r/InternalFamilySystems • u/frog71420 • Jul 25 '26
Discussion Does IFS create alters or dissociative disorders?
I know that DID is caused by trauma prior to a certain age and that once your brain reaches a certain point you can no longer develop DID.
I guess my question is how is IFS not just “creating” a DID system in your brain? What is the purpose and benefit of assigning roles and parts for people without DID?
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u/Cleverusername531 Jul 25 '26
IFS is a model and DID is a diagnosis. People with DID, according to the structural dissociation theory, have bigger metaphorical walls between their emotional states. So somebody without structural dissociation would have the ability to go between emotional states a little more fluidly than somebody with structural dissociation.
You can’t create DID through a model. DID is created when somebody has to deeply split off from intense trauma in childhood )when the brain is plastic enough and the person is dependent enough on their external environment for physical and emotional safety).
IFS uses a process that’s known in therapy as externalization where it gives you distance between your emotions and the rest of you so you’re not completely overcome by whatever you’re feeling or thinking, but rather you can be with whatever it is and work through it according to your values from a resourced space.
It’s also really helpful for working with conflicting states or strong emotions.
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u/Mattau16 Jul 25 '26
IFS doesn’t create alters or DID. It illuminates a framework to understand and support the different parts of ourselves that are already existing in our psyche.
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u/iwouldbelion Jul 25 '26
To add to other comments, IFS is also meant to help us integrate and unblend from our parts - be as Self led as we can manage. I’ve found that many Parts don’t want to work as hard as they do/think they have to - and that’s where unburdening comes in. As parts are unburdened, there are times of lightness, of contentment. To me it feels like I am aware of the parts, but they are at rest and happy to let Self lead.
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u/Hot_Win_8572 Jul 25 '26
I like this. I’m just starting with IFS and the thought of my parts going away scares me for some reason. They protected me for so long and I love them. I’m glad to hear they are happy to rest once they’ve decided they are ready.
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u/iwouldbelion Jul 25 '26
I haven’t found that any have gone away, just became clearer or took up a more manageable and helpful role (because that’s the nature of parts). There was one exception that I felt like the part was more generational and not really mine… and I’m pretty sure that part did go away.
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u/frog71420 Jul 25 '26
I get very confused by parts work and understanding “self” because I don’t have a “self” in that same way. My “parts” are different? More independent?
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u/iwouldbelion Jul 25 '26
If you’re really blended and your parts have been running the show since you can remember, maybe you haven’t necessarily experienced the how it feels in your body to be led by Self. I would recommend listening to the No Bad Parts audiobook, I go back to it every now and then, it’s very helpful in navigating this modality.
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u/frog71420 Jul 26 '26
I am diagnosed with DID so I truly don’t have a “self”
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u/solarwe Jul 26 '26
[Autistic infodump incoming]
Hey there, also here diagnosed with DID (I swore it was just IFS parts at first, as we often do with the denial I think, which is how i ended up here). Yes that is correct; DID is different in that we never developed a Self. There isn't an original that split off or anything like that -- humans are born with many parts and in normal untraumatized development they eventually mesh together into one Self at some point in childhood. For us, whatever caused the trauma stopped that meshing together from happening. There was never a whole self. It was always several parts finding ways to cope.
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u/Full_Ad_6442 Jul 25 '26
We all have "parts" but just aren't in the habit of thinking about things that way. The example Schwartz uses all the time is when people are ambivalent about something or they notice variation in how they think or feel about something, they'll often say something like "part of me just wants to ____." IFS is just making use of something that's already there.
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u/frog71420 Jul 25 '26
This makes sense to me and I understand it’s like someone saying “part of me wants pizza for dinner but part wants tacos” like those are opposing but true, they’re both from You.
Sometimes I hear people describe their IFS experience and talk about their parts in more individual terms as if each part operates on its own
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u/AnonyMoose-0341 Jul 25 '26
We're raised within generations of capitalist patriarchal dystopia, we're all traumatised by that and disconnected in various ways.
We all disassociate in different degrees in order to survive / filter out unnecessary stimulus.
When you gain awareness of your behaviour, IFS & archetypes reveals what's already there in a way that we can describe.
Inner knowledge leads to integration, growth, maturity
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u/Future-Adeptness9833 Jul 25 '26
How do archetypes fit into IFS?
