You can know exactly why you do what you do and still feel stuck doing it. For overthinkers, high achievers, and people who have analyzed themselves from every angle, Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy offers a different approach to understanding your patterns and creating meaningful change.
You probably know yourself pretty well.
You know where your perfectionism comes from, why conflict makes you shut down, what your inner critic sounds like, and maybe even whose voice it borrowed. You can trace your patterns back to earlier experiences and recognize the exact moment you’re doing the thing you promised yourself you wouldn’t do again.
And somehow, you still do it.
The issue might not be a lack of understanding of the problem, but that you’re trying to solve the problem with the same part of yourself over and over again with the same results.
I’ve worked with a lot of thoughtful, self-reflective people who are very good at understanding themselves and still feel stuck. One reason why I use Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is that it doesn’t ask you to stop analyzing or turn off your intelligence. Instead, it directs your curiosity toward the part of you that’s doing the analyzing, the part that’s pushing you to achieve, or the part that absolutely cannot tolerate failure.
From there, we can get curious about what those parts are trying to accomplish, and what they’re afraid might happen if they stop doing what they’re doing.
The Idea Behind IFS, in Plain Terms
No doubt you’ve sometimes felt like two different parts of you wanted completely different things.
Maybe one part of you desperately wants to rest while another keeps reminding you of everything you haven’t finished. Or one part wants closeness in a relationship while another starts looking for reasons to pull away the moment things get serious.Perhaps one part recognizes that facing difficult feelings might be helpful while another would much rather work, scroll, eat, or find some other way to avoid them.
The basic idea behind IFS is that we all have different parts of ourselves with their own feelings, perspectives, impulses, and ways of responding. Having parts isn’t strange or pathological but is considered the natural multiplicity of the mind, recognized in many therapeutic, philosophical, and anthropological perspectives. We already acknowledge having parts in everyday language when we say things like, “Part of me really wants to do this, but another part is terrified.”
IFS takes that familiar experience and explores it more deliberately.
As Richard Schwartz explains in his overview of the IFS model, we have an internal system of protective and wounded parts, along with what IFS calls the Self, which is associated with qualities such as curiosity, compassion, clarity, and calm.This doesn’t mean you’re literally several different people. IFS just offers a framework for understanding the sometimes contradictory things happening within one person.
What Are These Parts Trying to Do?
In IFS, parts are understood as taking on different roles, often in response to experiences that were difficult, overwhelming, or painful.Some parts work hard to prevent problems before they happen while other parts scramble to squelch problems once they occur. Still other parts carry the feelings and memories that those protective parts are trying to keep at a manageable distance.
IFS generally describes three roles that parts may take on: managers, exiles, and firefighters.
Managers are the planners, organizers, perfectionists, and problem-solvers. They’re often very good at anticipating what could go wrong and doing everything possible to prevent it. If you’ve ever found yourself preparing for every possible outcome of a conversation that hasn’t happened yet, you may recognize this kind of protective strategy.
Exiles are parts associated with painful experiences and the feelings that accompany them, such as shame, fear, rejection, or loneliness. In the IFS model, these are often the experiences other parts are working so hard to keep out of awareness.
Firefighters are the parts that respond when those painful feelings break through. Their priority is immediate relief, which might involve distraction, impulsive behavior, substance use, or anything else that provides a way to escape (that is, be protected from) emotional discomfort.
For example, one part might push you to work constantly (manager) because it’s afraid that making a mistake will lead to rejection (exile). Or maybe you do make a mistake and feel that rush of shame (exile), so you spend the rest of the evening zoning out by scrolling on your phone (firefighter).
Rather than deciding which part is right or trying to eliminate the behavior, IFS is interested in understanding what each part believes it’s accomplishing.
Why IFS Offers a Different Approach for Analytical People
Many of the people I work with have spent years being rewarded for being smart, capable, independent, productive, and good at solving problems.Thinking has gotten them through a lot, and I’m not interested in taking that away.
It’s very useful to understand that your perfectionism is connected to criticism you experienced growing up, or that your tendency to withdraw during conflict developed when expressing your feelings wasn’t particularly safe. But of course, understanding a pattern doesn’t necessarily change it.
