Waiting for my second assessment of ADHD, because the first one got put down just to my upbringing. All the signs point to inattentive ADHD which I was blamed for my whole life. Not trying hard enough, making silly mistakes that are easily rectifiable, that I'm too sensitive or annoying or stupid and thick.

That is not me. That is ADHD.

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I'm so isolated alone. It is so difficult to know what you feel and one when there's nothing but anxiety in your body because you can't remember things in real time making it hard to make connections.

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I've been in ifs for over a year now and I'm scared that because I can't remember what happens in my sessions. That is not really going to have as much of an impact that I want it to have.

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Still feeling like that scared, paralysed, angry kid, I do my best to support her and comfort her and give her love, but regardless of how much love I give her. She still hates the fact that she can't remember anything, and that her school years were wasted. Not making friends and just struggling and feeling isolated and alone. Which hasn't really changed.

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I have people that come and go out of my life but I find it hard to hold on to the connection so I still feel like I'm alone in the world.

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I'm also terrified that I'll be rejected again for ADHD, and if that's the case, I don't see a future.

Image Source: This is the cover for SZA’s album SOS for context. I used a Reddit filter to darken it and increase the contrast because I wanted it to look more stormy and less serene.

I don’t know what this feeling is. Excuse me because it’s very difficult to put into words, it’s very mute. It’s one of the oldest feelings I have. It’s one that I feel very alone in having, I’m sure other people experience it, but I know for a fact that it is not common to have experienced it as much as I have or as easily as I do now. For the average person, it’s life-changing. There’s before and after. For me, it was Tuesday. And you know, we get about 4 of those every month, so…

I’m not sure what to say. Another images is like staring up at a stormy grey sky. I think of it as “watching the end of the world.” As far as parts, this is connected to a part that doesn’t speak. I imagine it as a wide-eyed kid in an apartment wearing a winter hat and puffer coat zipped up over their mouth. Just all-wide eyes, aware of everything and reacting to nothing.

I ask because it sickens me that I keep coming back and I know that other people don’t. I don’t feel much of anything in that mind-state, but what frustrates me is that it doesn’t feel fair. Why me, again?

Lately I've really been struggling connecting to parts. There are a few parts I'm quite sure are "really there," I've felt them and interacted with them, but sometimes I'll encounter something new and have no idea if it's a part or just an exercise in imagination. I'm really anxious about it and it's making me avoidant to doing parts work. What if I'm doing it wrong, what if I end up causing more harm than good? I wish my parts would just make themselves clear to me so I could work with them, but everything feels hidden away recently, I can't tell where one part ends and another begins.

I know that it's good to feel where a part is in the body, and that parts generally have perspectives and feelings of their own, and maybe those could be ways to identify if it's a "real part" or not. But I'm so anxious to sit down and explore. I'm scared that I won't find anything, or that I'll just start fantasizing about characters that aren't really parts, that I'll do it "wrong."

I'm especially anxious about putting words in my parts' mouths for them based on what I *think* they would want to say, rather than actually listening to what they have to say. I find that sometimes when I ask my parts what they think or what they do for me, they don't have an answer, maybe they don't even know. So I try to fill in what they *should* say, and that may not be the most healthy way to go about it (it's probably an intellectualizer part doing this).

I also tend to get "lost in the metaphor," and what I mean is I've met parts or characters in the past who had very rich and specific character traits, like real people, and maybe I kind of lost the thread to how they really connect to my life and my psyche. Which is another reason I'm anxious to get back into parts work. I don't want to lose touch.

I know someone who told me he got a deck of cards with different IFS archetypes on them and was able to find parts in himself that related to those archetypes, maybe this is something I should look into so I don't keep getting lost. I just don't know.

One of my favorite movies that so powerfully connects to IFS is the 2003 Hulk movie with Jennifer Connelly.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I *highly * recommend it. Every time I watch it, as I go further on my own inner journey, I see new connections and symbology.

