What are Parts in Internal Family Systems Therapy? | IFS Therapy San Francisco

I’m a therapist in San Francisco who uses Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy to support my clients struggling with issues like anxiety, self-esteem, and relationship difficulties.

In my previous blog I gave a low-down of IFS, a revolutionary therapeutic model that offers us a new way of healing and relating to ourselves. IFS proposes that our minds are composed of different “parts”, each with their own histories, emotions, and needs that inform our behavior and play important - and often extreme - roles in our lives. By acknowledging, understanding, and embracing our parts, we are better able to handle stressful situations and facilitate a sense of inner harmony.

In my overview of IFS, I gave a brief description of the parts we all have inside of us - Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters. Today, I’m going to dive deeper into our parts and the roles they play in our lives. What does it look like when our parts are activated? How do these parts interact with each other in efforts to keep us safe? What does the process of working with our parts look like?

To illustrate our inner parts in action, I’ll share a composite anecdote describing a client’s experience with a break-up. To protect my clients’ confidentiality, I have blended themes from multiple stories with examples of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations that come up in IFS work and do not specify a particular individual.

Going through a break-up is a painful and triggering experience most of us adults have gone through. Our intimate relationships are where we are at our most vulnerable, and break-ups often bring up neglect or abandonment wounds we may have experienced as a child.

Exiles

As our composite client, whom we’ll call Sam, navigated a break-up with her partner, her Exiles became activated. Exiles are our “inner children”, the most vulnerable parts of ourselves that are often frozen in past traumas. They carry the burdens of extreme emotions and core beliefs often passed down to us from our caregivers or guardians.

For Sam, one of her Exiles was a nonverbal crying baby, terrified of being abandoned and in need of comfort until the feeling passed. Another was a crying toddler, who was activated when her former partner couldn’t meet her needs. This part desperately wanted to be reached, but carried the belief that no one would help her. Sam’s partner was not thriving in their own life, and lacked putting in effort toward the health of their relationship. Because they were unable to genuinely show up for Sam, Sam’s childhood wounds of being alone with her feelings were triggered.

As adults, our childhood pain still resides in our bodies, and can often manifest as bodily sensations or symbolic images. Sam’s trigger of deep loneliness brought up painful sensations in her chest and upper back, and she saw an image of tears enclosed in a circle, indicating “I want to cry, but I can’t.”

In Sam’s childhood, her parents had big emotions and were easily hurt, and sought to get their emotional needs met from their child. This led to Sam’s belief that she couldn’t go to her parents for her own issues, a painful burden her Exiles were forced to carry.

The pain of Sam’s Exiles triggered by her break-up sounded the alarm to Sam’s protector parts - Firefighters and Managers. When our Exiles are triggered, leaving us feeling vulnerable and afraid, our inner protectors jump into action to rescue us from what feels like unbearable emotions. 

Firefighters

The primary goal of Firefighters is to do anything to escape the Exiles’ extreme pain. One of Sam’s Firefighters was an angry part that she named ‘Medusa’. This part became activated when Sam didn’t feel like she could trust that others would be there for her. When Sam’s partner was repeatedly unable to meet her needs, Medusa would go from 0 to 100 – instinctively reacting by yelling in efforts to protect that crying toddler. Medusa felt safer embodying rage, rather than sinking in despair. 

When Sam’s Firefighter would lose her temper in a furious attempt to protect her Exiles, Sam would feel shame over her behavior and frustrated by how out-of-control she felt in those moments. But as we worked with Medusa by listening to what she had to say and acknowledging her feelings, Sam realized that her anger made sense–Medusa was trying to alert Sam that something wasn’t right in her relationship. Sam became curious, wondering if a healthier relationship wouldn’t activate Medusa as much. Through working with Medusa, Sam developed more compassion for her anger and the way Medusa was trying to keep her safe.

Managers

While Firefighters are all about damage control, Managers are focused on taking preventative measures in efforts to protect Exiles from potential triggers before they happen.

