Internal Family Systems
Sometimes a feeling or thought seems to appear out of nowhere — overwhelming anxiety, a wave of shame, or a harsh inner critic. In Internal Family Systems (IFS), these experiences are understood as distinct parts within you, each trying in its own way to help or protect you. Instead of pushing them away, IFS invites you to meet these parts with curiosity and care, listening for what they need. As you welcome and understand them, they often soften, realizing they no longer have to work so hard to keep you safe.
With time, this process helps you connect with the steady, compassionate core within you — the part of you that can hold all the others. From this place, you can move toward greater harmony, clarity, and a deeper sense of wholeness, feeling more at home in yourself and your life.
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When working through trauma - instead of re-experiencing and ‘being in’ the traumatic event, like other exposure-based modalities, you are sitting with the part that holds the trauma story and are allowing it space to share whatever it needs with you. It is a gentle and compassionate process. We will always go at your, and your systems, pace.
Learn to see yourself as differentiated from your parts and behaviors - allowing for more compassion for yourself and your system.
Provides a normalizing, non-judgmental perspective on your internal world.
Learn how to access your Self energy - compassion, calmness, curiosity, courage, confidence, clarity, connectedness, and creativity.
Achieve balance, harmony, and wholeness in your life - internally and externally. Learn to create and sustain communication between Self and parts. This allows you to ask the part to ‘unblend’ when a part is flooding or overwhelming the system. That way, you can be WITH the part instead of BE the part.
Gain more understanding of yourself and the way your system functions, which in turn allows for more compassionate understanding of those around you.
Gain better communication with your family, friends, and community through deeper understanding and compassion.
Understand your inner critic and allow your inner critic to understand you - creating more acceptance and less shame.
Integrative & Blended Process
Therapy is a living process that shifts and adapts as you grow. My work is rooted in relational therapy, IFS, AEDP, emotion-focused, grief, and narrative therapy, blended together in a way that is trauma-informed and compassion-centered. Together, we shape the process moment by moment, finding what feels most supportive and true for you.