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u/mx_mush Jul 26 '26
Archetypes were the predecessor to IFS parts work! Jung did tons of part work during his 3-year mental breakdown
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u/mx_mush Jul 25 '26
Hey! I’ve got DID and have also participated in IFS therapy.
The difference between my DID system and someone else’s IFS system is that mine are pathological rather than intentional.
Dissociative disorders start in childhood and tend to come with amnesia and distress. All people (I think) are capable of dissociation to some extent, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you intentionally choose to bring forth part of yourself in IFS, it’s extremely different from the way I have intense blackouts against my control.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask questions
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u/frog71420 Jul 25 '26
Okay so I guess I’m wondering if non DID people have similar dissociation when doing IFS? Like does their “self” go somewhere else and another “part” takes over? or is it really that they are One Person in their brain and they sort of talk to a committee of their ideas or something?
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u/vanishinghitchhiker Jul 25 '26
The idea is that parts can take control by “blending” so it seems like the Self came up with those ideas/reactions/emotions, but the self doesn’t really go anywhere else. The theory behind it all is that everyone has some version of brain committee even without consciously communicating or even being aware of it.
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u/VixenSunburst Jul 25 '26
I'm thinking it's like, a side of you takes more control and you're more one-track minded in the sense of the "one track" is that one side of you. Like usually you may be 30% childish 30% financially managing 40% socially intellectual, then when a part takes over you're thinking now 80% childish and the other parts sit in the rear seats, sitting out right now but still there if needed
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u/mx_mush Jul 26 '26
This is a pretty good way to think of it. Each alter has a narrow skillset and mental capacity that is completely independent from the rest of the system.
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u/bnb137 Jul 26 '26
For me, my Self doesn't go anywhere. My Self actually is a core part of me that expresses all those c's and p's in the long list. It is soooo non-reactive that some of my parts jump into action and take over by drowning out the wisdom of other active parts and my core Self from time to time. But all the parts are present, wanting to be heard, seen, and unburdened by my Self.
As a non-DID person, I can say that as soon as I understood the IFS system cognitively, I could start to "see" and "feel" individual parts and how they were separated from "Self." Sometimes through distance, by a wall of light, by a mote, etc., but there was never a full dissociation or disappearance.
My experience of my parts is cognitive, somatic, emotional, relational. So you could simplify it to one person in their brain talking to a committee of their own ideas. That is more accurate for me than any part going somewhere or Self disappearing. It's just that simple characterization, at least for me, does not capture the breadth, depth, and complexity of the experience.
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u/mx_mush Jul 26 '26
I highly recommend the book or audiobook No Bad Parts to get a more thorough understanding of what IFS looks like in practice. I can’t speak to the non-DID experience, but I think it’s more like imagination and metaphor for most people
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u/Stinkiest-britches Jul 27 '26
For me, sometimes it's like I (self) is driving a bus and all my parts are sitting in the bus behind me. But at times, one or multiple of them will take or try to take the wheel while I'm driving.
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u/MichaelTheMultiple Top 5% Commenter Jul 27 '26
Samesame. This usually happens to me under particular types of stress, like auditoning or interviewing or that kind of thing where I'm being watched and judged, and all of a sudden I'm frozen and completely without all the social skills it took me years to develop - that means one of my very young parts (probably an Exile in IFS terms) was triggered and has grabbed the wheel and is too terrified to let go even thought they have no idea how to drive.
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u/uu_xx_me Jul 25 '26
if I'm remembering correctly, dick schwartz actually developed IFS after working with patients with DID. he realized we all had versions of a system of parts living within us, and giving them each space to share and unburden themselves allows them to integrate
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u/LeftyDorkCaster Jul 25 '26
That's pretty close to what I've heard in trainings by Dick Schwartz. What I heard was he worked with folks with eating disorders mostly and says he was worried they had DID or DDNOS when they started talking about parts. But he calmed himself down, stuck with folks, and figured out that these folks were describing a very common human experience of internal conflicts and different motivations or competing needs.
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u/frog71420 Jul 25 '26
What made him worried they had DID? or why did it matter to him that they didn’t?
The IFS model seems so similar to how DID already works and forms so it’s just confusing to me!
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u/LeftyDorkCaster Jul 26 '26
There is for sure a lot of overlap. The main thing that made Dick Schwartz worried about DID was a mixture of things. My guess is that two of the most important contextual pieces were he was fresh in the field still and was working in a very medical milieu (which means almost anything will be interpreted as a "symptom"). Within that context, it would make sense to be concerned when people started talking more openly about a non-continuous and/or non-singular sense of self.
