Part 1 of 4. The image of God, what IFS actually is, and what trauma does to the likeness of God in us.
You can love someone and want to leave the room in the same minute. You can want prayer and not be able to sit still for it. You can believe God is good and still hear a voice in you that says He isn’t even real.
Most of us were taught to treat that split as hypocrisy, or as proof we were never whole. This series offers a different reading.
Our soul begins as a smooth foundation: the image of God in you. Not a pile of pieces. One likeness, whole and unbroken. That foundation is what Internal Family Systems names the true Self. You do not need the model yet. You need the claim. God made you in His image. Trauma did not get the first word.
What trauma does
When trauma comes, it fractures that image. Those fractures can begin to resemble a mosaic. The likeness is still there. What you can see of it has been obscured or hidden completely. Each fragment is a part: a piece of the break that now has a job, a fear, and a voice. Many parts are terrified.
We were not created as a mosaic. The mosaic is what the fractures became. Healing is not admiring the pieces and it is not throwing them out. As Christians we invite our wounded parts to befriend Christ, so that He can bring true healing. He integrates them so the likeness shows.
Paul already knew the split
Romans 7 is a man telling the truth about an inner war. I do not understand what I do. What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do. It is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me.
There is an I, and there is something at work in him that is not the whole of him. The I is the image of God still speaking. The thing at work is a part carrying a burden. When I say sin in this series, I mean that burden: anything that separates us from God or distorts the image of God in us. The part is not trash. The burden on the part is what warps the likeness of God in us.
What IFS actually is
Internal Family Systems is not multiple personalities. A family therapist named Richard Schwartz noticed that clients spoke like a household. A worried part. A harsh part. A younger part still holding the original wound. From a Christian reading those are not extra souls. They are fractures in the image of God.
Without a map, Christians often baptize the loudest part and call it personality, or declare war on it and call that sanctification. Both leave the wound in charge. A map lets you say: this is a part, not the whole image.
Years before I sat with IFS I read The Ethics of Beauty by Dr. Timothy Patitsas. In it, he names trauma as the opposite of true Beauty. Beauty invites you into communion with God. Trauma cuts us off from God and from each other, unravels virtue, and teaches a lie that feels like the whole truth: the image is destroyed and worthless.
That lesson is the lie. The image is not destroyed. One wound may leave only a few parts in the way. Years of trauma can cover almost the whole image. You are not a ruined creation. You are a distorted one. Distortion can be healed.
Next: the three kinds of parts most people meet first.
If you live in California
You do not have to sort the parts alone. I walk this work with California residents by telehealth anywhere in the state, and in person in Redding. We start where the foundation still is: the image of God in you. We treat every part as something to meet, not something to exile or display. As Christians we invite wounded parts to befriend Christ, so that He can bring true healing.
This is not crisis care. If you are in immediate danger, call 988 or go to the nearest emergency room. If you are ready for a slower, Scripture-honoring conversation about the parts that have been running your life, you are welcome to reach out.