What is Parts Work, or IFS Therapy?

Have you ever noticed that part of you wants to reach out while another part wants to disappear? That part of you knows you need rest while another part cannot stop moving? That two voices inside you can argue for days, and neither one wins?

That's not confusion. That's not a character flaw. That is your inner system doing exactly what it learned to do — usually a long time ago, usually for very good reasons.

Parts work is the modality that finally makes sense of that inner landscape. It doesn't try to silence the arguing voices or fix the parts that feel difficult. It does something more radical, and more effective: it listens to them. And in being genuinely listened to — many of them for the very first time — they begin to change.

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What Parts Work Actually Is

Parts work starts from a premise that will probably feel immediately familiar: the mind is not one unified thing. It's more like a community. Inside you are different parts — sometimes called subpersonalities, sometimes ego states, sometimes simply parts — each holding different feelings, different memories, and different jobs they took on somewhere along the way.

Most of the time, one part is in charge. Sometimes a different part takes over, and you do something you wouldn't have predicted. Sometimes two parts are in open conflict, and you're caught in the middle. This isn't pathology. This is how the human psyche is built — and for women who grew up in environments that weren't safe, the inner system becomes particularly elaborate, particularly layered, and particularly in need of careful attention.

The two main lineages of parts work I draw from are:

Gestalt Therapy — developed by Fritz and Laura Perls in the 1950s, working with parts directly, in real time, in the body, in the room. Immediate, embodied, alive.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) — developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s, offering a more detailed map of the inner world that many people find deeply recognizable the moment they encounter it.

In IFS, the system includes protectors who manage things from the front, exiles who carry the original wounds and have been pushed out of sight, and managers who organize everything to make sure the exiles stay hidden. And at the center — untouched, even by the worst of what happened — is the Self: your own steady, curious, compassionate core, present even when the parts are in distress.

The work is to access that Self. And from there, to let it turn toward the parts that have been running the show in its absence.

This is the heart of contemporary IFS therapy for complex trauma, and it's what many women who find this practice are already searching for by name.

What Parts Work Reaches That Other Approaches Can't

Many of the women I work with have already spent years trying to think their way out of patterns that simply won't move.

You understand, intellectually, why you over-function. Why you can't rest. Why the same argument keeps happening in your closest relationships. You've read the books. You've journaled. You've sat with excellent therapists. And the part of you that over-functions still over-functions, regardless of what you know about why.

This is exactly what parts work addresses. That part of you isn't going to stop because the rest of you has read about it. It has its own logic. It came into being to solve a real problem at a real moment in your life — possibly when you were five or six years old — and it is still faithfully trying to solve that problem now. You can't reason it out of the job it took on for you all those years ago.

But you can meet it. You can find out what it was protecting. You can let it know that you — the adult you, the Self — are here now, and that it doesn't have to keep working so hard alone.

From that meeting, slowly and with care, a part can begin to lay down a burden it has been carrying for decades.

Parts work also addresses one of the harder truths about complex trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery: some of what you do, you don't fully understand. The flash of rage that comes from nowhere. The sudden collapse in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. The voice that tells you you're worthless when nothing in the present moment has warranted it. These aren't random. They aren't symptoms to be managed. They are parts of you that haven't yet been met. Parts work is how they finally get met.

How I Work

My Portland, Oregon practice is built around an integrated approach to complex trauma — weaving together IFS and parts work, EMDR therapy, somatic and body-based trauma therapy, polyvagal-informed nervous system care, and relational psychotherapy into one coherent, carefully calibrated method.

These aren't separate treatments. They're one approach, responsive to what each woman is actually carrying, moving at the pace her system can genuinely integrate.

I see clients in person in Portland, Oregon, and virtually throughout Oregon and Missouri.

If you've read this and something in it recognized you, I'd love to hear from you. The first conversation is relaxed, unhurried, and without any obligation beyond seeing how it feels to talk.

Serving women in Portland, Oregon, and throughout Oregon and Missouri via telehealth.

What a Session Actually Feels Like

A session that moves into parts work usually begins with whatever you've brought into the room — a difficult week, a pattern you can't shake, a moment that's been sitting with you. We slow down. We notice that one part of you feels one way about it, and probably another part feels something different, and possibly a third part has opinions about the first two.

We begin to separate them out — gently, without forcing anything.

From there, the work is both conversational and embodied. I might ask:

— Where in your body do you notice this part?

— What does it look like, if it has a shape or an image?

— How old is it?

— What is it afraid would happen if it stopped doing its job?

These aren't rhetorical questions. The parts usually have answers — answers your thinking mind wouldn't have arrived at on its own.

Sometimes the work involves your Self speaking directly to a younger part — the adult you turning toward the child you, offering what the child never received. Sometimes it involves two parts that have been at war for decades, finally meeting each other. Sometimes it's quieter than that: the long, careful, surprisingly tender act of getting to know a part of yourself you've spent years trying not to notice.

