Internal Family Systems
The part of you that fills the calendar and the part that scrolls until 1am are on the same team.
Parts language for people at war with themselves. IFS-informed work, often alongside EMDR.
What It Is
In plain language
You have probably noticed that you are not one consistent person about this. There is the one who books the 6am flight and means it. There is the one who cancels dinner and feels relieved. There is the one who lies on the couch at midnight scrolling with a kind of grim determination, refusing to go to bed even though you are exhausted. Each of them has a reason. None of them can hear the others.
Internal Family Systems gives that observation a working structure. Rather than treating the midnight scrolling as a failure of discipline, we treat it as a part of you doing a job. When you find out what the job is, the behavior usually loosens without a fight. I am IFS-informed rather than IFS-certified, and I use parts language inside a broader practice rather than as the only lens.
The model describes an internal system with three kinds of roles. Managers run the operation and try to prevent pain in advance: the one who keeps your calendar full, edits the email nine times, and reads the room before you walk into it. Exiles carry the parts of your history that were too much at the time, usually young and usually holding something like humiliation or abandonment. Firefighters show up after the fact, when an exile gets close to the surface, and their only job is to make the feeling stop right now, by whatever means is available.
The overworking manager and the midnight scrolling firefighter look like opposites. They are colleagues. One prevents the feeling, the other extinguishes it when prevention fails, and they are both protecting the same young thing. Understanding that is what stops the internal war, because you cannot shame a bodyguard into leaving their post.
Underneath all of it, the model holds that there is a you that is not a part: steadier, curious rather than reactive, able to look at any of this without panic. Most people meet that version of themselves briefly and assume it was a fluke. A lot of the work is making it more reachable, because everything else gets easier from there.
At a Glance
- Shelley Davidescu, LMFT, 17 years in practice
- In person in Bankers Hill, San Diego
- Telehealth Monday through Friday across California
- Free 15-minute consultation
Individual sessions are $210, or $325 for 90 minutes. Couples sessions are $225, or $345 for 90 minutes.
All of my methodsIn a Session
What this actually involves
Step through it. This is the shape of the work, not a script we follow line by line.
You say something like: I should just be able to handle this. We slow down and ask which part of you says that, what tone it uses, and how old the voice sounds. People often recognize it immediately, and often it belongs to a specific decade of their life.
Fit
Best for, and not for
Worth knowing before you book, so neither of us spends four sessions finding out.
Best For
- People who are harshly divided against themselves and describe it as self-sabotage
- High achievers whose driven part and collapsed part alternate on a weekly cycle
- Anyone who has done a lot of insight work and finds the behavior unchanged
- People preparing for or working alongside EMDR who need protective parts on board first
Not For
- If parts language feels alienating or gimmicky to you, say so early: the same work can be done in plainer terms and I will not insist on the vocabulary
- If you need crisis or inpatient-level care, we would arrange the right level of care before doing exploratory work
If you are in crisis, call or text 988. If I am not the right clinician for what you are carrying, I will say so and help you find someone who is.
How I Use It
Where this sits in the rest of the work
IFS and EMDR fit together particularly well, and I use them as a pair more often than either alone. EMDR processing tends to stall when a protective part is not convinced this is safe, and the stall gets misread as resistance or as EMDR not working. It is neither. It is a part doing exactly what it was built to do. Spending a session getting that part's agreement usually unblocks the processing more effectively than pushing through would.
It also sits naturally with the compassionate self-awareness stance I work from, because parts language makes non-judgment structurally easier. It is difficult to despise a strategy once you know what it was protecting. In couples work, I sometimes use it lightly: the part of you that goes silent in an argument is not the whole of you, and your partner benefits from hearing that distinction out loud.
Questions
Answered plainly
Anything not covered here is worth asking on the free 15-minute consult.
Related Reading
Are you IFS certified?
No. I am IFS-informed. I use parts work as part of a broader practice, and I will not claim a certification level I do not hold.
Does this mean I have multiple personalities?
No. Parts language is a way of describing the ordinary experience of feeling two ways at once. It is not a clinical claim about your identity.
What if I cannot feel any parts?
Common, especially early on and especially for people who stay in their heads for a living. We start from behavior and body rather than imagery: what you did, what tightened, what time it happened. The rest follows or we use a different approach.
Can this be combined with EMDR?
Yes, and it often is. Getting protective parts on board first tends to make processing steadier, and I will usually suggest that sequence if EMDR keeps stalling.
Is IFS good for anxiety specifically?
It can be, particularly when the anxiety comes with a loud internal critic or a cycle of pushing hard and then shutting down. For anxiety that is mostly a present-day prediction loop, CBT and skills work are often the faster route, and we would start there.
Free 15-Minute Consult
Fifteen minutes to find out whether this is the right work.
Tell me what is actually going on. I will tell you honestly how I would approach it, and whether I am the right person for it.
In person in San Diego, and by telehealth across California.