Why Understanding Internal Family Systems is Crucial For Women Healing Attachment Styles After Divorce

Five Takeaways from the Podcast Script

1. IFS reveals hidden parts of the selfthat influence your dating choices, methods of self-protection, and emotional reactions. If you find yourself asking “Why do I keep attracting the same type of person?” you’re experiencing what happens when different parts of your psyche are making unconscious decisions about relationships. Healing attachment style after divorce begins with recognizing that your mind contains protective aspects—what we call “parts”—that developed specific strategies to keep you safe based on past experiences. When you consistently choose emotionally unavailable partners or find yourself people-pleasing in relationships, these aren’t character flaws but evidence of parts working behind the scenes to protect you from perceived threats—and parts work for women healing allows you to make conscious relationship choices rather than unconsciously repeating patterns that no longer serve you.
2. Attachment wounds from childhoodcan freeze parts of the brain in time, keeping women stuck in unhealthy relationship patterns. When you experienced early attachment disruption—whether through emotional neglect, inconsistent caregiving, or family chaos—specific parts of your nervous system became frozen at that developmental stage, which explains why you might feel like a terrified child when your partner seems distant, even though your rational mind knows they’re just stressed at work. Attachment wounds divorce recovery must address this neurobiological reality: divorce trauma literally changes brain structure, keeping parts of you stuck in survival mode from decades ago, with these younger parts not understanding that you now have adult resources, financial independence, and the ability to leave unhealthy situations. The hopeful news is that when working on healing attachment style after divorce,  your brain’s neuroplasticity means these patterns can change—when you work compassionately with these frozen parts through IFS therapy after divorce, you help them understand that past dangers are over, allowing them to relax their protective stance and trust your adult self to navigate relationships wisely.
3. IFS explains coping behaviors like overworking, people-pleasing, or addictive habits as protective strategies. Your coping behaviors aren’t failings—they’re evidence of how your mind adapted to difficult circumstances, and when you struggle with overcoming people pleasing, you’re working with a part that learned at an early age that keeping others happy meant staying safe yourself. This same part may have protected you from an angry parent or prevented abandonment by suppressing your own needs throughout your marriage. Your workaholism or need to control situations represents manager parts trying to create safety through achievement or predictability. When these strategies can’t manage overwhelming your emotional pain, “firefighter” parts take over with more extreme methods: binge drinking, compulsive behaviors, or other immediate pain-relief strategies. Understanding this internal system through parts reduces the shame and self-criticism that often keep you stuck, creating the compassionate foundation necessary for lasting change and emotional regulation after divorce, which is key to healing attachment style after divorce.
4. Healing requires compassion and self-awareness, allowing women to create emotional roadmaps and respond differently to triggers. Emotional regulation after divorce develops when you learn to create “emotional roadmaps”—conscious awareness of your internal patterns that allows you to interrupt automatic reactions and recognize early warning signs. So, when healing your attachment style after divorce, you’ll learn how isolation triggers your people-pleasing part, leading to overcommitment and resentment, or how criticism activates a part that wants to shut down or lash out defensively. The key is developing genuine relationships with these parts rather than trying to eliminate them—you might thank your people-pleasing part for trying to keep you safe while explaining that you now have adult skills for handling conflict. When these parts feel heard and understood rather than judged, they become willing to step back and let your adult self lead, transforming trigger responses from days-long rumination cycles into manageable moments that can be processed and released through your secure attachment style journey.
5. Secure attachment is possible after divorce through IFS, combining parts work with community, somatics, and self-compassion. Your secure attachment style journey involves learning to remain connected to yourself and others even during conflict or stress. You’ll learn to acknowledge these feelings while maintaining perspective and connection. Healing attachment style after divorce requires integrating multiple approaches: parts work to understand your internal system, somatic practices to address trauma held in your body, and supportive relationships to practice new ways of connecting, as this healing happens most effectively in community rather than isolation. When you treat all parts of yourself with compassion through IFS therapy after divorce, you create the emotional safety necessary for secure attachment in future relationships, no longer abandoning yourself when partners trigger your insecurities nor abandoning them when protective parts want to create distance.

Highlights

• 00:00 “Exploring Internal Family Systems”
• 06:00 Healing Addictions with IFS Therapy
• 09:28 “Discovering Self Parts in Therapy”
• 10:31 Deeper Healing Through Self-Awareness
• 14:04 “Healing Through Community Support”
• 17:04 Healing Through Conversation and Awareness
• 21:11 “Unpacking People-Pleasing Identity”
• 24:05 Embracing the 8C Self-Concept
• 26:05 Aspiring for Secure Attachment
• 28:46 Healing Through Motherhood

Full Transcript

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:00]:
Welcome back.

