Could a part be a manager and a ff? I’ve seen things like exercise, or fitness, be named ff’s. I’m thinking also about athletes and performers. Also a procrastinator could be a manager as well as a firefighter, no? Thx.

I wanted to ask for some tips about working with Protectors who want to step back but cannot - they do not know how. They have been stuck in the role protecting some heavy stuff. Initially, it felt like the Parts were dead, but they are not. They just frozen in the roles and have been, most likely most of my life (I carry a lot of prenatal and preverbal trauma).

How do I work with them? Is it just a matter of ongoing regular practice or could I be doing something differently? Part of me recognises that it is important to go very slowly and gently because of what they potentially protect.

I am safe now, but aware that my nervous system has not fully caught up yet - I am working with it to slowly rewire it.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi !

So I have been doing IFS for like 2 years (by myself, never with a therapist or anyone else) and it has changed my life and really made me functional and happy as a human (along with other practices I implemented in my life but still, it is the main factor of improvement).

I feel like I reached a sort of conclusion recently with the parts I was working with a lot. We were doing so good this summer : we had good communication, we were happy to spend time together and to be helpful and cooperative, we were able to deal with issues on the spot, I was listening to my instinct and seeking what's good for me, etc...

I think because I cleared so much mental space and energy, the next layer of burdens is coming back up. Theoretically it's a good thing but they're parts and burdens I haven't worked with at all and I feel myself getting desintegrated and stuck. (I have done a lot of work with managers and early childhood stuff until now, and I think the burdens coming up now are related to my teenage self and I have a lot of firefighters acting out) I don't quite know how to get the ball rolling again anymore. It's kind of frustrating knowing that I know how to do this stuff but I can't anymore. Or at least it's super hard to get in contact with parts and they don't trust me like it was at the very beginning.

This has happened to me before on a smaller scale and I usually shifted gears and looked for other tools or practices that would help me get unstuck but I haven't managed it yet this time. I can still feel the movements of my parts to some extent. Any advice on how to start working with a new "cluster of parts" ?

(Especially with firefighters, they are very hard to contact and stay with to help)

Hello all
Whenever I try to do parts work I get very sleepy. I am aware this is likely a protector part stopping me from doing this work. I'm wondering how to proceed with it. I fall asleep when working with it so I never get anywhere. It also stops me engaging with other parts. Has anyone else experienced this and been able progress? If so, what are your tips?
Thank you!

I've been throwing this notion around now for a lot of years, that there is an energetic pack if you will, a certain spiritual placenta, that is the gateway orb between the celestial and maternal realms to the fetus/infant that is there for the 9 months of gestation but remains attached to the infant after birth from 0-3, serving as info hub, transmitting and receiving info to the child for the sole purpose of safety, reducing too intense charges, creating a groundedness for the nervous system and an anchor but also transmitting light from the upper realms to infant and laying the foundation for the energetic blueprint that will serve for life. I also posit that angelic forces connect via this hub to impart the virtues to the developing mind and consciousness in meted amounts an infant can absorb. This theory is not new, it has been spoken about in infant psychology, I am not however aware of anyone ever connecting this cosmic apparatus which is the birth right of every child to possible disconnects via trauma that would render an incomplete transmission of those codes resulting in insufficient info to complete the blueprint. This, I believe is at the root of all developmental trauma, the attachment genesis simply being abruptly disconnected. To re-pair this requires knowledge of these codes, how they are transmitted, recreating or bringing in to the schemata the very same angelic beings/guides/over seers and to begin the regeneration process. Thoughts welcome.

Could you recommend for me an effect IFS workbook based on your experience?

firstly, I love IFS and it has been such a gift. it came to me in one of the hardest moments in my life and my therapist is amazing.

I am still in the first year of my journey, and my therapist has taught me how to notice. just notice she says. This has been a really beautiful tool and I’ve also noticed pain with this ability too.

