Internal Family Systems · Virtual · Six provinces
IFS Therapy (Internal Family Systems)
You have probably been having some version of this argument with yourself for years. Internal Family Systems just gives both sides a chair.
Online sessions with Mohamad Shabib, who has completed IFS Level 1 and Level 2 training. Available across BC, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador. English and Arabic. Free 15–20 minute consultation, evenings and weekends.
At a glance
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapy that works with the mind as a set of parts — protective patterns and the vulnerable feelings they guard — rather than as one voice. People looking for an IFS therapist, or for Internal Family Systems therapists, are looking for that parts work. At TEO Counselling it is provided online by Mohamad Shabib (MACP, CCC), who has completed IFS Level 1 and Level 2 training and sees clients in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador, in English or Arabic. Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session, couples sessions are $175 per 60-minute session, and the first step is a free 15–20 minute consultation with no referral needed. The wider BC picture — fees, extended health coverage, and every clinician available in the province — is on our British Columbia therapy page.
Searching for IFS therapy near me is usually an office search. This work is virtual only across six provinces, not in-person. Mohamad has IFS Level 1 and Level 2 training — never Certified, never certified-in-IFS.
What a “part” means in IFS therapy
Start with something you already say. Part of me wants to leave the job; part of me is terrified to. I know it’s fine, but something in me won’t settle. Ordinary language is full of this. IFS therapy takes that as its starting point: that internal experience often does not run as one continuous voice.
Internal Family Systems treats that ordinary observation as useful rather than sloppy. In IFS, a part is a recurring pattern — a cluster of thought, feeling, body sensation and impulse that shows up reliably, holds a consistent point of view, and has something it is trying to accomplish. The one that rehearses conversations at 2 a.m. The one that goes flat and polite the second there is tension in the room. The one that reaches for the phone the moment a feeling gets uncomfortable.
Nothing about this is mystical, and none of it is a diagnosis. It is not the same as dissociative identity disorder, which is a distinct clinical diagnosis and not what this page is describing. “Parts” is a working language — a way of getting specific about internal experience so it can be worked with instead of argued about.
Protectors, exiles and Self: the IFS map
IFS sorts internal experience into a small number of roles. The map is simple; what it opens up is not.
Managers
Work in advance. Their job is to keep pain from arriving in the first place. This is where perfectionism lives, along with over-planning, harsh self-criticism, people-pleasing, staying busy, scanning a room for whoever is unhappy. Managers are often the parts other people admire, which is one reason they are hard to put down.
Firefighters
Work after the fact. When something painful breaks through anyway, their job is to make the feeling stop now, whatever it costs later. Drinking, bingeing, scrolling for three hours, shutting down, spending, leaving. Firefighters are not stupid about consequences. They have simply been assigned an emergency, and emergencies do not weigh costs.
Exiles
What the protectors are organised around — younger, more vulnerable parts carrying the fear, shame, grief or loneliness that formed when something was too much at the time. They are exiled because feeling them fully once felt unsurvivable.
Self
Not another part. It is what is present when the parts step back a little: curiosity instead of judgment, some steadiness, some perspective, the capacity to be with something difficult without being swallowed by it. The model works from the assumption that this exists in everyone and cannot be damaged — only crowded out. That is a premise of the approach, not a proven fact about the brain, and it is worth naming it as such.
Some of what firefighters do lands on other people — rage, contempt, walking out mid-argument. Understanding what a part is protecting does not cancel what it costs someone else, and this work does not ask anyone to accept being hurt while it happens. If that is part of the picture, the safety note further down this page applies alongside everything else here.
Managers and firefighters are both protective parts. They tend to disagree with each other, which is why the internal argument feels endless: one part cracks the whip, another part goes numb in response, and the whip comes down harder.
Why IFS says no part is bad
This is the idea the whole model turns on, so it is worth slowing down for.
In IFS terms, an inner critic is understood as protective rather than self-sabotaging. It often looks as though the part took the job because criticism from inside felt safer than criticism from outside — get there first, and the blow lands softer. A part that drinks is not, in this model, a weak part; it is often using the fastest tool it trusts to end pain. A part that goes cold in an argument has often learned, somewhere, that cold was safer than open.
They are extreme. They are often costing a great deal. But in this model they are not enemies and they are not stupid — they are doing a job they took on for a reason, usually a long time ago, usually with far fewer options than are available now. Understanding why a part does something is not the same as concluding it is harmless. The cost it carries, to you and to the people around you, still counts.
