In working with the IFS Self, I became curious: How is the Self related to our healthy parts, especially those parts that are unburdened through IFS work? IFS gives a general idea of this, but it doesn’t go into much detail, leaving me stranded and curious.

I have used IFS in my work ever since 2002. I wrote Self-Therapy, which has become a widely used manual for IFS. More than 10 years ago, Bonnie Weiss and I began teaching about the importance of capacities in IFS work (Earley, 2012; Earley & Weiss, 2010).

I train professionals to lead Interactive IFS Groups. Capacities come up in important ways in my groups. For example, I encourage group members to pay attention to their “growing edge,” a capacity that they are working on developing through the group work. For example, Joe is working on spontaneity because he tends to be overly controlled and deliberate. In teaching helping professionals to be group leaders, I have developed a model for how these groups function and how they lead to therapeutic change and personal growth. For this model, I needed to understand capacities and their relationship to Self. This has led me to this larger project of understanding capacities as they appear in life and in many kinds of therapy or growth work.

This article is a followup to “Nuances of the IFS Self,” where I explored the difference between the pure Self, which has no goals or intentions, and the active Self, which does. To be clear: The active Self may have intentions but it does not have agendas. Even though it may want to heal your exiles or function well, it doesn’t have a fixed idea of how that should happen. It is flexible.

This article will help clarify this question and others that may come up in your IFS work. I believe that this clarity will help you to be more effective in your work with others or with yourself. A capacity is a self-led part, a healthy part, a part without burdens. It is an aspect of the active Self, as I described in Nuances of the IFS Self.

 

Self-Led Parts – Capacities

IFS focuses on burdened parts—exiles and protectors. This is appropriate because its primary goal is to unburden them, especially to heal trauma. But for a complete understanding of parts, we need to also include parts without burdens, which are often called self-led parts. Bonnie Weiss and I have introduced the term capacities to refer to self-led parts, and there is rich territory to explore there.

Schwartz has emphasized that parts are not created by experience—they exist as potential or actuality, then are forced into extreme roles by trauma and attachment injuries (Schwartz, 2021). Therefore, one way to look at capacities is that they are parts in their original condition—the way they were meant to function before life pushed them into burdened roles.

In fact, some parts have never had burdens. For example, if someone is naturally outgoing and gregarious, this would be coming from a Self-led part or capacity. If someone is naturally intelligent and thoughtful, this would be coming from a different part, also a capacity.

Example: Think of a person who has always had an easy warmth with strangers—a natural friendliness that seems to come from their very core. This isn’t a strategy or a defense; it’s not a People-Pleasing protector trying to avoid rejection. It’s a genuine capacity for warmth that has never carried a burden.

Exercise: Think of one capacity that you have always had naturally. Does it have an intention? How does it manifest?

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a capacity that you have naturally.

Some parts have had burdens but no longer do because of their IFS work. When our exiles and protectors are unburdened, they return to their naturally valuable states, according to Schwartz (Schwartz, 2021). He describes how unburdened parts can be invited into or choose new, preferred roles. They become Self-led parts and therefore capacities.

Example: A client had a fierce Inner Critic protector that relentlessly told her she was never good enough. Through IFS work, she discovered it was protecting a young exile who believed she was unworthy of love. After unburdening the exile and releasing the Critic from its protective role, the Critic transformed. It became a capacity for discernment—a part that could now evaluate her work honestly and helpfully, without judgment. The same energy that once attacked her now served her growth.

Another example: A man had a Caretaker protector that compulsively took care of everyone else while ignoring his own needs. After IFS work, the Caretaker unburdened and transformed into a capacity for genuine caring—one that could extend compassion to others without self-abandonment, and that could also turn that care inward.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a capacity that you have access to as a result of healing or unburdening a part.

The goal of IFS therapy is to unburden your parts so they become capacities and naturally work together with the Self and with each other to live in an optimal way. Capacities work collaboratively with each other because capacities are Self-led parts, and the Self naturally cooperates with parts. Schwartz identifies four goals for IFS: (1) releasing parts from extreme roles so they can be who they were designed to be, (2) restoring trust in Self-leadership, (3) helping parts get to know each other, and (4) parts collaborating in new ways (Schwartz, 2021). Capacities reflect all of those goals.