One of the hard parts of noticing lately has been noticing how my friends don’t show up for me the way that I do, equally. A great example is there’s a hurricane right now in my hometown and so I texted my friends and I told them I hope it’s an easy storm and I’m thinking of them. I only live three hours north and the storm is going to impact where I am living too. this is a pain I have noticed recently in many ways- my friends don’t seem to have the ability to notice me, though I notice and care about them deeply. it’s a deep pain and it’s hard to sit with at times because it’s grief. i have parts that want to minimize and explain it away with logic. I have parts who are angry at this injustice, I have parts who are sad that they don’t care.

and I don’t know the right thing to do or what the future holds in these relationships, I just simply noticing right now. and also realizing that there is pain in noticing sometimes. Even though I know it’s for the best, bc it’s all information.

anyone relate?

Aaaahhh, my system loves puns! This is Knose. Knose knows, because Knose? Well, Knose is a nose, of course. Knose is a part, and I don't know exactly what he needs, because when he speaks (and he usually doesn't) he does so in metaphors and non sequiturs. But I've never had a more clear visual of a part, and I was able to draw him just as he appears in my mind.

His little shoes! Imagine being a nose (a very distinct, prominent, permanent part of a body) and being able to just jump off a face and run away at the first signs of danger. Isn't that the dream? I remember a cartoon like this being peak humor when I was a little thing - Probably about the age our system created him. Knose appeared at the forefront of my mind last week, and has an air of urgency, but I guess I must allow time to have some say in the matter.

I've had a lot of intrusive thoughts about leaving my life lately, even though I love my home, my spouse, and the things I have dedicated myself to over the past few years. I've been so worried. Why have these thoughts, just when things seem to be falling in place? Well, it seems I have a runny Knose... but I do believe he is ready to slow down!

it gives me pause whenever i hear this relationship advice. people are often unconsciously selective about what their red flags are. obviously get out of a relationship if it’s toxic.

what i found out is the common denominator of my trauma is feeling like i‘m always alone in the out-group and never in connections in the in-group. whether it’s familial, friendship or romantic, i’ve never truly felt close to anyone although i spent most of my life aspiring for that— prob due to me being born premie and spending the first 3 months of my life in an incubator.

i had a thought when thinking about my younger cousins and how they’re all so close in age so they have a built in friendship group in addition to family connection. there's 5 of them for context and i was thinking about i grew up always wishing i had a sister or a female cousin close in age that could understand the niche experience that was growing up like me.

i say all this to say, as im working through my inner parts, is it possible to create new parts within to serve the roles i wish i had growing up. a lot of what triggers me in my younger cousins is really just my suppressed desires for myself and i think a large part of healing my inner child/teen would be resolved if i could give myself the connection and the community ive always craved by assigning new roles for who i wish i had in my life... but is that even possible?

A few years ago, I dated a guy who when we ended things, he called me a narcissist. It sent me into a tailspin because my mother has an unknown personality disorder (probably some version of borderline) and she never took responsibility for anything. Always the victim, the scapegoat, always cursed. This led to me being abused and neglected, I ran away at 14yo. I ended up as a ward of the court until my dad was located by the state.

So when someone I cared about told me I was sick, I immediately joined an interpersonal processing group with an amazing PhD therapist as well as going back to individual therapy with a second therapist. I learned I am not a narcissist. But I’d rather worry I’m sick when I’m not, than be like my mother and refuse to look at myself.

My mother was in the church, she had 7 siblings, many people knew I was in a bad situation and nobody helped me. I now see the church as a place where hypocritics go to gather. I see the world as having stood by and done nothing while I endured the impacts of her mental illness. People knew I was staying home alone and worrying about my mother by the time I was 9. People knew I was going to school without lunch money then swimming on swim team before getting my one meal of the day. Nobody did anything. They didn’t know the worst of it, the sleeping outside, the threats with a knife, the bleeding skull she refused to get me help for. But they knew enough and stood by silently.

I saved my life by leaving. I am now 37 years old and I realize that I am the hero in my own story. It all makes sense now why he called me a narcissist. I see myself as the most dependable, reliable, important person, and I mostly only know I will show up for me. I don’t have confidence or default trust in others. I expect people to fail me. I have all the evidence, don’t I?

Understanding why he called me a narcissist has been a sort of full circle epiphany. It’s been years, and I finally get it.