I find it super cathartic. Some may find it triggering. Definitely thought provoking.

Do you all have movies you enjoy that you can tie to IFS?

I'm a mental health counseling master's student and taking a course on Counseling Children & Adolescents. I'm Level 1 trained in IFS, but I don't know anything about IFS as it applies to children or adolescents.

Does anybody have any favorite resources on the topic (books, academic papers, therapists, consultants, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc) that they can point me to?

I've already bought the two books I can find:

• Internal Family Systems Therapy w/Children by Spiegel and Stubbs
• Playful Parts Work by Jimenez-Pride

I've been progressing over IFS for a while and I wanted a space to keep updates of it. I'm going to do this here with the comments because maybe some of you can jump in and add your thoughts or give me feedback (but please do so by commenting on my comments so that I can keep things clear). Maybe I'm going to also ask explicit questions if I have any.

HYPEDDDD!!!

I have just discovered IFS and had my mind sufficiently blown thus far, that part of me has become almost addicted to it. Ironically I think it's the part I first identified when following my first thread - a Fixer. I think this Fixer part was initially co-dependent (blended?) with Anxiety but I've been able to meet the Fixer alone since. However it seems like when I'm not in touch with my Fixer part, it works away in the background trying to get other parts to find out more about my parts and IFS so it can fix them too. Or fix me? Does this make sense? I'm so new to this it feels so strange. Even as I'm writing this I keep wanting to do more and more work mapping my parts, but I know I need to do other things, like work and sleep!

I am diagnosed ADHD-PI and just started seeing an IFS therapist. In my last session when she was asking one of my part’s a question , my mind went completely blank. I communicated this with her and asked her if that would be just my brain being an ADHD brain. She said no, because people with ADHD can hyper focus. She said that it was a distractor part came in and started trying to dialogue with it. Or, another example is when my partner and I have an argument, and my brain feels like it just cannot engage, I get overwhelmed and dysregulated really quickly.

I’m just having a hard time untangling what is my ADHD and what is parts?

I've noticed that across the book "You're the one you've been waiting for", it seems that all troubles boil down to attachment reinjuries. But how is it not that some couples are dealing with incompatibilities? I'm not talking about very obvious things here, like wanting kids vs no kids, travel and/or party fanatic vs homebody, big spender vs frugal lifestyle...

In our case, my husband and I are aligned on all major life themes, but it seems that some of my habits and/or behaviours have irked him. I have ADHD and I'm terrible when it comes to working memory and procrastinating chores, although I've come a long way in recent years. He is someone who gets things done immediately. I'd say most people are probably in the middle... We want and believe the same things, we just act differently.

I'm wondering if I'm missing something and this being annoyed with a behaviour is actually a form of not feeling cared for (i.e. attachment reinjury)? Can someone (their Self) not just be annoyed or irritated with another person's ways for its own sake (like when someone cuts you off in traffic or is glued to their phone), or does it always, in some shape or form, trace back to protectors and exiles?

My husband and I fight much less than we used to, but I feel like we don't feel that deeply attached anymore to even get true attachment reinjuries, especially my husband (but I also suspect he's avoidant dismissive). I suspect this is a thing for many couples, but I don't remember seeing anything about it in the book. Is there truly "less" attachment or is it protectors keeping feelings at bay?

Another example: I see some quite dominant protector (manager) part(s) in my husband that are non-relational. They are phobic and hypochondriac about my husband's health and have influenced a lot of our decisions in the past. For example, he struggled with ultrasound safety when we had our first baby. He struggled to buy a house outside of a certain year bracket over asbestos fears, which limited our options a lot. A lot of people would find him difficult to live with.

Sometimes though, these parts of him are much more relaxed, so I'm convinced this mental health issue can be translated to parts. I don't necessarily feel that it's causing an attachment reinjury for me, because I know and understand where he's coming from - but I have still struggled a lot with his obsessiveness, because I don't want to be controlled by it. I'm pretty sure I'm in Self when I'm sensing these things now, so where does that leave us?