The pace is slow. The depth is in the slowness. The work is in the meeting.

Parts work and IFS therapy tend to be a strong fit for women carrying:

— Complex relational trauma and complex PTSD

— The long aftermath of narcissistic abuse or narcissistic abuse recovery

— Developmental trauma and chronic emotional neglect

— Inner contradictions and self-sabotaging patterns that haven't yielded to other approaches

— Responses — emotional, behavioral, physical — that sometimes surprise or confuse you

It's also a particularly good fit if you've already done significant insight-based or cognitive therapy and feel like the patterns are still running underneath what you understand. The parts won't move through thinking alone. They move through being genuinely met.

As with any of the deeper modalities, parts work is generally not the right starting point if you're in acute crisis or working through active substance dependence that hasn't yet been addressed. Stabilization comes first, and I'll always tell you honestly if I think we need to begin somewhere else before we go here.

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Frequently Asked Questions

  • Internal Family Systems — most people call it IFS — is a model of psychotherapy developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s, and it starts from a premise that tends to feel immediately, almost relievingly, true: your mind is not one unified thing. It's made up of parts. Different voices, different feelings, different versions of you that each have their own perspective, their own fears, and their own jobs they took on somewhere along the way.

    IFS holds that every part — even the ones that seem destructive, or irrational, or exhausting — has good intentions. There are no bad parts. Each one came into being for a reason, and each one is still trying, in its own way, to protect you.

    At the center of the system, IFS holds, is the Self — your own steady, curious, compassionate core. Not a part. Not a role. The real you, present even when the parts are loudest. The work is to access that Self, and to let it turn toward the parts that have been carrying heavy burdens for a very long time.

    IFS is one of the most widely used and well-researched modalities in contemporary trauma therapy. It's also the form of parts work that most women search for by name — and if you've found your way here through that search, you're in the right place.

  • Yes — and it's one of the modalities most specifically designed for it.

    Complex trauma and complex PTSD don't just leave painful memories. They fragment the inner system. They create elaborate networks of protectors and exiles, managers keeping everything under careful control, and younger parts carrying wounds that have never been fully seen or met. Parts work — IFS therapy in particular — was built to address exactly this kind of inner landscape.

    For women carrying the long aftermath of narcissistic abuse, developmental trauma, or chronic relational harm, parts work is often what makes it possible to approach the more deeply held material at all. Some of what lives inside the system won't respond to insight, or reprocessing, or any amount of understanding — until it has first been genuinely met.

    Held inside an integrated approach — alongside EMDR therapy, somatic and body-based trauma therapy, polyvagal-informed nervous system care, and the relational psychotherapy that holds the whole — parts work does some of the most meaningful work in the room.

  • Talk therapy tends to engage the conscious, narrating part of you — the part that can explain what happened, reflect on patterns, observe your own behavior with some perspective. That part is valuable. That work is real.

    But parts work engages the other parts directly. The protector who won't let you rest. The exile who carries the original wound. The part that goes suddenly quiet in certain conversations. The part that takes over and does things you don't fully understand afterward.

    Talk therapy speaks about the parts. Parts work speaks to them. And the parts, it turns out, have a great deal to say — things your thinking mind would never have come up with on its own.

    The two approaches aren't in opposition. In this practice they're woven together throughout the work, each reaching what the other can't.

  • Nothing that would feel out of place in good, careful therapy.

    The work is conversational. You won't be asked to perform, or to do anything before you feel ready. If a part needs more time before it's willing to speak, we give it more time. If something feels like too much, we slow down or step back. The pace is always set by the slowest part — which is one of the gentler, wiser rules of this work.

    What can feel unfamiliar at first is being asked to turn toward a part with curiosity rather than frustration. To get interested in the voice that usually embarrasses you, or the pattern that usually exhausts you. That shift — from wanting to fix or silence a part, to genuinely wanting to understand it — is often where the work begins to move.

  • For complex trauma, parts work is rarely a short-term undertaking — and I'd rather be honest with you about that than promise something faster.

    It's part of a longer arc of treatment, often a year or more, with parts work woven through the EMDR therapy, the somatic work, and the relational holding that surrounds it. Some specific parts can shift meaningfully and quickly once they are genuinely met — the relief when a part finally feels heard can be immediate and real. The larger reorganization of the inner system happens more slowly, and more lastingly.

    The pace is set by what the parts are willing to do, and what your nervous system can integrate. That's not a limitation. That's the work being done properly.

  • Often, yes — and this is frequently the population the work suits best.

    If you've spent years in skilled therapy, built real insight into your history and your patterns, and you're still living with anxiety, hypervigilance, self-sabotaging behavior, or responses that surprise you — that's not a failure of your previous work. That's a signal that what remains is stored somewhere talking couldn't reach.

    The parts won't move through understanding alone. They move through being met. If your insight work has taken you as far as it can, this is often what comes next.

  • Collaborative, honest, and straightforward. We're here to guide the process, bring ideas to the table, and keep things moving.