Radical IFS with Melissa Sandfort, IFSCP
Why learn IFS from me?
Radical IFS is place to learn Internal Family Systems from the inside out. Like other autobiographical offerings on the internet, it’s also a place to witness how I handle the human and healing journey — struggles with food, culture, relationships, identity, grief, betrayal, mistakes, entrepreneurship, alternative health, mysticism and more. All through a 100% IFS lens. It doesn’t get more IFS than this!
These are granular parts-to-parts and parts-to-Self conversations. This is my real-life IFS work in real time. My vision is that hearing these IFS dialogues will both model how to talk to your own parts and also teach you tons and tons of IFS concepts (in the background of the conversations) along the way.
My favorite sci-fi writer is the real-life astrophysicist Gregory Benford. If you love to visit the worlds he creates, you also have to learn physics! He’s a professor, so he teaches physics in the background of all his novels. This Substack works that way — if you end up enjoying Sharky, green, rhino, bb, Jessica, the glass caterpillar or any other parts that pop up along the way — you can’t avoid learning IFS as you read. Learning one thing—by reading another thing that’s more engaging— is my favorite way to learn, so I’m embodying it here myself.
I’m an OUTSTANDING source of credible IFS information. If there were a PhD in lived IFS, I would qualify! I have over 2,350 hours of professional IFS training—over 1,000 hours with IFS founder Richard Schwartz. I’m 13x Level 3 trained and an IFS Certified Practitioner since 2010. I’ve done over 6,500 hours of IFS on myself since 2002. I currently do about 15 hours of IFS a week (700+ hours a year). Here is my full list of IFS trainings.
Invitation to beginners with IFS!
Please do not expect your parts to be able to talk to each other; in fact, steer them away from each other and towards YOU, your Self-energy. Only a FEW of my parts have developed the capacity to talk directly to each other, without Self-energy as a moderator, for a year or two — this is after 21 years of hard-core IFS work. Please do not compare your IFS work with mine or anyone else’s. This is your journey.
Conversations between A and parts are TYPICAL IFS
Substacks like #3 The Sleep Dialogues are what most Self-to-parts conversations look like in most people. I invite you to use the conversations between A and koala or other parts as examples of what IFS usually looks like.
Conversations between Sharky, green, bb, GC and other part-to-part conversations are NOT typical IFS
Sharky, green, bb, and the glass caterpillar have all done HUNDREDS of hours of IFS to be able to remotely get along with each other the way they do, and as it is, they frequently devolve into spectacular misunderstandings that take time, energy and emotional pain to resolve. These discussions are real, live, actual inner work — they’re not some art piece I’m putting out on the internet. This Substack lives up to its name — it’s Radical IFS, where my parts lead their journeys to develop their own Self-energy in real time, in front of you.
What you can learn about IFS here
In writing this Substack, I think my parts teach amazing things about IFS:
1) How to have Self-led conversations between people/parts
2) How to repair ruptures effectively and creatively (with Swedish ‘sorry’ fish)
3) How to feel through and resolve painful situations and emotions
4) How to use “I” statements like a champion
5) How to unblend
6) How to deeply understand managers, firefighters, exiles and Self in IFS
Everyone has a Self. Everyone has parts. Parts have Self too.
Everyone has a Self, and everyone has parts. And once you have a solid sense of Self-energy and you can work with your parts, you may embark on another level of your journey: developing the Self-energy of your parts. Because all parts have a Self as well.
This Substack makes me feel tremendous love for all my parts, whose courage to share their process with the world moves me deeply. Their confidence to be exactly who they are in public is inspiring. I’m lucky to be A, the Self-energy, who so far in this Substack has been called: ‘a Zen Koan,’ ‘an aware ego process,’ ‘not even a person,’ ‘not so person-y,’ ‘the real deal,’ a ‘silent presence,’ and ‘Self on the inside.’ It’s high praise from some individuals I deeply esteem, and I’ll take it!
My wish is Radical IFS supports you on your IFS journey, as it supports my parts on theirs.
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