Notes on validation, adolescence, and the work of becoming for everyone

September 25, 2026—If your experience as an IFS therapist or practitioner has been anything like mine, you completed your Level 1 IFS training, but somehow those beautiful sessions you witnessed in the training demos didn’’t manifest in your therapy office. Unlike the trainings, sometimes sessions can feel extraordinarily messy. We enter unknown territory, encounter clients’ parts and our own parts who befuddle us or refuse to unblend. Sometimes it feels a little bit like wan

September 9, 2026 — To be an adolescent therapist is to be willing to sit in the trenches; to be in extended uncomfortable silences; to navigate concerned, frustrated, and frustrating parents; to work with parts of us who are frightened for our teen clients and parts who are helpless in the face of our clients’ external circumstances and their pain. If you are a new therapist, even if you love teenagers, meeting them in the therapy room can be like walking into a minefield. E

July 22nd, 2026 —There comes a point in every therapist's journey when reading another book or taking another training isn't enough. You’re a professional now! You’ve read the books and done the trainings! It’s time now to sit with other professionals as colleagues and offer your expertise while benefitting from the wisdom of your peers. Being a therapist is a lonely profession. The work is done in an office alone or online. Just you and your client. You can’t talk about your

July 8th, 2026 One of the most frequent complaints and concerns I hear from parents, teachers, and those involved in raising up teenagers is that their child is going to grow up to be one of those adults who thinks the world owes them something. As I'm writing this, I'm out walking through my little town—a town I genuinely love. And yet every day I watch adults, and teenagers I’m sure, fly through neighborhood streets in oversized trucks or loud little sports cars as though t

June 24, 2026—One of the foundational assumptions of Internal Family Systems (IFS) is that every person contains a multiplicity of parts. We are not a singular, fixed "I." We are made up of many different aspects of ourselves—parts that carry hopes, fears, wounds, desires, beliefs, and strategies for navigating the world. Beneath and beyond these parts is what IFS calls Self: the calm, compassionate, curious, courageous essence that exists within every human being. For many a

June 11, 2026—Most adolescent service programs already include many of the criteria associated with positive youth development. According to youth development research, effective programs foster connectedness, communication, collaboration, constructive activities, and opportunities for success in academic and social settings. These are important foundations. Yet despite decades of investment in youth programs, schools, behavioral health services, and community initiatives, ad

It comes with the territory of being a human service provider, like a therapist or a teacher or parent or grandparent – people come to us in states of despair and hopelessness. Once you’ve listened to a few of these stories, it’s hard not to fall into those places ourselves. One of the gifts that the Internal Family Systems paradigm brings, not just to therapists and practitioners but to everyone, is a map that shows us a way through the dark places. Sal—A Story I started see

April 22, 2026— Lee-am was almost 13 years old when he started having significant behavior problems. He had always struggled in school and at home. By the time he was fifteen, he had multiple diagnoses, including ADHD, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiance disorder. The 40+ page report from the assessing psychiatrist noted many of Lee-am’s behaviors, presentation, and symptoms leading to the diagnoses. When Lee-am was 16, he was admitted to a long-term therapeutic deten