The Myth of Inner Parts in OCD
IFS’s Growing Popularity and Why It Falls Short for OCD Internal Family Systems (IFS) has swept through psychotherapy over the past decade. Its language of protectors, exiles, firefighters, and inner families gives people a cast of internal characters to identify with. It is imaginative. It is intuitive. It gives emotional life a narrative shape. And for many conditions, that narrative structure feels meaningful or even comforting. Because of this broad appeal, IFS is now being pulled into the treatment of OCD. [...]
The Magic of ICBT: Seeing Through OCD’s Illusion
Illusion has always offered one of the clearest metaphors for understanding obsessional doubt. Not the trivial kind, rabbits in hats or cards up sleeves, but the deeper magic of psychological illusion: the kind that reshapes perception, redirects attention, and persuades an audience to believe in a reality that is not there. From its earliest ideas, Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) drew on this logic of illusion. Magicians understand how attention can be redirected, how a fictive layer can be projected over [...]
Is I-CBT Just Exposure by Another Name? Why It’s Not, and Why That Matters
Every so often, a question appears that seems straightforward but reveals a deeper misunderstanding: “If Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) helps people face situations they’ve been avoiding, isn’t that just exposure with a different name?” The exposure therapy in question is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the long-standing behavioral standard for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The comparison is understandable, but misleading. From a distance, I-CBT may look as if it leads people back into situations they once feared, much like [...]