Transform your emotions by working with the parts of you that are trying to protect you.
Evidence-based transformative therapy for couples and individuals.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy offers a compassionate way to look inward and understand the different layers of your experience. If you often find yourself caught in intense emotional triggers, repeating the same frustrating patterns in your relationships, or carrying a persistent sense of inner tension, IFS provides a way to make sense of those feelings without judgment. This approach isn’t about the therapist having insight or an opinion, nor is it about you judging yourself; it enables self-discovery and self-healing.
We don’t achieve this by pushing parts of yourself away or trying to “fix” what feels broken or re-triggering you. Instead, we become curious about your internal world, helping you understand the “why” behind your reactions so you can regain a sense of clarity, control and more peace.
IFS is an evidence-based therapeutic approach. At its heart, it is based on the powerful idea that none of us are just one single “personality.” Instead, we are all made up of different “parts”. You might already recognise these voices in your daily life: the part of you that overthinks every decision, the one that reacts quickly when hurt, or the parts that feel heavy with overwhelm. You might even hear a voice that is constantly critical or demanding, while another part of you simply longs for calm and connection.
Rather than viewing these as problems to be solved, IFS recognises them as meaningful responses shaped by your unique life experiences. In our sessions, we slow everything down to meet these parts with care. As we understand them better, they often find they no longer have to work quite so hard to protect you, allowing your natural resilience to surface, along with greater calmness.
Many of the people I work with are incredibly thoughtful, capable, and high-functioning in their professional lives, yet they still find themselves reacting in ways that don’t align with who they want to be. They might notice emotional reactions that feel disproportionate to the situation at hand, or find themselves stuck in relationship patterns that seem to repeat no matter how much insight they have. IFS helps bridge that gap between “knowing” what you want to change and actually feeling that change happen from the inside out.
Many forms of therapy focus on managing thoughts, changing behaviours, or developing coping strategies. IFS takes a different approach.
Instead of trying to override or control parts of you, we become interested in them. Even the parts that feel disruptive or difficult are understood as having a protective role. By understanding parts and their historical role, your internal self becomes more fluid and able to align with your current concept of who you want to be.
In our sessions, the focus isn’t on analysing you from your intellect or memory. Instead, it is a collaborative, experiential journey where we slowly and safely begin to connect with your internal world. Rather than just talking about your life, we work directly with your experience in the moment.
This shift—from fixing to understanding—often leads to deeper and more lasting change.
Together, we identify the parts of you that feel most active—perhaps a voice that is constantly worrying or one that feels deeply overwhelmed, or one that is highly reactive. Then we explore with a sense of curiosity, gently asking what these parts are trying to protect and why they feel they must carry such a heavy burden or behave in certain ways. By doing this, we create the necessary space for a calmer, more grounded perspective to emerge from within you.
There is never any pressure to move faster than you are ready for; the work always unfolds at your own pace, held by a deep commitment to your safety and emotional clarity.
Internal Family Systems is a particularly compassionate way to navigate the complexities of our inner world.
It is particularly effective for:
If you are someone who carries a loud inner critic, struggles with perfectionism, or feels the weight of past experiences and trauma, IFS provides a path toward understanding. Rather than focusing only on managing your symptoms, we work at the deeper level where these patterns first showed up and helped you adapt to a life situation. This allows healing to happen more naturally.
The result being you no longer feel you have to spend so much energy constantly controlling or managing yourself.
As this understanding of your internal world deepens, the shifts you feel often begin to ripple through your entire life. Over time, many people notice a growing sense of emotional steadiness and a newfound ability to stay calm, even when things feel difficult.
You may find yourself becoming less reactive in your relationships, allowing for a deeper sense of connection and ease with others. Decision-making often becomes clearer, and you might notice a softer, more compassionate way of relating to yourself. Change stops feeling like an uphill battle of willpower and begins to feel like a natural unfolding of who you truly are.
We begin with establishing a mindful state, usually with eyes closed, then we get in touch with what feels most present or pressing for you.
