The Hilling Journey

Ilyse Kennedy is known as the IFS girl for a reason. In this solo episode, she shares why Internal Family Systems therapy and parts work have been so transformative, both in her own healing as a trauma survivor and AuDHD human and in her work as a therapist. The idea that we aren't black and white, but made up of many parts that all have good intentions, opened something up for her long before she ever trained in it. With a little help from Inside Out and Dwight Schrute, Ilyse breaks down: • What parts work is and where IFS came from, including its roots in Indigenous and shamanic traditions • Managers, exiles, and firefighters, plus the firefighter-shame cycle • Why IFS approaches exiles more slowly than inner child work • Self-energy, unburdening, and legacy burdens • Bonnie Badenoch's inner community model, and the piece it adds for folks with complex trauma • Her own IFS therapy, including meeting her reaching parts after her divorce She also guides listeners through a short meditation to get to know a protective part. (If you're driving, skip that section.) A heads up: IFS language can feel culty or triggering for anyone who has been in high-control groups or intense religions, so take what fits and shift the language as needed. This episode also touches on disordered eating, substance use, and grief.

Find Ilyse on Instagram @ilysekennedy

Check out her website HERE

Find out more about her therapy practice HERE

Buy her book HERE

Read her substack essays HERE

On this episode, Ilyse interviews Tiffany Reese, creator and host of the award-winning podcast Something Was Wrong and founder of Broken Cycle Media, a survivor-led, victim-centered media company. Tiffany and Ilyse go back to the early COVID days, when Ilyse first appeared on Something Was Wrong and how the show has evolved to become a trauma informed space for surviors to share their stories.

In this conversation, Tiffany shares how her own experiences as a survivor shaped a true crime show that refuses to treat trauma as entertainment, and what 24 seasons have taught her about supporting survivors through continual consent, transparency about risk, and care long after an episode airs. She opens up about the vicarious trauma that crept in over years of holding others' stories, how somatic therapy and understanding her neurodivergence changed the way she cares for herself, and what it was like to finally tell her own story in Season 16. Tiffany and Ilyse also talk about finding glimmers in childhood trauma, healing through music, navigating perfectionism as a public figure, and what's ahead in Season 25, which examines campus sexual violence and Title IX.

Please note, this episode was recorded prior to the Season 25 release and SWW is now on Season 26! We are releasing the episode this week to point folks toward Season 25 in light of Title IX coming up in the news. You can find Ilyse's more in depth look at the trauma of Title IX in the news on her substack to go along with this article.

Find Tiffany on Instagram at @lookieboo, and learn more at Something Was Wrong and Broken Cycle Media

Content note: this episode includes references to childhood abuse, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and homicide.

Find Ilyse on Instagram @ilysekennedy

Check out her website HERE

Find out more about her therapy practice HERE

Buy her book HERE

Read her substack essays HERE

How do we keep healing when it feels like the world is unraveling? In this solo episode, Ilyse talks about the collective trauma we're all absorbing through a constant stream of "bite-sized horrors" on our feeds, and how it quietly builds into burnout, numbness, and hopelessness. She explores why our individual and community healing matters more than ever, and offers ways to make space for collective grief, lean into community and rupture and repair, and reconnect with aliveness. We can't self-care our way out of fascism, but tending to ourselves and each other helps break the cycles these systems depend on.

Find Ilyse on Instagram @ilysekennedy

Check out her website HERE

Find out more about her therapy practice HERE

Buy her book HERE

This podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy with your own mental health professional.

In this episode, Ilyse sits with the grief episode she's tried (and abandoned) to record more than once — because sometimes grief has to soften before you can even find the words for it. She unpacks Mary-Frances O'Connor's kitchen table theory of grief, the neuroscience behind why loss doesn't make sense to the brain, and why we keep reaching for something that isn't there anymore. Drawing from her own years-long grieving process following her divorce, she explores what it means to grieve a relationship, a future, a version of yourself — not just a person who died.

You'll hear about grief rituals borrowed from Francis Weller's work, the five gates of grief, ancestral grief passed down through generations, and why the body needs to wail, shake, and move grief through rather than just think its way past it. This episode is an invitation to stop treating grief as a clinical diagnosis and start treating it as the universal, non-linear, deeply human experience it actually is.