In this understanding, the healing Self would be considered a capacity with the intention to reach that first goal. To be more accurate, the healing Self has a number of different capacities, such as caring, attunement, power, and clarity.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a capacity that is part of your healing Self.

 

Capacities, Experiences, and Pure Self

As I mentioned in Nuances of the IFS Self, the Self can appear in a pure form where it is just an experience without taking action. I call this the pure Self and it comes in many different flavors or experiences, such as joy, love, or inner support.

Furthermore, each part also has its own inner experience. Exiles tend to consist mostly of experience, painful experience. So, an exile might be feeling ashamed, sad, frightened, worthless, and so on. Protector’s experiences can be emotions, like anger, or other experiences, like feeling dead, spaced out, or wild. Capacities have flavors of pure Self as their experiences.

Sometimes the name of the flavor is the same as the name of the capacity. For example, compassion is a capacity. As a flavor of Self, it feels like lovingkindness toward someone (or toward a part) who is in pain. As a capacity, it includes lovingkindness but might also involve communicating your compassion to that person or taking action to relieve their suffering.

Some flavors of Self are related to more than one capacity and vice versa. For example, Strength is a flavor of pure Self. It feels powerful and expansive, with an energy of healthy aggression. It is related to capacities such as challenge, limit setting, and courage.

Example: The capacity for intimacy is imbued with the pure Self flavors of openness and connectedness. When this capacity manifests, you feel a warmth and porousness in your heart—a willingness to be seen and to truly see another person. The pure Self qualities of openness and connectedness are what give intimacy its depth.

Another example: The capacity for awareness—the ability to notice your inner experience as it unfolds—is imbued with the pure Self flavor of clarity. Clarity feels like an inner brightness, a clear seeing. When the awareness capacity manifests, it brings that quality of clarity to whatever you’re observing internally.

Exercise: Choose one of your capacities, and access it. Tune into your inner experience of this capacity right now. What flavor or flavors does it have? Take a moment to savor this flavor.

 

Capacities vs. Protectors

Protectors have roles, which tend to be fixed and not flexible. They are usually not entirely open to what is actually needed in the moment in the situation you are in. This is because they are coming from the past. Their roles tend to be extreme. Despite their best intentions, protectors’ roles often backfire or harm other parts of yourself or other people. They tend to become polarized with other protectors (or exiles).

On the other hand, the roles that capacities have involve intentions and actions. A capacity will have a role that is flexible and attuned to the moment. We could call it an intention. For example, you might have a capacity for honesty and directness. This capacity will be able to see when directness is needed and when it won’t work. It might communicate in a soft way that the other person could hear, or it might decide that now is not a good time to be honest. The actions of capacities also don’t cause collateral damage because they are attuned to the overall situation.

Example: Consider two people, each with a strong drive toward honesty. One has a Truth-Teller protector that blurts out harsh observations regardless of context, “I’m just being honest,” it says, even when the honesty wounds. You could call this bluntness. The other has a capacity for truthfulness. This capacity can read the situation: Is this the right moment? Can the other person hear this? It might speak directly, or it might wait, or it might find a gentler way to say what needs to be said. Same intention—honesty—but the capacity holds it flexibly, attuned to what will actually serve.

The capacity of honesty needs to be complemented by the capacity for Impact Awareness. So you want an integration of Honesty and Impact Awareness. Each capacity is truly healthy if it’s complement is there, too. Each capacity has an extreme, which is a pattern. Bluntness is the extreme of Honesty, when it is not integrated with Impact Awareness. Conflict avoidance is the extreme of Impact Awareness, when it is not integrated with honesty.

Pattern: Conflict Avoidance

Capacity: Impact Awareness

Capacity: Honesty

Pattern: Bluntness

Exercise: Choose a capacity of yours. In what situations does it arise? Consider the ways it manifests in those situations.  How much is it flexible and attuned to those situations and the moment? How much is it rigid or extreme?

