How does the therapy work?
Once we have agreed on what to focus on in the current session, I will ask you to turn your attention inwards. For some, this is easiest with eyes closed, while others prefer to look gently downwards. This facilitates a greater inner connection in the client, and instead of having the therapist as a conversation partner, the client has the opportunity to be with their subpersonalities and experience the images, words, physical sensations or memories that the parts show. As an IFS therapist, I help the client to experience the subpersonalities from the inside, to connect with them from my or their Self and to free them from burdens, traumas, misconceptions and rigid roles. Often the parts are also frozen in time and need to be refreshed and brought back to the present to release their role and burden.
The subpersonalities may also have completely different beliefs about what happened in the past than the client does, and it is usually surprising to the client how conflicts and pain are resolved through the body. The way visualizations, bodily sensations and implicit memory work creates creative and often surprising processes for the client that would not be possible in traditional talk therapy. The goal is not to eradicate the subpersonalities but to help them return to what they were designed to be, in a Self-led psyche.
Clients have said the following in the first IFS session:
‘IFS is like a therapeutic bouillon cube because it is so powerful and compressed’
‘I need the IFS scalpel for this problem. I’ve been talking about it for years, but now I need a precise intervention in my psyche’
‘I had no idea that I was holding all those images, it was all happening completely out of my control’.
‘I like that I’m not so dependent on you as a therapist, it felt like I could do the important work myself’
We agree on what we focus on in the session, but as it is only a very small part of your psyche that you are aware of, the problems cannot be solved on the surface. In a safe way, with great respect for the protective system, therapy allows you to create deep changes in the parts of the nervous system and implicit memory that carry pain. Psychological pain is often pre-linguistic and not possible to talk about or describe. Instead, it may present itself as a felt sensation, an image or similar that creatively represents the place that needs help. The subpersonalities often live in the body and the healing work also takes place through the senses, so IFS is not an intellectual process but a process that safely invites the client deep into a lot of what was not familiar to everyday consciousness. When the Self is present with the parts that carry pain, experiences, traumas and burdens can be witnessed in a way that they needed at the time, which is a healing corrective experience in therapy.
‘Becoming the adult who would have seen, understood and protected us when we were children is a great achievement.
Online therapy
For some clients, the benefits of a video meeting outweigh the advantages of in-person contact. Having some of the sessions online can also provide flexibility to switch between face-to-face and screen time. IFS is well suited to the video format as it is the client’s inner contact that is facilitated, which is why many of us also use this option internationally. I use Zoom as a platform for video sessions and will send you a link prior to a session.
I am sometimes able to offer video sessions in the evening and those times are not listed in my online booking system, so please contact me if you are interested.
A conversation about IFS inside and outside the therapy room:
