IFS

Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a way to understand your internal system and help it to transform and heal. IFS holds the view that every one of us has an undamaged, well-resourced self at our core. However, from early on in life, parts of us inevitably take on specific roles or beliefs in order to get us through difficult situations and other parts will then take opposing roles in order to balance the system. In this way we each have a complex internal system that’s rather like an internal family of individuals who all fundamentally want and need us (or the family) to be stable and happy, but might go about it in ways that end up leaving us unstable, unhappy and at war inside. As with good family therapy, healing comes through respectful and compassionate engagement with the individual parts that make up our internal system. If we can do this from a place of contact with our core self, we begin to build trust between this core self and our parts, giving them the chance to work less hard, and use their energy in more satisfying ways. It is rather like a good safe parent turning up at last, and the kids beginning to believe that they don’t have to run the show all by themselves: a huge relief, and better for everyone!

IFS therapy can be an excellent approach for addressing trauma, addiction, perfectionism, depression, anxiety, relationship issues and just about every experience that involves an internal struggle.

It offers a very natural, gentle, respectful and easily understood way of finding greater ease, calmness and peace within oneself. Greater peace inside leads to greater clarity and confidence as well as less reactivity in relationship with others and the world. IFS has much to offer to everybody, and is a wonderful approach that I am so grateful to be able to bring to my work with others, as well as to my own personal development and healing. 

I have completed Level 1 and 2 training with the Internal Family Systems Institute and I continue to deepen my competence in this field with further study and training.