The One Inside: An Internal Family Systems (IFS) podcast

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1. Wiring or Parts? ADHD and IFS with Carol Shilliday

   23 oktober 2026 · 38 min

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   On this week's episode I'm excited to chat with Dr. Carol Shilliday, a clinical psychologist, IFS assistant trainer, and author of the new book Inside ADHD: An Internal Family Systems Workbook to Understand Your Parts and Emotionally Thrive. We discuss ADHD, shame, acceptance, and keeping a spare set of keys. Lees meer

   Takeaways

   Is it brain wiring or parts? Yes. IFS lets us stay curious instead of picking one

   "Am I ADHD enough?" Not struggling as much as someone else doesn't mean you're not struggling

   The compensation and anxiety link

   Traits that come with ADHD get labeled as character flaws: lazy, too much, not enough

   Overachievers, perfectionists, and maskers often polarize with parts that burn out or give up

   Strategies don't stick until there's acceptance

   Healing the shame makes room for what works

   Low estrogen lowers dopamine, so hormones amplify ADHD for women

   Advice for partners and mixed neurotype relationships

   Opportunties to learn from Carol

   Join Carol in February 2027 for IFS and ADHD: Clarity and Healing, a two-day online workshop focused on working with ADHD clients in neuroaffirming ways.

   Find Carol
   Website

   Book

   About Carol
   Carol Shilliday, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist with over three decades of experience. She is an IFS assistant trainer, Level 3 certified IFS therapist, and IFS approved clinical consultant who specializes in working with adults with ADHD. She runs groups for IFS therapists and practitioners with ADHD and for those who want to lead their own IFS groups. She is the author of Inside ADHD: An Internal Family Systems Workbook to Understand Your Parts and Emotionally Thrive.

   Episode Sponsor
   This episode is sponsored by Souliology. Souliology offers retreats and immersive learning experiences for IFS professionals, many led by IFS Senior Lead Trainers and eligible for continuing education credits. Their programs support deep professional and personal growth, offering space to step away from the demands of daily life so yo…

2. IFS, Non-Duality, and Presence with Dr. Laura Patryas

   9 oktober 2026 · 48 min

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   On this week's episode I'm excited to chat with Dr. Laura Patryas, a psychologist, author, spiritual teacher, and 2026 IFS Annual Conference presenter. We discuss non-duality, presence, wholeness, and Cabbage Patch dolls. Lees meer

   Takeaways

   Honoring all of our parts while remembering the wholeness underneath them

   Every part has Self at its core. The burdens obscure it, but they don't change what's underneath

   Multiplicity and unity coexist--you can be a in part and be whole at the same time

   Tantra means to weave and to become whole--so does IFS

   Either-or thinking is often a burdened part, where Self offers perspective and choice

   My childhood Cabbage Patch doll burden is a lesson in non-duality

   Wholeness doesn't mean perfect

   Awakening is being present with whatever part is showing up right now

   Parts sometimes try to keep us safe from silence, stillness, and presence

   Presence is a birthright, and it's something you can practice and develop

   Three Fs: focus, flow, and feeling. It's a simple way to track how blended you are in any moment

   Therapeutic presence relies on something transpersonal

   Self leadership can be fierce and boundaried

   "You are loved. Every one of your parts is already loved."

   Here's a link to the Easing Back In meditation I mentioned.

   Find Laura
   Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn | Substack | Books

   About Laura

   Laura Patryas is a psychologist, author, and spiritual teacher whose work brings together Internal Family Systems, nonduality, and embodied spirituality. She is the author of Awaken to Love, exploring how we can reclaim our wholeness and awaken to the love that is already here.

   Episode Sponsor

   This episode is sponsored by the IFS Institute.

   This October, join the IFS Institute for the 2026 IFS Annual Conference, happening fully online October 15th and 16th. Over two days, you'll hear from over 45 voices from across the IFS community exploring the theme of Self in Relationship: From Inner Healing to Collective Repair. …

3. Poems For My Parts with Emma Coyne

   30 september 2026 · 36 min

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   Emma Coyne wrote over a hundred poems inspired by her IFS training and her own therapy. She sent them to people who told her they recognized themselves in many of them. That "me too" response encouraged her to share them with the world in her new book, but not before working with all of her parts to make sure everyone was on board. Lees meer

   She is a clinical psychologist and Level 3 IFS therapist based in Nottinghamshire, UK. She has spent 17 years working with people living with kidney failure, transplantation, and end of life care. Emma also writes a Substack on IFS and neurodiversity.

