Internal Family Systems

Is it from time to time difficult to stay within your SELF?

Do you recognize the following feelings or conflicting emotions? “A part of me wants to… And then there is a part of me that doesn’t…”

Are you sometimes confused about what you did and what in you initiated a specific reaction?

Richard Schwartz has been working for over 20 years as a systemic family therapist when he concluded while working with his clients, that our personality must consist of more than one part. And indeed, there seem to be very many different parts that interact with one another and display themselves as a whole. From then on, he used this knowledge and was more and more convinced that the inner system follows certain patterns.

Another important finding was that, apart from the individual parts, there is still one component that stands above all and, therefore, is responsible for the conduct of the various parts. Richard Schwartz describes this superior part as “the self”. This knowledge about the self and its fundamental influence on our inner balance makes the approach very special and is of great importance for the process of lasting change. The term “self” is meant to describe something that is difficult to describe. It could be compared with a superior authority, which is the core of a personality and is of a different nature from the individual parts. The self is rather felt than described, more felt by an inner behavior, such as compassion, kindness, wisdom, curiosity and openness and interest without judgment. In this state of consciousness, we have access both to the wisdom of our destiny and to the context of spiritual health. And the beauty is: Every human being has such a core! It is indestructible and contains precisely those qualities that we need to guide our different parts with. We can thus consciously connect and activate it as our guide.