IFS Insight: IFS And Spirituality

Today I want to gently explore something that lives beneath the surface for a lot of us.

Something many people feel,

But don't always have language for.

And honestly,

It's a conversation that's alive in the IFS world right now.

People are asking,

What does internal family systems have to do with spirituality?

How do these two worlds intersect?

Some folks are leaning in,

And they have parts that are leaning in and out,

And others are pulling back and have parts going both ways.

And there's this beautiful,

Sometimes messy,

Dialogue happening.

So I wanted to create some space for us to explore it together.

The deeper question underneath all of this might be,

Is there something sacred inside of us?

Now,

Before we go any further,

I want to be really clear about something.

I'm Christian.

That's part of my story.

Part of how I've experienced healing and meaning in my life.

But I'm not here to make you Christian.

I'm not here to push any particular spiritual path on you.

What I am trying to do,

And honestly,

This is something I've been working on my whole life,

Is find that balance between claiming who I am and creating space for you to be exactly who you are.

And the irony isn't lost on me that this tension,

This stance of being authentic,

While not alienating others,

Is the very thing I've struggled with since I was young.

So,

Let's ease into this slowly.

Because spirituality is tender territory.

For some of us,

That word brings warmth,

A sense of meaning,

Of connection,

Of being held.

But for others,

It brings pain.

Wounds we haven't touched in years.

Memories of being told we weren't good enough.

Or that we had to go outside of ourselves to find God,

Or love,

Or worth.

Messages we had to unlearn.

Rooms we no longer enter.

And yet,

In the midst of that,

So many of us still carry a quiet longing,

A desire to feel rooted,

To feel connected to something larger than our fear,

Wiser than our inner chaos,

More loving than the choices that shame us inside or out.

So,

In this session together,

I want to invite you into a spacious conversation.

No pressure.

No dogma.

No right way to experience any of this.

Just curiosity.

When Richard Schwartz,

The founder of IFS,

Began working with clients,

Something surprising began to happen.

He noticed that when people connected with what IFS calls the self,

This calm,

Grounded,

Inner presence,

They often used language that sounded a lot like spirituality.

They described feeling light,

Peaceful,

Unusually kind toward themselves.

Like they were tapping into something deeper than their usual thinking mind.

They spoke of compassion,

Clarity,

Courage,

Creativity,

Confidence,

Connectedness.

Words that show up across spiritual traditions around the world.

You might have heard them referred to as the fruits of the spirit or signs of divine presence or sacred awareness.

In IFS,

We simply call them the qualities of the self.

And here's the truly beautiful part.

You don't have to earn them.

They're not rewards for good behavior.

They're not given to the lucky few.

They're native to you.

They're already there.

Built into the very architecture of your inner world.

And here's something else that matters.

You don't have to be spiritual to access this.

You don't need to believe in God or the divine or anything transcendent at all.

Some people experience self as something sacred.

Some don't.

What we're really talking about transcends any particular religion.

It doesn't even require that you believe in something spiritual.

What it does ask is that you come to accept that there's this beautiful essence in you and everyone else,

And that it can be accessed simply by opening space inside.

Dick Schwartz tells this story that I love about teaching IFS at a seminary.

He was working with evangelical Christian students,

And he knew he'd be teaching them that people are basically good.

That the self is inherently compassionate and whole.

And he fully expected pushback.

He got it.

He thought they'd argue that people are basically bad,

Fallen,

Sinful,

In need of redemption from the outside.

So they had that conversation.

And Dick asked them,

Doesn't it say in the Bible that we're created in the image of God?

And the student said,

Yeah,

That's true.

But it's just this little seed,

And it's covered over by all this original sin.

And Dick said,

Well,

If we can translate original sin as burdens,

The wounds and beliefs we carry that aren't truly ours,

Then we're talking the same language.

Then one of their professors said something that stopped everyone.

You know,

I kind of know what you're trying to do here.

You're asking us to do inside ourselves what Jesus did in the outside world.

