Trauma therapy with Internal Family Systems at the center.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a model of psychotherapy developed by Richard Schwartz, PhD starting in the 1980s, after he noticed that his clients consistently described their inner experience in terms of multiple, distinct 'parts', the part that wants to leave the relationship and the part that's terrified to be alone, the part that pushes for achievement and the part that's exhausted, the part that lashes out and the part that's mortified afterward. Rather than treating this as fragmentation or pathology, Schwartz built a therapeutic model around it.

The core IFS premise: every person has a core Self (calm, curious, compassionate, confident) and many parts. Parts aren't disorders; they're sub-personalities that carry their own beliefs, feelings, and ways of trying to help. Trauma doesn't damage Self; trauma forces parts into extreme protective roles to keep Self safe. The healing work is helping those parts step back from their extreme roles so Self can lead, and so the wounded parts underneath can be tended.

This matters specifically for trauma because most trauma symptoms aren't really 'symptoms', they're parts doing their job. The numbing isn't a symptom; it's a part protecting you from being overwhelmed. The hypervigilance isn't a symptom; it's a part keeping you safe by scanning for threats. The inner critic isn't a symptom; it's a part trying to prevent the kind of failure or rejection that originally caused harm. When you fight these parts (which is what most therapy implicitly asks), they fight back. When you treat them as allies whose job has become outdated, they tend to relax.

IFS is now one of the most widely adopted trauma therapies. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) classified IFS as evidence-based in 2015, and outcome research has accumulated across PTSD, complex trauma, depression, anxiety, and chronic medical conditions including rheumatoid arthritis (one of the larger IFS RCTs).

The aim of IFS isn't to add new coping skills on top of existing patterns. It's to help you spend more time in what Schwartz calls Self-energy: the underlying state that, in his clinical observation, every person has access to underneath their protective parts.

Self-energy is recognizable by what Schwartz called the eight C's: Calmness (a settled nervous system, even in difficulty), Curiosity (genuine interest in your own experience without judgment), Compassion (warmth toward yourself and others, including parts you don't like), Connectedness (the felt sense of being part of something larger), Confidence (trust in your own discernment), Courage (capacity to face hard things), Creativity (flexible problem-solving), and Clarity (seeing situations without distortion).

Most trauma survivors don't believe they have access to Self. They've spent so long in protective parts that those parts feel like who they are. Part of what IFS does is help you notice the difference between 'I am anxious' and 'a part of me is anxious.' That small linguistic shift is also a clinical shift, because it creates the space from which Self can begin to lead.

When clients describe what's different after IFS work, what they often name is some version of these qualities returning. Not because the parts have gone away, they're still there, but because Self is now the one driving, and the parts are working with Self instead of running the show alone.

IFS classifies parts into three broad categories, each with a distinct role in trauma. Recognizing which kind of part you're working with shapes what the part needs.

Managers are the proactive protectors. They run your daily life and try to prevent anything bad from happening. The inner critic, the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, the controller, the planner, the over-functioner, the part that says yes when you mean no, these are typically managers. Their job is to keep wounded parts from being touched in the first place. They tend to be exhausting because they're working all the time.

Firefighters are the reactive protectors. They activate when something has already gone wrong, when emotional pain breaks through manager defenses. Their job is to put out the fire by any means: dissociation, numbing, substance use, food, sex, rage, self-harm, compulsive scrolling, work as escape. Firefighters get a bad reputation because their methods are often costly, but they're trying to protect you the same as managers, just from a different angle.

Exiles are the wounded parts that managers and firefighters are protecting. They carry the original pain, fear, shame, or grief, usually from earlier in life. Most trauma symptoms are visible because protectors are working overtime to keep exiles out of consciousness. The healing work in IFS is helping the protectors trust enough to step back, accessing the exiles, and unburdening them of what they've been carrying alone.

When clients hear this framework for the first time, what often lands is a recognition: 'That's exactly what's happening.' The fight inside isn't a character flaw or a willpower problem. It's a system of parts doing their best with the roles they were assigned, often decades ago, in a context that no longer applies.

An IFS session looks more like an internal conversation than a typical talk-therapy session. The therapist's job is to help you turn attention inward and meet whatever part is most present.

The structure usually moves through what IFS calls the six F's: Find the part (notice it in the body, the imagination, or the felt sense). Focus your attention on it. Flesh it out (what does it look like, sound like, what's it wearing, how old does it feel). Feel toward it (notice your reaction, if it's not curious or compassionate, that's another part you'll work with first). Befriend it (build a relationship; ask it questions; learn what it does and why). Fears, ask the part what it's afraid would happen if it stopped doing its job.

What surprises clients is how willing parts are to talk once they're approached respectfully. Decades-old parts can shift in a single session when they finally feel heard. Other parts take longer, particularly protective parts that have been holding the line on serious trauma material. There's no fixed timeline.

Sessions tend to be quieter than other therapy modalities, with longer pauses. The therapist isn't analyzing or interpreting; they're tracking what's happening inside the client and offering small prompts. Most of the work happens in the client's internal experience, not in the dialogue.

