2-Day Experiential Course Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS): Core Competencies and Techniques to Change Your Practice

CPD

Handouts

Speaker

Frances D. Booth, LICSW Related seminars and products

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Frances D. Booth, LICSW, is a certified IFS therapist and trainer with over 40 years of direct clinical experience in a wide variety of settings.  As a national and international IFS trainer, she collaborates with Dr. Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems, to bring IFS and Self-leadership to diverse populations worldwide.

Fran’s clinical specialties are: trauma, anxiety, depression, cancer and medical concerns, eating disorders, and attachment disorders. She has successfully integrated IFS principles into her practice and she consults widely to clinicians on using IFS.  She brings to this workshop a depth of experience for integrating IFS into practice.  A dynamic, engaging speaker, Fran’s unique blend of theoretical understanding and clinical expertise will provide a solid IFS foundation.

Fran graduated from Cornell University and Simmons School for Social Work and has held faculty positions at Smith College School for Social Work, Tufts Medical School and William James College.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Frances Booth maintains a private practice and is a trainer with the IFS Institute. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Frances Booth is a member of NASW and the ACSW.

Jory Agate, LMHC, MDiV, MA Related seminars and products

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Jory Agate, LMHC, MDiv, MA, is both a certified IFS therapist and IFS assistant trainer. 

Jory has been a student of IFS for over 10 years and has logged thousands of hours with a wide variety of patient populations.  As an assistant trainer for the Center for Self Leadership (CSL), the IFS organization founded by IFS creator Richard Schwartz, PhD, Jory presents IFS workshops around the country and abroad. She maintains a long affiliation with CSL and their passion to educate mental health professionals worldwide. 

She has successfully used IFS principles in a variety of cases and understands the real-world application of this effective treatment modality. As a speaker, Jory offers a unique blend of technical understanding of theory and clinical expertise, providing learners with comprehensive knowledge of the IFS approach. 

Her private practice is located Cambridge, MA where she specializes in working with trauma, attachment, families, couples, sexuality and identity, and parenting.  She received her counseling degree from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.  Previously, she had a 20-year career in Unitarian Universalist ministry.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Jory Agate maintains a private practice and receives compensation as a consultant. She receives a speaking honorarium from IFS Institute, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, and Unitarian Universalist Association. Jory Agate receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Jory Agate has no relevant non-financial relationships.

Objectives

1. Investigate Internal Family Systems (IFS) concepts and techniques to broaden treatment intervention options.
2. Assess how IFS brings a non-pathological perspective of mental health disorders by translating common comorbidities into parts language.
3. Measure the benefits of applying IFS to your current clinical practice.
4. Investigate the IFS view that client symptoms and psychopathology are attempts to solve an emotional problem.
5. Distinguish step-by-step the IFS model, and how it can free each clients’ parts from trauma, abuse, attachment injuries and suffering.
6. Plan how to start an IFS session with clients.
7. Utilize IFS meditations that can be used with clients to meet parts.
8. Analyze clinical sessions to deepen one’s understanding of IFS in a clinical setting.
9. Practice IFS interventions to enhance effectiveness in applying your new skills.
10. Integrate IFS trauma techniques with clients who have flashbacks and dissociation.
11. Apply IFS trauma strategies to help clients with intense rage or suicidality.
12. Determine how criticism and neglect from care-givers causes shame cycles in your clients and how parts-work breaks the cycle.
13. Assess special topics and see how utilizing IFS can help deepen the healing for clients.

Outline

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

• Comprehensive, compassionate, non-pathologizing paradigm
• Evolution of the model by Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D.
• Integration with various therapeutic modalities
• Shift perspective on “psychopathology”
• Understand the inner world of clients, Self and parts
• Facilitate access to inner wisdom and self-compassion
• Heighten internal strengths for healing
• Unburden and heal burdens
• Empirically validated treatment (Study limitations: small sample size, no control group)
• Risks: review clinical considerations

IFS STEP-BY-STEP
Step 1: Identify, Understand, Connect

• Translate the presenting concern into part/parts
• Map the system of parts
• Identify protectors and exiles
• Know where to begin

Step 2: Employ a Meditative Process, Mindfulness

• Differentiate the person from the symptom
• Access a state of compassion
• Help clients to become curious
• Connect with the target part
• Facilitate internal attachment work

Step 3: Work with Protective Parts

• Learn the history and benevolent intention behind the symptom
• Establish a trusting relationship with proactive and reactive parts
• Understand the fears and address concerns of protective parts
• Discover the real story behind the symptom
• Resolve internal conflicts
• Gain permission to heal

Step 4: Heal the Wound

• Inner attachment work for wounds
• Connect with the wounded part
• Witness the pain rather than relive it
• Allow compassion to flow
• Retrieve the wounded part from past
• Release feelings, thoughts, sensations, negative beliefs

Step 5: Integration

• Invite additional inner resources
• Integrate systemic reorganization
• Solidify strengths/gains

Synthesis and Application

• Flow of the model
• Goals of IFS therapy
• How to start an IFS session

IFS and the Therapist

• Recognize your therapist parts
• Understand the interaction of therapist parts with client parts
• Increase therapist self-compassion
• Redefine countertransference
• Shifted therapist role

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF IFS
Anxiety and Depression

• The IFS lens on anxiety & depression
• Allow parts a voice without overwhelm
• Mindfulness vs flooding
• Strategies to help anxious and/or depressed parts

Trauma

• Techniques to work with the extreme symptoms
• Flashbacks and dissociation
• Roadblocks to healing trauma
• New strategies for suicidality and intense rage
• Understand and heal the family lineage trauma

Shame

• Identify the critic and/or part that shames
• Recognize part that experiences shame
• Implement different clinical approaches for these parts
• Appreciate the protective system that develops around shame
• Confidently address the shame system

Relationship Issues

• Think systemically, multiple systems
• Understand the parts cycle
• Ability to unbend from reactive parts and do a U-turn

Problematic Behaviours Redefined

• Listen to the part that other parts hate
• Listen to the part that hates that problem behaviour
• Emotional eating & binge eating
• Addictions

Experiential Training INCLUDES

• Lecture & practice
• Videos
• Live demonstrations
• Meditations

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Therapists
• Addiction Counselors
• Psychiatrists
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Nurses
• Clergy
• Coaches
• Other Professionals Who Work with Mental Health issues

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