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This article was updated on September 18, 2026.
In my prior article, Journal Prompts to Cope With Perfectionism, I began a discussion about perfectionism.
In the current article, I'm discussing perfectionism from an IFS therapy perspective (see my article: IFS is a Gentle, Evidence Based Therapy).
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| Like the Japanese art of Kintsugi, IFS therapy doesn't eliminate our perfectionist parts—it repairs them with compassion, revealing the beauty in our cracks |
How Do Defensive Parts Develop?
From an IFS therapy perspective, defensive parts usually develop at an early age.
In IFS these parts are known as proactive and reactive parts.
When you're faced with trauma or adversity, some of the internal parts of yourself are forced to take on extreme, rigid roles to protect you from pain. This usually occurs when you have had experiences as a child of rejection, failure, loneliness, conditional love, abuse or childhood emotional neglect.
The Core Self:
From an IFS perspective, the Core Self is not a part.
Everyone is born with a Core Self and a natural ability to heal. However, when there is childhood trauma, the Core Self can get blended with your defensive parts (both proactive and reactive parts). That can make it difficult to access the Core Self.
Your IFS therapist can help you to discover your Core Self which helps with the healing process (see below for explanations about the proactive and reactive/defensive parts).
The Core Self and the 8 Cs
The Core Self is composed of the 8 Cs:
- Curiosity: Wanting to learn about your thoughts and feelings without judgment
- Compassion: Feeling kind towards your inner struggles
- Calm: Feeling steady and peaceful inside--even during rough times
- Clarity: Seeing your situation clearly without emotional fog
- Courage: Feeling able to face hard truths and uncomfortable emotions
- Confidence: Trusting that you can handle what comes your way
- Creativity: Opening up to new ideas and flexible ways of thinking
- Connectedness: Feeling a deep sense of belonging within yourself and with others
The Wounded and Defensive Parts:
This is the usual sequence of how wounded and defensive parts develop and how IFS healing process:
- 1. The Wounded Child Develops First During Childhood Trauma: Before the proactive or reactive parts develop, a vulnerable child part is wounded. The vulnerable child part is not a proactive or reactive part. It's the part that holds the trauma. As an example, a child might be rejected, yelled at or abused by a parent when she gets a bad grade at school. The child internalizes the parent's attitude towards her and believes "I'm unlovable" or "I'm powerless". In order to survive, the child's system buries the memory and painful emotion deep inside, which creates the exiled wounded child part.
- 2. The Perfectionist Part Steps Up to Prevent Pain (Proactive Part): Once the wounded part is buried, the internal system realizes it can never allow the wounded part to be triggered or exposed again. The proactive part emerges to police your life and prevent future pain before it can happen again. This part's strategy is, "If I can be perfect and never make mistakes, no one can ever reject or hurt me again." This part takes over your consciousness and establishes impossibly high standards. This might work reasonably well for you as a child and you get praise from relatives and teachers, which reinforces this survival strategy.
- 3. The Inner Critic Develops a Preemptive Shield: As life becomes more complex, maintaining 100% perfection becomes impossible. To protect you from the crushing blow of external judgment, a harsher manager called the inner critic, develops after the perfectionist develops. The inner critic believes that beating you up first (before you get external criticism) provides a safe shield. The inner critic's logic is, "If I criticize you for being lazy or messy before anyone else notices, I'll force you to fix it before others are able to hurt you." The inner critic often adopts the same words, attitude and tone of the critical authority figures from your past (parents, teachers and critical others). The inner critic learned that those voices are what define "safety" and "correctness".
- 4. The Parts Freeze in Time: The primary reason why these parts continue to be problems is that they are frozen in the past. Your perfectionist and critical parts often don't know that you are no longer child. They still believe you are that fragile child that couldn't survive without them.
- 5. The Parts Take on Healthy Roles: As part of IFS therapy, you learn to have a dialogue and a relationship with these parts of yourself to help them to understand that you now have adult resilience. As you develop a trusting relationship with these parts, they usually realize for the first time that you are no longer a fragile child that needs protection and they can relax instead of staying in exhausting roles. This allows them to take on healthy functions. For instance, instead of obsessively criticizing and striving for perfection, they might encourage you with a sense of healthy motivation.
Conclusion
For the sake of simplicity, I have described an inner world that has one wounded part, one proactive defensive part and one reactive defensive part.
In reality, there are usually many wounded, proactive and reactive parts to heal.
Although I have focused on perfectionism, the IFS step-by-step process is the same for any other problem.
In my next article, I'll discuss how IFS therapy works to heal perfectionism.
Get Help in IFS Therapy
If you have been trying without success to work through your problems, you could benefit from working with an IFS therapist.
IFS therapy can help you to heal your problems so you can be live a more fulfilling life free from your traumatic history.
About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and advanced practitioner specializing in IFS Parts Work, Somatic Experiencing, AEDP, EMDR, EFT Couples Therapy and Certified Sex Therapist.
I provide depth-oriented, experiential therapy to help individual adults and couples move past internal blockages into authentic relational alignment.
To learn more about my clinical background, clinical philosophy, and healing approach, please visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.
- Office Location: I see clients in-person at my Greenwich Village office (New York, NY 10011) as well as online via secure telehealth.
- Initial Contact: I provide a complimentary 15-minute introductory phone call prior to scheduling an initial appointment.
- Contact Information: You can reach me directly at (917) 742-2624 during standard business hours or email me.
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