I hope you are returning to these pages and already know the backstory; I am a woman who was nearly two decades into being known as a trauma specialist, when a crushing loss revealed my own repressed traumas. I entered into a whirlwind re-harvesting of the specialized tools of my trade. Like a little energizer bunny farmer, I retiled the rich soil of trauma informed tools and grew them new roots that I could trust would work as a self-help way into healing in phases. I couldn’t see how, but I started to and developed the concept called The Toolbox Approach that is now coming out in “You Are Not Broken. Break free from the fixing yourself mindset with The Toolbox Approach.” this summer 2025. Too fearful of the world I knew as a stable trauma therapist splitting apart, I didn’t know who to trust, and only profoundly knew these tools could work, if only I could trust myself again. That is where we are today. I am my own patient zero, despite the thousands of therapy goers that have met with me over two decades.
This concept applies to all of us, however. Becoming aware that you have an inner therapist and that entering into phases of healing for repair, but not with any intent that there is a doctor on call needed to fix things, is a peace of mind that is woefully needed in the brokenness community that so many of us think we are alone in and not together with others inside of at all. We all have the brokenness at one time or another and the truth is that it can be an invitation to inner work that helps you find an entire toolbox approach all your own. The message: ‘You Are not Broken’ that I posit in the book, is a message from your inner therapist. That person is a powerful guide, and you can make an appointment any time without the need to pay a co-pay or be in network!
Your inner therapist comes from a tool in the trauma informed approaches library called Internal Family Systems, or IFS, originally developed by Richard C. Schwartz. Essentially, it helps you re-discover your Core Self. This is the self that can look at things like “my addiction” or “my shame over two divorces”, as well as feeling states like repressed rage and resentment, as “parts of self”. The Core Self looks curiously on, holds a conversation, so the parts get a sort of therapy and acceptance that they are all part of a whole person who is not good or bad but just trying to be in balance.
Slowly, as I used my own toolbox, I realized it was in fact healing me and that generated more tools somehow. The phases of healing in The Toolbox Approach are Narrative Healing, Reprocessing Healing, and Relational Healing. At times they are mutually beneficial and cycling around on each other and the phases are less definitive. Other times, you are clearly doing inner work in one phase and using the boundaries of that phase to focus and protect it, aiming to say to yourself; ‘that is truly good enough right now, healing takes time’. That is where we stand today as I write, I can’t place my finger on what phase I am in, they are cycling around and feeding each other with new information. Nonetheless, the work I recently did as patient zero to myself, deeply impacted several therapy sessions this week, and so the post emerges as a necessary highlight for The Reprocessing Healing Phase in which I use a self-help version of IFS.
PATIENT ZERO
So, my patient zero story is, in truth, that it all started a week prior, when for the second time in a row, I tried to fit my own return to therapy into the end of my workday at 8pm. I was aware of doing this “I must try therapy again” mindset, based on a new dysregulation I was feeling like I should really work on in therapy to stay sharp about what I was also asking my therapy goers to be part of. I was not aware that I had put the intention on a ridiculous schedule that landed me in the second session with only disjointed triggers to discuss with no cohesion and only a subtle wisdom that it all made sense to me somehow but was not going to come to any inner cohesion. My approach was all head and “should” mentality and it was completely disembodied from the way it felt, disorganized, rushed, bad. I put myself on the bench the third week to prevent the pattern, but I was not feeling good. I always pride myself on noticing the feelings and taking responsibility that they are between me and me but I was outsourcing my feelings to yoga, meditation and a healthy diet and exercise routine expecting “better me” to show up and all the while I said yes to things that should have been a no and ignored that I had wanted to return to therapy and didn’t organize it in a way that felt good and was really pretty stuck. I had specific things I wanted to be regulating, things that were partially figured out and ripe for inner work, but I was stalling. My smile was painted on, my humor an escape, and my careful routine ended up a way to care less about what was being internalized.
Luckily, my body screeched at me to stop quite literally, an autoimmune reaction came knocking, ‘hey tough girl, we need to talk!”. Returning home to face myself and my guilt over several canceled sessions, my bed became a therapy session using Internal Family Systems (IFS). I was going to face “my parts” and not just say to myself the easy, “oh, I must have over done it, need some rest”. That part of me was there in full force the first hour, but with IFS we learn how to hear ourselves differently and I called my own bluff at the idea that this was all of what was going on with me. As we move toward the part, rather than run away, a slow emergence of other parts is found. A whole family system with members disengaged from one another much like in a real family when there is discord and dysfunction, is found. The members or parts of self each think they are protecting something or conversely being protected. The parts often have storylines of what is threatening, what the threat is going to do, what could happen, what should happen to prevent things, and generally they are not aware this is all about feelings that the system as a whole could hold and move through. That is where Inner Core Self or Inner Therapist comes in, this one knows to “hold space”, just like the title of the entire subscription here, Holding Space. These things create the pause we need to integrate all our parts and move through the feelings with curiosity not reactivity.
