What Makes Internal Family Systems So Special?

Our look at Internal Family Systems (IFS) reveals that this treatment method is considered particularly useful and effective vis-à-vis eating disorders. Today’s post provides some hints as to why, in the minds of many, that connection has been so strongly established.

After founder Richard C. Schwartz’s career had become established at Castlewood Treatment Center, at a later point, he was joined by Frank Anderson, co-author of the IFS Skills Training Manual. Anderson is credited with enhancing the basic IFS framework by integrating “neuroscience, psychopharmacology, and advanced trauma principles, especially for dissociation and developmental trauma,” thereby extending IFS into “a neurobiologically grounded trauma specialty.”

An insufficiently examined premise?

As previously mentioned, these pioneers found that most of the early-life traumas affecting the patients were sexual in nature, and they praised Castlewood for the institution’s policies that helped clients “heal the pain that underlies their eating disorders, rather than just manage the symptoms.” However, this approval was not universal.

As journalist Rachel Corbett recently mentioned, today’s medical community tends to believe that “eating disorders are no more linked to sexual abuse than they are other types of trauma”… or, for that matter, to unrelated genetic and/or environmental factors. Additionally, Corbett’s article, published last month, dropped these bombshells:

[T]he IFS Institute will have trained 15,000 therapists in the method by the end of this year, and another 5,000 are on a waiting list.

[…] and more than 45,000 mental-health practitioners in the Psychology Today database offer it as a treatment.

[T]he practice has exploded in social media. TikTok is flooded with millions of videos mentioning IFS, including those of people role-playing and analyzing their parts…

It comes as no surprise that some obesity experts suspect that there might be worrisome and potentially dangerous elements in a field over-saturated with IFA concepts. Some traditionalists are just not buying it and don’t care who knows.

A few random websites have been consulted to try and figure out what exactly the attraction is. Are the unorthodox ideas dangerous? What about the legal implications of accepting that each person embodies a whole crowd of amateur headshrinkers?

Poet Walt Whitman famously said, “I contain multitudes.” But is that true of everyone? What would he have thought of this possible over-identification with eating-disordered patients?

One of the general complaints mentioned by Corbett is that some therapists have far too enthusiastically embraced the whole multiple personality premise, and are inexplicably over-eager to encourage patients to discover multitudes of Parts inside themselves.

One technique recommended to patients is Guided Meditation, “which helps you invite Self-energy forward and engage with your Parts calmly.” These entities, of course, include the internal manifestations of the patient-as-victim at various ages, and also one or more of the patient’s self-rescuing guardian spirits.

In order to solve, for example, an attachment to overeating, some of the interior characters express their anxieties about life in general, while other “parts” or “alters” answer them, offering hope and reassurance, as well as tactical strategies to deal with specific situations.

Treatment or cult?

We will be looking at more of the reasons why many professionals feel uneasy about IFS. For one thing, there seems to be a near-universal opinion that “patients with eating disorders are among the most difficult to treat.” Meanwhile, here are additional words from Rachel Corbett’s research into what some researchers say:

[E]ven if high-functioning patients probably won’t develop multiple selves while exploring their “parts,” and plenty find it a helpful framework, it’s too untested a practice to be considered a safe form of psychotherapy… In the wrong hands, the potential for injury is higher.

Schwartz himself told the reporter that, even after more than three decades of research and thought, his own ideas about all of this are still evolving.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “ Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy,” iptrauma.org, 07/04/25
Source: “The Therapy That Can Break You,” thecut.com, 10/30/25
Image by AlisaDyson/Pixabay

The Ins and Outs of Internal Family Systems

The therapeutic modality known as Internal Family Systems (IFS) has been closely associated with, and so presumably uniquely suited for, the treatment of eating disorders that cause obesity. This preference is exemplified by the literature from a facility called Koru Spring, whose clients are “women seeking treatment for an eating disorder while presenting with co-occurring conditions including substance use disorder.”

This institution’s main areas of concern are described as anorexia, binge eating, bulimia, and Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFEDs). Those OSFEDs include Atypical Anorexia Nervosa, Purging Disorder, Night Eating Syndrome, and Binge Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. The causes are multifarious, including elements of biology, psychology, and the environment.

Substance vs. behavioral

In the overall picture of societal desire to eliminate obesity, there are two schools of thought. One group is more comfortable with the idea of food addiction as a substance issue, while the other philosophy tends to see eating addiction as a behavior issue. (Possibly, a person could have a combination of varying degrees of both.)

