Internal Family Systems Explained: Dr Richard Schwartz on Parts, Exiles and the Self

For Ton, the conversation was personal. In the film he describes IFS as one of the approaches that had a profound impact on his own healing journey. The scene below is taken directly from the documentary.

IFS takes the position that every one of us has parts that we are born with. Each part has its own talents and qualities to help us in life. Trauma does not create these parts, but it can force them out of their naturally valuable states and into roles that can be damaging and create symptoms.

Dr Schwartz describes how these parts also take on what he calls burdens: extreme beliefs and emotions that came into the system from the trauma and attached to them, almost like a virus.

The most sensitive parts are often the ones that get hurt first. Once they carry painful emotions, they have the power to overwhelm us and pull us back into old scenes. So we tend to lock them away in an inner basement. IFS calls these parts exiles, and when they are exiled we lose access to their qualities too. It becomes hard to be playful, the world feels more dangerous, and many more things can trigger us.

Other parts step in to keep the exiles from being triggered. Some manage our lives: keeping people at a distance, driving us to achieve so we never feel worthless, or acting as an inner critic. When the exiles do get triggered anyway, another set of parts deals with the emergency. These firefighters reach for impulsive fixes such as dissociation, substances or rage, anything to get away from the vulnerability.

Dr Schwartz noticed that when other parts stepped back, clients would suddenly feel compassion for the part they had been fighting. When he asked what part of them that was, they would answer that it was not a part at all, it was themselves. In IFS this is the Self, and it leads the healing.

Once released from their roles, parts transform back into their naturally valuable states. The aim is not to get rid of any part, but to let them trust the Self as a leader again.

Straight after Dr Schwartz explains the model, TRAUMALITY moves from theory into practice. To show how this kind of therapy actually works, director Ton Mazzone filmed one of his first ever therapy sessions that used an IFS approach, condensed for the film.

With his eyes closed, Ton is guided through a body scan and finds a part he describes as a ball of energy in his centre: a part afraid of making a mistake. As the dialogue opens up, a younger part of around nine or ten years old comes forward. It simply wants to be seen and accepted for himself.

The session reveals how a protector formed early in life, pushing Ton to be the loudest person in the room and to hold impossibly high expectations of himself. It kept him safe once, but over time it began masking who he really was and feeding perfectionism. This is exactly the pattern Dr Schwartz describes: a part still acting as if Ton were a child who needed protecting.

For Ton, IFS was one of the approaches that had a profound impact on his healing. Rather than fighting his fear or criticising himself for it, he could get curious about what the fearful part was guarding, and offer the younger part the understanding it had been waiting for. Seeing that moment on screen is what makes the film's exploration of IFS feel lived rather than explained.

Most people already speak the language of parts without noticing. "Part of me wants to go, part of me wants to stay at home" is a small example. IFS takes those everyday phrases seriously and asks what each part is trying to do for us.

IFS does not treat a diagnosis as a broken piece of the person. It treats many symptoms as the strategies of protective parts. Seen this way, anxiety can be a manager scanning constantly for danger. Depression can be a part that shuts everything down so the pain of an exile cannot break through. Addiction, self-harm and binge eating can be firefighters doing their urgent job of making a feeling stop.

This is why IFS is so often used alongside trauma work. It is applied with people living with PTSD and complex trauma, anxiety, depression, eating difficulties, addiction and relationship problems. The emphasis is on understanding why a symptom exists before trying to remove it.

An IFS session is usually calm and curious rather than confrontational. A therapist helps the client notice a part, often as a feeling, a thought or a sensation in the body, and then get to know it.

Many people also use the ideas on their own, for example by pausing when a strong reaction hits and asking: which part of me is this, and what is it afraid of? For deep trauma, though, IFS is best explored with a trained therapist, because meeting exiles can bring up a great deal.

Dr Schwartz developed IFS in the 1980s while working as a family therapist. What began as one clinician's model is now taught internationally. More than 7,600 practitioners worldwide have trained through the IFS Institute, which runs the official certification pathway, and it reports training close to 4,000 new providers a year, up from around 500 in 2017. There is no reliable count of how many clients have been helped by it, but the model is now used in therapy rooms, hospitals and retreats across North America, Europe and beyond, and its books and podcasts reach millions more.

The research base is still young. Early studies, including trials with people living with PTSD and with rheumatoid arthritis, have shown encouraging results, and in 2015 the model was listed on the US national register of evidence-based programmes. Larger trials are still needed, and IFS sits best as one part of a wider, trauma-informed picture.

TRAUMALITY explores the link between trauma and mental health with 22 leading voices in the field, including Dr Peter Levine, Deb Dana, Janina Fisher and Dr Richard Schwartz. Straight after this scene, the film shows one of Ton's own early therapy sessions that used an IFS approach.