Parts Work & Identity Healing | Understanding Internal Family Systems (IFS) with Sarah Jones

Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

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Parts Work & Identity Healing | Understanding Internal Family Systems (IFS) with Sarah Jones

Sarah Ann Macklin

Jun 11, 2025

Healing doesn’t come from fixing yourself.

It comes from understanding yourself.

Not just the polished parts but the scared ones, the striving ones, the parts we hide to survive.

This week’s guest, Sarah Jones, is a storyteller, artist, and activist known for her fearless exploration of identity. But this conversation isn’t just about identity in the outer world, it’s about the stories we carry inside, and the compassion it takes to hold them with care.

Raised in a racially and culturally mixed household, Sarah unpacks what it means to belong to many worlds and sometimes feel at home in none. Through humor, vulnerability, and incredible emotional depth, she shares how the practice of Internal Family Systems (IFS) helped her name, understand, and begin to heal her inner landscape.

We explore:

Why perfectionism is often just pain in disguise
What it means to live with “multiple parts” and how to listen to them
The link between emotional safety and self-worth
How addiction, self-abandonment, and survival can mask our basic goodness
And the healing power of play, creativity, and radical curiosity

Sarah reminds us that real self-love isn’t about declarations it’s about attention. Tending to the parts of us that didn’t get to speak, and learning to meet them with kindness.

Love,

Sarah Ann 💛

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Science Simplified, Health Humanised. Join thousands in exploring actionable insights that prioritise compassion, clarity, and real-life impact. https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

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Highlights:

Intro: Healing Identity Through Compassionate Inquiry (00:00)

Family, Race, and the Shaping of Selfhood (01:03)

Conditional Love and the Roots of Identity Crisis (02:23)

Emotional Intelligence and Parental Conditioning (05:24)

IFS Therapy: Mapping the Inner World (12:07)

Healing Through Parts Work and Self-Compassion (14:08)

Understanding Self-Abandonment and Innate Goodness (28:0)

The Role of Play in Emotional Integration (29:27)

Vulnerability, Reflection, and Inner Safety (31:39)

Addiction as an Expression of Unmet Needs (40:33)