Capacities also easily work together with each other. Their intentions are aligned with each other. They are all part of the larger Self so this is a natural outcome. While protectors, because of their rigidity and narrow scope, tend to get into battles with each other about how to proceed.

To put it succinctly: Protectors polarize and capacities integrate.

Example: Consider how a Controlling Manager protector and a Rebellious Firefighter protector might polarize. The Controller insists on strict discipline (“You must stick to the diet!”), and the Rebel reacts against it (“Screw it, I’m eating the whole cake”). Each part escalates in response to the other, creating an exhausting inner battle. Now consider how two capacities handle the same situation. The capacity for self-care might recognize that you need nourishing food, while the capacity for pleasure recognizes that you also need enjoyment. Rather than polarizing, these two capacities integrate naturally: you choose food that is both nourishing and enjoyable, maybe not as pleasurable as cake but still enjoyable. No war, no collateral damage.

Another example: A protector oriented toward Achievement drives a person to work 80-hour weeks, producing impressive results but destroying their health and relationships. A capacity for productivity, by contrast, channels focused energy when it’s needed, but naturally integrates with capacities for rest and connection, resulting in meaningful work that allows room for other things in life and therefore doesn’t produce wreckage.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me two capacities of yours that are aligned with each other in their intentions.

 

Uniqueness

We know from IFS that each part is unique. Even though we can look at a pattern like the inner critic, each person’s inner critic is unique to them. In a similar way, each capacity is unique to the person. My compassion will be somewhat different from your compassion.

Flavors of Self are also unique. My love will be different from your love. But not only are they unique to each person; they are also unique to each moment. For example, each time that compassion arises in me, it will be a slightly different experience. One moment, it might have a heavy flavor of sadness along with the love. Another time, it might feel more settled; a third time, the caring flavor of it might be prominent.

Even though flavors and capacities are unique, there is also a universality to them. We all have compassion. We all have strength, and so on. And though our experiences of these flavors or capacities are similar, they are not identical. So they are both universal and unique.

Exercise: Repeating question. Describe a capacity of yours and focus on how it is unique to you.

 

Self-like Parts vs. Capacities

It is important to distinguish between Self-like parts and capacities. Self-like parts are protectors (usually managers) who mimic qualities of Self and believe they are Self (Schwartz, 2021; Earley, 2014). However, they have agendas because they are protecting exiles. They are protectors not capacities, which, though they may have intentions, do not have agendas.

Example: A therapist has a part that feels deeply caring toward clients and seems like Self. But this “caring” part also has a subtle compulsion to rescue clients, becomes anxious when a session doesn’t go well, and takes responsibility for clients’ progress. This is a Self-like part—a Caretaker protector mimicking compassion. It carries a hidden agenda: protecting the therapist’s own exile who feels worthless unless they are helping. A genuine compassion capacity, by contrast, would feel caring without the underlying urgency, would tolerate uncertainty, and would not need the client to get better in order for the therapist to feel okay.

How to tell the difference: If you suspect you might be dealing with a Self-like part rather than a true capacity, ask yourself: “Is there urgency here? Is there an agenda underneath the caring or curiosity?” A capacity feels relaxed, spacious, and flexible. A Self-like part tends to feel subtly driven, attached to outcomes, or anxious when things don’t go as planned.

Exercise: Think about a Self-like part of yours. In what circumstances does it arise? How do you know that it isn’t self-led? Does it have an agenda? Does it over-react?

 

Activation vs. Manifestation

Protectors become activated when the exile they are protecting is triggered or when the situation you are in reminds the part of a dangerous situation from your past (Schwartz, 1995). This accounts for its extreme or rigid behavior. Furthermore, when a protector is activated, it tends to blend with the Self, taking over the seat of consciousness and obscuring the Self (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).

Example: You’re at a dinner party and someone makes a mildly critical comment about your appearance. Suddenly, your face flushes, your stomach clenches, and an angry part takes over. You snap back with a cutting remark. This is activation—your protector blended with you so quickly you barely knew it happened. The protector was triggered by an exile who carries shame about not being good enough, and it responded with its fixed defensive role: attack.

