A Primer on Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Narcissism Recovery

Internal Family Systems can help you put all of your parts together, so you have connection and clarity!

I’ve been using Internal Family Systems (IFS) interventions, both personally and professionally, for many years. I haven’t posted about IFS, because I’ve been waiting to complete the Internal Family Systems Institute’s Level 1 training.

That said, as of this month, I’m officially a Level 1 trained IFS therapist! So, it's time to start talking about what IFS is, and how Internal Family Systems can help you in narcissism recovery.

As it turns out, whether you have a parent or partner with narcissistic traits, or you think you have narcissistic traits, IFS is one of the fastest and most comfortable ways to both heal traumatic memories, and help you develop a strong inner foundation so you can handle life’s challenges. Let’s take a look!

So, what is IFS?

You’ve undoubtably had a moment where you thought, “A part of me feels one way about this…but another part of me feels completely the opposite!” Or maybe you’ve told someone, “Logically I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I can’t help the way I feel!”

If you’ve ever dieted, you’ve probably had a moment (or many) where you found yourself feeling powerless to stop eating when you weren’t hungry, even though you consciously wanted to stop eating.

Experiences like these can be frustrating and scary. IFS explains these common experiences by viewing our minds in a less Western “single mind” way, and in a more Eastern “multiple mind” perspective. IFS sees the mind as made up of Self-energy (what Western thinking calls “self”), and a collection of parts (aspects of you that have unique, conflicting characteristics).

Self-energy is the core of our being, and is characterized by feeling calm, confident, courageous, connected (to self and others), curious, creative, compassionate (for self and others), and clear-minded (able to think dialectically).

Being in self-energy is the goal, but being purely in self-energy isn’t a chronic experience. Many of our parts are active most of the time—personality parts, for example. You may not be blended or flooded with a personality part, but your personality parts are always close to the surface, ready to protect you.

There are no bad parts, so the goal isn't to ditch your parts. Instead, the aim is to get to know your parts, and rely on them just enough, only when you need them. Dr. Richard Schwartz, the developer of IFS, compares self-energy to a conductor, and parts to the musicians. The conductor knows their orchestra, and calls on each musician to play their instrument in a certain way, at a certain time.

Parts fall into two broad categories. Parts can be protective, and address day-to-day tasks, like helping you navigate fear, worry, and danger. Parts can act as cheerleaders, inner critics, manage aspects of personality, and much more.

As an example, I love spontaneity, and thoroughly enjoy surprises. On the other hand, I also love routines and predictability. In IFS language, I’d explain this contradiction by observing I have a part of me that loves spontaneity, and a part of me that loves predictability.

Protective parts can also be involved in managing the other category of parts, called exiles. Exile parts hold on to uncomfortable memories. If your protective parts are concerned that remembering those memories will be overwhelming, those protective parts will go to great lengths to help you avoid remembering memories, and feeling the feelings associated with those memories.

In IFS, the goal is to connect to self-energy, and then direct that self-energy to your parts. This benefits both your protective parts and your exile parts. Instead of getting caught up in polarizations between protective parts, self-energy allows you to hear out the parts of you that disagree. You can then make sense of the polarizations in your own thoughts and feelings, and act with clarity.

Self-energy also benefits your exile parts. Exile parts need to be witnessed. They rarely need to relive traumatic experiences, but instead, need an opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings, instead of repressing them. And they need your self-energy to make sense of the expectations they hold as a result of trauma, and to develop more reasonable expectations.

Why IFS instead of parts and memory, EMDR, or something else?

IFS is unique in a variety of ways. I’m also trained in parts and memory and EMDR, and I don’t use either one. I use IFS because it’s the only one of the three that doesn’t require you to fully activate a memory in order to heal the memory.

In contrast, when I trained in parts and memory, I relived a traumatic experience I had as a six-year-old. I could see, hear, feel, and smell aspects of the memory with crystal clarity. I remembered unpleasant aspects of the memory I’d deliberately trained myself to forget. When I trained in EMDR, I relived a 20-minute panic attack (which happened to be related to the memory from my parts and memory training).

While parts and memory and EMDR did work to heal those memories, the experience of reliving them wasn’t fun. In IFS, you can heal traumatic memories without having to fully activate the memory.

That’s not to say that you won’t feel uncomfortable feelings when you’re connecting with those parts of you that hold the traumatic memories. However, the degree of discomfort is considerably less, because you’re not fully activating the memory.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of IFS is that you create a relationship with all of the different parts of yourself. I encourage clients to notice their parts and learn how to be responsive to their parts by doing their own parts work as often as possible.

How can clients do this? Some common examples of protective parts include anger parts, worry parts, and perfectionism parts. When clients begin to see their thoughts and feelings about anger, worry, or perfectionism as a part of themselves, they immediately feel less overwhelmed by the thoughts. As they get better at parts work, they can engage with their parts and get back into self-energy on their own, without having to wait for their next session!

My clients report that one of their favorite aspects of IFS is how effective it is. I have clients who have been in therapy for years, and get “stuck” when they get to a certain place in healing, even when working with a trauma-informed therapist.

Why? In Darrell Hammond’s documentary Cracked Up: The Darrell Hammond Story, he describes a moment in talk therapy where, in IFS terms, he connects with a part and relives a traumatic memory that helps him put together aspects of his childhood. This moment happens after years of talk therapy.

In IFS theory, I’d say it takes years because the therapist is building safety and trust with the client indirectly. In contrast, in IFS therapy the therapist directly acknowledges the presence of protective parts that are fearful of the client being overwhelmed by the emotional content of memories. I work with my client’s protective parts, rather than trying to work around them (as in parts and memory and EMDR) or working indirectly with them (as Darrell Hammond’s therapist did).

