What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Internal Family Systems Therapy is a psycho-spiritual model that can really help you to understand what is going on inside.

It holds to a few principles.

The first one being that inside every one of us is a sense of self.

You at your core.

The part of you that is connected to the divine.

The part of you that is your intuition.

Part that is untaintable,

Uncorruptible and always there.

When things happen in life.

That become too much for the system.

Other parts of us.

Will take over to keep us safe.

The idea of internal family systems is that within us there is an internal family of parts that try to navigate and respond when the self was not available.

You have managers,

Parts of you that will proactively try and protect the system,

That will implement structure and routine and try and control.

You have firefighters that also try and keep us safe,

But they are reactive.

They will respond with emotionality,

With addictive behaviors,

With a reactive response to keep us safe.

And then we also have A.

Exile,

A part of us that basically took the brunt of whatever happened.

The managers and the firefighters will try and help us to not experience this pain.

They pull us in one way,

Pull us in the other way,

And there's a lot of internal conflict there.

The way we get around all of that is to connect to the sense of self.

The self has a few base traits and concepts.

For example,

The self is compassionate,

It's curious,

It's calm,

It's connected,

It is confident,

It is creative.

It's got patience,

Perseverance,

Playfulness,

And persistence.

The traits of basically you.

At your core,

At your best.

You connect into the heart space.

You find that place within.

Or you find someone that can model those traits.

And when they're in the self,

Your self tends to pop up.

From that space you embody it.

You become aware of the different parts that are arising.

And you connect to them and you welcome them in.

You almost develop a little bit of an internal dialogue.

The self connecting to the parts and maybe acting as an internal mediator,

Therapist or parent,

Letting each part speak in turn.

Asking them.

What are you holding on to?

How are you keeping us safe?

And what do you need?

And in time,

Those parts learn to put down their old roles,

Their old jobs,

Release and reintegrate.

If you'd like more on internal family systems,

I've got some audio and video content here on Insight Dharma.

I encourage you to check it out.