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Last week I was ending a session with a new client and the person was expressing how different Internal Family Systems is from regular talk therapy and other coaching they had done for years. The talking, thinking, analyzing, and planning they had done before hadn’t gotten this person to where they wanted to be. I responded: “Yeah, you can’t think your way there. You can only heal your way there.” This is hard to hear for those of us who live in our heads, who have thought our way through many problems, who feel safer in a world of ideas than in a body of intense feelings. It’s an attractive idea that if we just had the right protocol, plan, curriculum, or steps to fix our thinking––then we could really heal. But what if healing isn’t something you can think your way to? What if healing is a practice in itself, and thinking only gets in the way? This is the wisdom behind Internal Family Systems (IFS), the psychotherapeutic framework that’s the basis for most of my emotional health practices. At its core, IFS is an experiential and relational practice. It is not about changing your thinking, solving problems, or fixing faulty cognition. It’s about experiencing your internal world in an entirely new way––as a fluid set of relationships between parts of you and between those parts and your True Self. Often the first step in nurturing these relationships is to spend time with the analytical, planning, and cognitively vigilant parts to build trust that it’s ok for them to relax back. They must learn that healing isn’t dependent on them, and in fact healing will only be delayed by their persistence. Deep emotional healing comes from developing new relationships inside. There is no substitute for it. Just like you can’t think your way to a rich, nurturing, and intimate relationship with someone, you can’t think your way to healing. It takes slowing down, listening, and opening up to new possibilities. You can’t think your way there. You can only heal your way there.
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