Of course, I don’t force clients to use IFS in sessions. I always have a few clients on the calendar with whom I’ve discussed IFS, they’ve declined, and we use talk therapy, psychoeducation, online sandtray therapy interventions, art therapy interventions, and tapping. Sometimes clients want to do talk therapy with me, and EMDR, brainspotting, TMS, neurofeedback, or other interventions with another provider. That's absolutely fine with me. After all, no one intervention is always right for everyone!

How can IFS help me if I have a parent or partner with narcissistic traits?

In a healthy parent-child relationship, the child feels safe going to their parent and sharing their thoughts and feelings. If the child feels angry, sad, scared, or guilty, they know they can tell their parent, and their parent will listen to them and help them.

If you had a parent with narcissistic traits, chances are good that very often what you were worried about was your parent. Your narcissistic parent might have been abusive, neglectful, or both. So, they weren’t able to see, hear, and care about you.

That means you didn’t have an adult who could help you understand what to do when you felt angry, sad, scared, or guilty. So, what most children with narcissistic parents learn to do is ignore their parts.

When they feel angry, worried, sad or guilty, they experience very strong reactions in their bodies. Each person’s experience is different, but when I’m angry, my face flushes, and my hands shake. When I feel worried, I feel a cross between nausea and butterflies in my stomach.

If you have a parent with narcissistic traits, chances are good your parts are extremely “loud.” If you had to ignore your parts in order to survive your childhood, it just makes sense. Your parts learned early on in your childhood that they have to scream at the top of their lungs, so to speak, in order to be noticed. They are there to help you survive, and they won’t be easily silenced!

In parts work, you get to know your parts, and learn how to listen to them. Your parent wasn’t able to be a caring parent to your parts, and help you develop your Self-energy. But you can do this in adulthood, and parts work provides a clear path to doing so.

When you’re able to be a caring parent to your parts, you respond differently to situations. You can calm your parts when you feel angry or scared. You can comfort your parts when you feel sad or shameful. Your parts don't have to be so loud, because you respond to them right away!

For myself, the most significant difference in pre- and post-parts work is my relationship with food. When a part of me felt sad, I would eat. If I had chips or cookies or candy or ice cream in the house, I’d “hear it calling my name,” and I’d find myself eating it. As a kid, my favorite food was ice cream. As an adult, my favorite indulgence was cashews dipped in frosting.

Now, I completely forget there’s ice cream in the fridge. My kids bought me jelly beans (my favorite candy) a few years ago, and even though they’re sitting on my desk, I haven’t finished them yet. I keep forgetting about them! I haven’t had cashews and frosting in years, because it never crosses my mind when I’m frosting a cake. The parts of me that felt comforted by food don’t feel sad, so they don’t need to eat for comfort.

If you have a parent with narcissistic traits, you have parts that were deeply wounded by your relationship with your parent. Your story is unique to you, but being raised by an emotional four-year-old who doesn’t have the capacity to see, hear, and care about you left you with exile parts that are holding on to the anger, sadness, fear, and shame of those experiences.

And on top of that, your protective parts had to figure out how to navigate the adult world without the support of an adult, so you most likely have some challenges with managing worry, sadness, anger, and shame. Depending on whether you’re a moving toward or a moving away personality type, or have a moving against side to your personality, you probably struggle with fawning, dissociating, or aggression, or a combination of all three.

Happily, all of these challenges can be healed with IFS therapy. You can learn to see, hear, and care about your exile parts, and free them up to enjoy life to the fullest, the way that young children do. And you can learn to be a caring parent to your protective parts, and respond assertively to situations that arise in daily life. That frees you up to thrive, instead of struggling to survive!

How can IFS help me if I think I have narcissistic traits?

Narcissistic personality disorder is, by sheer definition, a personality disorder. Fortunately, our personalities are defined by our parts, not our self-energy. That means we can work with those personality-related parts, and help them heal.

When I work with clients with narcissistic traits who are open to IFS, we get to know their personality parts. Those parts are usually very young, and holding on to unhelpful survival beliefs, because of the neglect and abuse they experienced.

So, we use IFS to connect with and heal those parts. That allows the person with narcissistic traits the opportunity to be the caring parent they didn’t have. They learn how to heal and support their parts, so they can engage with themselves and the world from self-energy, instead of their parts.

It sounds fantastic! How do I find an IFS therapist?

If you’d like to find an IFS therapist, check out the Internal Family Systems Institute’s website here. Many websites like Psychology Today, Alma, Rula, Grow Therapy, etc., have a search feature that allows you to choose IFS as a filter.

What if I can’t find someone who’s IFS trained in my area?

If you can’t find an IFS therapist in your area, you have a variety of options. While Level 1 training definitely elevated my ability to support clients in working with their parts, being IFS-informed is a good alternative. You won’t find IFS-informed therapists on the Internal Family Systems Institute’s website, but you can find one via other websites like Psychology Today, etc. (You may have to reach out to the therapist and ask if they’re IFS-informed, parts and memory informed, or informed about parts through some other way.)

You can also seek out information on IFS online or in print. There are myriad videos, podcasts, and groups you can access on social media platforms. Check out apps for your smartphone, or consider books or workbooks. Schwartz's The Internal Family Systems Workbook is a great starting point. As a therapist, I’m a huge fan of Frank Anderson’s workbook, designed to support therapists in providing IFS to clients.

Of course, if you have a parent with narcissistic traits, or you believe you have narcissistic traits, I encourage you to find an attachment therapist who is IFS-informed or trained, and who has a strong background in trauma and narcissism. You deserve to make peace with all the parts of you that have worked so hard to help you survive your childhood—so you can finally thrive!

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