IFS and the inner critic

The voice in your head that says you are not enough, not doing enough, not far enough along, is not the truth. It is a part of you.

Internal Family Systems, IFS, is a way of working with the inner world as a system of parts. None of the parts are bad. Some are exhausted. Some are frozen at the age something hard happened. The inner critic is one of the loudest.

What the critic is actually doing

The critic is almost always a protector. It learned, often very young, that if it stayed ahead of failure, rejection, or shame, you would be safe. It has been on shift ever since.

Fighting it does not work. Silencing it does not work. What works is meeting it.

What meeting a part looks like

You slow down. You notice the voice. You ask, gently, how old it feels. You ask what it is afraid would happen if it stopped. You listen.

Underneath the critic there is almost always a younger part that is scared. Underneath that part there is you, calm and present, large enough to hold both.

This is the work. Not silencing parts. Welcoming them.

How the body helps

The mind alone cannot finish this. The body has to come too. Therapeutic breath retraining gives the parts a way to move through the tissue. Nervous system literacy tells you when you have room to do this work and when you do not.

Where to begin

Book a one to one session if you want to do this work with someone holding the room. If you want the frame first, read why we see the whole person.