The Six Fs of IFS, Explained Step by Step

If you've spent any time around IFS — a video, a book, a first session — you've heard someone mention "the Six Fs." It's the closest thing Internal Family Systems has to a step-by-step protocol: six moves, all starting with F, that take you from noticing a part to genuinely knowing it. My name is Conor McMillen. I'm an IFS-trained life coach — I completed the IFS Institute's Level 1 training in 2014 — and the Six Fs is still the backbone of almost every session I do, with clients and inside my own system.

This is the full walkthrough, in plain language. If you'd rather hear me teach it, the video below covers the same territory I teach practitioners in my live trainings:

What are the Six Fs?

The Six Fs come from the IFS model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. In order:

1. Find a part to engage with.
2. Focus on it.
3. Flesh it out.
4. Feel toward it — check how you feel toward the part.
5. Befriend it.
6. Fear — learn what the part is afraid would happen if it stopped doing its job.

Written as a list, it can look mechanical. In practice it's a structure for having a genuine conversation with a part of yourself — and the quality that carries you through every step is the same: calm, curious, and compassionate. Here's each step the way I actually teach it.

1. Find — work with the part that's on top

You can sit down to practice with an agenda — a part you've been working with, something specific you want to explore — and there's nothing wrong with that. But when you actually drop in, I encourage you to release the agenda to some degree and be open to whatever part needs to be heard first. I always say: work with the part that's on top. Not the part you planned to find — the part that's most alive for you in the present moment. You can ask your system, "Can I engage with this part today?" Maybe that part will be there. Maybe some other part shows up instead. That's really okay — the part that shows up is the work.

2. Focus — sit down for coffee

Focus is about attuning your energy toward the part. Notice where it shows up in your body — for most people, most of the time, it does — and how it feels, maybe what it's saying or thinking. You're essentially letting it know: I'm here, I'm focusing on you.

The way I think of it: it's like you and I sat down to have a cup of coffee. We wouldn't sit down and then have you looking around the room — you'd be engaging with me. We're meeting each other. That type of energy you have relationally with other people is exactly what you bring inside when you engage with a part.

3. Flesh it out — paint the part

Now you fill in detail, gently. What does it look like, if anything? What does it feel like? How does it move in your system? What thoughts, feelings, and body sensations come with it? Right now the part is a blank canvas, and you're putting color to it — and as you paint it, the part feels itself becoming real to you. (And if you don't visualize anything at all — more than half my clients don't see their parts. A felt sense, a thought, a pressure in the chest all count. Throw the movie-in-your-head expectation out the window.)

4. Feel toward — the most important question in IFS

How do you feel toward this part? In my mind this is the most important question in the whole model, because it tells you who's actually showing up for the conversation. What we're looking for is calm, curious, and compassionate. If the answer is "calm, curious, compassionate… and angry" — then there's an angry part here too. If it's "…and impatient," there's an impatient part here. Nothing wrong with those parts being present. But before you engage directly, you want to make sure it's really you — that calm, self-led place — sitting down for the coffee.

What if I don't feel calm toward the part?

This happens constantly, and it's not a failure — it's information. If you notice anything other than calm, curious, and compassionate, another part is active. Turn your attention to that part and, very gently, let it know: I see you. I hear you. I feel your anger — and I'd really love to spend some time getting to know this other part. Then ask: would you be willing to relax a little?

Back at the coffee table: you sat down to have coffee with me, and this other person keeps tapping you on the shoulder — hey, hey, hey. It's pretty hard to engage with me while that's happening. So you turn to them and connect: "I really want this conversation. Can I spend time with you after? You don't have to go away, and you're not doing anything wrong — would you like to sit to the side and observe? If you need anything, you can tap my shoulder again." Sometimes a part needs a few rounds of that — validation, then the ask. Most of the time, it relaxes. And sometimes the part doing the tapping needs the attention more than the part you sat down for — so that becomes the session. That's really okay too.

5. Befriend — real curiosity, and the age question

Once you're engaging from that self-led place, you start asking questions — and the best way to do this is to pull on your genuine curiosity. The protocol has questions built in, and the classic one is about the part's job: what are you doing for me? Why do you do that? But if a different question is alive for you, and it's coming from calm, curious, and compassionate, ask that one.

Two questions I find especially powerful. First, the age question: "How old are you? And how old do you think I am?" Parts are often young, and they often think you're young too. If a part says it thinks you're 14 and you're 44, you get to tell it: "I hear that you think I'm 14. I'm actually 44." That can shift a part's energy fast — it's realizing, sometimes for the first time, that it has an adult ally behind it.

Second, the possibility question: "If you didn't have to do this job, what would you like to do instead?" Notice what this does — it doesn't ask the part to change anything. It just sets up a space of hope, a perspective the part may never have considered. You can feel the gears turn: if I didn't have to do this job…

6. Fear — what would happen if you stopped?

The final F: ask the part what it's afraid would happen if it didn't do its job. "What's the concern? What do you think would happen?" And then — this is the whole move — you hear the fear and you validate it. This step is not about manipulating, coercing, or forcing a part to change. Nobody responds well to that in the outside world, and no part of us responds well to it inside. What all of us really want, most of the time, is to be heard and validated for how we're feeling — and through exactly that process, parts naturally and organically begin to soften and shift.

Where the Six Fs sits in the bigger picture

The Six Fs is the front door of the protocol — the way you build a real relationship with a protector. The deeper territory of IFS — polarizations between parts, and the exile work underneath the protectors — opens up from here, and it asks more of you than a list of steps can teach.

If you're practicing on yourself, start with the complete guide to self-led IFS, and when you're ready for a structured path, the Self-Led IFS Program walks you through all of this day by day. A good companion to the Six Fs is the seven questions to ask your parts.

If you're a practitioner — coach, therapist, or on your way — the video above is from the territory I teach in the IFS Education Intensive — On-Demand: the training that practices and clinical teams hire me to teach, now self-paced, with a full module on the Six Fs and the deeper work it opens into.

Common questions

Are the Six Fs only for therapists?

No. The Six Fs is how IFS professionals structure parts work, and it's also completely learnable for your own practice — that's most of what I teach. Whether you work with a therapist, a coach, or on your own, these six moves are a tool you get to keep for the rest of your life.

Are the Six Fs the same as the 8 Cs?

Different things, working together. The 8 Cs describe the qualities of Self — I work mostly with three of them: calm, curious, and compassionate, because three is easy to remember and in my opinion they're the ones that matter most in the moment. The Six Fs is the sequence of the conversation. You bring the Cs to every step of the Fs.

What comes after the Six Fs?

With a protector, the befriending itself is often the work — trust builds over repeated visits, and the part relaxes as it learns you're really there. Over time, protectors that trust you may give you permission to meet what they protect. That's exile work, and it deserves patience: never go faster than the slowest part.

All the best,
Conor McMillen

I am not affiliated with or endorsed by the IFS Institute. "IFS" and "Internal Family Systems" refer to the therapeutic model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. This page is educational and is not therapy or a replacement for therapy.