Read What Jonathan VAN NESS has to say about IFS:

Jonathan Van Ness, Star of Queer Eye and author of Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love
People mostly know me for being positive and loving. But part of being fearlessly, endlessly encouraging is also giving voice to the parts you don’t want seen—like the part that snaps when it gets riled. I wouldn’t want most people seeing that irritated part—the part of me that comes out if my assistant leaves my client’s toner on for too long and fucks up her color. You don’t want to be with me in the back room when I’m telling her, “I’m elbow-deep in highlights trying to fix the same mistake you’ve made twice this week.” You can’t be fiercely loving without also being passionate—and sometimes passionate isn’t pretty. What might seem testy is actually scar tissue, the residual effects of trauma that I lived through. So that’s the question that I keep coming back to. Would you love me if you saw me in a bad moment? Would you love me if I’m momentarily Grumps McGee about everybody taking forever? Would you love me if you saw all my parts?

The whole parts thing is really ferosh, but I didn’t come up with it. It actually came from this doctor, Richard C. Schwartz, who created something called internal family systems therapy. According to him, we were all born as a centered self, who is perfect and whole and can handle anything. But as we experience trauma in life, the centered self doesn’t know quite how to deal with it, so it develops pieces of ourselves that we can call upon based on the situations we find ourselves in. It’s not as intense as multiple personality disorder—it’s more, like, we all have these parts in our personality, personality, but some people’s are more extreme or polarized than others.

The work you do in this modality of therapy is about getting the parts to talk to one another. If you think of your personality like a car, it’s like this: My busy bee sits in the driver’s seat, saying yes to every job coming my way with no thought for overbooking. Kicking out my people pleaser who’s now in the passenger seat, and then my inner child is in the car seat. Meanwhile, my inner critic, who has the voice of grandmother, can’t stop backseat driving and telling everyone how I could be driving so much more effectively, and since we’re in a minivan, my narrator in the back seat can’t stop talking about the geopolitical climate of Venezuela but simultaneously also wants to talk about this year’s World Gymnastics Championships. What’s that noise coming from the top of the car? Oh, I think that’s my raunchy sex kitten in a tube dress, doing Lizzo ass-clap-twerk-practice to post up to her Insta story.

​That’s right: My personality is a minivan, actually a small bus. There are different pieces of me that are all driving together, with one in charge based on what’s happening in my life. Ideally, you get the parts to realize that they’re all in the same car—and they’re all trying to help, but your centered self is actually capable of driving you back to a safe, soothing place.
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WHAT IS IFS?

Internal Family Systems is a powerfully transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy. We believe the mind is naturally multiple and that is a good thing.  Our inner parts contain valuable qualities and our core Self knows how to heal, allowing us to become integrated and whole. In IFS all parts of the human psyche and experience are welcome. Even parts that are politically incorrect, "shameful" or otherwise hidden away.


IFS is a movement. A new, empowering paradigm for understanding and harmonizing the mind and, thereby, larger human systems. One that can help people heal and helps the world become a more compassionate place.
The IFS Institute, which governs the training and dissemination of IFS to teachers to coaches welcomes all people of any age, race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, ability, language or cultural background into the Internal Family Systems community.  We believe that IFS leads the pack in terms of social justice in therapy modalities.