   In this episode:

   How treating a kidney transplant as a new part can change someone's relationship with it

   Transplant patients often name their kidneys. You won't believe the most common name.

   Why the CBT she tried didn't fit, and what drew her to IFS instead

   The puppy dog part behind her IFS and Neurodiversity Substack

   What readers told her to cut before the book went out

   Getting every part's permission to publish

   How poetry carries parts through image, rhythm, and fragment, not just words

   "The stories belong to me, but the feelings belong to all of us"

   What her 10-year-old self wanted to be, and what's already waiting in her drafts

   Emma reads five poems in this episode for us, which is such a treat. As she reads she becomes the parts themselves. Make sure to catch the bonus reading over on Substack.

   About Emma:

   Dr. Emma Coyne is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with 22 years in the NHS, working in adult mental and physical health. She specializes in long term health conditions, neurodivergence, and developmental disabilities, and is particularly interested in working with the body in therapy. She is a Level 3 IFS therapist, trained yoga teacher, and holds Chartered status with the British Psychological Society. She is based in Nottinghamshire, UK. Find Emma on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok

   Mentioned in this episode

   Poems for My Parts: An IFS Therapy Journey by Emma Coyn…

4. IFS Health Therapy with Nancy Sowell

   1 september 2026 · 41 min

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   Episode Description Lees meer

   This week I welcome Nancy Sowell to the podcast to kick off Season 8. She spearheaded the intervention program behind the landmark study with medical patients that helped establish IFS as a promising treatment, and she wrote a book about what IFS has to offer our physical health.

   This one also feels like a full circle moment. Nancy was my lead trainer when The One Inside was just getting started.

   In this episode we talk about how chronic stress, childhood adversity, perfectionism, and burdened parts affect our physical health, and what IFS can offer.

   Takeaways

   Parentification, taking on adult roles or becoming an emotional support for parents in childhood, shows up again and again in the trauma histories of people with autoimmune disease

   Our health is influenced by our genome and our exposome - the collection of everything we've been exposed to throughout our lives, from gestation forward

   Chronic internal stress from parts carrying burdens, like "I'm not good enough," has a measurable effect on the body

   Nancy realized her body had been her guide all along, she just hadn't been tuning in

   Admitting you're wrong is a relief to your protectors. It's worth considering what it costs them to keep you from doing it

   Parts that don't want to connect to the body often have very good reasons. Start there

   About Nancy

   Nancy Sowell, LICSW, is a Senior Trainer for the IFS Institute and a Harvard Medical School Teaching Associate. She spearheaded the intervention program behind the landmark study with medical patients that helped establish IFS as a promising treatment. She has spent her career exploring how chronic stress, trauma, and unmet emotional needs--especially during childhood--affect our physical health throughout our lives, and what IFS offers for deep, sustainable well-being. Her new book, IFS Health Therapy, co-authored with Martha Sweezy and Richard Schwartz, is available now.

   Episode Sponsor

   This episode is sponsored by the IFS Instit…

5. Living Into Divine Essence with Brian Jaudon (Season 7 Finale)

   20 augustus 2026 · 39 min

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   Brian Jaudon is back on the podcast to help us wrap up Season 7. Lees meer

   We talk about soul alignment, what it means to organize your life around your divine essence, and what happens when a chapter closes and something new wants to emerge.

   Takeaways

   The question Brian has asked clients for 30 years: what has your life been organized around, and what would you like to reorganize it around?

   Invitation is a spiritual state. Have you invited what you want into your consciousness, your body, and your whole being?

   Soul misalignment shows up as a felt sense, and the body knows when something is off

   Once you've experienced a state of consciousness, you have access to it

   Live into what is and what wants to be, not what was or what should be

   Anything not aligned with your divine essence will surface to be examined, released, or renegotiated

   Brian's medicine journey revelation: we get to exist on this planet without being of service; we can choose how we want to show up and share our gifts with the world

   Relationship first, task second

   About Brian
   Brian Jaudon is a sacred witness to the divine unfolding of one's life. After 30 years as a coach, including his early role as a pioneer in the integration of IFS and coaching, Brian is embracing a new path and calling that is more vibrational and spiritual in nature. For the first time in his professional life, he is inviting individuals and couples to work with him in person at his home (Turtle Ridge) in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Brian's new website is www.divinebecoming.love

   Episode Sponsor

   This episode is sponsored by Therapy Training Boston.

