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

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. 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 Mindfully Meni, a podcast and Substack community for women in this chapter and for the people who love them. Melissa also offers clinical consultation for therapists working with this population and is building resources for clinicians. 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 practices that shaped the IFS model. They also offer an Intensive Certificate Program in Couples and Family Therapy to help you build confidence and capacity in community. 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 community for bonus conversations, extended interviews, meditations, and more. Find Self-Led merch at The One Inside store. Listen to episodes and watch clips on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram @ifstammy or on Facebook at The One Inside with Tammy Sollenberger. I co-create The One Inside with Jeff Schrum, a Level 2 IFS practitioner and coach. Resources New to IFS? My book, The One Inside: Thirty Days to Your Authentic Self, is a great place to start. Want a free meditation? Sign up for my email list and get "Get to Know a Should Part" right away. Sponsorship Want to sponsor an episode of The One Inside? Email Tammy.

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. 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 Professional, and creator of the groundbreaking Mothercentered approach. She developed the innovative Mom Parts Method—a revolutionary application of IFS to motherhood that helps moms transform guilt, anxiety, and anger into self-compassion and confidence. Jessica's book When Good Moms Feel Bad: An Empowering Guide for Transforming Guilt, Anxiety and Anger into Compassion, Confidence and Connectedness presents her paradigm-shifting vision that reframes maternal mental health struggles not as disorders, but as natural responses to the profound transformation of matrescence, in a world that provides insufficient support. Through her training programs, she empowers therapists to understand mothers through a non-pathologizing lens that normalizes the full spectrum of maternal experience while accessing every mom's own Inner Mom wisdom. Connect with Jessica at momparts.com She is also a singer-songwriter, and you can listen to her music here. 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 community for bonus conversations, extended interviews, meditations, and more. Find Self-Led merch at The One Inside store. Listen to episodes and watch clips on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram @ifstammy or on Facebook at The One Inside with Tammy Sollenberger. I co-create The One Inside with Jeff Schrum, a Level 2 IFS practitioner and coach. Resources New to IFS? My book, The One Inside: Thirty Days to Your Authentic Self, is a great place to start. Want a free meditation? Sign up for my email list and get "Get to Know a Should Part" right away. Sponsorship Want to sponsor an episode of The One Inside? Email Tammy.

Today I welcome Dr. Audrey Davidheiser back to the podcast. Her latest book, Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing for Every Part of Your Soul, is an IFS guide to loss that views grief as a collection of parts, each carrying something specific, each needing to be met. Audrey is a licensed psychologist, certified IFS therapist, and founder of the Los Angeles Dream Center, where she specializes in trauma and religious trauma. She's also someone who lost her father suddenly seven years ago and rebuilt her practice and her inner life from the ground up. Takeaways Grief doesn't disappear. Avoided, it piles up. You can negotiate with parts about how much grief feels manageable Every grief is different, and every system responds differently to the same loss Legacy burdens shape how we grieve Faith can support grief or be used to bypass it Parts that yearn for a person who's gone can be met by Self Avoiding grief work is felt as another abandonment for our parts The Book Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing for Every Part of Your Soul Find Audrey Instagram & Facebook: @DrAudreyD, Substack and website 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 community for bonus conversations, extended interviews, meditations, and more. Find Self-Led merch at The One Inside store. Listen to episodes and watch clips on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram @ifstammy or on Facebook at The One Inside with Tammy Sollenberger. I co-create The One Inside with Jeff Schrum, a Level 2 IFS practitioner and coach. Resources New to IFS? My book, The One Inside: Thirty Days to Your Authentic Self, is a great place to start. Want a free meditation? Sign up for my email list and get "Get to Know a Should Part" right away. Sponsorship Want to sponsor an episode of The One Inside? Email Tammy.