Tiffini [00:00:01]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:02]:
We’re going to talk about internal family systems, which is parts work. Right. And I’d love for this to be like a more round table conversation, like anyone hop in anytime about. Because we’ve all done work with our parts and we’ve all had really vulnerable, I don’t know, things we’ve discovered about our minds and things we’ve worked through as a team, things we work through in our personal lives. Right. And I think, just to preface this, so much of what I hear women talk about as they’re wanting to recover from divorce is being able to trust themselves again and not repeat the same mistakes when they’re dating or picking another partner. And I think one of the most powerful things you can do, the most powerful things you could do to get clear on your patterns and why you’re making certain choices and how you’re reacting or responding to certain things is through internal family systems. Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:01:00]:

This is a theory that was developed, I think, in the 80s.

Tiffini [00:01:03]:
Yes.

Dawn Wiggins [00:01:04]:
That sound about right.

Tiffini [00:01:05]:
Yes.

Dawn Wiggins [00:01:05]:
By a pretty well known, widely accepted psychologist. And I heard Huberman from Huberman Lab. I posted this in one in our chat for our ladies this week. Huberman had an IFS therapist on his podcast recently. So, like, IFS theory is it’s gaining popularity. Yeah. And so that’s to say. Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:01:24]:
It’s become pretty widely accepted and it does have a lot of specialty trainings in the world of therapy and coaching and whatnot. And coach Tiffany loves ifs, and so we’re going to let her kick this one off.

Tiffini [00:01:37]:
Yeah. I’m on fire about it. I think it was developed by a therapist that started listening to his clients in session, start describing these different parts of themselves and the voices that they were hearing in their head.

Dawn Wiggins [00:01:49]:
Not like.

Tiffini [00:01:50]:
Not a schizophrenic way, right?

Dawn Wiggins [00:01:52]:
No, but like, on the one hand, I want to have the ice cream sandwich, and on the other hand, I won’t let myself have the ice cream sandwich. Right. Like, as simply as that.

Tiffini [00:01:58]:
Yeah, absolutely. And so he started to identify that people have certain parts of themselves. And so the whole preface behind IFS internal family systems is you can kind of compare it to the movie Inside Out. So there’s all of these little sides of you personalities, emotions that are presenting. And then when those big heavy emotions start to present, your managers start to come on scene because they’re not comfortable with you feeling those heavy emotions. And so this is where we develop all of these beautiful things, like being a perfectionist, being a people pleaser, being able to just Kind of shut down, like all of those things.

Dawn Wiggins [00:02:34]:
Like be stoic.

Tiffini [00:02:35]:
Yeah, yeah. And so what I’m starting to learn about it is that when something happens in our childhood that creates a wound, and it’s basically described as any time that an adult in our life does not take responsibility for their behavior. So there was an action that happened as a child, the adult did not take responsibility. And so we then took that responsibility on as children and internalized it. It created a part, created an emotion associated with that part of us that couldn’t be processed.

Dawn Wiggins [00:03:08]:
Like the kid. Because trauma, right. A lay definition, like one way of thinking of trauma is when there was too much of something for too long or not enough of something for too long, right. So when there’s too much of something or not enough and the kid can’t me, I couldn’t process right. Then that content, that painful experience becomes a burden that I dissociate, right. I put it in a box on a shelf where it lives, it gets stuck.

Tiffini [00:03:35]:
So it’s like these little parts of ourselves along the way that have gotten stuck in certain times in the past, in our lives. And so what we start finding is that, and you’ve heard me describe this on the podcast, is that, you know, my dating style was I always felt like I was dating, you know, the same situation. It was just different people. Like I could literally lay out, like.

Dawn Wiggins [00:03:57]:
The pattern was the same.

Joy [00:03:58]:
Oh my God.

Tiffini [00:03:59]:
Like it was the same thing.

Dawn Wiggins [00:04:00]:
But like, insert different.

Tiffini [00:04:01]:
Yeah, insert different person. And so one of my biggest fears after divorce was how do I prevent this from happening to me again? Why do I keep picking men that are the same type of guy that I keep having these triggering reactions to that, that trigger me in a way that is just so severe that it’s obviously like something is happening. And so when I started figuring out my own parts work, what I started figuring out was that there were these parts of me that were still like in this very childlike mindset that didn’t understand that I am now a 40 some year old woman with a stable life and things are normal and I’m safe. And so these, these parts of me don’t have to protect me anymore because.