Learn more about Ilyse HERE

Follow Ilyse on Instagram HERE

Read Ilyse's essays HERE

Buy Ilyse's Book HERE

Feeling burned out but not sure why "self-care" isn't fixing it? In this episode, therapist Ilyse Kennedy, LPC-S, LMFT-S, SEP sits down with Morgan Johnson, LPC and author of 8 Keys to Healing, Managing, and Preventing Burnout, to break down what burnout actually is — and why the usual advice often misses the mark.

Morgan walks through the three hallmarks of burnout (decreased sense of accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization), why helping professionals are especially prone to it, and how it often shows up in the body first — through new migraines, gut issues, vertigo, or chronic tension. She also opens up about her own two experiences with burnout, the resources that helped her recover, and why the fix isn't more self-care but real community and connection. The episode wraps with practical "big breaks and little rests" for people who can't just walk away from the stressor, and why isolation tends to make burnout worse.

Whether you're a therapist, a caregiver, a parent, or just running on empty, this episode offers a more honest — and more useful — way to think about burnout.

🎧 Follow The Hilling Journey for more on healing, attachment, and mental health. 📍 Ilyse Kennedy, LPC-S, LMFT-S | Moving Parts Psychotherapy, South Austin, TX IG: @ilysekennedy | TikTok: @thehillingjourney | movingpartspsychotherapy.com | ilysekennedy.net

Struggling with loneliness after a breakup or life change? In this solo episode, therapist Ilyse Kennedy explores the difference between loneliness and aloneness — and how learning to embrace being alone can actually become a source of strength.

Ilyse shares her own experience moving into her first home alone, the rituals she built to "romance herself" (dinner reservations for one, tree time, candlelit baths), and what the U.S. Surgeon General's report reveals about the health risks of chronic loneliness. She also breaks down how to know when to lean into alone time versus when to push through discomfort and show up for community.

Whether you're newly single, an introvert recharging, or just trying to get more comfortable in your own company, this episode offers real, practical ways to shift from loneliness to aloneness.

🎧 Follow The Hilling Journey for more on healing, attachment, and mental health. 📍 Ilyse Kennedy, LPC-S, LMFT-S | Moving Parts Psychotherapy, South Austin, TX IG: @ilysekennedy | TikTok: @thehillingjourney | movingpartspsychotherapy.com | ilysekennedy.net

Lindsay is once again unavail but Ilyse sits down with Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy baddie: Grace Lawrie, LPC- Associate (she/they). Come get your questions about psychotherapy and psychedelics answered in this exciting episode!

Learn more about Grace and their work here!

You can find your hosts on socials @thehillingjourney and on Beyonce's Internet

*transcript coming soon!

The hosts speak with Julia Berg, LPC-Associate and Phoebe Coccetti, LPC-Associate about all things limerence. The term is used to describe fantasizing and obsessing over someone you don't have a relationship with or can never be with. These therapists began a support group to aid daters experiencing limerence. We cover everything from what it says about our attachment systems to Lindsay and Ilyse exploring why they might be prone to such a state.

Transcript coming soon!

Forever hilling. Ilyse's divorce has been final for over a year and Lindsay's will be final any day now. After each being in their relationships for 13 years they have a lot to say on the topic of togetherness, seperation, and aloneness. More conversations, less stigma and shame please.

Some reading recs!

David Whyte: The House of Belonging

Lindsay's Substack essay: Gut health? Intuition Health Baby.

Learn more about The Hilling Journey HERE. Follow us on Instagram @TheHillingJourney.

Lindsay and Ilyse speak with activist and author of "Love in a Fucked Up World," Dean Spade on the healing power of relationships and how to have better ones. Dean shares all he has learned about relationships through his own hilling journey and being in activist spaces. They touch on each of their favorite topics including app culture, grief, attachment, and sexuality. You don't want to miss out on Dean's wisdom and Lindsay's tears.

Find his book at your local independent bookstore and find him on social media at @spade.dean

You can find your hosts on socials @thehillingjourney and on Beyonce's Internet