Pause for a moment and feel that.

Jesus went with compassion and curiosity and care to the exiles in the outside world.

The lepers,

The poor,

The outcasts.

The one society had shamed and abandoned.

And he healed them.

Not by condemning them,

But by seeing them,

By extending love.

And what IFS invites us to do is turn that same compassion inward toward the exiled parts inside us.

The young,

Hurting parts that carry our deepest pain.

The parts we've hidden away because they felt too vulnerable,

Too much,

Too shameful.

What if healing isn't about getting rid of those parts?

What if it's about going to them with curiosity,

With tenderness,

With the willingness to listen?

However you understand that compassionate presence,

Whether you call it self or inner wisdom,

Or simply your truest nature,

The invitation is the same.

And I want to pause here for a moment because this matters.

When someone first experiences self-energy,

They often can't believe it's theirs.

They'll say things like,

That doesn't feel like me.

That's too kind.

I don't talk to myself like that.

And I always want to say,

But you just did.

You just spoke to that anxious part with such gentleness.

You just held space for that angry part without trying to fix it.

You listened to that young,

Hurting part without rushing away.

That wasn't borrowed.

That wasn't someone else's voice piped in.

It was you,

The truest version of you.

And here's what's so humbling about this work.

The self doesn't need to be created or installed or achieved.

It doesn't require years of hard work.

It doesn't require years of meditation,

Though meditation can help us access it.

It doesn't demand a perfect theology or spiritual purity.

It's simply present.

Like breath,

Like gravity.

It's the organizing center of your inner world.

Whether you've noticed it or not,

But life,

Trauma,

Stress,

Overwhelm,

Messages we absorbed growing up,

All of that can bury it beneath layers of protection.

And we forget because life happens,

Pain happens,

Fear shows up,

And different parts of us rise to the surface to protect us.

Sometimes in ways that confuse us or hurt us or pull us far away from who we know ourselves to be.

Maybe you've felt that.

Maybe you've had moments where you think,

Why did I say that?

Why do I keep avoiding this?

Why do I feel so disconnected from who I really am?

I know I've felt that.

That disconnection,

That inner fragmentation,

Isn't proof that you or I are broken.

It's a sign that your inner system is trying to survive.

IFS doesn't ask us to fight those protective parts.

It invites us to turn toward them,

To listen,

To recognize that every part of you has a reason for being here.

Even the parts you wish would go away.

Even the parts that feel anxious,

Angry,

Numb,

Ashamed.

They're not the problem.

They're responses to pain.

They're adaptations.

They're trying to protect something tender.

And when we approach those parts,

Not with judgment,

But with the presence of self,

That compassionate energy inside us,

Something begins to shift.

Those protectors over time begin to trust you.

They realize they're not alone in holding the burden of keeping you safe.

They don't have to run the whole system anymore.

And in that trust,

Something sacred begins to rise.

A quiet presence,

A felt sense that you're not alone inside your own body.

Let me share something personal with you.

When I was in seminary,

And honestly,

For most of my life,

I had this part of me that was obsessed with keeping everyone happy.

I wanted to be liked.

I wanted to fit in.

Normal,

Right?

I didn't want to offend anyone or make waves.

So I learned to shape shift,

To read the room,

To be what I thought people needed me to be.

And I've become pretty good at it.

And in the process,

Though,

I lost touch with who I really was.

There was this hesitation,

This inability to just show up fully,

Authentically,

Without worrying about how it would land.

And when I started doing my own IFS work,

I got curious about that part.

The one always managing,

Always adjusting,

Always performing.

And when I asked it what it was protecting,

I met this young exile,

This tender part of me that had learned early on,

If you show people who you really are,

They might reject you.

It's safer to hide,

Safer to please.

Here's what surprised me.

When I finally went to that young part,

Not to fix it,

But just to be with it,

I discovered something I'd forgotten.

That part had gifts.

It had qualities of self I'd buried.

