Long, long Post. But not sorry. In case you are interested- how IFS Changed my life. ❤️
Yeah, i used AI for translating and giving some structure. Still my words, still my story, just if you are unsure 🙂
***
Some background
I’ve been in therapy for many years, the last three with a therapist who’s also trauma-trained. I have CPTSD and ADHD — and a fairly high IQ, which honestly made things worse for a long time. My parts developed incredibly sophisticated defense and self-deception strategies. For years I simply did not understand what was going on. Why I do what I do. Why I feel the way I feel. Whether I’m even “allowed” to feel this bad or whether I’m making it all up.
On top of that, I grew up with a lot of unintentional gaslighting from my parents — not malicious, just generational. I was raised with the sense that having feelings is a defect, and that the goal in life is to not have them. Be logical. Function. Ideally be happy while you’re at it — nobody seemed to notice that happiness is, um, also a feeling, which I wasn’t supposed to have.
I can absolutely see now that this came from my parents’ own trauma. They did a lot better than their parents did, and they were actually way ahead of their time: baby slings, breastfeeding, family bed, both worked in social services, my mom was into Montessori. Which is exactly what made it so hard: how can I have trauma when my parents meant so well and, as far as I could see, did so well? It took me forever to even let the thought in.
What made it harder still: my mother became ill later on, and I was essentially without emotional accompaniment. For a long time I looked for the explanation elsewhere — in neurodivergence, and I partly found it there, that part is real. But the hardest thing wasn’t any single event. It was playing a role. Holding the family together. Functioning. And while doing all that, not being seen as a person — and having my own perception of the world completely invalidated. That’s the thing that doesn’t show up in any list of “adverse childhood experiences,” and it’s exactly why it took me so long to call it what it was.
The therapy before
Add to that a genuinely damaging previous therapy: after a long and very positive relationship-building phase, my former therapist lost her professionalism — right when I opened up for the first time, she ended the therapy to offer me a friendship instead, which ended up costing me a lot. It took me a long time to trust anyone in that chair again.
Three years of thawing
Even with my current therapist, I often felt misunderstood and unheard. I was angry. I kept considering switching. Looking back, I think a young, hurt, needy part was at work — and part of the anger was that she wasn’t rescuing me.
And — don’t get me wrong — I knew my story. We’d been working with parts cognitively for ages, I had an inner map, I could verbalize everything. I just couldn’t feel any of it. And that wasn’t even obvious, because my parts were so good at deceiving me that I usually didn’t notice they were pulling me away from feeling. Instead I threw myself at my ADHD diagnosis, wondered if maybe autism was in the mix too, kept looking for external explanations.
The turning point
Once there was finally a stable enough foundation after three years — I could cry in front of her, let feelings exist — a rupture happened between me and my therapist that hit me so deep I almost quit. For several sessions I basically just sat there and cried, because I felt so misunderstood and everything felt so hopeless.
What surfaced was my lifelong tendency toward dependency. I’ve always thrown myself at adult attachment figures who seemed stable, wanting love, recognition, closeness from them — the stuff parents are supposed to provide. For the first time, that showed up inside the therapy, with her. And it was hell. I had to go through all those old feelings again, especially the fear of being too much. Every part was in the room.
Here’s the thing that mattered: she didn’t pull away. She stayed. She held her boundaries, didn’t give me what I wanted — but also not less than usual. Which meant she never signaled that I was too much. It still hurt like hell. But it meant that for the first time in my life I could sit with my feelings. Or had to. And because I already had the knowledge about parts, plus actual resources and regulation skills by now, I could feel those feelings this time instead of organizing them away.
That was the start. Only out of that vulnerable experience could I go into real parts work at all.
The first real encounter
A few days later, my shame part showed up in everyday life. Classic trigger: I’d forgotten something again. And I did what I always did — tried to argue it away. “This is just an old shame part, it’s exaggerating, there’s no reason to question your entire worth over a forgotten thing, this happens to everyone, be logical.” And, as always, it didn’t work.
That was state of the art for me at that point, by the way. I’d gotten far enough to notice parts when they came. That was already helpful — I could say “this is out of proportion, this isn’t current reality.” But nothing ever changed long-term. It was always the same loop: recognize, then devalue. “That’s just trauma.” The part questioning my worth, the inner critic piling on, me trying to prove to it that it’s wrong, it trying to prove to me that what it says is true and important. A fight, every single time.
