IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy gives us the tools to deal with anxiety by understanding both our “Inner System” and our “External System”.

Everything we experience, think, feel and do is the result of how we make sense of the world through our internal system. For example, imagine that you go visit a friend and they pour some milk in a glass for you to drink.

The “External System”, in this simple example, is the friend offering you a glass of milk. The “Inner System” is made of all our reactions to the this situation, and, because everybody has a different inner system, each person will experience the glass of milk in a different way.

Someone might love that glass of milk because it reminds them of how their beloved father used to pour milk. Someone else might have a lot of anxiety because the glass of milk brings up memories of an abusive parent, or maybe because they have recently decided to cut milk out of their diet and they have not told their friend yet.

Whatever our anxious reactions are, there are two tasks at hand

1. Making sense of the inner system (in case of anxiety, I will call it Anxious Inner System)

2. Interacting with the external system

Using IFS to make sense of the Anxious Inner System

The anxious Inner System is a specific configuration of the different parts of our psyche that is driven by fears.

These fears, though, are not conscious and the person does not know exactly what they are scared of, nor if these fears are rooted in the present or in the past.

The result of such lack of clarity generates a mixture of

• Anxiety attacks in which the person feels a spike of anxiety without knowing why (in an extreme case, this leads to a panic attack);

• Low-level constant anxiety (worries, endless what-ifs, rumination, difficulties making simple decisions, etc.) for no apparent reason.

These are both undesirable experiences that, to my knowledge, rarely lead to any spontaneous improvement unless the person gets out of the situation of “not knowing” what is going on for them, understands where the fears are coming from, and lifts any traumatic blocks that exists in the Inner System.

With IFS therapy, we begin the exploration of the anxious inner system by focussing on the most accessible anxiety that the person is feeling. It is important to seek specialist help when first starting to practice IFS because it is difficult to go through the process correctly without guidance.

A little IFS Exercise - Looking inside without self-judgement

If you would like to experiment a little bit of the IFS method on your own, the first step would be to take some time to direct your attention to your inner system and notice what happens if you set the intention of “observing without judging yourself”.

You might want to do this when you are some quiet time while you stay away from distractions (phones, tasks, etc.) and take a break from the outside world.

For this exercise, you want to become observer of what is going on inside of you. An observer takes notice of all that is happening, is curious about it and does not want to change it.

As you try this exercise, you will notice that it is not easy at all to remain an “observer” without judging because judging is, simply, what we do the majority of the time with our thoughts.

The core of the exercise is to catch yourself as you slip into self-judgement. The moment we judge ourselves, we are no longer a neutral observed. As soon as you find yourself expressing judgement, notice it and get back to the role of the observer.

With time, you will learn how judgemental you are. Continue for a few minutes (5-10) and, at the end, make a note of how many times you caught yourself judging. This is the first step to get to know the parts of you that carry out the task of judging and monitoring what is happening inside of you.

A well trained IFS Psychotherapist has the skills to support you in accessing your internal system with an open mind, and, also, an open heart.

It is magical to experience what happens when we first look at ourselves without wanting to get rid of anything and without wanting to fight, erase, criticise, dominate or win against other parts of ourselves.

IFS Therapy facilitates the introduction of peace, compassion and calm in the inner system. Once we enter the inner system with the right attitude (what IFS calls Self or Self-energy), spontaneous change happens.

In case of anxiety, the most important shift that happens with my clients is that parts of the psyche start to disclose clearly and openly what is making them anxious. Usually the reasons are among the following

• a current situation reminds a similar one that happened in the past and did not go well;

• there are aspects of life that do not align with the person’s higher values;

• there are other parts involved that have been heavily traumatised in the past (exiles) and the anxiety serves the purpose of avoiding re-traumatisation.

Accessing the above information is key to recovery and healing. The good news is that this information can be accessed quite quickly with IFS; the bad news is that, at times, these parts carry a message that asks for changes in life.

Making changes in life - Using IFS to deal with procrastination and ambivalence

One of the most difficult parts of psychotherapy, and of change in general, is “doing” and “applying” the lessons that we learn from parts of our Inner System.

For example, if your anxious parts are telling you that you should not drink that glass of milk because you are on a new diet, what are you going to do? Are you going to honour what this part is telling you? Or are you going to have the milk anyway? Maybe you do not have enough information to make a decision and you need to connect to your Inner System again.

One of the tools that IFS gives us is the idea of “peaceful decision making”.

If we cannot action on something that we have decided, it simply means that there are parts of our Inner System that we have not taken into consideration, and are sabotaging our decisions.

Think of all the times you have decided to start a new exercise regime, or to introduce a new habit, and you did not do it. We call this procrastination or ambivalence.

IFS teaches us that the way to deal with procrastination or ambivalence is to look at how we make decisions.

Do you make decisions by imposing the will of one part of you over others? Do you silence parts of you and remain unaware that you have some resistance? Or are you able to negotiate with all parts of you and act in a way that is aligned with your Inner System and your values?

We are not used to having peace inside of us, and we are not taught how to bring harmony to all our parts. We might be under the impression that there is no way to make all parts of ourselves happy, and I can reassure you that, by listening carefully and kindly to all our parts, a way forward always exists. That way forward might not be what we wish for, and we might choose to discard the truths we find about ourselves, but this is a topic for another article.

One final note…

I hope this article has given you some insight into the IFS method. I personally write these articles and they are freely available on my website. I kindly ask that you reference them by quoting this webpage if you use them for personal, professional or educational purposes.

If there are topics you would like to know more about, please let me know.