Dr. Richard Schwartz explains Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Founding developer , Richard Schwartz, gives an overview of the Internal Family Systems model.


The mission of IFS Institute is to bring more Self leadership to the world. We provide IFS training for professionals, a practitioner directory for those looking for IFS trained providers, and international learning opportunities for those exploring personal growth through IFS. We want to make our programs as inclusive and accessible as they are informative and inspiring.

[Michael-zpkl]

I’ve been studying the healing arts for 15 years. IFS is one of the most powerful systems I’ve found. Understanding the mind as a multiplicity is a major break through.

[MassachusettsBeachDreamer]

The best therapists I’ve had practiced these theories. I could never have healed otherwise.

[Johnny-luzt]

Being a firefighter and still active for 36 years my therapist saved my life. She studied under him during this process I can process trauma from calls. That’s totally unbelievable. The places a person can go in the mid brain are I just can’t explain.

[Madkalibyr]

I’ve recently started therapy and am learning about IFS. It’s been very helpful, I carry so much burden attached to every thought and action, therapy has helped release traumas that shape my perception.

[elevatedconsciousness]

If you turn your brightness really really low he looks like a talking head with floating hands like Andross in Star Fox.

[khansherani]

Yesterday I sat with my feeling of deep pain in heart, like sadness or grief. I did conscious breathing for couple of hrs, like saying to myself “breathing through” the feeling-while breathing in, “breathing over” the feeling while breathing out. After this process as if I felt more connected to the feeling where feeling started opening up to me. Still, I saw that there is a cocoon over the feeling I asked it to open up the cocoon and tell me what message it has for me And then suddenly sad image of my mother came up. Like in my infantile years, my mother felt lonely depressed and as an infant I absorbed her pain that is still pulsating in me in my psyche as my sad inner child. I talked to that infant and my mother, reassured them, was with them without any judgement and sent lots of love from here in year 2024 to them in year 1977-78.
I told them I understand your pain, I am proud of you both and you both are winner as I am proving it as adult self now. I kept engaged to them for around 2 hrs while keeping the breathing-through, breathing-into exercise live again and again.
To especially my infant self.
I reminded him about how we overcame past hurdles, and how resourceful I am now.
Looked like the infant felt relief and smiled, I continued my engagement. Felt little tired, but saw peace within, I felt my feeling is at rest, I did not feel happy more than yesterday since years. Guys IFST is real Feel the feelings and talking to them for reeducating them or reparenting them is real. I was hearing on this since 2019, but was not having that deeper trust in it but slowly when my circumstances pushed me to apply this healing fully, the results were there. Be very intense and compassionate in reaching to these feelings, breathing exercise will help you, and then say to these feelings that it did not hear when it was formed first here you will have the healing.... for me it worked after 30 yrs of puzzle and confusion.... :). By evening that day in years I first time felt my CPTSD inner pain inner sadness is at 0%.

And one thing is sure u need a lot of patience, courage and acceptance to the inner pain when you dive in to your feelings. Feelings want you to listen to it, to feel it to get it validated and then to complete with the pressing issue that was there when first time the feeling got created.

Your psyche, soul, spirit, nafs is a real entity. May be it is easy for this internal energy form of you to fragment and become many sub-selves, and these sub-selves got stuck in the time. You need to time travel back in time in your meditation having focus on your feeling, talking to them with compassion and then provide their unmet need. Once you do this completion process again and again the feelings come to rest and you get inner peace, joy and happiness, freedom to feel your true self fully and engage in life powerfully. And in all this above process bringing God to your side always helps after even your inner psyche is a created entity, the basic energy form and its creation that only its creator knows very well. Bring this higher power to your side and start your journey

[tinydancer]

I love IFS! It has been totally life-changing for me personally, me as a therapist, my clients, and people close to me. Really brilliant modality. Spiritual, compassionate, holistic, non-dualistic, hopeful, helpful. I’m very grateful to Richard Schwartz and everyone who has helped develop the model.

[drodsou]

So cool to find this is an actual therapy. I've came to this by myself in my meditation practice for quite some time now and I find it the most powerful technique I've ever tried, it's my everyday bread and butter now as anything else feel like wasting time and effort. I call it "inner coaching" as it feels like finally someone has come to town to put the disbanded inner team together and take it to the major league. Also love the fact that it's both deep therapy and a doorstep to non-dual states in the same package, a unified way for deep human transformation and evolution IMO. I'll be studying this to find what I missed out.

[Johnny-luzt]

I will say this brain spotting therapy and IFS has saved my personal life and my firefighting career. Feeling better every day

[intruthmentalhealthcounsel]

I feel so validated that Dick needed help remembering the 8 qualities of Self!!

[IngridNelson-Stefl]

IFS holds the key to understanding people better and helping them to actually heal from the burdens of adverse childhood (and adult) experiences; it's been accelerating the effectiveness and helpfulness of my work with my clients.

