From an IFS perspective, CBT focuses on challenging distorted negative (or unrealistically positive) beliefs that were learned and/or developed, usually by young parts during childhood. Sometimes these beliefs are frankly untrue (the child was told a lie), but most often they have a kernel of truth. For example, a child was told not to be angry and they do have a part who feels angry. From that situation, managers absorb the message that anger is a threat to the child’s connections and, possibly, their survival. This belief is a blueprint for their subsequent actions regarding: suppress, ward off, interrupt, avoid, deny, and so on. Subsequent experience reinforces their view that this belief is accurate. 

From the IFS perspective, the psyche includes two forms of consciousness (some say there are more, but this is our focus). Our subpersonalities or parts manifest one form of consciousness. Our Self, a universal internal resource characterized by curiosity, calm, clarity, connectedness, confidence, courage, creativity, and compassion, manifests the other. The psyche functions optimally when both forms of consciousness are available and parts don’t exclude other parts. 

If you are familiar as a CBT therapist with Motivational Interviewing, you will have a good head start with the first (and hardest) portion of IFS therapy. Protectors often have good reason to be wary of adults, people who offer to help, treatment systems, and so on. Therefore, this portion of therapy requires what we call the 5 Ps (presence, patience, persistence, playfulness, and perspective) – all of which are cultivated in Motivational Interviewing. 

This first portion of therapy is devoted to the client’s Self befriending protective parts internally with guidance as needed from the therapist’s Self. It typically involves several steps: locating and noticing a target protector part; helping other protectors who might have the urge to interfere with this communication to relax; reaching out to the target part with curiosity and asking:

1. What would happen if you stopped doing this job? 

2. Who do you protect? 

3. Do you notice the (client’s) Self? 

4. If not, are you willing to?

5. If so, are you willing to let the Self help the part you protect? In different language, this is also the mission of Motivational Interviewing. 

What can IFS add to the CBT/motivational interviewing skill set? For me, a great deal. I am always drawn to thinking in terms of relational interaction, and I want to talk about who is doing what to whom and why. I find abstract thinking about thoughts, feelings, sensations, and so on boring. Narratives engage – I studied literature before getting into mental health, so this is my bent. I don’t just want to talk about beliefs, I want to talk about who has the belief, how it affects them, who disagrees with them, and the effects of any disagreements. 

The view that psychic multiplicity is the norm brings great explanatory power to human behavior, which is full of contradictions and rich with the relationship-interfering projections of parts who are in conflict. Additionally, understanding that much adult therapy is actually therapy with frightened young parts helps me to be patient, persistent, kind, and compassionate with all parts – even annoying ones. 

Thinking and talking about parts is, in my experience, very clarifying for clients and therapists alike. We don’t want to waste time in therapy talking about disowned behaviors. When someone says they don’t know why they do what they do, I can just ask them to talk to the part who does know. 

Additionally, in IFS I don’t pressure, manage, or try to control any part of a client – I’m there to explore internal and external obstacles to willingness. Accordingly, I don’t work harder than my client and I don’t burnout – I’m focused, curious, attentive, interested, and so on. I may challenge a part if I believe its thinking is distorted and the client’s Self is available to offer that challenge, but I can’t make parts do anything. I stay as experience-near with my clients as possible. I like spending my day being curious and engaging with parts, who can be living in the past and can feel very attached to destructive behaviors. But I know their reasons for doing what they do were valid in the past if not the present, and, moreover, I enjoy their creativity, loyalty, intelligence, good intentions, charm and humor.

There is no single origin for psychological problems. We each bring a unique mix of genetics, epigenetics, temperament, physiology, personal experience and environment to the project of living. IFS would say, however, that problematic behavior is generally actually an attempt to solve a problem. I have just finished a book on the topic of shame and guilt (forthcoming with Guilford, out in the spring of 2023) in which I argue that the underlying problem is almost always a sense of unlovability, accrued when a child is susceptible (for a variety of reasons) to accepting interpersonal acts as valid information about who they are and what they’re worth.

IFS has some similarities with – and in instances has borrowed from – other treatment modalities. Like psychodynamic therapies, IFS often ends up back in the past witnessing scary childhood experiences; like CBT, IFS explores and challenges distorted beliefs; like Schema therapy, IFS rescues parts who are stuck in the past in bad experiences; like Shamanism, IFS helps injured parts unburden toxic identity beliefs and stuck feeling states; like Sensorimotor and other body-oriented therapies, IFS orients clients to pay attention to the body, and sees the body and mind as elements of a larger, integrated, mutually influential system; like EMDR, the witnessing and unburdening portions of IFS therapy involve going into the past with a traumatized part, and being with it there; like DBT and psychoanalysis, IFS endorses an overarching form of consciousness (in DBT it is Wise Mind; in psychoanalysis it is the superego) that offers a unique perspective on the mind itself; and I could go on. Much of this similarity exists because close observers of the mind see the same things; the differences come from the cultural biases of the observers culture and that moment in time as well as variations in the language the observer uses to describe what they see. 

