January 2025 – Internal Family Systems: The Young Adult Part
This month’s article continues the run of Internal Family System (IFS) reflections (on Protectors, Exiles, the Self, and World Events) this time on the Young Adult part. The YA is the part of the psyche that emerges generally (in the West) about early to mid-20’s, when there is a transition from the more protected environments of family and school into having to build out an adult life. This is not the full Adult, which is marked by a stabilized ability to know and accept the world as it is, and regulate the inner world as one navigates with sufficient skill the external world. It’s a difficult and often un-demarcated phase of development, which leads to a blurring of the Adult and YA, an unhelpful conflation. So, the following piece attempts to clarify what the YA is and isn’t, and I hope it helps in spotting this Part in yourself, such that you can keep bringing forward the full Adult. (If the IFS lens is intriguing, you can check out the popular version of IFS, No Bad Parts, and the clinical manual, Internal Family Systems Therapy, both by Richard Schwartz.)
During this winter, may you be finding warmth in the cold, and light in the dark.
Describing IFS and the Young Adult part.
(If you’ve missed previous articles about IFS you might want to pause here and read them, as they will give you an overview of the IFS system. Here they are, on Protectors, Exiles, the Self, and World Events.)
We all have managers that are Self-like or Self-lite. We don’t typically detect them, because they’re so blended and involved in most of our interactions with the world. They often believe they are us, and we often believe that too. But they’re just a really convincing kind of protector. They make us nice, polite, and caring, for example, but only to persuade other people to like us and think we are good. And they’re often the ones responsible for keeping certain parts they don’t approve of exiled. Unlike the Self, Self-like managers have protective agendas and aren’t fully authentic when they convey caring, gratitude, or respect. They’re what some people derogatorily refer to as the ego, but they deserve our love rather than our disdain. Just like any other protector, we need to relieve them of their huge burdens of responsibility. (No Bad Parts, p. 88)
Clues that a Self-like part is running the inner show include (1) lack of progress in therapy despite apparent Self-energy in the client and (2) exiles refusing to interact with or be comforted by the Self’s (really the Self-like part’s) presence. (Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd Ed., p. 231)
Although Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) does not make a point of identifying the Parts of the psyche according to age, I’ve found it a useful way of seeing who’s who. Given that each developmental stage of a human has its own relatively unique features, asking the question of “how old is this Part” can give a lot of information about what age the Part is, and therefore how it is seeing and trying to relate to the world at large. There is certainly individual nuance, but I’ve found that the following groupings does a good job at describing the essential structure of these parts according to their developmental stage (including rough age ranges): infant/young child (about 0-2), child (2-11), teenager (12-18), young adult (18-25ish), adult (less about age then about functioning in a particular way).
The focus of this article is specifically on the Young Adult (YA), who seems to get missed often as a (relatively) distinct developmental stage that’s not the teenager, nor the Adult (which I often distinguish from the YA by calling it the “Full Adult” or the “Adult Adult”). The YA often shows up as the Self-Like part (as Schwartz describes above) because the YA often has to play the role of the full Adult, and can do that for a whole lifetime. The YA points to the phase of a human’s life when a person is no longer under the authority and guidance of adults and adult institutions (high school, college/graduate school, military) and must start understanding how to interface with a world that no longer sees them as, or gives them the concessions of being, a dependent. For some cultures this may start much earlier than in the West, but here it tends to correlate with the end of high school for some, and the end of college/grad school for others. That is, the time when one starts having to provide for oneself, and where caregivers (parents, institutions) begin withdrawing support and insisting one be self-supporting.
In contrast with the YA, the teenager is between autonomy and dependency, and their job is to begin separating their identity from their parents (and to some degree, culture-of-origin), and experiment with what identity and group seems congruent with their core self. But this happens when there is still a lot of the Child’s needs present and pulling for attention in the psyche, which the teen keeps falling into and resisting at the same time, leading to the normal and necessary chaos of this period.
Then, on the other side of the YA, the Adult represents the functioning of a person who is relatively self-integrated (the Parts are not fragmented and fractious), and who is able to navigate the external world and its requirements with a reasonable amount of acceptance and skill. (One starts seeing the Adult solidify around mid-30’s in general, but there’s a lot of variability; there are plenty of people in their 70’s who still show up as YA at best.)
The YA, then, is en route (if things go well) to the Adult stage, but they have a very difficult path. The world at large (partners, employers, government agencies) are going to look at them expecting and/or demanding behavior that matches the Adult description above, but at a time where the person is barely out of the teenager stage. This comes with a lot of pressure, as the consequence for not figuring out how to do the adult world systems required for survival and progression, and at least look like an Adult, are glaringly obvious to the YA. From the homeless to the “man-child” to the person in the dead-end job at 50, the object lessons all instruct the YA about what happens if they fail to make this transition.
