Love

I want to preface this post by stating that the concepts and suggestions I’ve made below are my own thoughts, opinions, and suggestions based on my own experience working in the mental health sector and lived experience. There may also be numerous grammatical and logical errors. I know that you’re intuitive enough to understand what I’m attempting to describe and explain. Therefore, there will be no references section at the end. This is merely an expression of thoughts, a stream of consciousness (William James coined the term Stream of Consciousness).

Episodic, acute, and chronic anxiety can be miserable and debilitating. Individuals living with anxiety have generally experimented with many techniques to cope with anxiety symptoms, and they have often been practicing these techniques for months, years, or decades. Anxiety is life changing. Current treatment can be efficacious at reducing the intensity or frequency of symptoms for the vast majority of people living with anxiety, but only at best. I, myself, have tried the deep breathing technique commonly advised by mental health professionals, and it can be about as useful as taking a sugar pill. There is credible science that supports deep breathing exercises can improve symptoms and recovery rates for stress, anxiety and depression levels – but what about for an anxiety attack or a panic attack or intense chronic symptoms of anxiety?

Sometimes nothing is effective enough for immediate relief. It is my contention that building a relationship with a trained psychiatrist, specialised in this domain, is an essential first step. Your treating specialist(s) will need to have extensive experience and a comprehensive understanding of the debilitating impacts of anxiety, anxiety attacks, and/or panic attacks. I recommend psychiatry because you will need someone who can prescribe short-term medication, schedule 4 or greater, to alleviate the pain rapidly. All symptoms a person may experience from any condition in the anxiety family present a risk for searching for any immediate relief. This is true for you or me or anyone. Without prompt and effective medical care readily available, many people who do not have a plan for managing anxiety will potentially search for an unhealthy substitute to acquire relief.

These substitutes are often unhelpful long term but effective short term. We all know what they are: alcohol and other drugs, sexual promiscuity or sex addiction, love addiction, gambling, excessive or unhealthy eating habits, self-injury, addictive forms of gaming, impulse spending, co-dependent or dependent behaviours on people, people pleasing, running away (avoiding reality), raging, reckless driving and other criminal behaviour, and relying on pharmaceuticals (legally prescribes or otherwise) that will have long-term unhealthy side effects. People know how to “doctor shop”, and although this area of medicine is becoming much more regulated, it still occurs. Unfortunately, there are people who do require certain types of legal drugs, in a timely manner, to find relief as a means of not engaging in any of the previously mentioned behaviours.

Some people may not have much faith in the field of psychiatry or psychology – HOWEVER – you may find yourself in a situation one day where you will need a doctor who knows your history to increase the likelihood of prescribing medication to treat anxiety when you need it most. This medication usually has addictive properties. An ethical psychiatrist will usually be unwilling to prescribe more than a single repeat of potentially addictive medication to treat their patients. This is standard, regulated medical practice in Australia.

Anyone working in the drug and alcohol sector or has regular contact with a person living with anxiety, or any form of addiction, will know that patients – people – are not being seen in a timely manner top treat anxiety before the patient starts looking elsewhere. Even once the patient has accessed some type of medical care, the length of care is not long enough for the patient to be “well enough” after discharge or ending their hourly session, to be on their own in the community safely without becoming vulnerable to their condition in a short time and looking for more relief to ease their pain and improve their well-being.

If a person or a patient cannot depend on the medical system in the way they need to feel safe and well, they will almost certainly begin to lose faith and trust in health professionals, and ‘the system’. This perpetuates their internalised stigma being reinforced, yet again.

I am not saying the patient doesn’t have a significant responsibly of their own to make valuable choices outside of medical treatment. I quote what someone once said to me, “You may not have asked for this disease, but it becomes our responsibility to stay well”. That is our duty as the person living with a health issue of any kind. There are things we certainly must do (or not do) to stay as healthy as possible. The help make not be there in a timely manner the next time we need immediate help.

