Dr. Richard Schwartz explains Internal Family Systems (IFS) 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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)

Parts work therapy is changing my life right now

I found this video after watching the TRUE SOVEREIGN SELF channel. Anastasia Moroney. and her partner Tony Sayers have some great video supporting this therapy.

Clarity, wisdom, compassion... Insight, intuition, these are all components of Mindfulness, which can be practiced and developed.

Simply Brilliant!!!

ty Jane’s dad from Breaking Bad very informative :)

So I’ve been in IFS therapy for about 5 months now, and it’s been really valuable in identifying how and why parts behave the way they do. However, I’ve never had a moment where self emerges and I’m beginning to get frustrated. Has anyone else experienced this? Does self really exist for everyone?

IFS sounds somewhat similar with shadow work.

✅ so good

I tried a lot of energy therapies and they always made me worse, can this help?

Kerluke Corners

Lind Cove

Internal family systems sounded like dissociative identity disorder to me. So I looked at the description and discovered it's about something else. (Haven't watched the video and am not going to.)

Does it ever feel a bit schizophrenic to think he have parts with sub-personalities?

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

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

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.

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.

I wish I had discovered ifs a long time ago. Most of the talk therapy I've been in seems pretty pointless in comparison.

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

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

I have come to similar awareness of childhood trauma needs to be released, so we can be free. This is after years of therapy and other healing modalities.

This is interesting! I can visualize my parts. Some can't speak. Some say things I can't say. I see what my parts look like and its always been like that. I guess you can say I have an active inner life because I was taught that expressing myself meant that I was bad so I do everything on the inside. At least that's what I think. My therapist wants to do IFS therapy and it will be a first for me. I would imagine I'm going to get to connect to some much needed emotions. This therapy looks promising to me. This does sound similar to therapy for DID or multiple personality. I sometimes wonder since DID is so controversial that therapist explain that everyone has "parts" instead of coming out telling someone they have separate personalities. Like IFS model is easier to accept. Like for me I think this therapy will do wonders because I can talk about what my parts are thinking like they are separate people so it will take the pressure off of me to own up to an emotion but eventually learning to connect to that part and feel everything eventually.

Really enjoyed the info he gave but did have a quick chuckle when he said the "c-word qualities". As a Brit I had another idea of what he might have been referrring to - which was very different to 'compassion, curiousity' etc... 😅

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

It’s interesting that this approach emerged from how people actually speak. “One part of me thinks that…”, etc. Who says, “My superego thinks….”?

You can find much of this approach in Jungian therapy. Also in Roberto Assagioli in "Pychosynthesis" and "The Act of the Will"

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 time......and 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

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.

Starting therapy next week, my therapist uses this system so sent me info on it... I'm a little dubious, because I've never felt like I have multiple people in me, but I'm open to learning!

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!

6:39 I have some c-word qualities myself.... But maybe that's just that inner critic talking, darn critic.. 😂

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Thank you, Dr. Schwartz! Ive got some videos on IFS and identity shifting on my channel that may be valuable. All parts welcome 🙏

Just realized I’ve got an inner professor and inner clown.

Great point. Thank you Dr. Schwartz.

🦄 Dolt by John Rickel 🦄

Lopez Daniel Jones Frank Wilson Patricia

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

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

Interested in the next, spiritual level of this conversation? We are excited to share on our channel a groundbreaking interview with Dick, with the below description. In this fascinating conversation, Dick discusses for one of the first times the spiritual implications of working with parts of self. In line with many traditions of the ancient world, we appear to have many parts that we are not consciously aware of. Though most of those parts belong to us, and are best integrated and healed, some parts do not. It is these that need to be removed, and their apparent sentient nature shakes up much of what current, scientific psychology is willing to see and accept. No matter what your views, you will be fascinated by Dick’s honest report of his decades of experience working first-hand at the crossroads of psychology and spirituality. Clinical evidence has shown that IFS works, and it is one of the most widely trained psychotherapy interventions today. We cannot, then, easily dismiss Dick’s wealth of clinical experience. The implications of this conversation are immense and only beginning to be understood. Deep gratitude to both Dick and his guides for their willingness and clarity in giving this thirsted-for guidance to the psychedelic provider community.

