Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the way I find compassion for my quirky, fearful, half-baked selves. I see it as a glittering telescope pointed inward, helping make visible the stuff inside you that's normally sealed shut. I started seriously engaging with it in 2023 and since then have been saving meaningful snippets on how to think about it and how to approach it. I love sharing IFS with a wide variety of people, so below I created IFS 101, a resource for beginners, and IFS 102, a resource for super pros (like me, hihi). Much of what's most useful here probably comes from my work with Kaj Sotala, or was sparked by it, thank you! You can find other great practitioners I worked with and recommend at the end of this post.
IFS is a therapeutic modali that views the mind as composed of "parts" (everybody remembers this bit better) and a core "Self" (which most people miss at first).
A part can be any internal experience (emotion, tension, want) that you give an identity to, in whatever form feels most appropriate. It can really be anything.
If you feel tiny rage because you didn’t buy a delicious cupcake, for example, you can feel the feeling and notice that the most appropriate form might be a hairy, furious, rainbow-colored bear. What matters is that it feels like an accurate portrayal of the essence of the feeling. When you summon it, you can relate to it, comfort it, or have it communicate with your other parts, like maybe a health-yoda who really wants what's best for you but, you discover, that it does in a “shouldy” way.
Putting identities on sensations may sound silly, and some people bounce off IFS because of it, but it's actually optional. You can stay with raw sensation and do IFS on it directly. For me, though, putting identities works great, and I think for two reasons. One, our mind works really well with characters. It's easier to imagine, relate, remember, and do all sorts of mental operations with a character than with a raw sensation. Second, it helps you stop treating a sensation like an object and gives you the option to start treating it like a subject (thanks Kant for the distinction): a conscious, independent ‘piece of consciousness’ that may want weird, arbitrary, random-seeming things. In my practice, I often default to experiencing sensations as things. But when I shift and can truly treat it as a subject, like an independent consciousness with its own wants and preferences, my IFS sessions are better.
A key thing in IFS is that there are no bad parts. It’s a non-pathologizing therapeutic modality (I personally think it makes sense to stay away from pathologizing ones). Every part has a positive intent, but some may get stuck in strategies that don't work well anymore, and you may need some time to connect to them and untangle their motivations.
Self in IFS is the core essence beneath all parts. It’s where healing occurs. Not a part itself, but the innate healing, compassionate spacious field within everyone. When parts "step back," Self naturally emerges. It's described as a "field" larger than the individual—felt as love, trust, presence and 8 C’s: Calm, Curiosity, Clarity, Compassion, Confidence, Courage, Creativity, Connectedness.
Self heals by compassionately witnessing parts, without managing, fixing, or wanting any outcome. Self has parallel concepts in many spiritual traditions: Buddha-nature—the inherent awakened quality in all beings, Atman in Hinduism—the true self beyond ego, Christianity: the "Christ within", Taoism: connection to the Tao
My favorite exercise to feel Self is "22: The Path Exercise," an audio meditation in Greater than the sum of our parts (but you'll probably need to do the previous exercises to really appreciate it)
Greater than the sum of our parts is my favorite introduction to IFS, by its creator. It's an audiobook where half the chapters are guided IFS practice and half discuss IFS. Richard Schwartz was asked what's the best introduction to IFS and out of many things he wrote he pointed to this resource. I think you can go really far just by listening to it on loop. (It’s audiobook format only.) Or just set up a session with an IFS guide.
