Bethany Russell IFS Therapist

Bethany Russell IFS Therapist For all inquiries please refer to bethanyrussell.com * Social media messages may not receive timely responses. ✦

Licensed Counselor | Self Sovereign Method
♦ Parts Work | Virtual
for Ambitious & Intuitive Souls
△ Science + Soul approach
📍 CO, CA, TX & Worldwide

* I do not respond to messages here. Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in IFS therapy, nervous system healing, and spiritual integration for ambitious souls ready to stop living in their heads and start trusting their intuition. I help high-achieving, intuitive individuals become Self Sovereign through comprehensive healing that addresses what's actually hijacking your power - not just surface symptoms.

✦ Licensed Professional Counselor (CO, CA, TX)
✦ IFS Level I + Legacy Burdens training with Richard Schwartz
✦ Creator of the Self Sovereign Method
✦ Parts work for ambitious & intuitive souls
✦ Science + Soul approach to healing

Ready to reclaim your Self Sovereign power? Services available virtually in CO, CA, TX and intensives/coaching worldwide.

✦ To best serve you and protect your privacy, please contact me through bethanyrussell.com for all therapy, coaching, and intensive inquiries.

One of the most disorienting parts of healing? Realizing that growth doesn’t move in straight lines.
In my own work, I’v...
12/21/2025

One of the most disorienting parts of healing? Realizing that growth doesn’t move in straight lines.

In my own work, I’ve revisited the same wound more times than I can count. The same younger part—a four-year-old girl on the stairs. The same moment in time. The same emotional landscape.

For a long time, I thought that meant I was failing. That I was stuck. That something wasn’t working.

Here’s what I understand now: I wasn’t revisiting because I was broken. I was returning because my system finally had more capacity to be with it (her) than before.

Healing doesn’t erase the past. It expands your ability to relate to it.

Each time an old wound resurfaces, you’re meeting it with a different nervous system. A different level of self-trust. A deeper internal support structure.

This is something I say to clients constantly: recurrence is not regression. It’s usually a sign of readiness.

Readiness to feel what couldn’t be felt before. 
To integrate what was once too much.
To stay present instead of abandoning yourself.

So if something old is knocking right now? You’re not behind. You’re finally resourced enough to go where you couldn’t before.

Send this to someone who needs to hear it. 🖤

You can be the most capable woman in every room and still feel completely unheld inside.

You can have your s**t togethe...
12/21/2025

You can be the most capable woman in every room and still feel completely unheld inside.

You can have your s**t together and still be one “are you okay?” away from falling apart.

(Except no one asks — because you’re the one who asks everyone else.)

Here’s what no one tells the strong ones:

You’re not tired because you’re doing too much.

You’re tired because you’ve been leading your entire life from a part of you that was only supposed to be temporary —
the one who took over when no one else showed up.

The one who decided it was safer to need nothing than to need and be disappointed.

That part kept you alive.

But she was never meant to run everything forever.

Sovereignty isn’t about doing more, doing less, or doing it better.

It’s about finally letting the part of you who has been holding it all together… rest.

And letting the real you lead.

Drop and emoji or comment below if you can hard relate 👇🏻

This is the energy we are building toward in 2026.
Stay close. 🖤

This is where leadership actually starts.
Not in certainty. In presence. 
That pause before you react?
That’s the skill....
12/18/2025

This is where leadership actually starts.
Not in certainty. In presence. 

That pause before you react?
That’s the skill. 🖤

Leaky energy still irritates me.
Not because it’s wrong,
but because I know how draining it is to live that way.
What ch...
12/16/2025

Leaky energy still irritates me.

Not because it’s wrong,
but because I know how draining it is to live that way.

What changed wasn’t my sensitivity to it.
What changed was my willingness to look at where my own energy was leaking.

Not loudly.
Quietly.

Through indecision.
Over-accommodation.
Staying open past my own knowing.

This year, especially the last few months,
I stopped trying to manage my energy
and started leading it.

