The Spiritual Side of IFS Therapy: Healing With Parts Work and Your Highest Self
Last updated July 1, 2025
If you’re on a healing journey, there’s no doubt you’ve heard of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy. From therapy offices to social media feeds, people are diving into the deep work that can come from befriending their ‘parts’, and learning how to uncover and integrate the various aspects of themselves that inform and impact all areas of being human. As more and more people learn about IFS, many are drawn to its accessible approach to inner work and its powerful capacity to support personal growth and healing.
But there's a dimension of IFS Therapy that often goes unexplored in mainstream conversations: its inherently spiritual nature. When you zoom out and look at IFS Therapy from a holistic point of view, it’s easy to see this is a process that invites integration and transformation that honors both your human complexity, and your spiritual nature.
Here at The Holistic Counseling Center, we've been exploring this spiritual side of IFS Therapy, and embracing parts work as a trusted tool to support your spiritual evolution and awakening. We've found that when IFS Therapy is integrated with somatic awareness, psychodynamic understanding, and authentic spiritual perspectives, it becomes an even more powerful approach for healing anxiety, trauma, depression, and self-sabotaging patterns (just to name a few).
An invitation: What if your healing journey could be both deeply psychological and profoundly spiritual? What if the very parts of yourself you've been trying to transcend or fix are actually opportunities to reconnect with your Highest Self? This is the invitation of IFS as a spiritual practice, an approach that doesn't spiritually bypass, but embraces the practice as a bridge to come home to your true Self.
In my 10+ years of practice as a psychotherapist, I've witnessed something beautiful happen when we honor the wisdom, science, and spiritual dimensions of healing. I’ve seen the beautiful humans who come into my office not only heal their symptoms, but remember who they are beyond the pain, the protection, and the wounding. I’m excited to share more about healing that happens at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and mysticism, and how it can transform not just your relationship with your parts, but your entire experience of being human.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy?
Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic modality developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz that views the mind as naturally containing many sub-personalities or ‘parts.’ The idea is that each of these parts plays a specific role in your inner world. IFS also offers that you have a core Self, a calm, compassionate part that is untouched by your childhood wounding and the programming you’ve received from your family, society and our culture. At The Holistic Counseling Center, we take this understanding even deeper, recognizing this Self as your Highest Self, the wisest, most centered aspect of your being that connects directly to Source.
IFS embraces the beautiful truth that we are multifaceted beings made up of different ‘sub-minds’ or parts that interact within us much like a family system operates. And while Western culture often promotes the myth of having just one unified mind or personality, IFS honors the reality that multiplicity is actually our natural state. Translation? Having multiple parts isn't pathological, it's your natural state of being human.
What transforms traditional IFS into something even more powerful is how we weave it together with the wisdom of your body and the depth of your spiritual journey. Rather than viewing your parts as simply psychological phenomena, we understand them as expressions of your mind, body, heart and spirit. This recognition opens doorways to healing that honor not just what you think and feel, but how your parts live in your physical being and connect to your soul's deepest longing for integration and wholeness.
This approach creates space for transformation that goes deeper than symptom relief into the realm of deep personal and spiritual growth.
Your parts aren’t in the way, they are showing you the way home to yourself.
Understanding Your Parts: The Three Types of Parts in IFS
IFS Therapy breaks your parts into three categories, each having different roles and intentions:
Protector Parts
Protector parts develop to keep you safe from pain, shame, and vulnerability. They fall into two categories: Managers and Firefighters
Manager Parts
Managers are proactive protectors, meaning they try to control your environment, relationships, and inner experience to prevent pain before it even happens. Manager parts might show up as:
The inner critic that holds you to impossibly high standards
The people-pleaser who abandons your own needs to keep others happy
The perfectionist who believes that only perfection is acceptable
The controller who needs everything to be predictable, organized and known
The caretaker who always focuses on others' needs more than your own
These parts are always working to maintain control and prevent vulnerable feelings from emerging. These parts are not the enemy, they're just trying to keep you safe the only way they know how (and typically with outdated and maladaptive patterns leftover from early childhood).
