IFS or EMDR for Complex Trauma: Why I Use Both — and What Else Is Needed

Tried IFS or EMDR for complex trauma and felt like you failed? You didn’t fail—the approach did.

I know this because I have been where you are. As someone who recovered from childhood abuse and systemic trauma, I experienced counselling approaches that did not work. Some were helpful in pieces. Others left me more confused and dysregulated than when I started. The particular exhaustion of doing everything right, following the guidance of trained professionals, and still not healing — I know what that feels like.

I also know what changed when I finally found approaches that actually met what I was carrying.

As a trauma-focused counsellor and coach, I see why some approaches fall short for complex trauma and why others succeed where years of therapy could not. This article honestly explains IFS or EMDR for complex trauma, highlights their limitations, and describes what a genuinely responsive approach looks like.

A note on who this article is for

Complex trauma is often connected to relational trauma in enduring conditions — abusive environments in different shades of grey. Not all relational trauma results in complex trauma. If you have experienced a specific relational wound without the enduring, chronic dimension — a single toxic relationship, a discrete betrayal — the general article on IFS or EMDR for trauma may resonate more.

Complex trauma exists on a scale from very mild to very intense. I have worked with clients with workplace abuse or domestic violence whose symptoms looked exactly like complex trauma — and others with similar histories whose experience sat closer to relational trauma. The label matters less than what you are actually carrying and what your nervous system needs.

Adults with childhood trauma are more likely to have some degree of complex trauma because the enduring conditions happened during the developmental years of their lives. Children simply cannot manage these complex dynamics while staying healthy and sane. That is not a reflection of weakness or inadequacy. It is a developmental reality. The nervous system was still forming when it was asked to carry what no nervous system should have to carry alone.

If you are unsure whether complex trauma describes your experience, that uncertainty is itself worth bringing into a conversation. You don’t need to know the label before you reach out.

If you are new to both approaches and want a broader overview first, I have written a companion article: IFS or EMDR for Trauma Recovery.

What makes complex trauma different

To understand why IFS or EMDR for complex trauma need a different approach, we need to understand the nature of complex trauma.

Complex trauma is distinct from single-incident trauma. In single-incident trauma, such as a car accident, medical crisis, or isolated assault, the event has a clear beginning and end. The nervous system is overwhelmed by something specific that then stops.

Complex trauma is different. It was ongoing. Often relational — happening within the relationships you depended on for survival. Often developmental — shaping your nervous system, your attachment patterns, your sense of self, your capacity for relationship, before you had the resources to process what was happening.

Adults with childhood trauma generally have different needs in their recovery than people with single-incident trauma. Relational trauma — an assault, a betrayal, bullying — has a different flavour than complex trauma. Its impact, while real and significant, is often less intense because the person had enough internal resources, healthy outside connections, or support to reduce its impact in the moment.

Complex trauma is different. It usually has no clear beginning or ending, often occurs during childhood, and may impact our attachment style, being woven into the nervous system and the sense of self. It stems from continuous woundings in violent environments we can’t escape — and from the absence of the resources that would have made those woundings survivable without lasting damage.

These distinctions matter for recovery. If a model applies the same framework regardless of history and doesn’t specifically ask what happened, it will miss something essential for people needing the most responsive approach.

These distinctions matter for recovery. A model that doesn’t ask what happened — that applies the same framework regardless of history — will miss something essential for the people who deserve the most careful, most attuned, most specifically responsive approach.

This is why IFS or EMDR for complex trauma require a fundamentally different application than either modality was originally designed for.

IFS or EMDR for complex trauma: Where IFS falls short

Before naming the limitations of IFS, I want to share my relationship with the approach candidly.

I came to parts work through my own recovery from childhood trauma — not through IFS. Over two and a half years of training in systemic constellation, parts work, and somatic practices, these practices were a constant thread. My systemic coaching training was grounded in parts work and the observer role. My professional background is influenced by Charles Whitfield’s work and Gestalt therapy. When I trained in IFS — including trauma-focused IFS — much of it was already familiar. It offered me additional tools within a tradition I had been living and practising for years.

