Parts Work/IFS/Ego States in Intensives
The parts of you that protect you deserve a seat at the table, not a battle.
Parts Work starts from something you already know from the inside: part of you wants to heal, part of you is terrified to look, and part of you learned long ago to protect you by any means necessary. Those aren't symptoms of being broken. They're evidence of a system that adapted to survive, and Parts Work is how we get that system working with itself instead of against itself.
What Parts Work is, less mystically than it sounds
You'll see a few names for this family of approaches: Internal Family Systems (IFS), Ego States, Parts Work. My formal training is in Ego State therapy through Robin Shapiro's work; she wrote the book on it, Easy Ego State Interventions, and teaches parts through a structural dissociation lens. I've built on that with ongoing continuing education in parts work more broadly. The names differ; the heart is the same. We treat the different parts of you with curiosity instead of judgment, help the ones stuck in old jobs update their information, and reconnect you with the steady core self underneath them all.
In practice, that might sound like noticing the part that goes numb every time we get close to something, and instead of pushing past it, getting curious about it, meeting it, hearing its story. That part has a reason. It's usually a good one. And when it finally trusts that you can handle what it's been protecting you from, the deeper work stops being a fight.
Why Parts Work belongs in intensives
Weekly sessions often spend their minutes negotiating with protective parts, and rightly so; that negotiation is the work. But in an intensive, there's time for the negotiation and what comes after it. The protectors get heard, the system settles, and then we still have hours for the reprocessing that the protectors were guarding. That's the sequence a weekly hour almost never has room for.
Parts Work rarely works alone here. It runs alongside EMDR, KAP, and Brainspotting, helping everything else go deeper and land softer. When a part blocks the processing, that's not a problem with the plan. That IS the plan; we work with what shows up.
What people bring to Parts Work
- The inner critic that never clocks out
- Self-sabotage that makes no logical sense and perfect emotional sense
- Feeling like different versions of you run your relationships, your work, your parenting
- The freeze, the numbness, the "I know better but I keep doing it anyway"
- Old survival strategies that were brilliant then and exhausting now
Where and how
In-person intensives happen at my office in Henrico, VA, minutes from Richmond. Telehealth intensives are available in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. For appropriate clients, ketamine assistance is an option in any format, in partnership with Journey Clinical, who handles all things medical. Learn about ketamine-assisted intensives here.
Formats and investment
Intensives come in three lengths: The Deep Breath (half day), The Long Exhale (full day), and Open Air (multi-day). Parts Work can lead any of them or weave through alongside other approaches. Current pricing is on the Services page. Room to Breathe is private pay, and you'll receive a Good Faith Estimate before we begin.
15 minutes, no pressure, and a fit check in both directions. If I'm not the right person, I'll point you toward who is.
Finally, come up for air.
Intensives are not crisis care. If you're in crisis right now, call or text 988 and come find me on the other side.