by Ben Carey Donaldson, certified IFS Therapist
(estimated reading time: 9 minutes)
Depression is far more widespread than you might think. It's also very commonly misunderstood. The clinical picture — low mood, reduced interest, disrupted sleep and appetite, difficulty concentrating, thoughts of hopelessness — captures something real. But it leaves out a great deal of what people actually feel when they describe being depressed: the flatness that is harder to name than sadness, the sense of going through the motions, the peculiar exhaustion of feeling nothing in particular.
This article looks at depression and emotional numbness through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a psychotherapeutic model that understands the mind as made up of multiple distinct parts, each with its own perspective and functional role. From an IFS perspective, the shutdown that characterises depression can be more than a simple disorder to be corrected. It can also be an organised response: something the inner system learned to do in difficult past circumstances, and which continues because the system hasn't yet learned to do anything different.
What follows explains what depression and numbness typically involve, why they persist even when circumstances change, and what the IFS model offers that more conventional approaches sometimes don't.
What Depression Actually Feels Like — Beyond the Checklist
The PHQ-9 — the most widely used depression screening tool in clinical practice — asks about nine symptom categories: low mood, reduced interest, sleep and appetite disturbance, fatigue, concentration difficulties, psychomotor changes, and thoughts of hopelessness or self-harm.
More subjectively, people describe depression in many ways. As a heaviness that has no obvious cause. As a greyness that settles over everything. As the absence of a feeling that used to be there, the inability to access what used to come easily. As functioning normally in every external sense while feeling entirely absent from the inside.
There is also a version of depression that doesn't look depressed at all. It's the kind that allows someone to keep performing, meeting deadlines, being present for others, all while carrying a persistent inner flatness that nobody around them can see.
Whatever form it takes, one of the most consistent features of depression is that it resists explanation. Understanding why you feel the way you do rarely makes the feeling lift. This is often what leads people toward models like IFS that work at a different level than insight and interpretation.
Why Low Mood and Numbness Tend to Persist
Depression can have many causes: cognitive distortions that perpetuate negative affect, neurochemical imbalance, inflammation, or even simple sleep dysregulation. These myriad causes have, in turn, myriad treatments. Medication can sometimes be appropriate, though awareness is growing as to the extent that it can be over-prescribed and, in many cases, ineffective. Beyond medication, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy — CBT — is often favoured, which works to retrain depressive thought patterns in the hopes that this will then change emotional states.
More recent research on neural prediction and the maintenance of depressive states offers an alternative framework, however. The depressed brain, in neuropsychological terms, might be said to be caught in a cycle of negative predictions based on past experience.
"The traditional view of depression is that negative thoughts cause negative feelings. I'm suggesting it's the other way around. Your feelings right now drive your next thought, as well as your perceptions, [and, therefore] your predictions."
— Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made
This cycle-of-uncorrected-predictions account aligns closely with what IFS observes in the therapeutic room: the parts of the system carrying depression are not responding to the present. They are responding to what the system learned in the past about what the present is likely to contain.
What this means practically is that analysis alone — even accurate analysis — doesn't disrupt the cycle. Something else is required: a change in the internal relationship to the parts maintaining the shutdown, rather than a more correct explanation of what they're doing.
What IFS Understands That Other Models Often Miss
The central insight of IFS — Internal Family Systems therapy is that the mind is not a unified whole. It is a system of parts, each with its own perspective, emotional range, and way of relating to the world. This is not pathology; it is simply the architecture of human experience.
What IFS adds to the depression conversation is a functional understanding of what the shutdown is doing. Low mood, flatness, and emotional withdrawal are not, in this model, things that are happening to a person. They are responses being generated by specific parts of the inner system, because the safest move seems to be to dim the lights and reduce engagement with the world.
If depression is a symptom to be eliminated, the goal is to restore normal function. But if depression is a protective response generated by parts of the system with their own logic and history, the goal is a different kind of conversation with those parts, one that begins with curiosity about what they've been doing and why, rather than efforts to override or correct them.
The Inner System in Shutdown: Protectors and Exiles
In IFS, the parts most visibly active in depression fall into two broad categories: protectors and exiles.
