Parts Work in Echo Park
(IFS-informed)
In person in Echo Park. Online across California.
$175 for individuals. $200 for couples. In-network with Aetna.
You are not one thing
Part of you wants to leave, and part of you wants to stay. Part of you is furious, and part of you is working overtime to make sure nobody sees it.
We already talk this way. “Part of me knows better.” “I wasn’t myself.” Parts work takes that language seriously. Each part has its own history and its own job, usually trying to protect you. Instead of shouting it down, we invite it into the conversation.
An old idea
Instead of “I am anxious,” you get to say “a part of me is anxious.” That small shift creates space.
Plato pictured the soul as a charioteer driving two horses that pull in different directions. Freud had the id, ego and superego. Jung wrote about complexes, Assagioli about subpersonalities. Fritz Perls put an empty chair in the room and asked you to talk to the part of you sitting in it, then switch chairs and answer back.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a newer, beautifully simple way of working with parts. I’m not IFS-trained yet, but I’ve studied it, worked with it in my own life and love it. My work is IFS-informed.
Tools for sympathetic magic
It’s easier to work with a part when it’s a little outside of you. Write a letter from the part of you that’s exhausted, then answer from the part that’s wise. Draw the critic and give it a name. Talk out loud to the younger you who learned to stay small.
This is why I make objects I call tools for sympathetic magic. My ritual bowls nest inside one another, and each one can be a part. You can take one out, look at it, set it beside you and put it back. If we meet in person, I bring the bowls into the room. Online, they’re visual aids on the screen.