virtual therapy in Texas, Massachusetts, or Maryland
IFS Therapy for those who have been disillusioned with traditional therapy, and seem to be in patterns that don’t make sense at the surface
If you’re a dynamic, high-achieving person who has tried to “win” at therapy by going consistently, seeing a talk therapist, and still wondering why you’re battling the same patterns, IFS Therapy might be the transformational approach for you.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is emotionally intense, demanding, and requires an unusual degree of personal courage.
No one can guarantee what sort of person you will turn out to be on the other side, only that you will be more yourself than you are now.
IFS Therapy Helps With Issues Like:
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Addictions, Eating Disorders, Etc
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Procrastination, Etc, Etc
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Unhealthy Relationship Dynamics
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Anger issues / Anger management
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Career Changes
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Phase of Life Changes
What is Internal Family Systems (IFS Therapy)?
All people have Parts: various distinct aspects of their personality. At any given moment, some parts are very active and prominent, while other parts are temporarily inactive.
Any person will think, feel, and act in one way at their workplace, another way with their romantic partner, and a third way when taking care of young children.
IFS imagines a human being as something like a bus, with only one driver’s seat and many passenger seats, and in a psychologically healthy human being the various parts smoothly and harmoniously take turns driving as needed. IFS conceptualizes most psychological problems as resulting from a disruption in the relationships between parts.
“What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world?”
― Alok Vaid-Menon
Resolving Internal Conflict Through the Examination of Parts
IFS is uniquely suited to resolve internal conflicts and ego dystonic behaviors, because unlike most forms of psychotherapy, it doesn’t attempt to impose some ‘correct’ way of thinking or acting onto the person from the outside.
It operates from the principle that, in all of these conflicts, all parts are being pushed into their extreme roles by some kind of trauma, painful emotions or beliefs from the past, and all of them are genuinely doing their best to help the person survive. Rather than attempting to fight or repress the ‘bad’ parts, IFS enables a person to access their core Self, which is unharmed by their traumas and is able to heal each part through compassion and curiosity, at which point they can learn to cooperate and live a new and more authentic lifestyle.
IFS is a ‘constraint-release’ model of psychotherapy, meaning that it rejects the notion of trying to make human beings conform to any idea of how they should be, and instead simply removes the internal obstacles preventing them from being exactly what they need to be, what they have always been.
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
How I Came to Provide IFS Therapy
When I was young, my first impression of psychotherapy was a story about Woody Allen, that he had been in psychoanalysis several times a week for over 30 years, and was still just as neurotic as ever.
That story kept me out of psychotherapy for a very long time. I have spent a great deal of my career gently explaining to clients why I won’t provide ‘maintenance’ therapy or ‘check-ins.’ The basic service of talking to someone about your problems, seeing things from another perspective, and feeling validated, comforted, and understood afterward, is undoubtedly essential to human wellbeing.
But it can be very efficiently delivered, for free, by a kind friend or a reasonably patient cat. Advice about how to solve any practical problem or navigate any particular social situation can also be found in a huge number of books or online resources. Real transformational psychotherapy, that is actually worth the time and money that people invest in it, provides a service that friends, cats, and asking ChatGPT for advice cannot.
I am deeply honored to meet clients for a relatively brief but incredibly important moment in their lives. They will work, face the hardest aspects of their lives, access the power they forgot they always had, transform, and then head out to meet their destinies.
This type of psychotherapy changes people’s lives forever. It frees them from the psychological prisons that their culture, their childhoods, and their own limiting beliefs have trapped them in.
Fields That We Know is 100% telehealth / virtual therapy, and clients must reside in Texas, Massachusetts, or Maryland. If you live outside of these areas, I cannot provide psychotherapy. I can still provide IFS coaching services to people residing in other areas on a case-by-case basis, please email me to discuss this possibility.
Reach out today and we’ll get back to you within 2 business days to discuss availability.