2 minutes on Internal Family Systems
A succinct 2 minute description of Internal Family Systems.
Video Transcript
Everybody has many parts. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you; as a matter of fact, it's a very normal thing. But the parts are a way of looking at a specific aspect of you and understanding more about where that part came from and how it can be useful to understand it better, especially if it's a part that's acting out or doing something that maybe doesn't feel particularly good to you.
In this model, we have different kinds of parts based on the function of what they do inside of you. For example, we have really young parts that are called exiles. These parts have been inside of us for a long, long time, and the reason they're called exiles is because we often just push them down. We're taught to push them down as young people because our parents don't understand how to maybe work with a specific aspect of our personality. So, those parts get pushed down; they often are the parts that come up in our relationships. And so, it's very important that we learn how to work with those young parts.
In this model, another kind of part that we have is the parts that run our lives. We love these parts; they're called our managers, and they help us be successful. They help us make a choice about what's the right thing to do each day, how to brush our teeth, how to get dressed, how to move forward into solving problems, how to take care of our children, those kinds of things. Those parts are often protecting us, keeping us safe, helping us stay on the path of being successful in our lives. But sometimes, those parts get overactive and for a reason, and we have to be curious about what the reason is. And so, that's part of our work, getting to know how those parts might be able to move back a little bit, not work so hard, so that we can get to know the other parts underneath that they are protecting.
So, it's like unpeeling the onion open and getting to know you very slowly and gently, in a process that feels safe and comfortable to you.