Protectors are the parts actively maintaining the shutdown. They may work proactively by pre-emptively dampening emotion, reducing investment in relationships or activities, managing everything from a safe distance so that nothing can hurt too much. They may also work reactively by numbing in response to specific triggers, dissociating, and generating the flatness that allows a person to stay functional without feeling too much.
These protectors are not malfunctions. They are working in response to sustained difficulty — chronic stress, relational loss, accumulated disappointment, experiences of not being supported when support was needed. Understanding how protectors work in the IFS model makes it clear why trying to simply switch them off — through willpower, positive thinking, or forced activation — rarely works for long. The protectors will reassert themselves, because they believe the threat they're protecting against is still present.
"When we have lots of exiles, our protectors have no choice but to be egotistic, hedonistic, or dissociative."
— Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts (p. 120)
Exiles are the parts being protected: the aspects of a person's inner experience that carry older pain — grief, shame, profound loneliness, the sense of being fundamentally too much or not enough. These parts are often experienced as fragile, destabilising, or simply absent, precisely because the protective system has worked so effectively to keep them at a distance. But their influence persists: in the low-level sadness that has no obvious source, in the dreams that don't quite resolve, in the difficulty accessing genuine connection even when connection is available.
What Emotional Numbness Is Protecting
Emotional numbness is often discussed as though it is simply the absence of feeling. In IFS terms, it can also be understood as a presence: a specific protective response doing something intentional.
Numbing parts typically develop in contexts where the full range of emotional experience has been, at some point, unsafe or unsustainable. The grief was too large to grieve in the conditions available. The loneliness was too isolating to be named without making it worse. The disappointment too repeated to keep registering without becoming unbearable. The protective system's response is to turn down the signal: better to feel nothing than to feel something that cannot be processed.
The paradox is that the numbness itself eventually becomes a problem. The parts it was protecting against remain unresolved, still exerting their secret influence on the system. The flatness that was supposed to be temporary becomes a way of life: functional, stable, and quietly impoverished.
"Parts are not their burdens. When they're liberated from their burdens, they return to their natural state and contribute to your wholeness."
— Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts
This is why depression and emotional numbness often accompany periods of sustained stress or significant life transition. The flatness isn't just maintenance. It's also a kind of held pressure.
Depression can share the same logic as burnout. Both involve protectors running at capacity, exiles accumulating pressure, and a system that has not had enough resource or space to do anything other than continue managing.
How the IFS Approach Works with Depression
The first move is to locate what is actually present. Not what should be present, or what used to be present, but what is actually there right now: the flatness, the heaviness, the blankness. To bring the same quality of attention to that as to anything else — noticing where it lives in the body, what it looks like if it were a character or a presence, what it is doing.
The second move is to ask what the shutdown is protecting. This is where the genuine work begins: not in trying to lift the depression, but in building enough trust with the protective parts to be allowed, gradually, to inquire about what they are managing. What do they believe would happen if they stopped? What are they holding back? How long have they been doing this?
When protective parts begin to feel genuinely heard — rather than managed or reasoned with — they often become willing to make room. And when that happens, the exiled material underneath can begin to be witnessed. Not processed in one session, not immediately resolved, but, at least, acknowledged.
Research on IFS as a clinical intervention has produced promising findings. A randomised controlled trial by Shadick et al. (2013) found significant improvements in depressive symptoms, self-compassion, and overall wellbeing in participants receiving IFS-informed treatment, compared to a control group receiving an active education program.[1]
What Begins to Change
When depression begins to lift through IFS work, it is more often a gradual change in the internal relationship to the experiences that have been present: a loosening of the grip of the shutdown, a return of something more like the ordinary range of feeling.
People describe noticing, sometimes, that they are genuinely curious about something. Or that they laughed and it wasn't effortful. Or that the heaviness was present but somehow less total, more like something they were aware of rather than something they were inside. These are small signals. But they point toward a system that is beginning to find it has more options than it once did.
The exiled parts are not magically resolved. But they have been approached, witnessed to some degree, and the protective system has begun to understand that approaching them doesn't mean being destroyed by them. That understanding is the foundation of something more durable than symptom reduction: a different relationship to the inner system, and through it, a different relationship to experience.