It can take weeks or more to enter a detox facility. It can take months to enter a rehabilitation facility. It can take months for an available appointment to open with a psychiatrist. It becomes our responsibility to know that even when we’re feeling well and back to “normal”, we must continue those relationships with medication professionals. It becomes our responsibility to try alternative medicines if that’s something you’re interested in. Let’s face it, psychiatrists cease their practice, our professional relationship has reached it’s potential for adequate, loving care, or we want to try something new.

Start the process of finding a reliable, qualified, and credible psychiatrist today. I would recommend finding a counselling psychologist or other mental health professional that you have a productive and friendly working relationship with – and if you want to practice Buddhism, or acupuncture, or hypnotherapy, or any other complementary and alternative medicine – do it. If you want to connect with God – do it. If you want to see a naturopath – do it. Whatever it is, this may very well be a lifelong journey for you. Based on my own experience, don’t stop because you think you’re “all better now”. The previously mentioned professions or treatment options or lifestyle choices can be extremely expensive, but I would encourage you to save for it, find less expensive options. Sitting in church is free, or listening to an online guru can be the price or maintaining your mobile service bill.

I once knew of a fellow peer in treatment alongside me who said he saved money for years to travel overseas to have a procedure not available in Australia at the time for this purpose. He wanted blood transfusions and heat therapy for chronic pain that didn’t doctors could not determine had physiological origins. The peer was sure it had to, and medical investigations in Australia come up negative. The peer explained the theory behind blood transfusions and heat therapy – he believed – were supposed to improve his blood circulation and blood flow to treat the chronic pain he’d been living with for years after a workplace accident. Even this procedure overseas proved ineffective in mitigating his chronic pain. So, next he tried the wim hof method. He changed is diet. He exercised differently. He tried hypnotherapy. Finally, he turned psychology to treat stress and process childhood trauma. He was being treated for this a private facility where I was a patient at that time. I lost contact with him after I ended my own treatment episode. I don’t know if he’s still living with chronic pain or not.

The following are some very basic and well-known strategies in the Western world of psychology that you can begin to practice today, and then practice every day after that too – even for 5-20 minutes:

– learning about anxiety – your specific “causes” and the conditions more generally

– mindfulness

– relaxation techniques

– correct breathing techniques

– dietary adjustments

– exercise

– learning to be assertive

– building self-esteem

– cognitive therapy

– exposure therapy

– structured problem solving

– support groups

My firm believe is this:

Strong, healthy, quality relationships are essential to treating anxiety and other psychological illnesses. This about your life today: are you lonely (romantically or otherwise), are you a stressed individual, do you regularly feel like you job is stressful or unfulfilling, do you feel sad a lot, are you feeling pointless a lot, or feeling helpless a lot, feeling shame a lot, getting angry a lot over considerably minor things? etc. etc. etc. I would strongly encourage talking to a professional and begin exploring what options you have available to you.

Try, explore, play with a few methods of treatment. However, this must take a priority in your life. It must balance will all the many other obligations and responsibilities people encounter daily.

Type alternative medications or approaches to psychology. There are so many. It can be fun to try out a few when your finances permit. Even planning a holiday every 3-6 months is taking care of your well-being.

Many blessings friends.

“Laughter is anti-inflammatory”

Reasonably well supported. Research suggests laughter reduces cortisol and certain inflammatory markers. It is not a medical treatment but the physiological effect is real.

“Crying is regulating”

Well supported. Emotional tears contain stress hormones that the body is literally shedding. Most people feel a genuine physiological calm after crying — that is not imagined, it is the nervous system returning to baseline.

“Hugging is immunoprotective”

Fairly well supported. Physical touch triggers oxytocin release, which has measurable effects on stress hormones. A Carnegie Mellon study found people who received more hugs were less susceptible to illness.

