Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a powerfully transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy that has evolved over the past forty years into a comprehensive approach for working with individuals, couples, families, and even groups. IFS is gentle, welcoming of all parts and identities, and can create lasting change.

Art therapy is a Master’s level mental health profession that offers an interdisciplinary mix of art and psychology. One of the most notable aspects of art therapy is its ability to help people externalize their thoughts, emotions, and experiences as a tool for coping, gaining new perspective, increasing personal insight, and exploring difficulties. No art skill necessary.

I am passionate about supporting clients who have experienced various forms of trauma, including complex relational trauma (CPTSD) and developmental trauma stemming from difficult childhoods, relational ruptures, and emotional wounds. The impacts of trauma can be wide-ranging, complex, and multifactorial. My training and experience extend beyond trauma-informed care and include an individualized, relational approach to our work together. For more information about trauma and the ways we might support it in our work together, please read my blog posts about trauma, IFS, and art therapy.

Feeling overwhelmed, tense, restless, or persistently uneasy and worried? Anxiety can sometimes feel like such an ever-present part of our lives and inner world that it’s hard to imagine who we might be, or how we might feel, without it. Society and culture often prompt us into problem-solving or adopting strategies to push away or “talk ourselves out of” feeling the sensations, fears, and concerns that drive these anxious parts of us. Instead, there are effective ways to gently turn toward this anxiety with curiosity and compassion to understand its protective role in our lives, and to discover ways to support and heal it.

Depression can stem from any number of factors ranging from genetic predisposition to unresolved trauma, difficult life transitions, loss, challenging relationships, job issues, chronic pain, illness, or an accumulation of stress that becomes chronic, or develops into toxic stress. Whether depression is low-level or significant, a short-term visitor or one that’s been around for years, there are ways to support it with compassion as we befriend the parts of you that are contributing to the overall experience of depression.

Feelings of low mood, emptiness, chronic sadness, despair, heaviness, or immobility can take over thoughts, energy, emotions, and even body sensations. These are all signs that indicate something inside needs compassionate support.

Life changes and transitions can signal the start of an exciting new chapter in our lives, but making big changes can also be scary, leaving us polarized between moving forward or keeping the status quo. Other times, things like job loss or the death of a loved one can bring about changes whether we wanted them or not. Themes of identity, meaning, purpose, setting boundaries, communication, adjusting to change, and sometimes grief and loss are often part of navigating new transitions. Therapy for life changes and transitions includes support for getting unstuck if you are polarized in decision-making.

Grief proceeds at its own pace. It is a visitor that can arrive in unexpected moments before leaving just as quickly. Experiencing loss is part of being human, but not all losses are the same, and some of them can knock us down or hit us like a ton of bricks. Grief can also become complicated and last far longer than ourselves or others might expect, which causes a cascade of other feelings like shame, embarrassment, or feeling unsupported by those around us. My approach to supporting grief includes IFS-informed explorations, being with and holding space for all the parts of your that might have differing ways of responding and grieving.

IFS therapy offers a compassionate approach to addictive processes and patterns such as numbing out, doom scrolling, soothing behaviors, disordered eating, excessive spending and retail therapy, gambling, substance use, alcohol use, and more self-destructive behaviors. Addictive processes are often viewed as a chronic internal polarization of parts that operate around buried emotional pain.

Our connections and relationships with others, no matter how meaningful or important, can often activate parts of us. Relationship challenges—whether with an intimate partner, spouse, family member, friend, or colleague—can be explored using a both/and approach of interpersonal exploration while also offering support to the unhealed parts of you that are reacting to a person or situation. In IFS therapy, the term tor-mentor, with a hyphen added, is often used to describe individuals who torment us but also teach us about what is needed to heal within us.