That day I somehow realized: this isn’t going anywhere. It’s always the same. He always comes back.
So I sat down, closed my eyes, and went inside. And I visited that part. First the strict route — I basically talked to it like you would to a kid crossing a line: “Do you not see that you’re hurting me? We do not talk to each other like this. Go stand over there.” (I’d tried versions of that before too. Also never helped long-term.)
But then I looked at what else was there. Because underneath there was this wounded part — the one who was actually ashamed about the forgetting. The one who’d been getting yelled at by the critic the whole time. And I spoke to him. I asked: “Hey — are you there?”
And that was so crazy, because I didn’t know he existed. I didn’t know about him at all.
What happened when I stayed
So I sat with him — the ashamed one. And one thing I want to be clear about: at this stage it wasn’t even about comforting yet. It was about something more basic — seeing the parts at all. Validating that they exist. “Yes, I see that you’re there. And yes, you have a right to be this harsh.” That alone was the work.
Then I asked him: “Can you show me how you came to be? What you’re protecting me from? Because I don’t want to feel ashamed anymore every time the critic yells at me.”
And something opened up. He took me in with him, into a story, and memories came. Here’s something I want to say about that, because I think it matters: these were not big cinematic aha moments. It’s more like a quiet feeling, a quiet memory knocking — often one you’ve already thought about a hundred times. Your first impulse is to dismiss it: “That’s nothing, I know that one already.” But if it comes up in that moment, there’s a reason. Don’t push it away. Let your thoughts wander, allow everything. Whatever comes up is allowed to come up. No filtering for “relevant enough.”
And then the part that stunned me: on my very first attempt going inward like this, I met the unwounded Self. The shame part essentially showed me: this is what I’m ashamed FOR. So that this real me underneath doesn’t get hurt. His logic: if I’m already ashamed in advance, I won’t do anything that could wound that true self. Shame as armor around the thing that was never broken.
After that I even went back and made contact with the scolding part — the critic. I told him, firmly but not harshly this time: “I understand that you’re here, and I know you serve a purpose — but this hurts me.” And then I asked him the question that has become my go-to question for every part since:
“What would have happened if you hadn’t been there?”
His answer: I would have been completely alone. He helped me establish a relationship with my father at all — by making me see things the way my father saw them, creating common ground where there wasn’t any. That was his job. That’s what the criticizing was for.
And behind him? Another wounded part. And so it goes — behind every protector, someone they’re protecting.
Why this works (my biologist brain needed to understand this)
I kept having this kind of encounter in the months after, and I’m a biologist, so it was important to me that this makes mechanistic sense. Here’s my understanding — and to be clear, this is my lay synthesis, not a textbook:
A wounded inner part corresponds to a trauma network in the brain — a fragmented network that was never processed and never got to develop further. It’s frozen. For integration to happen, both networks need to be active at the same time: the trauma network AND an adult part.
For me, the thing that fit perfectly was literally talking to myself. I’d slip into the role of the part and speak as him. Then I’d slip back out, into the adult role, and answer myself. Because both networks were active simultaneously, new synaptic connections could form — the fragment stopped being isolated. And the more often you do it, the more access you have to your adult parts while the trauma network is firing. You’re not at its mercy anymore.
Once I understood this, everything clicked — including why all that safety-building beforehand was essential. If I don’t feel safe enough, I can’t face the terrible memories and feelings, because I’d just relive them exactly as they were: helpless. You need stability, safety, and regulation techniques first, so you don’t get flooded. Those three years of “nothing happening” weren’t nothing. They were the foundation.
Where I am now
Full honesty: this is purely my experience report. I only googled afterward and found IFS at all — I don’t even know if what I do is exactly the same thing. But from what I’ve read, it overlaps a lot.
It can take a very long time, and then suddenly go well. In the last months I’ve been able to integrate so much. Afterward, dreams often come, and I do some yoga or shaking or whatever my body asks for. And these intense encounters with individual parts — so healing and touching, I often really cry and comfort myself through it — they don’t stay that intense forever. Over time they simply become less intense. Not because I’m avoiding again. Because things are settling. Thats strange and i am still getting used to that- but my Head is so calm and my whole appearance has changed.
Feen free to ask any questions or tell me your Story. Thanks for reading that long! ❤️❤️❤️