IFS Inner Work for IFS Coaches and IFS Therapists

IFS coaches encounter parts who have concerns that are unique to the niche of IFS coaching.
All IFS practitioners have parts who get triggered by clients!
I offer IFS inner work to help support unblending from these parts, working with their concerns, sorting out their confusions, and unburdening the exiles they protect.

Please note that I do NOT offer marketing consultation or general advice about these issues,
as I am 100% committed to doing IFS work with all my clients.

If you have general questions, I invite you to read these pages :

Coaching training advice

Coaching vs therapy

IFS Coaching FAQ

If those don’t answer your questions, please email me your specific questions and I will add them to those posts or create a new post!

I’ve been an IFS coach and certified IFS practitioner since 2010. I am also a graduate of two rigorous coaching training programs – the Coaches Training Institute (now the Co-Active Training Institute) and the Center For Right Relationship. While IFS is my primary affiliation, I remain active in the coaching arena as well, from offering an IFS workshop at the International Coaching Federation Midwest Regional Conference in 2012 to staying connected with my coaching peers. I know both worlds.

Common Concerns for IFS Coaches

Over the years, I’ve accrued lived insight into the challenges and issues facing IFS coaches, such as:

— What is the scope of practice of an IFS coach versus an IFS therapist?

— Can coaches do unburdenings?

— What kind of intake process should I have as a coach?

— When should I refer clients to a therapist?

— How do I discern who to work with? Who are my “best fit“ clients? What is my niche BEYOND just offering IFS?

— What are coherent ways to market IFS coaching?

— How can I help the parts of me who are scared about all these issues, so that I can stand in Self-led integrity, and offer my services as an IFS coach with confidence and clarity?

These are important questions and issues. There is a gray area between therapy and coaching. Our parts who are afraid, confused, overwhelmed, or stymied are not crazy! They are reacting to the reality of that gray area and the things that it triggers. Therefore, all their reactions are legitimate. What they need is support!

Because all these issues exist in a real-life gray area, there are no perfect rules for navigating it. Our poor managers are never going to find the perfect answers to all these questions in a book, or a blog entry, or a worksheet. Instead, what is needed is for each and every one of us to work with the parts of us who need support around these issues.

Doing IFS work around these issues allows parts‘ fears and concerns to slowly but surely resolve. Doing that work with someone who is also an IFS coach and knows that territory intimately can be particularly helpful, but it is not necessary! As with all things, the most effective solution is to do your inner work!

The world needs IFS, and it does not do the world any service for us to be held back from offering the miracle of IFS to the world, just because we have parts who are confused, overwhelmed, and stymied by the gray zone between coaching and therapy. There is a gray zone between nurses and doctors. There is ambiguity around the edge of most human endeavors. Professional societies and credentialing bodies can never define that ambiguity away, because our human world is a little bit messier than that!

I believe strongly that “a rising tide lifts all boats.“ The more of us offering IFS to the world, the more Self energy we can bring to this world! Every one of us has an important contribution to make. I believe in the value of wading into this messy territory, working with our parts, and emerging on the other side with a strong sense of Self-leadership about what we can offer the world, with integrity, as coaches.

I deeply enjoy accompanying my fellow coaches into this territory. I warmly invite you to reach out to me if this kind of work sounds like something that may be of support. Whether it’s simply for a session or two to get some footing in this territory, or on an ongoing basis as a monthly check-in, I’m open to any and all forms of support that may serve you in bringing your IFS expertise to the world as a coach!