Internal Family Systems – Informed/Parts Work Therapy
Internal Family Systems, often called IFS or parts work, is an approach to therapy that takes the multiplicity of the self seriously. It begins from the observation that the inner life is not a single unified voice. It is a collection of parts, each with its own history, function, and concerns, that take turns at the front depending on what the moment calls for.
Most of us have noticed this already, even if we have not had language for it. There is the part that wants the thing, and the part that talks you out of wanting it. The part that pushes you forward, and the part that drags you back. The part that is angry, and the part that is afraid of the anger. The part that wants closeness, and the part that flinches when closeness comes.
We use the word “informed” deliberately. Formal IFS is a specific, structured model. It has its own training and certification, its own sequence of steps for working with parts, and a careful process for the deeper work of helping parts release what they have been carrying. IFS-informed therapy means something a little different. We draw on the framework: the map of parts, the idea of a core Self, and above all the stance of meeting every part with curiosity rather than judgment. We integrate this inside relational, anti-oppressive therapy; the framework shapes how we understand and work with your inner world.
IFS/Parts Work treats each of these parts as having developed for a reason. They are not symptoms to be eliminated. They are not character flaws. They are parts of the self that took on particular jobs in response to what you have lived through, and that have been doing those jobs for as long as they have been needed.
The framework distinguishes several kinds of parts:
- Exiles. The young, vulnerable, often wounded parts of the self that carry the original pain of difficult or traumatic experiences. They are often exiled from awareness because what they carry feels too much to feel directly.
- Managers. The parts of the self that work to keep daily life functioning, often through perfectionism, control, vigilance, achievement, people-pleasing, or other strategies that try to prevent the exiled parts from being reactivated
- Firefighters. The parts of the self that respond when an exile gets activated despite the managers’ efforts. They use whatever is available to dampen the pain, including numbing strategies, dissociation, intense emotional reactions, or other behaviors that interrupt the activation
- Self. Underneath all of the parts, the framework holds that there is a core self, sometimes described as having qualities like curiosity, compassion, calm, clarity, and connectedness. This self is not damaged by what has happened. It has been there all along, often obscured by the activity of the parts.
The work is not to silence the parts. It is to build a relationship between Self and parts in which the parts get to set down the jobs they have been carrying, often for years.
Why this helps: many of our clients arrive having been told that they have problematic patterns to overcome. The framing is exhausting and often counterproductive. Treating the patterns as parts, each of which developed for understandable reasons, changes the whole texture of the work. Compassion becomes possible where contempt was before. Curiosity becomes possible where shame was before. The protective strategies become collaborators rather than adversaries.
This shift is often what can allow lasting change to happen. The parts that have been holding things will not let go because you have decided you do not like them anymore. They will let go when they trust that the system can handle what they have been protecting.
We hold IFS/Parts Work as a powerful framework for many of our clients, and we hold it inside a broader anti-oppressive frame. A few specifics:
- The protective parts of folks living inside racism, transphobia, immigration violence, ableism, or other structural conditions are often responding to real ongoing threats, not only to historical ones. The work has to distinguish what is ongoing protection from what is residual protection no longer needed.
- Not every part is formed in your own childhood. Some of the protective strategies a person carries are inherited, passed down through families and lineages shaped by colonization, slavery, migration, and generational survival. A part can be carrying a job that began long before you were born. We hold space for the ancestral and intergenerational layer of this work, not only the personal one.
- We are careful about how we treat the parts that carry rage. The standard impulse is to soothe these parts or quiet them down. But some of that rage is not a problem to be managed. It is sacred information, a response to real harm and real injustice, and it often knows something true. We work to be in relationship with it rather than to talk you out of it.
- The cultural assumptions embedded in the standard framing of IFS, including assumptions about self, individuality, and what a regulated inner life is supposed to look like, are worth examining rather than absorbing wholesale
- Parts work pairs well with somatic practice, EMDR, attachment-based work, and other approaches. It is rarely the only thing happening in a session.
What this work can look like at MLC:
- Slowing down enough to notice which part of you is talking right now, and what that part has been working on
- Building a relationship with the protective parts before working with what they have been protecting
- Gradually meeting the exiled, younger, or wounded parts, with the protective parts’ permission and at the pace they can hold
- Allowing the protective parts to set down jobs they have been carrying, as the system becomes able to hold what they had been holding back from
- Working with the body, since parts often live in particular places in the body and respond to body-level engagement
- Holding the structural, historical, and ancestral context honestly, including the real conditions that produced the patterns and the lineages they were carried through
The therapists at MLC use this approach because we have seen what becomes possible when the inner life is met with curiosity rather than judgment. The parts of you that have been working hardest, including the parts you have probably been frustrated with, often turn out to be the parts that have been protecting something deeply important. We are honored to be in this work with you, at the pace that fits.
