🕯️ How an IFS Session Differs from Traditional Therapy

Traditional therapy often centers on talking about problems. The client describes thoughts, behaviors, and memories, and the therapist offers insight or coping tools. Healing is something to achieve.

In IFS, healing is already waiting inside. The session becomes a meeting place — between Self and the parts that carry pain, protection, or confusion. Instead of analyzing them, the therapist helps you turn toward them with curiosity.

You might close your eyes. You might slow your breath. You listen for images, sensations, or emotions that arise — the language of parts.

The therapist doesn’t interpret; they invite connection.

Progress in IFS is not measured by symptom reduction alone but by relationship repair within the inner system. A once-hated critic becomes understood. A numbing part starts to trust.

In traditional therapy, you talk to the therapist. In IFS, you talk to yourself — the many selves within.

It’s not advice that changes you. It’s meeting what’s inside and discovering it no longer needs to hide.