IFS for Eating Disorders: How Internal Sequences Drive Disordered Eating
In clinical practice, it is increasingly evident that eating disorders are not isolated behaviours, nor are they best understood through categorical diagnoses alone. Instead, they often emerge as a dynamic system of internal processes, adaptive, though often extreme, responses to internal distress and unmet needs. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy offers a compassionate lens to understand and intervene in these patterns by focusing not on pathology but on internal multiplicity, protective function, and the sequencing of parts within the system.
From an IFS perspective, no single part “has” an eating disorder. Rather, eating disorder behaviours arise from polarised internal networks' protector parts who seek to manage distress and maintain balance, and exiles who carry the unprocessed burdens of trauma, shame, abandonment, or unmet attachment needs.
Understanding Inner Patterns
IFS does not treat eating disorders as diagnostic entities but rather as patterns of interaction between parts. These sequences often follow identifiable and clinically relevant chains.
1. Exile Activation
A vulnerable part (exile) becomes triggered, perhaps by perceived rejection, performance failure, or body-related shame. This part holds burdens often originating from early relational trauma, such as neglect, abuse, or chronic invalidation.
2. Manager Activation
Manager parts respond with attempts to contain or suppress the exile’s pain. This might include hypercontrol over eating, perfectionism, obsessive food planning, or increased rigidity. These parts aim to prevent the system from becoming dysregulated.
3. Firefighter Activation
When manager strategies fail or are overwhelmed, firefighter parts activate. These parts aim to rapidly extinguish the pain carried by exiles, often through bingeing, purging, substance use, or dissociation. These behaviours are typically reactive, impulsive, and relief-driven.
4. Inner Critic Escalation
Following firefighter behaviour, internal critic parts emerge. These manager subtypes engage in punitive self-talk, often reinforcing shame and reactivating exiles. The sequence begins again.
These patterns have been described in empirical and clinical literature. Schmidt and Treasure’s (2006) Cognitive-Interpersonal Maintenance Model of anorexia nervosa emphasises emotional avoidance, perfectionism, and interpersonal sensitivity, traits that align closely with IFS manager functions. Vitousek et al. (1998) also highlight the ego-syntonic nature of eating disorder behaviours, reinforcing the IFS notion that parts believe their roles are crucial for survival.
From an IFS-informed approach, treatment focuses less on eliminating behaviours and more on understanding and transforming the system that sustains them. The aim is not compliance but internal collaboration.
Key Strategies:
1. Internal Mapping and Differentiation
Clinicians work collaboratively with clients to identify and differentiate the parts involved in their eating disorder sequences. This includes naming the functions, fears, and burdens each part carries. Mapping supports unblending and promotes self-awareness, allowing for reflection without fusion.
2. Unblending and Direct Access
Therapy prioritises creating relational space between the client’s Self and their protectors. Once unblended, parts can be approached with curiosity and compassion. This process allows for direct dialogue, where the clinician facilitates the client’s internal communication with their parts.
3. Identifying Polarities
Often, eating disorder systems are maintained by polarised parts with conflicting agendas (e.g., restrictor vs. bingeing part). Working with polarities involves facilitating internal negotiation and witnessing how parts are in reaction to one another, not just to external triggers.
4. Accessing and Unburdening Exiles
Once protectors trust the Self and no longer feel the need to override or suppress, access to exiled parts becomes possible. These parts often hold core traumas, attachment wounds, and burdens of shame or unworthiness. Through witnessing and unburdening, their intensity reduces, and the system reorganises around safety and trust.
Working with Suicidality in Eating Disorder Systems
In systems where suicidality and eating disorders co-occur, these patterns may become even more complex. Firefighter parts may escalate to suicidality when other strategies no longer bring relief. Understanding the systemic function of suicidal ideation (e.g., as a final escape strategy or a way to be seen) is critical. IFS supports clinicians to approach suicidality as a communication from a desperate protector, not a threat, but as a signal. With this stance, we can engage parts holding suicidal thoughts with curiosity and compassion, rather than fear or coercion.
Eating disorders are not a single behaviour to be corrected or a diagnosis to be controlled. They are complex, relational, and adaptive internal systems. Systems shaped by trauma, culture, unmet needs, and burdens that were never meant to be carried alone. When seen through the lens of multiplicity, we begin to understand: eating disorders are not illnesses to be eradicated, but messages to be listened to.
Within Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, we come to know that no part acts in isolation. Restricting, bingeing, purging, and obsessing these are not random or irrational. They are sequenced responses from protectors, trying to keep exiles at bay. They are internal strategies of survival developed over time, often beginning in moments when the system had no other choice.
IFS offers clinicians a roadmap. A way of stepping into these systems not with control, coercion, or shame but with deep presence. With curiosity. With the courage to sit beside even the most extreme parts and ask, “What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t do this?” It is an invitation to witness each part’s logic and longing without pathologising it.
In this frame, healing doesn’t mean silencing the eating disorder. It means listening to it. Learning from it. Building trust between parts that have been at war. And slowly, gently, allowing Self energy to lead, so that the system no longer needs to use food, control, or disappearance to stay safe.
Because at the heart of every eating disorder is not a flaw to be fixed but a system waiting to be understood.
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional help. If you are in crisis, please call Butterfly Foundation 1800 334 673, Lifeline 13 11 14 or 000 in an emergency.
References:
Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. Routledge.
Sykes, C. (2020). Internal Family Systems Institute, Level 2 Training: Addictions and Eating Disorders.
Geller, J., & Srikameswaran, S. (2002). Treatment non-negotiation and the transtheoretical model of change in eating disorders. Eating Disorders, 10(2), 139–149.
Schmidt, U., & Treasure, J. (2006). Anorexia nervosa: Valued and visible. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 39(4), 287–291.
Vitousek, K., Watson, S., & Wilson, G. T. (1998). Enhancing motivation for change in treatment-resistant eating disorders. Clinical Psychology Review, 18(4), 391–420.
