Richard Schwartz · Internal Family Systems
IFS
A therapy for when part of you keeps doing what the rest of you hates. Family therapist Richard Schwartz’s picture of the mind as a family, where everyone is trying to help.
01 / Not one mind
You say it all the time: part of me wants to go, part of me would rather stay home. Schwartz’s idea is that this is literally true.
“It’s the nature of the mind to have [parts], and that’s actually a good thing because they’re all valuable.”
Richard Schwartz, family therapist
02 / Where it came from
Schwartz began as a family therapist, treating teenagers with bulimia by changing how their families worked. The families did change. The bingeing carried on. When he asked his clients why, they explained it in terms of parts.
“When something bad happens, this critic attacks me inside and it brings up a part who makes me feel worthless, and empty, and alone, and that feeling is so dreadful that the binge comes in to rescue me from it, but the act of the binge triggers the critic again.”
Richard Schwartz, repeating what his clients told him
The same loop, over and over. And when he looked inside himself, he found the same parts there.
03 / Three kinds of part
Over the years Schwartz noticed the same three roles in almost everyone. Two kinds of part protect you. The third kind is what they are protecting.
Protector · works ahead of time
“If I keep everything under control, nothing can touch the hurt.”
The inner critic, the planner, the pleaser, the part that keeps you thinking so you never have to feel.
Protector · works after the fact
“The hurt got through. Put it out now, whatever it takes.”
The binge, the drink, the rage, the scroll, the sudden need to sleep.
Protected · locked away
“I am worthless. I am alone. It is still happening.”
The young parts that took the hurt. They are frozen at the age it happened, and kept locked away so the feeling cannot flood you.
None of them chose the job. The exile was a playful kid before it got hurt. Ask the critic what it would rather do, and it often says: cheer you on.
“There aren’t any bad parts, they’re all just stuck in the past, trying their best to keep you safe, and carrying these burdens, and beliefs, and emotions.”
Richard Schwartz
04 / The rule
Early on, Schwartz went straight for the hurt, and his clients got worse after the session. The protectors had spent decades keeping that door shut, and he had walked through it without asking.
So the order matters. You talk to the protectors first, ask what they are afraid of, and wait until they say yes.
“I was bypassing protectors and going right to exiles without their permission, so they were what we call backlashing on a client.”
Richard Schwartz
05 / The Self
When Schwartz asked clients how they felt toward their critic, they mostly said they hated it. That hatred, he realised, was coming from another part. So he asked it to step back.
When it did, someone quite different answered: calm, curious, even a little sorry that the critic had to work so hard. Schwartz calls that person the Self, with a capital S.
“That Self, with those eight C qualities, is in everybody, can’t be damaged and knows how to heal both inside and in relationships.”
Richard Schwartz
What that person is like · Schwartz’s eight Cs
Calm
Curious
Clear
Compassionate
Confident
Creative
Courageous
Connected
06 / Blending
Say you make a mistake at work. Shame rushes in, and for the next hour you are simply a worthless person. Schwartz calls that blending.
I am
worthless.
That is the part talking.
A part of me
feels worthless.
That is you, noticing the part. The feeling is the same, but now there is someone home to look after it.
“Then I shift from being this little kid who feels like I really screwed up, to being in these eight C qualities, feeling really bad for that little kid and wanting to help him. That would be unblending from that part.”
Richard Schwartz, the day after his dog died
07 / The practice
Here is what a session looks like, as Schwartz walks people through it. The therapist’s main job is to help you stay in that calm, curious place, and then get out of the way.
Notice where you feel the part in your body. The critic, for most people, is somewhere in the head.
If the honest answer is hate, or fear, that is another part speaking. Ask it to step back and give you some room.
What is it afraid would happen if it stopped doing this? Then wait. The answer arrives on its own; you do not have to think one up.
Most parts are tired of their job. Given the choice, they often want the opposite one.
Let the hurt part show you what happened, and stay with it until it knows you have seen. Then, in your mind’s eye, go into that scene and bring it out.
Once it feels safe, it can let go of what it has been carrying. Schwartz has people hand it to light, or water, or wind. Then the protector is free to choose a new job.
Then there is usually another old hurt, with its own set of protectors. Schwartz’s picture for this is a bulb of garlic, one clove at a time.
08 / Other people
When two people argue, it is usually two protectors arguing. Schwartz asks couples to turn around and look inside instead; he calls it a U-turn. Find the part that has been doing the talking.
Speaking from it
“I hate it when you do that.”
The U-turn
Take a few minutes apart. What got stirred up in you, and what is it protecting?
Speaking for it
“When you said that, an angry part of me came up. It was protecting something.”
“Self-to-Self communication is entirely different from protector-to-protector communication.”
Richard Schwartz
09 / On your own
Some people, Schwartz says, get a long way with exercises alone. He is not one of them: when he goes near his own exiles, he wants someone else in the room.
The short version
Get curious about the part of you that you hate, and ask what it is protecting. The calm person underneath already knows what to do.
Where this comes from
IFS is popular and lightly tested. A 2025 scoping review found twenty-seven studies, two of them randomised trials. The best known, in seventy-nine people with rheumatoid arthritis, found less pain and depression a year on, and no change in the disease itself. A 2026 trial of a group version for PTSD matched an active comparison and did no better. A US government registry listed IFS in 2015; that registry closed in 2018. The numbers are the researchers’ own.