What is IFS?
This explanation is a good start. If you have questions the article doesn’t cover, email me.
Tell me why it’s not bullshit.
This is kind of my favorite question, except that it’s not very specific. I hope your concern is covered somewhere below. If it’s not, please email me with the reason you think IFS might be bullshit and I’ll answer it in a blog post and add it to this list. I like getting questions.
Talking to the voices in your head…isn’t that what crazy people do?
In short, no. Or rather, not anymore than anyone else. If having a bunch of different voices in your head makes you crazy, then everyone would be crazy. I’m pretty annoyed that I resisted “talking to the voices in my head” for years because it seemed crazy. I’m much saner now that I do it regularly.
The alternative to communicating with your parts isn’t ignoring them, it’s blindly following whichever ones are the most powerful.
I have personal experience with mental illness—I grew up with a brother who was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia—and I have lots of thoughts and theories about how that works. I haven’t written much of it up; maybe I will some day. But my model is clear on this: IFS helps people become way more sane.
But I don’t feel like I’m made out of parts.
You are. No really, I’ve worked with dozens of people, and everyone works like this. Maybe you mean something different from what I do by being “made out of parts”, and I prefer to skip semantic arguments entirely. But I’d be shocked if the introspective techniques involved in the IFS process were a dead end for anyone.
Okay, so maybe I have some parts, but that thing you told me to think of as a part really doesn’t seem like a part.
In my experience, any bundle of thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations can be communicated with, but some bundles are harder to get answers from than others. Often, clients will think it’s unnatural to think of “confusion” or “tiredness” as parts. “But I’m lacking key information. Of course I’m confused!” “I didn’t sleep last night—that’s why I’m tired.” Confusion and tiredness may be completely sensible and predictable responses to your situation. They may well be healthy responses. But that doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with them. I remember the first time I talked to my “cold part”. It told me that it was cold because the temperature was low, and it requested that I wear warmer clothes.
Fine, so maybe I have parts, but wouldn’t it be better NOT to? Why shouldn’t I be trying to be one cohesive whole?
I believe humans are happier with clarity of purpose, internal peace, and goals we can get our whole self behind. So in that sense, you should be trying to be a cohesive whole. One of the best way to move towards this ideal, reduce conflict, and resolve contradictions is to examine the currently contradictory or conflicting parts of ourselves with curiosity and compassion. Pretending we’re whole when we’re not won’t work.
Some of my parts seem pretty destructive and irrational—wouldn’t it be better to just get rid of them?
No. We have an alternative to getting rid of them. In IFS there is the option to transform the roles they play into something supportive. We have a good foundation to start with. It isn’t always obvious, but at their core all of our parts have a positive intent for us. Parts that encourage addiction want us to feel pleasure or escape. Scared parts want to shelter us from a dangerous world. Once we recognize what their intent is we can work with them to change.
Even if I’m not going to get rid of them, why would I ever trust what my parts say? They’re obviously irrational.
You can trust them to honestly express their story. A lot of our pain is tied to the irrational beliefs of parts. In hearing them out and with the help of a facilitator we can assist parts in taking on a more realistic worldview.
How can I tell whether something’s coming from a particular part?
You can check to see how you feel towards a part. If you’re curious and compassionate you can safely assume the message is from your target part. If you’re angry or judgmental then there is likely another part present.
I can’t visualize. Can I still do this?
Yes. You can communicate with parts through words, emotions, direct knowing and even body sensations. Strong imagery is useful but not necessary. If you can speak to another person then you can do IFS.
How do I know the memories aren’t made up?
You won’t always know. The process remains effective. IFS works by accessing and healing stored pain. We can accomplish this without a photographic memory.
I had a happy childhood—no trauma. Would IFS still work for me?
Yes. Some people access representations of struggle that are not tied to a specific traumatic event. Others find they were affected more strongly by small events than they realize. What looks trivial to an adult can be extraordinarily difficult for a child. The first B for an A student can be a crushing and unforgettable experience. Certain issues result from cumulative injury. It can hurt to be repeatedly turned away by a busy mother. IFS adapts to treat any type of pain.
A somewhat confusing piece of the puzzle about how IFS works is The Nurture Assumption, which is good science that makes it way less credible that childhood experiences shape our character. Here’s how I’ve reconciled the Nurture Assumption data with the huge changes I’ve seen in myself in others from working with childhood experiences:
It may well be that the factors that have the most predictive power in determining how our personalities end up have nothing to do with childhood experiences. However, this is a separate question from whether interacting with the stories in our heads about the origins of emotional and behavior patterns can work. Maybe around the time I was eight I was attracted to an experience that would lead to me internalizing guilt, either because of my genetics or my peer group. It seems likely that things would have gone much the same way if I hadn’t had the specific experience I did (of knocking over a pile of cups and feeling terrible about it). If it hadn’t been that, it may well have been something else. Binteracting with that memory and changing the story will still make a big difference.
If it works as well as you say, why haven’t I heard of this?
IFS has had little time to gain a large following. Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, published his first book on the model in 1994. Richard’s training organization, The Center for Self Leadership, was established in 2000. The first truly accessible book for the average reader was Jay Earley’s 2009 Self-Therapy. This pace is swift compared to adoption of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Behavioral therapy has its roots stretching back to the 20’s. Cognitive therapy began appearing in the 60’s. David Burns’ best-selling CBT book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy hit the market in 1980. The Internal Family Systems model is experiencing rapid adoption. There are already thousands of practitioners and several popular books written on the subject.
