Intersections: IFS and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
In our new “Intersections” series, we explore the relationship between IFS and other popular therapeutic modalities. By looking at similarities and differences, we hope to highlight the ways that IFS is a standalone approach while also serving as a meta-framework into which other modalities can be incorporated when useful for our clients.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and its many offshoots, such as Rational Emotive Therapy (RET), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), is a structured approach to therapy that has long been celebrated as a pragmatic and evidence-based anxiety treatment technique. At the same time, descriptions of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy (also an evidenced-based modality) often focus on the holistic and introspective nature of the approach, and de-emphasize the more practical, everyday elements of the modality. It might seem like these two approaches could not be any more different.
But did you know it’s possible to view Internal Family Systems as a version of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, with mindfulness at its core?
Thought Patterns and Parts
It’s estimated that the average person has around 62,000 thoughts per day, though our thoughts often manifest as recurring patterns rather than distinct ideas. These patterns are inseparable from our schemas and worldviews, and are often accompanied by emotions, composing our complex inner landscapes. Our thought patterns can be indicative of parts, or they can give rise to parts over time, as patterns become ingrained ways of looking at the world.
In CBT, thought patterns are taken at face value and viewed as the basic building blocks of a person’s worldview, the main drivers of the way someone interprets the events of their life. Consider, for example, if every time you were faced with disappointment you thought to yourself “everything always goes wrong!” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy would take this thought pattern at face value, helping you to become aware when it emerges while practicing skills to challenge and replace the thought with one that was more helpful, such as,“ sometimes things go wrong, but sometimes they also go right.”
With Internal Family Systems, thought patterns like this might be interpreted as subpersonalities or parts of us that hold such beliefs. Further, these beliefs are often intended to protect us in some way. For instance, as we get to know about this kind of part, we may find that it believes expecting the worst will help you cope when things are difficult or not leave you deeply disappointed. So in this way, this part might also be protecting an exiled part, a young child that was once deeply hurt and disappointed when something didn’t go as expected.
So before simply disregarding the thought, in IFS we are first interested in how it might be serving a function. Also, because we see this “everything always goes wrong” thought as connected to a part of someone, we relate to it in a more respectful way. In IFS, while identifying and challenging this difficult thought pattern is a significant part of the therapy, listening to and becoming aware of the schema is only the first step toward a deeper exploration of distinct parts of the psyche and interactions between them.
As we walk the trail of the thought pattern, we flesh out our understanding of this pattern of thought and find that there is a whole worldview underlying it. We realize that this is not a unidimensional pattern of thought but actually a multidimensional subpersonality, with its own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and needs. This understanding leads to a relational approach to internal life.
Approaching Thoughts from the Self
Another difference between CBT and IFS is that at the core of the system from an IFS perspective is the Self, a central, unifying force that provides an inner resource of compassion, courage, connectedness, curiosity, clarity, confidence, creativity, and calm.
Beyond just being a radical concept theoretically, Self energy, it turns out, is a game changer.
The Self serves as a guiding light, able to communicate with parts from a place of acceptance and compassion, which facilitates healing among burdened or challenging parts. And, it exists in everyone. In contrast to CBT’s focus on challenging and replacing distorted thoughts, IFS focuses on fostering a depth of understanding that comes from the core of the person—their Self. While traditional CBT focuses on a person’s schemas as isolated problems to be solved, the IFS model explores the way in which these different schemas/parts interact in relation to the core Self, seeking to understand the system in its entirety in order to change the way things work.
Behavior Change through CBT and IFS
When CBT is used to address issues such as addiction, disordered eating, and other challenging or extreme behaviors, the therapist often tries to rid the client of these difficult thoughts and behaviors.
With IFS, an understanding of the protective nature of these behaviors or parts is central to the therapy. The therapist and client work to unburden exiled sensations, emotions, and energies, so the behavior no longer needs to try to help in such an extreme way, and can still participate in the internal system in other, more helpful ways.
If this unburdening does not occur, another part in a protector role will often step in, in place of the original part, becoming extreme and challenging in a different way. Using IFS to address these behaviors makes relapse less likely because underlying issues are being addressed at the root and this “rebound effect” is not as likely to occur.
Rather than trying to suppress or eliminate parts that are burdened by their negative beliefs, IFS seeks to understand, through witnessing from Self, just how those beliefs got there. It goes on to transform them into more functional and harmonized aspects of the psyche. Parts then begin to carry more positive “schemas” in place of the negative.
Scientific Research
Psychotherapy is a field that is notoriously difficult to research, although the alliance between therapist and client has consistently proven to be an essential component to any successful approach. The patient experience in therapy is nuanced and particular to each therapeutic relationship, and because there can be so many different types of positive outcomes from a course of therapy, it can be difficult to quantify what “successful” therapy looks like.
However, CBT, with its manualized, systematized approach to investigating distorted thought patterns and replacing faulty schemas with more helpful ways of approaching the world, is more easily researched than many other types of psychotherapy. Thus, more research has been conducted on CBT than on other types of psychotherapy, which in part is responsible for its status as the preeminent form of “evidence-based” psychotherapy. This has helped promote CBT’s popularity in medical circles.
And yet, research always lags behind what’s actually happening in therapy offices. IFS is also evidence based, and has shown efficacy through different research studies. Yet because of the nuances within the model, IFS is not as easy to study. Still, the strength of IFS lies in exactly what makes it more difficult to research. IFS sees people, and helps them experience themselves, as much greater than just the emotions and thoughts their parts express. This nuanced, deep, and holistic approach can be hard to quantify through research.
Conclusion: Distinctions and Intersections
While the approaches are inarguably distinct, in exploring the intersection of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Internal Family Systems, we've found that thought patterns can be the first way parts present for some clients, and can be a valid starting point in doing deeper work.
While CBT offers a structured and evidence-based method for identifying and changing distorted thought patterns, IFS helps us understand, sit with, and ultimately heal the parts of the psyche perpetuating these unhelpful thought patterns in the first place. The Self energy from a skilled IFS therapist adds perspective, compassion and acceptance to the patterns parts present cognitively.
Do you find your thoughts getting caught in negative feedback loops? A therapist at IFS Telehealth Collective can help you find and connect with the parts that need to be seen, heard, and ultimately healed. If you live in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, or Oregon, please contact our Client Care Coordinator or call 503-447-3244.
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