Hello and welcome to my IFS story! I have been working with a therapist for almost 2 years now, and he practices a form of therapy called Internal Family Systems, typically referred to as IFS. I will explain more about IFS in the next post, but in short, the concept is based around everyone’s minds being made up of multiple parts that have different tasks to protect you and your parts. Unfortunately, trauma (even small things) can have a huge effect on your parts and system as a whole, causing some parts to act self-destructively. In IFS therapy, my therapist guides me to help work with my parts.

I will get into a more detailed explanation, but first I wanted to introduce myself and tell you why I’m doing this. Though not a formal introduction as I want to remain anonymous (at least for now), but I’m happy to give you a little information about me. I am an average man in my twenties and grew up with a loving family. I have a perfectly adequate and usually boring corporate job that I do so I can support my hobbies like writing (I’ve self-published a few books already), video games and miniatures games, and occasionally drawing. I’m now happily married, and though that’s been an adjustment, everything has been pretty great so far.

If you’re thinking, “if his life has been so great, why would he need therapy?” then you are not alone. It’s a question I asked myself often to deter me from therapy. Only crazy people and those who have been through horrific things should go to therapy. I just had to man up and “stop being a pussy” and that would solve all my issues… right? The numbness of my life would eventually go away when I do this or did that, or if I got off my phone to do more I’d be happier. That’s what I thought.

But I was wrong. I had a lot more wrong with me than I thought and that would cause me to act irrationally, and I’d often leave conversations wondering why I said something or acted a certain way. Hell, junior year of college I walked over to a nearby ~3 story tall waterfall with the intent jump off, and it still took me four more years before trying therapy because either I didn’t feel I deserved it or just had to man up.

But truthfully I was just scared.

I was scared of being viewed as a crazy person or not strong enough mentally. Or worse, I feared judgement by others (or a therapist!). I feared they would view my life as so great so they would think I must be truly pathetic to need therapy. So I avoided it. I’d go for long stretches of seasonal depression, struggling to get out of it and only trying to survive. I distracted myself with school, writing, swimming, and pornography. Nothing helped, I still felt numb and continued to feel numb because I thought it was natural.

The moment I realized I wanted to try therapy was when I snapped at a friend. She was bothering my other friend about how he was feeling. He looked terrible and unhappy, but already told me he didn’t want to talk about it and I respected it. ‘S’, on the other hand, always struggled with respecting that and kept pestering ‘T’ about how he was feeling until I finally snapped at her. I don’t remember what I said, but it really upset her. We got into a fight on my now wife’s birthday and it was just ugly because my wife was caught in the middle of it.

After that, I had a typical physical and when she asked me those mental health questions I always scoffed at I told her the truth that I was depressed. She recommended therapy and got me set up with Quartet, which helped me find my therapist. We had a phone consultation and he told me about Internal Family Systems, and everything about it really resonated with me. I did feel like I wasn’t in control of my actions and that parts were controlling me. (I get more in depth about the principles of IFS in “About IFS”)

I’ll get into specifics about some of my sessions and my parts in future posts, but it was one of my parts that convinced me to do this. I believe if I can show someone my story who needs it, they’ll get the help they deserve. If I can help, just one person, that’s all I care about. I’m not doing this for money or fame or anything, I just want to show a bit about my life and help someone who may need it.

If you have any questions or anything, feel free to comment and I’ll get to them when I can!