IFS Therapy in NYC
Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy
Jessica Healy, LMHC, LCPC
Therapy in NY, MA, ME, FL
Hello!
I provide online IFS therapy to residents of New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Florida. Most of my clients are NYC-based, where I offer in-person sessions in Brooklyn twice per year. In-person sessions are offered year-round in Portland, Maine.
Perhaps you’ve arrived here after having done therapy already. You’ve grown and learned a lot about yourself, but understanding your patterns hasn’t gotten you completely unstuck. Maybe you’ve found that knowing isn’t the same as changing.
IFS offers a way to move beyond the parts of you that know things intellectually to the parts that lie further inside, running the show behind the scene. IFS will grow your self-compassion and help you learn how and why your system has blocked access to deeper change for so long.
IFS Therapy for
When Talk Therapy Has Plateaued
Some of us are naturally very intellectual, analytical enough by ourselves without the help of a therapist. High performers may be used to problem solving on their own; creatives may have been using art to make sense of their emotions for years.
Recognizing the mistakes we’ve made, and what events or developmental stages they sprang from may be obvious; IFS therapy can dig into the internal structures that keep us making these mistakes over and over.
What Is Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy?
IFS explores inner conflicts and inner systems in more granular detail than “just talking.” While every therapist has their own style, the structure beneath the therapy remains consistent.
IFS posits that the psyche is made up of many different parts, each with their own perspectives, feelings, and agendas. The roles these parts take on are shaped by past experiences. Some work together in groups to achieve their goals; others work against each other.
- Managers protect the system from pain proactively. Some common ones are: perfectionism, procrastination, people pleasing.
- Firefighters protect the system from pain reactively. For example: raging, substance abuse, numbness.
- Exiles, the youngest most vulnerable members of the system who sometimes take on painful burdens, and who want very badly to be seen and witnessed.
Our job in therapy is to get to know the major players in your system, how you relate to them, and how they relate to each other. During this process, you will grow compassion for yourself, which helps integrate parts in conflict and include parts that hide in the shadows (which sometimes run the show).
Properly paced guided exploration of your system allows for greater connection to what IFS calls Self, which is the wisdom, confidence, and calm which we all have access to. Self guides what gestalt therapy calls “organismic self-regulation”: the innate ability of your inner system to rebalance and heal itself. This happens more fluidly when we are in touch with the system in its entirety (the inner “hardware”) and gain clarity about how its parts work together (the inner “software”), allowing for a greater ability to continually adjust your choices according to your ever-changing needs and circumstances.
Somatic IFS: Bringing the Body Into Parts Work
Western culture does not support connection with our bodies in their resting state. Commonly, we are in touch with them when there is a problem (such as with chronic pain and chronic illness), when we are optimizing them for peak performance (as athletes do), or when we use how our bodies look as a measure of our personal value (which can lead to low self-esteem or dysfunctional relationships with food or exercise).
Mindfulness awareness of the body is an important building block of IFS. The awareness of the felt sense of the body (interoceptive awareness) is a more ancient neurological process than language, and even than visual imagery. While top-down therapy exploring the repetition of undesired patterns is useful to a certain point, there are often many unconscious factors that hold those patterns in place, so it’s useful to work bottom-up as well. Slowing down and paying attention to our bodily sensations shines the spotlight on parts of ourselves we may be accustomed to pushing aside until their messages become urgent or overwhelming.
If you can’t easily access body sensations, that is great information as well, and there’s actually a lot to explore around the process or your body “turning down the volume” so low. This is somatic therapy, too!
I offer somatic therapy for non-somatic “thinkers.” I appreciate an analytical scientific mind – my own led the way to a number of published articles on the arts and clinical work – though I have learned to allow it to relax enough to let in alternative sources of information. I arrived to somatic work skeptical of bringing the nonverbal into therapy (yes, it can all sound a little woo-woo sometimes). My experience as a Certified Massage Practitioner (CMP) in California for 4 years, as well as my training in various somatic modalities, such as somatic IFS and Hakomi, have convinced me that the data provided by interoceptive awareness is invaluable to the healing process. The science bears this out, too.
What an IFS Therapist Can Help With
IFS therapy helps you get to know the parts and processes within your system that are keeping you stuck. Some common challenges that I specialize in and which IFS therapy can help alleviate are:
Working With an IFS Therapist
in NYC
IFS therapy with me looks like 50 minute weekly sessions, which are gently paced according to your system’s readiness. Consent of your system to go to certain places is integral to IFS, and we will not push beyond what your system is ready for. That being said, this is not completely free-form therapy either. IFS has a reliable structure as its backbone, which is something we will continually return to.
