FAQ: IFS Trauma Therapy & Coaching with The Self Sovereign Method™

Most therapy focuses on the mind - understanding patterns, developing coping skills, or processing trauma cognitively. My approach honors that your healing happens across all levels: mind, body, and spirit.

Here's what makes it different:

Comprehensive Assessment: I look at what's hijacking your power across your parts, nervous system, attachment patterns, inherited trauma, and even soul-level themes that may span lifetimes.

Science + Soul Integration: I blend evidence-based methods (IFS, nervous system regulation) with spiritual wisdom (energy work, intuitive guidance, ritual, and when appropriate, past life regression).

Self Sovereignty Focus: Rather than just managing symptoms, we work toward you trusting yourself completely and responding from your authentic Self instead of wounded parts.

Embodied Healing: We don't just talk about your patterns - we work with your nervous system to create felt shifts in your body.

This isn't therapy that keeps you in your head. It's transformation that helps you trust your whole system - logical mind, body wisdom, and spiritual intuition.

IFS therapy is particularly powerful if you notice different "parts" of yourself showing up in different situations - like the part that's confident at work but anxious in relationships.

You might be a good fit if you:

• Feel like you're living in your head and disconnected from your body/intuition

• Notice patterns repeating despite your best efforts to change

• Feel triggered easily or struggle to regulate back to calm

• Experience attachment struggles in relationships

• Find yourself people-pleasing or abandoning your needs to maintain connection

• Carry fears, shame, or burdens that feel bigger than your own life experiences

• Have tried traditional therapy but feel like something's still missing

• Are drawn to approaches that honor both psychology and spirituality

If you're curious about your inner world and ready to build a loving relationship with all parts of yourself, IFS can be transformational.

This is incredibly common for my clients. Traditional therapy often misses three key pieces:

Your nervous system - If you're stuck in fight/flight/freeze, your thinking brain can't access wisdom or make clear decisions.

Your parts - Different parts of you carry different wounds. Until we heal the specific part that's struggling, it will keep taking over.

Inherited patterns - Some of what you're carrying isn't even yours. It's ancestral trauma living in your system that therapy alone can't touch.

My approach addresses all three levels, which is why my clients often say "this is the first time therapy has actually changed something."

Yes, and I work with them differently than traditional approaches by addressing root causes rather than just symptoms.

Anxiety: We explore which parts of you are anxious and what they need to feel safe, regulate your nervous system, and reconnect you to your calm, centered Self.

Trauma: Using IFS, we help wounded parts release what they're carrying while strengthening your Self-leadership. We also address inherited trauma that may not even be yours.

Codependency: We identify which parts abandon your needs for others, outsource your wellbeing, and help them learn that you can meet their needs for connection and safety from within.

I also specialize in working with:

• High-achievers and entrepreneurs exhausted by living in their heads

• Empaths and highly sensitive people who need energetic boundaries

• LGBTQ+, polyamorous, and kink communities (I celebrate your authentic expression)

• Spiritually gifted individuals whose intuitive abilities need strengthening

• People with chronic conditions like endometriosis/PMDD who need whole-system healing

I create space for parts of you that other therapists might not understand.

self-sovereign (adj.)
/ˌself ˈsäv(ə)rən/

1. The lived capacity to lead from one’s authentic Self, even in the presence of trauma, emotional triggers, inherited burdens, or relational patterns.

2. A state of inner leadership in which thoughts, emotions, and actions are directed not by wounded parts or fear, but by clarity, compassion, and conscious intent.
   — “Once she reclaimed her self-sovereignty, her emotions became signals—not steering wheels.”

-Definition by Bethany Russell, MA, LPC — Founder of the Self Sovereign Method™