​

When understanding yourself isn’t enough to change the pattern

​

You may already understand yourself quite well. You might recognize where certain reactions come from, understand your relationship patterns, or know why you become anxious, self-critical, avoidant, or overwhelmed, and yet you still find yourself repeating the same responses.

​

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is an approach that offers a way to work with these patterns more directly. Instead of treating difficult emotions or behaviors as problems to eliminate, in IFS we become curious about the different “parts” of you that developed to protect you.

​

One part may try to help you stay in control; another part may withdraw, become overwhelmed, seek reassurance, or criticize you before someone else can. As we understand what these parts are protecting, it becomes easier to respond from a place of more steadiness and flexibility. 

​

What IFS Therapy Looks Like

​

In IFS sessions, we will pay attention to the emotions, impulses, beliefs, and internal conflicts that show up in your everyday life. Instead of simply analyzing them or trying to push them away, we will explore what they are trying to accomplish and what might be underneath them.

​

What parts can look like

Every internal system is different, and parts don't map neatly onto diagnoses. Still, some patterns come up often. These examples are illustrations, not templates. Your own system may look quite different.

When emotions come on fast and strong

Protectors: A watchful part scans for signs of rejection or conflict, while a controlling part tries to keep everything and everyone in order so nothing sets off a storm. When a feeling breaks through anyway, another part may take over to make it stop immediately: sending the text, shutting down, drinking, bingeing, or lashing out. Afterward, a critical part often arrives with shame: Why do you always do this?

Underneath: Often a younger part that was left alone with big feelings, or learned early that its emotions were too much.

What can shift: As the protectors come to trust that this younger part is being cared for, they don't need to react so fast. Feelings still come, but there's more space between feeling and acting.

After trauma

Protectors: Some parts work to prevent anything bad from happening again: staying hypervigilant, perfectionistic, busy, agreeable, or never needing anyone. Others step in when pain surfaces anyway: numbing out, going blank, disappearing into work or a screen, or flaring into anger.

Underneath: Parts that still carry the fear, helplessness, or shame from what happened, sometimes seeming frozen at the age they were.

What can shift: In IFS, we don't go straight to painful memories. We ask the protective parts' permission first, so the work moves at a pace your system can handle. When the parts carrying old pain are finally witnessed and cared for, the protectors can often step back from jobs they've been doing for years.

Living with a chronic health condition

Protectors: A pushing part ignores pain or fatigue to keep up with work and obligations. A frightened part monitors every sensation or searches symptoms at 2 a.m. A critical part treats flares as personal failures or weakness. And after pushing too hard, another part may collapse into hopelessness, until the pusher takes over again.

Underneath: Grief for the body or life you expected. Sometimes a part that learned long ago that needing care makes you a burden, or that it wouldn't be believed.

What can shift: Pacing can become less of a tug-of-war between pushing and collapsing, and hard days can be met with less self-blame. [Read more about therapy for chronic illness.] ​​

​

​

IFS May Be Helpful If You:

​

• Understand your patterns intellectually but still struggle to change them

• Feel pulled between different needs, emotions, or versions of yourself

• Struggle with self-criticism, shame, anxiety, avoidance, or emotional intensity

• Notice recurring relationship patterns you want to understand and change

• Want therapy that goes deeper than coping skills while still including practical tools

• Live with a chronic health condition and want support with the stress, grief, and self-judgment that can come with it 

​

What We May Work Toward

​

IFS therapy can help you develop greater self-understanding, emotional flexibility, self-trust, and a more compassionate relationship with yourself. Over time, the goal is not to get rid of parts of you, but to help them become less extreme and less controlling.

​

I also work with expats and internationally mobile clients navigating identity, belonging, relationships, and major transitions. I offer telehealth therapy to clients in Illinois and Michigan, as well as clients living in Japan.

​

Psychotherapy in Chicago, Michigan, and Tokyo​​

​​

​I feel fortunate to have been training in and practicing IFS therapy for almost a decade. It is my favorite modality due to its creative, intuitive, and deep-reaching nature, as well as its capacity for healing.

​

I offer 50-minute individual telehealth sessions for adults in Chicago and Michigan, as well as clients living in Tokyo. Sessions are $150, and eligible Chicago clients may use Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois insurance.

​

You can view my online calendar and request either a free consultation or an initial therapy session. If you don’t see a time that works for you, you’re still welcome to contact me, as I may have additional or upcoming availability that isn’t shown online.

​

​