Dawn Wiggins [00:04:43]:
That’S what happens physiologically with trauma. We can, we know now from doing brain scans actually that when we scan the brain of someone who’s experienced trauma, it actually changes the structure of the brain. We can see dissociation on a brain scan. And so what trauma does is it freezes those parts in time so they’re not oriented to time. Right. Like, our parts still think it’s 1989.

Tiffini [00:05:11]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:05:11]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:05:12]:
I just laugh because I wish I would have done brain scanning before. I probably would have lit up like a Christmas tree, you know, but honestly, like, so taking it through the journey, then I started going a step further. And, you know, it’s like you have these roles that kind of start to take over for you, but then when that doesn’t work, then you have the firefighters start to take over. And that’s when pain got triggered. Yeah. Like, when it was too much. And so, you know, pick your poison.

Tiffini [00:05:38]:
Are you binging Netflix? Are you doom scrolling on Instagram? Are you disassociating? Are you drinking? Are you dealing with it in sexually addicting ways? Like, what are you doing to deal with the pain?

Dawn Wiggins [00:05:50]:
Because the firefighter’s job is to put the pain down at all costs.

Tiffini [00:05:53]:
Yeah, absolutely. Because nothing else in the system is working.

Dawn Wiggins [00:05:55]:
Right. So the most extreme version of a firefighter is like, suicidal thoughts. Yeah.

Tiffini [00:06:00]:
Yeah. And then, you know what I started to learn, too, is that’s how people develop addictions to alcohol, eating disorders. Because at that point, your firefighters take over as the manager, and that’s just how you live. Because they think that you have to drink to be able to keep functional and safe, prevent the emotion. So now the alcoholic part is just going to completely take over. And so ifs work is very interesting because you walk through your clients, you know, you walk them through these core memories that are stuck in the system, and the goal of it is to be able to heal those parts of you. And it worked beautifully for me because I was able to see the little girl at the stage that I was where the memory was still stuck and bring her into my life now and start repairing that. So that way my system can say, every time you’re in a situation where XYZ is going on, it does not mean that XYZ is going to be the outcome.

Dawn Wiggins [00:06:53]:
Right.

Tiffini [00:06:53]:
You know, and it has. I remember when I was going through, getting my coaching certifications, neurobiology. Oh, my God, I’m a huge nerd. Like, all I wanted to do was study the brain, and I found it fascinating that, you know, that’s how trauma. It gets ingrained in these roadways in your brain. And the fact that you could actually reprogram your roads and you could reprogram that, you know, the way that your brain responds to trauma. Oh, my God. Like, I wish I would have had it 10, 15 years ago.

Dawn Wiggins [00:07:19]:
Yeah, that neuroplasticity piece. Yeah.

Joy [00:07:21]:
One of the reasons I love ISS so much is because it gives you the vocabulary to understand your body and what’s happening and those parts, when they get activated versus when you’re.

Dawn Wiggins [00:07:33]:
You know what I mean?

Joy [00:07:33]:
Like, the vocabulary is so important because it gives you permission to understand your bottom sl More.

Dawn Wiggins [00:07:37]:
Right. How often do we say, like, I’m not crazy, I’m sensing this, I’m feeling this, or whatever’s happening, right? Yeah. But we don’t maybe have awareness because we haven’t attended to it, that there are these facets of what we’re experiencing and a progression. Right. Of triggering, like, and that different. It’s so interesting to build relationships in the mind’s eye.

Joy [00:07:59]:
Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:07:59]:
With these parts of self.

Joy [00:08:00]:
Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:00]:
Because it gives you so much more capacity. I almost said control, but I take it back.

Joy [00:08:05]:
Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:05]:
Capacity to. To support a part.

Tiffini [00:08:09]:
Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:09]:
That feels out of control.

Joy [00:08:10]:
Compassion for yourself, a little girl.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:13]:
That was.

Joy [00:08:14]:
Right. Absolutely.

Tiffini [00:08:16]:
And I think it was interesting when Candace asked earlier, you know, how do you come back to yourself like that? I mean, a huge part of it is ifs work. It’s huge. It basically starts to repair the parts of you because again, if these parts aren’t being repaired, you’re going to keep reaching for the same things, the same partners, the same friendships.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:35]:
That said, though, I did so much at the time, we weren’t calling it ifs, we were calling it inner child work. Because there’s a lot of overlap between ifs and inner child. Right. I had done boatloads of inner child work until homeopathy. It was very hard for me to unblend parts. Right. And I think that there’s a piece about somatics in there. There’s a piece about, you know, and.

