59 : Why You Can't Stop Repeating Your Patterns (IFS Therapist Reveals the Truth)

💫Episode 59 : Why You Can't Stop Repeating Your Patterns (IFS Therapist Reveals the Truth)

"Have you ever looked at your life from the outside and thought — this looks fine. I have a job, I show up, I keep it together. And yet something underneath the surface just feels off, like you're performing a version of yourself rather than actually living as yourself?"

If that question landed somewhere deep in your chest, you're not alone. And more importantly — you're not broken.

In Episode 59 of Collective Guidance, host Charla Goodnight sits down with Laurie Nouchka, a therapist, embodied coach, and spiritual guide based in London, whose work sits at the intersection of one of the most transformational therapeutic frameworks available today: Internal Family Systems therapy — also known simply as parts work. Lori has worked with thousands of people, led workshops inside Google DeepMind, and been featured in Vogue, The Guardian, and The Times. But what she brings to this conversation is something far more personal — her own story of heartbreak, self-abandonment, and the healing that changed everything.

The Pattern That Keeps Finding You

Most of us have one. The relationship that goes nowhere. The way you shrink in a room full of people. The relentless inner critic. The tendency to give, give, give until there's nothing left — and then feel blindsided when no one gives back.

No matter how much you know better, you just can't seem to do better. And the reason, according to Lori, has nothing to do with a lack of willpower or self-awareness. It has everything to do with the parts of you that formed long before you had the capacity to understand what was happening.

Lori's own story began with a painful breakup in her mid-twenties — a moment that cracked open a much older wound. A part of her had decided, somewhere in early childhood, that she wasn't enough. And for years, without even realizing it, that belief drove her to chase romantic partners who were fundamentally unavailable — unconsciously trying to repair the story she'd been carrying since she was small.

"I was outsourcing the idea that someone else validating me would make me whole again. And of course, it never worked."

What Is Internal Family Systems (IFS)?

If you've never heard of IFS, here's the most human way to understand it:

When we have experiences as young children — especially experiences that feel threatening to our sense of safety or belonging — our minds create parts to help us cope. These parts form belief systems, stories, and protective strategies that helped us survive at the time. The problem is that those parts don't automatically update as we grow. They're still operating from the age they were formed, still trying to protect us from a threat that no longer exists — in a world that has completely changed around them.

The part that decided I'm not enough at age four is still running the show at forty. The part that learned if I keep everyone happy, I'll be safe is still working overtime, decades later, wondering why it's exhausted.

And here's what makes IFS so different from other approaches: we don't try to fix or eliminate these parts. We bring them closer. We listen to them. We give them what they never got at the time — acknowledgment, safety, and love. And by virtue of being truly seen and held, they naturally soften and change.

"You don't need to be fixed. What you need is to take the time and space to get to know these parts — who hold so much wisdom."

The Protector You Didn't Know You Had

One of the most eye-opening moments in this conversation comes when Charla shares something personal — a painful moment when someone close to her said, "It's all about you," after years of Charla giving everything she had to keep that relationship harmonious.

Lori's response is both gentle and profound: that was a protector. A part of Charla that believed if she could just keep everyone happy, if she could maintain harmony at all costs, she would be safe. The relationship wouldn't rupture. She wouldn't be alone.

This is one of the most important things to understand about parts work: your greatest strengths are often your most active protectors. The high achiever who never stops. The nurturer who puts everyone else first. The peacekeeper who swallows their own needs to keep the room calm. These are not character flaws. They are parts that have been working incredibly hard, for a very long time, to keep you safe — based on something that happened long ago.

The invitation isn't to go to war with those parts or shame them into submission. It's to say: thank you. I see how hard you've been working. You can rest now. I've got this.

The Nervous System Is the Hard Drive

Lori describes the nervous system beautifully: it is the hard drive of our experiences. Not a real-time threat detector, but a storage system for every moment in the past where we felt unsafe, unseen, or unloved.

That tightness in your chest when someone criticizes you. The knot in your stomach before a difficult conversation. The weight on your shoulders that never quite lifts. These aren't just physical sensations — they are your parts, stored in your body, speaking to you in the only language they have.

This is why talk therapy, while valuable, can only go so far. As Lori puts it — and as books like The Body Keeps the Score have confirmed — healing must be somatic. It must happen in the body, not just in the mind. And IFS creates the exact conditions for that to occur: a safe, spacious, inward-facing practice that lets the body finally feel what it was never allowed to feel before.

Where IFS Meets the Higher Self

Here is where Lori's work becomes truly extraordinary. She describes IFS not just as therapy, but as a spiritual practice — one that creates a natural doorway to the higher self.

When a part softens and releases, something opens up in that space. A presence. A frequency. What Lori calls the higher self — what IFS refers to as the Self with a capital S. Pure love, pure witnessing, pure presence. Not a part. A soul.

"It's the greatest gift I've ever received — to connect to higher self energy. And I wish that for everyone."

One Simple Step to Start Today

For anyone hearing this and thinking I see my patterns but I don't know how to do anything differently — Lori's invitation is beautifully simple:

Get outside. Take off your shoes. Feel the sun on your face. Turn your phone off.

Let nature be your first reset. Let your nervous system remember what it feels like to just be — without fixing, without performing, without protecting.

And if you want to go deeper, Lori has created a free inner parts meditation — a gentle, roughly 15-minute guided experience designed to help you meet and tend to the parts of you that have been working so hard, for so long, to keep you safe. It's a soft, compassionate entry point into this work — and exactly the kind of beginning that doesn't ask you to fix a single thing.

The Truth Worth Carrying

You are not your patterns. Your patterns are parts of you — parts that formed in fear, that learned to protect you the only way they knew how, and that have been waiting, perhaps their whole existence, for you to finally turn toward them with love instead of shame.

Change doesn't come from force. It comes from presence. From listening. From loving even the most wounded parts of yourself back into wholeness.

You don't need to be fixed. You need to be met.

🎧 Listen to Episode 59 of Collective Guidance wherever you get your podcasts.

Find Laurie Nouchka and access her free inner parts meditation through the links in the show notes. If this episode opened something in you, share it with someone who needs it — and subscribe so you never miss a conversation like this one.

✨ If this message resonates with you, please share this post with a friend, subscribe to the Collective Guidance podcast, and join me on Instagram @charligirl7 or @collectiveguidancepodcast . Let’s create a world where sensitivity is celebrated.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on:

Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Amazon

Sending love, remembrance, faith, and creativity,

Charla ❤️