Firefighter Parts
Firefighters jump in and react when pain, shame, or vulnerability has already been triggered. They rush in to rescue you from difficult emotions through distraction or numbing behaviors, such as:
Binge eating, drinking, or substance use
Excessive shopping or spending
Doom scrolling on social media
Workaholism or staying busy
Angry outbursts or emotional shutdown
Like actual firefighters rushing to a blaze, these parts aren't concerned with collateral damage, they truly just want to put out the emotional fire as quickly as possible. The focus isn’t on healing, it’s on removing the discomfort at any cost.
Exiled Parts
Exile parts hold the tender and vulnerable emotions, memories, and beliefs that your protectors work so hard to keep contained. These parts often formed during childhood or traumatic experiences and carry beliefs like:
‘I'm not good enough’
‘I'm unlovable as I am’
‘I'm broken’
‘It’s not safe here’
‘I deserve it’
Your exiled parts are the tender, vulnerable aspects of yourself, much like your inner child, that carry the raw, unprocessed emotions from times when you felt most alone and afraid. These precious parts hold the memories of moments when the world felt too big, too harsh, or too unpredictable for your young heart to handle.
When these exiles become activated, they can transport you back to the age when the original wounding occurred, flooding you with the intense emotions that never had a safe place to be felt and healed. Fear, shame, grief, overwhelm, and despair, these aren't just feelings, they're the wounding of the parts of you that are still waiting to be seen, held, and welcomed home.
These parts carry what IFS calls ‘burdens’, the painful beliefs about yourself and the world that formed during those tender moments. Beneath these burdens lies your essential goodness, creativity, and capacity for joy. Your exiles aren't broken parts of yourself; they're just parts of you that are frozen in time, waiting to be discovered and taken care of.
The Self: The Part That Knows
While discovering and understanding your parts is essential, the true foundation of IFS work lies in connecting with the Self, the true nature of who you are that exists beyond all your protective patterns and wounded parts.
The Self isn't technically another part; it's the calm, compassionate part of you that is always available, always wise, and untouched by your other parts. At The Holistic Counseling Center, we often refer to this as your Highest Self, recognizing its connection to your deepest spiritual nature, though traditional IFS calls this Self-energy.
When you’re able to access Self-energy, you can more easily access presence, curiosity, and compassion. You can witness your parts' struggles without being overwhelmed by them. You can hold space for difficult emotions without needing to fix or change them immediately. You can respond to life's challenges from a place of groundedness rather than reactivity.
What makes this work so powerful is that your Self is always there, just waiting to be accessed. Even in your most challenging moments, even when parts feel completely in charge, your Self remains untouched and available. It's not something you need to create or achieve, it's simply something you remember and return to.
At the heart of this work, IFS Therapy isn't about getting rid of parts or forcing them to change. It's about creating enough internal space for your Highest Self to emerge as the natural leader of your inner system, guiding your parts with the wisdom and compassion they've been seeking all along.
The Spiritual Side of IFS Therapy
At The Holistic Counseling Center, our therapists view Internal Family Systems Therapy as inherently spiritual work. When you learn to befriend your parts and access the deep well of Self-energy within you, something sacred unfolds, a natural evolution of consciousness that transforms not just your symptoms, but your very relationship with being human.
The Sacred Nature of Parts Work
While traditional IFS acknowledges the Self as a compassionate witness, we honor the deeper spiritual dimensions of this work that connect to humanity's universal healing wisdom.
Our spiritual therapists view parts work not just as a psychological process but as a sacred journey of reclaiming fragmented aspects of your soul. This perspective draws from the universal human understanding that psychological healing and spiritual integration are intimately connected, wisdom that has emerged across cultures and throughout history, including:
Ancient healing traditions of soul retrieval and integration
Indigenous healing practices focused on calling back dissociated aspects of the self
Buddhist understanding of returning to your original nature
Jungian perspectives on shadow work, individuation and wholeness
When you approach parts work as sacred, each interaction with a manager, firefighter, or exile becomes an opportunity for healing, reconnection, and spiritual growth. The healing journey isn't just about symptom relief, it's about coming home to your true nature.
