How IFS Therapy Helps You Overcome Chronic Pain, TMS, IBS, Back Pain, Pelvic Pain, Fatigue, Migraines and More
For years I lived with chronic symptoms that made no sense. Back pain. Stomach issues that looked like IBS. Fatigue I couldn’t shake. Tension in my body that wouldn’t budge. Every test came back normal, yet my symptoms were relentless. Nothing added up, and I genuinely believed something was wrong with me.
For years, I did what everyones does. Doctors visits, specialists, tests. I changed my diet, got new mattresses and accepted that at best I was only ever going to manage pain, but never fully overcome it.
Everything changed when I learned about Internal Family Systems therapy. IFS therapy helped me understand my pain. And I discovered all about TMS or mind body symptoms. It revealed that my chronic pain wasn’t random at all. It was a reflection of emotional patterns I didn’t realise I’d been avoiding for years.
A Key Insight: Allowing Emotion Is the Real Work
When you learn about TMS and chronic symptoms, one truth becomes very clear: you have to learn how to allow emotions instead of blocking them.
But allowing emotions is incredibly difficult when you don’t know
which emotions you’re avoiding
how you’re avoiding them
or why those patterns formed in the first place
Most people don’t even realise how quickly they tense against discomfort or shut down the moment something emotional arises.
This is where IFS therapy becomes so important.
IFS helps you identify:
the parts that suppress emotion
the parts holding the emotion
the protectors that jump in automatically
and the younger parts that carry pain from the past
You begin to understand why these parts do what they do. You learn to meet them with compassion rather than resistance. You see that none of your parts are trying to harm you. They are all trying to protect you in the only way they knew how.
And outside of sessions, IFS reshapes how you use mindfulness. Instead of trying to calm away discomfort, you learn to stay present with it. You learn to allow emotion rather than avoiding it.
This is difficult to learn on your own, which is why guided support is so helpful.
Understanding IFS Therapy
IFS therapy is a form of parts work. It teaches that your internal world is made up of different parts, each with their own job. Some protect you. Some carry old emotional wounds. Some shut down. Some push through. None of them are bad. They all formed to help you survive something.
An IFS session looks and feels like a deeper form of mindfulness. You close your eyes, go inward, and meet whatever part of you shows up. That might be anger. Shame. Fear. Guilt. Numbness. Overwhelm. Instead of pushing those parts away, you listen to them and feel what happens in your body as they speak.
This is where the mind body connection becomes obvious. What TMS theory calls repressed emotion, IFS helps you access directly in a safe and structured way.
Why Internal Conflict Creates Physical Symptoms
As you explore your inner world, you start to see just how much internal conflict you’ve been carrying without realising it.
You might find
A part that feels anger
A part that feels guilty about that anger
A younger part still holding sadness or fear
Protector parts doing everything they can to block all of it
This internal tension is what often shows up as chronic symptoms. The body steps in when emotions stay pushed down for too long.
This is why people with chronic emotional load often experience:
Chronic pain
Back pain
IBS
Migraines
Pelvic pain
Chronic fatigue, ME, CFS
Dizziness
Fibromyalgia
Tinnitus
Muscle tension and nerve symptoms
These symptoms are not random. They are protective. They are signals. They are attempts by the nervous system to keep you away from emotions you once believed you couldn’t handle.
How IFS Therapy Reduces Chronic Symptoms
As you begin working with your parts, something shifts.
You start telling your protectors:
“I understand why you react this way.”
“You’re not wrong for doing this.”
“You don’t have to work so hard anymore.”
When protectors feel understood, they soften. When emotional parts feel welcomed, they relax. When the internal system stops fighting itself, the symptoms stop needing to shout.
This is why people often experience changes in symptoms like back pain, IBS, pelvic pain, chronic fatigue, migraines, fibromyalgia, dizziness and tinnitus once they begin IFS therapy.
My Experience With IFS Therapy
When I began this work myself, I found younger parts inside me holding anger, sadness, disappointment and shame. None of these emotions were allowed when I was growing up. Society didn’t encourage them either.
I also found protector parts working overtime to keep me far away from those feelings. And my symptoms were their way of grabbing my attention.
As I started listening to these parts and allowing the emotions they carried, the chronic symptoms that dominated my life began to soften. The back pain, the IBS, the tension, the fatigue all shifted because I wasn’t fighting my emotional world anymore.
The Bigger Picture
IFS therapy offers a compassionate and practical way to understand chronic symptoms. It shows you how chronic pain, IBS, pelvic pain, migraines, fibromyalgia, dizziness, tinnitus, chronic fatigue, ME and CFS can all be connected to emotional patterns stored within your internal system.
When you understand your parts, your symptoms make sense. And when they make sense, they start to lose their power.
You do not have to face chronic symptoms alone.