IFS therapy: making room for all of you
One part wants change. Another wants to keep you safe. We can make room for both, with curiosity about what each has been trying to do for you.
What do we mean by “parts”?
Parts can communicate through thoughts, emotions, sensations and images.
Parts is a way of describing different aspects of our inner world. You might recognise the part that pushes you to get everything right, the part that wants to withdraw, or a younger part that longs to be understood. A part may communicate through thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations or images. You do not have to picture characters or use this language if it does not fit. We can begin with whatever you notice.
The responses that protect you
What a part fears, and what it hopes to do for you, both matter.
One part may insist that you work harder, keep everyone happy or never make a mistake. Another may want to escape, shut down or find quick relief when the pressure becomes too much. Then a critical part may return, leaving you caught between demands and exhaustion.
We are curious about what each part fears and what it hopes for. In IFS, we believe that every part has a positive intention for you, even when what it does causes difficulty or its purpose is not yet clear. We are curious to discover what that intention is, so we can understand and help the part.
For example, a part that makes you check a message again and again may fear that a mistake will lead to criticism or rejection. It may hope to keep you accepted, connected or safe. Another part may become frustrated and want to avoid replying altogether, hoping to give you some relief. We listen to both, rather than making either one the problem. Understanding their intentions also leaves room to address the impact of what they do.
Self and the qualities it brings
The eight Cs and five Ps describe qualities of Self, not a checklist to achieve.
In IFS, Self describes the compassionate, connected presence from which we can come to know and care for every part. Self is not another part taking charge or deciding which parts are acceptable. Other parts may feel angry with a part, dislike what it does or want it gone. Those parts are welcome too. We do not ask them to pretend to feel differently.
The eight qualities often called the “8 Cs” are calm, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity and connectedness. The “5 Ps” add presence, patience, perspective, persistence and playfulness. These are ways of recognising Self, rather than standards to meet or another task to get right. Persistence here can mean staying in caring relationship, rather than pushing a part to change.
You do not need to sit still, empty your mind or feel warmly towards every part before we can begin. We can listen to the parts that feel doubtful, impatient or critical, and find out what they need. Even a small moment of openness can give us somewhere to start.
Burdens and unburdening
Witnessing, updating and finding safety can bring relief too.
IFS uses “burdens” for painful beliefs or feelings that parts have come to carry, such as “I am too much”, “I am not enough” or “It is never safe to need anyone”. The part itself is not the burden. Unburdening describes an experiential process in which those beliefs or feelings may soften or be released as the part feels understood and supported.
Relief can also come before, or without, unburdening. A part may feel less alone when its experience is witnessed by your Self. It may begin to recognise that you are older now, have more support or have choices that were not available then. In IFS this is sometimes called updating. Helping a part that feels stuck in an earlier experience find safety now, sometimes called retrieval, can also be a significant step. Being heard, understood and accompanied matters in its own right.
There is no deadline or requirement to unburden. Some parts may nevertheless feel an urgent need for relief or change. We make room for that urgency too, listening to what feels so pressing while respecting parts that need more time.
For parts that want to understand the science
The person in the locked room
Imagine someone whose life looks wonderful from the outside: a loving family, a comfortable home and the things they have longed for. Yet they stay locked in a bare, uncomfortable room, cut off from food, care and connection. From outside, it can be hard to understand why they do not simply come out.
What we cannot see is that a frightened part believes there is a T-rex waiting outside the door. In this story, the world outside is safe, but to that part leaving the room means being killed. Staying hidden is an attempt to keep the person alive, even though it also keeps them from so much that they need.
Through a parts perspective
Once we understand the T-rex, the protection makes sense. We can be curious about what the part fears and what it knows of the world. That fear may connect with an earlier experience or with messages carried through family or culture. We can listen without needing to decide where it began before we offer care.
We do not force the door open. With the protective parts’ permission, we help the frightened part feel witnessed and accompanied, recognise what is different now and find safety. It may become able to release the burden it has been carrying. As the felt threat changes, there can be more room for its gifts and for connection.
Through a memory reconsolidation perspective
Old emotional learning can work like an inner rule: “If I go out, I will die” or “If I reach for someone, I will be hurt.” Reassurance may bring comfort or temporary relief, or it may not reach the part that is frightened. Another part may then feel frustrated or ashamed: “I know I am safe, so why can I not feel it?” That does not mean you have failed. The old expectation may still feel true to the part carrying it.
Memory reconsolidation research asks how an old learning can become open to updating. The old expectation needs to be brought to mind enough for new learning to connect with it. This does not mean making yourself intensely frightened or reliving the experience. In IFS, we aim to be with the part, with enough space to notice and care for it, rather than becoming overwhelmed by it. An experience that genuinely differs from what the part expects can then matter. In the metaphor, the part begins to experience being safe and accompanied where it expected danger. The difference is between being told there is no T-rex and coming to feel that the danger it expects is not happening now. That kind of new learning may allow the old expectation to change.
