Internal Family Systems Therapy (or IFS) is a transformative approach which views the mind as a system of interconnected parts, much like a family unit. Each part carries its own perspectives, preferences and needs, and certain parts may take on the role of being “protective” in nature while others may be more vulnerable and innocent in nature. Symptoms arise when a part is too burdened, or multiple parts have become polarized in their views. IFS also views each of us as having a core, unchanging and loving inner Self (with a capital “S”) that is indestructible and ever-present. Part of healing is getting in touch with this higher Self and allowing the Self to interact with any other parts of us that need its loving and wise attention.
Coherence Therapy is an inherently non-pathologizing therapeutic approach. From this lens, symptoms are the result of deep and likely unconscious emotional learnings that were adaptive at one time in our life. A “symptom” is often the solution to a problem. For example, if my need for unconditional love is not met as a child, I might develop shame about who I am to solve the problem of feeling unloved by my parents. The goal is to discover the coherent internal beliefs that are maintaining these symptoms and bring them into conscious awareness. We can then resolve the symptom by reappraising and updating our beliefs about ourselves and the world.
Somatic Experiencing (SE) seeks to resolve symptoms of trauma through working with the body. It’s fortunately becoming more common for people to understand that reactions to trauma occur on a physical level, and those reactions get stored in the body. The idea is that when we respond to a situation with fight, flight, freeze or fawn, these nervous system survival strategies get encoded into our bodily memory as tensions, heaviness, constriction and activation. When we are triggered to re-experience these sensations, it can end up causing a lot of dysfunction and distress as we try to navigate the world.
My approach to therapy is inseparable from all the modalities I’ve ever learned, studied and practiced (and continue to learn, study and practice). It’s also hard for me not to see patterns and similarities among them, making it difficult at times to distinguish exactly where the technique of one modality ends and another begins.