“Singing is vagal toning”

Accurate and underappreciated. The vagus nerve runs through the vocal cords and throat. Singing, humming, and even gargling genuinely stimulates it, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and promotes calm.

“Dancing is neurogenic”

Interesting claim. Neurogenesis means the creation of new neurons and it is stimulated by aerobic exercise, coordination, and rhythm. Dance combines all three, so this has a reasonable basis. Also, learning new skills, a diet rich in flavonoids, and restful sleep promote neurogenesis.

“Joy is a biological necessity”

The body does not treat joy as a luxury. Positive emotional states have measurable effects on immune function, cardiovascular health, healing rates, and longevity. Chronic joylessness is genuinely harmful physically, not just emotionally.

Introduction

There is a moment in therapy that many practitioners recognise — the moment a client says something like, “Part of me wants to leave the relationship, but another part is terrified of being alone,” or “I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, but I can’t seem to stop.” These are not signs of ambivalence or contradiction. They are the natural language of a mind that is, at its core, multiple.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, developed by American psychotherapist Richard Schwartz in the 1980s, offers a sophisticated, compassionate framework for understanding this inner multiplicity. Rather than treating internal conflict as pathology or weakness, IFS recognises that the human psyche is composed of distinct “parts” — each with its own perspective, feelings, motivations, and history. Far from being a burden, this internal family can become, through careful therapeutic work, a source of extraordinary resilience and self-understanding.

This article explores IFS therapy in depth: its theoretical foundations, its core concepts, how it aligns with and enriches other established therapeutic approaches, and why working with parts has become one of the most generative developments in contemporary psychotherapy.

The Architecture of the Inner World: Core IFS Concepts

The Self

At the heart of IFS is the concept of the Self — a capital-S, differentiated Self that is not a part but rather the core of who we are. Schwartz describes Self as characterised by what he calls the “Eight Cs”: curiosity, calm, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness. In a well-functioning psyche, Self leads the internal system with warmth and wisdom, much as a skilled and attuned parent might lead a family.

Crucially, IFS holds that Self is never damaged, even in the most traumatised individuals. It may be buried beneath layers of protective activity, but it is always there — always intact, always available. This is a radical and profoundly hopeful premise, and one that resonates deeply with strengths-based and person-centred traditions.

The Parts

IFS identifies three broad categories of parts:

Exiles are the youngest, most vulnerable parts of the psyche. They carry the emotional weight of painful past experiences — shame, grief, terror, humiliation, abandonment, worthlessness. Exiles are often frozen in the moment of the original wound, experiencing distress as though it is happening right now. Because their pain is so intense, the rest of the internal system works hard to keep them hidden, suppressed, and out of conscious awareness. The system exiles them to protect the individual from being overwhelmed.

Managers are the proactive protectors — the parts that work day-to-day to keep exiles contained and maintain a functional life. They might appear as the inner critic who drives someone to perfectionism, the hypervigilant part that constantly scans for danger, the pleaser who never says no, the workaholic who stays perpetually busy, or the intellectualiser who processes everything through logic to avoid feeling. Managers are often the parts clients first present with in therapy. They can be harsh, relentless, and deeply self-critical — but they are acting out of care. They are trying to prevent the exile’s pain from surfacing and disrupting the person’s life.

Firefighters are the reactive protectors who spring into action when an exile’s pain does break through — when a trigger cuts past the managers’ defences. Their methods are urgent and often extreme: dissociation, substance use, bingeing, self-harm, rage, sexual compulsion, suicidal ideation. Like emergency workers who will break down a door to stop a fire, firefighters care little for collateral damage. They want the pain stopped, now. What might look from the outside like destructive or self-defeating behaviour is, from the inside, a desperate act of protection.

The Burden

IFS introduces the concept of burdens — the extreme beliefs, emotions, and somatic experiences that parts carry as a result of trauma or adverse experience. A part might carry the burden of worthlessness, of being too much, of being fundamentally unlovable, of needing to be perfect to be safe. Burdens are not intrinsic to the part — they were taken on, often in childhood, and can be released through therapeutic work. This process, known as unburdening, is one of the most moving and clinically significant moments in IFS therapy.

