Detach From A Relationship and Develop Relational Discernment With IFS Therapy
I often work with women in my private practice who are struggling with anxiety and finding it incredibly difficult to let go of a relationship that isn’t healthy, reciprocal, or compatible.
Often, there is an abandonment wound underneath this. They may have grown up without having their emotional needs consistently met, particularly if a parent wasn’t comfortable talking about emotions, providing emotional reassurance, or offering consistent emotional attunement. As adults, we can unconsciously recreate what feels familiar. We may find ourselves drawn to partners who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, unreliable, or simply unable to offer the supportive relationship we want.
Sometimes the person is emotionally or logistically out of reach, but we become attached to their potential. We aren’t necessarily attached to the relationship as it exists in reality; we’re attached to the possibility of what it could become if the person changed, became more available, or finally gave us the security we’ve been longing for.
When You Don’t Feel Supported In The Relationship
I also work with women who become emotionally dysregulated within their relationships because they are doing so much of the emotional labour.
They are trying to fix things, encourage their partner to seek therapy, communicate better, create emotional safety, manage conflict, and hold the relationship together.
Meanwhile, their own nervous system is constantly in a state of stress because they don’t feel emotionally supported or secure within the relationship.
They may stay because of shame, guilt, fear of being alone, or a sense of over-loyalty. Or they may become so focused on their partner’s needs that their own needs gradually become secondary.
How IFS Helps Us Understand What’s Keeping Us Attached
This is where IFS, or Internal Family Systems, can be incredibly helpful.
IFS allows us to get curious about the different parts of us that become activated within relationships. Often there are parts that are in conflict with each other and IFS helps to reduce this inner conflict and create a grounded sense of self.
There might be a part that ruminates on someone’s potential, a part that is terrified of being alone, a part that becomes overly loyal very quickly, or a part that escalates intimacy before there has been enough time to observe compatibility.
There may be a hopeful part that sees the relationship through rose-coloured glasses.
There may also be a part that looks past someone’s lack of emotional availability, dismissive tone of voice and passive aggressive behaviour.
Beneath this, there may be a younger abandoned or rejected part carrying the hope that this time, someone will finally become emotionally present, consistent, and available in the way they weren’t in childhood.
These parts aren’t weak or irrational. They often developed for very understandable reasons. They are carrying fear, longing and unmet needs.
Rather than judging these parts or trying to force yourself to “just get over it,” IFS allows us to slow down and understand them. Relationships are complex and we need to give ourselves time to hold space for the different emotions that are coming up.
We can ask:
“What part of me is struggling to let go?”
“What part of me is focused on their potential?”
“What part of me feels rejected?”
“What part of me is overlooking someone’s emotional unavailability?”
And importantly:
“What does this part need from me?”
IFS helps us to redirect the focus back to ourselves and connect to the parts that are carrying unresolved hurt from the past, and bring them back to the present moment, so that our adult self can make relational decisions based on logic and not emotion alone.
When we can connect to our parts with self-energy we give them space to feel acknowledged and resolved by us, so that we’re not seeking them to be resolved by others.
Others who don’t have the capacity to meet us right now.
Others who aren’t vibrating on our frequency of confidence, radiance and power.
When we connect with ourselves, we connect to our inner power and we can pour that energy back to ourselves instead of people who are extracting our time and energy who can’t give us the life or relationship we want.
Creating Space Between Feeling and Choosing
As we build a relationship with these past, these parts become less activated and we can create more space for relational discernment from our adult self.
One of the 8C’s of Self in IFS is clarity and as we come back home to ourselves and heal our parts, we can have more clarity to have relational discernment.
This is where we develop discernment about someone’s capacity, chemistry and compatibility and assess whether someone aligns with our values, meets our emotional needs and makes our life easier, not harder.
What Is Relational Discernment?
Relational discernment is the ability to step back from the intensity of attraction, anxiety, fear, hope, or attachment and assess the relationship based on reality.
It means asking:
Is this person truly compatible with me?
Is this chemistry healthy, anxious, avoidant, familiar, or fantasy-driven?
Does this person actually have the character and capacity to build a stable life with me?
