Why the parts of you that stay in control deserve a relationship before the session begins.
By Naomi Christina (Naomi Stubbé) and Francisca Niklitschek
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), the mind is understood as a system of “parts” led by a core Self. Applied to psychedelic preparation, IFS means getting to know the protective parts of you — the ones that keep control, stay analytical, or shut feeling down — before a session, so they meet the experience as something familiar rather than as a stranger. This article explains what protective parts are, why they become so present in expanded states, and what careful, IFS-informed preparation actually involves.
A client once asked me, the week before her first guided session: “What if I lose control?”
It’s one of the most common questions I hear in preparation work. Underneath it is usually a more precise one, even if the person asking doesn’t have the words for it yet: which part of me is afraid of what might happen if I truly let go?
Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a direct answer to that question. IFS is a psychotherapeutic method developed by Richard Schwartz that understands the mind as a system of parts, each with its own role and history, led by a core Self. Applied to psychedelic preparation, IFS reframes the central task: not only setting an intention for the experience, but building a relationship, beforehand, with the protective parts that will meet the medicine alongside you.
What are protective parts, and why do they matter before a psychedelic session?
In IFS, protective parts work hard to keep the system controlled — rational, organised, performing well or pleasing others. Other parts react fast the moment vulnerability appears, through anxiety, dissociation, urgency, or a quiet kind of shutdown.
These are protectors, and they are adaptive by design. Each one developed for a reason. A part that keeps you hyper-organised may have once kept a chaotic home bearable. A part that shuts emotion down may have once protected a child from feeling more than they could hold. Schwartz describes these protectors not as flaws to fix but as the most loyal members of an inner family — parts that took on extreme roles because, once, that was what safety required.
The complexity arrives when these parts meet something as powerful as a psychedelic without ever having been introduced to it first.
Why altered states can activate protective responses
Psychedelics can intensify emotions, bodily sensations and existing psychological patterns. At the same time, they may temporarily loosen some of the habitual beliefs and defenses through which a person normally organizes experience.
If a protector part goes into a session feeling frightened or unprepared, the experience tends to organize around protection rather than openness. Someone may stay highly analytical the whole time, disconnected from feeling, hypervigilant, or working very hard to “do the session well” — itself a protector at work, wearing the costume of willingness.
Schwartz has described, from his clinical experience, that protectors which resist opening up in ordinary talk therapy can sometimes soften more quickly in a psychedelic session, once they trust what is happening. That trust is the hinge point. Moving too quickly can intensify a protector’s response rather than helping it soften.
Responses to threat and safety involve rapid, largely non-conscious processes in the brain and autonomic nervous system. Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory offers one influential clinical framework for understanding how perceived cues of danger and safety may shape these responses. It is worth noting that some of the theory’s specific neurophysiological claims are actively debated in the scientific literature; its value here is as a clinical lens, not as settled neuroscience. This helps explain why reassurance alone is not always enough. A protector is rarely convinced by argument. Trust is usually built through repeated experiences of being listened to, respected, and not overwhelmed.
Unblending: how protective parts soften before a psychedelic experience
In IFS, this process is called unblending — creating enough inner space that a part doesn’t take over the whole system. The Self stays present, curious, and steady, even while a protective part is active nearby.
Unblending is supported by curiosity, inclusion and respect rather than force. Protectors soften when they feel listened to, respected, and included in what’s about to happen. Pushing them aside, out-arguing them, or overriding them with willpower tends to keep them exactly where they are.
This distinction can often be felt in the body. When protective parts experience enough safety and trust, greater openness may become possible. When they anticipate being overwhelmed, exposed, or overridden, the system contracts — sometimes visibly, sometimes only felt from the inside by the person having the experience.
What research can, and cannot, tell us about IFS and psychedelic preparation
Direct clinical research specifically examining IFS as a model for psychedelic preparation is still limited. There are, as yet, no controlled trials that isolate IFS-informed preparation and measure its independent effect. Its use in this context is currently informed by clinical practice, the broader research on psychologically supported psychedelic therapy, and the conceptual overlap between IFS and trauma-informed approaches to altered states.