On the other hand, capacities aren’t exactly activated. They are Self, and Self is who we truly are. So capacities just manifest when you need them or when your situation calls for them. The same applies to flavors of the pure Self. They just arise when needed. They can arise in conjunction with a capacity or on their own.

Example: At the same dinner party, if your assertiveness capacity is available, you might respond to the critical comment very differently. Instead of a reflexive snap, you might feel a calm, centered energy rise up (a flavor of pure Self), and find yourself saying something like, “That’s an interesting comment. I actually feel good about how I look tonight.” There’s no trigger, no blending, no takeover—just the natural manifestation of a capacity that was available and ready to respond to the situation.

Capacities sometimes manifest spontaneously as they are needed, and sometimes you can choose to act from a capacity. Flavors of Self normally arise spontaneously when needed. However, you can choose to focus on a certain flavor of Self and it will usually arise.

Example of spontaneous manifestation: You’re at a family gathering and your young nephew, who usually ignores you, suddenly runs over and hugs you. Without any thought, warmth floods through you and you find yourself kneeling down to embrace him fully. Your capacity for affection manifested spontaneously—you didn’t decide to be warm; warmth simply arose.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a capacity of yours that manifests spontaneously.

Example of chosen manifestation: You’re in a work meeting and notice a colleague is being unfairly criticized. You feel a pull to stay silent—an old protector that doesn’t want you to stand out. But you consciously choose to act from your capacity for courage. You take a breath, feel the flavor of strength arise, and speak up in your colleague’s defense. Here, you chose to access the capacity.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a capacity that you have worked on by deciding to act from it in a certain situation.

 

Availability

Capacities can manifest only when they are available. Even if a capacity is needed, it won’t manifest if it is blocked. It can be blocked by a protector that hasn’t been unburdened and has blended with the Self.

Example: A woman wants to be more vulnerable with her romantic partner, but every time she tries to open up, a Protective Wall part blocks her. The capacity for vulnerability is there—she can feel its pull—but it can’t manifest because the Protective Wall protector is blended with Self, keeping the exile safe from the risk of being hurt again. After doing IFS work with the Protective Wall and the exile it guards, the capacity for vulnerability becomes available. The next time her partner asks her how she’s really feeling, the vulnerability manifests naturally—she feels a softening in her chest and the words come easily.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a capacity of yours that is sometimes blocked.

In some cases, the protector has the same intention as the capacity but it has it with a rigid agenda for carrying it out or an extreme one. When you unburden that protector, the capacity becomes available with a reasonable, flexible intention.

Example: A man has a Pushy Manager protector that aggressively pursues goals, alienating colleagues along the way. Through IFS work, he unburdens the exile beneath this protector—a child part that believed he had to achieve in order to be loved. Once unburdened, the Pushy Manager transforms into a capacity for healthy ambition—still oriented toward goals, but now able to collaborate, adjust course when needed, and pursue achievement without desperation.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me a rigid protector that is trying to manifest a capacity.

A capacity may be available because it never took on burdens to begin with.

Example: A woman grew up in a family where curiosity was encouraged. Her parents welcomed her questions, took her to museums, and never shamed her for not knowing something. As an adult, her capacity for curiosity is naturally available—she approaches new situations with genuine interest rather than anxiety. This capacity never took on burdens because it was supported from the beginning.

When a capacity is available, it will be in the background of your experience and then comes to the foreground or manifests when needed.

Example: Your capacity for compassion is available and sits quietly in the background as you go through your day. Then a colleague mentions that her mother just died. Immediately, compassion moves from background to foreground—you feel your heart open, your attention soften, and you find yourself fully present with her grief. The capacity was always there; it simply manifested when the situation called for it.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me of a capacity of yours that is available and manifests when needed?

Keep in mind that a capacity may be available in certain situations in your life and blocked in others.

Example: A man finds that his capacity for assertiveness manifests easily at work—he can advocate for his ideas in meetings, negotiate with clients, and set boundaries with colleagues. But when he visits his parents, this same capacity becomes completely blocked. His family system triggers old protectors, and he reverts to a People-Pleasing part. The assertiveness capacity is situation-specific in its availability.

