Why knowing your inner child is valuable in therapy | Dr. Coral Westaway, Clinical Psychologist
Dr Coral Westaway
Clinical Psychologist
Specialisation: Internal Family Systems (IFS), Energy Psychology, EMDR, Somatic Therapy
Regulatory Body: HCPC
Based in: UK (Online)
🧠According to the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, developed by Richard Schwartz, each of us is naturally made up of multiple parts. Some of those parts are young, carrying fear, shame, or grief from experiences that were too overwhelming to process at the time.
Others function as protectors, keeping those vulnerable parts locked away because reconnecting with those feelings still seems dangerous.
The aim of IFS therapy is not to silence those parts or reason them away. It is to befriend them: to understand what each one is holding, what it fears, and what it would need in order to feel safe enough to soften.
At the centre of this work is the Self: the steady, wise part of a person that views every part as valuable and acceptable. IFS describes eight qualities of self-leadership: curiosity, calm, clarity, compassion, connectedness, confidence, creativity, and courage. When the Self is in the lead, the protective parts no longer have to work so hard.
This offers one of the cleaner models for understanding why certain feelings or reactions persist even when people genuinely want to change them.
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