Evan Powers

One way of thinking about IFS is any time you’ve said, “Part of me wants to go to a party this weekend, but part of me wants to catch up on some sleep.” In IFS, this is a normal expression of the different motivating aspects of your being that drive internal conflict. In other words, the part of you that wants to go to the party is in conflict with the part that wants to catch up on sleep. If this example seems simplistic, you’re right. IFS is applicable to a broad range of concerns.

Imagine your emotions as a flame. What do we do with a fire? If your first thought was to put it out, I encourage you to keep reading. The overlooked nature of strong emotions (even negative ones) is that every single one of them comes about for a reason. By casting them aside, we only kick the can down the road until the next time the emotion flares up. Only this time, it will flare up with much more ferocity. This suggests a balance between extinguishing a flame and letting it run wild.

Whether you are looking for Marriage Counseling or you just want to figure out how to relate to others in a more effective way, relationships thrive on the skills that we develop in counseling. From the very beginning of our work together, you begin to communicate in an inherently non-judgmental environment. This opens up a world of external processing that you might never have experienced before. However, the work does not end there.

Obviously you know your children better than anyone. There is not a counselor you’ll encounter who could reasonably claim otherwise. What I can offer, though, is a professional setting where I am neither a family member or a peer. At a time in your child’s life when it seems like they might be looking to their friend group instead of to you, it makes sense that you have concerns about what goes on in that friend group away from your supervision. I am the third option.

Sometimes anxiety comes from a long struggle with uncontrollable worry and longing for an extra sense of control. Sometimes, it is a reaction to one significant event that seemed to come out of nowhere. In either case, there is no doubt that anxiety can inhibit motivation, action, and clarity as much as anything else you are likely to encounter. We will work together to identify the part of you that responds to the world with anxiety. The assumption is that you are not wholly an anxious person.

Many (or maybe most) people probably view themselves as individuals with a unified mind and a single personality. IFS, on the other hand, recognizes that every mind consists of sub personalities that come into conflict with one another and create inner turmoil. We will work to reconcile these inner differences and reach a state of harmony.

When clients first begin therapy, one of the questions that often comes up is what it means to work through emotions or traumas. From the perspective of Existential Therapy, we address the meaning that these experiences hold for you, which comes from our ability to build context foresight around them. If the past still hurts, or if the future holds too many mysteries, it is worth exploring the meaning that we derive from our life's story as a whole.