 

Self-Energy

We know from IFS that a part can have Self-energy, which is roughly the same as saying that it is Self-led (Schwartz, 2021). A part can also have a mixture of Self-energy and protector energy (or even exile energy). If a part has mostly Self-energy, we call it Self-led. It is a capacity, or we could say that it has capacity energy.

Once you have done some work on yourself, you may have noticed that some parts have a mixture of protector energy and Self-energy. Continued IFS work with the part will increase the degree of Self-energy and reduce the degree of protector energy.

Example: Think of a Communication part. Early in your IFS work, when you try to express a difficult feeling to your partner, you notice that your communication has a mix of qualities. There’s some genuine openness (Self-energy), but there’s also a defensive edge—a tendency to blame or withdraw (protector energy). Over time, as you do IFS work with the protectors involved, the communication part becomes increasingly Self-led. The openness deepens, the defensiveness fades, and eventually the part feels almost entirely like a capacity: you can communicate difficult truths with honesty, warmth, and presence.

Another example: An artist has a Creative part that contains both Self-energy (genuine inspiration, flow, and playfulness) and protector energy (a driven quality that pushes to produce in order to feel worthy). As IFS work progresses and the exile beneath the drivenness is unburdened, the protector energy decreases. What remains is a purer creative capacity—one that creates from joy rather than compulsion.

Exercise: Repeating question. What is a part of yours that has some Self-energy and some protector energy?

 

Internal Capacities

There are two kinds of capacities—internal and external. Internal capacities help you to explore your inner experience and guide your inner work, to help make it successful. For example, awareness is an internal capacity, the ability to recognize what you are experiencing in the moment.

Other important internal capacities are:

• Openness, the capacity to be open to your unfolding experience.
• Feeling, the capacity to fully experience your emotions and sensations.
• Parts awareness, the ability to recognize the parts in your inner experience, and
• Unfolding, the ability to allow your experience to unfold from partial glimpses as in Focusing (Gendlin, 1981).

These are not all the internal capacities. They are just some examples. There are many more.

Notice how each of these capacities forms a building block for your inner work.

Example of internal capacities in action: Suppose you notice a tight feeling in your stomach during a work meeting. Your awareness capacity recognizes the sensation. Your parts awareness capacity identifies it as a Worried part. Your openness capacity allows you to be curious about it rather than immediately pushing it away. Your feeling capacity lets you sense into the part’s experience more deeply. And in case the meaning of the stomach tightness isn’t clear at first, your capacity to allow experience to unfold (the Focusing-related capacity) allows the tightness to gradually reveal its meaning. Together, these internal capacities form the foundation for effective inner work, right there in the middle of a meeting.

Another example: During a meditation session, your awareness capacity notices that a sad feeling has arrived. Your parts awareness helps you recognize this as an Exile rather than “just sadness.” Your openness capacity keeps you present with the sadness rather than shutting down. Your feeling capacity lets you be moved by the exile’s experience. This cascading sequence of internal capacities is what makes IFS self-therapy possible.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me an internal capacity of yours.

Internal capacities can also show up in other ways, not related to inner work. For example, if you are working on developing theory in order to publish an article, you will probably be relying on your internal capacities for clarity and synthesis—understanding how different ideas fit together.

 

External Capacities

There are also many external capacities that help us to live our lives in a healthy way, such as challenge, confidence, impact awareness, vulnerability, and accomplishment. An external capacity is focused on making your life enjoyable, successful, or meaningful. An external capacity could be a goal for your inner work or group work.

Example of external capacities: Assertiveness helps you to ask your boss for a raise. Sensitivity helps you notice when a friend is struggling even if they haven’t said anything. Impact awareness helps you recognize how your words are landing during a difficult conversation and adjust accordingly. Vulnerability allows you to tell your partner, “I’m scared that you’re going to leave me.” Intimacy allows you to sit in shared silence with a loved one and feel deeply connected without needing words.

Another example of how external capacities work together: You’re having a disagreement with your partner. Your sensitivity capacity reads that they’re becoming defensive. Your impact awareness tells you that your tone has gotten too sharp. Your assertiveness capacity helps you continue to express your needs clearly, but your vulnerability capacity lets you soften and say, “I’m bringing this up because I care about us.” Your intimacy capacity holds the space for both of you to reconnect after the disagreement. All five external capacities working in concert, without any of them taking over or polarizing.

