Creating an Integrative Therapy Practice

It has been a wonderful and unpredictable journey into the practice that I now get to work in every day with my wonderful clients. When I started out, I thought it would be sufficient to become a life coach. While that was very interesting and quite fun to collaborate with folks on how they might like to shape their lives, it also became apparent to me that depth, stillness and deeper levels of relationship to self were fundamental in any decision to make a change in life.

I noticed rather early on in my practice that folks would come in with presenting topics, things like stress, identity, anxiety, trauma, lack of creativity, physical ailments, and so on, but the questions that really needed to be asked before any of the work of support the symptoms was to explore each person's relationship with the components to the concepts they were presenting.

It was very common to hear folks tell me that talk therapy had not worked, or more cognitive models. It was also very common that when we'd head into somatic or artistic modalities, folks would get very overwhelmed and head back into the realms of conversation. It was around this time that I realized; different parts of people's stories are going to need different modalities to access, process and soften. But how we figure out what access modality is appropriate, that we can only understand when we can begin to have a relationship with the presenting symptoms/topics/belief/etc. It became apparent at that point that Internal Family Systems was going to need to be a central tenet of my practice, which thus began the integrative approach that I now draw from.

Fairly early on, I was incorporating expressive art therapies, somatic therapy and some forms of Gestalt therapies in the room. Through gentle conversation and inquiry, clients were more able to raise their consciousness of the root of their discomfort. Sometimes it was a felt sense of unease or distrust, sometimes it was a memory of a harm that had been done to them. Through the IFS lens, we would begin to notice how certain topics were impacting their body, finding the sensation, and staying there long enough to see if we might identify a metaphor, narrative or image that could represent that Part in our work. Once we were able to find that access point, the questions of which modalities simplified. If the part was a preverbal exile part, perhaps them in their very early years, it did not make any sense to call upon cognitive modalities such as CBT to aid that part in feeling soothed and recovering a sense of trust. Rather, we might venture into the somatic realms, working with sensation noticing and pendulating, resourcing the client to the present moment here and now to allow their nervous system to recalibrate to the possibility of safety or neutrality. Alternatively, if a strong voice presented itself, we were able to explore that Part's narratives and limiting beliefs which allowed for cognitive work to take place. Sometimes we would even call on Gestalt and art therapy to make a mask or artwork representations of the parts. These modalities have proven very effective in deepening a client's relationship with these aspects of themself, which I've learned over the years truly is the most important part of this work.

So often clients will blame themselves or an event for causing the symptoms they are living with. As a result, very often they will blame their symptoms for their quality of life. When we are able to relate to the symptom or presentation as a part with a story and an impetus for survival, suddenly we are able to ask it what it needs, and what are the current barriers to accessing that.

By approaching a client's therapeutic journey from integrative lens, it seems that we are more likely to have their whole self involved in the process, which means there are no parts left behind feeling unheard, dismissed, invalidated or un-consenting. Assuming a one size fits all approach to a client who presents as a logical person or a creative person simply doesn't ensure that their entire being is being heard and attended to, which can ultimately reduce the efficacy of the therapeutic work in the long run.

I hope to continue exploring more modalities that could be integrated into my practice. There are so many ways to understand ourselves and each other. The more we know, the more we can diversify our ways of thinking and relating which just means that hopefully each client (and each Part) will have even more chances of being fully understood.