What is IFS?

Most people can agree that we all deserve to live a life free from the pain of our past and the inner turmoil that can come with it; to those seeking a more fulfilled life, the question is often how? 

There are many answers to that question, but one increasingly popular and successful approach is Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy a compassionate, non-pathologising approach to healing that has empowered people to achieve their full potential, free from the burden of trauma and self-limiting beliefs for the past 40 years.

With IFS, we acknowledge an understanding of ourselves that we have already sensed - we are complex beings with a mind that contains multitudes. In IFS, we call these multitudes "parts"—distinct aspects of your personality, that each have their own beliefs, emotions, needs and roles. At the centre of this system lies your core "Self," a place of calm, strength, and wisdom that is usually obscured by the parts, which have often taken on extreme roles, such as the critic or the procrastinator, in response to our lived experiences.  

Parts can take on protective or wounded patterns of behaviour resulting in inner struggles that can present as a range of psychological wounds or mental health issues, including but not limited to depression, anxiety, CPTSD and even ADHD. 

An underlying principle of IFS is that although the dysfunction that emerges from these parts’ actions or roles can cause us pain, there are in fact no bad parts; and once we commit to a process of identifying and understanding them, we can resolve our problems by allowing our parts first to heal, and then to relax their roles so the Self can take its rightful place in leading us to a more fulfilled life.  

The idea that we are rich and complex beings is hardly new, but when it comes to therapeutic methods IFS has been particularly transformative for so many people around the world because it doesn’t just acknowledge our differing parts but also takes an approach to overcoming our challenges that is led by curiosity, compassion, and self-love above all else.