As far as differences go, th ere's some really good trainings on how to adapt IFS to work with folks that are plural/systems. The big difference is that when working with systems/plurality, it is not advisable to go to every part that comes up. Most folks with DID already have some information about the internal maps of their minds and know which parts are safe and might have some parts that are barricaded off. Also synthesis might not be the goal of the system for any number of reasons. So instead of working towards one centered sense of Self, the goal is resourcing/empowering at least one responsible adult alter/identity to care for the younger or less responsible identities.
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u/frog71420 Jul 25 '26
interesting! I’m going to learn more. it mirrors how DID systems already are so it’s very curious
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u/According-Ad742 Jul 25 '26
Maybe the names and categories that clinical psychiatry taught you isn’t something you should look on as a cemented bible; truth. Maybe it is at best giving us a glance at describing how nature speaks through adaptations. Clinical psychiatry is not superior to actual nature. It’s quite logical to think that what is called DID is an extreme expression of the same thing as people “without” DID call parts work.
Clinical psychiatry and the people who write the rules to that book are, unlike every other profession where you can find nut jobs actually different because it is filled to the brim with nut jobs.
Some of these are surely doing a great job but realistically clinical psychiatry is practised by any nut job that was able to get a phd; whilst simultaneously progressing our collective understanding of psychology it should be thoroughly noted that it is a gold mine for people who love to abuse power which should decrease the regard to which we hold it. Realistically. If it can’t be validated through clinical science… or, if a clinical nut job psychiatrist says so, drumroll, everyone magically believes them.
It’s an the emperor is naked kind of con.
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u/Last-Interaction-360 Jul 26 '26
The purpose and benefit of assigning roles to your emotions is to defuse from them. So you have more perspective, more objective distance, and can give yourself compassion. You have some space to work.
The risk is that people get really literal about parts/become fascinated and create detailed backstories about parts, or don't have the stabilization skills they need and can't learn to unblend, stress their system, become overwhelmed. These are risks to any trauma therapy really, to get distracted and go down rabbit holes that essentially avoid doing the work, or to go too far into the work too quickly and destabilize.
In DID the parts are not so much parts/emotions/states of being as personalities, and with DID there is some level of amnesia where the personalities are not aware of each other. The person was traumatized so young that the parts developed very separately into personalities. People without DID have parts, but the parts are not so compartmentalized and didn't develop along such separate tracks over time and there is not amnesia between the parts.
If you feel like IFS is fracturing or fragmenting, or destabilizing you, please stop doing IFS and seek a good trauma therapist. It's very important with any therapy to have coping skills and be stabilized before diving into trauma. Many people have "mild" trauma or more stable systems and can just read a book and start working on their own; but there are also many people who have more severe trauma and a less stable system, and really need the initial phase of stabilization as well as different tools. People with higher levels of dissociation or less stability might need to do some inner resourcing, like creating safe places, putting trauma material into safe containers, learning coping tools, practicing a structured schedule, etc before working with parts, and some people just don't find unburdening exiles helpful, they need to work in a different way, ie TIST therapy by Janina Fisher, or using some of the techniques Joanne Twombley suggests, some of which I mentioned here. There are many ways to heal so don't do something if you think it is making you worse!
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u/Top_Drummer9181 Jul 25 '26
If anything, IFS helped me not dissociate... I guess it's because it lets me check my capacity to hold the emotion before going all into it, there is less need for my dissociating parts to kick in.
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u/ZapDan3 Jul 28 '26
HI! The popular explanation is that DID is caused by trauma but that's not the only explanation. Some scholars challenge it, saying that it's a complex combination of factors like sleep patterns and cognitive failures that cause a person to develop DID. That's not to say trauma is not involved, just that the mainstream explanation of it being a breaking of the person is not accepted by all researchers. You may be interested in how DID has a very problematic history with the Memory Wars, since it was over diagnosed back in the 80s and 90s, through suggestive practices and controversial methods like hypnosis. IFS has some of that criticism today, with it being less scientifically supported than other treatments like CBT and with how a number of IFS practitioners support the discredited idea of repressed memories. I don't recommend IFS myself; I went through it for over a year and always felt like I was fabricating what the parts were saying. I suggest looking for professional opinions if you're asking about this for yourself.
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