IFS: Internal Family Systems
Simply put, IFS is both a profoundly insightful way to understand ourselves, as well as an extraordinary process to work with the various players of our inner world. Most of what we do is on automatic pilot. Our nervous system takes care of the heart beating and blood flowing, lungs breathing, food digesting, etc., but if you stop and think about it, we often don’t choose our thoughts, our feelings or even our actions. IFS points out that as we grow up we learn to deal with difficult and painful experiences by automatically developing strategies to deal with life’s challenges. Getting angry at someone, feeling shame and avoiding participation, calling oneself stupid, feeling worthless… are all natural responses and strategies to manage our worlds. For the most part, these ways of being become automatic, they happen to us. We often don’t choose to feel, think or act as we do. As we learn, in therapy, since we are often on auto-pilot (researchers say 95% of our lives), it is necessary to get to know who are our inner “pilots” who are actually giving us our emotions, our thoughts, and motivating us to act as we do.
Yet, we’re not always on auto-pilot. We can be mindful and aware we’re aware (and learn to be so more than 5% of our “awake” lives). As we learn to calm down those Parts of ourselves who may well be feeling anxious or are being overly critical to others, or to ourself, we can learn to purposefully choose to be in the present and learn to access our best ways of being, such as being calm, compassionate, curious, confident, clear, connected, courageous and creative. These are known as the 8 “C” words for being our best/true/higher/core, divine… Self.
IFS involves learning to mindfully observe our inner world, to understand what experiences from the past, which are still loaded with strong emotions, are driving particular Parts to do what they do (such as calling us “stupid”), as well as to know we can access positive, healthy ways of being that help us heal in various ways.
We heal by: 1) getting better at accessing those “higher” ways of being—calm, clear, curious and compassionate—so we interact with people as well as ourselves in calm, loving ways, and not the reactive ways that too often interfere with our well-being; 2) by getting to the Parts of ourselves (like an “inner child”) that are still feeling the strong negative emotions from past experience, and helping them to let go of those emotions (e.g. shame) and to come live with you, safely, happily, in the present; and 3) when there isn’t the shame or fear in the system, the Parts that get angry or judgmental or anxious don’t need to do that anymore, and you will live more of your life with calmness, curiosity, compassion—love.
I find it interesting that what seems like a creative set of metaphors, perhaps fictional, are very much based in research on the neurobiology of identity, the self, of thoughts and emotions. I look forward to explaining it to you and leading you through it. Not only do my clients like seeing themselves through this lens, they see it really works.