Online IFS & EMDR Therapy in California for Adults Healing the Lasting Impact of Childhood Emotional Wounds
You hold it together. You keep going. But underneath the competence, something feels off
Have you spent years trying to understand yourself and make things better, but you're still feeling stuck? It doesn't mean change isn't possible. It may mean that insight alone hasn't quite reached the deeper causes that continue to shape your relationships, emotions, and sense of identity.
Many of my clients are highly capable adults who have achieved professional success but long for authentic connection in their relationships. Using IFS and EMDR, I work at a deeper level than traditional talk therapy to help create change that truly lasts.
Have you noticed
Relationships leave you feeling guilty, resentful, or longing for more.
You're the one everyone leans on, but no one asks how you're doing.
You look accomplished on the outside but feel discouraged inside.
You've read self-help books, tried different strategies, spent time in therapy, but something still isn't shifting.
You’re still longing for connection with a partner that feels consistent and safe.
Our work together begins this journey. You don't have to do the next step alone -
Let’s heal what is holding you back!
Why IFS and EMDR Work When Other Approaches Haven't
Traditional talk therapy works at the level of the mind to help you understand your patterns, reframe your thinking, and build better coping skills. That's useful. But for many people, it's a temporary fix and just not enough. The same patterns keep returning because they're held not just in your thoughts, but in your nervous system and in the parts of you that formed long before you had words for any of it. These parts are connected to with self-compassion, an essential ingredient for their healing.
Internal Family Systems · Level 3 TrainedIFS Therapy
IFS helps you understand and heal the protective parts of yourself that developed in response to difficult family dynamics: the part that people-pleases, the part that over-functions, or the part that shuts down when relationships start to feel too close. These parts has good intentions and are trying to protect you. As they begin to feel safer and less burdened by old roles, they can relax extreme strategies, allowing more confidence, clarity, and connection to your authentic Self.
Eye Movement Desensitization & ReprocessingEMDR Therapy
EMDR helps heal painful experiences that often remain stuck beyond conscious awareness. Childhood emotional neglect, emotionally immature or narcissistic parenting, anxiety, and relational trauma don't just live in your memories. They impact your nervous system and result in automatic reactions today. EMDR helps reprocess these experiences so they no longer drive your responses in the present. As healing occurs, outdated beliefs about yourself, others, and the world can shift, making room for more grounded perspectives that reflect your current reality.
Extended Format · Deeper, FasterIFS & EMDR Intensives
For clients ready to go deep and move faster than weekly sessions allow, intensives offer concentrated, immersive work designed to address long-standing wounds in a concentrated format. Particularly well-suited for those at a crossroads, navigating a major life transition, or returning to healing work after time away.
California Licensed IFS & EMDR Therapy for Adults Healing Childhood Wounds and Relational Trauma
Why My Clients Like IFS and EMDR Therapy
I'm Michelle Ascher-Weinberg, a California licensed therapist specializing in IFS and EMDR for adults healing from childhood emotional wounds and ongoing painful relationship patterns.
Many of my clients grew up in families where their emotional needs weren't fully met, or where they learned to adapt to caregivers who were unavailable, inconsistent, overwhelmed, or unable to provide the support they needed. They learned survival strategies early such as performing well, to caretaking, or to remaining unseen in order to feel safe. These strategies were adaptive and necessary because they helped to navigate inconsistent or unsafe relationships with caretakers.
Unfortunately these survival strategies now come at a cost. And what protected you in the past starts to run your life, interferes in your relationships and erodes who you know you are down deep.
Using IFS and EMDR, we work together to understand and actually heal the emotional wounds that are at the root instead of staying at the surface of issues. The clients I help throughout California leave therapy showing up much more authentically. As a result, they report feeling less emotionally exhausted, more grounded, and more at ease in their closest relationships.
Whether you’re carrying the weight of childhood trauma, or simply tired of pretending you’re fine, we’ll work together toward lasting change. This is an investment in yourself that will result in the rich rewards that come with commitment to finally healing.
Let’s start to dissolve the emotional blocks that have remained stuck in traditional talk-therapy, and start building the future you want!
What We Can Work On Together
Heal Attachment Wounds and Relational Patterns
When closeness didn't feel safe growing up, you develop ways of protecting yourself, such as withdrawing, over-explaining, anticipating rejection, or exhausting yourself by working hard so you can demonstrate your worth. Therapy helps you understand the practicality of these strategies that were essential in the past, and what a genuinely different way of relating might feel like.
Support Adult Children of Emotionally Immature or Narcissistic Parents
Many clients come in not yet knowing there's a name for what they experienced. What they do know is that something in their closest relationships has always felt harder than it should and they're ready to understand why. If guilt, chronic self-doubt, or difficulty trusting others feels familiar, this work can help.
Soften Overfunctioning, People-Pleasing, and Perfectionism
Overfunctioning and people-pleasing aren't character flaws. They're adaptations, usually developed in families where your needs came last. They may have helped you to achieve success in school or at work. But they've likely also cost you energy, authentically connecting, and knowing what you really want in life.
Learn more about how IFS and EMDR support deeper healing
You Don’t Have To Keep Carrying This Alone
If you’re feeling emotionally exhausted from painful family dynamics but you’re ‘soldiering on’ because that is what you’ve always done, therapy can help you find strategies to feel better in all aspects of your life.
I offer online IFS and EMDR therapy to adults throughout California.