IFS is described as “a system of interconnected parts, each with distinct roles.” So, this would seem to imply a tendency to favor the eating/behavior definition. Who is doing the behavior? According to founder Richard C. Schwartz, there is a central Self, and then three main categories of beings, which can each include more than one “part.” There might be, for instance, a number of Exiles in there, each one representing a separate instance of abuse suffered at a different age.

An exact quotation is provided here for a reason, and with the relevant parts emphasized:

Managers: These parts attempt to control and protect by managing daily life and avoiding emotional pain.

Exiles: These parts hold deep-seated trauma and emotional wounds, often hidden away to prevent overwhelming the individual.

Firefighters: These parts act impulsively to numb or distract from pain when exiles are triggered.

The emphasized phrases sound familiar because they describe displacement activity, something Dr. Pretlow has often discussed. The most recent mention would be right up front in the first two screens of his video “Treatment of Eating Addiction and Obesity as Displacement Activity: a Pilot Study“(as presented to the 2025 International Conference on Obesity and Chronic Diseases in Boston earlier this month.)

The inner orchestra

As always, it is interesting to see the same phenomenon interpreted or described differently by different interest groups. For instance, from a website called “Introduction to Internal Family Systems,” we learn that one treatment goal is to “unburden your wounded parts from extreme beliefs, emotions and addictions” (which undoubtedly is a skill good for anybody in this mixed-up world to acquire.) The overriding hope, however, is to learn to…

Shift from the limiting “mono-mind” paradigm into an appreciation of your marvelous, multidimensional nature.

Schwartz has been fond of describing IFS as a way to smoothly conduct one’s “inner orchestra,” saying,

The Self is the conductor, and your Parts are the musicians. With teamwork, they create a beautiful symphony!… At the heart of IFS is the Self — the calm, compassionate core of who you are. The Self isn’t just another Part; it’s your essence. Think of it as your inner CEO, mediator, or wise guide.

So, the Self is likened not only to an orchestra conductor, but to a corporate Chief Executive Officer. (Or maybe even the all-wise and always-loving parent you never had.)

The Managers, as mentioned above, are Parts in charge of maintaining safety and avoiding pain, just like the older concept of generating some displacement activity with the intention of avoiding pain; as a threatened bird might do by taking flight, or by picking nits from its feathers.

A fascinating confluence

The Parts that Schwartz christened as Firefighters play the same protective role as animal displacement activities like feeding. If a threatened creature adopts a casual, fearless attitude and begins to feed, it is just possible that the enemy could actually experience what humans call FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. That aggressor might be fooled into believing that some bounty is concealed in the grass, meaning that it should allow itself to be distracted from hostility, stop threatening the designated enemy, and get busy claiming its share of free food.

The inner beings Schwartz called Exiles are versions of the afflicted person, broken off and frozen in time, exactly as they were, years or decades in the past, when some outrageous wrong was done to them. They still don’t know how to escape or defend themselves, and the job of the Managers and Firefighters is to conceal and protect those wounded spirits. The object of IFS is to provide not just symptom management, but actual deep healing.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “OSFED — What To Know About Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders,” KoruSpring.com, undated
Source: “How Internal Family Systems (IFS) Can Transform Eating Disorder Recovery,” KoruSpring.com, 08/06/24
Source: “9th International Conference on Obesity and Chronic Diseases (ICOCD-2025),”
HealthManagement.org, undated
Source: “Introduction to Internal Family Systems,” IFS-Institute.com, undated
Source: “Internal Family Systems: Comprehensive Guide to the Model, History & Applications,”
IFSGuide.com, undated
Image by gdakaska/Pixabay

An Ounce of Prevention, Part 3

As always, it is helpful to look at the various attempts that have been made to turn back the tide of childhood obesity, or at the very least, to prevent the surpassing of its current level. This series highlights why many parents so fervently hope that their children will not become obese, and how some parents want to do everything possible to keep this from happening. Sadly, circumstance has placed in the way of that worthy ambition a major stumbling block, i.e., the very fact that we are human.

If Earthlings are being surveilled and discussed by intelligent observers from somewhere else, our attitude toward food must leave them deeply puzzled. One extraterrestrial scientist says, “You know, I comprehend the ones who never have enough to eat. Their goal is basic survival, to sustain life itself. If they think about food and eating all the time, this is perfectly understandable.”