HOLDING A SESSION WITH PARTS
To hold a session with YOUR parts, is not going to be identical to the experience I had but there are a few generic similarities that may help you be your own patient zero. First, most of us are generally trying to fend off the nervous system experience of anxiety when it comes to facing ourselves. To start this session with yourself, a quick somatic or body-based tool, helps create the pause needed to start revving down. To do this, perform the following:
Gently close the mouth and take two slow and strong breaths through the nostrils only. For imagery, you can imagine that the breaths puff up a crown or chef’s hat, or that you can feel it somehow on the top of your head.
After the strong breaths, the exhale happens slowly, like you are expelling frosty air out of your mouth. For imagery, you can imagine coating things around you with ice and even focus on the sound like an ice wielding dragon breath sound.
Gently place one hand over your breastbone/chest and silently claim slowed down mode powerfully; “I am here now”.
For the session, you can explore the following parts:
Repressed Rage
Don’t stop and feel what this really is Anxiety
Repressed Shame
Fear of Abandonment and Loss
ACTUAL SESSION RESULTS
Over the course of this week, I used IFS in this was several times after using it on my patient zero experience. The example provided is a combination of several sessions over the duration of my career and my own experience to protect confidentiality and preserve anonymity. Shared experiences with tools are our greatest tools in this community so if you have an experience reading, please be willing to share in the comments section, you never know who it may help.
We will use Issac, age 37, in our example. He is a writer and as his full-time employment is working as a software and IT specialist in a corporation. He is separated from his partner of 7 years, and they have raised her child from another relationship together for three years. Issac feels like the relationship changed him profoundly and he can no longer trust many people, even family. He was holding onto making it work up until a year ago when she moved to another state and he can no longer see the child he felt looked at him as “daddy”. Now, he has tried to consider writing about men’s health but finds his articles are too personal and he needs therapy to work on things “with a person I can pay to trust and hear me”. Recently, he has been getting very angry upon first interactions with women he meets on a dating app and with women at work. He tries not to let it out but mentally it gets to him, depresses him, and he has low energy, failing to stick to his normal workout routine. We used the somatic exercise with “I am here now” and Issac immediately commented “Oh, wow!”
Issac noticed right away how much he had been escaping something, first through pristine gym workouts but then when his energy got too down, through more frequent visits to the dating app. Afte the exercise, he noticed how much he had not been present in his life. Already, he was commenting, “I am not angry about women at work asking dumb questions or about these women on dating apps ghosting after one misunderstood comment!”. I asked him if he, with this part of his “I am here self” guide a meeting with the following parts. Here is his work:
Repressed Rage: “It says that I needed protection from this from the start and have only myself to blame. I helped her out of a bad situation, and it felt so good to be part of an instant family, but I never asked the important questions. I want to do it better on all these dating apps, but it takes so long getting to know people and I am just tired of not cutting to the chase and being direct about our pasts!”
Don’t Stop and Feel What this Really is Anxiety: “It says that I have to get my game back, stop skipping the gym. It says if I could just get a date, I would have reasons to be back to it again, I would have hope. I have to keep checking the app or work on my profile and just not feel rejection. I don’t want to feel like I won’t build a family after all this.”
Repressed Shame: “It says I should have been paying more attention to how she never held my hand or wanted affection. I just fell in love with being a dad and part of a family. I don’t know if my own father is proud of me, he died without me asking him so many questions I’ve wanted to know about if he wanted me or not.”
Fear of Abandonment and Loss: “I have always lost people before I can ask them how they feel about me. I am afraid that I just don’t get to have that family feeling. I feel like it is such a loss but also like I never had it so I am not sure why I can’t handle it and that frightens me more, how could I have so much fear I can’t handle the loss when I never had a real family feeling to begin with?”
Very likely you are relating your own life to this session as you read. If so, I encourage you to get a piece of paper and just try it. Be mindful to start with the short release of anxiety that comes with resistance to facing yourself. What you find, like Issac, is not a solution to your feeling but the feelings themselves. What you find is your parts. Just finding them in this mini session with yourself is an integration back into Whole Self, or Higher Self, where you don’t have to chatter away at a solution but can just accept your experience. This particular use of Internal Family Systems, IFS, is a Reprocessing Healing Phase tool today because of how it was used to reprocess dysregulation. For me, this week, I wanted to be facing things with regard to returning to therapy and learning to trust others again. Issac wanted to face his frustration and anger. Both of us were trying to point ourselves in directions but failing to take a pause and just meet with all our parts. Reprocessing things through as many parts of ourselves as we can brings us back to a more integrated self and can often be a solution in and of itself.
Life makes more sense, we are less good or bad, when we are integrated. If you like this tool, please subscribe below. Also, considers subscribing because you will get first shot at the guided approach to healing found in You Are Not Broken (not in publication yet but work in progress website for bookmarking) before it is launched on multiple platforms and audiobook. Lastly, find us on Spotify for the ENYA, Everyone Needs You Always podcast and on Patreon for Enter the Phases of Healing Courses.
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