Most practitioners of IFS have former training in various other therapy modalities, which they bring, along with creative problem-solving leaps, to sessions that challenge the therapist’s expectations. Many people are also expanding the application of IFS to various professional arenas beyond mental health. Legal mediation processes and medical health coaching are two examples, but there are many more. The main point (and challenge) in my view, is to experiment within the parameters of the basic concepts of IFS: that the mind is naturally plural, that we can all have access to the Self, and that the Self can manifest in each of us as both particle (me) and wave (us), to use Dick Schwartz’s physics metaphor. This approach will guide you regarding what works and what doesn’t.

Physically, anxiety manifests in agitation and arousal. Mentally, anxiety manifests in fearful, repetitive worry thoughts that do not turn off. This may cause reactive paralysis (blanking out/dissociating) or difficulty focusing and concentrating. Is a protector causing anxiety? If so, it has a motive and goals. Ask what it fears and what it wants. Is an exile feeling anxious? If so, it has a burdensome belief (like I’m unlovable). Ask what it needs and follow its lead. 

For phobias, is it a legacy burden? If yes, who inside is attached to the phobia? If no one, proceed to releasing the burden:

• If a protector is attached, explore how the phobia helps the protector’s agenda and offer to address that problem (for example, the protector wants their person to be inhibited, fearful, cautious, or loyal to an inhibited caretaker). 

• If an exile is attached, witness and unburden the exile. 

• Is it hard-wired? Snake and spider phobias, for example, can be hard-wired, apparently for evolutionary reasons. If so, interview parts who are scared and see what might help.

In IFS we speak of ‘Self-like’ managers. A Self-like part is a dominant manager who is used to being in the driver’s seat and will say “I am… (Adrienne, Santiago, etc). Managers have a managerial agenda, which involves controlling other parts and being the decision-maker because they want their person to be socially acceptable, included, useful, valued, and loved. When therapy stalls and/or other parts react negatively (for example, the Self seems to be present but other protectors remain intransigent, or an exile turns away) it’s a good hint that a Self-like part is standing in for the Self. If you suspect this is the case, you can ask the client if they have noticed it too, and either help them have a conversation with the Self-like manager or speak with it directly while the client listens. These parts are often fearful of not being in charge, and have reason to be attached to their power and position. Patience, persistence, and (often) a direct and appreciative relationship with the therapist (the direct access method of communication) are crucial to winning them over.

The Self leads by being useful and meeting the needs of parts with unmet needs. 

Proactive manager parts (protectors) are usually worn out and frustrated. They will more readily admit to being tired and, though they likely won’t believe help exists or that the exile they protect can be helped, they will usually be more open to the idea of getting help if it were to be available. Then we focus on helping the part unblend so it can meet the Self.

If a proactive manager part is dominant, ask about the pros and cons of doing this job. Is it working? Does the part feel successful? Who does it protect? What would happen if it stopped doing the job? Would it like some help? Is it willing to find out what the Self has to offer?

Reactive firefighter parts (also protectors) are usually defiant and determined to carry on. They are, therefore, less open to the idea of help (I don’t need help, they will say) or to trying something new (This works fine, thanks, they will say). Accordingly, they require more patience and need more validation. 

If reactive firefighter parts are dominant, ask what’s most important about doing this job, who it protects, and what would happen if it stopped. Crucially, it needs to hear that no one is trying to control it or take anything away. If it tries something new and doesn’t like it, it can always go back to doing what it has been doing. No one can stop it. Praise it for doing such an important job, but then ask the client whether things have changed or if the dangers this part fears are still current, and make sure the part is listening to this. Then, regardless of whether the dangers are in the past or they still exist in the present, ask if it would like to meet the Self and get some help so it doesn’t have to be so vigilant, so unpopular with other parts, and so on.

The therapist is the auxiliary Self in the therapeutic process. When the client has no access to their Self, the therapist’s Self stands in until the client does get access to their Self, at which point healing occurs primarily between the client’s Self and the client’s parts. The therapist Self is an important witness. Because tuning forks synchronize automatically, Dick Schwartz compares the client’s Self and the therapist’s Self to two tuning forks.

