Aion Farvahar  0:13
An Introduction to IFS 
(Understanding the Inner Workings of Your Mind)
By Aion Farvahar

"Our mind consists of a set of interconnected personality parts 
congregated around a psychospiritual center, called Self. 
When these parts are relaxed, working in harmony together, we feel calm and centered. 
But when they are otherwise tense or in conflict with each other, we feel unsettled. 
To stay calm and centered, we need to understand our personality parts, 
and help them relax and work in harmony together. Practicing IFS can help us do that." 

Aion Farvahar  1:09
Hi, this is Aion Farvahar. I am glad you are here.
This channel is about self realization, and honoring our life purpose and meaning. If you are interested in these topics, please subscribe to stay connected. Your support is the foundation of this channel, and encourages me to create more content in the future. For more information about myself and my life mentorship practice, please find my bio link in the description below. 
Have you noticed how your mood changes each day, depending on whom you interact with, or what you experience? Do you understand what makes you at times frustrated or angry? What about sensitivities you have toward certain behaviors in people? Do you have self-critical thoughts about yourself? Do you know why they are there, and what purpose they serve? What does make you like certain people or dislike others? What about them makes you like or dislike them? These are important questions, and finding answers to them helps you know yourself better and become less sensitive to your environment and people around you. 

In this presentation, we want to focus on IFS Self Leadership model, which is the most powerful model for understanding how our mind operates. Understanding how your mind operates is the foundation of your emotional well-being, because otherwise you may not be able to reconcile your at times conflicting feelings, beliefs, or behaviors. You cannot know why you feel down, anxious, or upset, why you cannot at times pursue what you really want, or why you at times choose to procrastinate or kill time? IFS model helps you notice the inner working of your mind and find answers to these questions. 

Aion Farvahar  3:36
This presentation explains IFS model is a simple and accessible way. There is also a short experiential IFS meditation at the end to help you experience how IFS works. More specifically, we cover on the following topics:

Brief Description of the IFS Model

Understanding the Multiplicity of our Mind 

An Example of Personality Parts

IFS Classification of Personality Parts 

Self: The Psychospiritual Center of our Mind 

And, Experiential IFS Meditation (Noticing and Connecting to your Personality Parts) 

Let's go over these. Please note that views presented here are based on my personal experience with the IFS model. For the official background and further information about this model and its application, refer to IFS Institute website, linked in the description below.

Aion Farvahar  4:55
Brief Description of the IFS Model
Internal Family Systems (or IFS) is an evidence-based, psychospiritual model, pioneered by Dr. Richard C. Schwartz, with applications in psychology and coaching. The ultimate goal of IFS is to embody Self-Leadership. Self-Leadership is a state of mind and heart that manifests through expression of confidence, courage, creativity, compassion, calmness, clarity, curiosity, and connectedness in all aspects of life. A "Self-Led" individual is one who is calm, emotionally centered, and confident during challenging situations and ordeals in life, no matter what they are.
IFS view of the mind is psychospiritual in nature, using both psychological and spiritual resources of the mind. This is because doing inner work using IFS involves connection to the psychospiritual center of the mind, which is also known as Self (with a capital S). 
We usually experience or express ourselves through our feelings, beliefs, and behaviors. In IFS, these are expressions of our distinct subpersonalities, "parts of our personality", or simply "our parts". Practicing IFS helps you notice your personality parts and understand why they feel, believe, or behave in certain way. Only through this understanding you can transform the way you view yourself, and live in greater harmony with people around you and the world.  


Aion Farvahar  7:05
Understanding the Multiplicity of our Mind

IFS views the mind as an interconnected set of subpersonalities, governing our feelings, beliefs, and behaviors, while interacting with each other. 
IFS was not the first model to focus on subpersonalities and inherent multiplicity of the mind. This empirical fact was first acknowledged in the West by Roberto Assagioli, an Italian psychiatrist, who developed a model called Psychosynthesis to work with subpersonalities. Swiss psychologist, C.G. Jung also recognized the multiplicity and inner-dynamic between various conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind, both in himself and his clients. Aside from working with dreams, Jung also helped his clients enter a dreamlike inner world, to connect and communicate with these aspects. He called this process "Active Imagination". 
The view that our mind consists of a set of subpersonalities may seem hard to grasp as first, because we have always viewed ourselves as a single mind and personality. However, if we are open to try IFS, we can easily notice the multiplicity of our mind. 

