Internal Family Systems is a client led, pscyho-spiritual framework with its roots in Family Therapy and Systems Theory. Amongst its myriad applications it has an established and growing evidence base demonstrating its capacity to heal trauma, and naturally and safely support psychedelic journeying and integration. It works with the multiple aspects of ourselves, within ourselves - which we experience as distinct, and often conflicting, beliefs, thoughts, sensations, energies, and feelings - as well as what both Jung and Richard Schwartz understand as 'the Self'. Within IFS, being 'in Self', outside of parts, describes being connected with a core source of energy that, as living beings, we can access, despite early life or present day difficulties. In slowing down and connecting with self-energy through a process of 'unblending', we can communicate and build relationships with parts of ourselves to deeply understand the burdens and wisdom they carry and may have carried for many years.
In feeling into and uncovering the patterns and relationships between the complex mix of elements within us, that make up our system as a whole - safely, slowly and compassionately - it is possible to transform our internal system so that we can:
In feeling into and uncovering the patterns and relationships between the complex mix of elements within us, that make up our system as a whole - safely, slowly and compassionately - it is possible to transform our internal system so that we can:
- Truly begin to know ourselves and the extreme roles taken on by parts of us to manage situations or protect against threats. With the clear and gentle facilitation of a qualified IFS therapist in cultivating an intentional embodied space, built on relationality and trust, conditions for generative self healing emerge - to safely tend to present day and historical experiential wounds.
- Release through self energy to reach healing that crosses a threshold of change. The practice of IFS takes us to a liminal space where we are able to sense into the depth of the undiscovered terrain within ourselves, whilst feeling connection with our own and larger innate healing energies. Through a process of 'unblending' and 'unburdening' self-energy allows parts to release long-carried beliefs and roles, which enables transformative shifts in functioning and experiencing. This depth work supports the healing of personal, intergenerational and cultural legacy burdens within our systems.
- Reconfigure through a process of transformation for our whole system, supporting new webs of meaning and patternings of 'us' as an 'ecosystem'. Gently and joyfully over time shifting the entirety of the roles and relationships within our inner system, and subsequently transforming relationships we have with ourselves alongside other systems in the external world, both human and non-human. Making space for emergence in new ways of perceiving, being and relating by calling forward those qualities we wish to intentionally live into and nurturing them.
- Return to alignment with ourselves. Returning and tending through self-energy as an ongoing process of unblending. Navigating a space wherein we can sense, negotiate and affect intentional change - releasing ourselves from unwanted unconscious drives, habitual patterns and 'auto-pilot', influenced by our culture, real world contexts, social location and the complexity of being a human on this earth amongst other complex humans - within structures and institutions of oppression, domination and capital. Oftentimes the patterns that play out within our internal system manifest in our conscious psyche as knowable and relatable feelings such as stuckness, shame, self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, addiction, disconnection, dissociation, perfectionism, need to control, overcome, beat or be better than.