What is Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)?
IFS is a compassionate, non-judgmental approach to therapy that helps you explore the different "parts" of yourself—like your inner critic, protector, or wounded child. By fostering self-awareness and curiosity, IFS guides you in understanding and healing the emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that may be holding you back. This evidence-based method helps you build a healthier relationship with yourself, promoting balance, inner harmony, and lasting personal growth.
Developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, IFS allows you to reconnect with your true Self and heal emotional wounds, including those from trauma, depression, and low self-image. This trauma-informed approach promotes healing by restoring balance to your internal system, making it an effective treatment for emotional challenges.
Exploring Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)
If you’re struggling with low self-respect, low self-image, or unresolved trauma, you may feel stuck in cycles of depression or anxiety. It can be overwhelming, but you don’t have to navigate this alone.Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy offers a powerful way to heal emotional wounds, reduce depression, and boost self-esteem by working with the different parts of yourself. IFS helps you understand and heal from the trauma that might be holding you back, guiding you toward a more integrated, compassionate relationship with yourself.
Who Can Benefit from IFS Therapy?
IFS is beneficial for anyone dealing with emotional struggles, including:Trauma and childhood woundsAnxiety and depressionLow self-esteem and low self-respectPTSD and complex PTSDEmotional difficulties in relationshipsIf you're struggling with any of these issues, IFS can help you heal, regain emotional balance, and move toward a more integrated and empowered self.
How IFS Therapy Can Help You
IFS offers a unique approach to trauma counselling and depression treatment by:Focusing on Your Inner Parts: IFS identifies and works with the different parts of yourself—helping you heal emotional wounds.Building Self-Respect and Self-Esteem: By integrating your parts, you can rebuild a healthier sense of self-worth.Trauma-Informed Healing: IFS is particularly effective for those who have experienced trauma, as it works to resolve emotional pain without retraumatizing you.Empowering You: IFS allows you to reconnect with your authentic self, fostering emotional resilience and transformation.
What to Expect in an IFS Session
In an IFS therapy session, we’ll work together to identify your internal parts, understand their roles, and heal them. Here’s what to expect:
A Safe Space: I will create a safe and supportive environment to help you explore your emotions.
Identifying Your Parts: You’ll identify different aspects of yourself—wounded, protective, or healing parts. Protective parts are the feelings and reactions that arise when you feel activated in your body. These protectors prevent you from experiencing the more vulnerable emotions connected to hurtful experiences. They hold good intentions but may show up in extreme ways—such as perfectionism, procrastination, critical self-talk, rage, self-harm, substance abuse, depression, and anxiety/panic.
Healing and Integration: Once your protective parts feel seen, understood, and integrated, they can move from extremes to healthier ways of being. This allows you to witness and heal your exiled parts—those parts that have experienced deep hurt and trauma. Exiles hold the loneliness, fear, and pain of past wounds, along with the core beliefs they internalized. Through compassionate witnessing, these parts can release long-held beliefs and intense emotions, leading to deeper healing and emotional growth.
