Richard Schwartz explains his IFS system.

When I first saw a video in my YouTube feed about Internal Family Systems (IFS), I skipped right past. It’s just me and the missus here and we get along fine.

It wasn’t at all what it sounded like. IFS is actually a kind of therapy for individuals invented by Richard Schwartz.
I’ve watched Schwartz in several interviews and I remain intrigued.

The idea is that you have a “family” of parts in your mind that behave like individuals. If you do things to sabotage yourself it’s usually one of those parts trying to protect you from reliving some childhood trauma.

You can talk to them and they answer. If you talk to them properly you can heal the “exile” and get the protector to relax.

It’s the opposite of what they used to teach about multiple personalities, that trauma causes them.

It’s more that you already have them without realizing it, but trauma makes them more noticeable.

Schwartz divides the parts into exiles and protectors, which can be managers or firefighters. Exiles, being the vulnerable parts we try to lock up to keep from reliving their trauma. Managers arrange your life to avoid triggers. Firefighters erupt when you’ve been triggered, to stop you reliving an exile’s traumatic memories. At the heart of it all is Self, which is curious, compassionate and knows how to heal.
The more “Self energy” you bring to the conversations, the more they will trust you. I think of it as the part of the ego that’s most genuine, most connected to the center that Carl Jung calls Self.

IFS reminds me of Carl Jung’s active imagination, which I’ve also tried with limited success.

My current thinking is that Jung helps you deal with the stuff in your head that culture puts there, and IFS is for all the people you used to be who are  in there suffering.

The idea is to heal them and get them working together.

It sounds so crazy at first, but I’ve played around with it and I swear it works.

As an American, it feels revolutionary. We’re taught to repress our painful parts, not make friends with them.

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