[ensorcelledether]

I'm so excited to discover this! I didn't know there was a field and so many people utilizing this concept. I independently discovered this same idea years ago, maybe 2006, and I referred to the "parts" as "archetypes", because Jung's archetypes were the closest to this idea that I had found. I considered myself and anyone else to be like a world unto themselves, populated by these segments of the self that seemed to develop over time in accordance with experiences. These lumped behaviors, feelings, reactions and concepts became grouped, habitual. They could be described as having personalities of their own, often mirroring the source of their assimilation. The wider personality was the grouping of all these parts and the way it was experienced by the self and others. It seemed natural to me, as all things are built of smaller parts. It's like everyone was referring to the forest as "that tree", and speculating whether it was an ash or birch. The more often aspects arose in response to the environment, the more easily they could be detected, named and considered. They were not truly neatly defined as a name would imply, but naming allowed me to point to the diffuse grouping and recognize it when it next arose, or to call it up at will, analyze it's origin and nature, compare it with others archetypes and their interactions, and hopefully lessen it's unconscious arising, if it is of problematic nature for the situation. If anyone happens to be curious, I did make a list online so that I could explore some of their individual natures and their arising through images (mainly): you can search for "archetypecatalyst" and click on the Archetypes section on the Catalyst tumblr to find it. I'm definitely going to be delving into the research that's been done. I found this method of self analysis and transmutation to be of significant personal benefit and I now I get to augment it with research? Yes please. Delving into these parts of the self reveals a vast amount of information, builds an incredibly specific and concise language to describe emotional experience, reminds the experiencer of the space between their awareness and their experience, allows the experiencer to modify and add to their collection of parts, and can free the experiencer from unfortunate habitual patterns over time with practice, determination and awareness. I noticed that a part seems to surge up after identification, occurring slightly more often in the next few weeks. Perhaps it's just that effect where you learn about something and then start seeing it everywhere, but it felt like it could be a bit more than that. After you explore more and more you begin to find it shocking just how much of your behavior was subconscious and reactionary, responding partially to the past and not the present. Of course as time goes on you continue to develop new parts, so definition and analysis seem like they need to continue on or else some of that gained awareness is lost to new subconscious patterns. I also made symbols to refer to them, which allows me to make graphic representations of them and remind myself about what aspects I would prefer to be. Symbols can fit into smaller spaces than names, and they work well for recalling the desired part and allowing you to then alter the state, or the part, you are currently embodying at will. I was fascinated by this concept and I did quite a bit of personal exploration. It seemed important to me to know myself, and I wanted the truth behind the illusions I was creating. I think this method has been very helpful in that process.

[HeatherGg]

I’ve experienced a bit of parts on my own before learning about IFS. Needless to say it was terrifying, especially since I had been doing research on dissociative disorders. My parts were similar but not similar or intense enough to be considered DID or OSDD. I went through a year of confusion and fear, trying to deal with this while also trying to convince myself I was fine. But then a friend of mine showed me this theory. It’s only been about a week but I’ve spent so much time with my parts and learned so much about them. I’ve been communicating with parts that I actively ran away from before, and explored the hurt felt by another. I see my parts, they have names, faces, attributes and personalities. I have a feeling I’ll be exploring myself and working with them to get through my day to day in the future

[DebbieL]

I just ordered the book. My therapist and I have been discovering this system together. It is helping me so much!

[TheDYsmal]

i just finished his "Greater than the sum of our parts" coursed on audible. it has helped more than any other course or book i have tried! feeling better day by day! Thanks Doc!

[ashberrychapman]

This makes huge sense to me. I found Richard and your IFS methodologies/organization via a very wise and helpful comment/review on Amazon for Gabrielle Bernstein's 'Happy Days' book on trauma healing. I'm extremely grateful and increasingly optimistic by discovering this work. I've experienced and survived massive traumas and self destructions that align very much with the notions of IFS. Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration helped save my life. I think IFS is part of my increasingly powerful rebirth. I'm a metabolic health coach and educationalist. Big experience in suicide. Including surviving a very determined attempt that would have been a homicide or multiple homicide as well. I was extraordinarily lucky and I feel blessed still to be alive to help others. Infinite love and gratitude, Alan Chapman (Live Wild Live Free, etc)

[smmn]

This man is amazing! His therapy helping me a lot !!!! And some how he is having a charismatic personality!

[deldridg]

Very interesting and something I wish I had come across many years ago. I'm about to read Dr Schwartz's book and will apply my learnings to my help my own children navigate what is looking to be a very uncertain and tricky future. Cheers from Sydney - Dave

[allyson--]

these are the kind of videos I like to fall asleep to, very informative & I want to learn but I always try to watch them when I'm too sleepy to learn

[panaah]

IFS feels so intuitive once you begin to understand it!