Why Have I Been in Therapy for Years, Understand Myself Deeply, and Still Not Feel Better?

This is a question I’ve heard many people ask, both inside and outside the therapy room. People may have told you that you’re extremely self-aware – maybe you’ve even heard this from your therapist – but you’re still struggling with the same issues.

IFS offers an answer to this question that I’ve found extremely helpful in my own and my clients’ healing: understanding what is going on with us, but not feeling any better, often means that analytical and cognitive parts have taken on responsibility for healing.

These parts are insightful, articulate, and often organised around natural traits like intelligence, depth of processing, and logical thinking. They’re not the problem. But when they stay in charge, therapy can stay at that cognitive level, while other parts of the system don’t get direct contact or care.

When thinking and analytical parts take over the work of healing

Analytical parts usually form by organising around capacities you were born with. If you were naturally observant, intelligent, methodical, or inclined to reflect deeply, these parts learned to use those traits to keep you safe. These parts can help create order and reduce unpredictability. Putting language on difficult things can also, to an extent, help things feel more manageable

These parts are genuinely helpful. They notice patterns, seek out information by consuming content, connect past and present, and help you communicate clearly in therapy. For many people, they are the reason therapy works at all in the early stages.

Difficulties arise when these parts quietly become responsible for change itself. When pain persists, they conclude that the answer must be more insight, more explanation, or better theories. Emotions then become something to figure out rather than something to sit with.

Why insights alone don’t reach the parts that are actually hurting

From an IFS perspective, symptoms aren’t caused by a lack of understanding or information. They come from parts that are carrying painful emotions and beliefs.

Some of these parts hold pain – fear, shame, grief, loneliness, or heavy beliefs. Others are protectors that manage, suppress, distract, or organise life to keep that pain from surfacing.

When analytical parts try to help here, they often talk about other parts rather than letting those parts speak for themselves. They explain why reactions make sense, trace them back to history, or reframe them cognitively. This can be useful, but it can also keep us at a distance from what’s actually happening.

Ironically, when thinking parts stay in charge, the system often doesn’t learn anything new. It stays with familiar interpretations instead of encountering something alive in the moment.

What these parts are usually protecting you from

Analytical parts are often protecting against emotional overwhelm. Many learned early that strong feelings weren’t safe, welcome, or manageable. Maybe emotions were met with logic instead of comfort. Maybe there was no one available to stay present.

In those moments, these cognitive parts became the caretakers of younger parts because nothing else was available.

From that perspective, we can see how hard these parts are trying to help. Their job has often been to prevent flooding, chaos, or collapse by seeking out answers and explanations. Asking them to step back without trust feels dangerous for a good reason. But once our thinking parts can start getting to know our Self – the caring, compassionate and healing presence inside each of us – they can slowly start seeing that there is a different way to be with difficult emotions.

How this shows up in IFS therapy

IFS works with analytical parts rather than trying to get rid of them. They’re not criticised or pushed aside. Instead, therapy involves getting to know them and working with them.

In sessions, these parts might be invited to stay close by, observe, or sit in the background while attention turns toward other parts of the system. They’re reassured that they’re not being excluded, and that they’re welcome to use all their skills to reflect on and analyse what emerges later.

When thinking parts allow direct contact with other parts, something different becomes possible. Instead of second-hand descriptions, the system hears directly from the source: whether that’s a vulnerable part or another protector. Now, we are able to form a direct relationship with other parts.

This often leads not only to healing, but also to learning that couldn’t happen through analysis alone. Paradoxically, this tends to satisfy analytical parts rather than diminish them. They gain access to new, real-time information.

Nothing is forced and these parts decide whether and when this feels safe enough.

A steadier way of understanding what’s been missing

If your mind has been leading your healing for a long time, it’s likely because it was the most reliable resource you had. Analytical parts used your natural strengths to protect you, and they did that well.

IFS doesn’t ask you to stop thinking or to silence those parts. It offers a different arrangement – one where thinking parts are collaborators, and where understanding grows not just from analysis, but from direct relationship with the rest of your system.

If you’re curious about whether this approach might fit what you’re looking for, you’re welcome to reach out to explore working together.