Hi, I'm Stephanie

Welcome, and thank you for being here.

We tend to describe ourselves through the things we've done, the places we're from, the work we do, the things we're interested in. And while all of these things tell part of our story, they can never tell the whole story of who we are.

I believe we are all made up of many different parts. There are parts of us that are confident, curious, playful, ambitious, and connected, and there are also parts that are afraid, protective, self-critical, or unsure. Some of these parts are shaped by our families and cultures; others emerge from experiences we have had and the ways we have learned to navigate the world.

I've become deeply interested in these different parts of ourselves — and in what happens when we stop seeing them as problems to fix and begin to understand them with curiosity and compassion.

My own path toward this work has been anything but linear.

I was born and raised in Chicago, where I studied sociology at DePaul University. Sociology gave me an enduring curiosity about people: how we become who we are, how our relationships and environments shape us, and how much of what we experience as “personal” is also connected to the larger worlds we inhabit.

That curiosity stayed with me as my life took me in different directions. I became a yoga teacher, moved to Spain, learned a new language (Spanish) and went on to train and work as a dance movement therapist (DMT).

Along the way, I was also doing my own work.

I have been in traditional talk therapy on and off for many years. I find it incredibly valuable. Having a space to be heard, understood, and supported helped me make sense of many things in my life. I learned to recognize my patterns and understand where they came from.

But I began to notice something that was difficult to put into words: understanding my patterns intellectually didn't always change how it felt to live inside them.

I could understand why I was doing something and still find myself doing it. I could know that a reaction belonged to an old experience and still feel it happening in my body in the present. There was a gap between what I understood in my mind and what I actually experienced within myself.

That gap became increasingly important to me.

Through yoga, dance movement therapy, 5 Rhythms, Gaga, singing, and social dances like swing, I began to discover the body as another way of knowing. I became fascinated by the ways our emotions, experiences, memories, and relationships live not only in our thoughts but also in our physical experience — in our breath, posture, tension, movement, sensations, and impulses.

I began to understand that sometimes we don't need more information about ourselves — sometimes we need a different way of listening, expressing, and exploring our internal, subjective world.

This led me to Internal Family Systems. IFS gave me language for something I had already begun to experience: that we contain many different parts, and that even the parts of ourselves we might wish would disappear are often there for a reason. Beneath these parts, IFS describes something deeper — an essential Self that is naturally compassionate, curious, and capable of relating to all of these different parts with understanding.

For me, this was a profound shift.

Instead of asking, “How do I get rid of this part of myself?” I began asking, “What is this part trying to do for me? What does it need? Can I become curious about it rather than fighting against it? Can I notice and experience the somatic elements of this part and understand how this part shows up in my body?”

That shift — from judgment to curiosity, from fixing to listening, from thinking about myself to actually experiencing myself (intellectualizing versus feeling) — has shaped the person and practitioner I am today.

I currently live and work in Barcelona as well as online with clients all over the world. My work brings together the different threads of my own journey: sociology, yoga, dance movement therapy, somatic awareness, and Internal Family Systems.

People are more than their stories, their symptoms, their identities, or the parts of themselves that have learned how to survive. I believe there is something deeply worthwhile in getting to know ourselves — not so that we can become a different person, but so that we can develop a more compassionate and honest relationship with the person we already are.