They just don’t get it

And the Extraterrestrial colleague says, “Sure. But look at the others, the ones who have so much food, they drown in it. They too think about consumption all the time! Build their day around it. Count up their energy units. All kinds of crazy nonsense that wastes the very essence of life they are so avid to preserve.”

The first ET scientist shakes one of its heads and says, “Check out this human specimen I’ve been observing. It does not want its body to increase in size. This could be prevented by causing some energy to be expended. So — and you won’t believe this — it goes out and activates its personal automated vehicle, in order to travel to the gym and — wait, what do they call it? — ‘Do some exercise’.”

It comes with the cream

Those researchers write a paper about how a little thing called “human nature” will always get in the way, warp our perceptions, pervert our best impulses, and waste our time and precious energy as we quarrel over details and side issues. Meanwhile, we are all in the same metaphorical sinking ship, and because of that, the best we can do, here on the Titanic, is to rearrange the deck chairs and play a tune, which explains the importance of Art in our relationship with the Universe.

Human nature has very much the appearance of being a package deal, where we must take the bitter with the better, and where we spend enormous energy to sabotage our own best interests. In the course of trying to solve our huge problems, we are capable of ideas and actions that turn out to be outrageously counterproductive. Often, enormous damage has been done before we figure this out, if we ever do. We humans are such contrarians, we are almost never able to totally stop working against our own best interests.

Parents are in a great position to understand how obesity works because they have gone through the experiences of being a child, an adolescent, and a young adult. Women are especially aware, because they are going to gain a certain amount of weight as expectant mothers, and of course, the fathers will notice the size increase too.

At any rate, it is to be hoped (though rarely achieved) that, once we understand what a drag it is to get out of obesity, we parents will be deeply inspired to instead prevent obesity. It is very easy to say that families should seek help from therapists. The next steps, finding a good therapist and affording the care, are quite a lot more difficult — and the hard part has not even started yet. Even with the aid of a professional, family conflicts and traumas can be incredibly difficult to cope with. Also, now in particular, the societal sources of help are drying up.

At any rate, after taking the long way round, we circle back to the main subject of this sequence, which is the type of therapy called IFS, or Internal Family Systems, about which there are two very important things to know. First, IFS has been widely utilized to address eating disorders and seems to have been promoted as particularly adaptable to this specific spectrum of problems.

Also, “Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.”

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Therapy That Can Break You,” TheCut.com, 10/30/25
Image by lethanhstudio/Pixabay

An Ounce of Prevention, Part 2

Yes, according to one of the most familiar platitudes in English, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Probably every other human language on earth has an equivalent old saying, because it is just so ridiculously, platitudinously true.

In this context, the meaning is obvious. We try to tell kids: Please make every effort to not be an obese child, because as you grow up and inevitably grow older, something unpleasant is programmed to occur. Most likely, you will wake up and realize it is time to shed those extra pounds, because you’re not a kid anymore. In addition, the effort to lose those pounds will make your life much more difficult than it would have been, if you had never added them in the first place.

Of course, kids never listen anyhow. Maybe some grownups listen, and if they have kids, they might take that warning to heart — especially because they probably know the truth firsthand. It behooves every parent to try to figure out how to get this message across in a way that might penetrate the juvenile mindset.

The oldsters do not say “You’ll be sorry” out of love for the lilting rhythm of the phrase. Hey kids, we know for a certainty that you will be sorry, because we made the same stupid mistakes, and we are now sorry, and we don’t care who knows it.

Monkey see, monkey do

This cannot be said too often: Children are much more likely to imitate what they see at home every day, than to follow precepts that are taught in any other way. A childhood that features unmonitored eating habits is awfully hard to overcome. Not to become a fat kid is a very difficult life challenge. Careless and excessive consumption makes it almost impossible to ever stop being a fat kid.

The great majority of grownups probably have a profound personal understanding of how difficult it is not to remain a fat kid. In other words, most adults grasp, from their own experience, how hard it is to retreat from the categories of “overweight” and “obese.”

But as Werner Erhard has said, “Understanding is the booby prize.” An adult can realize how difficult it is to lose body weight, and grasp the meaning of the sentence all day long, but none of that can help much. It is probably already too late for them, and their awareness and experience do not seem to go very far toward helping the next generation.