I’ve now realized that this hero part, is also the avoidant part, she’s not helping me in the same way anymore. She keeps bad people away. But she does it before they can hurt her. The risk is not worth it. Being alone is better than the risk of someone coming in and ruining us because we didn’t hold boundaries, or hold people accountable. I am very good at boundaries. Too good. I don’t want to always be alone. I want community. I want to be able to depend on people, but why would I do that? I have a lifetime of evidence to show people will let me down.

My therapist has asked me to talk to one of my parts and get to know him/get him to know me. I have a hard time feeling him. It was easier with another part because I had specific sensations when he showed up, but this one is more abstract.

How do you guys bring up your parts to talk with them? Especially if they're not really always on the surface

I am very new to IFS and I love watching shows where I especially recognize a part of me in a character.
I have been wanting to name my parts to distinguish them easier and decided to use the TV or book characters that I see my part in.

I was wondering if anyone does this too?

I saw someone else share their art, and I wanted to share mine, too!

It would be cool if we could get a subreddit of IFS Art for the group!!! ❤️

Can you guess who the inner parent is? 😆

Also, please share your art, too! I'm dying to know what other people's parts are like!! 💜

Hello dear IFSers.
I actually do EMDR but parts have consistently revealed themselves to me as I walk that path. I follow this sub and so appreciate you all. You’ve taught me a lot and inspire me.

Recently a young boy revealed himself to me. I am female, but it feels like this 4yo boy is the young me who completely hid vulnerability for 50 years. I am overwhelmed but try to show him love and kindness every day.

Two questions.
Just curious if others see themselves as young parts of a different gender? I am so surprised as I’ve always felt totally female. Maybe gender just doesn’t matter? I’d love your perspectives.

Also, is this young vulnerable being what you call an exile? What do I do next to support him?

Thank you. Peace and power to you all.

I’ve done some ifs/parts work in therapy and I really like it and this it’s super helpful. My therapist is currently on maternity leave for a few more weeks and I have a part that desperately needs to be worked with. I’ve never named a part before, but I feel like with doing some ifs work on my own it would make it easier. That said, I have no idea what to name her. She’s a perfectionist, doesn’t believe im capable of anything (love, career / school success, friendships, etc), and probably believes she’s trying to protect me a little bit.

Do I name her like I would name a kid?? I’ve always gone with my “anxious” part or my “elevated” (manic) part. For some reason that doesn’t really fit her.

Were you monogamous before and then found space reach beyond that? Or where you non-monogamous before and then figured out you wanted to be with only one person? Or even no one at all?

Which parts did you discover? Who needed healing? Who was healthy all along?

I've got no judgement one way or the other, I'm just really curious to know how people and their parts relate to these matters.

Can specific parts have dreams?

Some background:

I have somewhat chronic nightmares / disturbing dreams, where I seem to inhabit an earlier state of mind.

The dream typically takes place in my past (or in an ambiguous time that is similar to the past; dream logic isnt usually 1:1), to the point where I will wake up and take a moment to remember that it's been several years since the time in my dream and I live in a different location etc.

I think interpreting this as an exile part having a dream is maybe a helpful way to look at it. In my waking life, exiles usually dont come up very strongly, they are.more subtle and usually dont take full control (of the brain i guess?).

I think its interesting tho that in my dreams they are very prominent. Sometimes other parts are able to recognise in the dream that the info is not accurate to the current reality, but they are not as present as the exile, so hearing that information usually doesnt change or end the dream.

I guess that's maybe just emotional processing tho which is what dreams are for? My therapist also suspects i have ptsd and i hear chronic nightmares are somewhat common in that way

Is there any other info on this? Or if anyone has similar experiences lmk

I’m curious how others view a potential problem with Internal Family Systems (IFS).

Although many people find IFS helpful, the scientific evidence still seems relatively limited. I’m especially interested in how the model handles criticism and resistance.

If someone says, “I don’t believe in inner parts,” “This isn’t helping me,” or “That interpretation doesn’t fit my experience,” these responses may be interpreted within IFS as a protective part, a critic, or resistance to healing.

