Bettina Dee Psychotherapy Services

Internal Family Systems

The Internal Family System (IFS) model is a powerful approach to heal emotional wounds and to gain mastery over life's challenges. Developed over the past two decades by Dr. Richard Schwartz, IFS combines our understanding of the inner life of the psyche with our knowledge about interpersonal relationships. It creates lasting change, and provides life-long tools to lead a more peaceful, powerful and passionate life.

The IFS model is based on the belief that our natural language of parts (i.e. "Part of me wants to go, and part of me wants to stay.") quite accurately reflects the various sub-personalities we all have. We observe protective parts (active and reactive), vulnerable parts, and wise healing parts.

You will discover that even parts that take on the most destructive roles and behaviors, such as addictive, suicidal, or aggressive behaviors, all have good reasons for what they do. It is their learned way of trying to protect you from pain and danger.

However, often these parts are stuck in the past, when certain situations were just too painful, confusing and/or overwhelming, and when you did not have the appropriate resources to help yourself.

As soon as you fully understand the validity of these parts and their methods for survival, these parts then start to learn that you can protect yourself more effectively as an adult now, and they can become less extreme. Right away you become calmer, clearer and more confident in dealing with present difficulties and opportunities.

During the healing process, we will be very careful not to overwhelm you by rushing to vulnerable feelings/parts too quickly. It is the fear of overwhelm that will even keep you away from therapy and healing altogether. As we respect your fears fully, and understand them, we will know how to proceed in a safe way.

Over time you will become less reactive, and more confident in leading from what we might call Wise Self (or Divine Self), something we can all connect with, no matter how abused and neglected we may have been. This Self can consider other parts' feelings and opinions about any given situation, but will lead actions with confidence, compassion and caring towards the best common good for the internal system--you. While the therapist might take on the role of the Self for moments during therapy, ultimately it is from your own Self that you will unburden wounded parts, heal and transform them, and so harmonize your inner and outer life.

(for more information about IFS see www.selfleadership.org)