You know the Enneagram, but what is Internal Family Systems (IFS)?

And why are so many finding it so powerful in Enneagram and spiritual work?

IFS was founded by Richard Schwartz PhD, who was originally trained as a family systems therapist. He worked with adolescents struggling with eating disorders (particularly bulimia and anorexia).

He noticed that even when he worked with the client’s family (the external family), many clients continued to relapse.

This made him wonder: “What is happening inside the client’s own INNER world?”

This is congruent with Leslie’s work with contemplation and mindfulness. The more we practice, the more we encounter the many parts inside of ourselves.

The Enneagram points us to the habitual attentional styles of our pattern: What do we notice? What do we avoid?

IFS breaks these patterns into parts and offers us a deceptively simply METHOD to work with them by bringing them into consciousness.

 

WE CONTAIN MULTITUDES

As Schwartz listened more closely to clients, he began to hear them describe their inner life in terms of “parts.”

•    Some parts wanted to binge or starve.
•    Others tried to protect them from pain.
•    Others criticized them harshly. (Enneagram Ones aren’t the only ones with an Inner Critic).

Instead of dismissing this language as metaphor, Schwartz took it seriously — treating these parts as if they were real subpersonalities with intentions, fears, and roles.

 

DISCOVERY OF “SELF ENERGY”

Through this exploration, Schwartz noticed something remarkable which you may have see in Narrative Enneagram panels:

•    Beneath all the warring parts, clients sometimes touched into a core Presence — calm, compassionate, confident, curious.
•    He called this essence the Self.
•    Healing happened when the Self could form a relationship with the parts, rather than the therapist trying to manage them from outside.

This has some intersections with contemplative practice. Beneath our neurotic self talk, we begin to encounter a higher Self energy, deeply connected with what some call God, Reality, Universal consciousness.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF IFS

I didn’t set out to invent a therapy. My clients taught me about their parts and I just listened. Richard Schwartz PhD

The problem with pathologizing and labeling

I (Leslie) have often found that many conventional therapy models often pathologize the human condition. 

During Covid, I was becoming increasingly alarmed as I witnessed social media and real life therapists diagnosing people they’ve never met in spaces that didn’t look at the larger context.

Inexperienced people were posting about these pathologies  in others which contributed to profound ruptures in relationships that harmed families and communities.

I was also uncomfortable with how many people becoming over-identified with their diagnoses without giving attention to the powerful, authentic Self that lives inside of each of us which I found through contemplative work. 

In a pathology model, people are packaged and labeled. It disempowers us.

This led me to reflect on myself as an Enneagram teacher. At our worst, Enneagram teachers have done the same in our work with the Enneagram. We learned the hard way that whether we are labeling people as types or pathologizing them as diagnoses, it is a  limiting way to work with humans.

It’s why I’ve always been so drawn to Enneagram panels. It humanizes us. People are able to speak into their own experience in front of receptive, fair witnesses. We touch something deeper than the type structure. 

I was drawn to Richard Schwartz who has been outspoken about how much of traditional psychotherapy tends to pathologize people, and that concern was a major reason he shaped IFS the way he did.

When I discovered he found IFS through work with people with eating disorders, I was encouraged as I know that anorexia and bulemia are notoriously difficult to treat.

When Schwartz was working with young women with eating disorders in the 1980s, he noticed that:

•    Standard models labeled their behaviors as symptoms or disorders.
•    Their inner voices (e.g., the “critical” part, the “binge” part) were seen as irrational, destructive, or maladaptive.

But when he actually listened to those voices, he heard that each one carried an intention to help — even if in a distorted way. For example, a bingeing part might be trying to numb unbearable pain; a perfectionist part might be trying to keep someone safe from rejection.

Shift from “pathology” to “protection”

“Psychology has done a great disservice by convincing people that their inner experiences are pathological. When you listen to parts, you discover they are trying to help. They are not disorders — they are protectors.” Richard Schwartz PhD

Rather than labeling these parts as pathological, Schwartz reframed them as protectors.

•    They weren’t sick or evil — they were working overtime, often stuck in extreme roles because of trauma or unmet needs.
•    In his words, “There are no bad parts.”

This was a radical departure from mainstream psychotherapy at the time, which often emphasized diagnosing and treating “disorders.”

The Self as innate health

Another way Schwartz resisted pathologizing was through the discovery of the Self — the compassionate, calm, clear presence at the core of everyone.

•    For Schwartz, Self is never damaged.
•    No matter how extreme someone’s parts have become, the Self remains intact.
•    Therapy is about restoring relationship between Self and parts, not fixing a broken person.

Schwartz developed IFS because:

•    Traditional family systems therapy wasn’t enough to address inner conflict.
•    He realized people carry their own “internal families” of parts that interact like members of an external family.
•    By mapping those relationships and helping clients access the Self, profound healing and integration could occur.

 

IFS MEETS THE ENNEAGRAM 

The Enneagram gave me awareness of our patterns. IFS gave me a method in working with them. Joan Ryan JD

When JOAN RYAN, an Enneagram 9,  first encountered IFS, she found so many correlates in her 25+ years of teaching and working with the Enneagram.

Joan was struck by how “parts work” gave her a METHOD  to work with some of the most tenacious habits of her type structure which so instinctively goes stubborn and numbs out when activated.

She underwent intensive IFS training and then met Tammy Sollenberger, creator of the popular, The One Inside podcast and a licensed clinical mental health counselor and an Internal Family Systems (IFS) Certified Supervisor who also saw the correlates between the Enneagram, therapy and IFS.

Tammy and Joan are co-contributors to the new reference work “Altogether Us: Integrating the IFS Model with Key Modalities, Communities, and Trends.”

Their chapter is titled, IFS and the Enneagram: Connecting to Parts Using the Enneagram Map. 

Joan and Tammy’s contribution focuses on the integration of IFS and they have taught courses and have recorded a series of podcasts to detail this work.

Many of you know the Enneagram well. If you feel the need, Joan is offering a primer to IFS to help you prepare for the February intensive.

I will be offering an Enneagram primer to IFS practitioners who are new to the Enneagram.

If you feel called to dive in deeper into self observation, inner work and compassionate community, join us for the inaugural offering of this in-person integration.