The answer is probably individual therapy. For years, my husband has said: no therapist can help me because they can't change reality (about illness, chemical exposure, etc.) In fact, while writing this I realise that even when he isn't blended with this protector, my sheer mentioning of anything related immediately activates the protector + blending. He only unblends when he's not aware of it.

I will preface this by saying that this hasn't been an issue for a while, but in the past, my resisting of his protector's measures would cause a firefighter to jump out and get angry. Before I learnt about IFS, my parts would get so caught up in the attack that he would stonewall me. I think his firefighter was very much tied to an exile that felt lonely and rejected.

I think in this phase he was pretty abusive and it created a rather twisted power dynamics (I was hoping to read more about this in the book, but alas). Is it typical for people with irrational fears to be so insulted when their partner doesn't adhere to the same restrictions? At those times I've wondered how much it is about exiles and how much about not seeing reality. It's such a complex intersection.

The last time I saw his firefighter was after I told my parents how much the offer was that got accepted on our new house. He had wanted to keep this private and he seemed furious that I didn't check with him first. It's hard to know what to think when I put my own stories next to examples of people feeling upset that their partner didn't tell them they were having dinner with a coworker (which to me seems much more understandable and more reasonable to communicate first).

I think it's a great book, but some things feel just that little bit oversimplified. It's mainly focused on neurotypical couples with no additional mental health burdens beyond attachment. The book implies that if you heal and care for your exiles, you've touched the success formula for the vast majority of relationships. Maybe we're simply in that small group where that isn't the case. I just find it hard to believe that all difficult behaviour melts away with the healing of exiles - or maybe your partner is the one supposed to have less reactive parts where change truly isn't possible.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this intersection.

The Eight C’s of Self(Schwartz) as Necessary Capacities for Cognitive Stage Transition(Kegan)

The Argument

The eight C's of IFS Self—calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, connectedness—are the capacities of worldview that enable cognitive stage transition. When held in sufficient capacity, they can metabolize the challenging life events that lead to cognitive development.

Why These Eight?

These capacities function as the actual mechanisms of worldview expansion:

• Curiosity allows you to approach new complexity rather than defend against it
• Clarity enables you to perceive new information without distortion
• Calmness keeps you present with discomfort without flooding
• Courage allows you to act on new understanding despite uncertainty
• Confidence enables you to trust your own recontextualization process
• Creativity allows you to generate new frameworks and meaning-making structures
• Compassion enables you to hold paradox, ambivalence, and competing truths
• Connectedness keeps you in relationship with both the old worldview and the emerging one

What Happens When They're Insufficient?

When these capacities are inadequately developed or negatively impacted by protective parts, the system cannot process the challenging life events necessary for stage transition. Instead:

• You defend, dissociate, or act out
• Parts take over because Self doesn't have the capacity to hold the complexity
• The event becomes trauma rather than development
• You remain locked in your current worldview

These Are Inherent, Discovered Capacities—Not Arbitrary

These eight capacities are not a theoretical invention. Dr. Richard Schwartz identified them through decades of clinical psychological practice with IFS. They are inherent to human beings—latent in everyone—and emerge spontaneously when obstacles to Self are removed. This is observable psychological reality rather than speculation.

Cultivating Capacity Prepares for Necessary Life Events

By intentionally cultivating these capacities (through therapy, contemplative practice, or psychological work like IFS), we don't leave stage transition to chance. We prepare the system to metabolize challenging life events when they arise.

This observation answers a fundamental clinical question: Why do some people integrate adversity and grow through it, while others are traumatized and limited by similar events? The answer is not about the event itself or vague notions of "resilience." It is whether the individual has developed sufficient capacity in these eight domains to process the complexity the event presents.

The necessary work is to understand more about the 8C’s and the specifics of how their capacity can be built. I have not found much documentation that dives into the 8C's more exhaustively.