Not by becoming colder.
Not by becoming rigid.

By deciding my energy is meant to be potent.
And contained.

That choice reshaped how I decide,
how I relate, and how settled I feel in my body.

Where does leaky energy show up for you? 🖤
Share below 👇🏻

The real work is rarely shows itself dramatic breakthrough.
It’s the moment you notice an old pattern rising and you sta...
12/16/2025

The real work is rarely shows itself dramatic breakthrough.

It’s the moment you notice an old pattern rising and you stay with yourself long enough to choose something different.

Emotional authority is built in those micro-moments —
the pause where there used to be a spiral,
the breath where you used to abandon yourself,
the shift you feel before anyone else can see it.

This is sovereignty at the emotional level:
a quiet returning to yourself
until presence becomes your new baseline.

It’s not perfection.
It’s practice.

And if you’re building this kind of inner leadership, you’re already doing far more than you realize.

Save this for the days you forget you’re changing.

And follow along if you want this work to shape your 2026.

January is bringing something for women who want emotional authority and sovereignty to become their way of moving through the world — not just a concept they understand. 🖤

You rise when your inner world steadies. Not when you push harder.
Emotional authority is what turns activation into cla...
12/14/2025

You rise when your inner world steadies. Not when you push harder.

Emotional authority is what turns activation into clarity, urgency into precision, and self-doubt into grounded leadership.

It’s the difference between striving and sovereignty.

Save this for when you need the reminder. Follow along if you’re ready to rise without losing yourself.

January holds something for women who want emotional authority to be their edge. Stay close. 🖤

We’re taught that closure comes from the other person. A final conversation. An apology. An explanation that makes every...
12/12/2025

We’re taught that closure comes from the other person. A final conversation. An apology. An explanation that makes everything make sense.

But here’s the nuance: 
Sometimes that moment never comes. Sometimes it wouldn’t be safe. Sometimes they don’t have the capacity. Sometimes they don’t think they owe you anything.

Closure isn’t a gift someone hands you. It’s the point where you stop waiting for them to finish the story for you. 

It’s something you build — one boundary, one breath, one honest decision at a time.

You don’t need their participation to be free. 🖤

Today is my brother’s birthday. He would have been 33.
It’s been four and a half years. Grief still makes an appearance....
12/10/2025

Today is my brother’s birthday. He would have been 33.
It’s been four and a half years. Grief still makes an appearance. Not because I’m stuck, but because time has nothing to do with it.

People love a tidy 5-stage model.
They want grief to behave, to progress, to close the loop.
But real grief?
It refuses to be efficient.

Grief is nuance:
love + absence
joy + ache
integration + surprise
longing + forward movement
fine + leveled… and then fine again.

It’s the emotional equivalent of holding two opposing truths and not dropping either.

You can feel grateful for your life and still wish they were here to witness it.
You can laugh and ache at the same time.
You can be fine and then a memory drops you to your knees.
And then you’re fine again. That’s the rhythm.

That’s not regression.
That’s what integration actually looks like.

Grief isn’t a problem to solve.
It’s the residue of love and impact.
It changes shape, not importance.

Tonight I’m raising a glass of whiskey — his drink favorite drink.
It burns.
Missing him does too. 
🖤

Who are you carrying with you today? Drop a name, initial, or heart below. I’ll hold them too.🤍

Black-and-white thinking feels safe. It isn’t.
It gives your nervous system something solid to land on. A villain, a her...
12/09/2025

Black-and-white thinking feels safe. It isn’t.

It gives your nervous system something solid to land on. A villain, a hero, a clean line. But the truth is rarely that tidy.

Most people aren’t making “bad decisions.” They’re making fast ones. Their system is overwhelmed and afraid. And when fear runs the show, everything collapses into this or that. Right or wrong. All or nothing.

Nuance is harder. But it’s where your actual clarity lives.

It’s where you hear the difference between fear and intuition. Old patterns and present truth. What you want, and what you’ve been trained to choose.

