IFS on Ibogaine

My Love Affair with Internal Family Systems—and Its Underdiscussed Role in the World of Ibogaine Healing

This piece is about my torrid love affair with the unlikeliest of mistresses: a psychological model called Internal Family Systems, developed over the last 40 years by the psychologist Richard Schwartz and described most famously in his book, No Bad Parts.

Whispers and Rumors

The affair began innocently enough.

It was about two years ago, and I was preparing for my first ibogaine journey at a clinic in Mexico called Beond.

Like many romances, this one began with enticing rumors.

For years, I’d been hearing whispers about IFS, about how useful it was to treat clients during and after their journeys with ketamine and MDMA. I’d heard Tim Ferriss swoon about IFS on many an episode.

Perhaps it was my laziness, or perhaps—to use IFS vernacular—a part of me was resisting learning about IFS, but I never dove in. I never read a book or took a class. But what I did do—and to be honest, I don’t have a conscious recollection of doing this—was to include IFS in my long list of ibogaine intentions.

About 25 spots down on the list (you read that correctly—I had a really long list of asks for this powerful medicine), I wrote, “Show me my parts.”

Thanks to that fateful decision and the two ibogaine journeys that ensued, IFS has become the primary way that I understand my inner world. For me, IFS is capital-T True. It has been a vital tool in helping me understand and process my two enormous ibogaine journeys, which I wrote about in Lucid News here and here.

Though IFS has been explored with other psychedelics, I haven’t seen it discussed much in the context of ibogaine. This is unfortunate, for as I explore here, given ibogaine’s unique properties, it pairs particularly well with IFS, like Aperol with Spritz on a sun-kissed Italian afternoon.

The Wonderful World of Parts

Before we go further, let me try to paint a picture of the object of my affection. To me, IFS is beautiful, and that beauty begins with its core premises:

We have a Self. That Self is good and pure. Inviolate, it cannot be harmed by external events, even the most savage. Depending on your spiritual inclination, you may choose to think of your Self as your Soul. The Hindu tradition may call it our Atman, that divine spark that is simultaneously our own and part of that infinite cosmic conflagration, the Brahman. In this way, though IFS is a Western psychological model, it dovetails with the core tenets of many spiritual traditions. IFS has, for me, become as much a spiritual practice as a psychological one. IFS also synergizes with particle physics, a subject that enraptures me. Like a photon, the Self can be wave of energy or a particle, depending on whether one is in flow or in a state of observation.

We create parts. When bad things happen, we often create parts. There are parts that are in pain—the ones that have been hurt or made to feel unlovable or ashamed. We call those exiles. Then there are parts that swoop in to protect our exiles from feeling even more pain, and to guard us from feeling our exiles’ pain. Protectors can include everything from eating or drinking or working too much or too little, to harming others or ourselves, to compulsive behaviors such as gambling and sex, and infinitely more. Many of those protectors, given the enormity of their role, bear crushing burdens. Within each of us is a family of parts, a world, just waiting to be known, witnessed, and loved.

Each part is a mini-sentience—a distinct personality and presence. Often, parts nestle into particular parts of our body. Parts can have ages and genders, thoughts and feelings, and they can most certainly have triggers. Parts may be verbal or nonverbal, diminutive or gigantic.They may take human form, or appear as shadows, frankensteins, or fantastical beasts. They may have their own sartorial style. Parts are often trapped in time, at the moment of their creation. As such, they are often young, they perceive you as young, and they continue to treat you as they would a child—incapable of defending them, which, in fairness, at the time of their creation, you very likely weren’t. Parts can carry their own pain along with the pain of generations past.

Your parts love you. Now here’s where it gets really beautiful: All of your parts, even the ones that do things that cause you and others so much suffering, love you. Every action that every part of you has ever taken has been done out of the purest love for you. It may not feel that way, but that’s not their fault, and it’s certainly not their motivation. When they cause you pain, it’s because they are protecting you from something that they believe to be, and may actually be, far, far worse. They may also be crying out in pain, longing to be seen, heard, or held, only their cries often take the form of destructive behaviors. In a sense, it’s the ultimate miscommunication—a cry for love experienced as a stab of pain.