A Place to Begin: The Self-Assessment
The Depression & Low Mood Self-Assessment uses the PHQ-9 framework alongside IFS-informed interpretive profiles — no clinical scoring, no diagnosis. It can be a structured starting point for noticing which protective pattern resonates most with what you've been carrying.
Download the Depression & Low Mood Self-Assessment →
For more on the relationship between trauma history and depression, the article on IFS for Trauma and PTSD covers the longer arc of how protective systems form and what healing can look like over time.
Curious about working with this in IFS therapy?
If what's described here feels recognisable — the flatness, the shutdown, the exhaustion that rest doesn't quite reach — IFS offers a way of working with what's underneath, not just managing around it. Sessions are online, in English and French.
About the Author
Ben Carey Donaldson is a certified IFS practitioner, meditation guide, and group facilitator based in the Fontainebleau–Paris region of France. He works online with English- and French-speaking clients across Europe and internationally, supporting people navigating depression, emotional numbness, burnout, and the inner patterns that shape how we live and relate. The Depression & Low Mood Self-Assessment is available as a free download from the resources page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can IFS help with depression?
IFS has been applied to depression in both research and clinical practice with promising outcomes. Its central contribution is a non-pathologising frame: rather than treating depression as a malfunction to be corrected, IFS understands depressive patterns as protective responses generated by specific parts of the inner system. Working with those parts tends to produce more durable change than approaches focused solely on symptom management.
What is emotional numbness in IFS terms?
In IFS, emotional numbness is understood as a protective response rather than an absence of feeling. Numbing parts develop when the full range of emotional experience has been, at some point, unsustainable or unsafe. Understanding numbness as a protective part rather than a symptom changes what's possible: instead of trying to force feeling, the work involves getting curious about what the numbing part believes would happen if it stopped.
What is the difference between depression and burnout?
Depression is a broader clinical category with its own diagnostic criteria and patterns. Burnout refers specifically to a state of chronic occupational stress that has not been adequately resolved. The two often co-occur, and burnout can develop into depression over time. In IFS terms, both involve protectors working at capacity, exiles accumulating pressure, and a system that hasn't had sufficient space or resource to metabolise what it has been carrying.
Why doesn't understanding depression usually make it better?
Insight is useful, but it addresses a different level of the system than the one generating the depressive response. The parts maintaining the shutdown aren't responding to accurate explanation — they're responding to what the system learned in the past about what safety requires. Changing that response requires a shift in the internal relationship to those parts, not a more correct analysis of what they're doing.
What is the PHQ-9 and how is it used in the self-assessment?
The PHQ-9 is a widely used clinical screening tool for depression developed by Spitzer, Kroenke, and Williams (1999). In this resource, the nine question domains are used as a reflection framework only, with IFS-informed interpretive profiles rather than clinical scoring. It is an educational resource, not a clinical assessment.
Is it possible to work with depression through IFS without a therapist?
The self-assessment and this article can support self-reflection and pattern recognition. IFS as a full therapeutic process — working with protectors and approaching exiles — is best done with a trained practitioner, particularly where depression involves significant distress or trauma history. If you are experiencing severe symptoms, please speak with a qualified mental health professional.
Related Articles
What Is Internal Family Systems (IFS)? — A Definitive Guide
How IFS Works: Parts, Protectors, Exiles, and Self-Energy
IFS for Burnout and Emotional Exhaustion: When Your Protectors Are Running on Empty
IFS for Trauma and PTSD: How Parts Carry the Burden of What Happened
References & Further Reading
1. Shadick, N. A., Sowell, N. F., Frits, M. L., et al. (2013). A randomized controlled trial of an Internal Family Systems-based psychotherapeutic intervention on outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis: a proof-of-concept study. Journal of Rheumatology, 40(11), 1831–1841. https://doi.org/10.3899/jrheum.121465
No Bad Parts — Richard Schwartz (2021)
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain — Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017)
Spitzer, R. L., Kroenke, K., & Williams, J. B. W. (1999). Validation and utility of a self-report version of PRIME-MD: the PHQ primary care study. JAMA, 282(18), 1737–1744.