As a San Francisco anxiety therapist, I encourage therapy seekers to inform themselves about the therapy process and to ask prospective therapists questions before diving in. The therapy approach I use to support clients with anxiety is called Internal Family Systems, or IFS. I find IFS to be an effective method in therapy and also as a beneficial general guide for living a fulfilling, adaptive way of life. I’ll answer some questions below that I often get from clients at the onset and in the middle of IFS therapy.

What is IFS therapy?

The essence of IFS is about tapping into your internal world and having a healing conversation with ‘parts’ of yourself. IFS views the human psyche as multiplicitous—that we have many ‘parts’ or aspects of our personality. For instance, let’s say a friend asks you to go to dinner. One part of you wants to go, because you like trying new restaurants and you’ve been craving more social connection. But there’s another part of you that doesn't want to go, because you like decompressing on Fridays. That’s an example of internal parts, and in particular, parts that have competing needs around one issue.

When we’re not aware of our parts at play or we’re disconnected from our internal world, our parts can take over and become extreme, polarized, or chaotic. Let’s say you decline your friend’s offer to go to dinner. Instead of feeling okay about your decision, you feel guilty and anxious, and you’re ruminating about how you’ll be perceived by your friend. If this is your reaction, it’s possible that one or more of your parts have become extreme.

Some examples of parts that become extreme are anxious parts, avoidant parts, inner critic parts, or depressed parts. When parts—like anxiety—become extreme, it’s actually an effort to protect you or get your attention. In a way, it’s asking for help.

An IFS therapist will facilitate healing conversations between you and your anxiety.

When you start to build a relationship with your parts by learning about and recognizing their positive intent and how they’re trying to protect you, they start to relax. This results in more balance in your inner system.

In our example of your friend asking you to dinner, with a little inquiry with your anxious part, you might discover that it’s afraid you’ll lose your friends if you continue declining invitations to hang out. This is a valid concern. Your anxiety is not a pesky, nonsensical feeling, but rather in service of you not being lonely or without a necessary support system.

IFS therapy will guide you to appreciate how hard protective parts have been working and how valuable they are (because who doesn’t want to be appreciated?). When our parts feel acknowledged, safe, and have their concerns addressed, they’re less disruptive in our lives.

Your anxiety could be protecting other vulnerable parts of you.

Our protective parts do a lot of “you should do this” or “you shouldn’t do that”. One of the reasons they do this is because they’re aware of other parts of us that often hold a lot of distress. IFS calls these parts ‘exiles’—they're less obvious parts that hold shame, pain, profound sadness, or fear. These are often younger parts that have been around for a long time.

In our example of you declining dinner plans, perhaps you would discover that your anxious part became anxious as a strategy to make sure a younger part of you, one that felt painfully alone at some point in your life, never feels lonely again.

With permission from your protective parts, an IFS therapist will guide you to witness your exiled part with compassion, to hear it in the way it needs to be heard, and to offer it the possibility of unburdening or releasing the pain it’s carrying. When you become aware of the exile’s burden, it no longer needs to hold the pain or remain frozen in a past time in your life. This releasing process can help bring peace and calm to your inner system.

I’m sure the idea of talking to yourself seems odd, but I’ve found it to be very compelling and impactful for relief of symptoms and general personal growth.

These healing conversations with our parts provide corrective emotional experiences.

Through having corrective emotional experiences with parts of yourself that are stuck in old, painful memories, you can revise an emotion tied to an old experience with a new emotion. Neuroscientists call this memory reconsolidation. As you update a memory, you actually create a neurological change in your brain—isn’t that f’ing cool!?

How does IFS view anxiety?

IFS holds a non-pathologizing and empowering lens on mental health. Rather than reducing a client to their diagnosis, IFS therapy sees anxiety as a part of you that holds anxiety—not that you are simply an anxious person. Anxiety is an understandable response to something in your environment—like trauma, family, culture, and societal oppression—and there is nothing wrong with you.

I want to get rid of my anxiety—will IFS help my anxiety go away?

It’s understandable that you want to get rid of your anxiety because it’s very uncomfortable and keeps you from feeling free and at ease. Although, what we resist persists.

IFS is all about changing how we relate to anxiety, not about getting rid of it. If I’m trying to push away my anxiety, then I’m relating to my fears and anxiety in a repressive way, and I still end up buzzing with anxiety because I’m not addressing it. So instead of aiming to get rid of anxiety, the IFS process will help guide you toward being with it, getting to know it, and shifting your relationship to your pain, which can help soften the intensity of anxiety.

What does ‘be with’ my anxious part mean?

IFS will help you learn to relate to your emotions differently. The therapist will guide you to be with the anxious part as if it’s another person. They will help you approach anxiety with gentleness, compassion, and curiosity about its function and how it came to be.

An IFS therapist will ask you to turn your attention inward and see if you can notice where anxiety seems to be located in or around your body. How are you experiencing this anxious part? Do you see it, hear it, feel it, sense it?

You’ll be asked to pay attention to how you feel towards your anxious part. In an effort to befriend the part, the therapist will invite you to ask it questions about its role in your inner system. What does it fear will happen if it doesn’t do what it does? If, hypothetically, it could do something differently, what would it want to do?

Does your anxiety want a different job?

After getting to know your anxious part, we’ll see if it can help you in another way that doesn’t overwhelm you with anxiety. We’ll invite it to choose the qualities and actions it would prefer to take on. A part may choose to advise you about choices rather than paralyzing you with anxiety. It might want to keep its skill set but not be ‘on’ 24/7.

The IFS therapy approach says there are no bad parts. What does this mean?

The IFS model holds a radical assumption that there are no bad parts. No matter how awful a part seems, it has a painful history to share of how it was forced into a role and came to carry burdens it didn’t consent to. Your anxiety isn’t bad. Your angry part isn’t bad. Your avoidance in relationships isn’t bad. There is nothing wrong with you. Shit has happened to you and parts of you have helped you cope.

A free therapy consultation in San Francisco

I hope these answers to some common questions about IFS-informed therapy in San Francisco are helpful to you. I care about helping people find a therapist and the right approach that will feel effective for them, so feel welcome to call me at (415) 851-5125 for a free 15-minute phone consultation. If you are looking for help with anxiety, you can read more about how I can help here. My specialties include anxiety, self-esteem, and relationship issues.

Common Questions about Internal Family Systems Therapy for Anxiety | Anxiety Therapy San Francisco