Herein lies the most beautiful, tragic paradox: so much of the world’s suffering is caused by our protectors’ efforts to keep our exiles safe, and yet, our protectors’ sole motivation is to love us. And so, our protectors’ infinite love for us leads to infinite pain in the world.

Your work is to love your parts. IFS invites us on a journey to get to know our parts, to witness them and their burdens, to build trust with them, and to fall in love with them. As we do so, we may invite our protectors to relax and put down the weights so many of them shoulder. We start to instill in them the confidence that we, as adults, can protect ourselves. As that trust deepens, our protectors allow us to interact with our exiles, show them love, assuage their suffering, and welcome them from the shadows of our subconscious and into our broader internal family. Your relationship with your parts is like any other relationship. it requires trust, time, communication, and forgiveness.

The goal is to become Self-Led. As the process of loving our parts unfolds, we become Self-led—that is, we learn to act from a place of Self, of Soul, rather than as the helpless marionettes of our protector parts. We enter into a state of harmony with our parts, and cease working at cross purposes. Rather than our protectors working to protect our exiles, our protectors become trusted advisors of the Self and our exiles become parts of a well-adjusted, integrated personality.

The psychologist Carl Jung wrote that, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” There’s a way to understand that idea through an IFS lens: only when you know, understand, and love your parts can you ask them to relax and begin to lead your life from a place of Self. Until then, your protectors will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Show Me My Parts

Now that I’ve painted a picture of my love interest, let me resume my account of how the affair unfolded.

In the midst of my first ibogaine journey, when I asked the medicine to “show me my parts,” candidly, I didn’t really know what I expected to receive, if anything. But as it always does, ibogaine delivered.

After the initial, six-hour so-called visions phase concluded—during which I rescued my childhood self from a sea of pain—insights began pouring forth from deep within me. So, too, did the identity of my parts, and even their physical descriptions.

The first part to appear was my saboteur—the part of me that tried to sabotage my present moment experience by pulling me back in time to where my inner child, Baby Joshua, remained buried in my subconscious. As I got curious, I noticed, to my surprise, that he looked like a french man with a red beret, a long mustache, and a stereotypically French white-and-blue-striped shirt. He shared that his name was, “Sebastien.” He always seemed to be smoking a cartoonishly long cigarette. I wrote it all down in my journal, even going so far as to draw him.

Over the course of the next ten days, parts kept revealing themselves to me. I could almost hear the popping sound announcing each one’s arrival in my consciousness.

There was never any doubt what they were. They’d appear as words—the Overeater, the Overworker, the Inner Critic, the Dissociator, the Distractor—crystalline, almost glowing. And they’d hover there, always exactly long enough for me to pick up a pen and jot them down.

The Org Chart of My Inner World

After I left Beond, I spent a few days relaxing alongside a stunning freshwater lagoon called Bacalar.

One afternoon, I sat on the grass, my three overflowing journals next to me, brimming with revelations, thoughts, emotions, drawings, memories, and of course, the names of parts sprinkled throughout.

I thought it would be interesting to list all of the parts in one place. So I went through my journals page by page, and every time I saw a part written down, I’d type it into a Google Doc. A few hours later, I was done:

I had about 110 parts.

Hmmm, that’s interesting, I thought. I wonder if the parts can be grouped in any way.

Sure enough, each part fell into one of three categories: the body, the external world, the internal world. By “the body,” I meant, parts that dictated how I’d treat, or rather, mistreat my body. “External world” parts were those that affected how I interacted with others. “Inner world” means parts that affected how I thought and felt about myself.

Hmmm, that’s interesting, I thought. I wonder if some parts are related to others. Might some be stronger than others? Might some parts take orders from others, as an infantryman would from a sergeant?