If this stirred something, let it sit. There’s nothing wrong with you for slipping into absolutes. Your system learned that for a reason.

This is Day 2 of my Nuance Series. Tomorrow: why nuance feels scary in the first place, and how your body decides whether complexity is safe or dangerous.

Follow along if you’re building the capacity to hold more truth, more choice, and more of yourself.

🖤

Where does nuance feel hardest for you right now?

Nuance is one of the first things I teach my clients. It’s one of the conversations I have on repeat.
If you’ve ever wor...
12/07/2025

Nuance is one of the first things I teach my clients. It’s one of the conversations I have on repeat.

If you’ve ever worked with me (or honestly, if you’re a friend of mine), you’ve definitely heard me talk about this.

Because black-and-white thinking is one of the fastest ways people lose themselves.

Extreme thinking feels safer:
“all or nothing,”
“right or wrong,”
“good or bad,”
“I’m the problem or they are.”

You see it everywhere:
“If you vote for ____, then you must be ____.”

As if a single decision, moment, or disagreement reveals someone’s entire identity.

But that safety is an illusion.
It’s protection, not truth.

And one of the quickest signs someone is blended with a protective part of themselves
is when everything suddenly becomes absolute.

When their language collapses into extremes,
the part of them talking is trying to keep them safe —
not help them see clearly.

Nuance is where your actual clarity lives.

It’s where you can tell the difference between fear, desire, pattern, and truth.
It’s where Self-leadership begins.

When you stop demanding simplicity, you stop abandoning yourself.

And when you start holding nuance, you start making choices from power — not protection.

Nuance is what your patterns can’t fake.
It’s the signature of a Self-led life. 🖤🩶🤍 (More on this later this week)

Where has nuance felt the hardest for you? I guarantee you’re not alone. Safe space. Name it below. ↓

Sovereignty isn’t a mindset you think your way into. It’s an energy your system remembers when you stop leaving yourself...
12/05/2025

Sovereignty isn’t a mindset you think your way into. It’s an energy your system remembers when you stop leaving yourself behind.

It’s the micro-moments most people miss:

The second you start to shrink… and choose to stay in your body instead.

The old fear that speaks up… and doesn’t get to run the show this time.

The realization that you don’t have to hustle for love, attention, or approval. Not anymore.

Sovereignty is inner leadership. It’s the truth-telling your younger self could never do alone. It’s the quiet, grounded steadiness that returns when you finally… finally… come back to yourself.

This is the energy I help people build their lives from.
And in 2026… we go deeper.
Stay close. 🖤

(📸 from a time in Sitges, Spain)

Follow for more on sovereignty, parts work, and ritual —> .russell.cc


You’ve been doing parts work your whole life.
Every time you’ve said, “Part of me wants to… but part of me is scared,” t...
12/05/2025

You’ve been doing parts work your whole life.

Every time you’ve said, “Part of me wants to… but part of me is scared,” that’s IFS.

Every time you’ve felt pulled in two directions, fought with yourself, or wondered why you keep doing that thing even though you know better… that’s your parts.

IFS (Internal Family Systems) is a therapy model that changed everything for me — as a clinician and as a human.

It’s based on a simple but radical idea:
You’re not one single “self” that needs to be fixed.
You’re made of different parts — each with their own feelings, fears, and ways of trying to protect you.

And underneath all of those parts?
There’s YOU — your Self.
The version of you that’s calm, clear, curious, compassionate, and capable of leading your life.

The goal isn’t to fix your parts or get rid of them.
It’s to build a relationship with them — so you get to lead.

That’s what I mean when I talk about emotional sovereignty.
This is where it starts.

If you’re new here — welcome. Save this post. You’re going to want it later.

And if you’ve been circling my work for a while, this is your sign:
You’re not broken. You’re not too complicated. You just have parts.
I can help you meet them.

DM me or comment “PARTS” if you want to learn more about working together. 🖤

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Denver, CO

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm

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