Believe it or not, each of us has many voices inside our head.
There’s the voice telling you that you’re hungry while at work.
There’s another voice ruminating over a recent conversation with a friend.
There may be a third voice silently planning your next vacation behind all the mental chatter.
All of these voices can, and in fact, do, coexist inside our mind all day long.
This is what we refer to in Internal Family Systems (IFS)1 as parts. Each part, or voice, inside us has a different purpose and a different need.
The majority of these parts can be traced back to a childhood event and unmet need.
Traditional models of psychotherapy have been based on the premise of a single, coherent psyche and have pathologized the existence of voices or parts as ‘split personality’ or ‘multiple personality,’ however more recent models have been openly adopting the idea of multiple coexisting components to the psyche.
Working with clients under the premise of multiple parts allows for greater acceptance and flexibility with competing needs, while allowing the client to view themselves as a healthy, complex being with coexisting emotions and desires.
Having used IFS in my work with clients, I can confidently say that there is great therapeutic value in seeing someone as a complex system of varying emotions, temperaments, stories, and needs. Clients feel a greater sense of wholeness when the entirety of their system is recognized rather than placing therapeutic focus on a single emotion or desire that is momentarily taking the forefront.
Seeing clients as a complex, rainbow-colored canvas has drastically changed the quality of therapy and outcomes. Moreover, clients leave feeling fully seen and acknowledged, appreciating the complexities that are allowed to coexist within their systems.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a modality developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz that focuses on the existence of multiple parts within one’s psyche and seeks to achieve coherence amongst a family of parts using Self energy ↩︎