Sure enough, the answer to all of those questions was “yes.”

A hierarchy began to emerge, and it took the form of an org chart.

At the very top was the Founder and Chairman of the Board, who called himself Alexandre. I knew that, in the earliest days of this incarnation, Alexandre had instantly sensed that the world was not safe for me. So he entombed my inner child into the deepest reaches of my subconscious, protecting me from a nuclear winter above.

Alexandre appointed a Chief Executive Officer, who I named François Le Freeze. His job was to plunge my nervous system into a state of deep frozen-ness. I’d later learn from books on Polyvagal Theory that this part of our nervous system is called the dorsal vagal, the oldest and most primordial part of the system.

Think of it this way: when our earliest ancestors were walking through the jungle, they’d automatically freeze when they spotted the tiger. But if the tiger spotted them, a different part of the nervous system would kick in—the sympathetic, also known as fight-or-flight. Our parasympathetic state formed much later, likely when we had started to feel a more reliable sense of safety.

Alexandre created another powerful part, my inner critic, who I’ve come to call Idris. In a sense, he served as François’ enforcer. The task of Idris was to keep me in that small, frozen state. He did this by convincing me of the most awful, untrue things: I was dumb, fat, ugly, and unworthy of love. Just for good measure, he created another wickedly powerful part—shame—which hung like a radioactive fog around me and repelled me from engaging with those beliefs.

Beneath the C-Suite on the org chart were the three distinct groups appeared—the body, the mind, and the outer world. Each groups had its own hierarchy. There were senior managers, managers, and employees. Some parts clearly reported to others. For example, I had an anxious part called Cendrillon (for some reason, many of my parts have French names) who controlled many other parts, like the one that tried to isolate me from others, or the one that tried to please them. Some parts reported to multiple managers.

I was stunned at what unfolded across my screen as I mapped it all in Google Draw.

Walt Whitman was right; we really do contain multitudes.

Thank You, It’s True

During my first night at Beond, a couple of days before my journey, we were invited to play a game after dinner called, “Thank you, it’s true.” One guest would turn to another and pay them a compliment. All that guest could say in response was, “Thank you, it’s true,” then turn to another guest and compliment them.

Several days later, as the tidal wave of my flood dose still surged through me, an idea arose: I’ll play the compliment game with my parts.

From a place of Self, I sat at the feet of my saboteur part and said, “Sebastien, thank you for protecting me for so long. I know that you did everything you could to keep me from shining too bright. I know you did this out of the purest love for me, out of the belief, which was 100% correct, that when I was young, the safest path was to conform, to do exactly as I was told. You probably saved my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” As I the words poured out of me, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

Ibogaine then allowed me to inhabit Sebastien’s consciousness, and to feel my love and gratitude pouring into him.

“Thank you, it’s true,” he responded, as we embraced, tears streaming down his face.

Taking a deep breath, Sebastien turned to Alexandre, the mightiest part of them all. “Alexandre, thank you for burying Baby Joshua so deeply. You knew that he would be so alone down there, so terrified, so helpless. You knew he’d be in so much pain. And yet, you did it because you loved him. You did it because the alternative would have been far, far worse.”

Ibogaine allowed me to dwell simultaneously in the consciousness of Sebastien, Alexandre, and my Self.

It also allowed me to experience this exchange through the eyes of my newly rescued inner child, who bore witness to it all. It was almost too much to bear, but ibogaine swelled my inner universe’s capacity not just to hold it all, but to release it, once and for all.

And on it went, one part absorbing a compliment, thanking the part that provided it, then paying it forward.

As this miracle unfolded, a few things became clear to me.

First, I experienced—not just intellectually but far more importantly, in my body—that all of my parts loved me. Everything they’d ever done, no matter how painful it seemed at the time, was motivated by love. They had no clue how much pain their actions had brought me, even as they saved my inner child. Upon learning this, they apologized and begged for my forgiveness, which I instantly bestowed. I hope that everyone on earth can, at least once in their life, experience such deep love for every particle in their inner universe.

