Hey friend,
The questions you submitted for this month’s Q&A revealed something I see constantly with driven and ambitious women: the exquisite irony of bringing the same perfectionism that kept you functional into the healing work meant to free you from it.
Questions about decision paralysis when you finally have precious free time—knowing you “should” rest but unable to choose between walking, workbooks, or calling a friend. About thanking your controller part for protecting you, only to watch her immediately add “practice IFS correctly” to her endless to-do list. About realizing your firefighter part doesn’t drink or shop—she deep cleans the kitchen at midnight and researches new business ideas instead. About being completely competent at work but falling apart at home over small things, discovering you might have entirely different parts systems for different areas of your life.
Your questions weren’t asking for better time management or generic self-care advice. They were asking something much more specific: How do you heal when your protective parts weaponize the healing work itself? How do you rest when your nervous system believes productivity equals safety? How do you work with firefighters that look impressive from the outside but serve the same emergency function as any other escape strategy?
These are the questions that keep driven women staring at their clean kitchens at 2 AM—because healing from relational trauma isn’t just about learning new frameworks. It’s about recognizing that the same strategies that made you successful are often the ones keeping you from actually feeling safe.
In this month’s Q&A, I address the real mechanics behind why our manager parts turn recovery into another project to ace.
Here’s part of my response to the reader whose controller part added “practice IFS correctly” to her to-do list:
“IFS managers like your controller exist to keep things orderly and safe. When you thank her and she pivots right back to mastery and control, it’s a sign of how deeply she believes her vigilance is necessary. This isn’t doing IFS wrong—it’s a beautiful window into that part’s true concerns.”
The complete Q&A goes deeper into what I call “sophisticated firefighters”—the protective responses that look productive but serve the same function as any other avoidance strategy. I also address the common experience of having entirely different parts systems for work versus home, and why decision-making around self-care can feel so paralyzing when you’re used to performing competence.
These conversations are too nuanced for surface-level self-help and too specific for generic therapy advice. They’re for women who understand that their relationship to healing work reveals exactly what needs healing—and who are ready to stop performing recovery and actually experience it.
The full 20-minute recording and complete transcript are below, including practical frameworks for working with parts that turn everything into a project, and guidance on building trust with your internal system rather than trying to manage it into submission.
