Approach · Internal Family Systems
Internal Family Systems
Part of you wants to leave the marriage and part of you cannot picture the house without him in it. Part of you is desperate to rest and part of you goes cold at the thought of being someone who rests. That is not indecision and it is not you being difficult. It is an inner household in which different members hold different jobs, and they do not currently agree. Internal Family Systems is a way of working where each of them gets a turn.
Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.
What parts work looks like with me
We start where you already are, which is usually mid-argument with yourself. I will ask you to slow down and separate the voices out. Not analyze them; separate them. Which one is speaking right now? How old does it feel? Where do you notice it in your body when it takes over? Most people can answer those questions immediately, which surprises them, because they have never been asked.
Then I ask how you feel toward that part. This is the real hinge of the work, and the honest answer is often contempt. You are ashamed of the one who needs reassurance, exasperated with the one who cannot get out of bed, frightened of the one who says cruel things at the worst moment. We do not pretend otherwise. We notice that the contempt is itself another part, doing another job, and we ask that one to step back a little so there is room for a straight conversation.
What comes next tends to be quieter than people expect. A part that has been treated as an enemy for thirty years does not usually want to be argued with. It wants to be understood about what it is afraid of. Very often it is afraid of one specific thing that happened when you were young, and it has been guarding that spot ever since, with no relief and no updated information. When it finally gets to say so, and you actually hear it, something in the whole arrangement loosens.
The point of all this is not a tidy inner committee. It is that you get to be the one at the center of your own life rather than whichever part grabbed the wheel this week. When that shift starts happening, most people describe it as being less at war with themselves, and it shows up first in small things: a slower pause before the sharp reply, a hard afternoon that no longer becomes a hard month.
There is no part of you that is only a problem.
The one you most want gone is usually the one working hardest.
Where I find this fits
Grief the parts disagree about
Grief is my primary specialty, and it is common for one part of you to want to speak about the loss constantly while another part shuts the subject down to keep you functional. Both are right about something. Neither can operate while the other is in charge.
The inner critic that never stops
A voice that is harsher to you than you would ever be to anyone else. Rather than trying to silence it, we find out what it believes will happen if it eases up. The answer is usually much older than your current life.
Self-protection that has outlived its job
Going numb, going quiet, going first. Strategies that genuinely worked in the situation they were built for and are now costing you the relationships you want.
Trauma, approached carefully
When a part of you is not willing to go near a memory yet, that refusal is information, not resistance. Parts work is often how we make it possible to do EMDR or somatic work later, safely and without flooding.
Couples and families
Two people, four protective parts, one fight that has been running for years. Naming the sequence out loud is often the first time either person can see it while it is happening.
How we would work
We start with a free 20-minute consult by phone, text or video. You describe what is going on, and I say honestly whether this is work I can be useful in.
If we go ahead, sessions are weekly by secure video or audio. I do not run this as a rigid protocol. Some sessions are almost entirely parts work; others need somatic attention because a part communicates through the body faster than through words, or EMDR when one memory is holding the whole arrangement in place, and I am EMDR certified. Expressive approaches help here too: a part that will not speak will sometimes draw, write or move.
I work with adults, seniors, couples and families, and where an old loop keeps closing on itself we bring in my own Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning alongside this.
- Slowing down enough to tell the voices apart
- Finding what each protective part is guarding
- Getting your criticism of yourself to step back a little
- Making room for the younger part underneath the protection
- Learning to notice which part just took over, in the moment
- Working at a pace your most cautious part can live with
Questions people ask about parts work
- Does talking about parts of myself mean something is wrong with me?
- No. Having parts is ordinary. You already talk this way and have probably never noticed: part of me wants to go, part of me wants to stay. What is unusual is only that we take that language seriously instead of treating it as a figure of speech. Nothing about this framework implies a diagnosis, and it is not the same thing as a dissociative condition. It is a way of describing an inner life that is more like a household than a single voice.
- What if the part I want gone really does need to go?
- That is almost always the request people arrive with, and I understand it, because the part in question has often cost you a great deal. But in my experience the ones we most want gone are the ones working hardest at a job nobody else took. The drinker, the perfectionist, the one who lashes out first, the one who goes numb: each of those was hired at some point to prevent something worse. If we exile it, it usually comes back louder or something else takes its shift. So we find out what it is preventing, and we make sure that thing is genuinely covered before we ask it to stand down.
- How is this different from just analyzing myself?
- Analysis happens about a part, from a safe distance, and it tends to leave everything where it was. This is a conversation with one, which is a different experience and usually a more uncomfortable one. Instead of concluding that your anger stems from your father, you get curious about the angry part directly: how old it feels, what it is afraid will happen if it goes quiet, what it wants you to know. People are often surprised by the answers, which is the clearest sign that it is not just intellectual work.
- Can this be done with couples?
- It is one of the more useful things I do with couples and families. Most stuck fights are not two people disagreeing. They are one person's protective part triggering the other person's protective part, at speed, with neither of the actual people getting a turn. When both of you can name the parts that show up in that fight, you stop debating who is unreasonable and start noticing a sequence you can both interrupt.
If you are at war with yourself
You do not have to arrive with the language for this. Most people find it within a session or two. Text or email and we will find a time to talk. Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.