Making Peace With Your Inner Parts: The Power of IFS Therapy
Have you ever had an experience that had you thinking to yourself, “a part of me wants to say/do this, but another part of me wants this.”? Congratulations! You have engaged in IFS! But wait, let’s explore that more!
IFS, or Internal Family Systems therapy, conceptualizes that each human being is built by an internal system. Within that system, we have our Self at the core, and 3 types of “parts” that influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Dr. Richard C. Schwartz, the founder of IFS, describes our Core Self as pure and self-healing driven by what is referred to by the 8 C’s: these being curiosity, calm, clarity, and compassion, alongside confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness (IFS Institute, 2026). The 8 C’s and our Core Self, can become hidden and disconnected through 3 types of parts: Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters.
Exiles
-
-
Our parts that hold painful emotions, memories, shame, fear, and/or vulnerability
-
Example: “The part of me that feels like I’m not good enough.”
-
-
Managers
-
-
Our parts that try to prevent us from feeling painful emotions
-
They give us the ability to function on a daily basis by giving us an illusion of safety
-
Example Manager parts: Perfectionism, People-Pleasing, Avoidance. This part may say “If I make everything perfect, nobody can criticize me”
-
-
Firefighters
-
-
Our parts that put out our fires! When feeling an emotion becomes too overwhelming, our Firefighters come to the rescue and try to provide us with immediate relief/distraction
-
Example Firefighter parts: Compulsive Behaviors, Substance Use, Emotional Shutdown
-
-
What is important to know about all of these parts, is that while they may show up in our lives in an unhelpful way, they were all created with the sole purpose of protecting us!
So what does this all mean? Well, let me indulge into one of my own parts and use myself as an example.
“I have anxiety” is a sentence that has been used countless times, and using the words, “I have anxiety” influences how strongly I identify with the anxiety. And how strongly I identify with it, determines how much I believe it. With that, instead of working so hard to get rid of this anxiety and the thoughts that come with it, IFS allows me to understand it. Anxiety is one of my Manager parts. Its role is to try really hard to protect me from something, even if I don’t know what it’s protecting me from yet. It can be too proactive in the way that it becomes unhelpful for me, leading to anger and frustration with myself—and look, now this created an anger part and a frustrated part. So what now? The goal becomes re-building my relationship with these parts, which is different than getting rid of them. An IFS approach allows me to separate myself with the parts that I notice, and let the parts speak for themselves. These parts want me to know something, and IFS allows me to hear them out. Once there is a mutual understanding between my Core Self and my protective parts, we work together and negotiate ways where my parts can become more helpful.
Now that I mentioned separation, let’s look at how cognitive defusion fits into the scene too. Cognitive Defusion is 1 of the 6 core processes of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) which describes it as “you detach or distance yourself from negative thoughts and beliefs. You see a thought as a passing event instead of a truth that drives your actions,” (Cleveland Clinic, 2024). Our brains are designed to produce millions of thoughts each day, but that doesn’t mean we have to believe everything our brains tell us. We may not have control over the thoughts that our brains produce, but we have the control of which ones to believe and identify with.
Here’s an analogy:
You’re sitting in a booth at a sushi restaurant and you’re watching each plate of sushi travel along the conveyor belt. You pick and choose the plates you want and leave alone the plates you don’t want, and watch them continue to travel on the conveyor belt. You’re also being conscious of how many plates you grab because if you grab it–you pay for it even if you don’t like it.
Now let’s imagine those aren’t plates of sushi on the conveyor belt, they are your thoughts. If we identify with every thought that we have, that means you are going to be grabbing every single plate on the conveyor belt. Eventually, it’ll get to a point where you glance down at the table and see there is no room left, and now we are completely overwhelmed with every thought that we grabbed. Then, we get the bill and see what it’s costing us (i.e., inner peace, calm, joy, confidence, etc.).
Integrating an IFS approach with a Cognitive Defusion approach allows us to enjoy that meal. The combination of these approaches emphasize the idea of separation—with our thoughts and our parts. Often, it is our parts that produce these unhelpful thoughts and make it difficult to separate from them. Remember, all parts are created with good intention, they may just not always show up that way. If we have parts of ourselves we are frustrated with, it can be a notification we are disconnected with our Core Self.
In other words, it allows opportunities for self-understanding and self-connection. Most importantly, it allows opportunities to build a healthier relationship with yourself.
References:
Cleveland Clinic. (2022, April 28). Acceptance and commitment therapy
(ACT): What it is & how it works. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy-act-therapy
Internal Family Systems Institute. (n.d.). IFS Institute.