The Collective and Transpersonal Dimensions of Parts
Some parts you encounter in your healing journey may connect to experiences beyond your individual life:
Ancestral parts that carry intergenerational patterns or wisdom
Cultural parts shaped by collective beliefs and values
Archetypal parts that embody universal human experiences
Transpersonal parts that connect to spiritual dimensions of consciousness
By acknowledging these deeper layers, you can create space for more profound healing that honors all aspects of who you are, from your most wounded personal experiences to your connection with the collective human journey and beyond.
The Divine Nature of Self-Energy
In our approach, we recognize that the qualities of Self-energy, compassion, curiosity, courage, clarity, creativity, calm, and connectedness, mirror what many spiritual traditions describe as divine or essential nature. When you experience moments of being fully present in Self-energy, you're touching what various traditions might call:
Buddha nature
Christ consciousness
Divine presence
Source energy
The Universe
Higher self
This recognition creates a bridge between psychological healing and spiritual awakening. As you learn to rest more consistently in Self-energy, you're not just becoming psychologically healthier, you're remembering your inherent divine nature.
The Mind-Body-Spirit Connection in Parts Work
Parts don't just exist in your mind, they live in your body, they're shaped by your history, and they connect to your spiritual journey. This embodied, holistic approach to parts work creates the conditions for deep transformation.
“Your parts didn’t just randomly appear, they developed for important reasons, often rooted in early relationships and family dynamics”
When we work with parts through this lens, we're not just talking about feelings or changing thoughts, we're engaging with the living reality of how your protective patterns show up as tension in your shoulders, how your exiled grief lives in the hollow of your chest, how your spiritual longing emerges as your parts begin to trust your Highest Self to guide them home.
The Somatic Expression of Parts
Your parts express themselves through physical sensations, creating a bridge between psychological awareness and embodiment:
A critical manager part might be expressed as tension in your jaw or shoulders
A caretaking part might manifest as leaning forward in your posture
A fearful exile might create a pit in your stomach
A firefighter part might trigger a surge of restless energy or complete shutdown
By bringing awareness to these physical sensations, you can learn to access parts that might be difficult to reach through talking alone. This somatic awareness allows you to learn new ways of tending to these feelings and sensations, instead of just reacting with outdated habits.
The Psychodynamic Roots of Parts
Your parts didn’t just randomly appear, they developed for important reasons, often rooted in early relationships and family dynamics:
The critic may have formed when you were criticized by caregivers
The people-pleaser may have developed when your needs weren’t met
The perfectionist may have emerged when your worth became tied to achievement
The caretaker may have formed when you had to tend to others' needs before your own
Understanding the origins of your parts can help you develop compassion for these parts and recognize how they've actually been trying to help you survive in ways they learned long ago. This psychodynamic understanding creates a foundation for understanding, and enough safety to be able to relate to these parts in a new way.
The Spiritual Aspect of Parts
Your parts aren't just psychological phenomena, they're expressions of your soul's journey toward wholeness, each carrying wisdom about your path to healing and spiritual awakening.
When you approach parts work through a spiritual lens, you begin to see that:
Your protective parts formed to keep your soul safe during times when the world felt too harsh or unpredictable
Your exiled parts carry not just emotional wounds but soul fragments that have been waiting to come home
Your firefighter parts are seeking relief through whatever means possible when your soul feels overwhelmed
Your Self-energy connects directly to your divine nature, what we call your Highest Self, the part of you that has always remained whole and connected to Source
This spiritual understanding can deepen how you relate to your parts. Rather than seeing them as problems to solve, or parts to fix, you begin to recognize them as abandoned aspects of yourself asking to be witnessed, honored, and lovingly integrated back into wholeness.
Authentic Self-energy vs. ‘Self-like’ Parts
It’s important to understand the difference between authentic Self-energy and ‘Self-like’ parts, the parts that have learned to mimic spiritual qualities but are actually protective strategies in disguise.