   Therapy Training Boston offers live, in-person, and online workshops, plus consultation for therapists and other helping professionals, designed to support you as a whole person while satisfying your CE requirements. All of their offerings are taught with an eye toward context, power, and relational justice, and draw on the family systems theories and best p…

6. Self Unbroken with Robert Falconer

   30 juli 2026 · 54 min

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   On today's episode we welcome Bob Falconer back to the podcast. Bob is an IFS teacher, consultant, and author who has devoted decades to trauma healing and the study of mind and spirit. He co-authored Many Minds, One Self with Dick Schwartz and wrote The Others Within Us. His memoir, Self Unbroken, is out now. Lees meer

   It's hard to pick a favorite "Bob" episode, but this one might be my favorite so far. We talk about his daily practice of dialoguing with Spirit, the sewer path to wisdom, what skeptical parts need, and the monk who changed everything for him

   Takeaways

   Self may be less like a particle and more like a field.

   The high road to wisdom is lined with people waving shiny objects. Bob suggests trudging through the sewer instead.

   Skeptical parts don't need to be shut down, they need to be invited in.

   Not knowing is the beginning of knowledge

   When a spirit dialogue starts making you feel superior to others, it's your clue the signal has been hijacked

   Understanding a past life isn't what heals it. Witnessing and unburdening the emotional charge is what changes things

   Use your client's language instead of imposing yours

   Here's a link to The One Inside Audio Guides I mentioned in the intro.

   About Robert Falconer:

   For the early decades of his career, Bob focused on work with men who had histories of major sexual and physical abuse as Bob had. He used various forms of parts work (Ego State Therapy, Gestalt, and Pia Mellody's work among others) but some 16 years ago he discovered Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) and is now focused exclusively on IFS, which he finds to be the most respectful and powerful modality. His own recovery is the deep basis for all his work.

   Bob has taught IFS extensively and internationally online and has led classes and trainings in Pakistan, China, South Korea, Mexico, Poland , Spain, Canada, the UK, and for the Fort Belknap reservation. He has also been on the staff of over 20 of the official IFS institute trainings. Bob has been…

7. Connection After Loss with Liz Brenner

   25 juni 2026 · 32 min

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   This episode didn't go as planned, and I'm grateful it didn't. Lees meer

   I invited Liz Brenner on the podcast to talk about the Family Process article on the family systems roots of IFS she co-authored with Dick Schwartz and Carol Becker in 2023. Instead, we found ourselves talking about grief.

   A month before we recorded, my dad died unexpectedly. Liz lost her partner, Dan, in 2018, just six weeks after his cancer diagnosis. We both came into the conversation still processing our losses, and grief was the conversation we needed to have.

   Takeaways

   Grief can break you, and it can also heal you. Both can be true at once

   A felt connection to someone who has died can be a real and ongoing relationship

   When the spiritual dimension of Self gets left out, the Self-to-part relationship can feel smaller than it actually is

   Constraint release, an idea from family systems therapy, asks what pattern isn't working rather than what's broken

   Meaning-making is an often-overlooked stage of grief

   A part that's afraid of losing connection to someone you love can be asked to step back (Liz learned that during a session with Dick Schwartz)

   Family systems theory shaped IFS more than we realize

   We'll have Liz back on to finish the conversation about the family systems article.

   About Liz Brenner

   Liz Brenner, LICSW, is the director of Therapy Training Boston, the continuing legacy of the Family Institute of Cambridge. She is the primary instructor of their Intensive Certification Program in Couples and Family Therapy and co-author, with Richard Schwartz and Carol Becker, of the 2023 Family Process article on the development of the IFS model (email Liz for access to the article). Follow Therapy Training Boston on Facebook or Instagram. Links: Therapy Training Boston Courses and Workshops

   Episode Sponsor

   This episode is sponsored by Souliology.

   Souliology offers retreats and immersive learning experiences for IFS professionals, many led by IFS Senior Lead Trainers and eligible for conti…

8. Trauma Coaching and Addiction Recovery with Achara Tarfa

   9 juni 2026 · 49 min

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   My guest on today's episode is Achara Tarfa. She is a certified IFS practitioner, co-founder of the Global Trauma Institute, and director of the PATH program. We talk about finding IFS, what trauma coaching offers that therapy often doesn't, and why she and her co-founders built GTI to create the spaces they needed but couldn't find. Lees meer

   Takeaways

   IFS gave Achara language for her own anger for the first time

   When the people you turn to for help fail you, the harm compounds. Achara experienced this firsthand and it shaped everything she built

   Trauma coaching isn't replacing therapy. It's reaching people the system has missed

   Healing isn't just individual. It's about dismantling the systems, cultural, institutional, hierarchical, that created the harm

   PATH meetings use IFS to address addiction and its underlying trauma together

   AA teaches you how to survive; PATH teaches you how to live.

