This is a short video on internal family systems or IFS therapy.
I'm an internal family systems therapist.
And I get asked lots of questions about this model.
What is it?
How does it work?
People sometimes find it a bit confusing,
So I really wanted to answer some of those questions here.
So IFS was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz in the late 1980s.
And Dr.
Schwartz.
Had this idea which he really learned from his clients.
Of what we call multiplicity of self.
And this really means that instead of just having one self,
For me that would be Dan,
For you it would be whatever your name is.
In fact,
We are made up,
Our mind is made up of lots of different parts.
And this is not only something that happens if we experience trauma or we have a Mental health diagnosis is just the way that the brain creates the mind.
And sometimes this can be a bit confusing for people or a bit challenging even.
And so a good way to understand it is just to think about a typical part that we would call the inner critic.
And the inner critic is really just the self-critical thoughts you would have in your mind at any time.
We all have an inner critic.
Some of us it's really harsh and negative.
For others it's much milder,
More benign.
But we all have some kind of self-critical thoughts.
Running through our minds throughout the day.
In IFS,
We just say that instead of this is you criticizing yourself,
This is just a part of you criticizing you.
That's immediately very helpful for therapists like me.
Because it means we can identify that part.
And we can start to work with it.
Speak with it directly,
We can understand why it's being so critical.
We can try and collaborate with it and get it to calm down a bit.
Stop giving you such a hard time.
So this is not just a helpful concept,
It's really helpful when you're doing psychotherapy of any kind.
To understand that you have different parts of you.
All of whom are trying their best to help.
And in IFS we have these different parts.
We have the young parts called exiles.
And then parts who are trying to protect them.
And these protectors are divided into.
Firefighters and managers.
I'm not going to get too into the details of all of that in this video.
I will explain more about that in subsequent videos.
Just for now,
This understanding.
That you have young parts of you which really would be the inner child,
Which is again not a new idea.
And then different parts are trying to protect these hurts.
Vulnerable.
Young parts of your system.
And finally we have something called Self with a capital S and Self is.
.
.
It's the wonderful.
.
.
Healing.
Wise,
Compassionate resource that we all possess.
And self-energy.
The expression of self.
Something we're always trying to encourage and develop in our clients.
So I hope that's a good start.
And I will explore some of these concepts in greater depth.
Thank you so much for being with me today.
And I hope you have a lovely day.
