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1. Each of us has many subpersonalities, or parts.
Maybe you have experience talking to yourself? For example, you would like to spend money on a new gadget/new shoes, and on the other hand you are worried whether it is a good time for such an expense?
This is how our two inner parts talk to each other: one shows the benefits of buying a new thing, while the other pragmatically looks at the circumstances and money. Sometimes they can argue quite a bit!
Seeing these dialogues in ourselves and getting to know our subpersonalities is part of the IFS therapeutic process.
Internal Family System is an evidence-based approach to psychotherapy, the foundations of which were created by systemic psychotherapist Dr. Richard C. Schwartz.
What does an IFS session look like?
IFS therapy is experiential and practical. The session involves you having a dialogue with your “parts” in the presence of a therapist. During the session, you can discover and learn more deeply about your parts, which present themselves through thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. The role of the therapist is to accompany, guide, and support.
Selected assumptions of the IFS model
3. As a result of difficult experiences (most often from childhood), our parts take on different roles, all to protect us and allow us to survive in difficult conditions. When the parts take on these roles, they no longer have the space (or they have much less) to develop their talents.
Imagine a child who is valued in the family only for being ‘something’ (e.g. quiet, polite, not causing trouble) or for doing something specific (e.g. being a confidant of the parent, or through their successes/appearance adding to the parent’s value). Here, parts of the child are created which, in order to gain the attention and love of their parents, take on the roles that are expected of them. The child cannot be natural, cannot develop their talents, but meets the expectations (sometimes unspoken) of their parents. In adulthood, parts can still take on such roles at work, in relationships, in friendships. What once helped survival in the family (the child was saturated with the attention of the parent), today becomes a nuisance. Discovering these roles that our parts have taken on also takes place in the IFS therapeutic process
In the second part of the film 'Inside Out', you can see how our emotions (in simple terms, parts) can support us in different ways. Sometimes this support is healthy, adaptive, but sometimes our parts, under the influence of life history, overwhelmed by beliefs, choose really dysfunctional ways of support. What we can change is to notice how difficult our parts are and help them free themselves from the burdens they carry. On a side note, I highly recommend the first and second parts of this film (Inside Out) - it very specifically illustrates what a view of a person looks like from the point of view of IFS.
2. Each of us, in addition to our parts/subpersonalities, also has a non-judgmental, wise, compassionate SELF. This is the core of our personality.
It is from the perspective of the SELF that we can look at our parts and the conversations in our head. In this way, we bring harmony and balance to our internal system.
If you are interested in this form of therapy, please contact us:
email - info@ckudublin.org
Phone/ WhatsApp: + 353 876 494 555
At the CKU Center, you can also take advantage of other forms of therapy and personal development.
4. All parts have good intentions. Although the parts may be in burdensome roles, their intentions are always good towards us. However, the burdens they carry can make it seem like the parts are not serving us.
When, for example, we are shy, explosive, have no sense of worth, overeat, hurt ourselves, (fill in your own words here), we may feel that parts do not serve us at all. But changing our perspective on the situation is already the beginning of the path to overcoming our difficulties. Because when we look at the fact that our parts carry the burden of shyness, lack of sense of worth, when we see that we have a part that struggles with overeating and self-harm, then we can tenderly take care of our part and, in the therapeutic process, leave behind the burdens that our parts have been carrying (sometimes for a very long time).