Joy [00:09:01]:
And to your point, I had done a lot of homeopathy before I did ifs.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:05]:
So like you, it was easier for you to drop into that process.

Joy [00:09:08]:
Yeah, I was able to drop in. I was able to process and understand because that was clear of the fog.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:14]:
Right.

Joy [00:09:16]:
When you pair them together or multiple different values, you get a more pure version of yourself. Both, you know, both ways. It’s a very interesting combo between the two.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:28]:
And I think it’s important to point out because I, you know, have been a therapist my entire adult life, and I had done all these therapies, and so to have done all this inner child work. Parts work, you know, when I did my most advanced EMDR training is when I first learned about parts. And I was, like, sitting in the training and they were talking about parts of Self. And I was like. And there’s this, there’s this exercise that they do with coming to a meeting place, A table, A meeting table. And I was like, holy crap, they’re talking about me. I have parts. And you can do EMDR with one part at a time, which helps create integration.

Dawn Wiggins [00:10:04]:
Because the goal, Right. Is for these parts to like, work as a team. Because all parts are necessary, all parts are important. Parts were developed as a strategy to cope with what is not able to be coped with. Right. But even with all the EMDR and all the parts work, I still struggled with certain things. And add homeopathy and boom. Which is a lot of the inspiration for why we do our program the way we do.

Tiffini [00:10:27]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that’s. That is the reason.

Dawn Wiggins [00:10:31]:
Right.

Tiffini [00:10:31]:
Like we can go deeper when we have all the things. So it’s ifs with homeopathy, with somatics, with quantum healing, like all of that is going to transcend the experience. But for me, the ifsps, it was just mind blowing. And, you know, I think that it does take a while for clients to get to the point where they have the self awareness to start making these roadmaps. But it’s interesting because, you know, basically it’s like, hey, every time I feel this overwhelming sense of isolation, then I start to people, please, because I don’t want to be alone. And then if the people pleaser can’t take over, well, then I’m just going to sit around and drink because that’s what you know. And so you can start to see that when you start feeling.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:08]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:11:08]:
The emotion, the same thing starts to happen. And I think as women, like, we don’t slow down enough to pay attention to our patterns.

Joy [00:11:16]:
Yes, fair. Absolutely don’t. But also, I do believe that we’re conditioned to do so.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:21]:
Yeah.

Joy [00:11:22]:
Especially, you know, especially in the church. I grew up in a very, very conservative Baptist church and I.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:29]:
You’re.

Joy [00:11:30]:
You’re basically taught to be a wife that keeps her head down, her mouth shut and her legs open. Like that is your role on this planet. And I think that we are. Our culture keeps women small. And so we are designed to suppress. We’re not designed to suppress, but we are.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:47]:
No, we’re conditioned to suppress. Well said. Well, and then the expectation for women to work nine to five jobs when our hormonal cycles. Right, don’t. Absolutely. Right. We are so suppressed as women.

Tiffini [00:11:58]:
Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s where a lot of these things get stuck in the system, you know, because Again. And it started manifesting in my physical body, you know, with health issues and problems that I started having. And especially, you know, I’ll be honest, as a single parent, when the hell did I have the time?

Joy [00:12:13]:
Right?

Dawn Wiggins [00:12:13]:
Right?

Tiffini [00:12:13]:
You know, when did I have the time? Like, yeah, there were nights when I would, you know, cry in my bedroom every once in a while. But for the most part, I’m like, for what? Like, it’s not helping, you know? So I just suck it up and I just continue pushing forward.

Dawn Wiggins [00:12:24]:
I think that what you just said is so important. Like, how many women are scrolling TikTok or Instagram and they’re learning about mental health, but then when it comes to sitting in your room at night, you’re exhausted, you know, you maybe have two jobs and single momming it, and you got to fix the toilet yourself, too. And you could cry and you may write some things in your journal, but it’s like, but that’s not enough. And then you feel so stuck, so helpless, hopeless. Right. And despairing. Like they keep saying. Freaking dawn on the Dear Divorce Diary keeps saying, this could be the catalyst for my greatest life.

Dawn Wiggins [00:13:01]:
But it’s like, no, it’s. This is complicated.

Tiffini [00:13:06]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:13:06]:
Yeah, it is.

Tiffini [00:13:08]:
And I think for me, like, post divorce, I was so afraid of feeling my feelings that I just kept going and going and going. I was the ass girl.

Dawn Wiggins [00:13:16]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:13:16]:
Like, I wanted my entire day to be full. And I don’t know how many women out there, I’m sure, feel this way because I’ve talked to them as a single mom. When your kids go to their dad’s for the weekend, there is this anxiety. Like, oh, my God. Holy. How am I going to fill my time? It made me so anxious to just sit about thinking, now. I love it. Like, now I’m like, Like, pride.

Tiffini [00:13:37]:
Evening at home. Give me a book. Like, I’m very comfortable with myself.

Joy [00:13:40]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:13:40]:
But I think when women talk about the loneliness of divorce again. We just talked about this last week in one of our emails. You’re just lonely for yourself. Like, I miss.

Dawn Wiggins [00:13:50]:
So disconnected. Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffini [00:13:53]:
And when it was quiet, the stuff that used to go through my mind was horrible. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I didn’t want to feel it. I wanted to push it away. I wanted to drink it away. I wanted to. Whatever it was, you know, that’s.

Dawn Wiggins [00:14:04]:
That’s why having a team to heal in is so valuable. Right? Because we’re not supposed to feel all that pain in isolation. We’re supposed to feel it in Community. Yeah. Who was I saying this to recently? Was it. Oh, you remember when y’all covered me so I could go to Savannah with my husband for the weekend? I was sitting in the Airbnb. I’m taking it to the crazy place now. But I was sitting in the Airbnb, and I was looking at the little sign that was like, our WI FI password is whatever.

Dawn Wiggins [00:14:28]:
Right. And I was like, they have us so separated by they. Right. I don’t know who I’m talking about, but, like. Right. Every little apartment has its own WI Fi. Like, we’re so separated, and then we all have to pay for WI Fi and we all have to play for Netflix, and we all have to pay the grocery bill and the water bill and the electric bill. And then when we get divorced, then who do we have? We’re so separated.

Dawn Wiggins [00:14:50]:
And that’s part of why it is so hard for women truly, to recover their lives, because we are so isolated in our communities. Our communities aren’t communing anymore in really vulnerable ways. Right. And then we have our internal family system, and our internal family system isn’t communing either. Right. One part is arguing with how another part is strategizing this pain, and it’s just so overwhelming. And then our nervous systems freeze.

Tiffini [00:15:17]:
Yeah. I mean, most of us live in neighborhoods where, to be honest, you can literally reach outside of your window and touch the house next door. Because you don’t know those people.

Joy [00:15:25]:
Right.

Tiffini [00:15:25]:
You don’t know anything about those people. I mean, I didn’t meet any of my neighbors until the hurricane happened this year. And all we all had were chainsaws. No cell phone and nothing. No911 services. We were stuck. Yes, we are.

Dawn Wiggins [00:15:36]:
Because we threw something together. Yeah.

Tiffini [00:15:38]:
And I know now that if there was ever a zombie apocalypse, my neighbors and I would have it together.

Dawn Wiggins [00:15:42]:
We’re coming to your house safe with them. Yeah.

Tiffini [00:15:44]:
But again, there is. There’s this disconnect, and I don’t know where.

Dawn Wiggins [00:15:48]:
Dissociation. Dissociation. Well, yeah.

Tiffini [00:15:51]:
I don’t know where this happened in society, but we are taught now as women, honey, you got to be a hustler. You got to grind. You got to pull your big girl pants.

Dawn Wiggins [00:15:58]:
And that’s not how we were designed.

Tiffini [00:15:59]:
And it goes against everything that we are.

Dawn Wiggins [00:16:02]:
Yeah. Designed to do. Yeah. Let’s talk through. Let’s give some examples. Right. Let’s talk about, like, when I called you the other day. So I called you, and I’m, like, in this obviously, like, manager state.

Dawn Wiggins [00:16:15]:
Or would you have Said firefighter. No, you’re manager, manager state. I had probably dipped in and out of firefighter, though, because earlier in the week I had been isolating. Right. Which is more of a firefighter state.

Tiffini [00:16:26]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:16:26]:
So this was sort of me coming out of firefighter vibes. And you called out that there that I had been triggered around belonging. And so as soon as it started to dawn on me in our conversation that that’s what was happening, I sat for a moment and then I waited for a memory to pop in. Because that’s how ifs works. Right. And so I had this memory pop in from high school where I had had this very traumatic experience where these kids had made a bunch of signs and hung signs all over the school about me and my girlfriends. It was mortifying.