IFS feels so intuitive once you begin to understand it!

Robinson Lisa Wilson Robert Garcia Barbara

It's interesting and very revealing that on every one of Avaiya's video's the comment section is turned off. What's even more revealing is that, neither Ike or Ande have posted a single thing on FB for weeks. Why am I here now...well...simple answer. To alert the rest of you that this is a fraud, a scam of a grand scale. I received an email that presented these oh so wonderful people (sic) were holding free classes/courses to sit in on and to either watch, or listen to. When I did click on the "free" course, it took me to yet another window, asking me for credit card information . I did the background check on both of these two and found it pretty odd that neither of them have had a stable address for some time. What really got my attention is the fact that they do not provide phone number to contact this supposed university. When I did the research on this "university", it's got a few issues... And the icing on the cake was when I looked at both of their profiles on FB and found that neither one has had a single thing to say in weeks. This has all the earmarks and trappings of a scam . Avaiya has been named in a consumer complaint and legal recourse has been sought. You do not, piss off a vet who has the where with all to research you and find you're practicing fraud. Buyer beware. You'd be better off going to a library and finding written books on the subject matter and joining support groups. All this outfit wants to do is to prey on those who are desperate and living in fear. Jig's up people.

Parts. And they’re all good. Sounds like some dang new age stuff. 😂 I’m so grateful to be in this space. 🙏💕

Is it really safe to do this alone for those who have trauma and possibly cptsd?

Gage Mountains

So helpful!

Imagine if all leaders of the world did this very important, transformative work.

I don't know what he means about the part being the burden or understand exactly what he is saying- if this is the first video it is not very clear to those who truly want to learn- or let's say it is not clear to me

This resonates. #Grateful.

Work will go just fine. Be fair to me, and you'll be pleased with me as an employee.

*slurp sound*

❤

If one could explain this concept and thus actually NOT explain this (to the layperson), this guy just did it. I learned nothing. I'm shinking someone could do this better. PLEASE DO !

What a beautiful time we live in

Brilliant thanks

just heard of this but having no luck reintegrating myself with...itself lol. so far been taking shrooms which at least makes me more aware and compassionate but without them it's straight back to wanting to 'throw my body away' and 'go home' i.e kms (my most stubborn part realllllllly hates it here and im feelin kinda incompetent as a parent to that part tbh)

❤️

Extreme beliefs gained through attachment/emotional/relational injury/ies.

Are you talking about a system, what used to be referred to as "multiple personality disorder"?

For years I have gone down an elevator 🛗 in my mind and at the bottom a big steel double door opens into a conference room where a bunch of people I have chosen to give their opinions are sitting. For years some of the people I invited that were lasting because I valued their opinions( my chosen role models because I valued something I that I learned about them) were Frederick Douglass, Audrey Hepburn, Harriet Tubman, Joseph Campbell, my 5 year old niece, M.L.K. Jr., etc. Over the years I have added people, Stephen Covey, James Redfield, Bruce Lipton Joe Dispenza, etc.. Then I started including aspects of myself that I had been judging and denying; shadows. Now I have a RU-vid playlist where I start with a guided meditation, I do a visualization of a shadow character( Whatever in any given time I feel I am missing and need to integrate) I have a loving re-embracing conversation with the character, then I have a royal ceremony at the conference table. My playlist has horns, I announce the Character/attribute/quality showing up in the form I created in my guided mediation, they step into the room and are announced with royal introduction horns, then a standing ovation plays and the character sits next to me at the head of the table as an honored guest while all the other attribute characters are wildly applauding the new one. I make a vow to always listen, pay attention and that this character will always be held as important and valuable at the table. I have been adding characters whenever I notice that something is needed in my life experience. It is always easy to embody the missing or judged attribute into a character form. I am finding this process amazing for allowing me to love myself in every aspect needed to deal with any situation. If I am holding myself back it is due to something good inside me that I have been falsely trained as bad or believed was bad due to some past experience. I found found no bad ones, all useful and helpful to my successful life journey. They only cause me problems if I am ignoring them instead of embracing them. ❤ Sometimes I will call a conference about something thar I am working on to get different perspectives according to the different characters. I ask questions and call upon whoever wants to add their opinion. I listen observe, let them have their say, consider it and make my decisions. I am looking forward to listening to and understanding the relationships these protector, excited and rejected parts have with each other by listening to Dr. Schwartz.

