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Life naturally wants to heal. Plants, animals, and humans all have a built-in self-healing mechanism. When we embark on a healing journey, we put ourselves into alignment - in flow- with what naturally wants to happen.

Healing Our Parts

The Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach allows us to understand ourselves in an entirely different way. When we get to know our minds as consisting of parts rather than being a single thing – and we truly connect with those parts and hear their stories – everything shifts:

​​- We come to see our inner world as an intelligent, relational system which operates with intention rather than randomly or without purpose. If it has often seemed like we are broken, we quickly learn otherwise – while trauma may disrupt our innate harmony, it's always possible to heal and get it back​

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​- We learn that all of our parts have a positive intention for us – they’re always trying to help, even when their results are negative. By separating intentions from results, we come to see things in a very different light​​​​

The natural outcome of the above is self-compassion. When we turn inside and get to know the parts of ourselves who we’ve rejected, who we’ve fought against, who we’ve ignored, and who we’ve distracted ourselves from – the change is profound. Once we get to know our minds in this way, we never look at ourselves the same way again. We’re then in a position to be able to heal our parts, so that they can go back to their natural, healthy roles.

Healing our Parts

IFS provides a multi-step process to heal our parts. A brief overview of the fundamentals is provided below. Note that these steps aren’t necessarily linear.​​​

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Witnessing: When truly listen to what our parts have experienced, we come to understand why they’ve taken on certain roles in the system, and why they’re hurt and so easily triggered. In this step, the part shares with us anything it wants us to know about its past: what it has been through, what life was like for the part when we were young, as well as any emotions and negative self-beliefs that the part is carrying. The part may also want us to go back with it into certain scenes/memories, and protect the part the way it needed somebody to do back then.

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​Retrieval: Trauma causes our parts to get stuck in the past, at young ages. They’re often stuck in a particular time/place, or even in a specific scene. In this step, we bring the part to the present with us, and show them that they’re safe with us. This often results in a big shift for the part, since it no longer has to worry about any threats that were present during childhood.​

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Unburdening: In this step, we help the part unload the pain, trauma, and self-beliefs that it has been carrying for so many years. This process – which borrows from shamanistic traditions – is extremely powerful, and is where most of the healing occurs in the IFS process. The part is then invited to bring in positive qualities to fill up the space that was created during the unburdening.​

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As we heal our parts, we notice any number of changes with respect to our internal system and how it functions. Some examples are:​

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- A fundamental lightness inside, often hard to describe fully​

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- Less reactivity to external events. While upsetting things will still occur, we find that our level of agitation internally is substantially reduced​

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- Coping strategies which have impacted our lives – often for decades – are eliminated or largely reduced. This includes addictions (to substances or otherwise), social anxiety, procrastination, shyness, being stuck, and many others.

​Conclusion

While it isn’t difficult to describe IFS in a logical/linear fashion, it’s something that has to be experienced to truly be believed and appreciated. I am grateful to the pioneers who developed IFS – by keeping an open mind rather than being locked into western preconceptions – and I’m so happy to see its popularity increasing by the day.  

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©2025 by Terry Baranski

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