IFS therapy and Attachement Theory
IFS and attachment belong together.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapy form that sees our parts (ego states, protective strategies, patterns of behavior, symptoms and so on) as positive aspects or inner beings trying to uphold balance and ensure survival. The more extreme the trauma, the more insecure the attachment, the more extreme and polarized the parts become in order to protect.
The intention is alway good, the result (often) not so much.
When children grow up in an unsafe environment, the attachment they can form to their parents will be somewhat insecure.
This can take as many different forms — and have as my degrees — as there are people (and parts) in the world. Therefore the secure attachment style and the insecure attachments are not boxes we can fit ourselves into, but different ways to recognize part of what is going on inside of us because of what happened to us.
Being emotionally or physically neglected, used or abused in any way or combination will create unsafely attached parts in our system. They hold our pain to protect us.
We all have some, because no childhood is perfect.
Because we are all human.
IFS is attachment taken inside; into the internal family.
This is not a new concept. A big part of attachment is the koncept of regulating the nervous system:
When the child feels upset or ashamed they need their parents to regulate the nervous system of the child through the nervous system of the parent (aka co-regulation).
When children start crawling and walking they start feeling more states of shame, because they start getting a lot of “No’s” from their parents instead of just the “Yes” that they have been getting so far when they start smiling, learning new skills and so forth.
“No” is important and necessary to be safe and to learn social cues, and at the same time it creates shame; a small (or big) shutdown of the inner system.
The essential thing here is not to stop setting boundaries, but how we — the parents — meet that shutdown or shame?
Do we leave the child alone (to punish or so he “can learn”)?
Do we refrain from comforting (so she doesn’t “get spoiled”)?
Is dad not allowed to comfort when mom was yelling (because then the child “pins us against each other”)?
Or do we comfort a crying — or in other way upset/shamed/shutdown — child, to bring him back to the safe and social sphere; back to the “Yes”?
In other words to we co-regulate our small children who cannot yet self-regulate?
There are so many ways in which we have been told not to comfort our children, but when we leave a child in shame; when we do not regulate a small child, he does not learn to regulate himself. He learns to shut off to himself; he creates parts in his system that are exiled and parts that shut off those feelings involved.
The same happens when we let our kids “cry it out” — instead of their system getting regulated and knowing inside and out that the world is safe and “I can lean into it” (into my parents) — they learn that the world is unsafe and “I must close off to protect myself.”
Co-regulation creates self-regulation. The safe parent I can lean out in, becomes a safe foundation inside I can lean into.
The secure attached child will have more access to what IFS calls Self-energy (safe foundation).
Self is the parent of the internal family system, just like mom/dad is the parent of the outer family system.
Thereby the parts (or children) of the internal family system will have a secure attachment to the Self (inner parent). That’s what IFS is all about.
All the parts are welcome, but the parent (Self) is the leader that parts revolve round and feel safe with.
In an primarily insecurely attached child, the Self-energy (the inner parent) will be (more) hidden, because parts (inner children) will have blocked it and taken up the space in order to protect the system and survive. Often they don’t even know that Self is there or they feel abandoned by it. Thereby the child cannot Self-regulate but shuts off instead (in many different ways).
The inner attachment reflects the outer attachment.
IFS therapy and the IFS way of understanding human beings is a lot more hopeful than the early attachment theories, because in IFS we know that no matter the trauma and insecure attachment, we all have a Self (it’s just hidden away), which means; we all have a possible safe attachment awaiting inside.
When we start working with the inner system and give our parts time, space, love and acceptance (and yes we can all do that when we are in our Self-energy), our insecure attached parts can start creating a safe attachment to our Self and will stop looking for that do-over outside of ourselves and therefore stop recreating the past (as many of us unbeknown to ourselves keep doing) and start creating safe and healthy relationships to other people.
IFS therapy and attachment belong together. We attach outside and we attach inside.
We lean out and we lean in.
Learn more about IFS therapy
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