I grew up outside a small town in Texas and because of the circumstances and the way my young tender parts perceived things, I developed parts to my personality to help me cope. For example, I had a part that sought approval and to please others. Another part felt responsible for things that had nothing to do with me. I had a part that believed doing my best, working hard, and being good would get me love and affection. I had a part that used food to comfort me. I had a part that was extroverted and loved performing. I had another part that escaped into novels. In therapy in adulthood, I was able to get more mentally healthy and this helped a lot. Eventually, I became a psychotherapist because I wanted to help others the ways my therapists had helped me. Even after years of therapy, I still had painful memories and triggers that I would work hard to modulate. As a therapist, I studied and practiced psychodynamic, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) before discovering the IFS model. With IFS, I was able to do my own healing at home and quickly reached and healed many of the wounded parts that needed comfort, compassion, understanding, release, and restoration. (One of the things I like most about IFS, it that you can accelerate your time in therapy by learning to work with your own parts at home.) Once I became knowledgeable enough and trained, I started working with my clients using the model and have come to embrace the IFS model as the framework for my practice.