From there, we gently explore what is happening internally, helping you to:
There is no pressure to disclose more than feels comfortable. The process is fully guided, but never forced. The therapist asks a series of questions in response to your internal experience. Clients report a spectrum of experience after the session ranging from the immediate feeling of deep relaxation and calmness that can come from being in a mindful state, to feeling a little bit tired from concentrating. It’s rare for a client to feel emotionally exhausted from an IFS session. Usually clients feel gratified to have learned about and understood themselves more.
IFS may be for you if you’re looking for a therapy that goes beyond coping strategies and you are looking for deeper understanding and more spontaneous change.
It is ideal if:
Although it sounds corny it can give you more emotional freedom.
Tonia is a registered psychotherapist with qualifications in psychotherapy and counselling, and clinical training in IFS (along with many other modalities).
Tonia is passionate about personal growth and finding greater clarity and freedom in our internal lives.
Compassionate and empathic, Tonia’s approaches are informed by understanding how people function in complex, real-world contexts. Find out more about Tonia, her qualifications and the approaches she uses here.
IFS Therapy
The protocol for an IFS Session is 90 minutes. IFS can also be conducted in a standard 50-60 minute session. Ideally the first one (or first few) are 90 minutes – then therapy can continue successfully in the standard 50-60 minute session time.
IFS is well suited to telehealth, if a quiet, private space can be found from which to be online.
Individual 50-60 minute sessions are $170 and 75-90 minute sessions are $250.
A reduced price can be offered for bulk session purchase. I also offer health fund rebate matching if I am not registered with your health fund.
The therapist can still assist you to do parts work, however a mindful state is more helpful for being confident in the answers your system provides. The therapist can give you some exercises to do in advance of the session to help you feel more comfortable and increase the likelihood of success.
Start with the website for Internal Family Systems Institute and watching the videos located at
https://ifs-institute.com/
If you’d like to experience a little of what IFS is like from the comfort of your own home, you can listen to the audiobook ‘Greater than the sum of our parts: Discovering your true Self through Internal Family Systems Therapy’, by Richard C. Schwartz, PhD. The book has some guided meditations which simulate a little of the therapeutic experience.
Originally developed in the early 1980’s’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a research-supported approach with a growing evidence base, including randomised controlled trials and increasing use in trauma-informed psychotherapy. IFS was validated in 2015 when listed in the US National Registry for Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP)
IFS has been studied in depression, PTSD, anxiety and chronic illness populations. It is widely recognised for its depth, safety, and effectiveness in working with complex emotional patterns. While other therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) have a greater volume of studies, IFS has more depth-oriented outcomes, which are harder to measure but clinically meaningful.
Read more about the evidence base at
https://psychology.org.au/for-members/publications/inpsych/2022/winter-2022/internal-family-systems-therapy
Yes, the use of parts language in IFS the intuitive framework is empowering.
It also produces change that feels deep and lasting, not just symptom-focused strategies.
Therapists offer IFS because its non-pathologising and it is intuitive and empowering for clients. Equipped with parts language, clients can also continue to do self-work long after the sessions are over. Therapists find it integrates well with attachment theory, neuroscience and other trauma treatments such as EMDR. And, because underlying trauma is at the heart of many disruptive emotional patterns and disproportionate emotional responses, offering an ability to integrate trauma treatment and heal causes of original wounds and patterns is essential to achieve lasting change – particularly for couples.
You could choose a therapist that offers both. IFS is often selected by clients who want to understand and change the underlying emotional patterns driving their reactions, rather than primarily learning strategies to manage them. Instead of challenging thoughts, IFS helps you relate differently to the parts of you that feel anxious, critical, or overwhelmed, so those reactions naturally shift. Many people experience this as a deeper, more lasting form of change, particularly for relationships and older patterns. Most also find it less tiring in the longer term, requiring less vigilance.
With a Medicare Mental Health Treatment Plan patients typically experience out-of-pocket cost of approximately $80–$150 depending on the practitioner. When the number of sessions in the Mental Health Plan have been exhausted (usually 10), the client will incur the full cost of treatment which is often $220-$300+.
Private IFS Therapy is not Medicare funded and so the full session fee of $170 applies.
Some health funds offer counselling rebates under Extras Cover. Check with Tonia if she is registered with your health fund.
I use IFS in two ways with couples:
Schedule a consultation and take the first step toward internal peace.