How can I tell that the changes I’ve made with IFS will last?
At the end of every session you’ll return to the memory that triggered your extreme emotional response and see if it feels different. This is typically a good gauge of how strong the change was. If you can immediately begin establishing new habits by engaging in the once-difficult behavior then it’s my experience that the changes will become permanent.
Is there any research you can point me to about IFS?
IFS founder Richard Schwartz reports on the state of the research,
Unfortunately, at this time no well-constructed outcome studies testing the IFS model and methods have been completed; however, several are currently in progress. One of them, led by Nancy Shadick of Harvard Medical School, is using IFS with 30 rheumatoid arthritis patients and contrasting that to a control group. A second, led by Helen Reiss, also at Harvard, will use brain scans to evaluate changes in 20 depressed patients as compared to 20 controls. A third will evaluate changes in juvenile sex offenders at an agency in Colorado after a course of IFS treatment. A fourth study, led by Shelley Haddock at Colorado State, is also studying the effects of IFS with a group of depressed students as compared to a control group receiving treatment as usual at the counseling center.
We’ve emailed one of the researchers currently conducting a study about the effects of IFS and she informed us she would have results in about three months. Sign up for our newsletter to be informed about research as soon as we get results.
How does IFS compare to CBT?
They share much of the same underlying theory. CBT’s schemas and IFS’s parts are assumed to have formed in childhood and adolescence in response to stressful events. Growth occurs in either therapy as a result of transforming childhood coping mechanisms into rational adult strategies. CBT uses imagined and physical activation of emotional triggers in order to draw up and challenge cognitive distortions. IFS maintains a safe emotional state by only using imagined scenarios. Outside of the therapy room CBT often requires that patients consistently fill out worksheets during times of intense stress or depression to help them identify distortions. While it varies between therapists, CBT is usually present-focused and predominantly works on symptoms as they arise now without regard to a patient’s history. IFS sessions treat a patient’s problems by accessing early memories of the origin of behavior so that you can immediately adopt a new response. It aims to heal without tedious homework. Emotional triggers change naturally with IFS as the sources of pain are investigated and alleviated.
So…how long until I can heal all of my exiles?
I’ve included this question because I think it’s a very fair one, and it’s one that I’ve asked myself. I don’t have a good answer because it depends on a million different things: the skill of the person you’re working with, where you’re coming from (experienced meditators seem to have an easier time with IFS), what sort of trauma you experienced in the past. How well you sleep at night may make a difference, since you need time to consolidate changes.
However, I won’t dodge the question entirely. If you’ve never done anything like IFS, your way of relating to your beliefs and emotions should change radically in the first five hours you spend doing it. I predict that about one hundred hours of focused work will resolve most of the emotional problems currently on your plate. That being said, while engaging in the IFS process, you will likely become pickier about your target emotional state.
How does IFS fit into different spiritual traditions?
IFS complements meditative practices very well. Anything you can do to clear your mind, ground yourself, and cultivate curiosity, compassion, calmness, joy, and kindness will strengthen your Self state, which will make all IFS work you do more effective.
What are the risks of doing IFS?
When you’re doing IFS work, you’re in an altered, trance-like state. You will be touching pain, sometimes very deep pain, and you may be dazed afterwards. You should leave space for yourself after completing an IFS session, as you will be feeling more vulnerable than usual. Having access to comfort and care from a supportive friend or partner is the best thing you can do for yourself.
IFS work respects your defense mechanisms, but there is also a certain amount of leeway here. Sometimes, if you want to go deeper and explore something you aren’t quite comfortable with, your IFS facilitator may decide to lead you to do so, which is more likely to lead to reactions after the fact. Once, after doing deep work, I woke up in the middle of the night with stomach pain that felt related. To me, it was entirely worth it to push myself, but you must make your own choices about how far to go. If you’re ever approaching a topic you don’t feel comfortable exploring, speak up and tell your facilitator.
Finally, the IFS process is about radical honesty with yourself, and when you see your life more clearly, you may well decide that you don’t like it the way it is. If you want to eliminate procrastination and get yourself to work long hours doing a job you hate, choosing IFS will be risky. You may discover that you can’t achieve that outcome and also be true to yourself. P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” A good friend of mine replied that the statement makes about as much sense to him as saying “That which can be destroyed by lions should be.” It’s up to you.
But XYZ thing about IFS seems kind of supernatural.
I believe that absolutely everything in the universe is subject to the laws of physics. I take thinking rationally very, very seriously.
Everything has a mechanism, and we can interact much more powerfully with systems if we understand what they are. I have theories about what the mechanisms in IFS are, and I’m happy to share them in specific detail if you contact me. Sometimes I don’t know why something works, but that just means I’m still trying to figure it out.
That being said, it wouldn’t surprised me if your brain were pattern matching some of the claims that IFS makes with mystical claims. For a much fuller and more eloquent description of my views on mysticism, please read Eric Raymond’s Dancing with the Gods.
How can I learn more about IFS?
By experiencing it. We know that the written word can only go so far to convey what’s going on, and that most people aren’t familiar with IFS. Because of that, we offer a free 30-minute consultation. Schedule your session today!
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