What can be said is that IFS is not peripheral to modern psychedelic therapy — it is woven into its clinical lineage. Michael Mithoefer, who led much of the MDMA-assisted therapy research for MAPS, is a certified IFS therapist, and IFS is among the modalities that shaped the MAPS therapeutic approach. Mithoefer has been careful to note that therapists in the trials did not set out to “do IFS”; rather, the non-directive protocol made room for parts work when it emerged on its own. He has also described an informal, unpublished observation that, at active MDMA doses, participants spontaneously began relating to inner “parts” a large majority of the time. This is a clinical observation, not a validated finding — but it points to why a parts-based framework has felt so natural to many practitioners in this field.
This clinical foundation has recently become more explicit. IFS-informed psychedelic work now has a dedicated literature, including a clinical skills manual co-authored by Richard Schwartz himself (Lovas, Sweezy, Schwartz & Strasburg) and a case-based clinical volume by Curt Kearney. These are practitioner texts rather than controlled trials, but they mark a shift: IFS is increasingly treated as a serious clinical framework for the psychedelic space, not a fringe association.
In studies of LSD-assisted and psilocybin-assisted therapy — such as Gasser and colleagues’ work with people facing life-threatening illness, and Carhart-Harris and colleagues’ six-month follow-up in treatment-resistant depression — preparation and psychological support were integral parts of the treatment protocol. Because these elements were not studied separately from the psychedelic intervention, we cannot determine their independent contribution to the outcomes. Their consistent inclusion does, however, reflect a broader recognition within the field that psychedelic experiences require careful psychological and relational support.
The REBUS model, proposed by Carhart-Harris and Friston, offers one possible explanation for why deeply held fears, assumptions and protective patterns may become more visible during a psychedelic experience. According to this model, psychedelics may temporarily reduce the influence of rigid, high-level beliefs about the Self and the world, consistent with emerging psilocybin brain research into how the substance reshapes neural activity. This does not provide direct evidence for the IFS model, but it may help explain why habitual ways of controlling or organising experience can become less stable during a session. (I discuss the REBUS model in more depth in my book, Het potentieel van psychedelica.)
This way of working — meeting defences rather than breaking through them — is also consistent with principles described in the MAPS treatment manual for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, which advises therapists to approach psychological defenses with respect and curiosity rather than attempting to overcome them. Although this is not evidence for IFS itself, it reflects a closely related clinical principle: protective responses are more likely to soften when they are understood and included than when they are treated as obstacles.
Bessel van der Kolk’s work with trauma points to the same idea from the body’s side: healing happens by helping the body register that the danger has passed, not by overriding what it’s signaling. A psychedelic session asks a great deal of the body in a short window of time. It deserves to be met with that same patience.
What careful preparation looks for
Preparation involves more than asking whether someone feels anxious or ready. It means becoming curious about how readiness is organized within the person’s inner system. Is the person genuinely calm, or emotionally disconnected? Is one part afraid of losing control while another is impatient to push ahead? Is there openness, or is a high-performing part trying to become the “perfect” psychedelic client?
These distinctions matter because apparently similar responses may require very different forms of support. Anxiety may call for clearer information, more relational trust, or more time. Emotional distance may reflect steadiness, but it can also be a protective form of disconnection. A strong desire to proceed may express genuine readiness, or an urgent part hoping that one powerful experience will finally resolve everything.
Good preparation does not assume the answer. It creates enough space to listen to what each response may be protecting.
When reluctance should be respected
The aim of preparation is not to obtain inner permission at any cost. A protector’s reluctance is not always an old defense that needs reassurance. It may be responding to something important in the present: insufficient trust, subtle pressure to proceed, an intention that feels too ambitious, instability in someone’s life, or a setting that does not yet feel safe.
Sometimes the most therapeutic response is therefore not to encourage surrender, but to slow down. More preparation, additional psychological assessment, a change in the setting, or postponing the session may be the safest and most respectful choice. Listening to a protector also means being willing to take its “not yet” seriously.
How to prepare your protectors before a psychedelic session
In my practice, I often see people arrive with a beautifully clear intention and very little relationship with the parts of them that are afraid of what that intention might cost. That gap is usually where the hardest sessions begin — a protector, never introduced to what was coming, meeting it as a stranger.
A brief clarification is worth making here. MDMA and classic psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD work through different pharmacological mechanisms and can produce different kinds of experience; MDMA is usually described as an entactogen rather than a classic psychedelic. Both, however, can bring people into unusually open, emotionally intense, or psychologically vulnerable states in which protective responses become clinically important.
