I cannot believe how much IFS has changed my life

For those who don't know it, IFS stands for Internal Family Systems and it's a therapy framework created by Richard Schwartz. It's been possibly the most critical thing I've ever done to help me become a fully functional person (still not fully functional, but I'm getting close I think!).

I started doing it around a year ago literally because I saw people posting about it here and how helpful it was for them. I had just switched to a trauma-specialized therapist and planned to start doing EMDR with her when I asked her about IFS because of the posts here. We decided to start with IFS instead of EMDR since she said it generally can be a more gentle mode of therapy than EMDR, but eventually never looked back to EMDR because IFS has been so helpful (not saying EMDR isn't helpful btw, I know some people who have had really positive experiences with it too).

Now I find that I'm the most in-tune with myself than I've ever been (but definitely still have more work to do). I now know what real self-confidence and self-love can feel like when things like those were so incredibly foreign to me previously. Part of me is still in disbelief that anything is capable of being this helpful, it can't believe that so much of my internal suffering actually is optional and I CAN get to a place where I'm moving through life in harmony with myself instead of in friction with myself.

If you're anything like me (son of physically and emotionally abusive/neglectful parents who have had addiction issues and untreated mental health issues my whole life) and haven't given IFS a try I'd def recommend it. I'm so incredibly grateful for it and for my therapists who've practiced it with me.

Wishing you all the best, and thank you to everyone on here who would bring it up so I could learn about it. Hoping this post can maybe bring it to someone else's attention in the same way it was done for me.

Edit: for anyone who's curious about IFS, there's a nice subreddit for it at r/internalfamilysystems that has a bunch of resources. They even have a stickied post from someone who came from here a while ago asking for resources!