Joy [00:17:04]:
Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:17:04]:
It was horrible bullying. And then I sat with that for a couple of days and I work with that memory and I worked with that part of me and. But that came as a result of us having this conversation and you having the awareness that I was in that triggered state. So that’s the power of ifs, Right. Where it’s like when we’re feeling uncomfortable in our bodies but can’t put our finger on it and can’t get it to clear and don’t know why. Right. So as a result of having that conversation with you that day, I was able to integrate parts and clear some things rather than just happen to be like, I’m tired of feeling like this. Let me take a clonapin or push past it or numb it out or run away from it and just hoping it’ll clear eventually.

Dawn Wiggins [00:17:44]:
And not having actually done that integration work. So now the next time something comes up around belonging, it’ll be less triggering.

Tiffini [00:17:51]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:17:51]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:17:53]:
And that’s the thing is, like, every time you work through a memory on ifs, it’s like you’re starting from a new point.

Joy [00:17:58]:

Right.

Tiffini [00:17:59]:
You’re not starting from rock bottom. You know, the trigger is not going to feel as severe as next time you’re going to be able to. You know, before I used to ruminate on my thoughts for days. Like, I would be triggered, severely triggered, and it would take me two to three days to move back out of it. Whereas now it’s maybe 10 minutes, it’s maybe an hour. It just depends. But it’s so much easier this time because I have the self awareness to know this is what’s happening. Like, there’s literally a roadmap to my triggers.

Dawn Wiggins [00:18:26]:
So I think that’s a really good thing to point out. To women about, like, do you qualify? Right. Who is ifs for? Do you qualify for this type of approach? And I think that’s a really good sign. Right. Like, if you have a lot of, like, reoccurring thoughts that are intrusive and repetitive, that’s a really strong sign that you’ve got some manager firefighter vibes going.

Tiffini [00:18:50]:
On and women stuck in a loop. Yeah, I’m constantly in a loop.

Dawn Wiggins [00:18:53]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:18:53]:

I think. And that’s what I hear a lot from our clients.

Dawn Wiggins [00:18:56]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:18:57]:
Like, basically, you know, every single time I was in the same setting, I would get severely triggered.

Joy [00:19:04]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:19:04]:
It didn’t matter how much I felt good going into it, how much I’d tried to prepare myself for it. Every time I got into a social setting with alcohol, I just went hyper vigilant. I was watching everyone’s behavior. I was anticipating the worst things to happen. I was this and that. And I would just. It would end up the same thing every time. I was disassociating.

Tiffini [00:19:24]:
And I’m, like, a very social person. I’m, like, super energetic. I’m, like, very whatever. I would be the one in the corner, and I would just be scared to death.

Dawn Wiggins [00:19:31]:
Not yourself.

Tiffini [00:19:32]:
No. Oh, my God.

Dawn Wiggins [00:19:32]:
Not yourself.

Tiffini [00:19:33]:
No.

Dawn Wiggins [00:19:33]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:19:34]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:19:35]:
In a trauma practice, we see lots of people who say, well, I can’t remember my childhood that well. So, you know, I would say, like, homeopathy loosens that up so much. Right. So that you can sort of follow the body sensation when we clearly have parts activated, but we can’t remember where it comes from. Can we just work with the body sensation? Would that be enough?

Tiffini [00:20:00]:
Yeah, I think that the body remembers. The body remembers the feeling and the first time that it felt that way.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:07]:
And so you just trust that sensation and go with it. Yes.

Tiffini [00:20:10]:
And start describing. And so I work the clients through the senses. You know, what does it smell like? What does it feel like? What were you dressed in? What? You know, and a lot of times I’ll have clients, they will talk about the room, they will talk about things people are wearing, and even as kids, like, they have these glimpses.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:26]:
Glimpses.

Tiffini [00:20:27]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:27]:
But so often people say to me, I don’t know if I could trust this memory. Maybe it was a dream. And I have found, I think 10 out of 10 times, it wasn’t a dream. Memory is not reliable. We know that. Right. Memory is malleable. It’s what’s so beautiful about tools like IFS and EMDR is we can literally go and intentionally change how we remember a thing.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:45]:
To our advantage.

