In-Person

Exploring Internal Family Systems: Restoring Wholeness

Presented by Dr. Richard Schwartz
12.0 CE Hours
Clinical
Exploring Internal Family Systems: Restoring Wholeness

Information

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Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

  • Describe 4 basic theories and principles of Internal Family Systems therapy as they apply to work with trauma

  • Define the IFS model as an internal attachment model

  • Identify three effects of trauma on parts and Self

  • Describe their own parts and how those parts impact therapy

  • Explain the history and development of the Internal Family Systems model of therapy

Educational Goal

Participants will gain knowledge of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model.

Description

Developed over the past four decades, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model offers both a conceptual umbrella under which a variety of practices and different approaches can be grounded and guided and a set of original techniques for creating safety and fostering Self-connection.

We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. IFS challenges the mono-mind theory and offers a non-pathologizing model that delivers a route to loving, honoring, and understanding all our “parts.”

IFS has been transforming psychology for decades and has been effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment. This presentation will provide an introduction to the basics of the IFS model and its use with attachment and trauma. An overview of IFS and its clinical applications will be presented.

Target Audience

  • Counselor
  • Marriage & Family Therapist
  • Social Worker
  • Substance Use Disorder Professionals

Presenters

Dr. Richard Schwartz

Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief, and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called “parts.” These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationships that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and separated from their parts, they would shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence, and compassion. He called that inner essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s.

IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and, more recently, corporations and classrooms.

In 2013 Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA, where he is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.