IFS Therapy

Individual Sessions Available In Person (Austin) or Virtually (Texas) · Couples Sessions Available In Person Only

You are not one thing.

You know that feeling — the part of you that wants to speak up, and the part that goes quiet instead. The part that wants to trust again, and the part standing guard at the door so you don't get hurt the same way twice. You're not indecisive. You're not broken. You're human, and humans are made of parts

What IFS actually is.

Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is built on a simple idea: your mind isn't one voice, it's a whole internal family of them. Each part showed up for a reason, usually to protect you from something. IFS doesn't try to get rid of any of them. It helps you get to know them, understand what they're so worried about, and lead your internal system from a calmer, clearer place instead of being run by whichever part is loudest that day.

Meet your protectors.

The anxiety that won't let you rest. The perfectionism that won't let you turn something in. The anger that shows up before you even know you're hurt. These aren't flaws to white-knuckle through — they're protectors, working overtime at a job they took on a long time ago, often before you had any say in it. Once a part knows its job isn't the only thing standing between you and disaster, it can finally exhale

The parts that got left behind.

Underneath the protectors are usually younger, more tender parts — the ones still holding the original hurt. Family-of-origin wounds. Spiritual abuse from a community that was supposed to be safe. Grief that never got space to land. IFS calls these exiled parts, and the work isn't to relive them — it's to finally go back for them, with you leading the way instead of a scared part having to do it alone.

There's a Self underneath all of it.

IFS holds that under every protector and every exile, there's a core Self that's never actually damaged — calm, curious, compassionate, courageous, clear. Not a personality trait you build, but something you already have and can learn to lead from again. That's the real goal here: not eliminating parts, not fixing you, but helping your own Self take the wheel

In your relationship, too.

Couples get stuck in the same pattern for the same reason individuals do — two people's protectors talking to each other, neither one getting through to the other's Self. When we slow that down together, you start responding to your partner's actual hurt instead of reacting to their protector, and vice versa. It changes the whole shape of the fight

Especially when life shifts under you.

Big transitions and losses have a way of waking up parts that have been quiet for years. That's not a setback — it's information. It's usually a sign of exactly where the work wants to go next.

Curious what your own system might have to say? Call me now. (512) 633-1994