Second, I realized that, with my inner child now safe and free, my parts could shift their role. There was no longer a schism between my inner child and my Self, for the two were now united. I saw that the cause of so much pain later in life was that my parts served a different master—they acted to protect my inner child, yet that very protection caused me so much pain.

I invited my parts to shift their role—they could become trusted advisors, working directly for my Self. They accepted, overjoyed in the knowledge that we could, at last, unite and work together in harmony.

My inner critic became my inner cheerleader. One day, many months later, I was having a conversation with a work colleague about a presentation I was going to be giving, when I blurted out, “Gosh, I’m so bad at this kind of public speaking.” But then the most miraculous thing happened before I was even able to engage my conscious mind. I said, “Actually, a better was to express this is that I don’t have a lot of experience with this particular kind of presentation, but I’m really good at other kinds of presentations. I’m excited to develop my skills in this new area.”

As it turns out, this process of inviting parts to transform their roles is a critical aspect of IFS work.

Just as you can never hate yourself into a better version of yourself, so too can you never connect more deeply with Self by trying to pummel a part into submission, ignore it it, or banish it. You’ll only make it stronger and more agitated, and it may even enlist the help of, or even create, other more powerful parts.

In the months after my first ibogaine journey, my trusty org chart by my side, I started reading everything I could about IFS, and amazingly, my own experience mapped perfectly onto the IFS framework.

It became clear that I’d had a spontaneous IFS experience.

Dick Schwartz’s words rang true: he didn’t invent IFS; he discovered it.

The Escape of My Exiled Protector

By the time of my second journey one year later, my love affair with IFS had deepened into a full-blown relationship.

I proposed and she accepted.

As I lay back in the bed at Beond once again, I wondered how my knowledge of IFS would inform and illuminate my journey. Would IFS simply enhance my ability to describe my journey, or would that knowledge actually unlock a deeper understanding?

Without a doubt, it was the latter.

I won’t rehash my journey again; you can read about it in my article entitled My Miracle in a Molecule. Recall that the apex of my journey, indeed, of my entire life, was an onyx lightning strike that slayed a shadow that had slithered its way through the generations of my family lineage. So violent was that strike that my system shut down for 14 hours, barricading me on the outside. Panicked, I thought my life as I knew it was over forever.

As I trudged forlornly around the Beond pool during the wee hours of the morning, the key that unlocked the castle walls was an IFS-informed insight:

The black lightning was actually a long-pent-up part. Specifically, it was what IFS would call an exiled protector. For me, that was rage.

Now, I understood. As a young child, Alexandre knew it would have been dangerous for me to experience rage, so he buried that powerful part in the deepest region of my subconscious, where it had remained for over four decades, seething and alone, unable to fulfill its purpose.

But ibogaine had created the conditions for that exiled protector not just to emerge, but to fulfill its core desire—to kill the shadow.

And so it did. And it was free.

Like with my other parts, I was able to embrace it, show it love, and invite it to shift its role in my inner world. Anger—which I’d never in my life been able to experience—is actually a vital part of our life energy. Anger, when experienced in a healthy way, is a core part of how we protect ourselves and draw and enforce healthy boundaries.

Bathed in the glow of ibogaine, I witnessed my exiled protector morph into one of my most beloved parts.

One thing I’ve come to learn is that protector parts have their own energetic frequency, and the more agitated they are, the more that frequency falls within the spectrum of the sympathetic part of our nervous system.

In a later journey with a different medicine, I experienced my anger as a wolf. I became the wolf. As I write this, he lies curled up at my feet, breathing softly and deeply, our nervous systems gloriously co-regulated.

I have little doubt that my knowledge of IFS catalyzed the insight that allowed me to regain access to and create harmony within my inner world.