I use IFS-informed parts work regularly. I also find that pure IFS, applied without adaptation, can feel like a straitjacket — as if I have to set aside everything I’ve learned over years of my own healing and clinical training to follow the model correctly. I never feel this with EMDR. That difference matters — not just for me as a practitioner, but for my clients.

Here is where IFS specifically falls short for complex trauma:

The self-energy problem

IFS assumes access to self-energy — that calm, curious, compassionate inner presence from which healing is meant to happen. For people with complex trauma whose nervous systems are chronically dysregulated, self-energy may be fleeting or entirely inaccessible at the beginning of the healing journey. When a client cannot access self-energy, pure IFS stalls.

I want to be honest about something here — this is my opinion rather than a clinical fact: I think self-energy is partly IFS’s attempt to distinguish itself from other parts work traditions that have always existed. I do believe we all have a core self that becomes more accessible as we heal. But I don’t experience it as an energy. And I think accessing it requires more than the 8 Cs.

Other parts work approaches speak of the healthy adult self, the wise part, the caring observer — embodied, grounded in the present, able to connect with parts. These concepts are often more accessible for clients. It includes skills that can be learned. What matters is not the model but what works for you.

Frank Anderson — a leading IFS trainer — now acknowledges that self-energy alone is not enough for healing. It must happen in connection. The quality of the therapeutic relationship matters. I agree. But this is not fully reflected in the standard IFS model. When I did healing of systemic trauma with IFS, the energy from the practitioners mattered to me – and they were able to hold a healthy relationship with me.

What matters is not the model but what works for you. Trauma-informed care asks for choice. So I give clients options and follow what resonates with them.

The compassion without boundaries problem

Many people with complex trauma — especially those who experienced emotional abuse — have too much compassion for others and never learned to respect themselves. Focusing exclusively on compassion without accountability, mutual respect, and assertiveness can increase risk to further harm.

None of the IFS trainings I attended included explicit boundary work or assertiveness. But boundaries are not separate from healing — they are central to it if we have relational wounds. For adults with complex trauma, rebuilding the sense of self and learning to discern healthy from toxic relationship dynamics cannot happen without them. Charles Whitfield’s framework on the connection between boundaries and reestablishing the sense of self is something I integrate explicitly — because the gap IFS leaves here is significant.

The rejection of stabilization tools

Traditional IFS rejects external tools for nervous system regulation — grounding techniques, breathwork, resourcing — on the basis that introducing them without sufficient self-energy may cause decompensation. In theory, I can hold this possibility in mind. In my clinical practice, it has never happened.

For many of my clients with complex trauma, these tools are essential — not a replacement for parts work but the foundation that makes parts work possible. Without sufficient nervous system stability, parts work can’t reach what it needs to reach. The window of tolerance needs to be wide enough to look inward safely.

Janina Fisher’s trainings close these gaps — offering concrete tools to work with activated parts, to build nervous system stability alongside parts work, to address what pure IFS leaves out for this population. Her approach is where trauma-focused parts work and nervous system regulation actually meet.

I integrate her framework explicitly — because for clients with complex trauma, stabilization isn’t a detour from the real work. It is the real work.

The body location problem

IFS typically locates parts in the body—you are asked to notice where you feel a part, to focus inward, and to sense into it. However, for survivors with significant dissociation, this can trigger exactly what we are trying to heal. In these cases, some of my clients can engage only with parts work without dissociating when we externalize—using stones, figurines, drawings, or visualization to represent parts outside the body. This is not the client’s fault; rather, it is an adaptation that honours where their nervous system actually is.

Finally, it’s crucial to highlight the relational blind spot within IFS and its impacts

For adults with complex trauma, that relationship is not peripheral. It is the primary healing mechanism.

If a trauma-focused practitioner cannot acknowledge toxic or abusive dynamics in the client’s story — cannot say I believe you, it was not your fault — the client is left alone with their experience inside a relationship that is supposed to be healing them. That replicates the original dynamic. The crazy-making between client and practitioner becomes another version of what happened in childhood — harm that isn’t named, a witness who doesn’t act, an authority figure who stays neutral when naming it and acknowledging that was not okay is what’s needed.

