Gender Unburdening: Using Internal Family Systems to Heal from Gender Socialization

Have you ever objected to the gender norms you’re “supposed” to conform to? This isn’t about whether you’re cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary—it’s about the rules ALL of us are expected to follow depending on the type of body we inhabit.

Every one of us has been swimming in the soup of a highly gendered culture our entire lives, and we’ve all acquired beliefs about how to behave as well as, most likely, a heaping dose of distress. The good news is we’re not stuck with either the beliefs or the distress. This book offers you a front-row seat to a lab for healing from gender socialization.

  • Review terms and concepts that enhance gender literacy.
  • Learn about Internal Family Systems (IFS), a powerfully effective approach to personal growth and healing.
  • Read about cross-cultural gender diversity and the origins of the gender rules.
  • Explore the connections between gender, race, and sexual identity as social hierarchies used to marginalize.
  • Follow along as the author, an IFS life coach and former therapist, sheds gender burdens and reclaims a sense of empowerment.

Every person’s journey to wholeness is unique—there’s no formula to follow or cookie-cutter result to aim for. Free of constraints, this exploration holds tremendous promise for expanding our lives by healing parts of us that carry cultural burdens about gender. This book is for anyone seeking freedom from cultural conditioning about gender as well as therapists, coaches, and other professionals who support them in their quest.

Available in print and ebook editions through
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“In this fascinating, timely, and well-written book, Kirin Alolkoy not only discusses the topic of IFS and gender but also takes us along on a powerful journey of using IFS to heal the wounds produced by family and culture around gender.”

—Richard Schwartz, PhD, founder of Internal Family Systems

Losing and Finding My Father:
Seasons of Grief, Healing and Forgiveness

Foreword by Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, founder of Internal Family Systems

Losing and Finding My Father (published under my previous name) is a memoir about the remarkable transformations I went through in the process of grieving my father’s death and healing from the effects of an abusive childhood.

It is a story of loss — loss of childhood trust, loss of self-esteem and desire for intimacy, loss of the father. It’s also a story of revelation — about finding my voice, softening emotional armor, forgiving the past, creating pathways to intimacy, and revising my life story.

My deepest hope is that Losing and Finding My Father will inspire readers to believe that healing is possible — from grief as well as from the pain of a traumatic childhood — and, even more, to set forth with consciousness, intention, and heart into the turbulent waters that hold the profoundest of possibilities.

Available in print and ebook editions through
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Tools for Healing: Simple, Creative Ways to Explore,
Learn From, and Resolve Emotional Distress

A concise, easy-to-read collection of tools and exercises to support personal growth, including active imagination, the observer self, art therapy, subpersonalities (parts), journaling, and an extensive list of recommended resources

*NOTE: This short book is also included in Losing and Finding My Father as an appendix.

“Brilliant, easy, do-it-yourself tools for introspection and self-growth. This is a great collection of tools for anyone working with a therapist or coach who wants to expand introspection on their own — or, a coach/therapist seeking to augment what they’re doing with clients. It includes techniques that would be familiar to any IFS (Internal Family Systems) practitioner … but also many beyond that.”

— Mark Hurwich, Concentrated Coaching

Available in print and ebook editions through
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo