Parts Work / Internal Family Systems Therapy in Edmonton

A compassionate path toward inner harmony, healing, and integration

Parts Work—often known as Internal Family Systems (IFS)—is a therapeutic approach based on a simple yet transformative truth: we are not one thing. We carry many inner parts, each with its own story, emotion, and purpose. Some protect us. Some hold pain. Some carry wisdom. All of them are trying, in their own way, to help us survive.

Parts Work helps you meet these inner parts with curiosity and compassion—so that instead of feeling overwhelmed by inner conflict, you can move toward clarity, choice, and inner harmony.

What Is Parts Work?

Rather than seeing the mind as a single voice, Parts Work understands that we all have:

• Protective parts – the anxious one, the perfectionist, the pleaser, the critic, the one who wants to shut down or take control

• Wounded parts – younger, vulnerable parts holding grief, shame, fear, or unmet needs

• Core Self – the calm, compassionate, wise center within you

Parts Work helps you access this Core Self so you can form a healing relationship with the parts that carry pain or responsibility. Instead of pushing them away, we learn to listen to them—and help them transform.

Why Work with Parts?

Many of our struggles—anxiety, overwhelm, people-pleasing, emotional shutdown—are driven by parts of us that learned adaptive strategies earlier in life. They worked then, but they may no longer serve us now.

Parts Work allows you to:

• understand why certain reactions feel automatic

• access younger parts holding unprocessed emotion

• update old protective strategies

• release shame and self-blame

• cultivate deeper emotional balance and clarity

This approach is especially powerful for long-standing patterns that don’t shift through insight alone.

A Neuroscience-Informed Approach

Parts exist in neural networks formed by lived experience. Many of these networks involve implicit memories—body-based emotional learnings stored beneath conscious awareness.

Parts Work helps:

• access these implicit emotional memories

• bring them into connection with Core Self

• reshape them through new experiential learning

• promote lasting change at a neural level

This is one reason Parts Work is so effective for trauma, attachment wounds, and ingrained emotional patterns.

My Integrative Approach: IFS, Jungian Psychology & Somatics

My Parts Work integrates:

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

A gentle model that helps you build a compassionate relationship with your parts, guided by Self.

Jungian psychology

Bringing in archetypes, inner images, dreams, and symbols to explore the deeper meaning behind your parts and their stories.

Somatic awareness

Because parts show up not just in thoughts—but in posture, breath, tension, impulses, and body sensations.
Working through the body helps access parts that talking alone may miss.

Together, this creates an approach that is symbolic, embodied, relational, and rooted in deep psychological healing.

What Parts Work Sessions Feel Like

In a typical session, we might:

• slow down and notice sensations or emotions arising in the moment

• identify which part is activated (a protector? a wounded younger part?)

• explore its role, fears, and history without judgment

• help that part feel seen, supported, and less alone

• access Self energy—curious, calm, compassionate

• guide protective parts into healthier, updated roles

• offer younger parts the care, attunement, or safety they never received

The aim is integration—not perfection. We’re not eliminating parts; we’re helping them become allies rather than drivers.

Parts Work Can Help With:

• anxiety and emotional overwhelm

• shame and inner criticism

• trauma and childhood wounds

• relationship and attachment struggles

• people-pleasing, perfectionism, burnout

• feeling “fragmented,” conflicted, or disconnected from yourself

Over time, Parts Work strengthens your ability to stay grounded, compassionate, and centered—no matter what inner part arises.

The Transformative Potential of IFS / Parts Work

Parts Work helps you shift from:

• self-judgment → self-understanding

• inner chaos → inner clarity

• old survival patterns → new, embodied choices

• fragmentation → integration

• shame → compassion

When your parts feel supported rather than pushed away, they soften. They trust. They transform.
And you regain access to more spaciousness, self-leadership, and emotional freedom.

Is Parts Work Right for You?

Parts Work may resonate if you:

• feel like different “versions” of you compete or conflict

• are highly self-critical or overwhelmed by inner dialogue

• want a gentle, compassionate, non-pathologizing approach

• feel stuck in old patterns despite lots of insight

• are drawn to inner work, symbolism, or depth-oriented therapy

If this speaks to you, Parts Work can offer a profound pathway home to yourself.