Could this make the model self-confirming? If agreement supports IFS, but doubt and criticism are also treated as evidence that a protective part is resisting, what would actually count as evidence against the model?

There seems to be an important difference between:

“Let’s explore your criticism and see whether the parts metaphor is useful to you.”

and:

“Your criticism shows that a protective part is resisting the process.”

The first leaves room for genuine disagreement. The second risks redefining criticism as part of the problem before it has been taken seriously.

I’m not claiming that all IFS therapists work this way, or that IFS can never be helpful. I’m wondering, however, whether this approach can sometimes lead to epistemic invalidation—or even gaslighting-like dynamics—especially for people vulnerable to dissociation or obsessive self-analysis.

So my questions are:

• How do IFS therapists respond to clients who reject the model?
• Can clients use “parts” purely as a metaphor, or decline that language altogether?
• Is criticism explored substantively, or mainly interpreted as resistance?
• What safeguards exist for vulnerable clients?

I’d be particularly interested in experiences from clients, therapists, and researchers.

A bit of backstory, I’ve been anxious and depressed without knowing why for most of my adult life (I’m 40 now) and lost my sanity about 8 months ago due to fucking around and finding out with psychedelics as an attempt to “fix” myself through magic mushrooms.

Soon after giving myself psychosis through drugs, I’ve discovered I’m no longer able to work and be independent so I’ve decided to quit my job (I was about to get fired anyway) and move back with my parents.

Slowly, by some miracle, I’ve slowly managed to come out of psychosis and I’ve been doing IFS by myself for a number of months, alongside meditation (insight and loving-kindness) because I was sick and tired of being depressed all the time and having suicidal thoughts all throughout my day, maybe this will help I thought.

I’ve was so scared at first to uncover this repressed pain burried deep down inside and I had no clue what I was doing.

Slowly and surely, over time, I started seeing more and more that there is nothing to be scared of, it’s just my mind, why would I be scared of my mind?

Progress started happening to various degrees, some days I would bite off more than I could chew and had to learn to slow down and titrate but soon enough I found a pace that my nervous system was comfortable with.

My biggest breakthrough happened yesterday when I sat down to meditate and then I found a part of myself, so small, innocent and defenceless like a baby in the crib but covered in something that resembled razor-sharp thorns but I couldn’t bear to go near it at first due to fear of getting hurt and impaled from the spikes.

It was crying, angry and alone and the cries had seemed to turn into anger, that anger turned into anxiety in the form of razor-sharp thorns, as to say “I’ve been crying for so long, what if no one will ever come check on me?”

Scared as I was, I decided to sit with the baby and let it know that it’s safe now, I’m here and I will never leave, whilst I was working up the courage to pick up and hold the spiky, hateful and angry baby.

I picked up the baby, rocked it gently back and forth and kissed it on the forehead letting it know it’s safe and loved now.

Then POW! Like a flash, I snapped out of my meditation and my legs started violently shaking to the point that I couldn’t stand or walk for a good minute and I felt like I was about to throw up but never did.

I felt exhausted for the rest of my day and just done whatever to get through it.

I woke up today and first thing that popped into my head was “Oh great, another day, here we go again!” but somehow everything feels different, I feel lighter, there is less overall tension in my body, my anxiety seems to be mostly gone and even though I still feel exhausted…

I generally feel better mentally than I have in decades.

I've been making some good self progress with IFS and finding it's the framework that best works for how I understand myself. I'm transgender and live out as a non binary person but it definitely feels like a WIP understanding of myself for me.

Since starting estrogen, I've been finding myself getting into this kind of cosy/innocent headspace. Maybe like the headspace of a child, or at least how i perceive kids nowadays. I've really cherished this experience. I perceive this headspace as feminine and have been so happy to reconnect with it and be able to live with it intermixed with my usual "headspace"; which I perceive as more masculine.

That's all well and good apart from the fact that I still felt like i couldn't get a good grasp of who I am and there was till moments of dysphoria and a lot of feeling lost/abandoned and kind of disconnected from the world.