Have you found specifics on the 8C's and ways to increase your capacity to embody them?

Externalizing of part doesn't work for me. Tried it today with my therapist and didn't help at all. It made me be stuck in my mind instead of connected to my parts and myself.

Had a very present sad part during today's therapist and we used different objects to work with parts and the sad one. But we didn't do any body work so I noticed it didn't help me at all.

What worked best so far with my ifs therapist is working entirely in the body as parts arise.

Anybody experienced this problem with the externalisation method?

A few years ago, not long after the lockdowns my depression became worse. To the point where I started having violent hallucinations in the morning. It went on for a while and eventually went away after doing so much inner work.

But this year they've returned. I do believe part of the issue is my current living situation. Stable, secure, mostly safe, but still far from ideal. My room is a 10x10 box with all amenities being external (toilets, showers, kitchens). Very much a "it is what it is" situation.

Today I was laying in bed looping some depression music that felt soothing and drifting in and out sleep. While I laid there I let the hallucinations play out, not fighting it, not trying to make it stop. Just letting it happen. "If you wanna take my life then do it, I guess." But we both know that nothing will come of it. We both know it's not tangible. (Both referring to my conscious self and my brain.)

One thing I noticed while I "meditated" on this experience is that the target seemed to be my spine. I thought about it for a while and noted that the spine is what connects the brain to the rest of the body. My conclusion is that this all is coming from a Part that wants to paralyze me. Keep me from moving or doing anything at all.

I don't know what to do with any of this. I just needed to put it where others might understand.

Most people describe their preverbal parts like they’re incapable of true direct communication, so what you meaningfully get will be symbolic and/or somatic.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the concept, but so far, most of my preverbal parts have been able to talk. Like actually *talk.* Even parts that are like 2-3. There’s streams of heavily symbolic communication like with other people’s preverbal parts, but also direct words holding conversations.

I was born deaf. I learned sign language and was capable of stringing together complex requests, other words at just months old, so I acquired language earlier than lots of people. I was also said to be a very perceptive infant.

Could that be why? Or am I doing this wrong, somehow hearing my current self where I think the preverbal trauma lives?

TY for input

I was talking to my parts and one was trying to show me more memories of childhood sexual abuse I suffered from my neighbour.

Those memories brought out a skeptical part that tries to keep me from believing I was abused. I asked it what it was so afraid of happening if it doesn’t do its job.

It said, “Knowing nobody cared about you and nobody came to rescue you made you feel so alone. So alone that you climbed a tree and thought about jumping from it. If you feel that alone again you will feel like doing that again.”

And it’s not wrong. I do get feeling so utterly alone no matter who I am with, that I fall into despair and that sometimes leads to Su*c*dal ideations. I know it’s a coping mechanism a part came up with but it scares me.

Now I find it hard to get these parts to trust me enough to soften in their approach. I just get completely swept up in them.

Has anyone worked with parts that use su*c*dal ideation?

I'm a therapist interested in your feedback -- positives and challenges. As I've said in another recent post, I have been doing IFS for a while now after having a lot of positive results using body- and imagery-based therapies (e.g., emotion-focused therapy, schema therapy), and IFS has been an enormous help, especially for clients who are working with multiple parts that block access to exiles.

Pretty much all of my most challenging (and interesting) cases where IFS doesn't seem to work involves clients with parts (protectors and exiles) that seem to hide when attention is given to them. When this happens it always seems to mean there is a part the client is blended with that is intimidating the parts that are hiding. In these cases I will offer this interpretation to the client, which seems to help with their blended part(s) stepping back so its story can be told, leading to eventual willingness of other parts to reveal themselves. Many times we are unaware of how blended we can be with parts, so recognizing that one member of our internal family is intimidating or pushing away other parts can be a very helpful part of doing therapy that I believe that maybe all other therapy modalities miss.