I have never heard any convincing argument that we get value out of feeling shameful. Compassionate, honest feedback is more successful at inhibiting unwanted behavior than shaming. As Richard Schwartz says, Self is not a marshmallow. Compassion does not equal compliance or cushioning in regard to parts that engage in dangerous behavior. Compassionate feedback is incomparably more effective than shaming if the goal is to influence another’s behavior. 

When we ask exiles about their burdens, they almost always name something that signifies shamefulness: I’m worthless, bad, too much, not enough, unlovable. This belief almost always developed when the child accepted an insult (or insults of a chronic nature) from someone else (an authority figure, an older child, a peer or a group of peers) that generalized from some feature of their body, personality, or behavior to their inherent, global value. My brother says… my feet are too big, I am embarrassing, less than, freakish, unlovable. My teacher gets angry when I can’t spell, therefore I am stupid, unworthy, doomed. 

Protective parts respond to this by trying to inhibit the vulnerable part, or hide/reject that feature of the body, and so on. Ironically, though young managers don’t see the irony, they try to prevent more external shaming by dishing out a lot of internal shaming. 

For an extensive discussion of shame from the IFS perspective, keep an eye out for my new book where I go over all this in detail, which will come out in the spring of 2023. The tentative title is Internal Family Systems Therapy: Shame and Guilt in the Plural Mind. The publisher is Guilford.

Sweezy, M. (Spring 2023). Internal Family Systems Therapy: Shame and Guilt in the Plural Mind (tentative title). Guilford Press.

Anderson, F.G, Sweezy, M, & Schwartz, R.C. (2017). Internal family systems skills training manual: Trauma-informed treatment for anxiety, depression, PTSD & substance abuse. PESI Publishing.

If you haven’t read the second edition of Dick’s first book, it’s 70 per cent new and covers the whole model as well as his story (in the first chapter): Schwartz, R.C & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd edition). Guilford Press.

I’m including this manual on IFS couple therapy because it illustrates great tactics for handling polarities, which we can apply inside as well as interpersonally: Herbine-Blank T & Sweezy, M. (2021). Internal family systems couple therapy skills manual: Healing relationships with intimacy from the inside out. PESI Publishing.

And this manual on IFS addictions treatment, which has great tips for engaging strong firefighters and stubborn manager-firefighter polarities: Sykes, C, Sweezy, M & & Schwartz, R.C. (Spring 2023). Internal Family Systems Therapy: A trauma-informed, compassionate model for substance use, eating, gambling and more (tentative title). PESI Publishing. This is not my book, but it does describe an important IFS approach to the body: McConnell, S. (2020). Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy: Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement, and Touch in Practice. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. 

Also not my book, but important reading regarding trauma: Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma. New York, NY: Viking Press. 

For a bibliography of IFS related publications, go to the Foundation for Self Leadership. I don’t know how often it’s updated, but it will list many publications. Also, check out the bookstore on the IFS Institute website for at least some publications.

Trauma survivors tend to believe they are shameful, unlovable, bad, and so on because children have a distorted view of reality. They feel responsible for things they couldn’t possibly cause. This is just how it goes developmentally. Additionally, in uncontrollable circumstances, manager parts will weigh in and reinforce this immature view in an effort to exert some control. If I am responsible, I can do something. Listen for the word do with clients – it’s a manager talking who’s been trying really hard to get a grip on circumstances that were often largely beyond the client’s control.

The Self shows up when parts are willing to do what we call ‘unblending’ in IFS. Think of consciousness as a lighted stage. All kinds of things can be happening on this stage, and also out of sight in the wings or in dressing rooms below. For example, one part can be in the spotlight holding forth (a blended part), in which case the person is seeing the world through its eyes. Or, multiple parts can be on the lighted stage interacting, with the person seeing through one part’s eyes and then another part’s eyes (I call this serial blending). Or, parts can make room for the Self to come on stage, in which case they can show or tell the Self about their perspective and try seeing the world through its eyes. Finally, the Self can take the spotlight and be on stage while parts are offstage in the wings (this state is more likely to come in meditation than during everyday activity). 

So, my broad advice is to pay attention inside, notice your parts, say hi, be curious and respectful, spend time getting to know them, interact as much as you can, and keep asking them to make some room for you. The more willing they are, the more access you will have to Self-energy. If this proves too challenging for your parts without help, do some inquiry with the help of an IFS trained therapist or coach. You can find a listing of therapists who have been through IFS training on the IFSI website.