Understanding Parts Work in Therapy - Internal Family Systems (IFS)
On the inner world, why you feel divided, and how relating to your parts can change everything.
Sound Familiar?
Most of us have had this moment.
You know what you want.
You know what would be good for you.
You might even know exactly why you keep doing the thing that isn't working.
And yet.
Something pulls in a different direction. Something hesitates, shuts down, or reaches for the old pattern before you have even had a chance to think.
It can feel maddening. Like you are somehow working against yourself.
Parts work offers a different way of seeing this.
Not as a failure of willpower.
As something much more interesting than that.
You Are More Than One Thing
Parts work begins with a simple but radical idea.
You are not a single, unified self. You are a system. An inner world made up of many different aspects, each shaped by your history, each holding its own perspective, its own fears, its own way of trying to protect you.
Carl Jung called these complexes. Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, called them parts. The name matters less than the recognition.
You already know your parts.
The part that wants rest and the part that keeps pushing.
The part that longs for closeness and the part that quietly keeps people at arm's length.
The part that knows better and the part that does it anyway.
Parts work just gives us a language for what is already happening inside you.
What a Part Is
A part is an aspect of your personality that formed through experience.
It learned, at a particular moment in your history, how to respond. How to adapt. How to survive whatever it was navigating at the time.
Here is the important thing.
Parts are always trying to help.
Even the ones that look like they are working against you.
Even the ones that shut down, lash out, go numb, or reach for something that doesn't serve you.
Somewhere underneath the behaviour, there is an intention.
The part that avoids intimacy learned, at some point, that closeness came with a cost.
The part that cannot stop achieving learned that performance was the condition of love.
The part that shuts down in conflict learned that speaking up wasn't safe.
These parts formed for good reasons. They just haven't been updated..
When Parts Start Running the Show
When a part has enough traction, it can feel like it is running the whole system.
This is when people say things like:
I don't know why I keep doing this.
It's like something just takes over.
I can see exactly what I'm doing and I still can't stop.
Parts work doesn't try to eliminate these responses.
It helps you understand them. And slowly, from that understanding, shift your relationship to them.
Relating Rather Than Reacting
When we don't recognise our parts, we tend to either become them completely or spend enormous energy fighting them.
Neither works particularly well.
Parts work creates a little space. Instead of being fully inside the reaction, you begin to notice it. To get curious about it. To ask, gently:
What part of me is here right now?
What is it trying to do for me?
What might it be afraid would happen if it stepped back?
This is where the work becomes less about control and more about relationship.
Ways to Begin
You don't need to go to the deepest places straight away.
Start with something small. Something that feels manageable to be curious about.
Notice the moment.
Catch a small moment of tension or hesitation. Rather than asking what is wrong with you, try: what part of me is here right now? You don't need an answer. Just noticing begins something.
Get curious.
When does this part tend to show up? What seems to activate it? What does it want you to do? What might it be protecting you from?
Try a simple inner dialogue.
Silently, out loud, or in writing. Let the part speak. Then respond from somewhere a little steadier. Jung called this active imagination. It doesn't have to be elaborate. A few honest lines can be enough.
This Work Is Relational
You can begin exploring parts on your own. Many people do.
But this work often deepens in relationship with a therapist who can help you stay grounded when things feel like too much, notice the patterns that are harder to see from the inside, and hold space for the parts that carry more than you can manage alone.
In my work, I bring IFS alongside EMDR and Brainspotting. The combination matters. Parts work helps us understand and relate to what is happening inside. EMDR and Brainspotting help the nervous system actually release what the parts have been carrying.
Understanding and release. Both are needed.
What Shifts Over Time
Something changes when parts begin to feel genuinely met.
You are no longer entirely at the mercy of each part. You are relating to them. Listening. Sometimes, gently, choosing.
IFS calls this self-leadership. Not control. Not the absence of complexity. A steadier centre that can hold your inner world without needing to collapse it.
Parts work doesn't make you less complicated.
It makes the complication less frightening.
A Different Way of Seeing Yourself
Parts work gently loosens the idea that you are too much. Too inconsistent. Too hard to understand.
Instead, it offers something else.
You are layered.
You are adaptive.
You are in process.
Every part of you, including the ones you most wish you could be rid of, has a reason it is here.
That reason is worth understanding.
If something here has felt true, and you are ready to go beyond understanding it, I would love to work with you.
theintegrationspace.au · Online · Australia-wide
Tiffany Valente
Clinical Psychologist · The Integration Space