The Therapeutic Process: Accessing Self-Leadership

From Pathologising to Curious Partnership

One of the most significant shifts IFS invites is a fundamental change in how clients — and therapists — relate to symptoms. Rather than treating, suppressing, or pathologising parts, IFS invites clients to approach them with curiosity and genuine interest. What is this part trying to do for me? What is it afraid would happen if it stopped? This shift transforms the therapeutic relationship with internal experience from adversarial to collaborative.

This is deeply congruent with person-centred therapy as developed by Carl Rogers. The Rogerian conditions of unconditional positive regard, empathy, and congruence are, in IFS, extended inward — the client is invited to offer those same conditions to their own parts. The therapist models and facilitates an attitude of deep, non-judgmental curiosity toward even the most frightening or destructive-seeming aspects of the client’s inner world.

The U-Turn

IFS uses the evocative phrase “the U-turn” to describe the core therapeutic movement: from focusing attention outward (on external people, situations, or events) to turning inward and attending to one’s own parts. This is not a withdrawal from relationship, but a deepening of internal attunement that ultimately enriches external relating.

Working with Protectors First

A key technical principle in IFS is that therapists never attempt to work directly with exiles until protective parts have been acknowledged, understood, and have given permission. Attempting to bypass protectors — to push clients toward vulnerable material before the system is ready — risks overwhelming the client, reinforcing the protectors’ sense that they need to work harder, and potentially retraumatising.

This principle reflects trauma-informed care at a systemic level. Trauma-informed practice recognises that what looks like resistance is actually protection, that the body and mind have wisdom in their defensive responses, and that safety must precede exploration. In IFS, the therapist earns the trust of the protective system before asking it to step aside — and this is done with patience, respect, and genuine appreciation for the parts’ efforts.

IFS and Attachment Theory: The Inner Attachment System

Attachment theory, originally articulated by John Bowlby and extended by Mary Ainsworth and many others, holds that human beings are biologically wired for connection, and that the patterns of early caregiving relationships shape our internal working models of self and other. These models — secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganised — become templates for how we relate to ourselves and others throughout life.

IFS offers a compelling lens through which to understand these attachment patterns. A child who learned that their caregivers were unreliable or frightening may have a manager who vigilantly monitors others for signs of abandonment, and a firefighter who withdraws or rages when attachment fears are triggered. The exile at the centre of this system carries the original wound: the devastating belief that they are too much, not enough, or fundamentally unworthy of consistent love.

From an IFS perspective, insecure attachment patterns can be understood as the elaborate protective architecture built around early attachment wounds. The work of therapy is not simply to provide a corrective relational experience with the therapist (though this is important), but to help the client develop a secure relationship with their own internal system — to become, in a sense, a reliable and loving parent to their own parts.

This resonates with the concept in attachment theory of earned security — the idea that adults can develop secure attachment through reflective, attuned relationships, including therapeutic ones. In IFS, the therapeutic relationship with the Self becomes a primary vehicle for this.

IFS and Emotionally Focused Therapy: Accessing Primary Emotion

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg, centres on accessing and transforming primary emotional experience as the key to therapeutic change. EFT identifies how people become trapped in negative interactional cycles — often driven by underlying attachment fears and needs — and works to create new, corrective emotional experiences within the therapeutic relationship or within close partnerships.

There is rich conceptual overlap between EFT and IFS. Both approaches recognise that:

• The emotional reactions clients present with (often described in EFT as “secondary” or “instrumental” emotions) frequently protect against deeper, more vulnerable primary emotions.
• Accessing and expressing primary emotional experience, in the context of an attuned, validating relationship, is transformative.
• Defensive strategies and relational patterns make sense in the context of their developmental origins.