Exercise: Repeating question. Tell me an external capacity of yours.

 

Here is a form of capacity work: Get to know one of your important capacities. Find out how much of it is available and how much is blocked or rigidified and in which situations. Do the IFS work to unburden any protectors who are interfering with it. This will make it available in the important situations in your life.

When a situation arises in which that capacity is needed, notice if it arises and then act from it. This will often happen naturally without your awareness, so take some time now to be aware of this. If the capacity doesn’t arise naturally, explore to see what is blocking it or rigidifying it. If it does arise, enjoy the experience and the results. You might even take a moment to experience the flavor of pure Self that arose along with the capacity.

Example: You realize that your capacity for vulnerability is available with close friends and some family members but blocked with romantic partners. You use IFS to explore what’s blocking it and discover a protector that formed after a painful betrayal in your first serious relationship. As you work with this protector and the exile it guards, the vulnerability capacity gradually becomes available in romantic contexts as well. The next time your partner asks how you’re feeling, the vulnerability manifests naturally—and you notice, underneath it, a flavor of pure Self that feels like courage.

Exercise: Choose one of your important capacities. Give it a name. (I will call it Cap here).
Think of a situation where Cap is available most of the time. What is that like for you?
Think of a situation Sit where Cap is not available most of the time? What is a part that gets in the way of Cap in Sit?

 

Capacities Develop over Time

The pure Self doesn’t develop or change. It just is. However, the active Self, as it manifests in various capacities, does develop. To be more accurate, each of our capacities can develop. There is a natural tendency for capacities to develop, which happens under the right conditions. This is similar to Carl Rogers’s concept of the actualizing tendency—the inherent striving of every organism to realize its potential (Rogers, 1961). Our capacities develop especially during child development and maturation, and this continues (or can continue) during adulthood, unless it is blocked. Our capacities will especially have a chance to develop if we engage in therapy, personal growth work, or spiritual work.

Example: A child learns to share toys with siblings, developing the capacity for generosity. A teenager navigates the complexity of peer relationships, developing capacities for social attunement and appropriate self-disclosure. A young adult learns to manage their own finances and living situation, developing capacities for self-responsibility and practical planning. Each developmental stage naturally calls forth and strengthens particular capacities.

Our capacities also develop as we engage with the world as adults. When we take a new job or move into a new professional situation, when we get married or have children, we are called upon to develop new capacities or strengthen existing ones.

Example: A new mother finds she must develop capacities she never needed before: the capacity to tolerate sleep deprivation without becoming reactive, the capacity to attune to a pre-verbal infant’s needs, the capacity to set limits with love as the child grows. A father discovers he must develop the capacity to be emotionally present in ways his own father never modeled. Parenting is one of life’s most powerful crucibles for capacity development.

These are examples of the development of external capacities.

Exercise: What is an external capacity that is not very well developed in you?
What is an external capacity that is well developed in you?
What is an external capacity that you have and would like to develop further?

When we work on ourselves in therapy, coaching, spiritual work, or group work, we need to develop the internal capacities to be successful in this work. Some of these capacities develop as a result of engaging in certain inner practices. Other internal capacities must be consciously worked on through targeted attention and practice.

Example: A client realizes that her capacity for feeling is underdeveloped—she can think about her emotions but has difficulty actually feeling them in her body. Her therapist gives her specific exercises: pausing several times a day to notice body sensations, naming the felt sense of emotions, staying with uncomfortable feelings for increasing lengths of time. Over months of deliberate practice, her feeling capacity develops, and her IFS work deepens dramatically as a result.

As a group leader, I am tuned into which capacities each member has and to what degree, especially those internal capacities that are the foundation for a member being successful at growing as a result of their group work. I make a conscious effort to facilitate each member to help them develop any capacity that they seem to have underdeveloped.