Self-like parts might show up as:
The ‘spiritual bypasser’ that uses meditation or positive thinking to avoid difficult emotions
The ‘enlightened’ part that judges others for being ‘unconscious’ or ‘low-vibe’
The ‘guru’ part that dispenses wisdom to avoid vulnerability
The ‘martyr’ part that sacrifices endlessly in the name of service
The ‘transcendent’ part that disconnects from human problems without engaging
These parts often develop when we've learned that being ‘spiritual’ keeps us safe, loved, or in control. They're not bad, they're protective strategies that serve important purposes. But they can prevent us from accessing the genuine Self-energy that doesn't need to perform to be spiritual, acceptable or loved.
Authentic Self-energy feels different:
It's naturally present without effort or performance
It holds space for all emotions, including anger, grief, jealousy and fear
It's curious rather than judgmental about other people's journeys
It can set boundaries and engage in healthy conflict when needed
It aims for integration rather than trying to transcend being human
When you're in authentic Self-energy, spirituality isn't something you do, it's simply who you are. There's no striving, no spiritual perfectionism, no need to maintain a particular image or energy. You find the way to rest in your essential nature while remaining fully present to life as it is.
How Spirituality Naturally Emerges from Parts Work
As you learn to identify, access, and tend to your parts, something amazing begins to happen: you learn to listen deeply, to trust your inner knowing, and to be guided by wisdom that emerges from within. The process of parts work naturally supports your spiritual growth because it invites you to access and align with your Highest Self while turning toward the parts of yourself that have been abandoned and disowned.
This journey is the psychological expression of the hero's journey found in all major religions and spiritual traditions – a process of descent, discovery, and return to wholeness. The beautiful thing is, you don't need elaborate rituals or practices to become more ‘spiritual.’ You simply need to learn how to listen to yourself, access your inner wisdom, and engage in the sacred work of shedding layers of outdated protection while embracing your true nature.
As your parts heal, you might notice:
Increased presence and awareness that feels easeful rather than forced
Natural compassion that extends to yourself and others without shame or obligation
Deeper connection to something greater than yourself that emerges from awareness rather than seeking
Intuitive guidance that feels like remembering rather than relying on external input
Deep reverence for the mystery and beauty of being alive
This organic spiritual unfolding often includes what many would consider mystical experiences, synchronicities, moments of awe, intuition or deep knowing that transcends rational understanding. These aren't goals you have to set and achieve but natural byproducts of living in alignment with your Highest Self.
Authentic Spiritual Awakening Through Parts Work
When you try to layer spiritual practices onto an unhealed internal system, your parts will often resist or co-opt these practices as new forms of protection. But when spirituality emerges naturally through parts work, when it grows from understanding your inner world rather than being imposed upon it, it carries an authenticity and a groundedness that can only come from true connection with Source.
Many of our clients describe this process as ‘remembering who I really am’ or feel this process supports ‘coming home to myself.’ It's not about becoming more spiritual, it's about removing the obstacles that have been blocking your natural connection to the sacred.
This is why we view IFS as inherently spiritual work. Not because it teaches specific beliefs or techniques, but because it clears the way for your own authentic relationship with the sacred to emerge. In healing your parts and aligning with your Highest Self, you're not just addressing psychological symptoms, you're reclaiming your birthright as a whole, integrated, spiritually alive human being.
Looking for a Spiritual IFS Therapist?
Healing with IFS: From Protection to Alignment with Your Highest Self
The goal of IFS therapy isn't to get rid of your parts, it's to transform your relationship with them so they can function as allies rather than obstacles. When you align with your Highest Self, you naturally access the unconditional presence, love, and nurturing that your younger parts have been longing for all along.
As these parts begin to feel genuinely safe and cared for, something beautiful happens, you're able to access the energy you need to live a bigger, more expansive life. Energy that was once trapped in protective patterns becomes available for developing deeper relationships, creative expression, and living and authentic life. You can explore this world with more awareness, curiosity, and joy rather than constantly scanning for danger or managing internal chaos.
Here's how this healing journey typically unfolds:
1. Identifying and Acknowledging Your Parts
The first step is becoming aware of your different parts and how they show up in your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors. This awareness alone can be transformative, shifting from ‘I am angry’ to ‘A part of me feels angry.’
Somatic Practice: Notice where you feel sensations in your body when a particular part is active. Place your hand there and take a few breaths.
