What Is Internal Family Systems and Why Is It Perfect for Adolescent Therapy?
Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic protocol that’s been around for over 30 years but exploded onto the scene during the pandemic and is now being used globally, is especially well-suited for adolescent therapy.
What is IFS?
I offer here a brief and basic introduction to the model. If you type Internal Family Systems into your browser, you will find a plethora of videos, books, blogs, and resources.
Parts
IFS assumes that our identity, that which we self-refer to as “I” or “me,” is a multiplicity. There is not just one “I” but many; these many identities are our parts. We tend to use this language in our everyday life and experience ourselves in this way, though we may not even be aware of it.
For example:
A part of me hates that guy, and a part of me is terribly attracted to him.
A part of me wants to just pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep, but another part of me knows I’ll regret it if I don’t get my ass in gear.
I love my mom, and I hate her.
My party part wants to drink all night long, but I have a part that’s worried I might be an alcoholic.
At home, my mother or daughter or wife parts are in the driver’s seat of my operating ego. I have other parts at work or school that sit in that seat. It would most likely be inappropriate for my lover parts to be the ones that show up to work.
In IFS, we recognize that experiences and behaviors that we typically pathologize—like anxiety, depression, dissociating, anorexia, bulimia, etc.—are burdens that our parts carry for various reasons, often stemming from childhood experiences.
We also identify perpetrator behaviors, such as lying, stealing, or abuse, as burdens or the jobs that our parts do. Also, for a variety of reasons.
The underlying assumption—and the work bears out the truth of this—is that all parts have positive intentions for us. The parts’ intentions for managing our daily lives are positive. Burdened parts have particular jobs or roles in our internal systems. However, their impact can be, at the very least, ineffective and, at the very worst, harmful to others or ourselves. Suicidal and violent parts are examples of the far end of that spectrum.
Approaching a person and their internal psychic landscape from this assumption allows us to approach clients with compassion and curiosity. IFS is strengths-based, non-pathologizing, and enormously compassionate.
Parts’ roles
Exiles are the parts of us that carry wounds, trauma memories, and the unwelcomed and the unacceptable aspects of our psyche. Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, refers to exiles as ‘the basement children’ because these parts of us are exiled to the basements and cellars of our psyche. From an IFS perspective, our exiles flood our system with painful sensations and feelings when we get triggered.
The role or job of our manager parts is to maintain the status quo in our system, including behaviors and emotions, so that we won’t get triggered and the exiles’ pain stays locked away, stays exiled so that we won’t get flooded.
However, life is capricious, uncertain, and unpredictable. No matter how hard our managers may work to manage, sometimes we’re knocked sideways, and we are triggered. Then parts of us come to the forefront, attempting to ‘put out the fire.’ These firefighter parts’ sole job is to quench the emotional pain that rises up from the exiles. Often, the behaviors of the firefighters leave destruction in their wake.
In IFS, the managers and firefighters are considered protector parts in the system. They are both protecting the person from exile energy and also protecting the inviolable essence of the individual, what IFS calls Self energy.
Self energy
In IFS, the assumption is that everyone has an inviolable Self. It’s not a part, but something more than a part. The therapist also operates under the assumption that there is no need to develop Self energy or strengthen, create, grow, or build Self energy. It is already complete in the person and their system. We work towards accessing Self energy. We do this by working with the protector and exiled parts. The beauty and power of this model is that everyone, no matter their wounding, pain, feeling of brokenness, or Self alienation, can eventually find their way to and access Self energy.
We know when we’re tapping into Self energy when we experience one or more of the following, what IFS calls the 8 C’s.
calm
clarity
compassion
confidence
connectedness
courage
creativity
and curiosity
When Self energy is available to the person, healing happens. Self energy is who we are; our parts are what we are—as they say in IFS. I describe the experience of being in Self energy as ‘standing on the Ground of Being’ or ‘coming home to myself.’
IFS and adolescent therapy
Adolescents hold a particular and vital role in our species, one of liminality, of the betwixt and the between. Adolescence is a true becoming, a metamorphosis. A Being that is Coming-into-Being. A Being-that-is-yet-to-Be. Adolescence is the Being-that-is-yet-to-Be and the Being-that-is-now. Situated in the place of Adolescence is to be situated in a place that is not the past nor the future; it is a present moment which paradoxically is a meeting of the past and the future.
They are neither this nor that, neither child nor adult and yet hold aspects of each, and at the same time bring forth completely new aspects of being human. They are “the quintessential paradoxical being,” according to Jungian analyst Sue Crommelin-Dell. Adolescents attempt to discern where the boundaries of this “I” begin and end, and where the boundaries bump up against and are reflected in the world around them. They position themselves both intentionally and unintentionally at the margins of society.
Internal Family Systems—with its compassionate curiosity and understanding, ability to map and systemically connect parts within, and trust in the presence of Self energy to hold intense experiences—is an exceptional therapeutic approach for adolescents. Much comes up in those liminal and imaginal realms of the adolescent psyche. And let’s face it, adolescence can be a time of extreme emotions, heartbreak, and angst. All kinds of parts get activated in teenagers. And in the therapist.
Therapists will have parts that might be reactive to any of the following parts/behaviors in teens:
suicidal and self-harming parts
delinquent parts
idealistic, naïve parts
risk-taking parts
defiant, disrespectful parts
helpless and hopeless parts
For the sake of the young person’s adolescing, their journey of becoming, and to honor and support the essential nature of Adolescence, it is imperative that adolescent therapists work with their parts.
I have found no better approach than IFS to do this work.
Photo by: blackdiamond67