In the aftermath of her break-up, Sam became active on dating apps and signed up for more social activities, putting herself out there and going out more than usual. Her inner Manager wanted to push Sam out of her comfort zone and help her meet her goal of finding a new, healthy relationship. In this difficult period, the motto of Sam’s Manager was “put one foot in front of the other” – in her body, this “mover and groover” part manifested in the front of her torso and head, facing the world head-on and pushing Sam toward fulfillment and away from pain and grief.

Leaving our comfort zones to connect with others can be a positive thing – but when our Managers over-function, it can cause burnout. For Sam, burnout looked like going on dates even when she didn’t feel like it. Despite her introverted leaning, some weeks she would balance multiple dates, hang with friends and family, work, and volunteer, ignoring her need for spacious days and alone time. Sam’s anticipatory anxiety of attending each of these dates took a toll on her stress level. Soon she began to neglect replying to messages in a timely manner, and began to experience negative self-talk and critical thoughts about herself. In truth, one date a week was what she had the capacity for, and she felt mad at herself for not listening to her inner preference.  

When we took the time to listen to Sam’s Manager part in therapy, we discovered her fear that if she didn’t keep pushing Sam, then Sam would become idle and never meet her desire to start a family. I guided Sam to develop a collaborative relationship with this fiercely proactive “mover and groover” part that was working on overdrive and causing burnout. 

Working with parts

We all have vulnerable exiled parts and protective managerial and firefighter parts. At some point in your life, some part of you got hurt, betrayed, or neglected, and another part came in to try and protect that part from the pain. IFS therapy helps us separate these parts and get to know them through the process of ‘unblending’, in which we learn to observe our parts and untangle them from our core Self, recognizing each one as distinct and individual.

In my practice, we use the “6 F’s” to unblend from our parts, starting with the Protectors: 

Find the part

Flesh it out

How do you Feel toward the part?

BeFriend the part

Find out what it wants you to know

What is its Fear? 

It’s important to begin this process with our Protectors first, and receive their permission to access our Exiles and begin the delicate process called ‘unburdening’. Our Exiles become ‘unburdened’ when we build a secure attachment with them with great care and compassion, and reassure them that they are no longer stuck in their painful pasts. This allows our Exiles to release the emotional weight of their burdens and core beliefs they hold and liberate them from the roles they’ve been trapped in. 

While many tools of IFS therapy can be practiced alone, unburdening Exiles can be an overwhelming experience and is often safest to explore with the guidance of a therapist. Below are the steps I take with my clients to unburden their Exiles: 

Trust: Build trust and establish a relationship with the Exile.

Witness: Acknowledge the Exile’s story, which usually looks like visualizing a scene from the past.

Retrieval: Go into the scene and invite the Exile into present day time, supporting them in the way they needed someone in the past. 

Unload: Help the Exile release the emotional load, lies it was told, and painful core beliefs it’s been carrying.

Invite in new qualities: Visualize qualities the Exile will need now and in the future, which is often back to the Exile’s original state before the burden occurred.

Integrate: Ask the Exile what they want to do now that it’s not stuck in the pain. 

Through the processes of unblending and unburdening, my clients are empowered to become primary caretakers of their wounded parts, tending to them with the same loving support you would with a child. Through asking questions and engaging in “parts work”, my clients are better able to understand how their parts inform their behavior. 

I encourage my clients to develop a system for recording their parts. Some clients keep a journal to track the parts that emerge during our sessions. Others use index cards to draw or write down key features about how their parts manifest in their body, thoughts, and emotions. I also keep a record of parts that show up in my clients’ sessions, and share my clients’ language by using the names they use for their parts–such as Medusa, or the Anxious One. In our work together, my clients develop awareness of each of their unique and valuable parts, and when their parts are triggered, they can readily practice the tools we develop in our sessions to communicate, soothe, and collaborate with them.

A free therapy consultation in San Francisco

If you’re interested in IFS therapy in San Francisco to help you navigate your relationship with yourself and others with the guidance of an IFS-informed therapist, feel welcome to call me at (415) 851-5125 for a free 15-minute phone consultation. My specialties include anxiety, self-esteem, and relationship issues.