What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)?
Perhaps you’ve heard of Internal Family Systems Therapy, or IFS—an evidence-based form of psychotherapy that can be used to treat many negative mental health issues and symptoms. As a form of therapy, IFS can help you better understand the self by teaching you about the many parts that comprise it, while also helping you integrate and harmonize those parts.
The larger approach of IFS sees all of us as consisting of our own internal family systems, each of which divides up into various subparts. These are the segments of our personalities that influence our thoughts, our behaviors, and our relationship with our larger core self. Many of us already understand the concept of parts in everyday life; for example, we might say things like, “Part of me wants to say how I really feel, but another part wants to stay quiet.” IFS is built around this notion of parts and the idea that the various parts of ourselves can be healed and brought into harmony through a process of increased self-awareness.
IFS Therapy Offers A Wide Range Of Potential Uses
But what can IFS be used to actually treat? IFS Therapy lends itself well if you’ve had a history of trauma, toxic relationships, or poor emotional health as a child or as an adult. Beyond this, IFS Therapy can also be applied to struggles as diverse as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and grief—issues that most of us have or will experience at some point in our lives.
Rather than stigmatizing aspects of your personality, though, IFS can help you learn greater forgiveness toward yourself, as well as greater compassion toward others as you learn to see them as a sum of their own respective parts as well. Through the lens of IFS, there are no bad parts, but merely wounded parts that need to be listened to and integrated into the whole.
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How Does The IFS Therapy Process Work?
Unlike many other modalities, IFS therapy is not primarily focused on forcing change in your thought patterns or behaviors—which most of us can appreciate. Instead, IFS centers on the underlying causes or reasons for the thought pattern or behavior by getting in touch with how you are feeling through the lens of three primary emotions: sad, hurt, and afraid. This proves effective because you are actually getting to know, understand, grieve, and heal the self, rather than forcing change through thought-based intervention. Who doesn’t like the sound of that?
IFS parts work typically unfolds across distinct stages, though the process varies from person to person. You and your therapist will work to identify the various subparts of your personality and build a relationship with these parts and their emotions. This will usually involve a lot of asking questions and actually listening to the subpart, as you work to develop greater understanding, compassion—and, yes, patience—for it. We will then move toward mediating a constructive discussion between this part and various other parts of yourself in order to resolve any conflict.
The Diverse Benefits of IFS Counseling
IFS work is versatile. Not only can IFS Therapy be used to treat a lot of different mental health struggles and relationship issues, but it can also help treat anyone from individuals to families to couples. Because IFS can be used to effectively build toward greater connectivity between people, it applies to personal, professional, and social contexts as well. And the overall effectiveness of IFS work is becoming only more apparent.
According to one study involving adults with PTSD, for example, by the one-month mark following IFS Therapy, 92 percent “of participants no longer met the criteria for PTSD” (1). IFS parts work offers a “bottom-up” approach, which can prove more effective but also requires more vulnerability than other modalities. This is because IFS requires clients to be deeply honest with themselves about how the different parts of their personalities might conflict with each other. With that said, the long-term benefits can prove profound, since IFS involves addressing and healing deep wounds, which facilitates a return to wholeness rather than merely figuring out how to live as less than the sum of your parts.
Why We Believe In And Practice IFS Therapy
We have been utilizing IFS Therapy within our practice since 2021. Prior to that, we had each practiced various forms of counseling for years before both becoming fascinated by the IFS approach. The notion that we all contain our own internal family systems that need care and attention allows us to approach ourselves and others with empathy and open hearts. IFS has proven powerful for each of us in our own emotional healing journeys, and we both became interested in learning to help others find healing in the same profound way.
Our IFS work has positively changed our relationship with ourselves, each other, our families, our friends, and of course our clients. We’ve found that IFS Therapy can offer the most direct way to find regulation, healing, and wholeness in your life. In many cases, we have helped individuals move from barely functioning to fully thriving, and we look forward to undertaking the same journey of growth, progress, and healing with you as well.
(1) https://www.foundationifs.org/research/empirical-evidence
You Can Feel Joyful And More Whole In Your Life
If you are looking to build toward greater self-attunement and are interested in IFS Therapy, please call 719-413-6879 or visit our contact page to get started.
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