Could internal family systems (IFS) coaching help you?

If you’ve become stuck in an unhelpful cycle of thoughts, feelings or behaviour that holds you back in your career, working patterns, relationships, confidence, sense of self, enjoyment of life, creativity, parenting – IFS coaching might be the answer.

Coaching is an affordable way to make measured changes and feel tangible progress that is all under your control. Your coach will support you in using the IFS approach to understand your obstacles to a more fulfilled professional and personal life and learn how to work with these roadblocks in a way that feels helpful and manageable.

What’s all the hype about IFS?

The Internal family systems approach was developed by Richard Schwartz in the context of family therapy over forty years ago. IFS is now a peer-reviewed, evidence-based approach and is one of the most sought-after therapies and personal change models being practised across the globe, a testament to its efficacy.

It’s used in multiple settings, from therapy and personal coaching to leadership development, team coaching and conflict resolution (Rydings, 2022), working with addictions (Sykes, 2023), and even informing research into the rapidly expanding medical field of psychedelic-assisted therapy (Wolfson, 2023).

What are some key benefits IFS coaching can provide?

• It can help you explore the impact of your internal parts on your own decision-making, actions, relationships and sense of contentment.
• It offers a way for you to find your own solutions and create your own strategies to create harmony in your inner system of parts.
• You will guide your own progress and be in control.
• You'll feel more confident, curious, calm, clear, connected, compassionate, creative and courageous.
• You can heal unresolved painful emotions, and feel less reactivity in your system and therefore less shame.
• You'll experience more presence, persistence, perspective, patience and playfulness.

How does IFS work?

The approach is based on the precept that we all have parts that direct our thoughts, feelings and behaviour, and that these parts can have opposing agendas. We express this naturally in statements like “Part of me wants to get up and go to the gym, whilst another part wants to go back to sleep.” When we become aware of these parts and their conflicting agendas, we understand why we can become stuck, procrastinate and struggle to change unhelpful thinking and habits.

Even the most intransigent of problematic beliefs that limit our confidence, self-belief and self-esteem can be transformed with IFS.

Parts can appear as inner voices that represent aspects of ourselves and the beliefs and values we uphold. Each part has distinctive hopes and fears and these can feel helpful or limiting. You may have critical parts, along with anxious-to-please parts, and parts that feel like they’ve failed. Other parts may be playful, curious, encouraging and feel like inner cheerleaders.

The IFS model helps us discern between protective parts and wounded parts and work with these subsets in particular ways. It suggests that because we all received setbacks and hurtful experiences early in our lives, our protective parts want to keep us safe by avoiding future harm and repressing the hurt parts of us. Over time, these can become rigid expectations of ourselves and others that create disharmony, unhappiness and stress, and even have implications for our physical and mental well-being.

Is IFS effective?

The model helps us to differentiate our parts and understand their polarised wishes and then offers a straightforward way to work with these to get clarity and move forward in our personal and professional lives. Even the most intransigent of problematic beliefs that limit our confidence, self-belief and self-esteem can be transformed with IFS.

Once we find more ease and flow in life, there is a commensurate shift in our relationships and the opportunities that we can access. It helps clients successfully change anything from an unhelpful habit to overcoming major trauma and mental illness.

How is progress maintained through coaching?

The coach supports the client to continue to work with their parts outside the session and deepen both the practice of working with parts and the expansion of changes to other aspects of our lives. In this way, changes become self-sustaining through the clients’ own mastery of the IFS model and continue to make progress outside sessions - the ideal coaching outcome!

Why do we get so stuck in the first place?

The approach suggests that our parts learned their limiting beliefs in difficult past experiences. It offers a gentle, non-pathologising way to challenge these beliefs and remind us that as adults we now have knowledge, experience and resources at our fingertips and can make wise and discerning choices.

Because of the way IFS encourages a compassionate relationship between our wise adult ‘self’ and our younger vulnerable parts, clients feel the changes happen in the moment and often make immediate positive transformations to very old problematic thinking.

Where is IFS coaching currently used successfully?

As well as individual coaching and therapy, IFS coaching is used in organisations, in one-to-one leadership and executive coaching and in team settings. When the parts approach becomes integrated into company culture, groups develop more tolerance and collaborate with much greater ease, making organisational change and development work smoother and less costly.

Coaching is individual, specific, powerful and accessible. You don’t need to stay stuck, indecisive, unconfident, unsupported. If you’re interested in knowing more about IFS and how it can help you, book a discovery call with a fully IFS-trained coach today.