This matters practically, not just philosophically. A part under attack often digs in. People often arrive having already tried to defeat their own behaviour — willpower, deadlines, contempt — and found that the harder they push, the harder something pushes back. IFS does not ask you to win that fight. It asks a different question: what is this part afraid would happen if it stopped? The answer is usually a real answer. And a protective part that trusts the answer has been heard is often willing to loosen its grip, which is not something it will do under pressure.
What happens in a session
People genuinely do not know, so here is the shape of it.
You name something concrete — a reaction you keep having, a behaviour you can’t argue yourself out of, an argument that went the way they always go. Then, instead of analysing it, you turn your attention toward the part of you doing it and describe what you notice. It might be a tightness in the chest, a tone of voice, an image, a familiar sentence.
Then comes the question that does most of the work: how do you feel toward that part? If the answer is “I hate it” or “I want it gone,” that is useful information — it means another part has an opinion, and that one gets attention first. Nothing is skipped past.
When there is enough space, you get curious with it directly. How long has it been doing this. What is it worried about. What would it have to feel if it stopped. Protective parts frequently answer, and the answers are often more coherent than expected.
Only when the protectors agree does the work move toward what they are protecting. That permission step is not a formality; it is the main safeguard in the model. IFS does not require a detailed retelling of what happened to you, and it is not designed to push you into the deep end to prove something.
Sessions are online. Some people close their eyes; many keep them open.
What it actually feels like
Talking to a part of yourself sounds strange until you have done it.
Most people feel self-conscious in the first attempt. That is normal, and for many people it passes sooner than expected — often because something answers back that they did not consciously compose. Some people get images. Some hear a phrase. Many get nothing visual at all and only notice a shift in the body — something loosening, or a tightening that says not yet. All of these count.
Some people get nothing for several sessions. That happens, and in IFS terms it is not failure; it is usually a cautious protector deciding whether this is safe. That gets worked with too.
It is not hypnosis. You are awake, you remember everything, you can stop at any point, and you can say “I don’t want to go there today” without a debate.
Is “parts work therapy” the same as IFS?
Close, but not identical. Parts work therapy is the broad umbrella for any approach that treats the mind as having distinguishable inner voices or states — ego state therapy, chairwork, schema modes and others all sit under it. Some of these ideas are decades older than IFS.
IFS is one specific, structured version of parts work: its own map (managers, firefighters, exiles, Self), its own sequence, and its own rule that you do not approach a vulnerable part without the protectors’ permission. If you searched “parts work therapy” and landed here, IFS is most likely what you were reading about.
IFS vs CBT: how they actually differ
The honest answer is that they are asking different questions rather than competing for the same one.
CBT
Works with the content of thoughts
- Is this thought accurate? What is the evidence?
- What happens if you change the behaviour and watch what follows?
- Structured, usually time-limited, often involves practice between sessions
- One of the largest and longest-standing research bases in psychotherapy for several specific difficulties
- Tends to be efficient for clearly bounded problems — panic, insomnia, a specific phobia, a defined behavioural pattern
IFS
Works with the relationship between parts
- Less interested in whether the critical thought is accurate
- More interested in who is saying it, how old that voice is, and what it believes will happen if it goes quiet
- People tend to reach for it when they already understand the logic, can recite the reframe perfectly, and still feel exactly the same
Neither of those observations is a rule about you. They are also not incompatible — Mohamad has training in both IFS Level 1 and 2 and CBT for Trauma Level 1 and 2.
Who IFS tends to suit — and who it may not, right now
IFS often lands well for people who:
- have a loud internal critic and have lost every argument with it
- feel like a noticeably different person at work, at home, and alone
- understand intellectually why they are like this, and feel no different for knowing
- have coping behaviours they cannot reason themselves out of
- carry long-standing relational or childhood material rather than one discrete event
- dislike being told what to think, and would rather be asked
It may not be the right starting point right now if:
- you are in immediate crisis, or housing and safety are unstable — practical stabilisation generally comes first
- experiencing yourself as having separate parts is distressing rather than clarifying, or you have a history of psychosis
- substance use is at a level that needs medical detox or a higher level of care than outpatient therapy sessions can provide
- you want a short, protocol-driven course of work for one clearly defined problem, where a more structured approach may get you there faster
These are tendencies, not rules, and none of them is a judgment about you. If two or three of those landed, the next step is a free 15–20 minute consultation. The consultation exists partly so all of this can be said out loud, including saying that we are not the right fit. Cost can be said out loud there too. IFS runs open-ended rather than as a fixed course of sessions, so the per-session figure is what there is to plan against — you can check what a session costs and how much notice a cancellation needs before you book.
