Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. – The Founder of Internal Family Systems
Richard Schwartz began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.

In the IFS model, there are three general types of parts:

1. Exiles: represent psychological trauma, often from childhood, and they carry the pain and fear. Exiles may become isolated from the other parts and polarize the system. Managers and Firefighters try to protect a person’s consciousness by preventing the Exiles’ pain from coming to awareness.
2. Managers: take on a preemptive, protective role. They influence the way a person interacts with the external world, protecting the person from harm and preventing painful or traumatic experiences from flooding the person’s conscious awareness.
3. Firefighters: emerge when Exiles break out and demand attention. They work to divert attention away from the Exile’s hurt and shame, which leads to impulsive and/or inappropriate behaviors like overeating, drug use or violence. They can also distract a person from pain by excessively focusing attention on more subtle activities such as overworking or over-medicating.

Therapist Update:7/21/2021
I am trained and qualified to utilize the IFS model within sessions in Individual, family and group therapy. IFS Full- Certification takes time, practice and there are many training stages to complete before final certification. I am currently in the process of pre-certification of my “IFS Therapist Journey” with this model. If you think this model is a model you would like to try and utilize within sessions, please let me know anytime during your treatment. I love this model because you (the client) are in control of how the sessions pace themselves, what you choose to process within sessions, what you choose to explore and ultimately you make the connections to benefit overall mood management, increased trauma healing and stability.

David D. Barnett
For more information about the IFS Institute please see below and it will take you to the Institute web page.