It's shamanism.

No one is _born_ with parts. Our environment shapes us, including our personality. Tabula Rasa. Schwartz is obsessed with talking about "parts" as if it is a discovery! Dr Gabor Maté is way ahead of this guy, but I accept that some need to start somewhere.

I wish I knew this 20 years ago.

My daughter did IFS therapy with very experienced therapists on a weekly basis for 3 years. She got nowhere with unburdening or reintegrating her exile: IFS seems to be very good at explaining the problem but, from our experience, wholly ineffective at providing a solution to actual difficult problems.

Beautiful talk, love the honest, humble approach to something that is really an endless mystery - speaking of endless Mystery, around 7:32 is what a number of us (call us crazy if you like) would call God or the Divine or Source - the Love that heals every wound and guides us Home!

Great point. Thank you Dr. Schwartz. I am an NLP & Self Concept coach. Parts are real and very useful in helping one to heal. Thank you again.

it’s another bs haha Just more names for a human psychology

After reading your Book, I thought it was a good idea to try to see if I had parts to meet. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done. This is dangerous. I tried this on my own with a session you lead that I found on RU-vid. The first part was a protector from childhood, but the next part looked like the living dead, she was stuck in a cave that seemed to be red with fire and soot. I couldn’t see her face but I saw a mouth with sores and decaying teeth when she spoke. She wished I was dead and told me I had abandoned her for over 30 years. When I examined where I felt her, I felt her in my arms and at that moment I saw she had shackles around her wrists. The toxic vile and anger she spewed at me scared me to death. She told me I was a worthless pice of s**t, a pushover, and many other things I can’t even say here. She was even murderous. I asked her what her name is and she answered “anger” she got in my face and said “My name is Anger. I’ve never seen anything or anyone so angry in my life and in a state of decay. Today was a horrible day for me, I’m scared, irritated and lost. I had no idea this part was inside me and now I don’t know what to do? I’m completely frozen with fear. Although she wants nothing to do with me and doesn’t trust me, she has entered my psyche and is messing with me and I don’t know what to do. I’m paralyzed with fear. Please don’t be telling people that they can meet their parts on their own. You don’t know who the F you’re going to meet and it’s highly irresponsible to tell people they can face these parts on their own. These parts can be extremely confrontational and feel dangerous, you don’t even know that they are there. DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!! SERIOUSLY!

1. Forcing your clients to become schizos is abusive and absurd. 2. The system makes little sense. It’s not clear what Self or parts are let alone how they relate to each other. If the Self is composed of parts with sub personalities and aspects of the sub personalities conflict with other sub personalities then it’s unclear how a harmonious Self can exist. If the parts are in conflict and the Self is a whole of its parts then the Self shouldn’t be able to coexist with conflict. It’s ludicrous. 3. There’s absolutely no evidence for any of this except for mistaking a metaphor for reality. Idiocy. 4. This therapy will exacerbate mental illness by distorting the perception of reality through the insistence of little people in one’s head who don’t exist. 5. This whole system is a huge distraction from the root of mental illness which is a combination of identifying self in non-self and feeling forced to conform to a materialist society. What. A. Joke. This isn’t science, it’s new age bullshit.

Is it actually similar to „the inner Team“ by germanys Schulz von Thun or Not ?

I got to the end of this video and I still don't know what the heck Internal Family Systems is. It sounds like gobbly gook to me.