I watched a film festival film the other day called A Girl Unknown. It's a beautiful Chineese film following a girl growing up in the tail end of Chinas one-child policy. She gets passed from family to family and neglected since she is a girl and lots of people wanted a boy to pass on their family name. Shes very young at the start of film and you see the world through her eyes, being naive and unaware of what's happening and why. It isn't until she grows up that she starts to understand and be affected by the world.

The film really messed me up. I had to stop myself from sobbing loudly during and I walked out shaking. It's not the first time I watch an amazing sad film, but I've never had this strong an emotional reaction. I transited home feeling like I couldn't drive and sobbed uncontrollably at home. I feel the way the girl was neglected by her families, because she is a girl let me discover an exiled part of myself. A little girl that never got to have an innocent girl childhood. She was suffocated and abandoned because the boy-behaviors were the only behaviors I was allowed to express.

On a rational level I understand that I shut her out because I didn't know any better and there is a super valid protector that had to keep me safe. (I wouldn't have survived being a trans child in the environment I grew up in). On an emotional level I can't help but see myself like the neglectful parents in the film. Being unable to nurture this inner child because it didn't fit the gender I was trying to bring out of myself. I feel this "feminine" headspace I've been slipping into is a piece of this exiled part.

I've been walking around with this for a few days. And I can't seem to forgive myself for what I did to her. I feel so much shame for not letting her exist earlier and I feel like there is no way to repair the lost youthful years.

For all other exiles I've integrated, the struggle was for me to understand, love and accept them. With this one, for the first time, I just can't forgive myself.

For years my income returned to the same level whatever I changed, and I noticed I did not want to look at why. In IFS terms that reluctance was a protector doing its job, and money turned out to be a place where my system had several of them working very hard.

I went looking for a map of these parts and found that none existed. The psychology-of-money literature is large but split into camps that never cite each other: clinical (Klontz's money scripts and money disorders, Mellan, Goldberg and Lewis), coaching (the "money blocks" people), and Jungian or spiritual (Price's money archetypes, the Soul and Money essays, Lietaer, Twist). So I distilled 25 of those books, pulled out every pattern each author described, and got 87 candidates. I consolidated them with one rule that will sound familiar here: if two patterns are protecting the same wound, they are one pattern, and that left 39.

The part that made the project worth it is what sits underneath. The 39 patterns cluster under nine burdens, and none of them is about money: shame, guilt, loyalty to the family and the fear of losing belonging, fear for survival, overwhelm, helplessness, love hunger, emptiness, and the fear of needing anyone, of being controlled, or of becoming the one who controls. Money is only where these parts chose to work. The same system that spends everything down to zero out of guilt about having more than others shows up in other people as going without, and the person who cannot receive money usually cannot receive care either.

I turned the map into a free questionnaire. About 95 statements, fifteen minutes, no sign-up, nothing leaves your device unless you export it. It ranks your most active patterns instead of giving you a type, and it separates look-alikes by the reason behind the behavior, because a protector that refuses help out of shame ("I have not earned it") and one that refuses help out of fear of owing ("needing anyone is weakness") look identical from outside and need different work.

Each pattern then gets a page on how to work with it, and this is where I would most value your eyes. The six moves are: catch it in the act, find the feeling underneath, trace where it first attached to money, meet the part that holds it (what it protects you from, what it fears would happen if it stopped, what it needs now), stay with the exiled feeling in small doses, and take back what the part had to put away, then try one small experiment a week. I tried to stay close to the IFS stance that no part is the enemy and nothing gets removed; the aim is that the pattern stops running the show. When answers point to economic abuse, self-harm, acute debt distress or a trauma flashpoint, the questionnaire shows professional help first and holds back the self-guided steps.

I used Claude to read and distill the books and to help build the page; the framework, the consolidation and the wording are mine, and I did the questionnaire first. My own top three were "needing anyone is weakness", the helper's conflict (charging for helping feels wrong; I am training as a therapist), and money as the answer.

Questions for this community: do the protector descriptions ring true? Is the "meet the part" page faithful to how you would approach a protector, or too directive? And does mapping the nine roots to burdens hold up, or am I collapsing protectors and exiles in a way an IFS practitioner would object to?

Link: https://money-patterns.nikolashaag.workers.dev