2. Unburdening from Manager and Firefighter Roles
As you build a relationship with your protective parts, you can begin to understand their concerns and help them trust that there are new ways to keep you safe. This doesn't happen through forcing or fighting with these parts, but through genuine curiosity and compassion.
Insight: Recognizing how these protector parts formed in response to early experiences can help you see their positive intent, even when their strategies are no longer serving you.
3. Healing Your Exiles
With your protectors' permission, you can begin to connect with and heal the vulnerable exiled parts. This involves:
Witnessing their pain with compassion
Retrieving them from the past where they're stuck
Unburdening them from outdated beliefs and emotions
Bringing them into the present with new possibilities
Spiritual Perspective: This healing process often feels sacred, an unearthing and reclaiming of the lost parts of yourself and a reconnection with your inherent goodness.
4. Alignment with Your Highest Self
As your parts begin to trust your Highest Self to guide them, your internal system naturally reorganizes. Rather than being driven by the fears and beliefs of your parts, you become guided by the wisdom, compassion, and clarity of your authentic Self.
The Invitation: This isn't about controlling your parts, it's about creating an internal family system where all parts are welcomed, heard, and safe. Where healing is possible.
Holistic IFS Practices: Where Mind, Body, and Spirit Meet
At The Holistic Counseling Center, we integrate practices that enhance traditional IFS work by integrating somatic awareness, psychodynamic understanding, and spiritual elements. These practices can help you connect with your parts more deeply and create actual change that goes beyond just intellectual understanding. If you’re looking to explore parts work on your own, the practices below can help you get started. If you’re looking for support, please reach out. Our team of IFS Therapists would love to support you.
Somatic Parts Dialogue
This practice combines IFS with somatic awareness to help you connect with your parts in your body:
Find a quiet space where you can sit comfortably and get curious about your inner experience
Scan your body slowly from head to toe, noticing any areas of tension, heaviness, warmth, or other sensations
Place your hand gently on any area that draws your attention
Breathe into this space with curiosity and compassion
Ask gently: ‘What part of me is showing up here?’
Listen without judgment to whatever emerges: images, words, emotions, or memories
Engage in dialogue with this part while maintaining connection to your embodied experience (speak out loud or journal)
This practice helps you bypass the analytical mind that might otherwise intellectualize or block access to certain parts. By starting with the body's wisdom, you might discover parts that have remained hidden from your conscious awareness.
“As you build a relationship with your protective parts, you can begin to understand their concerns and help them trust that there are new ways to keep you safe. This doesn’t happen through forcing or fighting with these parts, but through genuine curiosity and compassion.”
The Parts Journal Practice
This writing practice helps you develop deep relationships with your parts over time:
Create a dedicated journal for your parts work
Begin each entry by centering yourself with three deep breaths
Invite a specific part to express itself through writing
Write from the part's perspective in the first person (‘I feel…’ rather than ‘This part feels…’)
Switch to writing from your Self perspective, responding with curiosity and compassion
Continue this dialogue, allowing both the part and your Highest Self to express fully
Close with appreciation for what has been shared (gentle hand on the heart, a deep breath, and a smile)
Many clients find that parts will reveal deeper truths through writing that might not emerge in conversation. This practice creates an accessible way to connect with different aspects of yourself that might not emerge in day to day life.
Connecting to Love Practice
This gentle practice helps you experience the loving connection between your parts and your Highest Self:
Find a comfortable position and close your eyes, taking a few deep breaths
Imagine a warm, welcoming space within you where all parts of you are safe and honored
Gently invite the parts you've been working with to gather in this sacred space
Acknowledge each part with appreciation for the ways they've tried to protect and care for you
Feel into your Highest Self as a loving, wise presence at the center of this gathering
Ask each part what they need to feel truly seen, heard, and valued
Visualize warm, healing light flowing from your Highest Self to each part, surrounding them with the love they've been seeking
Rest in this connection for as long as feels right, allowing this sense of inner love and harmony to settle deeply within you
Close with an intention for continued integration and healing
This practice helps solidify the work you've done in therapy sessions (or on your own) and creates an intentional space that you can return to whenever you feel fragmented or overwhelmed.
