How to Stop Fawning and Transform Fawning Into Boundaries

Conflict avoidant? Codependent? A people pleaser? You could be having a trauma response and not even know it.

If you tend to avoid conflict, keep everyone happy, over-accommodate, or feel responsible for other people’s emotions, you might recognize yourself in the concept of fawning. Fawning is often described as a trauma response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. It can involve appeasing, people pleasing, conflict avoidance, becoming highly attuned to other people’s emotions, or adapting ourselves to keep someone else comfortable. From the outside, these behaviors can look like kindness, empathy, flexibility, or simply being a “nice person.” But sometimes there is something deeper underneath. A part of us may have learned that keeping other people happy is the safest way to maintain connection, avoid conflict, or feel secure.

When we understand fawning as a protective response, we can begin approaching it with more compassion. Instead of asking, “Why am I like this?” we can ask, “What happened that taught this part of me that I needed to behave this way?” This moves us away from shame and toward curiosity. These behaviors may have developed for a reason and may once have helped us navigate difficult relationships. The goal isn’t to judge the part that learned these strategies, but to understand what it has been trying to accomplish. From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective, we can become curious about the protective parts behind these patterns.

Fawning can begin as a way of staying connected

Children are dependent on the adults around them and don’t have the same choices, resources, or power that adults have. If a child grows up around unpredictability, criticism, neglect, emotional instability, abuse, or other difficult dynamics, they may become incredibly good at reading the room. They learn facial expressions, tone of voice, footsteps, moods, and subtle changes in someone’s behavior. They learn when it is safe to speak and when it is safer to stay quiet. They may learn to become helpful, agreeable, invisible, entertaining, or exceptionally sensitive to everyone else’s needs.

From an IFS perspective, these behaviors can be understood as protective parts doing jobs they learned a long time ago. A child might learn, “If I keep everyone happy, maybe I’ll be safe.” Another might learn, “If I don’t cause problems, maybe they won’t be angry.” Another might learn, “If I can figure out what everyone wants, I can prevent something bad from happening.” These strategies can become deeply ingrained. Years later, we may still use them automatically, even when the original circumstances are long gone.

What can fawning look like?

Fawning doesn’t always look like obvious people pleasing. It can show up as saying yes when you want to say no, avoiding difficult conversations, feeling responsible for other people’s feelings, constantly monitoring someone’s mood, or walking on eggshells. It can look like apologizing excessively, over-explaining your decisions, struggling to tolerate someone’s disappointment, or becoming especially agreeable around authority figures. It can also involve making yourself smaller so someone else doesn’t feel threatened, hiding your achievements, taking responsibility when something goes wrong, or anticipating what everyone else needs.

Sometimes fawning becomes more complicated because it isn’t simply about avoiding conflict. It can become an attempt to heal, rescue, change, or fix another person. We may stay engaged with someone because we believe that if we understand their trauma, communicate clearly enough, or love them deeply enough, they will eventually become different. We become preoccupied with their potential rather than their present behavior. Underneath this can be a younger part hoping that if we can finally get someone to change, something inside us will finally feel resolved.

When people pleasing becomes trying to fix someone

I work with clients who have fawning parts and codependent parts that try to heal, change, rescue, or fix other people. Many of these clients are incredibly self-aware, emotionally conscious, socially intuitive, and deeply committed to personal growth. They understand boundaries, have tools to regulate their emotions, and may have invested enormous amounts of time and energy into healing themselves. Yet they can still find themselves repeatedly drawn toward relationships where they are trying to change another person. This can feel confusing because they may think, “I’ve done so much healing, so why am I still doing this?”

Sometimes, when we look underneath the pattern, there is a younger part. It may be a child part who was hoping an abusive, unavailable, critical, or unpredictable parent would eventually change. That child may have believed that if they were good enough, loving enough, understanding enough, or helpful enough, the parent would finally become the person they needed. If that part remains stuck in the past, it can continue looking for the resolution it never received. Years later, it may find itself trying to create that resolution with an abusive or controlling partner.