Book a Free ConsultationDoes IFS work? What the evidence shows
IFS is widely practised and has a detailed, well-specified clinical model. As a research subject it is still young, and it deserves a straight description rather than marketing.
The published research base is small. It is dominated by case studies and a handful of small trials, with only a few randomised controlled trials so far. Published reviews describe the early findings as promising while stating plainly that larger, fully powered studies are needed before anything firmer can be said.
What that means in plain terms: the evidence is early and encouraging, not settled. It is a much smaller base than CBT or EMDR have accumulated. Anyone describing IFS as proven for a specific condition is ahead of the data, and no approach — this one included — can be promised to work for you.
It is also not the only useful thing in the room. IFS is used here because it is often clarifying for people who have been stuck in a fight with themselves, and it is combined with other training where that makes more sense.
Mohamad Shabib
Founder of TEO Counselling Services Inc., he has completed IFS Level 1 and Level 2 training. He is not an IFS Certified Therapist — that is a separate credential issued by the IFS Institute, and he does not hold it. The distinction is easy to blur and we would rather be exact about it.
He is a Canadian Certified Counsellor, holds an MACP, with additional training in Advanced EMDR (EMDRIA), Gottman Method Levels 1 and 2, CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, and hands-on addictions experience. He served as a Trauma Counsellor at Edgewood in Nanaimo with concurrent trauma and addictions, including first responders, and began counselling in 2020. Sessions available in English and Arabic.
Read Mohamad’s full bio →Our other clinicians, Alison Shaji (RCC, British Columbia) and Rola Shbib (RSW, Ontario), bring different training and do not offer IFS.
Session details
Clinician registrations differ — Alison as an RCC in British Columbia, Rola as an RSW in Ontario — so where you are affects which clinician you can see. Receipts are provided for extended health plans. TEO is an approved provider with BC’s Crime Victim Assistance Program.
Book a Free ConsultationIf things are unsafe right now
Therapy sessions are scheduled appointments, not a crisis service, and no page can assess your situation.
- If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911
- In Canada, the Suicide Crisis Helpline can be reached by calling or texting 988, at any hour
If someone in your home is being hurt, that needs a response faster than a waitlist — 911, or a local crisis or victim services line. And if you are the one worried about your own behaviour toward someone else, that is still a legitimate reason to seek help, and saying so is not something you will be shamed for here.
Common questions about IFS therapy
Is IFS the same as having multiple personalities?
No. Dissociative identity disorder is a specific clinical diagnosis with its own features. The "parts" language in IFS describes ordinary internal multiplicity — the same thing you are doing when you say part of you wants one thing and part of you wants another. Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and only an assessment with a qualified professional can address that question.
Will I have to relive what happened to me?
IFS does not require a detailed retelling. The model deliberately works with protective parts first and moves toward more vulnerable material only when those parts agree. If they do not agree, that is the work, not an obstacle to it.
How many sessions does IFS take?
There is no fixed number, and anyone quoting you one is guessing. Some people notice a change in how they relate to a familiar reaction within the first few sessions. Longstanding protective patterns generally take longer. This is reviewed with you as you go rather than decided in advance.
Does IFS work online?
It adapts well. The work is internal, and being in your own space — with the option to stay there afterward instead of driving home — often helps rather than hinders.
Is it covered by insurance?
That depends on your plan and on which practitioner registrations it recognises, which varies more than people expect. Receipts are provided for extended health plans, and it is worth confirming the specifics with your insurer before booking rather than after.
Is Mohamad an IFS Certified Therapist?
No. He has completed IFS Level 1 and Level 2 training. Certification is a distinct IFS Institute credential he does not hold.
Can I do IFS alongside another therapy?
Often, yes. The question is usually sequencing rather than the combination itself — if structured trauma processing is already underway elsewhere, adding a second approach at the same time can pull in two directions. Mohamad’s training includes EMDR and Gottman Method as well as IFS, so where approaches would overlap it is worth raising in the consultation before starting rather than midway through.
Start with a conversation
Book a free 15–20 minute consultation. It is a conversation about what you are dealing with and whether this approach fits — no commitment, and no obligation to book afterward.
Book a Free ConsultationOr call (519) 760-5211
Not ready to book? Send a message instead.
If you would like to ask about parts work before booking a time, send a short note and we will reply by email.