If you’re looking for a challenge rather than constant validation, the IFS model will do this by bringing to light parts that have been kept in the dark, parts which can be evasive even when going in with the intention of seeking them. The desire to be challenged in therapy is also something to consider. Sometimes the challenge is less in pushing yourself to “do hard things” than it is in examining the belief that pushing is always necessary to see results, and together we can learn when it is and when it isn’t.
I am equipped to guide you through your IFS therapy having immersed myself in the modality. My experience includes completing IFS Levels 1 & 2 through IFSI, IFSCA’s comprehensive Stepping Stones program, as well as several other a la carte specialty IFS courses.
Online IFS Therapy
in New York, Massachusetts, Florida and Maine
I work mainly as an online IFS therapist, offering virtual psychotherapy to clients in:
- New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens)
- Massachusetts (Boston area, North Shore, Western Mass.)
- Maine (Portland, Falmouth)
- Florida
(Miami,Ft. Lauderdale)
I am available to work with coaching clients anywhere in the world.
In-person sessions are available in Portland, ME, as well as twice per year in Brooklyn, NY.
Frequently Asked Questions About IFS Therapy
What is IFS therapy best for?
IFS therapy is best for anxiety, depression, trauma (PTSD/CPTSD), addiction, eating disorders, and other mood disorders, such as bipolar I & II. Many folks who are neurodivergent (along the spectrum of ADHD, AuDHD, and autism) also find IFS useful. Each of these diagnoses consists of an array of parts, some of which work together, and others in opposition, with certain systems relying more on firefighters, and others more on managers.
Using IFS to treat severe mental illness that includes psychosis is currently still in the exploratory stages, so if this is the treatment you seek, I would advise you to look for someone in the IFS directory who specializes in this, or go with a more traditional therapeutic route.
Does insurance pay for IFS therapy?
Most of my clients use their insurance to pay for sessions via out-of-network insurance coverage. For more information, see the Fees & Services page.
Which is better, EMDR or IFS?
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and IFS (Internal Family Systems) are both valuable therapeutic modalities that work in different, often complementary, ways.
EMDR is a highly structured modality which uses tools such as tapping or holding vibrating buzzers in the hands to stimulate bilateral brain activity. This helps to reprocess traumatic memories and reduce reactivity to triggers.
IFS explores clients’ inner systems and component parts to deepen understanding of the system and relieve emotional burdens.
Both treat distress as something that is stuck in time and aim to update the system so it knows it is safe. Both also use body sensations and imagery to access memories.
How do I find a good IFS therapist in NYC?
The IFS Directory managed by IFSI is the best resource for finding IFS therapists in New York City and around the world. I am listed in the directory.
IFSI upholds a high standard of training and also has a certification program. The Level 1 training occurs over a series of months, so you can be certain that therapists have not just taken a one hour course in the method and called themselves an expert. This length of study is important as the modality is experiential, not just intellectual.
Also, if you’re here on my website, you’ve found a good IFS therapist in NYC! Drop me a line!
I’ve done talk therapy before. How is IFS different?
Other talk therapies are unstructured (think “free association”) or one-size-fits-all (see the 12 week psychoeducational program of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy). While these are valuable building blocks, IFS balances both structure and exploration.
I follow your lead as far as what you want to delve into, and we conceptualize your mind as a system with component parts that work together and/or against each other in different parts of your life. The deepening process of getting to know your “parts” has a familiar structure once you’ve done it a few times, though what it leads to is often unexpected. Together we will learn what parts are at play at a pace your system can handle, opening more options for systemic change.
I like the computer metaphor: in IFS we learn the hardware we’re working with (your parts) and the operating system that guides how things work together (parts’ relationship to each other and your relationship to them). If the goal is to go in and reprogram things, we first need to know what we’re working with to see how things can more run more effectively.
Are you a certified IFS therapist?
I am currently in the final stage of getting certified.
The IFSI certification process is rigorous, and requires applicants to take a Level 1 training, as well as a Level 2 training or to participate as a Program Assistant for a Level 1. Applicants must also complete 2 years as well as 200 hours practicing IFS, 15 hours of additional IFS training, 15 hours of IFS clinical consultation, and, finally, submit a video of a session for review.
I have exceeding the training requirements in that I have completed both a Level 2 training and was a PA for a Level 1, in addition to taking numerous other IFS workshops, and all I have left to do is submit my video!
Do you offer IFS therapy online?
Yes! I offer IFS therapy to clients in New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Florida. I offer online IFS coaching to clients anywhere in the world.
What happens in a free consultation?
In our initial meeting, I will ask what’s bringing you to therapy, what you are looking for in a therapist, and what you hope to get out of therapy. This can be what’s going on in your life now, or things from the past that feel important – whatever is easiest for you to talk about as we get to know each other. It may feel awkward at first revealing intimate personal details to someone who is essentially a stranger, so we can go at whatever pace feels best to you.
Read more about consultations on the Contact page.
