Why we do what we do — even when we don't want to
Have you ever found yourself reacting in ways you don't fully understand? Shutting down when you want to stay open. Lashing out when you want to stay calm. Choosing the same kinds of relationships over and over. Feeling like there are different parts of you that want different things — and none of them are fully in charge?
These experiences often have roots in our earliest relationships — with our parents, our family systems, the emotional environments we grew up in. Our families taught us, often without words, what emotions were safe to feel, what needs were okay to have, and what we had to do to belong and survive.
Parts work and family of origin therapy help you trace these patterns back to their source — and begin to change them from the inside out.
What is parts work?
Parts work is a way of understanding the self not as a single unified entity but as a system of different inner parts — each with its own perspective, its own history, and its own way of trying to help you. Some parts protect you from pain. Some carry the wounds that were never fully healed. Some have been exiled because they felt too vulnerable or too much.
Drawing from both Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), I help you develop a compassionate, curious relationship with all these parts of yourself. When the most wounded parts finally feel seen and heard — rather than managed, suppressed, or criticized — something profound shifts.
Family of origin work
Our families of origin are the first place we learned about love, safety, boundaries, and belonging. Even loving families transmit patterns — anxious attachment, emotional unavailability, enmeshment, perfectionism, the unspoken rule that certain feelings aren't allowed.
Family of origin work helps you:
- Understand the emotional patterns you inherited — not to blame your family, but to see clearly
- Identify the beliefs about yourself and relationships that formed in childhood
- Grieve what you didn't receive — the attunement, safety, or recognition you deserved
- Differentiate — develop a clearer, more autonomous sense of who you are outside of your family system
- Change the patterns you carry into your adult relationships
What we can address together
- Inner critic and harsh self-judgment
- People-pleasing and difficulty with boundaries
- Fear of abandonment or engulfment in relationships
- Shame and chronic unworthiness
- Perfectionism and achievement-based self-worth
- Anger, numbness, or emotional shutdown
- Enmeshment or estrangement from family
- Parentification — having been the emotional caretaker in your family
- Intergenerational trauma and cultural wounds
- Spiritual wounds from family religious environments
My approach — IFS and EFIT blended
I draw primarily from Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) — two approaches that complement each other beautifully. IFS offers a detailed map of the inner system and a compassionate framework for working with parts. EFIT brings the depth of attachment theory and emotional processing — helping you access, experience, and transform the deeper feelings beneath the surface patterns.
Together, they allow for work that is both structured and deeply felt — honoring both your intellect and your emotional and embodied experience.
What to expect
Individual sessions are 50 minutes, conducted online via a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform throughout Tennessee and Malaysia. This kind of work tends to be deeper and longer-term than symptom-focused therapy — most clients find it genuinely transformative over 3–12 months.