Tiffini [00:20:46]:Yes, we can.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:47]:
Yeah. So memory is not reliable, but 10 out of 10 times when there’s a body sensation and a trigger that’s not just a random dream you had, like something happened. Yeah.

Tiffini [00:20:58]:Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:59]:
Are there any examples that either, like you’ve done some cool ifs stuff also like any, any aha moments or anything you want to share about, like, oh, these are, these are the parts that I’m in touch with or what I’ve noticed about myself.

Joy [00:21:11]:
I’m. I’m the quintessential people pleaser and I used to wear it as a badge of honor. Like, I’m a two on the Enneagram. I’m here to serve and like all identities that I had as a people pleaser. But when you. When I really started unpacking that with Tiffany’s help, it was. It was more of a way to control or cope with a situation. And when someone was upset at me or, or had even had a, like a baseline, very reasonable conversation and I would get activated because I felt like a bad girl.

Dawn Wiggins [00:21:43]:
Like, I felt like my identity was.

Joy [00:21:45]:
Just like in question or.

Dawn Wiggins [00:21:48]:
Well, because I think from a parts perspective, that is the identity. Right. When we’re clicked into that, it is an identity. Right. And that part doesn’t want to give up any ground unless it sees a benefit.

Joy [00:21:59]:
So being able to identify, being able to feel it coming like, and being able to manage it now that I. With the tools that I have in the semantics and the process and then the. It’s just such a game changer for my self acceptance and me being able to live my authentic self versus this, you know.

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:19]:
Yeah. Because I think it’s important to point out. Right. Just because a part has some traits.

Joy [00:22:23]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:24]:
Like, you know, caretaking is. Can be on the manager list. Right. Because we can often shift into caretaker mode as a way to avoid feeling big emotions. But that doesn’t mean that caretaking is all bad.

Joy [00:22:37]:
Right?

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:38]:
Right. And so you as a people pleaser, as a servant, you’re somebody, you’re a Sagittarius. Like your nature is going to be to want to serve your community.

Joy [00:22:44]:
Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:45]:
And so I think it’s an important distinction to make that.

Joy [00:22:48]:
But being able to examine like, why.

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:50]:
Am I right when and why am.

Joy [00:22:53]:
I wanting their approval or because I’m. It’s a pure intention. Like I do I want to look better, you know, I mean, do I want to have this facade of having my stuff together or da da da da da. Or is it because I truly believe God has laid it on my heart to go serve him. A pure intention versus try to avoid pain.

Dawn Wiggins [00:23:11]:
Yes.

Tiffini [00:23:12]:
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:23:12]:
Like a psychological Tylenol. I have a great example of when I was with a client just recently who did this beautiful parts working session and then like really a first time breakthrough drop in, like massive shifting. Right. And then at the very end of the session they very quickly shifted into are you okay? How are you? I worry about you when you’re back to back in session like that. What can I. I’m going to give you some minutes back at the Right. And so we wrapped up the session and I just sent a sweet text message that was like that caretaker part really like attempted to tuck all those painful emotions back in the box at the end of the session there, didn’t it? And that’s an example of that. Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:23:50]:
Caretaking is a beautiful thing, but it’s like understanding when you’re doing it to distance from your emotions versus processing.

Tiffini [00:23:56]:
Yeah, yeah. And we talk a lot about sense of self. Like women, you know, they have a hard time, especially coming out of divorce, that they don’t trust themselves.

Dawn Wiggins [00:24:03]:
Oh, right, that.

Tiffini [00:24:05]:
So like there are these words that we use. The 8C is to describe self. And a lot of it is like, are you coming from a place of calm? Do you feel connected to yourself? Do you feel confident? Because women can say, yes, yes, yes, I do. And that’s when you know that you’re acting in a manager like state. I mean for me, like my hyper vigilant and need to control every single setting around me. Like I knew that was my manager and when I was in that mode, I couldn’t be creative, I couldn’t be calm or connected to myself because I was so damn busy looking at what everybody else was doing around me. So fixing these parts of yourself and reintegrating, that’s the way that then when you get signals from other people, you know, whether this is going to be a good fit or not for you the next time. You don’t keep picking those same types of men, those friends that trash you and talk about you behind your back.

Tiffini [00:24:52]:
You know, like dawn was mentioning that earlier, for such a long time in my life, I didn’t have female friendships. Like I had acquaintances. And yes, I, I had a couple besties out there, but people only knew what I wanted them to know about me.

Dawn Wiggins [00:25:06]:
Like I.

