IFS Informed Financial Therapy
When we think about well-being, we probably think of being happy, healthy, and secure. Most wellness programs only focus on one of these aspects yet leave the others unfulfilled, which is damaging to overall wellness. One of the single most important parts of all three of these components of wellness comes down to financial habits.
Studies have shown that nearly every financial decision we make hinges on our emotions. However, these emotions can potentially drive us to extreme financial beliefs that are harmful to our overall well-being. When this occurs, traditional help focuses on changing financial behavior without addressing the underlying causes of the behavior.
In contrast, IFSSM Informed Financial Therapy™ helps individuals to identify and modify the extreme beliefs that lead to these harmful behaviors. So, let’s take a closer look at this program and how it can help you to make better financial choices for your overall well-being.
What Is IFS Informed Financial Therapy?
This new program is a combination of financial therapy and Internal Family SystemsSM (IFSSM) Therapy. IFSSM Therapy is an evidence-based approach to helping individuals understand all of their “parts” that contribute to the decisions they make.
IFSSM Therapy recognizes that everyone has an internal system comprising several different parts that all act together for their overall well-being. However, sometimes these parts suffer trauma, which can lead to harmful and destructive behaviors in order to cope with the pain.
In addition to these parts, everyone possesses a “self” that acts as the seat of consciousness and understands the parts and how they may be healed. A therapist can help an individual to communicate with the wounded parts of themselves as they heal to promote harmony throughout the system.
These same principles also apply to financial wellness. In some cases, the parts of our internal system suffer trauma that leads them to make poor financial decisions. These may have been caused by troubled family legacies, past financial issues, and countless other things. Parts of our internal system may cope with these traumas through poor financial habits, which damage our overall wellness.
How IFS Informed Financial Therapy Can Help
IFSSM Informed Financial Therapy™ addresses poor financial well-being by addressing the underlying trauma that has led to extreme financial beliefs and habits. These may include struggles with over or under-spending, inability to confront financial issues, gambling, and difficulty with paying bills.
IFSSM Informed Financial Therapy™ will help you explore your financial history to identify these problem behaviors as well as how past traumas or relationships may have formed them, possibly as a way to cope. Through discussions with friends and family about money, these beliefs can be closely examined along with the impact they have had on financial behavior. By understanding the root causes of these behaviors, the IFSSM financial therapist can create a plan and provide the tools to understand and address these unconscious habits.
What Can an IFS Financial Therapist Do for You?
The role of an IFSSM Informed Financial Therapist™ is to help you to manage your beliefs about finances. The therapist will help you to build a relationship with your inner self in order to facilitate a discussion about the many parts of you that contribute to your overall personhood. The main goal is to help unburden you of the negative beliefs you hold so that these parts can resume their natural and healthy role in supporting your well-being.
Getting to know the parts of yourself requires showing them compassion and curiosity rather than just shutting them down. Then these parts can begin to reveal themselves and tell you their own stories. From here, you can genuinely understand that every part really does have your best interests in mind, no matter how harmful the beliefs they hold seem to be.
Often these parts do not want to serve in the role they currently hold, but they do not trust the self to lead on its own. As a result, they feel the need to protect it. Reversing this process and building trust between the self and these parts is crucial to accomplishing financial well-being. An IFSSM Informed Financial Therapist™ can act as a mediator between these different parts as well as the self to rebuild these relationships. This therapy will grow the “Eight C’s,” which are critical for healing our system:
- Curiosity
- Calm
- Confidence
- Compassion
- Creativity
- Courage
- Clarity
- Connectedness
Discover a Service That Offers Advanced Well-Being
Together, IFSSM and Informed Financial Therapy™ can offer you a state of “Advanced Well-Being.” Reaching this state is more than simply fixing what is wrong financially; it extends to healing your internal system and achieving a greater state of financial, emotional, and overall well-being. This is possible by addressing the individual parts of yourself and the trauma they hold. You will not only correct poor financial habits but restore the self and instill a feeling of wellness that extends to all parts of life.
