IS AN IFS THERAPY INTENSIVE ‘TOO INTENSE’ AND WILL IT LEAVE ME FEELING DISCOMBOBULATED OR VERY UPSET?

Intensives ARE intense, because we will be thoroughly focused on you and your challenges, goals and parts for much longer stretches of time than a typical ‘therapy hour’.

However, IFS remains an incredibly respectful and gentle modality which never wants to shock or bypass any part of your system. As a result, IFS intensives should feel rich, deep and transformative but as your therapist, I will attune to your needs throughout and you should leave your experience feeling lighter, more hopeful and having experienced many beautiful healing moments.

As an IFS Therapist, I work with private clients in two main ways. One is the more traditional approach of weekly IFS sessions, which works very well for most clients, who enjoy the regularity of a weekly hour or 90 minutes to spend focused on their healing, processing and on gaining insight into their challenges and areas of need.

The second way is less typical but equally as powerful and has been borne out of requests from my clients who want to do even deeper work and spend more time healing and exploring their inner worlds. As a result of these elongated therapy sessions, and the results I have seen in clients, I work with a small number of clients each month doing intensive therapy blocks. This may look like a full day of therapy, with a break for lunch, or more often it means consecutive days of therapy sessions. During these intensives, we work to deepen healing and often to accelerate it.

HOW A BEAUTIFUL - AND DEVASTATING - FILM OFFERS A MOVING INSIGHT INTO LOVE, LOSS, HEALING AND HOW WE CAN PROCESS OUR OWN TRAUMA.

As a counsellor, IFS therapist and coach, I find that films in particular can offer insights that complement healing within the therapy room; what may take chapters to explain in a book can be expressed in moments in a piece of highly crafted cinematic art.

In this blog post, which is the first of several linking films to the deep work that I do with clients, I’m digging into a recent movie, All Of Us Are Strangers, that I think makes for extremely valuable watching to many clients going through their own healing and processing journeys.

I love nothing more than sharing resources and especially books or audiobooks that I feel are helpful to my clients. Often these resources touch on topics that we have worked on together and sometimes they can serve as a good way of clients getting deeper on certain between sessions.

In the case of Internal Family Systems Therapy, I have noticed two distinct styles of engaging in IFS Therapy. For some clients, they ask me for as many books, podcasts, resources, meditation apps and other ways to learn more about IFS that I can recommend. Like me, they have become hooked on the thinking and the ideas behind this modality, as well as participating in their own beautifully transformative and healing sessions.

At the very core of IFS is a key assumption.

We are not ONE thing, one entity, one singular personality. We are no more our worst moment any more than we are 100% our best highlight reel. We are complex and beautiful, flawed and incredible beings. And a big element of this is that we are MULTIPLE.

The best way of explaining this could be to think about the times when you feel caught between two ideas or options. Do I go to the gym or do I gobble down a whole packet of cookies? We have both sides inside of us. In IFS we call these parts, so in this case a ‘gym-goer part’ and a ‘cookie-lover’ part.

Learn about the 8 Cs and 5 Ps of Self in the transformative Internal Family Systems Therapy model.

Clients love getting to know, understand and heal their parts. Parts are at the centre of the Internal Family Systems approach and experience.

And yet, there is something else extremely beautiful with in the model, and inside all of us, which is NOT a part.

Despite all of this adversity in their families of origin, they landed on my virtual doorstep with a list of accolades, courageous acts and accomplishments as long as their arms. But often these same humans were clearly lacking the positive self-image that one might assume would go alongside that level of success and achievement.

Through extensive training in IFS, I have discovered the profound impact that self-compassion can have on personal healing and transformation. My aim is to provide a safe and nurturing space for clients, encouraging self-love, self-leadership, and healing using this gentle and empowering approach to wellbeing.

IFS addresses the complexity of human psychology by considering the internal system as a whole. It highlights the transformative power of integrating and harmonising internal "parts" for healing and growth. The profound impact of self-compassion and self-energy in IFS makes it a very holistic model.