Internal Family Systems & parts work

A map of the human psyche that helps you work through conditionings that no longer serve you, and reach resources that have been shut away due to neglect or trauma. One of three layers I combine; the others are coaching and family constellations.

Trance, not hypnosis

While not hypnosis, these sessions involve a form of trance where you are both present and in a working space with your “parts.” The focus is not on what you tell me or my interpretation of your problem, but on a specific session structure where I hold space for you to effectively work with your parts.

What “stuck parts” produce

Parts can get stuck. When they do, you see it as behaviour: addictions, fear, indecisiveness, procrastination — and longer-running personality structures like perfectionism or anxiety. These aren’t character flaws. They’re the visible surface of a part that needed to take on a job and never got to put it down.

The standstill

When two parts go head-to-head, we either don’t make decisions, or we make impulsive decisions, or we make a decision and then we make the opposite decision in a very quick sequence. We call this the standstill. None of those three is the right option — but it’s the kind of decision we keep making over and over again, which is what keeps us stuck in an equilibrium.

One level deeper than coaching

To work with this content, going one level deeper than traditional coaching is beneficial. Coaching typically operates on the level of cognition, discipline, and executive power — your ability to regulate yourself. We, however, work on the level where emotions are generated through your nervous system. In parts work, we address different aspects, levels, and clusters of your nervous system using a playbook designed to improve their collaboration and connection to your innate source of power. This power is what allows you to discern what is good for you, what leads to life and wholeness, what sparks joy, and what aligns with your purpose. Here, we work on blocks within this field.

Under these long-standing feuds between parts, there’s usually a third part — an exile. Some deep innate capacity in you, something good, got damaged at some point in your life. You don’t remember; you don’t need to remember. You were a fish in water and you don’t know what water was. When that exile gets met, the standstill softens — and your default choice changes. Not because you tried harder, but because the thing the standstill was about just isn’t so loud anymore.

One step below the systemic layer

Parts work sits between coaching above and family constellations below. Constellations operate on the systems we belong to — family, lineage, the implicit rules we carry. Parts work meets the nervous system that holds the imprint of those systems inside an individual psyche. Different layer, same direction of travel: integration.

How this fits inside the program

Inside the Signature Program, parts work runs through every healing block. As parts get heard and integrated, your default choice changes — you don’t need the same accountability scaffolding because the part that was avoiding the work has been met. Coaching then carries the integration into the shape of your week, and constellations open the layer above when a transgenerational pattern is what’s in the way.