Example: In my groups, I notice that one member, Sarah, has strong awareness and feeling capacities but struggles with the capacity for self-expression—she can sense what’s happening inside but freezes when trying to articulate it. I gently encourage her to speak in the moment, even if her words are imperfect. I reflect back what I sense she might be experiencing, giving her language she can borrow. Over time, her self-expression capacity develops, and she becomes more able to share her inner experience in real time.

Another member, Tom, has the opposite pattern: he can talk easily but tends to intellectualize, staying in his head rather than dropping into felt experience. For him, I frequently invite him to pause, notice his body, and speak from sensation rather than analysis. His capacity for embodied feeling gradually strengthens through these repeated invitations.

Exercise:
What is an internal capacity that is not very well developed in you?
What is an internal capacity that is well developed in you?
What is an internal capacity that you have and would like to develop further?

 

Related Frameworks

The concept of capacities as I’ve developed it here resonates with several well-established psychological traditions outside of IFS.

In the psychodynamic tradition, ego psychology developed the concept of ego strengths—the healthy, adaptive functions of the ego that enable effective personal functioning. Heinz Hartmann proposed that some ego functions are innate and autonomous, not created by conflict—parallel to my notion of capacities that were never burdened. Leopold Bellak systematically cataloged ego functions such as reality testing, judgment, impulse control, and mastery, which are similar to what I call capacities. The ego psychology literature demonstrates that these capacities can be assessed, developed, and strengthened through therapeutic work (Bellak, Hurvich, & Gediman, 1973).

Positive psychology offers another parallel in Peterson and Seligman’s classification of character strengths and virtues (2004). They define character strengths as positive capacities for thinking, feeling, and behaving that are personally fulfilling and contribute to the collective good. Their 24 character strengths, grouped under six virtues, represent a systematic effort to classify human strengths rather than deficits. Their research confirms that these capacities can be developed and strengthened through intentional practice.

Developmental psychology has extensively studied the emergence of self-regulation capacities across the lifespan—the ability to modulate one’s cognition, emotion, and behavior in service of goals. This research confirms that such capacities develop rapidly in early childhood, can be strengthened through practice and supportive environments, and form the foundation for later social, emotional, and academic competence (Eisenberg et al., 2010).

 

Depth and Life Work

Capacities form both the foundations for IFS work and its goals. They provide a focus for our work beyond healing trauma and a way to experience and celebrate our successes. When we formulate our work in terms of the healthy capacities we want to develop, and we recognize the capacities that have developed through our inner work, this is empowering.

Even though IFS is a complete method of therapy, it focuses primarily on healing trauma. This is entirely appropriate as trauma is a major issue in our lives and our world. My interest has gone in a different direction. Even though I have helped many clients to heal their trauma, I have gotten especially interested in how IFS can help with how we relate and how we act in the world. You could distinguish between depth work and life work. IFS, as it has been taught, is expert at depth work and leaves room for life work. My focus is on how IFS can become expert at life work as well.

I don’t consider these ideas to be final. I expect them to keep developing and improving over time. I am interested in feedback and even possible collaboration with other people on this work. I welcome your input. In fact, I am teaching a collaborative course on these topics. Feel free to join.

This article is part of a series on Interpersonal Psychology. It is a follow-up to Nuances of the IFS Self.

 

References

Bellak, L., Hurvich, M., & Gediman, H.K. (1973). Ego Functions in Schizophrenics, Neurotics, and Normals. Wiley.

Earley, J. (2012). The Pattern System: A Periodic Table for Psychology. Pattern System Books.

Earley, J. (2014). Self-Therapy, Vol. 2: A Step-by-Step Guide to Advanced IFS Techniques for Working with Protectors. Pattern System Books.

Earley, J. & Weiss, B. (2010). Freedom from Your Inner Critic: A Self-Therapy Approach. Sounds True.

Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T.L., & Eggum, N.D. (2010). Self-regulation and school readiness. Early Education and Development, 21(5), 681–698.

Gendlin, E.T. (1981). Focusing. Bantam Books.

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford University Press.

Rogers, C.R. (1961). On Becoming a Person. Houghton Mifflin.

Schwartz, R.C. (1995). Internal Family Systems Therapy. Guilford Press.

Schwartz, R.C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.

Schwartz, R.C. & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd ed. Guilford Press.