When the past gets replayed in the present

This can become especially painful when a relationship involves controlling, jealous, volatile, coercive, or abusive behavior. Someone might repeatedly hurt us, we explain how their behavior affects us, they apologize, things improve temporarily, and then the same pattern happens again. We may start thinking that we need to communicate differently, understand their triggers better, provide more support, or become even more regulated ourselves. We may tell ourselves that they have trauma and simply need more patience.

This is where a healing part can become recruited into the fawning pattern. People who have invested deeply in their own healing can become incredibly skilled at understanding why someone behaves the way they do. We can see the wounded child underneath someone’s behavior and understand where their reactions came from. But understanding someone’s history does not require us to tolerate their behavior. Compassion does not mean taking responsibility for another person’s healing, and someone’s trauma does not make us responsible for changing them.

Seeing someone for who they are right now

One of the most important boundaries we can develop is learning to see someone based on their current behavior, rather than primarily through their potential. What are they actually doing? How do they respond when you say no? Do they respect boundaries? Do they take responsibility and repair harm? Do they consistently change their behavior, or do they repeatedly return to the same patterns? Their behavior is information, even when another part of us desperately wants to see something different.

For people with strong healer parts, this can be particularly challenging. A healer part may see someone’s potential so clearly that it becomes difficult to see their present reality. We may think, “I can see the wounded child underneath their behavior,” and that may be completely true. But another question matters too: “What are they choosing to do with their wounds?” Someone can have trauma and still be responsible for how they treat other people. We don’t have to deny someone’s humanity in order to have a boundary with them.

Creating an internal boundary

An internal boundary might sound like, “I accept that this person may not change.” This doesn’t mean we can predict the future. It means we stop making our safety, wellbeing, or choices dependent on someone else’s potential transformation. Their healing is their responsibility. Their growth is their responsibility. Their emotional regulation is their responsibility, and their behavior is their responsibility. Our healing is ours.

Sometimes we need to accept that we cannot get a different ending from the person who created the original wound. We may need to stop trying to resolve a childhood experience through an adult relationship. Instead, we can turn toward the younger parts still waiting for something to change. We can help them understand that they don’t have to keep trying to get the same resolution from another person. We can begin creating internal healing resolution rather than continually seeking external resolution from someone who may not be capable or willing to provide it.

Healing fawning parts through IFS

In IFS, we can approach these younger and protective parts with Self energy: curiosity, compassion, openness, warmth, awe, and admiration. We can become curious about what a part has been trying to accomplish and what it is still hoping will happen. We might ask, “What were you hoping would happen?” “What did you need from this person?” or “What are you still waiting for?” A younger part may still be waiting for an apology, recognition, safety, protection, or for a parent to finally become loving.

We can help these parts understand that they don’t have to keep waiting. They don’t have to get another person to change, prove themselves, or earn love by becoming more accommodating. We can also bring Self energy to the healing parts that have been working incredibly hard to help everyone else. Rather than shaming the fawning part, we can meet it with love and genuine admiration for how hard it has worked. The goal isn’t to get rid of the fawning part. It is to help it become less burdened and discover that it has choices now.

Developing assertiveness and boundaries

In IFS, we can also work with the parts that become activated around assertiveness. Maybe one part fears anger, another fears rejection, another believes saying no makes us selfish, and another believes we have to explain ourselves perfectly. Rather than forcing these parts to disappear, we can become curious about them and appreciate the jobs they have been doing. We can help them learn that adult assertiveness is not necessarily the same thing as danger.

Assertiveness isn’t aggression or being harsh. It is the capacity to stay connected to ourselves while remaining in relationship with another person. Sometimes a boundary is saying, “No, thank you,” “That doesn’t work for me,” or “I need some time to think about that.” Sometimes it is allowing someone else to be disappointed without rushing to fix their feelings. Sometimes it is creating physical distance, leaving a conversation, changing our availability, or simply believing what we are seeing. Over time, these experiences can help our parts learn that we can survive other people’s reactions.

Working with fawning and relationship patterns

I work with clients who have fawning parts, codependent parts, healing parts, rescuing parts, and younger parts that are still trying to resolve something from the past. Many are deeply self-aware, emotionally conscious, socially intuitive, boundary conscious, and committed to personal growth. Yet they may still find themselves pulled toward people they want to heal, change, rescue, or fix. Therapy can provide a space to understand why these patterns developed and help bring parts that are stuck in the past into the present.

