🕯️ Understanding Therapist Parts in IFS

Every therapist carries their own internal system. Within that system live parts that long to help, to protect, to prove worth — and those same parts quietly shape the therapy room.

A therapist part may rush to soothe a client’s pain because it can’t bear helplessness.

Another may retreat into professionalism when vulnerability stirs.

One may crave admiration; another fears being incompetent. These are not flaws. They are protectors doing their best to keep the therapist safe.

IFS invites practitioners to meet these parts with the same compassion they offer clients. Before entering the room, a therapist might ask, “Who in me wants to lead this session?” If the answer isn’t Self — calm, curious, connected — that awareness alone can soften the system.

When therapist parts are seen and cared for, the work becomes cleaner, warmer, more human. Clients feel the steadiness of a companion who is not performing Self but returning to it again and again.

The best IFS therapists are not the ones without parts.They are the ones who befriend them — and let that friendship light the way.