An Example of Personality Parts

As mentioned, our mind consists of personality parts. It would be useful here to see this using an example. Imagine Sue, who works as an employee in a large company. She is intelligent and doing well in her professional life. Sue's high career aspiration has been demanding long hours from her, leaving little or no time for her to focus on her personal life. This has affected her health and emotional well-being. At work, she is busy and distracted, and does not have time to think about her personal life. But off work, she has an inner critic that shows up in her mind. The inner critic reminds her of her dull and uninspiring personal life, and blames her for not eating well, not exercising, and not socializing. 

Aion Farvahar  9:57
The shaming voices of Sue's inner critic make her feel sad and lonely. This is when a part of her personality emerges and invites her to unplug from all of these feelings. This part wants to distract her, maybe making her sleep longer hours, buy more stuff, or binge on food, TV or Internet. These activities numb her down, and disassociate her from feeling sad and lonely. 

In this example, Sue's feeling and beliefs are driven by various "parts" of her personality. One part of her is a successful professional with career ambition. Let's call this part the "Professional". Another part of her is a critic who uses shaming voices to make her focus on her personal life. We can call this part the "Critic". Finally, another part of her personality comes to rescue her from the sadness or loneliness caused by the Critic. We can refer to this part as the "Distracter", because it uses mind-numbing habits or activities to distract her from feeling sad or lonely.

You can notice that all of these parts have good intention, for example, the Professional part wants her to realize her highest career potentials. The Critic wants her to focus on her personal life, and live a healthier and happier life. The Distracter wants to protect her from feeling sad or lonely, by numbing her down. 
You can also notice some polarization and conflict between these parts. This is because they have different views of what's best for Sue. For example, the Critic part does not like the space the Professional part is taking, because it believes there is more to life than having a successful career. Similarly, the Distracter does not like the Critic, because her shaming voices make Sue feel sad and lonely. Likewise, the Critic does not like the way the Distracter numbs Sue down with useless activities, instead of improving her personal life. 

Aion Farvahar  12:43
Sue seems caught up between the conflicting voices of her parts, which drain her emotional energy with no resolution in sight. She is not even aware of her subpersonalities, and how they affect her mood and behavior. 

IFS Classification of Personality Parts

IFS classifies our personality parts in three groups based on their function and the belief they have about us. These are Manager Parts, 
Firefighter Parts, and Exile Parts. Let's briefly explain these. 

Managers are protective parts of our personality that run our day-to-day life. They like to maintain stability, predictability, and control in our life. Managers do not like change, because they are worried about unexpected emotional impact of change in our life. Examples of managers are our "doer parts" that get things done, our "caregiving parts" that keep our loved ones happy, our "life schedulers" who keep our life organized and predictable, or our "socializing parts" that want us not to feel lonely or isolated. Managers may use critical shaming voices to control our behavior and keep us grounded, like our parents did to control our behavior, when we were little.

Firefighters are also protective parts of our personality. They take over our mind when our managers fail to protect us from negative feelings or beliefs. Firefighters are impulsive and take over when we are about to get overwhelmed by a negative feeling and belief. Firefighters always act irrationally, for example make us eat without being hungry, shop without needing anything, or spend hours binging on movies or social media without knowing why. Firefighters don't care about the consequence of their actions, which may affect our health, or invite a sense of guilt or shame. They only care about one thing, which is to distract us from feeling anxious, sad, lonely, angry, or any other feelings or beliefs which could otherwise overwhelm us. Examples of Firefighters are "workaholic parts", "gambling parts", "overeating parts", "procrastinating parts", or mind-numbing "addictive parts". 

Aion Farvahar  12:51
Exiles are deeper parts of our personality that had traumatic or painful experiences in the past, and are therefore very vulnerable. Our exiles are usually very young, like our inner child, and may feel lonely, sad, unloved, abandoned, vulnerable, or unfairly treated in the past. Because exiles hold emotional pain, they are usually suppressed and exiled by the protective parts of our personality, either by our Managers or Firefighters. This prevents us from getting overwhelmed by the emotional pain of our Exiles, so we can continue to function in life.

In Sue's example, the Professional and the Critic are manager parts. The Distractor is a Firefighter, and the part of her that feels sad and lonely is an Exile. 