Toward the end of the session, the therapist supports closure: making sure no parts are left exposed or activated, asking parts if they're ready to step back, and helping the client return to baseline. Like other trauma modalities, IFS pacing matters; rushing closure can leave parts destabilized between sessions.

EMDR and IFS are the two most-used modalities in our trauma work, and they pair extraordinarily well. They're not redundant; they target different aspects of how trauma is held.

EMDR works on the integrative layer, helping the brain finish processing material that was too overwhelming at the time. IFS works on the relational and structural layer, helping the parts that formed around the trauma update their roles. In practice, we often use IFS first to identify and build relationships with the protective parts that would otherwise block reprocessing, then use EMDR to process the underlying material once those parts have agreed to step back. Other times the order reverses: EMDR opens up new material, and IFS helps integrate what surfaced.

Christina Mathieson, LMFT #115093, has completed IFS training and is the team's IFS lead. Jalyse Stewart, AMFT #153712 (supervised by Christina), is the team's EMDR specialist and incorporates IFS-informed approaches into her trauma work. Most clients work with one therapist primarily; when both modalities are clearly indicated, we coordinate across the team rather than asking one clinician to deliver both formally.

Clients who've done EMDR alone sometimes describe symptom reduction without a corresponding shift in self-relationship: the trauma feels less acute, but the inner critic is still as harsh as ever, the perfectionism still as relentless. That's where IFS adds something distinct: it changes the relationship to the protective system that the trauma originally built, not just the activation level of the trauma itself.

Trauma is multilayered, and no single modality addresses every layer. Alongside IFS and EMDR, we draw from several other approaches as the work calls for them.

Somatic practices for what's held in the body. Drawing from Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing framework and polyvagal-informed work, somatic practices target the physiological residue of trauma, the held tension, the chronic activation, the freeze responses, that talking and even IFS alone don't always reach. For clients whose trauma is primarily body-stored or preverbal, somatic work is often where the most movement happens.

Trauma-informed CBT for day-to-day functional skills. CBT isn't the centerpiece of trauma work in our practice, but its tools (cognitive reframing for trauma-related beliefs, exposure work for avoidance, behavioral activation for trauma-driven shutdown) are useful adjuncts when stabilization or daily functioning needs direct support.

Polyvagal-informed regulation work based on Stephen Porges's research. Practical work on the autonomic nervous system, recognizing the difference between ventral vagal (regulated and engaged), sympathetic (mobilized for fight or flight), and dorsal vagal (collapsed or numbed) states, gives clients a framework for understanding their own nervous system in real time, and for working with rather than against it.

Attachment-focused work for relational trauma. Adult relational patterns shaped by early attachment injuries often need explicit attention alongside the trauma reprocessing. We pull from EFT for relationship-context work and from attachment-informed IFS for individual work on adult attachment patterns.

Single-event trauma (a car accident, an assault, a sudden loss, a medical procedure) and complex trauma (chronic, relational, often beginning in childhood) share some treatment elements but differ significantly in how the work unfolds.

Single-event trauma typically responds well to focused EMDR reprocessing once stabilization is in place, many clients see meaningful resolution in 8–15 sessions. The protective system has usually formed around one identifiable event, so once the underlying material is processed, the protective parts can update relatively quickly.

Complex trauma is different. The protective system has been built and rebuilt over years or decades, often starting before explicit memory was reliable. Multiple parts are typically working together (or against each other) to manage what was unsafe across time. The exiles aren't one event but many, layered, often without clean narratives. The treatment trajectory is longer, often a year or more, with phases of stabilization, parts work, reprocessing, integration, and then return to stabilization as new material surfaces.

IFS is particularly suited to complex trauma because it doesn't require a target memory or a coherent narrative. You can do meaningful IFS work with a felt-sense pattern, an inner critic, a part that's been around 'forever,' or a body sensation. The model holds the complexity rather than requiring you to simplify it for the protocol.

For complex trauma in particular, the relational context of therapy itself matters. The therapist becomes a corrective relational experience, someone who can hold the parts of you that haven't been held safely before. This is part of why trauma therapy, especially complex trauma therapy, doesn't generally rush.

IFS works exceptionally well online. The work is internal, the bulk of what happens is between you and your parts, with the therapist guiding from outside. There's no requirement for in-person presence, and many clients find it easier to do parts work in their own space, where they're already comfortable and have less external stimulation.

EMDR also translates well to telehealth, with bilateral stimulation delivered via screen-based visual stimulus, tactile tappers shipped to the client, or alternating audio tones. Outcome research on virtual EMDR shows comparable results to in-person delivery for most adult outpatient cases.

Some pieces of trauma work can be more challenging remotely. Clients with severe dissociation may need in-person stabilization. Body-based somatic work that involves close therapist observation of subtle physiological cues sometimes benefits from in-person sessions. For clients where this matters, we'll discuss it during intake and may coordinate with a body-based provider for the somatic piece while continuing the IFS and EMDR work via telehealth.

For most adult outpatient trauma work, online is fully clinically appropriate, and often the right choice for clients who would otherwise face logistical or scheduling barriers to in-person care.