I am also trained in domestic abuse, and this informs how I work with clients navigating partners and ex partners who have patterns of jealousy, volatile behavior, controlling behavior, coercive dynamics, and other patterns of abuse. When these dynamics are present, I help clients look at behavior as information, rather than a puzzle they have to solve. We can ask, “Who is this person being right now?” “What patterns are they continually showing me?” and “What boundaries can I create to put my emotional safety first?” This can help us move away from hoping for healing from someone else and toward creating internal healing resolution for ourselves.

Work with me 1:1

If you’d like to explore your fawning parts, people pleasing, codependent patterns, boundaries, relationship dynamics, or the younger parts underneath these patterns, you can fill out the form below to begin working with me 1:1. We can use IFS to approach these parts with curiosity rather than shame and understand what they have been trying to accomplish for you. We can explore the younger parts carrying old hopes, fears, and beliefs, while also working with the healer parts that have been trying very hard to make relationships work. Together, we can develop greater internal safety, assertiveness, boundaries, and relational discernment.

IFS retreats

If you’re interested in IFS retreats, we’ll be exploring fawning and people pleasing through a combination of somatic yoga and IFS. We’ll explore these patterns through both the body and our internal systems, with a focus on awareness, compassion, boundaries, assertiveness, and choice. If you’d like to join the IFS retreat waitlist, fill out the form below and write “retreat” so we know you’d like to be added. You don’t have to figure all of this out on your own. Sometimes healing begins by becoming curious about the part of you that has been working so hard to keep everyone else okay, and helping that part discover that you are allowed to be okay too.

Relational Discernment to Consciously Choose Relationships Based On Logic And Not Activation

Struggling to detach from a relationship and let go? Perhaps one part of you analyses everything. Another holds onto hope and potential. Another feels anxious, afraid of losing the connection, or terrified of being alone.

And beneath these parts, there may be a younger part still carrying the hope that this time, someone will finally become emotionally present, consistent and available.

Rather than judging these parts or forcing yourself to “just get over it,” inner child work invites you to slow down and listen.

You might ask:

What part of me is analysing?
What part of me is still hoping they will change?
What part of me is afraid to let go?
What does this part need me to understand?
Where do I notice this part in my body?

When we approach these parts with curiosity and compassion, we can begin to build a different relationship with the parts of ourselves that become activated in relationships.

Instead of continually looking to another person to resolve an old longing, we develop the capacity to meet more of that longing within ourselves.

And as these parts become less activated, there can be more space for something incredibly important:

Relational discernment.

Relational discernment is the ability to step back from the intensity of attraction, anxiety, fear, hope or attachment and assess a relationship based on what is actually happening.

Asking ourselves, is this chemistry healthy, anxious, avoidant, familiar or fantasy-driven?

Does this person have the character and capacity to build the kind of relationship I want?

Am I seeing who they actually are, or who I hope they could become?

What evidence do I have about their consistency, emotional availability and capacity for commitment?

Am I escalating trust and intimacy based on reality or potential?

Inner child work isn’t about becoming detached, cynical or less loving.

It is about strengthening your relationship with yourself so that your relational decisions can increasingly come from clarity rather than activation.

From evidence rather than fantasy. From discernment rather than fear. From seeing the whole person, not simply the potential.

My inner child healing package is designed to help you explore the parts of you that become activated in relationships and develop greater clarity around your relational patterns and choices.

Together, we explore:

Chemistry — What am I actually feeling?

Character — Who is this person consistently showing themselves to be?

Capacity — Can they actually offer the consistency, stability and effort that I need?

Compatibility — Are we aligned in values, needs and vision?

Risk — What am I overlooking because I am attached to the potential?

If you’re ready to understand why certain relationships can feel so difficult to release and want to develop greater clarity in how you choose, and build relationships send me a note with the words DISCERNMENT for more information on our IFS therapy groups for women. You can read more about our groups here.

