Working With Parts: Clarity in a Time of Critique

Recently, a piece in the New York Times questioned aspects of Internal Family Systems therapy. Some of the concerns raised included whether parts language risks reinforcing fragmentation, encouraging suggestibility, or blurring the line between metaphor and literal belief.

Whenever a therapeutic model comes under scrutiny, it can leave clients and therapists feeling uncertain. Rather than reacting defensively, I see moments like this as an opportunity to clarify what I mean when I say my work is "IFS-influenced."

For me, this has never meant rigidly following a single model. It means drawing on ideas that help us understand the complexity of our inner world, while staying grounded, relational, and psychologically responsible.

What Do We Mean by "Parts"?

IFS, developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s, is based on a simple observation: we are not psychologically uniform. We contain different emotional states, protective strategies, and internal voices.

Most people recognise this intuitively: a harsh inner critic pushing you to do better; a procrastinating part that avoids what feels overwhelming; a younger, more vulnerable part that carries sadness, fear, or shame.

Long before IFS formalised this language, therapists like Carl Jung spoke of "complexes," and humanistic approaches used techniques such as chair work to give voice to different aspects of experience. In other words, the idea that we contain multiple emotional strands is not new.

The key question is how we work with them.

Not Fantasy, But Metaphor for Lived Experience

One critique of parts work is that it may encourage people to treat these parts as literal personalities. In my view, parts are not alternate identities. They are metaphors for deeply embedded emotional patterns, often formed early in life.

When we speak to a part, we are not indulging in fantasy. We are giving structured attention to feelings that are often pre-verbal, embodied, and difficult to articulate.

Crucially, the work remains grounded: in the present moment, in the therapeutic relationship, in shared reality.

We are not amplifying fragmentation. We are creating integration.

What If the "Problem" Is Actually Protection?

Historically, therapy often aimed to quieten or eliminate unwanted traits, the critic, the avoidance, the anger.

But what if those responses are intelligent survival strategies?

The guilt-driven voice may have developed to prevent rejection. The emotional shutdown may have been the safest response in a home where feelings were unwelcome.

These parts are not pathological by default. They are protective.

Understanding them is not the same as excusing behaviour. Compassion does not remove responsibility. In fact, it increases it. When you understand what drives you, you gain choice.

Insight brings responsibility. Compassion brings freedom.

The Role of the Self

IFS speaks of the "Self", a calm, curious, compassionate centre from which we can relate to our internal experience.

Whether or not we use that exact terminology, most therapeutic traditions recognise something similar: the observing capacity, the reflective ego, the grounded adult self, the conductor of your internal orchestra.

The goal is not to argue with parts or suppress them. It is to relate to them from a steadier place. When that happens, change often unfolds organically.

In many ways, this is not unlike the chair work used in humanistic and Gestalt therapy. When a client speaks to an empty chair representing a parent, they are often, in reality, speaking to their internalised version of that parent, a part of them. By giving it a voice, we can understand its role, its burdens, and what it truly needs.

My Approach: Holding and Grounding

When I describe my work as IFS-influenced, I mean that I adopt a compassionate, curious stance toward internal experience. But I do not push people into deep excavation. I do not dramatise inner worlds. I do not impose a framework.

We move at your pace.

Often, the work begins simply: noticing a tightness in the chest, becoming curious about a knot in the stomach, naming a feeling without trying to fix it. Sometimes we may give it an image or a name. Sometimes we simply sit with it.

The healing does not come from theatrics. It comes from being met, safely, relationally, and without judgment.

A Tool, Not a Dogma

Parts work is one thread within a broader, integrative approach that also draws from attachment theory, psychodynamic thinking, and somatic awareness.

No model should become ideology.

The aim is not to identify endlessly with wounded parts, nor to blame them for everything. The aim is integration, helping you move beyond old conditioning and into a clearer, more grounded sense of self.

Understanding a part is not surrendering to it. It is learning how to lead it.

If you're curious, this is something we can explore together, thoughtfully, carefully, and at a pace that feels right.