Self: The Psychospiritual Center of our Mind

Our parts collectively form our personality. When they don't work in harmony with each other, we may feel unsettled, anxious, depressed, or disoriented. But personality parts don't represent the totality of our psyche, because we also have a psychospiritual core or center, which is different from our personality. This psychospiritual center is usually experienced during meditations, when our mind is fully calm and cleared from the energy of our parts. In IFS, this psychospiritual center is called Self (with a Capital S). You can think of Self as your inner most center, your open heart, your higher mind, or the clairvoyant wisdom of your Soul. Connection to Self happens naturally, when you separate yourselves from your personality parts, and their feelings, thoughts, or beliefs. When you embody Self, you experience its energy and wisdom. Self Energy can manifest in different ways, such as compassion, calmness, clarity, curiosity, confidence, courage, creativity, connectedness, and so on. That is why we feel a sense of calmness and presence during meditations. The structure of the psyche is like a tree. Parts are like branches of the tree, representing us in the outside world, but Self is the trunk of the tree, deeply rooted and grounded in the earth. When parts are not fully connected to Self, they become like branches that have lost their connection to the trunk of the tree, and are therefore weak and fragile. 

Aion Farvahar  19:11
Our parts are intelligent, but highly myopic and narrow-minded in their perspective. So, despite their good intentions, parts are unable to see the totality of our personality as a whole. This means even if we manage to recognize all of our personality parts, there is no guarantee we can bring operational harmony to our parts. But, when we are connected to Self as the psychospiritual center of our mind, we can successfully mediate and bring that harmony to our parts.  

Unfortunately for some of us, especially those with childhood or past traumas, Self and its energy may not be as readily accessible. This is because trauma creates personality parts that hold emotional pain or extreme beliefs, and prevent us from accessing Self to feel centered. IFS model allows you to separate yourself from your personality parts and their emotional pain or extreme beliefs. This creates space inside to access Self. That is why IFS model is highly effective in helping us feel calm or be more centered.  

Experiential IFS Meditation 

As we saw, IFS model views the psyche as a set of personality parts, congregated around a psychospiritual center, called Self. When our personality parts hold emotionally-charged beliefs, they take too much space in our mind, making it impossible for us to access Self or be centered. 
We need to develop skills to notice and understand our parts. Only then, we can help them relax to give us space. 
In this section, we want to do a short IFS-Style meditation. This meditation is designed to help you notice and understand a part of you who at times gets angry or frustrated with you or others. This meditation helps you notice this part and become more curious about it.

Aion Farvahar  21:48
Start of mediation.

Take a deep breath to feel more grounded. If it helps, close your eyes or soften your gaze to further descend to a state of calmness and presence inside you and away from the world outside. Turn your attention inside and look for moments in recent times, when you felt angry or frustrated about something. Check if you can find this angry or frustrated part in or around your body, maybe as a sensation in your body, an image, a color, a memory, or how this part wants you to notice it. If you cannot sense or visualize this part, just focus on it and try to connect with it intuitively. 

As you focus on this part, check how you feel toward it, knowing that it is angry or frustrated about something. Check whether you feel open and curious about it, without judging it. If you don't feel particularly open, check if there are other feelings or thoughts that are blocking you from being open. These could be parts of you that don't like the intensity of your angry or frustrated part, and may be worried about it overwhelming you. If so, acknowledge that, but kindly ask them to step back and give you space to be more present. Let these blocking parts know you are just curious about your angry or frustrated part, and are careful not to get overwhelmed by it. Thank them for giving you space. Repeat this process until your heart is fully open, and you feel compassionately curious about your angry, frustrated part. Extend your openness to your angry, frustrated part, and let it know you are here to be with it and get to know it better. 

Ask it to tell you why it at times gets angry or frustrated? Also to tell you, how it believes its anger and frustration is helping you? If you understand the reason behind its anger and frustration and notice how this part of you is trying to help you, thank it and share your appreciation. 

Aion Farvahar  27:15
Now, ask this part of you what it is afraid to happen to you, if it does not get as angry or frustrated? Is the angry part of you worried about, and is protecting, another younger more vulnerable part of you, a part who is affected by what you experienced? If so, can the angry part tell you how old it believes you are? If the part thinks you are much younger, make a note of that age, but let the angry part know your current age, and the wisdom and life experience you have gained since then. 
Check if you updating this part with your current age, wisdom, and maturity, makes the part feel a bit more relaxed. Check how your angry frustrated part feels, if you make efforts to empower the younger vulnerable part of you? If the part likes the idea and seems more relaxed hearing it, check what other help it would rather give you, when it no longer has to get angry to protect your younger vulnerable part?  

Also, let your angry part know that you are here with it, and it should never feel alone when working so hard to protect you. If you feel comfortable, let it know you are open to reconnect with it, and listen to it more. Thank this part for being here with you, and thank any other part you have noticed during this meditation for giving you space to be present. If you are open, commit to be more aware of their presence inside you. Say your goodbyes, and when ready come back to here and now. 

End of mediation. 

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Blessings.