A technically competent IFS practitioner who lacks relational honesty, authenticity, and embodied presence may still cause harm. The model doesn’t guarantee the practitioner. Nothing does — except the practitioner’s own commitment to doing their own work and being genuinely present in the room.

Read more: Subtle warning signs when working with a trauma counsellor

These limitations do not mean the model has no value. But they help explain why IFS or EMDR for complex trauma require thoughtful adaptation rather than rigid adherence to one model. Janina Fisher’s work exemplifies this distinction in practice. Her approach works with parts in a way that is explicitly trauma-informed — meeting activated parts where they are, understanding shame spirals as trauma responses, and integrating somatic awareness with parts work.

When I use IFS-informed tools with clients who have complex trauma, I am not using pure IFS. I am using parts work within a trauma-focused framework.

Read more: Parts Work Therapy for Adults with Childhood Abuse

IFS or EMDR for complex trauma: Where EMDR falls short

EMDR was not originally designed for complex trauma. It was developed for single-incident trauma — a car accident, an assault, a discrete event with a clear before and after. For that, it can be almost miraculous.

Complex trauma is different. It rarely involves discrete memories. It is often a texture of experience — thousands of small moments of neglect, unpredictability, or violation that wove together into a way of being in the world. There may be no single memory to target. Or targeting one opens so many others that dual awareness collapses entirely.

EMDR is generally accelerating, which is its strength for single-incident trauma and its risk for complex trauma at the beginning. Moving too fast through material that the nervous system isn’t ready to integrate doesn’t produce healing. It produces overwhelm.

Standard EMDR with memory processing alone will not heal attachment wounds or teach you to set healthy boundaries. It doesn’t address inner fragmentation, insecure attachment, or the loss of sense of self that complex trauma creates. These require relational and somatic work to rebuild — not just memory reprocessing.

EMDR also requires dual awareness — the capacity to hold one foot in the present while processing the past. For survivors with a limited window of tolerance or significant dissociation, this dual awareness may not be stable enough. Without adequate preparation — resourcing, grounding, parts work to address internal resistance — EMDR can make symptoms worse.

Most EMDR research focuses on memory processing — primarily because preparation and relational factors are difficult to measure. Research supporting EMDR measures outcomes under conditions that may not reflect what you actually receive. The preparation that makes memory processing safe cannot be captured in a randomized controlled trial. Which is why it so often gets skipped.

Each person’s brain and nervous system is also different. A result in one person may look completely different in another. This is why EMDR cannot be delivered mechanically — what determines the outcome is the interplay between the protocol, what is happening inside the client moment to moment, and what is happening in the relationship.

Read more: EMDR Therapy for Trauma Recovery

What a responsive approach with EMDR and IFS for complex trauma looks like

Best practices for healing complex trauma consistently point toward approaches that combine modalities. No single approach is sufficient. EMDR, somatic work, parts work or IFS, and a strong relational foundation are not mutually exclusive. They are components of the same process.

I don’t believe any single model holds the complete truth about how humans heal. Every model I have trained has offered a piece of the truth—a piece of the picture that the others don’t fully capture. EMDR reaches what parts work sometimes can’t. Parts work reaches what EMDR doesn’t touch. Somatic approaches reach what neither words nor memory alone can access.

The integration isn’t a compromise between approaches. It’s the recognition that healing is complex enough to require more than one truth at a time – and that your experience as the client matters.

Here is how I actually use IFS or EMDR for complex trauma together in the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™:

Parts work — early in the process, in the form of visualization, externalization, and IFS-informed internal work. I give clients options — body-based or externalized — and follow what their nervous system tells us. Some clients resonate immediately. Some tell me they hate it and don’t want to do it. I stop. I don’t reframe their response as resistance. A year later, some of those same clients come back and say, “I finally get it.” The nervous system finds its own timing.

