Parts Work Therapy in Calgary: Helping You Feel Whole and Grounded Again

In Calgary and ONLINE across Alberta

Are you a woman who appears put-together on the outside—yet inside you struggle with anxiety, self-doubt, emotional pain, and a relentless sense of not being good enough? Many of my clients juggle heavy responsibilities at work and at home, often working in helping professions while carrying the weight of their own emotional pain. They may feel trapped in cycles of overwhelm, perfectionism, people-pleasing, self-criticism, or imposter syndrome.

I provide compassionate, depth-oriented therapy to help women heal unresolved trauma, build emotional resilience, and reclaim a grounded, authentic relationship with themselves.

Understanding Parts Work

As an experienced therapist, I am proud to integrate a number of different approaches to parts work therapy, including IFS Informed Parts Work and Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) into my holistic trauma focused practice. There are many approaches to parts work therapy, all based on the idea that we each have many “parts” or aspects of ourselves that carry different emotions, beliefs, and roles to help us navigate life's challenges When trauma occurs, some parts may become protective while others carry the pain of those experiences.

If you feel stuck—despite all your hard work and best intentions—parts work therapy can offer valuable insight and relief. Often, it’s not a lack of effort that holds us back, but inner conflicts between different parts of ourselves. When these parts are in tension—one striving for change, another protecting against risk or vulnerability—they can quietly sabotage your progress and leave you feeling frustrated or overwhelmed.

The Impact of Distressing Experiences and Trauma on Your Internal System

Overwhelming experiences and trauma can profoundly affect your mental health, relationships, and overall well-being. When left untreated, traumatic experiences can manifest in many forms, including:

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms like flashbacks and nightmares
Persistent anxiety and hypervigilance
Difficulty forming and maintaining healthy relationships
Physical symptoms with no clear medical cause
Intrusive thoughts and traumatic memories
Emotional regulation difficulties
Chronic stress affecting your nervous system

These symptoms aren't a sign of weakness—they're your body and mind's natural response to overwhelming experiences. Parts work therapy and TIST acknowledge that these responses made sense in the context of your experiences and provide a path forward to healing.

IFS-Informed Parts Work Therapy

When you’ve been carrying anxiety, self-doubt, and the effects of unresolved emotional pain and trauma for years, it can feel like different parts of you are constantly at odds—one part pushing through and performing, another part overwhelmed and exhausted, and yet another holding old pain or fear. Parts work provides a framework for understanding and healing these internal dynamics so you can move toward healing with greater clarity, ease, and self-compassion.Parts work therapy, informed by Internal Family Systems principles, recognizes that we all have different aspects of our personality that serve various functions. This approach helps you:

Understand Your Internal System

Through IFS-informed parts work, you'll learn to identify and understand the different parts within your internal system:

Protective Parts These parts developed to keep you safe and may include:

The inner critic that drives perfectionism
The people-pleaser that avoids conflict
The achiever that pushes for success
The controller that tries to manage outcomes

Vulnerable Parts These parts carry emotional pain, trauma, and unmet needs. They may hold:

Childhood hurt and disappointment
Feelings of abandonment or rejection
Shame and self-doubt
Fear and anxiety about safety

The Self At your core exists your wise Self—the compassionate, and curious part of you that can lead your internal system with clarity and care.

Develop Self-Leadership

Through IFS-informed parts work therapy, you'll learn to access your Self and develop the capacity to lead your internal system with compassion and wisdom. This process allows you to:

Listen to all parts with curiosity rather than judgment
Understand the positive intentions behind protective behaviors
Provide care and healing to vulnerable parts
Create greater harmony within your internal system
Apply these insights to improve relationships and daily functioning

Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST)

I am also trained in Level One Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST). Developed by internationally respected trauma expert Dr. Janina Fisher, TIST is an evidence-based, phase-based model that combines IFS-informed parts work, trauma neuroscience, and somatic awareness.

TIST is especially effective for women living with complex trauma (CPTSD) from childhood abuse, emotional neglect, repeated relational trauma, or prolonged exposure to stress. Many of my clients feel stuck in survival mode—exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, and constantly on alert despite their appearance. TIST offers a compassionate, structured path forward.

TIST helps you:

Stabilize your nervous system
Soothe emotional overwhelm
Understand and work with your inner parts
Move beyond survival mode
Heal safely—without retraumatization

Schedule Free Consultation

What is TIST?

TIST is a structured, three-phase model that prioritizes stabilization first, before addressing traumatic memories. This makes it particularly helpful for clients who feel flooded by emotion, struggle to regulate, or tend to shut down under stress.

TIST integrates:

IFS-informed parts work
Trauma neuroscience
Somatic awareness (tracking body sensations and states)
The theory of structural dissociation (understanding internal conflicts and trauma responses)

Rather than asking “What’s wrong with me?” TIST shifts the focus to “What happened to me?”—and gently supports you in understanding and healing the protective patterns that helped you survive, but may now be holding you back.

