Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, A New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy

This approach is fundamentally different from the way we ordinarily relate to our parts. Usually when we become aware of a part (or a feeling or behavior pattern), the first thing we do is evaluate it. Is it good or bad for us? If we decide it is good, we embrace it and act from it. If we decide it is bad, we try to get rid of it. We tell it to go

Some try to make you into a loveable person so people will like you; that way they won’t hurt or abandon you.

Yet if the Self is truly at the center of each of us, you may be asking, why don’t we know it better? Because over the years we have experienced hurts, trauma, and grief, which have burdened us with shame, fear, and negative beliefs. These events have prompted some of our inner characters to take over in a desperate bid to protect us from harm. The

Some protectors help you be successful or popular to build up your confidence and self-esteem. They see a hole deep inside you where you feel deficient, and they want to compensate for it with accolades from others.

Exercise: Learning about Protectors

When you crave that piece of cake late at night, it isn’t just a desire that comes up from time to time. There is an entity inside you that repeatedly needs a sense of sweet fullness. It has reasons why it feels it must have that dessert. It might need to push down anger or fill an unbearable sensation of emptiness. This part has memories that driv

IFS is designed to be self-led. It empowers you to take charge of your own growth because your true Self, not a therapist, is the agent of healing and wholeness. This makes IFS a natural vehicle for self-therapy.

Exercise: Identifying the Parts at a Trailhead

Every part of you is trying to help you feel good and avoid pain.