I used to be neutral on IFS therapy
I used to be neutral on Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy… because like most everyone else who likes or is neutral on it, I thought the metaphor of parts inside that are trying to help you deal with life was a fine way to talk about “being of different minds”–which is how we talk about having conflicting mindsets in depth psychotherapy. OF course you have an unconscious mind full of conflicting desires and goals that you have to make sense of… no argument…
IFS therapy says the “parts” are NOT metaphors
Well, lo and behold, Richard Schwartz, the founder and creator of IFS therapy has blatantly said that these “parts” are NOT metaphors. He says they are fully developed autonomous beings with their own thoughts, emotions and motivations.
IFS therapy teaches about harmful entities called Unattached Burdens
And the worst part of this BONKERS idea is that he also believes in entities called unattached burdens that want to hurt you… LIKE DEMONS that can be expelled from you by someone who knows how to ask them to leave…. THIS IS BONKERS. It is a recipe for psychosis in the right patient. It’s BAD THERAPY. He says they’re not metaphors, guys. He’s teaching therapists to tell patients they have actual entities inside them. THIS IS BONKERS.
Why is IFS therapy dangerous?
These ideas are actually a recipe for psychopathology. Because one way people manage difficult experiences, ideas, or emotions is to remove them from their conscious minds, and then as far as they know, those things simply don’t exist in them anymore… but their behavior can then be mysteriously driven by those thoughts, ideas or emotions…
Recipe for Psychosis
And in certain people, in its most intense form, that phenomenon can very easily lead to what you might have heard of as multiple personalities, or as it is known today, dissociative identity disorder.
IFS therapy has bad ideas
Because as most people would agree, to live successfully in our day and time, it is not functional to believe we have a psyche full of different personalities that make us act the way we do or to believe that negative ideas and desires we’ve got in our mind are foreign entities inhabiting us.
That may be fine in certain cultures, but it’s not fine in ours. We use science to explain what’s going on in our minds, not mysticism. And science says all these entities IFS talks about are ideas, not beings.
There’s a better way
Think critically of the ideas you consume. Because we generate reality IN OUR MINDS, and then we look for evidence in the world and in our bodies to back up what we believe to be real.
And that means that the beliefs we install, or that get installed by people we trust or rely on to learn how to make sense of life, will determine the kind of information we seek and the kind of world we experience, mentally and physically.
