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Internal family systems (IFS) helps us understand we have young, wounded parts inside.

These parts hold painful thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences from childhood.

IFS offers a step-by-step way to befriend and heal these hurt young parts.

When I first meet a new client, I often need to socialise them to the idea that our mind is comprised of many different parts. This idea, called "multiplicity of self,"1 is a big paradigm shift for most people. We tend to think of ourselves as a singular self, meaning, I am just "Dan." And of course, I am Dan. That’s my name, what everyone calls me, how I sign off my emails.

But the big paradigm shift is to understand that, instead of being "Dan," I am made up of many "parts of Dan." Although this idea has become associated with internal family systems (IFS), because it’s one of the fastest-growing and most popular therapy models right now, it’s not unique to IFS. Schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, Gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, and many more are, in their different ways, parts-based approaches to healing.

But in this post, I will focus on IFS, because it’s my favourite of these models and makes the most sense to me, clinically, in understanding how this multiplicity works. In IFS, you have two main categories of parts: "exiles," which are the hurt young parts of you, holding painful memories, thoughts, beliefs, and experiences from key stages of your childhood. And you have "protectors," whose job it is to make sure you never get hurt again in the same way.

If you........

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