Strengthening Social Safety For Women in Society

We talk a lot about women’s safety, but I think we need to broaden the conversation about what safety actually means. 

When we talk about violence against women, the conversation often focuses on what happens when a woman is already in danger. Of course, protection and specialist support are essential, but I also believe we need to think about what happens before a crisis, and what happens afterwards. 

What does a woman’s wider social environment look like? Does she have people around her who know her well enough to notice when something isn’t right? Does she have somewhere she can go? Does she have friendships that make her feel stronger rather than smaller? Does she trust herself enough to recognise when a relationship or situation doesn’t feel right?

Domestic abuse is still something I don’t think we talk about enough in everyday society. In England and Wales, around 3.8 million people experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2025. Behind statistics like this are women navigating experiences that can be incredibly difficult to explain to somebody who has never experienced them. Abuse isn’t always visible. It can involve coercive control, emotional manipulation, intimidation, financial control, isolation and a gradual erosion of someone’s connection, confidence and autonomy.

This is part of what makes leaving so complicated. We sometimes talk about leaving an abusive relationship as though it is simply a decision: “If you know it isn’t healthy, why don’t you leave?” There can be love alongside fear, hope alongside dysregulation, and a deep attachment alongside the knowledge that something isn’t right. 

A woman may know that she deserves something different while simultaneously feeling terrified about what life will look like without the relationship. This is why I believe social connection needs to be part of the conversation around women’s safety. Social connection can reduce isolation and give women more opportunities to seek support, gain perspective and rebuild their lives. Having people around us who know us, care about us and can gently say, “I’m not sure that sounds healthy,” can be incredibly powerful. Sometimes we don’t need somebody to give us advice. We need somebody to help us hear ourselves.

What happens when a woman is trying to rebuild her life?

A woman’s nervous system doesn’t automatically understand that she is safe simply because the relationship has ended. If she has spent a long time living with unpredictability, control, criticism or intimidation, she may continue to feel highly alert to what is happening around her.

She may find it difficult to relax around other people. She may feel uncomfortable in unfamiliar social situations. She may want to reconnect with society but feel unsure about where she belongs.

A woman might go out to a bar or nightclub and experience unwanted attention. Someone may continue after she has said no. Someone may pressure her. Someone may try to guilt her into feeling bad for having boundaries. For somebody who is already trying to rebuild a sense of safety and trust, these experiences can be deeply unsettling.

This is why I believe we need to think about socially safe spaces for women.

Imagine having somewhere you could go where you didn’t have to monitor everyone around you? Somewhere you could meet other women, talk, laugh, learn something new and simply relax. Somewhere you knew that if a boundary was crossed, the people around you would understand what was happening and support you.

That is what I mean by social safety. Places where you can go that have zero-tolerance with harassment. 

We need to strengthen women’s support networks

One of the things I find particularly important is the relationship between isolation and vulnerability.

When a woman has a strong network of friends, family, colleagues and community connections, she has more opportunities to experience different perspectives and forms of support. When that network becomes very small, one relationship can begin to occupy an enormous amount of emotional space.

This is particularly significant when that relationship is unhealthy. If someone doesn’t have many people to turn to, leaving can feel like losing the only person they have. Even if the relationship is causing harm, the thought of being alone can feel frightening. This doesn’t mean that women with strong support networks cannot experience abuse, or that women with small networks are somehow responsible for their vulnerability. 

I believe we should be investing in women’s communities before women reach crisis point

We need places where women can make friends, develop confidence, talk about difficult experiences, learn about relationships and simply experience belonging. 

But many women have complicated experiences of female friendship. For some girls, school can be one of their first experiences of social rejection. They may experience bullying, rumours, exclusion, comparison or friendship groups turning against them. 

Being ostracised can leave a lasting emotional imprint. A girl can learn that belonging is conditional and that if she is too different, too confident or simply not part of the right group, she might be rejected.

A woman who was excluded by other girls may carry a fear of being excluded into adult friendships. And sometimes women do compete with each other. Women can feel threatened by another woman’s confidence or success rather than celebrating it.

