IFS Book club over

For the past few months, I’ve been leading a book club around Internal Family Systems.

I took a IFS for Coaches course last summer. I invited classmates to join me in a book club to read No Bad Parts by Richard Schwarz. After we finished that book, we read the first half of Self-Therapy by Jay Earley. Then this year, we went to re-read No Bad Parts again.

It was a great. The community was vulnerable and open to others. I accomplished my goal to read through the books and be able to discuss them with others.

I’m still slightly skeptical about the spiritual aspects of IFS. I view it as a useful metaphorical tool, but not a truth about reality. I feel that I have gotten my fill of it and sufficiently explored that rabbit hole to my contentment. Actually, even more than intended. I was going to stop at the end of last year. But the book club members wanted me to continue, and I felt bad about leaving them.

But enough is enough. I was no longer looking forward to the book club meetings. While I’ll miss the members, I have other things on my plate now that need my focus. I have responsibilities in other courses.

I’m grateful for the time that we had getting to know each other. Even though I was mostly listening, and being quiet in the background, I got to learn from others experiences and relate them to my own.