I know this from the inside as well as from the therapy room. My own first psychedelic session was with MDMA, and I was afraid — afraid of losing control, of whatever might surface. My psychedelic coach at the time didn’t work with parts. What helped was her presence: as I went into the experience she held my hand, and that simple sense of safety was what finally allowed me to surrender to the process. It was only later, through my training in Internal Family Systems, that I came to understand those feelings and reactions as parts of me. In the sessions that followed I could do that inner work beforehand — meeting the parts that were afraid — so that I no longer arrived at the medicine bracing against it.
That’s what I mean when the session begins before the dose. It means building a relationship with the parts of you that are afraid of what might happen if you truly let go — meeting them beforehand, with curiosity instead of impatience, so that on the day, they’re not meeting the medicine as strangers.
So before you ask what you hope this experience will give you, it may be worth asking something quieter first: which part of you is already bracing — and what would it need to feel safe enough to soften?
Disclaimer
This article is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical or psychological advice. If you are experiencing mental health difficulties or considering any therapeutic intervention, please consult a qualified healthcare professional.
References
Carhart-Harris, R. L., Bolstridge, M., Day, C. M. J., Rucker, J., Watts, R., Erritzoe, D. E., Kaelen, M., Giribaldi, B., Bloomfield, M., Pilling, S., Rickard, J. A., Forbes, B., Feilding, A., Taylor, D., Curran, H. V., & Nutt, D. J. (2018). Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: six-month follow-up. Psychopharmacology, 235(2), 399–408.
Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Friston, K. J. (2019). REBUS and the anarchic brain: toward a unified model of the brain action of psychedelics. Pharmacological Reviews, 71(3), 316–344.
Gasser, P., Holstein, D., Michel, Y., Doblin, R., Yazar-Klosinski, B., Passie, T., & Brenneisen, R. (2014). Safety and efficacy of lysergic acid diethylamide-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety associated with life-threatening diseases. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 202(7), 513–520.
Kearney, C. (2025). Psychedelics and Internal Family Systems: A partnership in relational healing. Curt Kearney, MA, LCPC.
Lovas, D., Sweezy, M., Schwartz, R. C., & Strasburg, S. (2026). Psychedelic Medicine and Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy: A Clinical Skills Manual. PESI Publishing.
(Note: no dedicated PESI product page turned up in search — Amazon listing used instead. Worth swapping for a pesi.com URL if you have one.)
Mithoefer, M. C. (2017). A Manual for MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Version 8.1). Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.
Stubbé, N. (2025). Het potentieel van psychedelica. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij SWP. ISBN 9789085603252.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
IFS is a therapeutic model developed by Richard Schwartz that views the mind as a system of “parts” — protectors, exiles, and the core Self that can lead the system with calm and clarity — rather than a single, unified personality.
IFS gives psychedelic preparation a psychological framework: identifying which protective parts are active around the upcoming experience, and building enough trust with them beforehand that they don’t need to dominate the session itself.
Protective parts are aspects of the psyche that developed to keep a person safe, often through control, performance, distraction, or emotional shutdown. In IFS, they are treated as adaptive rather than pathological.
Psychedelics tend to intensify existing nervous-system and psychological patterns rather than override them. If protective parts feel unprepared or unsafe going into a session, the experience often organizes around protection rather than openness.
Unblending is the IFS process of creating enough inner space that a protective part is present without taking over the whole system, allowing the Self to remain grounded and lead the experience.
Direct clinical research specifically examining IFS in psychedelic preparation is still limited. The approach draws on broader research into psychologically supported psychedelic therapy, clinical experience with IFS, and treatment models that emphasise curiosity and respect towards protective responses. IFS is best understood as a promising clinical framework, not as a separately proven psychedelic treatment protocol.
A part that does not want to proceed should not automatically be treated as resistance to overcome. Its concerns may reflect earlier experiences, but they may also point to something important in the present. More preparation, a different setting, additional assessment, or postponement may sometimes be the most appropriate response.
No therapeutic model can guarantee that a psychedelic experience will not be difficult. IFS-informed preparation may help someone recognize and relate differently to fear, control, or inner conflict, but it cannot remove all uncertainty. Careful screening, appropriate support, a safe setting, and realistic expectations remain essential.
Calmness generally allows for curiosity, emotional contact, and flexibility. Protective disconnection may feel flat, distant, or unusually controlled, with limited access to bodily sensations or emotions. The distinction is not always easy to recognize alone and may become clearer through careful psychological preparation.
