Have you ever been paralyzed by two conflicting emotions, thoughts, or deeply rooted feelings? For example, maybe you are yearning for closeness in your relationships, but when someone invites you to open up and be vulnerable you push them away? You may have some polarized parts. Enter Internal Family Systems (IFS) or “parts work.”

Developed by Richard Schwartz, this model of therapy invites us all to get to know the many different aspects of ourselves, our brains, and our personalities. These parts are all important and work hard in their individual jobs to keep us safe, but sometimes they can make our lives difficult. In this model, there are three types of parts: managers, firefighters, and exiles.

Our exiled parts usually develop early in our lives and are representative of young, vulnerable, and sometimes shameful aspects of ourselves and our experiences. One example of an exile could be someone who was abandoned by a parent at a young age, developed a deeply implicit and visceral belief that, “I am unlovable.” Because these exiled parts are so rooted in the past, and are so correlated with young experiences, it can feel extremely unsafe to show these exiled parts of ourselves to others.

Enter managers and firefighters. Our manager parts work very hard to keep us safe by directing attention away from our exiles. This could look like someone over-performing in a relationship, thereby giving no reason for their partner to leave them and expose that vulnerable, “I am unlovable,” part again. If things get too dangerous from a parts perspective, our firefighter parts might get called into action.

This could look like dealing with stress in an unhealthy way such as going on a bender, acting impulsively, or, in some extreme cases, self-harm or suicide. The important thing to remember about these parts is that they are only doing their “jobs” and they don’t fully understand how their methods may be causing more harm than good.

The IFS model calls this your “Self,” or “Self-energy.” This theory is deeply rooted in the belief that you have everything you need inside of you to heal, and that healing comes from within, not from someone externally “fixing” you.

If you work with an IFS informed therapist, they will invite you through many different techniques to first get to know, then understand, and eventually begin to direct “self-energy” to all of your parts. This is where the healing comes from.

IFS is an evidenced-based approach, and it is truly inspiring to see clients give their parts what they need, and in the process, change their thought patterns, beliefs, and feelings about themselves.