Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS is part of my daily life
I have included IFS as one of my practices as it is truly integrated into my daily life. When I take decisions, argue with my husband, feel upset about the world news, wake up in a bad mood - I can find the parts involved, tune into them, find out what they are thinking, feeling and needing, what are wanting to contribute, and whether there are memories further back in my life that are being activated.
In trickier moments it helps to have someone else support me to find the parts, and understand their back stories.
I resonate with IFS as it is a compassionate, non-pathologizing approach. The client is considered the expert on their own experience. The 'therapist'-roled person is there as a guide, trusting that each part has value and a positive intention, and not making analytic diagnoses.
These attitudes are also true of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and are, for me, aspects of nonviolence, In other words: using no force in the inner world, no humiliation, full respect, deep listening, trust in essential goodness.
I sometimes follow the IFS flow when I am supporting clients in their inner journeys, in a way that integrates with NVC awareness and practices.
Psychosynthesis - an earlier influence on me
My experience with IFS began in 2018 and rests on the foundation of the Psychosynthesis workshops, training and therapy I was engaged in from 1980 to 1984 in London.
Psychosynthesis is a spiritually oriented psychotherapy originated by Robert Assagioli in Italy in the 1950s and 60s.
In Psychosynthesis I discovered I had quite a few sub-personalities that had a semi-autonomous life within my psyche, and that could rapidly evolve, mature and become more integrated, when given loving, compassionate attention.
I also learned a map of the many levels of a human being that resonated with me more than any other map I had come across at that time. It became a core aspect of my cosmology.
Through guided meditations I experienced a great depth that evoked my purpose in life, and linked me to my Self and its healing and creative power. I was 28 years old and some of those key insights and experiences have lived in me now for more than four decades.
IFS has helped me return to the wisdom and potential in my inner world and has taken me further through its systems approach - the relationship of my parts/sub-personalities to each other, and to my Self.
These internal relationships enormously influence my choices, stuck places, relationships, and all of my life. And these relationships can improve - parts can accept each other more, mature, change, and learn to take their place collaboratively in my whole inner system.
What is IFS?
Richard Schwartz, the creator of IFS, describes it like this:
"Internal Family Systems is a powerfully transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy. We believe the mind is naturally multiple and that is a good thing. Our inner parts contain valuable qualities and our core Self knows how to heal, allowing us to become integrated and whole. In IFS all parts are welcome. IFS is a movement. A new, empowering paradigm for understanding and harmonizing the mind and, thereby, larger human systems. One that can help people heal and helps the world become a more compassionate place."
How did IFS emerge?
In the 1980s Schwartz was working with clients with severe multiple trauma as a Family Systems Therapist when he noticed his clients often referred to 'a part of me'. He got curious and found his clients had several identifiable 'parts'. And he realised that he could apply the family systems approach to his client's inner world, as these parts had definite inner relationships with each other, and when brought into relationship with their Self, this brought tremendous healing.
Over the 40 years since that time, he evolved IFS into a simple yet sophisticated way to engage in inner journeys of great depth, that heal and enlighten.
My training in IFS
By a stroke of luck I first experienced IFS at a week-long residential training in Italy in 2018, co-led by the founder Richard Schwartz and his wife Jeanne Catanzaro. The publicity hadn't happened so we were a small group of 16.
I wrote full notes of all the powerful exercises and my inner journey, during the training. I wrote down Dick's interventions in the two 'demos' we had each day word for word. I looked forward greatly to returning to those notes to deepen my understanding - and then left the notebook on a train! (A demo is where Dick works with one person on an issue they want to explore - as he would in an individual IFS session - followed by a discussion.)
All the same - I'd been deeply immersed and for weeks afterwards my parts spoke so much to me that I typed pages of inner dialogues and processes. (For me, when I type, I can 'hear' the parts better.)
I have completed these IFS trainings
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7-day IFS retreat with Richard Schwartz and Jeanne Catanzaro
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Level One IFS training with Paul Ginter and team
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Legacy Burdens with Einat Bronstein
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Compassion for Addictive Processes with Cece Sykes
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Somatic IFS with Susan McConnell
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IFS Online Circle year programme
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IFS in-person Open Space weekend
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Individual IFS therapy sessions