What this means is that the YA has to turn their attention from their own self (the Child) and from their self-in-group (the Teenager) to the outside world, but without the confidence or competence to do so…confidently and competently. If the YA is still beset by needy internal Child and Teen parts (not to mention agitated Infants), and cannot regulate those Parts, they will stumble just when they are needing to get their stride. It’s something like the early phase of learning to drive a car, where you have enough experience and training to keep it from stalling, but not enough yet to do it elegantly, and still with a lot of fear you will crash.
Hence the YA is typically anxious, self-conscious, marked by efforts to suppress the younger Parts and their needs (since the YA does not know how to parent), and often experiences imposter syndrome in work and social settings (i.e., “I don’t deserve success, I don’t belong here, and I’m going to be discovered and kicked out”). The YA knows the contours of what an Adult looks like, and tries to mimic it to fit in socially (and to learn what being an Adult means). Also, an orientation to controlling outcomes, rather than engaging the present, becomes much more prominent. Getting a good job, finding partners, solidifying one’s place in the group/community—these all pull for attention at this phase. Not that the YA necessarily engages these right at the start; the pull of the Teen and Child are still strong, and can continue on through the 20’s as a resistance to moving into the YA stage. But there is a tension that begins here between self-involvement and world-involvement that is going to have to be worked out.
(In getting a bead on the YA, it is important to remember that IFS understands the Parts as modes of functioning, such that the “Young Adult” is a particular way in which we think/feel/act in the world. It comes on-line around the early-mid 20’s, but it is not fused to that age any more than the other Parts, such that one can see the YA playing out in people who are 60 years old. That is, you can spot it by its qualities, not by the age of the person.)
An example: Becca (not a real person) is a 47yr old married woman who works as an advertising executive and struggles with chronic anxiety. She does not take medication (she feels it is weak) but uses hard exercise and caffeine to regulate the emotions. Her work life is very functional, but her wife complains that Becca is gone too much, and when she’s around is not very emotionally connected. Becca’s life goals are work related, particularly climbing the ladder further, and she does not express many desires outside of work. She had a fairly normal upbringing, although her parents were generally emotionally detached, and she remembers having separation anxieties as a young child, “but that in the far past.”
In Becca we can see the YA in high contrast: she is future oriented, is oriented towards goal attainment rather than relationship, tries to control her emotions through suppression, holds a philosophy that lauds work and self-reliance, and denies the impact and presence of her past. In IFS terms, she has exiled her Child and Teenager parts, denying their relevance or their attempts to communicate through her symptoms. Her present anxiety is both the voice of the younger Parts, as well as the YA’s fear of those Parts taking over and collapsing the YA’s mission of making and stabilizing an adult life.
If Becca was to engage psychotherapy, what would have to happen to alleviate the anxiety would be the integration of the Child and Teen parts into a psyche in which the Adult infused with the Self (see here) is the central organizer, and in which the YA is heartily thanked for her Self-like work and allowed to put down her heavy burden of having to defend an adult life when she is not the Adult. This would be a difficult process given how long her YA has been running the show, and the YA would not initially trust the Adult/Parent and Self, in large part because they were not modeled in her parents. But nonetheless, the YA, when given space and support in therapy, will start describing how hard it has been and how much she would love to step back from the main stage, which is what will happen when things feel safe enough.
In therapy, Becca would learn the difference between the YA, who tends to herself mainly in order to suppress the younger Parts, and the Adult self who is genuinely parental. The way she would learn to tell the difference is by asking herself, “How do I feel towards that Part?” If her answer was, “Kind and empathic,” she’d know that the Adult was present, because understanding and empathy are the central features and superpowers of the Adult. But if the answer was something else, then she’d know she is located in (blended with) a different Part. If it’s the YA, then she will look towards the young Parts and feel some version of, “I’m annoyed, because I just want them to be quiet so I can get on with it.” It might sound like something kind, maybe, “I wonder what I can do to not feel sad,” but when unpacked, she would find that the intention is not to purely listen and connect with, but to fix and quiet. As much as the YA may think it is, or think it should be, the parent, it simply is not; that is the competency of the Adult.
Conclusion
As with all other Parts, the YA is just trying to do what it is programmed to do; it is not trying to harm or hurt anyone, it is not doing anything wrong or bad. The problems come when the YA is not connected to a supportive and guiding Adult, what the fortunate individual gets from a parent or mentor who shepherds them through this new stage. Given that the medicine is always that which was missing, when the YA is given that missing parent/mentor in the form of the Adult, it will release its tight grip on the reigns of the psyche, allow the younger Parts to take space, and permit the integration of the different parts (the internal family) to happen. Although this process can get halted for a number of reasons, it can always be restarted.