There was this smile,

This lightness,

This joy that I hadn't let myself feel in years.

And it was like encountering an old friend I'd abandoned.

I realized this isn't just a wounded part.

This is a part of me that carries aliveness.

And slowly I've been learning to put that smile back on.

Not the performed smile,

Not the one that says everything's fine,

But the real one.

The one that comes from deep inside.

Maybe you've got a smile inside that would feel good to put back on.

And I put it on from a place of self that knows I don't have to hide anymore.

Here's the ironic thing.

Here I am,

Still working on that same thing,

Trying to claim who I am while making space for you.

Trying to share my faith story without pushing it on you.

Trying to be authentic without alienating.

That's the dance.

And I'm still learning it.

And maybe the most challenging piece,

But the piece that gives me so much hope,

The one that's still a mystery to me,

Is this deep belief that we're all going to be okay.

That everything is going to be okay.

And parts of me still struggle to believe that.

Some of them don't believe it at all.

You know what?

They don't have to.

They can carry their doubts,

Their fears,

Their certainty that things won't work out.

And I can still show up with presence,

With compassion.

That's the work.

And that's what I keep seeing in my own life,

In the people I work with,

In this conversation happening across the IFS community.

Everyone I've ever sat with has had moments where their own compassion surprised them,

Where something wiser than their usual thoughts stepped forward,

Where they met a hurting part of themselves,

Not with shame,

But with tenderness.

And that's not an accident.

That's not a trick of the brain.

That's the self.

That's the inner leader you may have forgotten you had.

And it's still there.

Even when your parts are loud,

Even when you feel lost,

Even when you've spent years disconnected from that sense of inner wholeness.

So let's take a breath together here.

And let this question echo quietly inside you.

Where have you felt that compassionate presence in your own inner world?

It doesn't have to look like a mystical vision.

Maybe it was a moment of forgiveness toward yourself.

Maybe it was a breath that softened your chest.

Maybe it was a tear that finally felt safe enough to fall.

Those moments matter.

They're not magnificent.

They're little lanterns lighting the way back to the deeper truth of who you are.

You're not broken.

You're not behind.

Whether you experience it as sacred or simply as your truest nature,

It's already inside you.

Not just as a metaphor,

But as a real felt sense that's available to you.

When your parts feel safe,

When you feel safe enough to let it lead,

This is one of the gifts of IFS.

It doesn't ask you to reject your past or silence your pain.

It invites you to the table with gentleness and curiosity.

And when your system begins to feel that welcome,

Healing happens,

Integration happens.

And whether you call it spirituality or simply wholeness,

It becomes something embodied,

Not abstract.

So let's try something together.

Just a brief moment to practice.

If you're in a space where you can pause for a few breaths,

I invite you to settle in.

Notice what you're feeling right now.

Maybe there's a part of you that's curious about all this.

Maybe there's a part that's skeptical.

Maybe a part that's tired or wondering if you're doing this right.

Whatever's there,

Just notice it.

You don't have to fix it or change it.

Just acknowledge.

I notice a part of me that feels and fill in the blank and see if you can find a small space inside,

A place that's just noticing,

Not judging,

Not managing,

Just aware.

And that's self.

It might be quiet.

It might be subtle,

But it's there.

And from that place,

See if you can extend just a little curiosity toward the part you noticed.

What do you want me to know?

You might not get words.

You might just feel something shift,

A softening,

A warmth,

A sense of being accompanied.

That's enough.

That's the compassionate conversation happening inside of you.

You begin to realize that your inner world isn't a battlefield.

It's a sanctuary.

It's a place where every part has dignity and where the self,

Your compassionate center can lead with love.

So wherever you are in your journey,

Whether this is all new or you've been doing IFS for years,

I want to bless that part of you that's still reaching for connection,

Still longing for peace,

Still wondering if there's something whole and good inside.

There is.

It's not far away.

It's you.

And it's waiting patiently,

Compassionately for you to return.

Thanks for being here in the session today.

Take care of yourself.