As an Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner, I’m pleased to offer pure IFS sessions, IFS-enhanced well-being coaching, or a blend depending on your individual needs and preferences.

What Is the Internal Family Systems (IFS) Model?

In short, Internal Family Systems is a natural process for healing and awakening. It is a method for transcending the hurt and trauma of the past. It is also a path of awakening as it shows us how to access and live from Self—our core, divine essence or true identity.

IFS is an inclusive framework at the forefront of a movement toward a more collaborative therapeutic approach that relies on clients’ intuitive wisdom. It offers a clear, non-pathologizing, and empowering view of human cognitive and emotional life and provides a dynamic approach that allows both client and practitioner to enter into a transformational relationship in which healing can occur.

The growth of IFS is a testament to the power of its potential. With IFS, individuals can rapidly unload traumatically held beliefs, sensations and emotions that burden their lives, allowing for Self-led transformation.

IFS is based on the principle that there is an undamaged, resourceful Self at the core of every person and that accessing and working with that Self is a safe, effective way to heal other, hurt parts of ourselves.

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, has been developing the IFS model for more than 30 years, with IFS now practiced by thousands of licensed therapists and other professionals throughout the United States and internationally. Professionals trained in the IFS model use the unique methods IFS offers to create safe environments for clients to become Self-transforming. IFS is a simple yet sophisticated integration of psychology, spirituality, and intra-psychic and family systems theory that:

• Is a client-led approach that respects each client’s pace and goals

• Establishes a productive, trusting, and collaborative partnership between client and practitioner

• Helps practitioners remain centered and open-hearted

• Can effectively help trauma

• Works well with couples, families, groups, and children

Is IFS an Evidence-Based Practice?

Yes! Internal Family Systems is now posted on NREPP as an evidence-based practice. NREPP is the National Registry for Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, a national repository that is maintained by the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Interventions listed in NREPP have been subject to independent, rigorous scrutiny, and are deemed to show significant impact on individual outcomes relating to mental health.

What Conditions Can IFS Improve?

As a clinical treatment, IFS has been rated effective for improving general functioning and well-being. In addition, it has been rated promising for improving:

• Phobia, panic, and generalized anxiety disorders and symptoms

• Physical health conditions and symptoms

• Personal resilience/self-concept

• Depression and depressive symptoms

These scientific findings and the listing of IFS on NREPP affirm the vast potential of IFS therapy for advancing emotional healing and mental well-being. In particular, they indicate promising effects on mind (depression, anxiety), body (physical health conditions), and spirit (personal resilience and self-concept).

In a recent publication in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, IFS has been shown to significantly reduce PTSD symptoms for a group of adults with multiple childhood trauma. Notably, at the one-month follow-up assessment, 92% of participants no longer met criteria for PTSD.

How Can IFS Help Addictive Processes?

Too often society approaches addictive behavior with blame and shame, creating common behavioral spirals of control and release. IFS brings an innovative, new perspective to working with many types of addictive processes, including substance use. It offers a view where there are no bad parts, but only parts that have taken on protective roles and carry burdens shielding their naturally valuable states. IFS can move us into a new dimension of support with these challenging processes and offers methods for using clear, systemic interventions to neutralize polarizations that can occur in the traditional treatment milieu. Through compassion and hope, IFS allows these parts to transform and can resolve addictive processes.

How Can IFS Enhance Health and Well-Being Coaching?

The IFS model is increasingly being applied to coaching. Using it, coaches help clients quickly access a state called the Self which is characterized by qualities like calm, clarity, curiosity, creativity, and compassion. Then, from that state, clients explore and transform their relationships with the parts of them that are blocking their goals or their vision. Finally, they are more able to lead their personal and work lives from the state of Self-leadership which creates more harmony and ease in their relationships.

How Can I Help?

I value IFS as a model for its capacity to meet every person with deep respect and compassion. As an IFS Practitioner, I’m pleased to offer IFS sessions, IFS-enhanced well-being coaching or a blend of the two depending on your individual needs and preferences.

I’ve been honored to keep experiencing the power of this incredible method and believe that, along with psychedelic-assisted therapy, IFS is the medicine our wounded world needs the most to heal. There's so much magic in creating a safe container in which we extend our unconditional positive regard to our clients and trust their unlimited ability to tap into their inner wisdom to heal themselves and become Self-led.

My heart is overfilled with gratitude for Richard Schwartz, PhD and the IFS Institute for their enormous gift to humanity. I trained in IFS at the IFS Institute, the sole provider of official Internal Family Systems trainings, with senior lead trainers Osnat Arbel, PhD and Cece Sykes, LCSW. I continue to participate in IFS supervision, advanced trainings and workshops as well as benefit from private IFS sessions facilitated by a senior IFS Practitioner.

What Is an IFS Session Like?

While many agree that engaging in IFS can be a profoundly life-changing experience, it’s hard to describe what a session feels like. It is often compared to a deep, meditative experience, a creative flow state or a psychedelic journey such as those achieved through Holotropic breath-work. The experience is different for everyone but one aspect is constant: we prioritize the safety of the inner system and never proceed faster or dive deeper than what feels comfortable for the system. In these sessions, nothing is expected or pressured. Parts often communicate through images, symbols, sensations, or feelings, and sometimes they stay silent—it’s all okay! Profound insights commonly emerge in the next few days following a session and it can be valuable to capture them.

How Can IFS and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Work Together?

IFS and psychedelic-assisted therapy are an excellent fit! In fact, Internal Family Systems is one of the main modalities used in MDMA trials done by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). Notably, there’s a current study (now in Phase III trials) looking into how MDMA works with patients with PTSD, and the research is being spearheaded by Dr. Michael and Annie Mithoefer—two experienced IFS therapists.

As Dr. Schwartz writes in No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model:
”I’ve been particularly interested in the use of MDMA, in part because (unlike other psychedelics) when people take MDMA they don’t hallucinate or leave their bodies. Instead, they experience a sense of inner peace, joy, well-being, and a strong compassion and connection to others. In other words, they experience the same things I’d been discovering about the Self. (…) In an early study, the Mithoefers found that 70 percent of the subjects spontaneously began working with their parts in a loving way without any prompting from them. This phenomenon would suggest that what happens in IFS is a natural process that we all know how to do when we are not bound up by protectors.”

And from The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body In the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, MD:
“[The study participants] received two eight-hour psychotherapy sessions, mainly using internal family systems (IFS) therapy. Two months later 83 percent of the patients who received MDMA plus psychotherapy were considered completely cured. None of the patients had adverse side effects. (…) By being able to observe the trauma from the calm, mindful state that IFS calls the Self, mind and brain are in a position to integrate the trauma into the overall fabric of life. This is very different from traditional desensitization techniques, which are about blunting a person’s experience to past horrors. This is about association and integration—making a horrendous event that overwhelmed you in the past into a memory of something that happened a long time ago.”

The IFS model can be applied during three stages of working with psychedelics—preparation, experience, and integration.

Where Can I Find More Information About IFS?

For more information about IFS, please visit the IFS Institute’s website.