I've been a professional counselor in private practice since 1999, and my training includes several different kinds of person-centered, spiritually based, and relationship-oriented psychotherapy frameworks. Since 2004, however, my primary approach has been Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, also known as "parts therapy." This model says that our natural emotional development, from childhood through adulthood, includes spontaneously creating sub-personalities or parts in our inner system to protect us through traumatic or highly stressful moments, and hiding the hurt parts of ourselves so they can avoid getting hurt again.
 

This system helped us survive. But now we're often stuck behaving as if we're back there, wherever our worst hurts were.
 

We've all had difficult times when it feels like something has taken us over. So, we get angrier than the situation warrants, or more afraid, or more overwhelmed. Or maybe a critical part takes the reins and starts bossing others around or berating us for not being smarter, more successful, more popular...just more. Or we reach for a drink or a drug or a bag of cookies.
 

None of these parts is out to hurt us (though sometimes they do). They're all trying, usually in less-than-effective ways, to help us.

But they've forgotten that, beneath even the most extreme behavior, is the essence of who we really are - loving, relaxed, centered, and fully alive. The goal of IFS therapy is to help all our parts release their burdens - the roles they've had to play to help us survive. Releasing those burdens opens us up to more creative energy and joy in our lives, and begins to allow our true essence - our "Self" - to take the lead. (For more information on this model, visit the Center for Self Leadership website: www.selfleadership.org.)