Somatic approaches — to reconnect with the body in a way that feels safe, to build the window of tolerance, to work with freeze and fawn responses, to develop the embodied awareness that makes everything else possible. I integrate Janina Fisher’s trauma treatment, somatic approaches, and Staci Haines’ somatic work around dignity and belonging.

EMDR — for unburdening, whether that means processing a memory, releasing what a part has been carrying, or reducing the emotional intensity of experiences that have lingered in the body for years. I use EMDR for resource building with slower eye movements, the Flash Technique for indirect processing, EMDR with activated parts in the present, and full memory processing when the nervous system is genuinely ready. The process is iterative — moving back and forth between EMDR and parts work as your system guides us.

Skill building — boundaries, assertiveness, discerning healthy from toxic relationship dynamics. This is not separate from trauma recovery. For adults with complex trauma, it is central to their lives. Rebuilding the sense of self requires the lived experience of having boundaries respected, of asserting needs and discovering the relationship holds.

Anti-oppressive practices — to provide inclusive trauma recovery for people who are targeted by systemic oppression. Something none of these modalities inherently does. EMDR, IFS, and somatic approaches were largely developed within dominant Western culture frameworks. They don’t automatically account for the impact of systemic oppression — racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, colonial violence, immigration — on the nervous system and the sense of self. Healthy trauma recovery needs to respect the systemic realities and dismantle how they play out in the models we use.

The therapeutic relationship is the foundation on which everything else rests. I will be honest about what is happening between us. I will say I believe you, and it was not your fault when that is what you need to hear. I will stay present in conflict rather than disappearing behind a professional persona. I will repair when I make a mistake.

The caring adult — what parts work is actually building toward

Beyond the IFS-specific framework of self-energy, parts work approaches have different perspectives on what the deeper work is actually building. The healthy adult self. The wise part. The caring observer. Each tradition names it differently.

Across all of these approaches, the deeper work is building what I call the caring adult — the internal presence that can hold space for all parts. The healthy ones. The wounded ones. The ones with behaviours that are socially deemed unacceptable.

Not welcomed conditionally — welcomed as they are. I find IFS’s perspective, “All parts are welcome in our sessions,” helpful. Because every part was developed for a reason. And when necessary, the caring adult also sets gentle limits with parts whose behaviours are causing harm. Not with punishment or rejection. With the kind of loving limit that says: I see why you learned this, and this is not the only way anymore.

Some parts learned toxic behaviours because that was all that was available to them. The caring adult doesn’t shame these parts for what they learned. It reeducates them — gradually showing them that different ways are now possible.

This is what healthy parenting looks like from the inside. Most adults with complex trauma never received it from the outside. The work is to build it within.

But the internal work doesn’t happen in isolation. The trauma-focused practitioner needs to be able to model it — to hold space for all of the client’s parts with the same curiosity and care the client is learning to offer themselves. To set gentle limits without rejection. To stay present through difficulty without disappearing behind a professional persona.

You cannot teach someone to build a caring adult from the inside while being unable to embody it from the outside. The relationship is where the internal model is first experienced as possible. That is why who you work with matters as much as what approach they use.

A note on consent of all parties — and where it meets the limits of real life

A useful principle from IFS is getting consent from all parts before making a significant change. For example, before moving into memory processing with EMDR, all parts need to agree. It is sound clinical practice.

Outside of sessions, in real life, it is not always possible. If you are in an abusive relationship, a part that yearns to attach may make leaving feel impossible — not because you don’t want to leave, but because that part’s need for connection is genuine and deep. The goal in that situation is not to override that part. It is to gently educate it — to build enough connection with it so that it knows you’ll be there. While you make the decision to leave, the part can still feel that you are present with it. Leaving feels less like a threat to your life and your connections and more like an act of care toward yourself.

Sometimes life places us in situations that challenge our integrity entirely. Staying in a toxic workplace because financial stability requires it. Navigating complex systemic dynamics as a BIPOC person, a 2SLGBTQ+ person, an immigrant, or a person with a disability — where the stakes of leaving are higher and the alternatives are fewer. All of your parts may be screaming to leave, while your circumstances make leaving genuinely dangerous.