In IFS terms, the secondary reactive emotions — anger, contempt, numbness — are often the expressions of firefighter or manager parts, while the primary vulnerable emotions — terror, grief, shame — belong to the exiles. The EFT therapist and the IFS therapist are, in a meaningful sense, working toward the same goal: creating conditions in which the most vulnerable inner experience can be safely accessed, expressed, and received.

For practitioners integrating both models, EFT’s attention to the intersubjective, relational dimension of emotional experience complements IFS’s detailed intrapsychic map beautifully.

IFS and Trauma-Informed Care: Parts as Survivors

Modern trauma theory — shaped by figures including Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Judith Herman, and Pat Ogden — has fundamentally reframed our understanding of traumatic experience and its sequelae. Trauma is understood not as a historical event but as an unresolved physiological and psychological response that continues to shape perception, behaviour, and relationship in the present.

IFS is inherently and deeply trauma-informed. Several key principles align precisely:

Safety first. IFS protocol requires establishing safety with protective parts before approaching wounded exiles — this is trauma-informed practice enacted at a structural level.

Symptoms as adaptations. IFS reframes all parts, including those that drive the most problematic symptoms, as adaptive responses to overwhelming experience. This directly mirrors trauma-informed care’s understanding of symptoms as the body and mind’s best attempts to survive.

The body as part. IFS readily integrates with somatic approaches, recognising that parts often manifest in the body — the tight chest of a manager, the hollow ache of an exile, the rush of adrenaline of a firefighter. This aligns with Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which understand trauma as fundamentally embodied.

Avoiding retraumatisation. The IFS approach of never forcing or bypassing protective systems directly addresses the risk of retraumatisation that is central to trauma-informed care. The system is never pushed faster than it is ready to go.

Van der Kolk has noted in his own work that IFS offers one of the most effective frameworks for trauma therapy available, precisely because it honours the adaptive intelligence of the traumatised system while providing a clear pathway toward healing.

IFS and Strengths-Based Practice: The Innate Wisdom of Parts

Strengths-based approaches in psychology — drawing on positive psychology, solution-focused therapy, and narrative traditions — begin from the premise that clients possess inherent resources, capacities, and competencies that can be identified and amplified in service of wellbeing and change.

IFS is, at its core, profoundly strengths-based. Consider:

• Every part, no matter how destructive its behaviour appears, is motivated by positive intent. The self-critical manager wants the client to be safe. The dissociating firefighter wants the client to survive. The exile, once unburdened, reveals not just pain but also energy, creativity, vitality, and joy.
• The Self is understood as inherently healthy, wise, and compassionate — it is never broken, never the problem.
• The goal of IFS is not to eliminate or control parts but to help them transform — to release their burdens and step into new, more constructive roles. Former managers may become trusted advisors; former firefighters may channel their protective energy more skillfully.

This sits comfortably alongside narrative therapy, which invites clients to identify their own preferred stories, values, and competencies, and to recognise that the problem is never the person — a belief IFS would extend to say that the problem is not even the part, but the burden the part carries.

Parts in the Consulting Room: Clinical Applications

The Inner Critic

One of the most common — and most clinically challenging — experiences clients bring to therapy is the inner critic: the harsh, often relentless internal voice that judges, shames, and attacks. Many therapeutic approaches attempt to challenge, reframe, or quieten this voice.

IFS invites a different approach: curiosity. What is this part trying to do? What is it afraid would happen if it stopped criticising? Almost invariably, the inner critic is a manager whose attacks are preemptive — better for me to shame myself than for others to shame me; better for me to be hard on myself than to become complacent and fail. Underneath the critic, there is almost always an exile who already feels deeply ashamed, and a fear that without constant vigilance, that exile’s shame would engulf everything.

When clients can approach the inner critic with curiosity rather than reactivity or resignation, something remarkable often happens: the critic softens. It is, at last, being seen. Its genuine care — however misguided its methods — is being acknowledged.