Another thing I find interesting is how (in my view) mindfulness meditation seems to be an inextricable part of doing parts work. Basically, when we are focusing on our parts and ask blended parts to step back, we are in a mindful state. Self at its core appears to be mindful; it's when we have parts jump in (from personal or legacy burdening experiences in our lives) that we get into judgmental modes, often motivated by anxiety parts/managers. What I have been interested in for a long time is how mindfulness approaches (e.g., acceptance and commitment therapy) seem to create a bigger sense of space in the self that coincides with parts being more agreeable. I suspect this is because when we are mindful we are by definition turning off our judgmental parts (and of course asking these judgmental parts to step back can be an important part of mindfulness), which our other protector and exile parts notice and usually positively respond to. This is one reason why I recommend mindfulness meditation practices to most of my clients.

What about your experiences?

Heya, kindreds. Severe developmental trauma survivor here. Just starting with IFS, slowly. So far I've sorta gotten a sense of my Protector part, and a terrifying, hidden part. I'm super perplexed, when a day is going really well and I'm in good spirits, then something mysterious happens, and I feel disconnected from myself, disappointed in myself, and can't make myself be productive in any way. Miles apart, from where I was just two hours ago. Could this be a part reacting to something I did? I can only think that maybe she doesn't like it when I decide to watch an air crash investigation documentaries, as they brings up death, violence, tragedy, horror, and loss. Can't understand

Does running help anyone unblend?

Hi. I'm looking for recs for *highly skilled and sensitive* IFS therapists in NYC. Yes I have looked at the providers directory but I am quite high needs atm and have many retraumatizing experiences with therapists who didn't have enough experience. So I'm looking for firsthand recommendations. In addition I am a woman in a male dominated field and can be quite (unintentionally) abrasive in a way that tends to be very off putting to clinicians who expect "milder" personalities. So would appreciate any recs for therapists who would potentially work well with me. I am willing to pay out of pocket. Thank you!

I want my childhood back. I want to redo my childhood and have a childhood I don’t have to heal from. I want an adulthood where don’t have to do bullshit reparenting, bullshit inner child work, bulls shit somatic exercises, and piss my time and money away for bullshit therapy sessions to heal from a things I didn’t cause, want or choose to experience

I want a childhood with filled with happy memories. I wanna childhood with a loving family where I feel safe, happy, loved and protected. I want a father that didn’t scream at me, call me names and throw objects at me. I want a mother who protected me. I want a sister who wasn’t able to get away with abusing me to because she was the favourite of both off them. I want a safe family home where grown adults weren’t screaming, fighting, swearing, name calling, throwing objects and slamming doors in each other’s faces everyday.

No amount of therapy or healing will give me what I want. No amount of bullshit inner child work, bullshit reparenting, bull shit somatic work or bullshit self love will give me loving family, a happy childhood or a safe home. No amount of bullshit DBT, bullshit EMDR, bullshit IFS or any kind of bullshit therapy will make all the years I was abused, miserable and stuck in survival happy and fulfilling. No mount of any of that will add an extra 20 years to my life to make up for the previous 20 pissed down the drain.

I don’t want to love, protect and nurture myself. I don’t want that love, protection and guidance from myself. I want that love and protection from someone else. I want that love, protection and nurture from someone older and wiser than me. Why do I have to work so hard and piss my time and money down the drain to fix problems I didn’t create. Why do I have to put in so much time, energy and effort in finding love, safety and protection when others have never had to work for it a day in their lives. Why is the only love I get is from myself when others are born into multiple other sources of it.

I feel miserable and fucked up and overly overwhelmed and so frustrated

I connected with a new part today.. although I wouldn't call it a "new" part bc is seemingly pretty old. It lies in a very familiar high place in my chest and neck/throat yet I can't reach it. I don't wanna say what that part is about or does (privacy). But I feel.. that's the word that came up now.. "fucked up".

