IFS + Grieving Outgrown Communities

Hello IFS Friends!

I have a part named the Farmer whose job is to research workshops, trainings, and other learning spaces to help me evolve.

Between 2002–2017, I invested over $125,000 in Internal Family Systems, coaching, and other somatic and psychology trainings, so this part was BUSY!

Self-transformation has stages.

After fifteen years of intensive study and practice of many, many different modalities—2,350 hours of IFS training and workshops, hundreds of hours of coaching training, authentic movement, and more—I finally moved beyond the stage where learning more was my primary way of growing and started deepening into the deliberate practice of methods that fit me best: IFS and authentic movement.

Others certainly inform my approach, but these two remain my ongoing practices.

To grow is to outgrow.

You can’t graduate from one stage without leaving it behind.

Learning means grieving.

As someone who can milk a training for all it’s worth—I took 2 Level 1, 5 Level 2, and 13 Level 3 IFS trainings—believe me when I say I don’t give up on squeezing the value out of a training.

But at some point, I can’t keep repeating something. I have to go deeper, or learn something new. I finally outgrew every training the IFS Institute had to offer.

I still take online courses in special topics occasionally, but that’s a radically different experience from an in-person, week-long IFS immersion.

Even though my last IFS training in person was in 2017, I still have parts who grieve.

Who miss going to Kripalu or Esalen, or taking a Level 3.

The Farmer has been hit hard by this grief lately.

Farmer: I know I’m not “retired” and that my research skills are being repurposed.

For instance, now I’m getting better at learning public transit to get us around without a car. It’s just hard to believe that inner work actually works so much you can outgrow even the most amazing learning environments that once felt like the Garden of Eden!

I used to feel like every training was the tree of knowledge and I could eat all the apples…But it is like graduating from elementary school.

Eventually, the information is too elementary, and there’s no one for me to practice with because I work too quickly.

I was once paired up with a stranger at Kripalu who cried after we traded sessions because she felt that “Melissa didn’t need any help.” Well…that was true. I can’t hide my capacity to work with myself to make someone else feel useful. After that, I opted out of being paired up when it was time to practice and just practiced with myself.

The room where the IFS workshop is held at Kripalu is three stories high; it was once a chapel. I feel like the doors are now barred to me by Seraphim and Cherubim.

I’ve been exiled from that Garden of Eden, and I guess I’m feeling it now because this is right around the time of the yearly Kripalu IFS workshop.

So I’m sad and grieving. I know it’s a normal part of growth. Like you said, to grow is to outgrow.

I have to take off my old shoes that are pinching and start wearing the new ones.

Goodbye, Kripalu!

As I grow, I outgrow.

One of the reasons I offer such extremely small IFS groups for just 3 or 5 people is so that people who are committed to doing IFS work in safe, resonant spaces have the perfect, intimate place to do it.

My groups are for folks who may be relatively new to IFS, but who have already done a fair amount of inner work in other modalities.

They’re also for intermediate to advanced IFS folks who are interested in the practice of IFS and are sincerely committed to their own self-transformation.

Having done over 8,000 hours of IFS on myself, I have explored—and continue to explore—the frontier of what is possible with parts work.

It’s my mission to bring the power of IFS to those who are truly excited to bring IFS alive in their lives.

If this is you, I invite you to schedule a free conversation to see if my groups are the right fit.

And if you’ve been thinking about getting some IFS support, and you’ve already joined a group in the past, reach out to join an upcoming one!

With delight to be on the IFS journey with you,
Melissa