IFS

Internal Family Systems (or IFS) is best represented by the film Inside Out, where we meet and get to know some emotions, or parts, of a little girl named Riley. The film was partly inspired by IFS, and IFS therapists were consulted during the making of the movie. In the therapy room, this approach looks like welcoming all aspects of ourselves, getting to know parts that we may not particularly like or find helpful in our life, easing conflict that we feel within ourselves and developing a loving relationship with ourself.

I am level two trained in IFS by the IFS Institute, having done my level two training in “A Compassionate Approach to Addictive Processes and Eating Disorders.” Internal family systems is both a modality of therapy and way of life that operates in conjunction to my advocacy for abolition.

A common myth about IFS is that it endorses and encourages the concept of multiple personalities, which is a distinct and very real experience of dissociative identity disorder. It’s also a misconception that IFS doesn’t allow clients to take accountability for themselves, instead passing that along to their parts. While IFS may help to externalize parts of ourselves to understand them better, we are ultimately at the helm of our system and responsible for our parts.

Therapy Style

Feminist Therapy

While feminist therapy was originally developed as a way for clients and therapists to better examine the impact of gender on women’s mental health and overall experiences, it also values how we can examine other cultural influences and identity in the same way for everyone’s mental health.

Some common themes I address within this medium are mother wounds, personal exploration of sexuality and gender, late diagnosed Autistic and ADHD women, helping men access a fuller range of emotions, and the mental load within heteronormative relationships.

Feminist therapy is for everybody, not just women. Similarly to relational-cultural approaches, The feminist framework allows us to understand how the way in which we show up in the world has a big impact on how we ultimately end up viewing ourselves and those around us.

Narrative Therapy

In narrative therapy, the client is the expert and the therapy process is collaborative. There is an emphasis on our stories and how we understand them. Through these stories we have the freedom to explore personal growth and the meaning in our life.

Narrative therapy can have a lot of overlap with person-centered therapy, which is non-directive and also sees the client as the expert in the therapy room. Person-centered therapy is another core of Little Bird Psychotherapy.