Signs That IFS Therapy Might Be Right for You
You might be drawn to our holistic and spiritual approach to IFS therapy if:
You find yourself caught in self-sabotaging patterns despite your best intentions
You experience inner chaos or feel like different parts of you want different things
You're self-critical and perfectionistic
You struggle with people-pleasing and setting boundaries
You numb difficult emotions with substances or staying busy
You've experienced trauma or emotional wounding
You feel disconnected from yourself
You're seeking not just symptom relief but deeper transformation
You want support for the spiritual dimension of your healing journey
You're curious about how your body holds onto past pain and how to let it go
Combining IFS with Other Modalities
At The Holistic Counseling Center, we don't practice IFS in isolation. We always work from a holistic approach, meaning we customize our modalities based on what you actually need, not based on a rigid protocol. We often weave IFS together with:
Somatic Therapy to help you notice and work with how parts manifest in your body, releasing stored tension and trauma while developing a deeper relationship with your nervous system's wisdom
Psychodynamic Therapy to understand how your parts formed through early relationships and experiences, uncovering the deeper childhood patterns and attachment styles that shape your current reality
Mindfulness Therapy to develop the present-moment awareness needed to notice and work with your parts without becoming overwhelmed or reactive to their experiences
Spiritual Therapy that honors the sacred nature of this work and connects you to deeper meaning and purpose, recognizing that healing is both psychological and spiritual
Shadow Work to explore and integrate the disowned aspects of yourself that your parts have been protecting, transforming what you've rejected or kept hidden into sources of energy, creativity, purpose and joy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help you identify thought patterns and behaviors driven by specific parts, developing practical tools for responding differently when protective or reactive parts become activated
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to process traumatic memories that your exiled parts may be carrying, allowing stuck emotions and beliefs to move through your system with greater ease
Brainspotting to access and heal trauma stored in your nervous system, helping your parts release protective patterns held deep in your body's memory
This integrative approach ensures that your healing journey addresses all dimensions of your being: the psychological, the physical, the spiritual, and the relational. By weaving these modalities together with IFS, we create space for transformation that honors both your analytical mind and your intuitive wisdom, your wounded parts and your true self.
What Happens During an IFS Therapy Session?
In a typical IFS-informed session at The Holistic Counseling Center, we might:
Begin with grounding or a guided meditation to help you access Self-energy
Identify which parts are present through conversation, body awareness, or mindful attention
Develop a relationship with a specific part through curious questioning and compassionate presence
Explore the part's role and concerns with respect and appreciation
Invite the part to step back slightly so you can maintain connection with your Self-energy
Access and heal vulnerable exiles when your protective parts are ready
Integrate insights and bring new awareness into your daily life
This process unfolds at a gentle pace, with deep respect for your internal system and its wisdom. Our therapists are all trauma informed and never push you to grow faster than you are ready to.
IFS Therapy at The Holistic Counseling Center
If you're feeling called to explore how our holistic approach to Internal Family Systems therapy might support your healing journey, I invite you to reach out. Working with the different parts of yourself with compassion and curiosity can transform your relationship with anxiety, trauma responses, and self-sabotaging patterns, and create space for the authentic, vibrant life that's just waiting to emerge.
Remember: There are no bad parts. Every aspect of you developed for a reason and carries wisdom and positive intention, even if its strategies are no longer serving you. Through our integrated approach to IFS therapy, you can heal the wounded parts, ease the burden on your protectors, and return to your natural state of alignment with your Highest Self.
The journey of connecting with your parts isn't always easy, but it's one of the most rewarding paths of healing I've witnessed in my 10+ years of being a psychotherapist. When you can turn towards every part of yourself, even the ones that have caused you pain, with genuine curiosity and compassion, something beautiful begins to unfold. And you start remembering who you truly are beneath all the pain, protection and wounding.
Getting Started with IFS Therapy
IFS Therapy In-Person and Online
Ready to get started? We offer both in-person and online IFS therapy with therapists who bring depth, compassion, and expertise to this sacred work. If you're in California, we'd love to work with you in person at our offices in San Francisco, San Anselmo, Berkeley, or El Dorado Hills. We also offer virtual therapy in a handful of other states.