Plenty of words out there

There are a lot of words we can use in trying to convey to a child the importance of eating only worthwhile foods, and even then, not too much of them. Here’s the catch. By the time a child can understand the words, she or he has already logged several years of much more convincing communication. Mr. or Ms. Grownup, that kid has had an eye on you from Day 1, clocking your every move. Every single treat, snack, and third helping. It’s all there, on the shelves of their brain libraries.

Why must so much emphasis be placed on the prevention of childhood obesity? Because of a fact that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore with each passing day. We cannot avoid noticing that childhood obesity almost inevitably leads to adult obesity.

Okay, admittedly, there is another possibility, one that is equally damaging. A person can spend an entire lifetime tirelessly, devotedly taking measures to fend off adult obesity; every minute of every day being acutely conscious of the weight-related consequences behind every bite of food. That sounds like zero fun.

A grownup can be in therapy, able to recall and comprehend in exquisite detail every single factor in three decades of life that led to being a 30-year-old who weighs 350 pounds. But… Understanding is the booby prize.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by endho/Pixabay

An Ounce of Prevention, Part 1

In the realm of wisdom passed down through the generations, one of the most tried-and-true (and trite) sayings is, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The maxim includes two terms that measure weight, which is very appropriate because weight is the subject here.

In the USA and the world, the emphasis on childhood obesity is a vital part of the overall health picture. Why? Because “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree,” and also because other corny old sayings with the same meaning are found all over the globe and in a variety of languages. They are all truthful descriptions of a real phenomenon.

“Give Me the Child Until He is Seven, and I Will Show You the Man” is a saying whose attribution is contested, but whose veracity is rarely questioned. Adjusting for traditional sexism, of course, it means that anyone who is entrusted with the upbringing of a child, male or female, during those first six years, is pretty much guaranteed to produce a kid trained to their satisfaction.

An even deeper truth is at work here, which is the rule known as “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” In other words: Granted, it is very likely that a child can be trained by deliberate and purposeful instruction. Still, it is even more likely that the kid will pick up the habits and ways that are consistently demonstrated by adults and observed by the child, rather than the ones being programatically instilled. Because, to roll out yet another ancient proverb, “Actions speak louder than words.”

Digression: an impactful best-seller

In 1973, Flora Rheta Schreiber published the hefty (almost 500-page) non-fiction book titled Sybil. Consequently, most people heard about multiple personalities for the first time, as the patient in the book had 16 of them. This is mentioned only to establish that prior to the publication of Sibyl, most Americans had never heard of any of this stuff. Suddenly, the multiple personality concept achieved wide awareness. People — especially parents — were primed and ready to hear more.

Now, granted, the odds of any one particular child developing such a serious problem are slim. Still, it is one of many possibilities. Given the choice, most parents would rather not have a situation like this to deal with, for the sake of the child and of themselves and their other children, and indeed for the well-being of the general public.

In the intervening decades, various branches of the psychological arts have taken on the challenge of rationalizing and working with multiple personalities. Some people are comfortable explaining them as visitors from the past, who previously had bodies and all the other accoutrements of standard human life. These tourists can be accepted as perfectly legitimate echoes of a person’s own previous incarnations, who have returned to work out their karma.

Or maybe…

Another narrative requires absorbing some information about the theories of Richard C. Schwartz, who may be thought of in shorthand as the father of IFS, the initials that must become intimately familiar if the rest of this is to make any kind of sense. IFS stands for Internal Family Systems, the operating assumption and principle connected with Schwartz’s controversial Castlewood Treatment Center. In a very recent article, journalist Rachel Corbett announced right up front and up top,

Internal Family Systems is a widely popular trauma treatment. Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.

Corbett backed this up by presenting a case study, that of teenager Elizabeth Lerz, who in 2011 convinced her parents that her eating disorder necessitated a stay at Castlewood. They were relieved that she was amenable to treatment and that they were able to afford the hefty fee. What could go wrong?

All too soon, the answer became apparent. Mr. and Mrs. Lerz discovered that after four months of inpatient therapy, their daughter had become a hostile stranger who made horrendous accusations against them. This is not the place to cover those aspects in detail. Suffice it to say that, after enormous legal expenses, followed by 14 years (and counting) of hostile alienation, the family never recovered.

(To be continued… )

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Therapy That Can Break You,” TheCut.com, 10/30/25″
Image by geralt/Pixabay