   If you're in protection mode, there's no room to feel. That's not a flaw, it's survival

   Catch my extended interview with Achara and our Audio Guides meditations over on Substack.

   About Achara

   Achara Tarfa is a certified IFS practitioner, co-founder of the Global Trauma Institute, and director of the PATH program. Connect with her on Substack and Instagram.

   Episode Sponsor

   This episode is sponsored by Souliology.

   Souliology offers retreats and immersive learning experiences for IFS professionals, many led by IFS Senior Lead Trainers and eligible for continuing education credits.

   Their programs support deep professional and personal growth, offering space to step away from the demands of daily life so you can return to your practice more present and resourced for the clients you serve.

   Souliology: Where growth meets depth. Learn more at souliology.com

   About The One Inside

   I started this podcast to help spread IFS out into the world and make the model more accessible to everyone. Seven years later, that's still at the heart of all we do.

   Join The One Inside Substack commu…

9. Parts and Perimenopause with Melissa Monahan — IFS for the Transition Nobody Warned Us About

   19 mei 2026 · 35 min

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   I didn't know frozen shoulder was a perimenopause symptom. Neither did Melissa Monahan, this week's podcast guest, and she's a therapist living through it herself. Lees meer

   This week Melissa joins me on the podcast to talk about the mental health side of perimenopause and menopause, and what IFS can offer women going through it. She's an IFS Level 2 therapist and host of Mindfully Meni, a podcast and Substack for women in this chapter of life -- and the people who love them.

   In this episode we talk about the changes happening in our inner worlds during this transition, and how IFS can help us make sense of and befriend parts whose burdens we may be noticing for the first time.

   Takeaways

   Perimenopause is as much an identity transition as a physical one.

   As estrogen drops, the manager parts lose their primary tool. Anger, anxiety, and old wounds may surface.

   Parts that were managed and exiled for years may now need additional care and compassion

   I share about my angry part around hot flashes, and what happened when I got curious instead of contemptuous.

   Anger in women going through this transition is often the first time they've allowed themselves to feel it.

   The polarization between shrinking completely and blowing everything up is a parts pattern, not a personality flaw.

   Melissa went to PT for weeks for a frozen shoulder that kept getting worse. A surgeon finally told her it was common in women her age. Nobody had connected it to perimenopause. That's the gap she's trying to close.

   Community is not optional. It is medicine.

   Be sure to check out my extended interview with Melissa over on The One Inside on Substack

   About Melissa

   Melissa Monahan is a licensed mental health counselor and IFS Level 2 therapist specializing in perimenopause and menopause. She integrates IFS, EMDR, and Brainspotting to support women through the hormonal and emotional dimensions of this transition, with a focus on the mental health conversation perimenopause deserves. She hosts Mindfu…

10. When Good Moms Feel Bad with Jessica Tomich Sorci

    12 mei 2026 · 37 min

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    On today's episode I welcome Jessica Tomich Sorci to the podcast. She's a therapist, perinatal mental health specialist, and creator of the Mom Parts Method. She's spent 15 years working with moms and noticed the same parts showing up, so she began naming them, then created a methodology and a new book. Lees meer

    Her Mom Parts Method is a five-step IFS-based process specifically for mothers. It starts with a meditation to connect with a triggering experience, then moves through naming which parts showed up, speaking truths on their behalf, noticing underlying shame or grief, and identifying what those parts actually need.

    She identified 29 mom parts that kept appearing across 15 years of practice--things like anger, resentment, anxiety, destroyer, blame--and named them so moms could recognize themselves without feeling alone in it. Her Mom Parts cards are a physical tool to support the process.

    Takeaways

    The parts that make us such attuned mothers are the same parts that make it hard to let go as kids grow

    Grief is a through line in motherhood, from the 12-month clothes replacing the 6-month ones all the way to high school graduation. We don't talk about it enough.

    The good mom/bad mom flip is parts thinking, not Self. It's black and white, and it's exhausting.

    Motherhood is as much your developmental journey as your child's.

    You have every right to grow, struggle, fail, and try again too

    Twenty percent of moms are diagnosed with a perinatal mood or anxiety disorder. Jessica's take: that's a cultural failure rate

    "I've never heard anyone say they're screwed up because their mom took such good care of herself"

    Team Kid and Team What About Mom are both in your system. Both are trying to help.

    Catch my extended interview with Jessica over on Substack. And while you're there, be sure to try one of our new Audio Guides meditations.

    About Jessica

    Jessica Tomich Sorci, LMFT is a Level 3 Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist, Certified Perinatal Mental Health Pro…

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