How Internal Family Systems Therapy Can Help You Understand Yourself

You may have heard of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, a relatively new and buzzy therapy popular in the trauma therapy community. This theory offers an interesting perspective on personality and can help you gain insight into your thoughts and behaviors. So what is IFS therapy, and how can you use it to better understand yourself?

In IFS theory, the personality is made up of many different parts that are managed by the Self. You can think of this like a mug full of pens and pencils - many different parts brought together by the whole. You may have the part of yourself that loves to have fun with friends, and another part that likes to stay in and have some quiet time. Your Self is the conscious part of you that decides what your plans are for the night. 

There are three parts of the personality that are of particular interest in IFS - Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters. Exiles are parts of self that have experienced pain, trauma, and/or rejection, often in childhood. These parts are isolated from the conscious Self in an effort to protect oneself from feeling pain, rejection, and other negative feelings. Managers are the parts of self that try to control the individual’s situation, relationships, and experiences in order to prevent those exiled parts from being activated. Firefighters try to ‘put out the fire’ of the pain that is caused when the exiles are triggered, often using strategies like substance use, mindless scrolling, and other unhealthy coping mechanisms to dull the pain. 

Let’s give an example: take Amy, a fictional 25-year-old woman. Amy was raised in a household where she often felt overlooked by her parents, who were engrossed in their own careers and played favorites with Amy’s younger sister. As a result, there is an exiled part of herself that craves connection, attention, and unconditional love. Her manager parts lead her to be a people - pleaser, bending over backwards to make others happy in an effort to avoid the pain of feeling overlooked. When she does feel rejected and overlooked, those exiled parts are triggered, and the firefighters kick in. The firefighter drives her to decide to go out to the bar and binge drink to feel happy and connected again.

IFS is a unique therapy, influenced both by Freudian psychodynamic theory and modern trauma research. This framework can help you better understand yourself and your behaviors. Can you think of any unhealthy coping mechanisms you use to avoid emotional pain? What do you think that emotional pain was triggered by? These are just some questions to get you started. A therapist trained in IFS therapy can help you dig deeper, get to know all of your parts, and ultimately strengthen your Self. 

References 

IFS Institute. (2023). The internal family systems model outline. Ifs-Institute.com. https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/internal-family-systems-model-outline