10/21/2025
🧠 Ever feel like you're being pulled in opposite directions, or that you're unintentionally working against your goals? That might be your "internal family" at work!
IFS stands for Internal Family Systems therapy, and despite what you might initially gather from the name, it's an individual-focused therapy.
IFS helps us understand different Parts within ourselves (think Pixar's Inside Out), and how they show up differently to protect us (even if it isn't always helpful). Understanding these parts can help us bring them into balance!
In IFS, we focus on 3 key parts:
❤️"The Self" — your 'truest' self, you at your core, and your strengths. There are 8 C's of Self: Compassion, Calm, Curious, Connected, Confident, Courageous, Creative, and Clarity. When we work to access these Parts, we're operating from our truest self!
👷"Protectors" — these consist of 'firefighters' and 'managers', the Parts that keep you safe (sometimes too safe, and cause us to feel that inner conflict or confusion)
😓 "Exiles" — these are wounded parts that we've pushed away.
Let's see a scenario in action. Think about one of your goals. One part drives you to achieve it, while another criticizes you when you slip up. Another might feel a sense of failure and keep you from continuing on your pursuit of this goal.
In IFS, we don't fight these parts, we get curious about them, understand what they're trying to do for us, and then bring them back into balance!
For the full breakdown on Internal Family Systems therapy, we invite you to check out the link in our first comment and read our latest blog, written by our very own incredible therapists: Brennan Howick & Jon Voigt 💙
What do you think of IFS? Does this seem like something you'd like to try? 🤔
