Internal Family Systems: What it Is and Why It Drives Us

It’s not just a model of psychotherapy; it’s a life-changing practice.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a framework for relating to our inner worlds that sees our minds as naturally made of parts or sub-personalities. And behind these parts is a deep, powerful, and undamaged essence that IFS calls Self, but could also be called Spirit, Soul, or Core.

IFS provides a set of practices and ideas that help us allow for more room in our internal systems for Self, by healing, integrating, and supporting all of our inner parts.

Why we’re driven by IFS

We all have a compassionate, wise Core Self; now we can learn to make space for it.

From the perspective of Internal Family Systems, the idea that we have a single, unified personality or self is the “myth of the mono mind.” Instead, every human mind has many parts or sub-personalities that together makeup who we are and how we manage our lives. 

When first hearing of this idea, some people think of dissociative identity disorder (DID), where a person will have many distinct personalities of different ages and genders, and who may not even know the existence of other personalities. According to the IFS model, DID is just an extreme version of the sub-personalities and internal system we all have. 

Through IFS practices, we can learn how to come into a loving, supportive relationship with all of our parts (even the ones we’re angry with or scared of). And through building these Self-to-Part relationships, more space is opened inside for our deeper essence (Core Self, Spirit, Soul, or whatever you want to call it).

This opening up of Core Self leads to healing longstanding trauma, rebuilding broken relationships, and bringing more compassion, calmness, clarity, and courage into our daily lives.

Our IFS-Inspired Programs

  • IFS for Your Daily Life (Levels One and Two) will help you develop four fundamental emotional health abilities: emotional intelligence, groundedness, resilience, and connection. Through real-world IFS tools and skills, you’ll be able to practice IFS right in the midst of all you have going on in your life.

  • Each month, trauma-informed breathwork facilitator and coach, Tamy Erle and Yes Collective co-founder, Justin Wilford, PhD, will lead a 2-hour psychedelic breathwork session. Using an Internal Family Systems framework, Tamy and Justin will prepare you for and guide you into a psychedelic state of consciousness––all through your own breath.

  • In the Yes Collective's 4-week Internal Family Systems Experiential Healing Circle, you will get a deeper understanding of the paradigm-shifting model of Internal Family Systems; focus further on daily IFS practices, learning what it means to bring IFS into daily life; and experience live IFS “In-sight” work in each session.

  • Root Work is a transformational 10-week program designed by the Yes Collective therapy team to prepare and help members integrate profound "frame-breaking" psychedelic experiences through one-on-one and group-based coaching. Using an Internal Family Systems model, our team guides members into deep self-discovery, self-acceptance, and psycho-emotional healing.

Checkout Our IFS-Inspired Podcast Episodes.

Over the years, we’ve interviewed some pretty amazing leaders in Internal Family Systems. We talked about healing from trauma, daily IFS tools, parenting, grief, forgiveness, psychedelics and a whole lot more!