Have you ever found yourself reacting in harmful ways, despite promising yourself you would stop? Worn out by seeking perfection, but unsure of who are without it? Realizing that the ways you’ve survived in the past have left you feeling disconnected and unfulfilled?

These are just a few of the reasons clients come to therapy, and they are often extremely distressing, confusing, and lonely experiences for the people I work with. My approach to therapy, called Internal Family Systems, sees that that these are parts of you that are trying to protect you in some way. These are parts of you that believe they must use strategies such as constantly striving for perfection, criticizing yourself or others, lashing out, or numbing out…and they have really good reason! It’s just that most of the time they are also the reason we seek out therapy.

You are here on my website and reading about the therapy I offer, so you likely have parts of you that are concerned enough to seek out help with your experiences of overwhelm, anxiety, numbness, codependency, disordered eating, or substance misuse—and the list goes on. The parts of you using these protective strategies often don’t know that they have an option other than their current methods, and so you stay stuck in the same patterns without truly healing those old wounds and painful experiences.

IFS Therapy is the experiential process of finding that there is another option for you other than being exhausted, overwhelmed, reactive, and numb.

So if you’ve read this and thought that it might be nice to talk to a therapist who sees that you are doing the best you can, while still believing that things could be different—reach out! I’m happy to talk with you about how I can help.

If you’d like to learn more about the nuts and bolts of how IFS therapy works,  feel free to read my Overview of IFS Therapy here.