Does this person put in effort into the relationship and plan dates and align with the lifestyle I want?
Am I seeing this person clearly, or am I interpreting everything through attraction, hope, fear, pressure, or old patterns?
What factors in my life are adding complexity and impacting my relational judgements?
There are also factors, circumstances and stressors in our life that erode our relational discernment.
For example, perhaps you have children and you don’t want to your children to get hurt, so you are hoping an abusive partner can be “civil” but their pattern of abusive behaviour continues and you are lacking boundaries?
Perhaps you learned a pattern from childhood of hoping an abusive partner would change, so you struggle to detach from the potential and hope for change.
Maybe you want to have children and a family and you have time pressure that’s adding stress and pressure, so you’re struggling to let go out of fear of being alone.
Naming these factors in therapy, helps you to validate the complex emotions that are arising, giving you the space to strengthen self-trust.
Vetting
I believe choosing a partner shouldn’t be based on emotion alone. You can have incredible chemistry with someone who isn’t compatible with you.
You can love someone who doesn’t have the capacity to give you the relationship you need and you can be honest about who someone is today instead of being hopeful that they can change.
Relational discernment means allowing reality to reveal itself over time and calibrating your level of trust, access, investment, and commitment to the evidence in front of you.
We look at things like chemistry, character, capacity, compatibility, effort, relationship readiness, relationship competence and risk.
Vetting is about slowing down and making sound judgements once you know your needs, boundaries, lifestyle goals, dealbreakers and values in a relationship.
It’s about getting to know yourself and slowing down enough to actually observe.
Look at the Pattern, Not Just the Potential
We can ask:
What is actually happening here?
What does this behaviour reveal?
Is this a moment, a signal, a pattern, or a deeper issue?
Is this something to communicate about, observe, slow down around, repair, or take seriously as a deal breaker?
And perhaps most importantly:
What level of access has this person actually earned?
Because effort reveals investment.
Consistency reveals reliability.
Stress reveals character.
Conflict reveals repair capacity.
Time reveals pattern stability.
And patterns reveal far more than promises.
Let Your Adult Self Lead
IFS can help you bring your energy back to yourself, become the observer of your own internal world, and allow your adult Self to lead.
Instead of an activated part of you steering the relationship, you can begin to make relational decisions from a place of power, self-knowledge and strength.
You can notice what your body feels when you feel chemistry with someone and know what attraction means to you.
You can take it slow and observe behaviours and patterns.
You can slow down and spend time getting to know someone before escalating intimacy.
You can assess compatibility with chemistry, capacity, relationship competency and lifestyle goals before increasing your time, energy, emotional investment, and access to someone.
You can reflect on whether someone helps make your life easier or harder.
You can allow reality to reveal itself before becoming deeply attached to potential.
You can focus on what a person is bringing now, not in the future.
That is the shift from attachment-driven decision-making to relational discernment.
Book a Session
Join an IFS therapy Group for Women
If you are struggling to detach from a relationship and want support from supportive women who can listen and hold space, this group is for you.
In the first week, we will be exploring the parts of us that struggle to let go of relationships and detach.
The part that holds onto hope and potential.
The analytical part that keeps analysing everything.
The part that is scared to be alone.
The part that wants to let go.
Rather than judging these parts or trying to get rid of them, we can meet them with curiosity, openness and compassion and begin to understand what they are trying to do for us.
Together, we will meet these parts through meditation and create space for Self energy, while also experiencing what it feels like to have other women listen to and hold compassionate space for the different parts of us.
I have been working with the IFS model for five years and I am fully trained in IFS therapy, and I am passionate about helping people get to the root of the issue, cultivate self-worth and develop greater relational discernment.
I have already had 29 women show interest in the group, and I am really looking forward to welcoming the women who feel called to be part of it.
If you would like more information about the IFS therapy group for women in Newcastle, fill in the form below and I will get back to you with the information.
If you don’t hear back from the form, please send me a WhatsApp message (on the bottom right corner of the screen) with the words “sisterhood space” with your name, number and email address so I can send more information about signing up and invite you into the Whatsapp group.
Vicky x