IFS Is Having a Moment. So Is the Backlash.

IFS—aka Internal Family Systems, a therapeutic model built around working with distinct “parts” of the psyche—is having a moment. It’s all over wellness culture right now—TikTok therapists, podcast guests, airport bookstore self-help—and with that kind of buzz comes backlash. The Cut recently published a piece on the dangers of IFS (paywalled), and I’ve seen the headline circulating in a few places. I finally sat down and read the thing.

The harms described—if accurate—are disturbing. But what I actually see when I read the piece is woefully bad applications of IFS. There’s a bunch of stuff in this article describing the so-called treatment that produced these negative outcomes, and none of it is part of how any responsible IFS practitioner would work. Being certified in trauma-focused IFS, I know that responsible trainers are extremely cautious about splintering, fracturing, or mistaking the forest for the trees. This view is consistent with my broader practice. In Buddhism, we recognize that the mind has an infinite capacity to self-liberate, but an equally infinite capacity to self-delude. Experienced, ethical guides are essential.

It’s also worth remembering that IFS didn’t arrive from nowhere. Parts work is ancient. The recognition that human consciousness contains multiplicity—distinct inner voices, impulses, and aspects with their own agendas—is one of humanity’s oldest psychological insights. For example, Buddhist psychology has long taught that what we call ‘self’ is actually a collection of aggregates—the skandhas—and that consciousness contains multiple “minds,” each arising and passing without any of them constituting a fixed self.

In the West, Jung worked explicitly with what he called complexes: semi-autonomous entities with their own emotional charge, memories, and behavioral patterns that could be personified and dialogued with. Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis named “subpersonalities” and emphasized a central Self that could coordinate them with compassion. What IFS contributed was clarity, structure, and a crucial normalization: not “some people have parts due to trauma,” but “everyone has parts, and that’s how minds work.”

What I’ve found in working with IFS is that its real utility is as an entry point—a way to help people get some distance from reactive energy that’s rooted in prior conditioning, energy they feel blended with. The model is quite useful for creating space from that identification. And through personification, we can start working with compassion toward those parts in a way that may feel more accessible to modern, Western minds. After all, there are no “bad” parts.

In my experience, IFS is a solid on-ramp to self-healing. The beginning phase is about making room for what’s there rather than trying to change it—and then finding a way, through the IFS metaphors or through felt-sense work, to metabolize whatever that is. To bring it into coherence rather than conflict with the rest of how you know yourself. That’s useful. Of course, every practice is provisional, and I’m not in the business of reifying. Getting free isn’t about a particular framework. It’s about what works at the time it works.

Articles like this one tend to show up at a pretty predictable moment—when a therapeutic model crosses over into the pop-psych supermarket. The Cut isn’t wrong to ask hard questions, and it’s worth keeping a finger on the pulse. But the conversation gets noisy fast, and I’d rather stay oriented to what happens in relationship than to what’s trending in the discourse.

If you’re interested in learning more about IFS and older forms of interoceptive healing, check out this discussion with John Makransky and Dick Schwartz.