Internal Family Systems (IFS) believes that we all contain a mixture of feelings, beliefs, and behavioral strategies, held by what IFS calls parts. Different parts help us accomplish different things in our daily lives. Well-being arises when we build caring relationships with our parts and help them become a collective.
The IFS model draws from a couple of different theoretical foundations.
One is systems theory. The founder of IFS was a family therapist when he developed the model. In family therapy, no one can be treated in isolation. The whole system is composed of members with different roles, all working together to maintain homeostasis. Challenges with an individual are challenges in the system. Similarly, in IFS, no part is a “problem.” Our parts exist in a web of internal relationships with other parts who all have roles in the present state of affairs.
Another is multiplicity of the mind: a person’s psyche is composed of distinct parts. This idea is found in psychoanalysis, with the concept of id, ego, and superego, as well as in other schools of psychological thought. Various models, including IFS, consider it normal for people to contain subpersonalities that represent different aspects of a complex whole.
Parts in IFS
In IFS, there are two main types of parts, protectors and exiles. Then there are two sub-types of protectors: managers and firefighters.
Managers are good at planning, directing the action, getting us from point A to point B, and keeping us secure. They’re also good at criticizing, suppressing, demanding perfection, controlling, and shaming. Managers are generally proactive.
Firefighters are good at rushing in to save the day by distracting from or soothing distress. They often do this through what can become compulsive behaviors. Using substances or eating more than you want to, doomscrolling, shopping to financial burden, and self-harming are all firefighter behaviors. Firefighters are more reactive in their strategies.
Managers and firefighters do what they do partly to protect us from the overwhelming pain, intense emotions, or perceived danger held by exiles.
Exiles are the parts of us, often young, who carry “burdens” from trauma or deeply wounding in the form of terror, hopelessness, shame, feeling unlovable, beliefs like “not good enough,” and more. These parts are kept isolated from our daily awareness through the actions of protective parts so that we don’t become overwhelmed by their big feelings or memories.
Protectors can also have burdens. The difference is that protectors’ burdens fuel some of their actions, while the entire job of exiles is to hold pain. They are kept trapped by our protective systems, and when unburdened get to have some agency in how they participate in the inner world.
Self in IFS
Self is a tricky concept. The IFS Institute describes self as a “different level of entity than the parts—often in the center of the ‘you’ that the parts are talking to.”
A lot of parts work teaching leans into the idea of self as soul or spirit. Not everyone is spiritual enough to connect with the idea of self as spirit, and that’s fine. I’m not. I think of self as the seat of consciousness, the place from which I notice my existence and its goings-on.
Self is thought to have specific qualities, which are grouped into eight C words and five P words.
The Cs: compassion, creativity, curiosity, confidence, courage, calm, connectedness, clarity.
The Ps: presence, persistence, perspective, playfulness, patience.
When we find this type of energy, we are touching into a source of care for all our parts that will help our systems move in the direction of healing. These C and P qualities of self are laid out in the original model, but self-energy can show up in a lot of ways. I’ve heard people experience justice-seeking, free wildness, and deep contentment as self energy too.
The key is to figure out how to be attentive to your own well-being. You’ll then sense how your system is organized around the goal of showing up internally and externally in the most centered and resourced way possible.
An important note about “self”: plurals/multiples may have no “self” at all. Internal Family Systems can be quite helpful or quite harmful for this community, depending partly on how much an IFS practitioner demands that a client adhere to this framing of having a “self.” I certainly don’t.
Goals of IFS Coaching
Turning inward to explore and embrace your full psyche is a nothing less than paradigm shift in how you move through the world. Rather than thinking of some of your qualities as “bad” and others “good,” you will understand how every part of you is trying to help you thrive.
This deeper self-awareness means you can accept yourself as you are instead of striving for impossible ideals. When you understand why you do the things you do, rather than disavowing some behaviors, you’ll be able to act with more thought and intention. It becomes possible to align your choices with your deepest values. And listening to all your parts will help you develop a strong internal compass.
Through parts work, you grow your capacity to be with your own pain in a compassionate way, rather than judging or beating yourself up when things feel hard. One aspect of IFS is unburdening your pain—releasing the beliefs or feelings you hold from past wounding that interfere with your well-being.
And it’s not only pain you’ll be able to sit with. IFS helps you be more present for all your experiences, including happiness. Sometimes it’s scary to focus too much on what’s going well. We manage our expectations by downplaying the good so as not to be disappointed when it ends. But life is full of both pleasure and pain, and reveling in our joy when it happens helps us persist through the rest.
Curious if IFS coaching is for you? Check out my main coaching page to learn more or send me a message for a free consultation.