Methods

“Like the sun, the Self can only be temporarily obscured, but it never disappears.”

-Richard C. Schwartz, PhD

Internal Family Systems

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidenced-based therapeutic approach that promotes a deeper sense of understanding your inner world to facilitate healing. It encompasses the idea that we all have different “parts” within us, including, but not limited to: the inner critic, the people-pleaser, the perfectionist, the high-achiever, the angry part, the part that shuts down when things get hard, always on-the-go part, or the over-analyzer. These parts aren’t flaws – they’ve developed to protect us and help us cope. Sometimes, however, they can clash, overwhelm us, or keep us stuck in patterns we desire to change.

IFS gently guides you to get to know these parts, build a compassionate relationship with them, and access your core Self – the calm, confident, grounded place within you that can lead your healing. IFS can empower you to become the leader of your own internal system – one where all parts are heard, healed, and working together.

Through IFS, you’ll learn how to:

• Understand and address inner conflict through generating creative solutions to internal issues
• Address concerns and fears that block healing
• Build a bridge to heal trauma (single event or complex trauma) and deep wounds
• Obtain balance, wholeness, harmony and alignment with your core Self and system

Polyvagal Theory

Grounded in neuroscience, Polyvagal Theory helps explain why we react the way we do – especially in moments of stress, anxiety, or overwhelm. This theory also explains how the nervous system learns to adapt to trauma – not just through fight or flight, but also through subtle states of shutdown, freeze, hyper-independence, or disconnection that may go unnoticed.

Through a Polyvagal-informed approach, therapy helps you understand your body’s responses, reconnect with a sense of safety, and shift from survival mode into a grounded presence to promote working with your nervous system instead of against it.

Other ways Polyvagal Theory can help is if you:

• Feel stuck in anxiety, burnout, or emotional numbness
• Struggle to relax-even during downtime or moments of success
• Feel disconnected from yourself, emotions, or relationships
• Have a history of childhood or relational trauma (even if you’ve “moved on”)
• Experience chronic stress

Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic therapy helps you explore the deeper layers beneath your current struggles – patterns rooted in early experiences, relationships, and the unconscious stories that quietly shape how you think, feel, and relate to others.

Rather than focusing only on surface-level symptoms, this approach invites you to understand the why behind your emotions, behaviors, and inner conflicts. Psychodynamic Therapy involves a collaborative approach through a reflective process to facilitate self-understanding, not just symptom-relief.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (also widely known as EMDR), is an evidenced-based modality that helps process and heal from painful memories, trauma, and/or overwhelming experiences – without needing to talk through every detail. This is one aspect that separates EMDR from traditional talk therapies. It taps into the body and brain together and focuses on how a memory is stored – not just the story.

When something distressing happens, your brain sometimes stores it in a way that creates a reliving of symptoms experienced during past traumatic events into the present moment, which may create feelings of being stuck – in anxiety, self-doubt, emotional reactivity, or even physical tension – and affects not only your relationship with others, but also, the relationship with yourself. EMDR uses guided eye movements (or other forms of bilateral stimulation) to help your brain reprocess activating memories so they no longer feel as intense.

You’re not erasing the past – you’re removing the emotional charge it carries and gaining new perspectives through adaptive resolution to promote an integrated form of living.

EMDR has demonstrated positive therapeutic results with individuals who experience the following (not limited to this list):

• Single-Event Trauma or Complex Trauma
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Law Enforcement (police officers, firefighters, etc.)
• First Responders
• Excessive grief
• Anxiety (general, social, performance, etc.)

“When an event has been sufficiently processed, we remember it but do not experience the old emotions or sensations in the present. We are informed by our memories, not controlled by them.”

–Francine Shapiro