MODULE 1: The Essentials of IFS with Dr. Frank Anderson

Join IFS and trauma expert Frank Anderson, MD, and learn all that this therapy model can do for you and your clients. In this practical and experiential training, you'll gain a foundational understanding of IFS — including its core methodology, neuroscience roots, and clinical application — so you can discover its full potential for permanent healing.

This module includes:

IFS Overview

In this session, Frank will offer a step-by-step breakdown of the IFS model and teach you how it applies to your clients. Learn the roles of emotions, pain and trauma within a person and begin to understand common client reactions such as substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, obsessing, conflict avoidance, bingeing, cutting, and more. Discover how to identify the “core self” within the client that holds the capacity to lasting healing.

Gain access to internal healing resources

Through in-session video demonstrations and practical instruction, Frank will teach you how to assess your clients diagnoses and symptoms (such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders) through the lens of the IFS methodology. Learn to establish therapeutic goals, and access proven processes for working with the various “parts” within your client.

In-depth overview of why IFS works

In this session, you'll discover the science behind the IFS model, including the research and evidence that showcase IFS's unique ability to permanently heal both the brain and body.

The Process to Permanent Healing

In this last session, Frank will guide you through a transformative five-step process toward permanent healing, including how to overcome abuse, trauma, and other clinical issues. He'll also arm you with a post-healing process for use in future sessions and to teach your client for at-home use. Finally, through a moving in-session video demonstration, you'll see in action how to change your client's emotional memory so your clients can leave with the feeling of lasting healing.

Dr. Richard (Dick) Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems in response to clients’ descriptions of experiencing various parts – many extreme – within themselves. He noticed that when these parts felt safe and had their concerns addressed, they were less disruptive and would accede to the wise leadership of what Dr. Schwartz came to call the “Self.” In developing IFS, he recognized that, as in systemic family theory, parts take on characteristic roles that help define the inner world of the clients. The coordinating Self, which embodies qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion, acts as a center around which the various parts constellate. Because IFS locates the source of healing within the client, the therapist is freed to focus on guiding the client’s access to his or her true Self and supporting the client in harnessing its wisdom. This approach makes IFS a non-pathologizing, hopeful framework within which to practice psychotherapy. It provides an alternative understanding of psychic functioning and healing that allows for innovative techniques in relieving clients symptoms and suffering.

In 2000, Richard Schwartz founded The Center for Self Leadership in Oak Park, Illinois. Dr. Schwartz is a featured speaker for many national psychotherapy organizations and a fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and he serves on the editorial boards of four professional journals. He has published four books and over 50 articles about IFS. His books include Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual (with Frank Anderson, M.D. and Martha Sweezy, Ph.D.), Internal Family Systems Therapy, Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model, and The Mosaic Mind (with Regina Goulding), as well as Metaframeworks (with Doug Breunlin and Betty Karrer). Dr. Schwartz lives and practices in Brookline, MA and is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard School of Medicine.

Frank Guastella Anderson, MD, completed his residency and was a clinical instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the chairman of the Foundation for Self Leadership (the Internal Family Systems Therapy organization) and has served on the research advisory committee and the speakers bureau for the Center for Self Leadership.

He has lectured extensively on the Neurobiology of PTSD and Dissociation and wrote the chapter “Who's Taking What” Connecting Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Internal Family Systems for Trauma in Internal Family Systems Therapy-New Dimensions. He has maintained a long affiliation with Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Center at Justice Resource Center in Boston and maintains a private practice in Concord, MA. He co-authored a chapter on “What IFS Brings to Trauma Treatment” in Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy and co-authored Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual.

Dr. Anderson maintains a private practice in Concord, MA, and serves as an Advisor to the International Association of Trauma Professionals (IATP).

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Delivery Method
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