I'm excited to welcome Jenna Riemersma back on the podcast for the third time to talk about her new book. She's a certified IFS therapist, bestselling author, and someone committed to making IFS accessible to everyone. Her new book, Move Toward: A Simplified IFS Therapy Tool to Welcome All Parts of You, gives you a simple way to work with parts in the real world, in real time. In This Episode The three-step Move Toward tool: Notice, Know, Need How Self Energy can transform a room of people What Self-led action looks like when you're in a toxic relationship or a power-down position Parts-led activism vs. Self-led activism Why moving against our own parts, and other people's parts, makes suffering worse IFS and addiction: why fighting parts never works long term "Every burdened part I take care of inside of me is no longer creating impact in the world around me." -- Jenna Riemersma Takeaways Move Toward is not the same as anything goes. Unblending changes your energy even when nothing on the outside changes. People feel it Self-led action includes courage, clarity, and the ability to see danger clearly, not just softness and compassion Parts-led activism burns you out and widens division. Self-led activism keeps your humanity intact People in marginalized or power-down positions need safe spaces to fully express their parts before deciding how to engage The Book Move Toward by Jenna Riemersma | jennariemersma.com About Jenna Jenna Riemersma is a Certified IFS therapist and IFS Clinical Consultant who specializes in making parts work accessible. She's the best-selling author of several IFS books including Altogether You, IFS Integration, and her newly-released book, Move Toward. Free resources, worksheets, and guided meditations available on her website and Insight Timer 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 community for bonus conversations, extended interviews, meditations, and more. Find Self-Led merch at The One Inside store. Listen to episodes and watch clips on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram @ifstammy or on Facebook at The One Inside with Tammy Sollenberger. I co-create The One Inside with Jeff Schrum, a Level 2 IFS practitioner and coach. Resources New to IFS? My book, The One Inside: Thirty Days to Your Authentic Self, is a great place to start. Want a free meditation? Sign up for my email list and get "Get to Know a Should Part" right away. Sponsorship Want to sponsor an episode of The One Inside? Email Tammy.

Today I welcome to the podcast Drs. Risa Adams, Robin Beardsley, and Elizabeth Parsons. They are family physicians turned psychotherapists who came together during the pandemic to write, find community, and speak for their parts. What they found in that process and wrote about in their new book, It Doesn't Have To Be This Way: A Physician's Guide To Radical Self Care (by three physicians who've been there), is something most caregivers, doctors, healthcare workers, therapists, parents, partners, anyone who finds their worth in being needed, will recognize. In This Episode The parts that helped you survive by taking care of everyone else Why fear and shame rarely get spoken out loud in medicine, or anywhere caregiving happens What finally broke each of them, and what helped Writing as a way to let parts be witnessed for the first time Why belonging and helping got tangled together so early Takeaways Helper parts learned that helping was the price of belonging The parts that make you good at caring for others are often the same parts driving burnout Burnout is a signal that the strategy has run out of space Being witnessed by people who get it can reach parts that have never been spoken out loud The culture around caregiving, in medicine and elsewhere, rewards the helper and punishes the one who needs This episode is for anyone who has ever made themselves smaller so there would be room to help. Links: Book: It Doesn't Have to Be This Way: A Physician's Guide to Radical Self-Care IFS Canadian Community Conference: A two-day online gathering for professionals using Internal Family Systems in their work, and for those exploring how IFS may support their professional practice. June 5-6, 2026, online. About the guests: Risa Adams, MD, CCFP, is a family physician with a focused practice in perinatal mental health and complex PTSD. She is a Certified IFS Therapist, Approved Clinical Consultant and Trainer with the IFS Institute. Through her own travels with mental health she has come to appreciate the complexity of being a human while being a physician, with a special interest in intergenerational trauma. Risa lives in Elora, Ontario, with her partner and two children, and hopes to help bring IFS to doctors, patients and her own communities. Robin Beardsley, MD, FCFP, a Family Physician with over 35 years' experience of comprehensive family medicine practice and psychotherapy with a focus on care for the caregiver. She is a certified IFS-I Therapist, approved Clinical Consultant, with extensive training in the Satir Model and is a trained teacher of Mindful Self Compassion. She also works with learners, as a faculty member of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa, and teaches Self Compassion for Health Care Communities. These experiences of working with and healing from empathic distress in medical communities with IFS and Self-Compassion, along with her own journey of being a caregiver, personally and professionally, has given her a greater understanding of the complexity and multiplicity of our systems. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario with her husband and adult children nearby. Elizabeth Parsons, MD, FCFP, has been a physician for over 25 years, practicing psychotherapy since 2007. She is a Certified IFS therapist and an Approved Clinical Consultant with the IFS Institute. In addition to IFS, Elizabeth is trained in trauma therapy and has been facilitating psychotherapy groups since 2010. Her interest in physician well being goes back to residency, when she surveyed medical residents on their coping strategies. She has been closely involved with the Medical Psychotherapy Association Canada since 2007, launching a self-care retreat for physicians that has run annually since 2012. Elizabeth lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and 3 children. 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 community for bonus conversations, extended interviews, meditations, and more. Find Self-Led merch at The One Inside store. Listen to episodes and watch clips on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram @ifstammy or on Facebook at The One Inside with Tammy Sollenberger. I co-create The One Inside with Jeff Schrum, a Level 2 IFS practitioner and coach. Resources New to IFS? My book, The One Inside: Thirty Days to Your Authentic Self, is a great place to start. Want a free meditation? Sign up for my email list and get "Get to Know a Should Part" right away. Sponsorship Want to sponsor an episode of The One Inside? Email Tammy.