Confident, Connected

As we grow, more and more of our experience is in this state. With self-leadership parts abandon their jobs, release their feelings, develop and integrate more fluidly with the overall system. We can still visit and talk to parts, but we are constantly surprised to hear about the positive ways in which they now influence the system (e.g new hobbies, new attitudes, new ideas). We form strong connections with our parts who love to see us