Parts Work Therapy, Online
Offered virtually in California, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Texas and Illinois.
Is parts work the same as IFS?
Almost — and the difference is worth knowing before you choose a therapist. IFS, or Internal Family Systems, is the best-known school of parts work and probably the reason you've heard the term. What I practice at Soul Works Healing is somatic parts-work: my certificate, through The Embody Lab, draws from both IFS and Somatic Experiencing. Same core map of the mind, with the body brought fully into the room.
That matters because parts rarely show up as thoughts first. The pleaser lives in your shoulders and your rising voice. The manager is your jaw. The one who went quiet is a heaviness behind your sternum that arrives before you've noticed anything at all. The body is where parts announce themselves — and often where they finally let go.
And to be plain about credentials, because you deserve that from any therapist you're vetting: I'm not an IFS-certified therapist, and I won't wear the label sideways. If certified IFS is specifically what you want, the IFS Institute keeps a directory. If what you want is parts work that includes your body, that's what I do.
What a parts work session actually looks like
We don't hunt for parts; they come to the session on their own. You'll be telling me about your week and your voice will change on one sentence — that's a part arriving. We slow down, find where it lives in your body, and get curious: how old does it feel, what's its job, what is it afraid would happen if it rested?
Then comes the quiet, central move of this work: you discover you are not the part. You're the one who can listen to it. That small separation — feeling the anger instead of being the anger — is where choice comes back.
Some clients meet a part by drawing it before they can describe it. That's expressive arts and parts-work shaking hands, and it's available whenever words run out. And doing this over video, from your own space, helps more than people expect — parts tend to show up more honestly at home than in a stranger's office.
Part of you knows exactly what you want. Another part won't allow it. A third part is tired of refereeing. And underneath all of them, you've quietly stopped trusting your own signal — because your signals don't agree.
Parts work therapy starts from a simple, relieving premise: a mind with parts isn't broken. It's built that way. I'm Logan Brantley, a licensed clinical social worker, and somatic parts-work is one of the core modalities at Soul Works Healing — online, over secure video, in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
If you've ever started a sentence with "part of me wants to," you already speak the language. This page is about learning the rest of it.
What is parts work therapy?
Parts work therapy treats the mind as a system of parts — the inner critic, the pleaser, the achiever, the one who went quiet to survive — rather than a single self with symptoms. Instead of fighting these parts, we get curious about them: what job each one took on, when it took it, and what it's still protecting you from.
Most parts formed early, under real pressure, and they've been doing their jobs faithfully ever since — long after the emergency ended. The critic that kept you achieving. The pleaser that kept the peace. The numb one that got you through.
No part of you is the enemy. Every part has a reason, and most have been working overtime since you were small.
What changes when parts work works
Parts don't get evicted. They get new jobs. The critic that ran on fear relaxes into discernment. The pleaser's radar becomes genuine attunement — offered by choice, not reflex. The achiever keeps its drive and loses its whip.
This is the part of the work that runs past symptom relief: when your protectors trust you to lead, you stop outsourcing decisions to a committee in crisis mode. You can hear your own signal again, because the parts shouting over it feel heard. That's the rebuilding after the healing — identity, agency, connection — and it's the point.
My somatic parts-work certificate comes through The Embody Lab, Levels 1 and 2 — a training that braids IFS's map of the mind with Somatic Experiencing's map of the body. It sits inside a practice built to receive it: Brainspotting for what the parts have been guarding, expressive arts for the parts that predate words, and the interpersonal neurobiology lens I teach to graduate clinicians at Bastyr University.
About my training in parts work
Questions people ask about parts work
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No. Parts are the ordinary architecture of a healthy mind — everyone who has ever felt torn about anything has them. Parts work isn't a diagnosis; it's a way of listening. Having parts is not a disorder, and noticing yours is a sign of health, not a symptom.
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Most people do at first, and you never have to talk to anything out loud. Noticing "something in me tightens when I say that" is already parts work. The silliness tends to fade the first time a part answers.
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No. Parts work starts wherever you are today — the parts in the room right now are the doorway, and they know the way back better than a timeline does. You may never need to narrate the story at all.
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I see clients over secure video in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Sessions are $160, $200, or $250 on my equitable three-tier model — you choose what's sustainable. Superbills provided; I partner with Thrizer. The first 20-minute consultation is free.