I think we can consciously create a different culture. We can create spaces where women don’t have to compete for support or belonging. We can create friendships where another woman’s success doesn’t diminish our own. We can learn to celebrate each other, support each other and be genuinely happy when another woman is doing well.

Many women are longing for this. They want friendships where they don’t have to perform. They want to be able to say, “I’m struggling,” without feeling ashamed. They want women around them who will encourage them rather than compare themselves to them. 

I believe women are stronger together, and that sisterhood can be part of how we build social and emotional resilience and reduce isolation.

We may intuitively know a relationship isn’t good for us, but struggle to let go

As an IFS practitioner for the past five years, I have worked with women who are struggling to let go of unhealthy relationships, who experience people-pleasing tendencies.

One of the things I have come to understand is that we intuitively might know a relationship isn’t good for us. A woman might know that her relationship isn’t healthy. She might recognise that her partner doesn’t respect her autonomy. She might notice a power dynamic. She might feel herself becoming more isolated in a relationship. She might have an inner voice telling her that something is wrong.

And yet she may still struggle to leave, set a boundary or trust her own judgement. And when a woman has grown up in unsupportive environments where boundaries wern’t respected and she grew up with controlling and unsupportive parents, she may struggle to set boundaries.

Often women are grown up to be people pleasers and be nice and pleasant to others and complicity but not have their own autonomy. 

For those who have experienced this, resonate with IFS therapy and how we devleop parts in response to difficult experiences in life.

There might be a people-pleasing part that wants to keep the peace. 

There might be a part that becomes emotionally invested very quickly and loses touch with their own friendships, interests and routines. 

There might be a part carrying shame from earlier experiences, and another part that constantly doubts itself.

There may even be a part that feels pressured to do something they don’t want to do and is complicit.

These parts aren’t necessarily broken. Often, they developed because they were trying to help us survive or belong.

Developing self-trust and discernment

I believe women need spaces where they can strengthen their relationship with themselves.

That means exploring self-worth, boundaries, assertiveness, emotional regulation, self-trust and relationship discernment.

We need to be able to recognise when we are abandoning ourselves to keep somebody else happy. We need to notice when guilt or shame is influencing our decisions. We need to become more honest with ourselves about another person’s capacity to respect us.

Our bodies can also give us information. Sometimes we notice tension, numbness, a feeling of wanting to leave or a sense that we are becoming smaller around someone before our conscious mind has fully understood what is happening. These sensations aren’t automatically evidence that someone is unsafe, but they can be an invitation to pause and become curious rather than immediately overriding ourselves.

For many women, learning to listen to themselves again can be a powerful part of rebuilding self-trust.

Sisterhood Space

This is the thinking behind Sisterhood Space, a women’s IFS personal growth group to listen to ourselves and built self-trust.

I want it to be a space where women can explore the parts of themselves that may be struggling with boundaries, people-pleasing, self-worth, attachment, relationships and letting go. 

We can learn from one another. We can hear another woman’s experience and realise that we aren’t the only person who has struggled with something. We can develop friendships and connections that exist outside of romantic relationships. We can experience what it feels like to be around women who are genuinely interested in supporting rather than competing with us.

The first Sisterhood Space session will focus on “The Parts That Struggle to Let Go.”

Detaching from an unhealthy relationship can be particularly difficult when there are complicated dynamics of attachment, loyalty, guilt, hope, power and control. 

There can be a part that reminds us that we are free and that it’s better to be free than in a controlling relationship. 

IFS gives us an opportunity to become curious about them. What are they afraid of? What are they trying to protect? What do they need us to understand?

Sometimes the part that struggles to let go isn’t weak. It may simply be carrying shame and low self-worth.

Join Sisterhood Space

Every Tuesday evening I will be holding Sisterhood Space for women to connect with one another, listen to each other with self-energy in pairs and receive openness, attunement and support from other women. 

If you would like more information about the IFS personal growth group for women in Newcastle, 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.

Looking forward to inviting you to the group

Vicky 🙂

The Solar Eclipse in Leo, Taking Up Space and Finding the Courage to Be Seen

This recent solar eclipse in Leo got me thinking a lot about courage, taking up space, leadership and having the courage to follow your purpose and allow yourself to be seen.