The story helps us picture a shift from knowing something in our head to a part being able to take in something different. Researchers are still working out which processes bring about lasting change in therapy, including IFS. We can stay curious about the science while listening carefully to what your parts experience.
Another way to picture it is a rustle in a bush. If a bear once appeared, responding quickly to that sound could have saved a life. The alarm is understandable. Later, discovering a rabbit behind the rustling bush offers something different to learn: this sound does not always mean danger. Safe experiences may help the alarm soften. Sometimes an old fear returns; learning safety and changing the original fear are not always the same process.
For the data gatherers
Memory research offers encouraging evidence that learned fear can change. Under particular conditions, bringing old learning to mind can create an opportunity for it to be updated.
Sevenster and colleagues (2013) found that an unexpected outcome, called prediction error, was important for opening a learned fear memory to change in their human experiment. A 2025 study by Ni and colleagues found reduced fear responses after memory retrieval and safety learning, with different patterns over time suggesting that more than one process was involved. Findings like these give researchers useful ways to investigate how old expectations can change.
The results are not uniform. A registered replication by Chalkia and colleagues (2020) did not reproduce the expected lasting benefit of a particular retrieval-and-extinction procedure. That finding raises questions about when and how reliably that procedure works; it does not settle every question about memory updating.
For IFS, this opens an interesting possibility: a part encountering care, connection or safety while an old expectation is present may be experiencing something relevant to this kind of updating. That connection still needs direct study. These experiments did not test IFS, and we cannot tell from a felt shift alone which brain processes were involved. The IFS Institute’s research overview describes the growing work and its remaining gaps. There is room to take the possibilities seriously and keep asking careful questions.
Legacy burdens: carrying what did not begin with us
Family and cultural messages can shape what we feel we must carry.
Some burdens are so familiar that we may not realise we carry them. They can feel like simply who we are, or how life has always been. Some fears, shame, roles or expectations can feel older than our own experience. Families and cultures pass on messages about belonging, loyalty, identity and what it is safe to feel. Legacy burdens may include scarcity, a sense that there will never be enough, or that security could disappear and suppression, where needs, emotions or your voice have had to be hidden. These patterns may be shaped by real experiences of poverty, oppression or the need to survive, whether in your own lifetime, in earlier generations, or both. For our ancestors, carrying them may have been a way to protect themselves and the people they loved. We may learn to keep quiet, look after everyone else or prove our worth without remembering when we first learned it.
In IFS, “legacy burdens” gives us a way to explore what you may be carrying from family, culture or earlier generations. This can show up in family stories, unspoken rules and relationships, as well as bodily sensations, automatic expectations and responses outside conscious awareness. We may notice the effect before we can put it into words. We can explore how these influences affect you now, without needing to know exactly where every feeling began. We can understand what earlier generations faced and how their ways of coping may still affect you today. We also make room for the pressures you are facing in your own life now.
A part may worry that letting something soften means losing connection, being disloyal or no longer knowing who you are. Those concerns deserve time. We do not need to force release or impose an ancestral or spiritual practice. Your identity, values and connection to others can remain important as we support a part to release what it no longer needs to carry. This can make room for its gifts and for ways of connecting that feel more nurturing, within yourself and with others.
In my own inner work, I found that parts of me strongly rejected the class system I had grown up around. Their rejection also made it difficult to acknowledge other parts that had absorbed those messages. For the parts carrying them, those beliefs were about survival. Meeting them with compassion brought more freedom than keeping them hidden. If you would like, I share a little of my own experience here →
IFS at the heart, with flexibility around you
The person leads. The model remains flexible.
IFS is central to my work, alongside trauma, attachment and relationships, with play, sandtray and other creative approaches where they are helpful. What matters to me is the relationship you can build with your own experience, rather than getting the language or an exercise right.
A protective part does not need to be argued out of its concerns. Hesitation, disagreement and not knowing are welcome. I pay attention to how the work feels for you. You are welcome to let me know if I have misunderstood or something does not feel right. That may be difficult for parts that fear disagreement, upsetting someone or not being believed. We can work with those concerns too, without expecting you to speak up before it feels possible. There is space for neurodivergent ways of communicating, sensory needs, movement and the effort of masking, without treating your neurotype as something to cure.
Read my reflection on the inner work I bring to therapy →
There is no wrong feeling or part to bring here. IFS offers a way of being with ourselves and showing up for the people and communities around us. It is not a technique we have to perform correctly. We can practise listening, making room for what is here and responding with care, confidence and courage in everyday life, as well as in therapy.
I walk alongside you through this work. If we come to a door that feels frightening, we can pause together and listen to the parts that need us to understand. I will not push you through or walk ahead and leave you behind. We find our way side by side, with care for what feels safe enough to explore.
Explore further
A question is enough to begin.
You are welcome to ask whether this support might be right for you. My practice is currently full; enquiries about the waiting list are welcome.