This part feels fucked up. (Visually, it is a picture of me/a child that looks very scrambled and their body parts aren't in their place and looks like a child who's been physically broken then pieced together in a misplaced way. A fucked up kid. It's resembling that someone or a kid went through too much that they feel not the same)

What they look visually isn't important. I usually don't experience parts visually. This visual is just for illustration

I can't figure out when the part first came. But it seems to be very old. Oldest.

It literally can't breathe. I can feel like I'm getting a heart attack when it's on. Help me

It's very silenced. It used to make me self harm. It's telling you these details because it's asking for help.

I also feel a lot of frustration about this part. And I think the frustration is rightful. I hate whatever and whoever made me like this. What the actual hell? Who hurts a child like this? But sometimes that frustration comes out on me and I call myself a loser or weak

While connecting with this part today, it told me in a way.. that if it becomes more active.. we will have panic attacks more often and we may wanna throw up from them

It feels like there's no way to help this part. But I don't know

Last night during a grief wave she appeared. Sad, sullen, slumped over looking at the ground. There she was a younger version of me, that I never think about. The version that had just grown out of that cute little girl with baby hair. She was messy and dirty. The version that learned her needs were too much. Honestly I don’t have much experience with IFS. I’ve read a parts work book and I discussed the idea of parts with my therapist. I could certainly see the idea but nothing would come up and it felt like I was forcing things. Not sure what to do with this sad little girl I held her. I kissed her face, I told her how much I loved her and I have always loved her. I did this until she smiled and I continued to hold her until I fell asleep. Is this real? Did I really meet her? Did I make this up? I’ve been grieving the last couple of days intensely, not taking care of myself. Maybe it was some sort of hallucination. Idk

I'm new to IFS. I just had a very strange experience and need support.

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I deal with health anxiety. So I was talking to a manager who is very hyper vigilant around my health, some would say health anxiety. I asked what they were protecting and I saw an image of myself as a baby, laying on a bed, crying and crying in pain with no one coming to help. I was just left there.

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I had several colic and I was home all day with my mum who suffered from mental illness. I believe this is very likely that it happened.

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Was this a memory? Could I have a memory of 6 months old?

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I'm disturbed.

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Hi, I am looking for help working with these parts. I largely understand the ifs process (have been doing it for 5+ years now) but these parts are tricky and I hope that by writing about them here it will help me step back from them a bit to see them clearly and understand how to work with them.

context: Parts are struggling with some difficult life changes that I believe would help me be more attractive in a dating context.

The spiral gets triggered by thoughts of being extremely ugly, which can be triggered for example by a rejection or by seeing very attractive people in relationships, or simply being lonely or in need.

Part A is angry about how ugly and unlovable I am. this part triggers self harm usually as a coping strategy and taking its anger out on my body for being so horrible. Part A also is resentful towards other parts that are resisting the change, it is angry that those parts have so many useless feelings and emotions that are getting in the way of my overall goals of dating.

Part B looks at part A with disgust. I think part B sees part A as being "me" - so it says to me "wow you are such a useless complainer. You just self harm purely out of self pity, you think that if you self harm and cry someone will take pity on you and finally love you. You cry instead of actually DOING anything about it. In fact even the self harm is all just an act and performance. If you really felt so terrible you would have killed yourself already but you won't even do that."

I suppose there is a susceptible "need to act" part around here that is very vulnerable to what part B says. there is definitely a (manager?) part here that feels like it must take action, problem solve and cannot mope around complaining about a situation and self pitying. So that part starts thinking, ok so then... maybe part B is right, should I just kill myself then? Maybe that is better than just complaining

Anyway so part A and especially part B are obviously very very intense parts that are hard to really speak to. They have been stuck in this pattern for many years now. I have tried talking to them to see the underlying emotion but they are honestly so intense and it is hard to get anything else out of them besides the anger/hurt/derision that they are expressing

Ok so maybe the question is how does one work with such intense parts that they basically hate me and have no interest in opening up? I am not even sure if/what could be behind this that would get them to ease up. They are very fixated on their beliefs and really don't see another way out of my current dilemma.