IFS and the Personification of Parts
Status: #seedling
IFS (Internal Families System) is a psycho-therapy model focused on viewing yourself made up of different parts / subpersonalities. It was coined by Richard C. Schwarts and presented in his book No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model.
Example of parts mapping:
Source: https://www.unblend.app/blog/what-is-ifs-parts-mapping
While the overall approach makes sense, what bugs me is the multiple personalities analogy. Different parts of yourself - I get it, you can have different thought patterns accumulated over time, people are complex beings, "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then, I contradict myself. / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)".
These parts are also linked to certain areas in your body, just how I feel anxiety in my chest, jealousy in my stomach, and so on. This concept is linked a bit to the concept of the pain body in the teaches of Eckhart Tolle.
However, treating these parts as individuals that speak through you in therapy sessions seems absurd to me. It does seem to be mostly a mental block, since it feels uncomfortable to "let a part speak", like I am just a vessel for whatever emotion. I am not in Inside Out.
At the same time, in practice, it totally makes sense - when i feel an exile part being triggered, I can sense it's reacting like a child, and for anything I ask, I will get an immediate response.