In those situations, the work is not to achieve the ideal therapeutic conditions described by frameworks like IFS. It is to be present with the parts that are in pain. To explain to them honestly why you are doing what you are doing. To take care of yourself and your parts as well as possible within the situation you are in — minimizing new harm, building internal resources, and moving toward change when it becomes possible.

That is not a failure of healing. That is the caring adult meeting reality with honesty and gentleness — holding the complexity of a life that doesn’t always offer clean choices, and staying present with all parts through it.

The caring adult doesn’t wait for perfect conditions to begin building toward joy. It starts from wherever it is.

Sometimes that means moving toward a fuller, more connected life. Sometimes it means staying sane in a world that feels hostile. Both are acts of profound care toward yourself — and toward every part that has been waiting to be met with something other than shame.

Life will bring pain all by itself. The caring adult’s responsibility is to build toward joy, from wherever it is standing right now.

What becomes possible with this work

Most counselling models focus on healing the past because it needs to be healed. That’s necessary. But it’s incomplete.

We heal the past to create a better present and future — for ourselves and for the generations that come after us. Trauma is intergenerational. So is healing. The work you do on yourself changes how you show up in every relationship, every community, every life you touch.

Without feeling the pain, we cannot feel more joy. If we avoid unpleasant emotions — if we manage them, suppress them, stay just far enough away that they can’t reach us — we stay stuck in them. The avoidance doesn’t protect us. It maintains the distance between us and our own lives.

Healing is not an obligation. If there are parts of your past that are unhealed but not affecting your life negatively, you don’t have to go there. This work exists for one reason: to help you become a fuller version of yourself. Not to fix what is broken. You are not broken. You are a person who experienced things that were too much — and who adapted in the ways that were available.

The past is the context. The future is the point.

What being healed actually looks like

Being healed doesn’t mean you won’t have emotions. It means your emotions are connected to the present rather than amplified by everything that was never processed. Jealousy that is simply about now. Anger that is proportionate to what just happened. Grief that belongs to this loss rather than every loss.

But emotions still carry information that requires a response. Jealousy may mean a need isn’t being met. Anger may indicate that a boundary has been violated or that a situation isn’t fair. Resentment may mean you have been abandoning yourself in a relationship. A healthy adult can hear these signals clearly and respond wisely — not someone without emotions, but someone who can be with their emotions and use them in the service of building the life they want.

That capacity is what the caring adult is for. Not to heal emotions away. To receive them clearly.

A note on fit — and on who I am in the room

One more thing worth saying before you consider reaching out.

I don’t think practitioners can ever be blank slates. As a trauma-focused practitioner, I play a role in healing. I also believe that it matters that I, as a trauma-focused practitioner, need to do my own healing.

I can hold space for pain because I have sat with my own. I am not afraid of shame because I can be with my own shame. That is not something I learned in a training. It is what my own healing gave me.

Trauma often happens if our vulnerability has been abused. Therefore, it’s natural that parts of you are scared of healing – and learning to be vulnerable again. I know what it costs when people are vulnerable, and the practitioner doesn’t respond in a healthy way. When their experience has been invalidated or minimized. It is harmful. It taught me that embracing vulnerability is my responsibility as a trauma-focused practitioner. Not a personal style choice. A professional and ethical commitment. I can’t promise you that we’ll never have conflict or misunderstandings – but that we work through it constructively if you want to.

If you are looking for a single-modality approach — pure IFS or standard EMDR — I may not be the right fit, and I would rather you know that now. Reality is, if you have experienced complex trauma, it isn’t even the ethical choice.

If you are curious about an integrative approach with EMDR and IFS-informed parts work that adapts to your specific needs, that centres the relationship as much as the modality, and that is honest about both what is possible and what it requires, I offer a free consultation. We can explore where you are in your healing, and whether working together makes sense.

Alternatively, you can learn more about my trauma counselling services, available online and in-person in Calgary.

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