The Three Phases of TIST

Phase 1: Stabilization and Safety The first phase focuses on creating internal and external safety, developing coping skills, and building resources for emotional regulation. This includes:

Psychoeducation about trauma's effects on the brain and body
Skills for emotional regulation and distress tolerance
Techniques to expand your "window of tolerance"
Grounding and self-soothing strategies
Understanding your internal parts and their protective roles

Phase 2: Processing and Healing

When you feel ready and well-resourced, we move carefully into processing traumatic experiences:

Processing traumatic memories at a pace that honours your nervous system
Using evidence-based approaches such as EMDR and ART, always in collaboration with your parts system and with a focus on safety

Phase 3: Integration and Growth

Finally, we support you in integrating your healing into everyday life:

Developing healthier, more authentic relationships
Strengthening resilience and self-compassion
Creating meaning from your experiences
Moving forward with greater freedom, clarity, and confidence

Benefits of IFS-Informed Parts Work and TIST

Enhanced Emotional Regulation

One core benefit of this approach is improved emotional regulation. You'll develop:

Greater awareness of emotional states and triggers
The ability to identify triggers before they overwhelm you
Practical techniques to self-regulate in challenging situations
A more balanced nervous system response to stress
Skills to process difficult emotions without being overwhelmed

Building Resilience and Self-Compassion

TIST and parts work therapy equip you with essential coping skills for managing life's challenges while developing greater self-compassion. You'll learn:

A stronger sense of self-efficacy
Healthy boundaries in relationships
Greater flexibility in thinking and problem-solving
A deeper connection to your personal values and strengths
The capacity to seek support when needed

Improved Daily Functioning

These approaches can help you

Build greater emotional resilience and self-regulation
Respond to triggers with more calm and clarity
Set and maintain healthy boundaries with less guilt or fear
Increase focus, clarity, and productivity in your work and life
Improve sleep quality and restore a sense of restfulness
Make decisions with greater confidence and self-trust
Experience more moments of ease, connection, and fulfillment

Schedule Free Consultation

Other Therapeutic Approaches I Offer

EMDR Therapy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy helps process traumatic memories and reduce emotional distress through bilateral stimulation. Within the TIST framework, EMDR is used with careful attention to your parts and internal system, ensuring processing happens at a pace that feels safe and manageable.

EMDR is particularly effective for treating PTSD symptoms and doesn't require you to discuss traumatic experiences in detail, making it gentler than traditional talk therapy approaches.

EMDR Intensives

For clients seeking more concentrated trauma processing, I offer EMDR Intensives—extended sessions that allow for deeper processing within a shorter time frame. These intensives are particularly effective for:

Addressing specific traumatic events
Processing grief and loss
Working through phobias or anxiety
Breaking through therapeutic plateaus

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)

ART is another powerful approach for processing traumatic memories and emotions. Similar to EMDR, it uses eye movements to help the brain process memories, but with unique protocol differences that often produce rapid results.

Many clients appreciate ART's efficiency and the fact that they don't need to verbally share details of their trauma, making it excellent for those who find discussing traumatic experiences overwhelming.

Somatic Approaches

Trauma isn’t just stored in memories — it’s often held in the body. Many of the women I work with experience chronic tension, fatigue, or anxiety that doesn’t always respond to logic or talk-based approaches. That’s because trauma imprints itself in the nervous system and shapes how we physically respond to stress and threat. Somatic approaches—including those used within TIST, EMDR, and ART—help you:

Increase awareness of physical sensations and nervous system patterns
Identify areas of tension and stress
Track changes in your body to recognize stress or safety signals
During EMDR and ART, in particular, safely process and release the emotional or physical intensity associated with traumatic memories
Restore healthy nervous system regulation
Regulate your body’s responses to stress and build somatic resilience

By combining somatic awareness with structured, evidence-based therapies, you can begin to feel more grounded, present, and at home in your body.

Specialized Support Areas

High-Functioning Anxiety and Perfectionism

For professional women — especially those working in helping fields such as healthcare, education, mental health, or community services — high-functioning anxiety is often an invisible struggle. You may appear capable and composed on the outside, yet inside battle relentless worry, perfectionism, and a deep sense of not feeling good enough.

IFS-informed parts work offers a compassionate, transformative approach to understanding the parts of you that drive overfunctioning, people-pleasing, and self-criticism — helping you move beyond symptom management and toward true internal healing and balance.

Complex Trauma and Childhood Experiences

Many women carry the unseen impacts of complex trauma. This may include adverse childhood experiences, emotional neglect, toxic relationships, or repeated relational wounds that shaped how you view yourself and the world.

Complex trauma, resulting from repeated or prolonged traumatic experiences, can significantly impact how we view ourselves, others, and the world. This includes adverse childhood experiences, emotional neglect, or other developmental trauma.

The TIST approach is particularly effective for complex trauma because it prioritizes stabilization and resource-building before processing, reducing the risk of retraumatization.

Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) and IFS-informed Parts Work are particularly effective in this area, because they help address the internal wounds, nervous system impacts, and parts-based protective patterns that can result from narcissistic abuse. Many women find they continue to struggle with anxiety, self-doubt, shame, emotional overwhelm, and loss of trust in themselves

As part of my trauma counselling services, I offer specialized support for those recovering from relationships with narcissistic individuals. I help women who have experienced narcissistic abuse to:

Recognize subtle forms of manipulation and gaslighting
Rebuild trust in their own perceptions
Reestablish healthy boundaries
Process the trauma of emotional and psychological abuse
Develop strategies for managing ongoing contact when necessary
Reconnect with their authentic self and core Self

Intergenerational Trauma

An important part of IFS-informed Parts Work — and supported within the TIST approach — is recognizing how certain patterns of belief, emotional pain, and coping strategies — can be passed down through families. These burdens often shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and respond to stress, sometimes without conscious awareness. In our work together, we help your parts release inherited burdens, so you can create new patterns for yourself and future generations.

Through our work together, we will help you:

Identify and unburden parts of you that may carry wounds from your family system
Release inherited patterns of self-doubt, perfectionism, shame, fear, or emotional suppression
Reclaim a greater sense of agency, freedom, and Self-leadership

This allows you not only to heal your own experiences, but also to interrupt these cycles — creating the possibility of healthier patterns for future generations.

Who Can Benefit from My Services?

I specialize in working with women, particularly those experiencing:

High-Functioning Anxiety

Women who appear successful externally but struggle internally with persistent worry, perfectionism, racing thoughts, and the pressure to maintain control in all areas of life.

Trauma and PTSD

Individuals recovering from various forms of trauma, including:

Childhood trauma and emotional neglect
Relational trauma and narcissistic abuse
Medical trauma
Workplace trauma and burnout
Single-incident traumatic events

Life Transitions and Stress

Women navigating major life changes while managing multiple responsibilities, chronic stress, and the challenge of maintaining their external image of competence.

You might particularly benefit from my approach if you:

Work in a helping profession or high-stress career
Exhibit perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies
Experience burnout despite achievements
Notice stress affecting your physical health
Have faced a recent crisis that motivated you to seek deeper help

My Approach

Creating Safety and Stability

As a trauma-informed therapist, I prioritize creating a safe, supportive environment where all parts of you are welcome. This safety is essential for effective parts work therapy, allowing protective and vulnerable parts to gradually engage in the healing process.

Personalized Treatment

I recognize that every person's internal system is unique, shaped by individual life experiences and circumstances. My approach using TIST and IFS-informed parts work is tailored to your specific needs, history, and therapeutic goals.

Integration of Multiple Modalities

The TIST model allows for the integration of various evidence-based approaches, including EMDR, ART, somatic techniques, and other modalities as appropriate for your healing journey. This flexibility ensures comprehensive treatment that addresses your whole person.

What to Expect

Initial Consultation

I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation to discuss your current challenges and determine if my approach aligns with your needs.

First Appointment

Your first 50-minute appointment serves as a comprehensive intake session where I gather information about your history, current concerns, and therapeutic goals. This allows me to create a personalized treatment plan.

Regular Sessions

We meet weekly or biweekly, depending on your needs and phase of treatment. In the initial stabilization phase, consistent attendance is particularly important for building safety and developing coping resources.

Throughout our work, I may offer between-session practices and homework to help you apply insights and skills in your daily life, supporting the integration of healing between sessions.

EMDR and ART Options

For those ready for memory processing work, I offer:

Regular EMDR sessions integrated with parts work
EMDR Intensives for more concentrated processing
ART sessions for rapid trauma processing

Begin Your Healing Journey

If you're ready to explore how IFS-informed parts work and Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment can support your journey toward healing and wholeness, I invite you to reach out for a free 15-minute phone consultation.

As a therapist based in Calgary, I offer both in-person and online therapy sessions to clients throughout Alberta. My practice provides a safe, inclusive space for women seeking comprehensive trauma healing and personal transformation.

FAQs

Unlike approaches that focus primarily on changing thoughts or behaviors, IFS-informed parts work addresses the underlying structure of your internal system. By working with the parts that generate symptoms rather than just managing the symptoms themselves, this approach creates deeper and more sustainable transformation.
TIST stands out because it combines IFS-informed Parts Work, trauma neuroscience, and structural dissociation theory into a practical, phase-based model. While many trauma therapies focus on memory processing, TIST begins with building nervous system stability and unblending from reactive parts — helping you feel more present and grounded before exploring past experiences
TIST is particularly well-suited for complex trauma because of its emphasis on stabilization and resource-building.
The duration varies based on individual needs, trauma complexity, and therapeutic goals
Absolutely. For women with high-functioning anxiety, parts work offers a comprehensive approach to understanding and healing the underlying dynamics driving anxiety, often providing more lasting relief than symptom-focused approaches.
While I don't bill directly to insurance providers, I provide receipts that you can submit for possible reimbursement. Many extended health plans cover services provided by registered therapists.

Together, we can work toward helping you develop greater internal harmony, emotional regulation, and the capacity to live with more authenticity, calm, and confidence.