Offering Online IFS and EMDR Therapy across California
Online IFS & EMDR Therapy in California for Adults Feeling Stuck, Disconnected, or Drained
You hold it together. You keep going. But underneath the competence, something feels off
Many of my clients are highly capable adults who have achieved outward 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.
You've likely spent years trying to understand yourself and make things better. If you're still feeling stuck, it doesn't mean change isn't possible. It may simply mean that insight alone hasn't reached the deeper patterns that continue to shape your relationships, emotions, and sense of self.
Relationships leave you alternating between guilt, resentment, and longing.
You're the one everyone leans on, but no one asks how you're doing and really means it.
You look accomplished on the outside but feel discouraged on the inside.
You've read self-help books, tried those strategies, and maybe even spent years in therapy, but something still isn't shifting.
You long for connection that finally feels safe. My work with you begins this journey.
You've already done hard things. You don't have to do it 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.
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, the part that shuts down when things feel too close. These parts aren't problems to eliminate. They're trying to protect you. The practice of IFS helps these default coping strategies feel safe enough to rest, so you can finally show up as more fully yourself.
Eye Movement Desensitization & ReprocessingEMDR Therapy
EMDR reaches what talk therapy often can't: the body-based roots of painful experiences. Childhood emotional neglect, emotionally immature or narcissistic parenting, anxiety, and relational trauma don't just live in your memory. They live in how your nervous system responds today. EMDR helps reprocess those experiences at the root, so they stop running your reactions in the present.
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 Choose IFS and EMDR Therapy With Me
I'm Michelle Ascher-Weinberg, a California licensed therapist specializing in IFS and EMDR for adults healing from childhood emotional wounds and painful relationship patterns
Many of my clients grew up in families where their emotional needs weren't fully met. They learned early to perform, to caretake, or to remain unseen in order to feel safe. These strategies were truly adaptive because they helped to navigate unstable relationships with the adults in life.
But these survival strategies now come at a cost. And at some point, what protected you starts to run your life, interferes in your relationships and erodes your sense of who you are at your core.
Using IFS and EMDR, we work together to understand and heal the emotional wounds that are at the root of painful patterns, not just manage them at the surface. My clients across California leave therapy being more authentic. They report feeling less burdened, more grounded, and genuinely 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 to create lasting change.
Let’s start to dissolve those blocks that have kept you stuck in traditional talk-therapy, and start building the future you want!
What We Can Work On Together
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.
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.
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 live and feel better in all aspects of your life.
I offer online IFS and EMDR therapy to adults throughout California.