Hello, From IFS Telehealth Collective
More than ever, there is a need to heal. There is equally, a need to be seen and heard. Welcome to IFS Telehealth Collective, a place for healing, bearing witness, and honoring. We are a new group practice with the goal to bring compassion, understanding, and curiosity to anyone who wants help feeling whole again. We believe in the power of a team, the power of our innate ability to heal, and the power of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. Detailed below, you will learn about the Collective and our mission.
Our Location:
IFS Telehealth Collective is ready to meet you where you are, both emotionally and geographically. We are the first IFS multi-state group practice, which comes with much delight and responsibility. Accessibility to therapy is a primary tenet of our ethos. We have therefore made it our mission to offer top-quality IFS online therapy conveniently located right where you are. This comes with the added benefit of servicing historically underserved areas.
We are proud to announce that we are currently servicing clients in California, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon and Michigan. Moreover, all services are delivered through telehealth, which eliminates the need to commute, promotes scheduling ease, allows for the familiarity and comfort of your own home, and ensures that clients in remote areas have equal access to services. IFS Telehealth Collective has a continued goal to expand our practice to meet the needs of our communities.
Our Collective:
We are a collective of therapists because healing is most possible in community. We believe that we can best serve our clients when we have a team with diverse lived experiences and perspectives as our accountability partners. We are not only stronger together, but we are also more culturally and clinically competent.
In addition to our deep passion for therapy, we all share an unwavering belief in the transformative healing powers of IFS. The model helps clients of all identities and ages acknowledge, honor and heal the parts of them that adopted extreme roles in the pursuit of protection and safety. Together, the client and clinician work toward harmonious integration of the client’s multiplicity with the goal of feeling more balanced and whole.
While our clinicians have an expansive understanding of IFS therapy, it is often better for clients to experience the shifts in their inner world than to conceptualize it. Paul Ginter, Senior Lead Trainer and IFS Telehealth Collective co-founder shares his insight:
“In my experience, there might be one in 25 clients who may benefit from first talking conceptually about the Model. For those, having a mental framework of IFS may provide a sense of safety to proceed with the work. My preference, though, is to allow clients to directly experience the work itself.
I’d rather have clients authentically experience parts of themselves as they emerge, rather than having preconceived ideas of what should be happening inside. We lose some of the intervention’s power when clients comply with the expectations we set for them rather than fully trusting the work. It is much more compelling to help them access qualities such as compassion, curiosity, and clarity than to tell them about those qualities. When people experience those things, so many things can change for them.”
In addition to our personal transformation through IFS and bearing witness to our clients’ sustained healing, we believe in IFS because evidence proves that it is an effective therapy model. IFS was developed by Richard Schwartz PhD in the early 1990s and has since been listed in the National Registry for Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. We believe the data, but most importantly, we witness the effectiveness in real time.
Our collective is here to help clients move toward healing. We approach the following topics from an IFS framework:
Chronic Stress
Trauma
Anxiety
Depression
Anger Issues
Self-esteem
Grief
Addictions
Relationships
Self-care
While we have a collection of specialties, we believe in working with the client’s system instead of symptoms. In the model’s name, Internal Family Systems, lies our belief that we all have a psychological system made up of a constellation of parts (or family members) that are in need of reconciliation and harmony. If we only attend to the client’s symptoms, their underlying wounds and harm would likely go unnoticed and unhealed.
Our Clinicians:
Our clinicians compose a mosaic of varying specialities and strengths, but they all share two major similarities: they are all trained in IFS and skilled at administering the model. Being trained in IFS is imperative to our collective, as this ensures that the approach is being used safely and knowledgeably. Additionally, trained clinicians have had the expansive opportunity to explore their own inner worlds through an IFS lens, which allows for expertise in the model, empathy building and appropriate pacing.
We are dedicated to our clinicians’ learning and clinical growth. All clinicians receive weekly consultation from two IFS Lead Trainers and ongoing peer support from the Collective. We support each other so that our clinicians have the tools and skills to support their clients. Check out our team for a therapist who suits your needs.
“There is so much demand now for IFS therapy and so many under-trained people offering it that I’m very happy to have this resource of the IFS Telehealth Collective. Two top IFS trainers vet, hire, and provide consultation to well-trained IFS therapists so that if you refer to this practice, you can be confident that clients will be getting the real deal.”
Our Vision:
We trust the inherent wisdom inside all people to be accessible and essential for the well-being of the world. We’re committed to creating a therapeutic environment that empowers clients to transform and reclaim parts of themselves from a place of compassion and curiosity, allowing them to live meaningful and healthy lives. We are committed to delivering exceptional Internal Family Systems telehealth services to our clients by providing expert IFS consultation and support to the clinicians who serve them.
Our Lens:
Our therapeutic lens is non-pathologizing and anti-oppressive. We believe that labels can limit the healing process, as they do not embrace the complexity, nuance, and creativity of clients’ survival. We view clients in their entirety and help them heal their system, not their diagnosis or symptoms. This separates us from the norm because we work diligently to heal the root of clients’ wounding, not the manifestation of it like many other therapy modalities and practices. Additionally, we work to understand how systems of oppression impact our clients’ well-being and how they come to light in the therapeutic dynamic. We strive to acknowledge the myriad ways that power shows up between the client and clinician and work toward a clinical relationship that is based in shared and equal power. We wholeheartedly believe that clients are the experts in their lives and have the tools for transformation and self-fulfillment. Lastly, collaboration is at the heart of our practice. We work alongside clients on their self-determined goals and move at the speed of their trust instead of a rigid agenda.
Your Healing:
We believe that healing is only possible when you are ready. If you are interested in learning more about IFS, check out our website, come back for weekly blogs from our IFS Telehealth Collective experts and sign up for our newsletter.
If you would like to be matched with an IFS trained clinician and live in California, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon or Michigan, please contact our Client Care Coordinator or call 503-447-3244.
If you don’t see your state listed above, join our interest list, and we’ll notify you as soon as we begin seeing clients in your area.