Showing You the Way Home: Why IFS and Ibogaine Pair So Well Together

So, what makes IFS and ibogaine such a potent pairing?

Sure, IFS plays well with other psychedelics. Stories abound of MDMA helping journeyers relax their protectors long enough to suffuse their tortured exiles with love and forgiveness. So too will trauma survivors of all stripes crow about how, in the sacred storm of an ayahuasca journey, or in the beatific glow of a ketamine experience, they embraced their inner child and felt love for the first time.

I bow deeply to those medicines. They have helped me immeasurably along my own path. But they don’t even come close to ibogaine.

To me, it’s about degree, depth, and direction.

Sometimes, a difference in degree is so vast that it becomes a difference in kind.

A shower and a tsunami both get you wet.

Ibogaine penetrates deeper into the subconscious and does so in a more direct way, without abstraction, illusion, or intergalactic travel.

Ibogaine is a laser, taking you to the deepest, most hurt parts of yourself.

But it’s more than that. One of ibogaine’s many miracles is how it interacts with protector parts. Ibogaine doesn’t bypass protectors exactly, or sneak by them—such strategies would backfire and cause harm. But ibogaine whispers softly in their ear, its sweet susurrations coaxing them to exhale at last. To relax. To experience, often for the first time, a sense of peace, even safety. It creates space around them, and allows them to experience love. It invites them to put down their burdens and to withdraw their tentacles from the stranglehold they can have on the Self.

In IFS terminology, it invites them to unblend.

What remains after that unblending is connection with Self. The ibogaine journeyer stands powerfully, lovingly, resolutely in Self energy, perhaps for the first time ever. The journeyer learns what it’s like to feel that Self energy, and to distinguish between it and that of those pesky protectors.

This, in my opinion, is the foundation for healing.

Self is the source.

It is home.

Protectors will always return and try, in their loving, misguided way, to lead us astray. But once we’ve been shown that home exists, and once we’ve felt what it’s like to reside there, we know we have something to return home to, and the path to finding it is far easier.

A journeyer’s awareness of the basics of IFS can empower them to more deeply understand their journey and bring more of it with them to their daily life, and keep it with them for longer.

This brings me to an additional benefit of the IFS-ibogaine pairing, which comes during the integration period. Like all psychedelics, ibogaine creates a window of neuroplasticity, but ibogaine’s is far longer than all the others, as shown in this chart from Gül Dolen’s exquisite article. (In my own experience, the window remains open far longer, for six months or more.)

This matters because IFS is easy to learn and easy to do on yourself. In fact, there’s a wonderful book on this very topic, called Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS. There’s even a helpful IFS chatbot, called IFS Buddy. An ibogaine journeyer can therefore continue to deepen their work with their parts throughout the critical period window and beyond.

Integration is where much of the magic, the healing, and the transformation happen, but it’s not enough to simply tell a journeyer to “make time for integration.” How should that time be spent? That’s for each person to explore on their own. In the view of this author, IFS—whether on one’s own, with IFS Buddy, a therapist, or a coach (ideally a Fireside-Certified Psychedelic Coach!)—is a potent integration tool.

An Enduring Love

As I write, I can feel a universe inside of me. I can sense my cute little parts, too, and the unconditional love they have for me.

Almost nothing is certain in this life, but one certainty is my parts’ unconditional love for me, and mine for them.

To be sure, I’ve always felt the vastness of my inner world and had a desire to explore it, even before my fateful encounters with ibogaine and IFS. As my friend LouLou would say, I’ve always been psychologically minded. But the powerful combination of ibogaine and IFS has given me the tools to explore and understand that world more deeply.

More than that, the combination has radically expanded my capacity to love my Self and my parts, and to be infinitely grateful for all of it.

My hope is that this piece will help inspire others to discover this miraculous pairing for themselves, and for more practitioners, especially ibogaine practitioners, to consider introducing IFS to clients, ideally well before their journey begins.