What is IFS?

Internal Family Systems, or IFS for short, is a type of parts work that is used in therapy. There are many different frameworks for doing parts work, but IFS is my personal favorite. In parts work, we observe that all people have different 'parts' of themselves that run certain aspects of their lives, show up in certain ways, or have a certain role they play in our inner world. Examples of common parts that people have or recognize are a 'perfectionist part' that tries to make sure we do things exactly right, a 'people-pleasing part' that tries to keep others happy, or an 'inner critic'. We also have parts that carry our trauma or wounds, and one of the goals of IFS is to help those parts.

In IFS, we use a structured process to get to know our parts and start to build trust between a client and their parts. Our goal is to help all the parts - to reduce suffering and to help the parts be more at ease, have more safety, and have more choice about the jobs they are doing in the client's mind. For example, sometimes a part started doing a "job", such as being a people-pleaser, for an important reason. However now that the client is grown up, that job may not be as necessary as it once was, but the client still can't figure out how to stop the behavior. IFS is a very gentle and kind method for working with these parts to help change behavior and negative feelings. Although it involves talking, it often moves things in a deep way that talk therapy has not been able to touch. It is also highly effective for complex trauma when trauma processing has been able to clear some things but the underlying patterns still remain.

We use IFS frequently in alongside EMDR to deepen the work, clear stuck points, or to help people get ready for trauma processing.

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This article is cross-posted at www.auramorris.com

Keywords: IFS, IFS Intensives, PTSD therapy, trauma therapy, IFS/EMDR Intensives