IFS Therapy in Boone

Understanding IFS: The Language Of Parts

The language of parts has been around since the time of Plato when he wrote about reason, spirit and appetite. Freud used the words, Id, ego, and super ego for the same concept. We’ve all said things like, “Part of me wants to go to the movie tonight and part of me wants to stay home” or, “Part of me wants to address an issue with a family member and part of me just wants to forget about it.” So in that sense, we, too, have used the language of parts in everyday life.

IFS, which stands for Internal Family Systems, is a holistic approach to therapy that incorporates the language of parts into the healing process. It provides a way for us to zoom out and look at ourselves from a bigger perspective, allowing us to see our emotions as if they are a part of us. Instead of trying to avoid our feelings or stuff them down, we can learn to view them as younger parts of ourselves that need compassion and validation. 

For example, if you grew up in a home with abusive parents or caregivers, you may have developed a people-pleasing “part” that helped you survive the trauma of a rocky childhood. IFS can help you connect with this part in a gentle, compassionate way, allowing that part to heal from the past and fulfill a healthier role in your life. Through this transformation of parts, you can connect with your whole “Self” and live a more balanced and well-rounded life. All our parts have good intentions and therefore are good parts. We never try to get rid of them, we simply get to know them so they do not have to work so hard at their job of, say, endlessly pleasing people.

Who Can Internal Family Systems Help?

Internal Family Systems is ideal for people who are looking to do deeper work in therapy. It’s not about short-term relief—although it can certainly provide some, given how quickly new insights are fostered—but about initiating long-term change through a process of building self-awareness.

After all, self-awareness is the key to all growth. You can’t heal what you don’t know, and therein lies the magic of IFS: it helps you get to know yourself on a deeper level. You can understand where triggers and reactions come from, why inner conflicts persist, and what self-defeating behaviors might be getting in the way of a happier life.

IFS can help with numerous mental health issues and personal challenges, including:

1. Anxiety

2. Depression

3. Trauma and PTSD

4. Panic disorders

5. Eating disorders

6. Addiction

At Surf Ridge Counseling, many of the clients who come to me for IFS have been in therapy for years but haven’t gotten the results they are looking for. They want to explore the root of their problems, not just focus on surface solutions, and that’s why IFS is so transformative for them—it initiates change on a deeper level than traditional models of therapy allow for.

How Does IFS Therapy Work?

I like to tell my clients that IFS is about getting your head, your heart, and your gut to align. It's about listening to what your parts are telling you and getting them to serve your “Whole Self” instead of causing inner conflict. On the surface, parts work can seem quite abstract, but once you begin therapy, you start to see just how simple and organic IFS can be.

Let’s say that you’ve struggled with anger for as long as you can remember—anger is your default response when things go wrong. In the language of IFS, we’d say that you have an “angry part.” While you might not like this angry part, it’s important to remember that it is not inherently “bad” (there are no bad parts). Your angry part has a job, and its job is to help you deal with an unpredictable and often unfair world. 

Digging a little deeper, perhaps we find that this angry part developed when you were young, and you were dealing with bullying, rejection, abuse, or illness. Although anger may have helped you cope as a child, it may have outlived its usefulness. Now, as an adult, it may be holding you back from forming healthy relationships and feeling happy with yourself.

Through the process of getting to know this angry part, we can understand what its intentions are and (most importantly) what role it might serve going forward. After all, a little bit of anger is not a bad thing—but we want to channel it and redirect it so that it’s not sabotaging your life. In this way, IFS helps you interact with your parts in a healthy and constructive way so that they do not control your whole self. 

IFS also incorporates somatic principles. When getting to know a part, we go inside our body to find out where in [or around] our body the part resides. For example, if you have an anxiety part, it might live in your chest and you might experience it as your heart beating faster. Connecting with an emotion and knowing where it is in your body can help you get down to a deeper, more subconscious part of your brain. In this way it brings what is unconsciously driving your behaviors to your conscious mind, enabling you to transform old behaviors and habits into more conscious ways of moving in the world.

How Can IFS Therapy Benefit Your Life?

I know the wonders IFS can work because I've experienced them as a client myself. A long time ago, a therapist friend of mine pointed out my hesitation to move forward in my life, saying: “I think you have a part of you that doesn’t believe you can do it.” 

This set me on a journey to create a freer and productive career and helped me understand emotions that were holding me back. An unfolding began once I started my IFS journey, and it’s one that had positive ripple effects throughout the rest of my life.

Based on what I’ve seen in my own life and the lives of countless clients, I believe that IFS can help you:

1. Increase your self-compassion

2. Decrease feelings of guilt and shame

3. Trust your gut and your intuition more

4. Develop healthier coping strategies 

5. Boost your communication skills

6. Establish healthier boundaries 

The greatest part, as an IFS therapist, is simply getting to witness the process of my clients putting aside their judgments and learning to treat their emotions as they would treat a very young child—with gentleness, compassion, and acceptance.