My Journey to IFS

In this first blog post, I share some of the personal and professional experiences that brought me to IFS. It has been such a joy to stumble across IFS, feel the profound impact it’s had on me, and be able to share that with the world. As Psychologists we are always looking to find ‘what works’ and I have really seen how my own journey of healing has served as ‘practice-based evidence’ for tools and approaches to share (or not) with my clients and community.  

In my early 20s, I found myself feeling anxious a lot of the time - my anxiety ‘part’ was blended with me all day long, and this had a huge impact on my relationships, studies and work. At 21, I started to practice Yoga on YouTube (shout out to Yoga with Adriene) - I came to Yoga, as many do - seeking exercise, but what I found was so much more. Quite simply, whilst practicing yoga, I felt better. 

I now understand that in my Yoga practice, I allowed my thinking parts to relax. My attention was directed inside my body, in the breath and in the movement. Rather than be constantly ‘in my head,’ I began to sense and feel my body more, to experience moments of stillness, sensation, and silence, rather than the constant mental chatter I had been familiar with. This was a huge relief for me, and overtime, I began to bring some of that practice outside of the yoga class. 

Around this time, I was towards the end of my undergraduate degree in Psychology, and I was struck by how ‘in the head’ Psychology also was. My own mental health was being hugely helped by yoga, a practice entering body, breath, movement and meditation, and yet there was a huge absence of this in the mainstream study of Psychology. I continued to pursue my paths in Yoga and Psychology, somewhat separately. 

In 2018 I trained as a Yoga Teacher, which was a beautiful experience that solidified my love for the practice. The following year, I started my doctorate in Child, Community and Educational Psychology at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London. Here I learnt much about our inner and outer worlds, which really sparked my curiosity. Using both Psychoanalytic and Systemic lenses, I learnt about how our past and present experiences, are situated within our cultural systems, on many different levels. These systems impact the individual, and the individual impacts the system, and all of this affects our ways of relating to others, and to ourselves. I learnt a lot from the psychoanalytic and systemic teachings, and I’m still influenced them in my Psychology and Therapy practice today.

I came to IFS around two years ago when my friend Bee lent me a book by Richard Schwartz who developed IFS with the help of his clients and colleagues, since the 1980s.  The book is called 'No Bad Parts’ which I strongly recommend as an intro to IFS.  A central tenet of IFS is multiplicity - it is the nature of the mind to be multiple, made up of different parts.   Another key principle is that we all have a Self.  Self is really a state of being - being present, playful, calm, confident, courageous and clear.  Everyone has access to this resource, regardless of their life experiences, but sometimes we need help to ‘unblend’ from parts who may obscure our state of Self, often because they don’t believe there is another way. When we can help our parts build trust in us, we can help and heal ourselves.

The IFS approach is not a purely individual venture - there are complex internal systems within each of us, just as we see in our outer communities and contexts, at the different levels. Through IFS, we also aim to help and heal the systems of pain, prejudice, and polarisation that we see in the world around us. When things start changing on the inside, we start to see things changing in our outer environments, and there’s hope that the more peace we can reveal within, the more peace we will see in a large scale in the world, which is much needed right now.

IFS is not a one size fits all approach. It is a guiding framework which invites and welcomes what is already here for clients, and helps them to relate to their parts from a more compassionate place. We work with the mind and the body as one, our thinking parts, our feeling parts, our parts who show up as physical tension or pain. In welcoming them, and getting to know them, things can shift, and life can feel lighter. In learning the IFS model in trainings, experientially and in working with my clients, I know the amazing impact that this approach can have.  

To end, IFS encompasses so much of the good bits of many of the different Psychological and Spiritual approaches I have resonated with, and I’m grateful to be sharing this work in many ways.

I look forward to sharing more here in writing as I continue to learn and grow.

Louisa

Blog Post Title Two

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