On the day of the eclipse, I actually got locked out of my house after leaving my key inside, and with my phone dying on me I suddenly panicked.

It made me think about how important it is to have people around us that we can actually lean on, particularly as women, and how much we need emotionally supportive communities where we can reach out when things feel difficult.

Then, two days later, I decided to do something I have wanted to do for a long time, which is to create an IFS therapy group for women in Newcastle where women can come together, support each other and experience the kind of emotional attunement and connection that I think so many of us are missing.

It felt very connected to the energy of Leo for me.

Meaning Of The Solar Eclipse

Leo is about courage, leadership, confidence, creativity and being willing to take up space. It is about having the courage to follow your purpose and to allow yourself to be seen, even when other people might not understand you or might feel uncomfortable with the space you are taking up.

I think this is something women can struggle with so much.

We are often taught to make ourselves smaller, to not be too confident, to not be too successful, to not be too loud, to not have too many boundaries and to not make other people uncomfortable.

And sometimes when you start standing in your power, you realise that other people’s jealousy, insecurity or discomfort can become something that you start carrying as if it is your responsibility.

But it isn’t.

You don’t have to feel guilty because someone else is uncomfortable with your success. You don’t have to make yourself smaller because someone else is insecure. You don’t have to apologise for having boundaries.

And you don’t have to continue giving men access to you simply because you feel guilty about saying no, particularly when someone isn’t offering you the emotional safety, respect, consistency or reciprocity that you need.

There is something incredibly courageous about being able to say, actually, this doesn’t work for me anymore, and trusting yourself enough to walk away.

I think we need more women who are willing to do this, and we also need more women who are willing to support each other when we do.

Because too often women compete with each other, and we can say that we support women until another woman starts doing better than us, becomes more confident, becomes more visible or starts taking up space in a way that makes us uncomfortable.

I don’t think this does anything to help women.

It keeps us divided, and I think that division can perpetuate some of the very systems that have historically kept women smaller and more disconnected from each other.

When women are excluded it can leave us feeling isolated and alone, and when we don’t have a strong social network around us, we can become more vulnerable to unhealthy relationships because we don’t have other people to lean on, talk things through with or help us see what is happening from the outside.

This is why I think we need a revolution in how women support women. We need to strengthen our communities so women have other women to lean on, and so that we have relationships where there is emotional attunement, encouragement, connection and genuine support.

I think our society is missing socially safe spaces for women to listen to each other and hold space for each other, where women can share their burdens and not feel that they have to be the strong one all the time.

The Cost Of Being An Empathic Woman

Because being an empathic woman can actually be difficult.

When you are someone who naturally gives a lot of empathy, listens to other people, notices their emotions, encourages them and holds space for them, it can feel incredibly lonely when you need that same empathy and attunement and don’t receive it back.

You can become so used to being the person who understands everyone else that you don’t always realise how much you need somewhere to be understood too.

And this is why I feel so strongly that women need spaces where they can come together and experience this kind of support from each other.

I think there is something incredibly healing about women being able to sit together, listen to each other, encourage each other and experience the feeling of being held in community rather than having to carry everything alone.

Leaning on Courage

As a Leo myself, I feel like I am leaning into this channel of strength and courage and allowing it to encourage me to step into a new timeline where I create the kind of community I want to see.

A community where women can feel safe.

A community where women can go to an event without worrying about harassment.

A community where women can lean on each other.

A community where we can celebrate each other’s success rather than feeling threatened by it.

And a community where we can begin to heal the sisterhood wound.

IFS Therapy Group In Newcastle, UK

This is why, two days after finding myself locked out of my house and feeling the vulnerability of not having someone nearby to lean on, I decided to create something I had wanted to create for a long time: an IFS therapy group for women in Newcastle.

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.

Where women can come together and feel supported, listened to and understood.

Where we can learn from each other and remind each other of our own strength.

Where we can receive the empathy and attunement that we so often give to everyone else.

And where we can begin to create the kind of sisterhood that so many of us have needed.

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

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

If this resonates and you’d liked to go deeper and develop more self-trust and relational discernment, I have limited spaces available for some clients and you can book a session here.

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