Taking the next step is simple:
Schedule a Free Consultation Call: During this 15-minute conversation, we'll listen to what's bringing you to therapy, answer any questions, and help determine if our holistic approach to IFS therapy is right for you.
Get Matched With the Right Therapist: Based on your needs, preferences, and scheduling requirements, we'll match you with one of our IFS-trained therapists who can best support you on your healing journey.
Begin Your Transformation: In your first session, you'll have the opportunity to share your story, explore your goals, and begin developing a personalized approach to befriending your parts and accessing your Highest Self.
Rooting for you, always!
- Kim Burris, LMFT + Founder of The Holistic Counseling Center
Takeaway
IFS therapy becomes truly transformative when approached as a sacred spiritual practice, a journey of reclaiming the fragmented aspects of yourself that have been waiting to come home. By befriending your parts with compassion and curiosity, you're not just healing psychological wounds, you're remembering your divine nature and reconnecting with your Highest Self. This isn't about fixing what's broken; it's about recognizing that every part of you, even the most challenging ones, carries wisdom and is doing its best to love and protect you. When you create an internal family system guided by your Highest Self, you're not just becoming psychologically healthier, you're attuning to the wholeness that has always been your spiritual birthright. You don’t have to heal alone. If you're feeling the nudge, that quiet inner call to befriend your parts and reclaim your wholeness, we're here. Book a free consultation call to take the next step on your healing journey.
Additional Resources for Your Healing Journey
As you continue exploring the spiritual dimensions of Internal Family Systems work, these resources from our site can deepen your understanding and support your healing journey:
Inner Work
How To Do Shadow Work To Support Your Healing Journey - Learn how shadow work naturally complements IFS therapy to unearth and integrate the disowned aspects of yourself
6 Spiritual Symptoms of Anxiety - Discover how anxiety might be signaling to the parts of you needing attention and care
Are You Using Spirituality To Hide From Yourself? You Might Be Spiritual Bypassing! - Explore the difference between authentic spiritual growth and spiritual bypassing parts
Holistic Healing
Spiritual Therapy + The Benefits of Working with a Spiritual Therapist - Understand how spiritual therapy creates the perfect container for deep parts work
What is Holistic Counseling? - Learn about our integrative approach that honors mind, body, and spirit in healing
Understanding and Regulating Your Nervous System: A Holistic Approach - Discover how nervous system work supports your parts in feeling safe to heal
Practical Tools for Integration
How to Love Yourself More: A Guide to Self-Love (From A Holistic Therapist) - Discover how to develop a loving relationship with all parts of yourself, creating the foundation of self-compassion needed for deep parts work
A Holistic Guide to Healing Anxiety - Practical exercises for working with anxious parts and accessing your Highest Self
5 Minute Grounding Meditation For Anxiety Relief - A guided practice to help you return to Self-energy when parts feel activated
Our Holistic Therapy Services
Internal Family Systems Therapy - Learn more about our spiritual approach to IFS work
Anxiety Therapy - Discover how we help anxious parts find safety and healing
Somatic Therapy - Explore how body-based approaches support parts integration
References
Anderson, F. (2021). Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems.
Dana, D. (2018). The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation. W.W. Norton & Company.
Johnson, R. A. (2009). Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche.
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2019). Internal Family Systems Therapy. Guilford Publications.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
Welwood, J. (2002). Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation.
About the Author
Kim Burris, LMFT is a licensed holistic psychotherapist, founder of The Holistic Counseling Center, and author of ‘The First 90 Days After Birth.’ Her work has been featured in Vogue, Bustle and the Daily OM.
She honors the mind, body, spirit connection and offers evidence-based psychotherapy with a heart centered approach that helps people find relief from anxiety and self-sabotage so they can live life with more joy, freedom and ease.
Kim and her team currently offer holistic counseling to individuals in San Francisco, San Anselmo, Berkeley, El Dorado Hills, CA and online. Click HERE to book a no-cost consultation call and get matched with one of our IFS therapists.
