IFS-Informed Communication

Speaking for your Parts, not from them.

Description

The everyday application: name what is happening inside you without aiming it at anyone. “A part of me feels hurt” leaves room for a conversation. “You hurt me” arrives as a charge, and the other person’s protectors answer it before they have finished hearing the sentence.

Speaking for a part rather than from it also does something on your side of the exchange. You have to unblend enough to describe the part, which is most of the work, and by the time you have found the words you are often no longer in the state you were about to have the argument from.

A caution, since this is our own most common failure: parts language can be weaponised, and it is very effective at it. “I notice a part of you is being defensive” is a diagnosis handed to someone who did not ask for one, wrapped in enough vocabulary to be hard to object to. The rule we try to hold is that you get to narrate your own system and nobody else’s.

What IFS-Informed Communication is NOT:

Not jargon for its own sake — if the other person doesn’t use this language, translate. Not moral high ground either, and not a licence to dump: “a part of me wants to say this” doesn’t make the thing kinder to say.

Examples:

“A protector just turned up for me — can we pause?”, and both people pause.
Saying you’re angry, and owning it as a part’s reaction rather than as a verdict on them.
A team naming that tension is high without anyone getting diagnosed.

see also:

Self-Leadership; Co-regulation; Rupture and Repair; Attachment