Polarised Parts

Clients frequently present with two parts in fierce opposition: the part that wants to leave a relationship and the part that is terrified to; the part that wants to rest and the part that drives relentlessly; the part that rages and the part that pleases. IFS understands these polarisations as a natural consequence of the parts system — each part pushes harder against the other in a bid to be heard, and the client gets caught in the middle, exhausted and immobilised.

The therapeutic work is not to choose a side but to witness and appreciate both parts, understanding what each is protecting and what burden each carries. When both parts feel genuinely heard — often, for the first time — they can begin to negotiate rather than fight, and a new, more integrated path often emerges organically.

Parts in the Body

Working somatically with parts is a natural extension of IFS practice. Clients are often invited to locate a part in the body — Where do you feel that manager? Where is the exile? — and to attend to it with curiosity. This somatic dimension both deepens access to parts and creates a felt, embodied quality to healing that purely cognitive work cannot achieve.

This reflects the insights of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and somatic trauma work: that the body holds experience, and that healing requires the body’s participation, not just the mind’s.

The Therapist’s Parts: Working from Self

IFS has a distinctive and valuable contribution to make to therapist reflective practice. The model recognises that therapists, too, have parts — parts that may be activated by particular clients, content, or dynamics. A therapist’s rescuer part might want to fix a client’s pain. A manager part might become anxious in the presence of a client’s rage. A part carrying shame might be triggered by a client’s self-loathing.

IFS invites therapists to develop the same kind of Self-to-part relationship within themselves that they facilitate in clients. The goal is to work predominantly from Self — from that grounded, curious, compassionate centre — rather than from reactive parts. This is what makes authentic, attuned presence possible, and it is what clients most fundamentally need.

This resonates with concepts from relational psychoanalysis and interpersonal neurobiology around the therapist’s own embodied presence, attunement, and regulatory capacity as central to therapeutic change.

What the Research Tells Us

IFS has been formally recognised by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as an evidence-based practice. Emerging research supports its effectiveness across a range of presentations including depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, relationship distress, and chronic pain. Qualitative research consistently highlights clients’ experience of increased self-compassion, reduced internal conflict, and a greater sense of agency and coherence.

It is worth noting that the mechanisms of change in IFS (i.e., accessing and processing primary emotion, developing self-compassion, resolving internal conflict, processing traumatic memory) align with well-established change processes across multiple modalities. IFS does not work in spite of other evidence-based frameworks; it works, in significant part, because of the same underlying processes.

A Note on Integration

IFS is perhaps best understood not as a standalone modality but as a rich, generative framework that deepens and organises other therapeutic approaches. It sits comfortably alongside Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (whose defusion techniques offer another pathway to working with parts), Schema Therapy (whose modes bear striking resemblance to IFS parts), EMDR (which can be powerfully integrated with IFS for trauma processing), and Compassion Focused Therapy (which shares IFS’s emphasis on developing compassionate self-relationship).

For practitioners working across multiple frameworks, IFS offers what might be called a meta-map — a way of understanding the internal landscape that gives shape and direction to interventions drawn from many sources.

Conclusion: The Courage to Go Inside

Ultimately, IFS therapy is an invitation to curiosity over judgement, to compassion over shame, to relationship over exile. It asks clients to do something both simple and profoundly courageous: to turn toward their own inner world with the same warmth and interest they might offer a dear friend.

The parts of us that cause us the most distress are rarely our enemies. They are, more often, the oldest and most loyal parts of ourselves — still working, long after the need has passed, from strategies learned in more dangerous times. When we can see them clearly, appreciate their efforts, and help them lay down their burdens, what emerges is not fragmentation but wholeness: a richer, more spacious sense of self, capable of greater authenticity, deeper connection, and genuine wellbeing.

This article is intended for professional and educational purposes. If you are interested in exploring IFS-informed therapy for yourself, please speak with a qualified mental health practitioner.