IFS invites us to approach patterns a little differently.
Instead of focusing exclusively on why you became a perfectionist, for example, we might get curious about the part of you that insists everything needs to be done perfectly.
What does it think will happen if you make a mistake? And what might happen if it stopped working so hard?
The idea isn’t to interrogate that part until it agrees to behave differently. If a part has been working hard to protect you, there’s a good reason why it doesn’t want to give up its job.
Interestingly, we can also be curious about analytical parts, the ones who have gotten us far in life and whose efforts have helped us succeed and thrive.
What do they get from understanding everything? Do they believe that if they can just figure enough things out, nothing painful or unexpected will happen?
Sometimes the part that’s been helping you make sense of everything is also working very hard to keep you from having to experience certain feelings.And if that’s the case, simply giving it more information may not move the needle.
When we’re curious about parts, we’re automatically in a different relationship with them. Rather than being fully identified with them, acting out their familiar patterns, we can simultaneously be connected to them and also have more space from them. This spaciousness makes room for new emotional experiences and creates movement where intellectual understanding may fall short.
What Does IFS Look Like in a Therapy Session?
We might start with something that’s been bothering you recently. Maybe you’re overwhelmed by responsibilities, frustrated with someone you care about, or avoiding a project that’s important to you.Rather than immediately trying to solve the problem, I’ll help you slow down and notice what’s happening internally in the moment. This shift into an observing stance creates room for curiosity.
What thoughts come up when you consider the situation? What do you notice in your body? Is there a particular feeling or impulse that seems especially strong?
Sometimes people notice that they feel irritated with a particular part of themselves. They wish they could stop procrastinating, stop worrying, or stop being so critical.In IFS, we might get curious about the part that’s frustrated with the original part.
What is it worried about? What does it want to accomplish by pushing for change?
As we explore, we may discover that a part is responding to something much older than the present-day situation that initially brought it to our attention. Or we might learn that a strategy that seems counterproductive now once served a useful or even vital purpose. Frequently, simply listening to parts softens them so that they’re not so forceful or take over as quickly.
Once we’re able to build a trusting relationship with protectors, we can connect with the exiles that carry the painful or traumatic experiences that drive the protectors. Touching into those experiences while remaining anchored in the present is what allows our bodies and brains to process the emotional wounds that have been haunting us and quietly organizing our internal landscapes.
What Does the Research Say About IFS?
IFS is currently considered an emerging evidence-based therapeutic practice. Using IFS has resulted in statistically significant reductions in depression in multiple randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and smaller pilot studies show IFS’s promise in treating PTSD. More RCTs are needed to expand the research base to more fully establish IFS as an evidence-based treatment.
Notably, in 2015, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) added IFS to its National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP), finding it effective for improving general functioning and well-being and promising for reducing symptoms of depression, phobia, panic, and generalized anxiety. In 2018, SAMHSA replaced the NREPP with its Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center, which does not maintain a database of specifically-named approaches. However, having been listed by NREPP in the past is held as meaningful in the mental health field.
Is IFS Therapy a Good Fit for You?
IFS may be worth exploring if you’re caught between competing feelings, motivations, or behaviors and you can’t seem to stop the spin. I find it to be a very gentle and non-pathologizing way to approach parts that you may not understand or even like very much but you’re tired of battling with. What comes up when using IFS can be surprising or unexpected, but it’s often fascinating, illuminating, and can lead to real change.
IFS may seem simple to explain but it has the potential to tap into intense emotional experiences, so finding a therapist trained in IFS is highly recommended. As with any therapeutic approach, the therapeutic relationship matters, too. Particularly when you’re exploring vulnerable experiences, you should feel comfortable asking questions, expressing uncertainty, and working at a pace that makes sense for you.
I consider IFS to be one way to understand our internal experiences, but I don’t think any one therapeutic approach has all the answers. What matters is whether the work is effective for the person I’m sitting with, and that can look different from one client to the next. I offer online psychotherapy to adults in California, so if you’re interested in IFS and working with me, I’d be happy to start a conversation about what you’re going through, what you’d like to be different, and whether we’d be a good fit.