Internal Family Systems Therapy

I invite all of you into the room, all your parts and complexity. 

IFS is based on the truth that we are complex beings. We all have multiple parts of ourselves. You’ve probably experienced this: you feel conflicted or ambivalent, part of you wants something, and part of you doesn’t. Part of you sees something from one perspective, and part from another.

The founder of IFS used this core human experience, as well as his work in family systems therapy, to create a process for you to get to know yourself on a deeper level and find healing for your wounded and traumatized parts. IFS can help you build an internal sense of harmony and ability to be responsive and proactive, rather than being mired in conflict, fear, anxiety, depression, or shutdown.

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.
―Carl Gustav Jung

IFS also gives us a path to heal the cultural and legacy burdens we received from family or social structures: those internalized narratives around gender, race, ability, class, or around perfectionism, emotional repression, and fear of abandonment, to name just a few. IFS is a model that supports liberation work.

Talking to parts of myself? Yes, it can seem silly. But even clients who feel weird about it find that IFS helps them develop insight, find self-compassion, improve self-worth, become more resilient, and create new relationships to their own experiences and goals. 

Resources
Internal Family Systems—Meet Your Inner Family is a long article but has a great explanation of the history of the multiplicity of mind concept as well as core IFS concepts.

This super-short video is a good overview of internal parts

This six-minute video is a good overview of the model as a whole.

This eighteen-minute video talks about the model, some of the neuroscience behind it, and how this type of therapy differs from other types of experiential therapies.

And finally, the funny video If My Brain Held a Morning Meeting gives a snapshot of what a client’s internal system might be like when they’re first coming to therapy.

Healing means accepting all parts of ourselves, not just the parts we like, but all of us.
—Louise Hay

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Want to get started? Find answers to common questions on my contact page. Send me an email at augustinkendalltherapy@gmail.com or fill out the form below.