Tiffini [00:25:07]:
There was no vulnerability and without vulnerability, I can’t have true connection.

Dawn Wiggins [00:25:12]:
And then you feel lonely. Yes.

Tiffini [00:25:13]:
And so in the program, the more vulnerable we can be with each other, you know, and we Set the example, ladies. When you’re in our program, you get a behind the scenes look.

Dawn Wiggins [00:25:22]:Oh, yeah. At our lives, at all of our.

Tiffini [00:25:24]:
Stuff, because it’s like we’re not sitting on the other side of this saying, oh, we’re perfect. Nothing ever. No, no.

Dawn Wiggins [00:25:29]:
Because life, life, life. There’s always contrast in life.

Tiffini [00:25:33]:
The difference is when we are triggered in situations or when things happen. Like dawn, she reached out to me and said, hey, I need coached into this situation, you know, or whatever.

Dawn Wiggins [00:25:40]:
And, yeah, got coached.

Tiffini [00:25:44]:
Like, we just were able to come out of it. And this is the beautiful thing that I’m seeing with the women in our program, is that they’re halfway through it and they’re reaching for the tools, and then they’re coming back to us and saying, hey, this happened today. But I came out of it so quickly. And so that’s the beauty of it. For me, the goal of this program is emotional regulation, because life is never going to be able to be controlled well.

Dawn Wiggins [00:26:05]:
And a secure attachment style is my goal for that. But in the secure attachment style requires being able to take care of those parts of self so that I can remain in relationship with myself and then remain in relationship with you. Even then we’re having hard conversations or I feel triggered or I feel threatened. Right. I can work through those parts and I can stay in there and I can keep my heart open, even in conflict or even when we don’t agree. And that’s a secure attachment. Right. And that’s what all these tools all mushed together facilitate.

Dawn Wiggins [00:26:36]:
Right. Is emotional regulation a true secure attachment style? The capacity from a nervous system perspective to tolerate painful emotions? Yeah. Oh. One thing that I just think probably is a common example. I’m wondering if either of you relate to this. I know before emdr, even right before I was EMDR trained or anything like that, workaholic was my main firefighter. Right. I perceived, like always that the money monster was chasing me.

Dawn Wiggins [00:27:05]:
Right. And I just work, work, work, work, work was how I maintain a sense of well being. Yeah, not really. And then when I didn’t have to work, I would not be able to relax. So, like, let’s say it’s Sunday and I don’t really have to work, but I couldn’t feel at ease at all. Right. I couldn’t shift out, or let’s say it was nighttime and I was going to put Grace down to bed and I couldn’t feel at ease putting her down. I wonder how many moms relate to that.

Dawn Wiggins [00:27:41]:
And it’s because I was Stuck in a part. Right. There wasn’t integration because the goal is for all of our parts to work together. Like, God forbid something happens in life, you need that workaholic part to call on it for some reason. But you want to be able to have this fluidity amongst parts. Right. And so I can look back on those seasons now and see, like, man, the reason I couldn’t shift and be present in those moments was because I was stuck in a. Either a manager part or a firefighter part.

Dawn Wiggins [00:28:11]:
And so I think to the woman who struggles to be present, there’s parts activated. Right. And for the woman who struggles to be able to shift into connection or relaxation or peace, it’s because there’s probably some pretty significant parts activation. But there’s a solution. There’s a path out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tiffini [00:28:31]:
It took me a long time to figure out how to be present as a mom, you know, and I know a lot of other moms struggle with it.

Dawn Wiggins [00:28:36]:
Yeah.

Tiffini [00:28:37]:
You know, because it’s such. You’re a box checker and things need done and bills need paid.

Dawn Wiggins [00:28:41]:
Oh, I think when you gotta pay the bills and parent your kids and. Yeah, yeah.

Tiffini [00:28:45]:
Like, it’s a lot.

Dawn Wiggins [00:28:45]:
Survival mode.

Tiffini [00:28:46]:
So, you know, in those moments when I could really be present with her, you know, and tap into myself, like, that’s really what drove me to want to be able to heal, is because I knew that the time was fleeting, you know, now here we are, and my daughter’s an adult. And so it’s like, I look back and I don’t have any regrets about it because I know that, you know, if I was having a really shitty day and I came home and all she wanted to do was sit on the floor with me and play with her Barbies or play with her little Shopkins or whatever, like, she healed me too, in ways that I didn’t realize, you know, like. And I think a lot of women are able to or do heal themselves through their children on behalf of. Yes, absolutely.