Dates: 2025 date for this workshop will be announced soon
Times: 10am-5:30pm Eastern (Find the time for your location)
Instructor: Richard C. Schwartz, PhD
Location: Live on Zoom, this event will not be recorded.
Credits: 12 CEUs
Description: Trauma and the IFS Model Workshop
This workshop provides a review of the basics of the Internal Family Systems model then will focus in detail on its use with attachment injuries and trauma related presenting problems. Internal Family Systems is a non-pathologizing, hopeful framework within which to practice psychotherapy certified as an evidence-based practice by SAMHSA. IFS offers both a conceptual umbrella under which a variety of different approaches can be grounded, and a set of original techniques for creating safety and healing trauma in individuals, couples, and families. The model posits that people have a core Self that is unharmed by traumatic events. The path to healing in the IFS model is to facilitate a process that releases constraints to people living a life that is led by their core Self rather than from aspects of themselves, called parts, that act from reactive and defensive stances, causing further problems in an effort to help or protect.
The first day of the Trauma and the Internal Family Systems Model workshop will focus on helping clients release personal burdens developed as a response to trauma in their lives. An overview of the clinical applications of IFS in trauma work will be presented. You will learn through didactic teaching, interactive dialogue, demonstration, and live interviews.
During the second day, the focus will be on understanding and releasing legacy burdens. Legacy burdens are beliefs and emotions we and our clients absorb from family, peers, ethnic groups and cultural contexts regarding ourselves and/or groups with whom we identify, as well as groups we consider “other.” Dr. Richard Schwartz will describe those burdens and the fears of releasing them. He will show how this work is critically important to create more peace and less divisiveness in our often-fractured world. Through the concept of legacy burdens and the path to healing them, Dr. Schwartz will posit a way of understanding ethnic, racial and other differences related to intersecting identities that create paths to a more ethical and just approaches to working across differences between and among the people with whom we work.
Dr. Schwartz will discuss contraindications to using IFS therapy as well as the ways the model can and cannot be easily integrated with other approaches to trauma work. He will discuss current research on the Internal Family Systems model including limitations of the data and needs for further study.
Statement of Need: Prior to the pandemic there was a greater need for trauma trained mental health professionals than there were clinicians available. Currently, we are living in a time of significant added stress, trauma, complicated grief, and uncertainty. IFS is a model that was developed as an intervention to support clients with dangerous trauma reactive behaviors who were not responding well to traditional methods. This two-day workshop will provide many concepts and methods to enhance their capacity to serve work with a wide range of clients and traumatic reactions in a variety of settings.
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD is a marriage and family therapist, author and creator of the Internal Family Systems model. He began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. He co-authored, with Michael Nichols, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, the most widely used family therapy text in the U.S. Dr. Schwartz was Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Institute for Juvenile Research and later at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. Currently, he is a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, at Cambridge Health Alliance. His Internal Family Systems approach to psychotherapy suggests alternative ways of understanding psychic functioning and healing creating innovative techniques for relieving clients’ suffering and symptoms. In 2000, Richard Schwartz founded the Center for Self Leadership in Oak Park, Illinois now known as IFSI, the Internal Family Systems Institute. A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz serves on editorial boards of four professional journals. He has published several books and over fifty articles about IFS. His books include: Many Minds, One Self; You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships; Internal Family Systems Therapy; Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model; and The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves of Child Abuse Survivors (with Regina Goulding); as well as Metaframeworks(with Doug Breunlin and Betty Karrer), about transcending current models of family therapy.
Participants will learn how to:
- Deal with client “resistance” more effectively and with less effort
- Utilize the clients’ Self to repair attachment injuries
- Recognize the IFS model as an internal attachment model
- Identify the effects of trauma on parts and Self
- Have a sense of how to utilize the model in treating trauma
- Gain some awareness of their own parts and how those parts impact treatment
- Explore the sources of burdens and fears
- Identify strategies for releasing burdens and fears
- Release legacy burdens
Schedule
Learning Objectives
- Explain the basic theory and principles of Internal Family Systems therapy as they apply to working with trauma.
- Describe how the Internal Family Systems Model understands the primary route to healing trauma.
- Identify three major roles that wounded parts play in the inner system.
- List eight qualities that define Self.
- Describe how the IFS model is an internal attachment model.
- Explain parallels between external and internal attachment styles.
- Identify the effects of trauma on parts and Self.
- Define the concept of legacy burdens.
- Use two methods from the IFS model to stay grounded when working with traumatized clients.
- Compare the way IFS works with other models that use skill building to begin trauma work.
Target Audience
This learning event is designed for helping professionals including, but not limited to, social workers, mental health counselors, and marriage & family therapists. We designed the learning methodology to further develop beginning and intermediate professionals learning to apply the IFS Model by supporting improvement of skills for direct practice. Advanced IFS practitioners may want to attend the workshop in order to deepen their practice in direct service, supervision, and teaching roles. People who attend from professions other than those we are able to provide CEs for may request a Certificate of Attendance.
Cost
- Individual Registration: Regular Rate—$375; Early Bird Rate: $350
- Early Registration Deadline: January 31, 2023
- NEAFAST Member Rate: $330
- Black Therapists Rock, National Association of Black Counselors and all BIPOC clinicians may access an equity rate of $280.
- Please contact us for discount codes. No application is required.
- 12 CEUs will be available at an additional cost of $40 paid upon registration for social workers, mental health counselors, and marriage & family therapists.
- 12 CEUs for IFS Certification will be available at no fee for those who are IFS Certified professionals and those seeking certification.
Location
The event will be held live on Zoom. We will not be recording this event.
Additional Information
Participants MUST attend 100% of the program to earn the 12 CEUs approved for eligible professions.
CEU certificates will be downloadable within three days of each event after participants complete the workshop or course and fill out the online evaluation.
- Therapy Training Boston is approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6707 for Mental Health Counselors. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Therapy Training Boston is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CEUs FOR MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS - This program is approved by the New England Association for Family and Systemic Therapy, Inc. for professional continuing education on behalf of the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Allied Mental Health & Human Services Professions for 12 LMFT professional continuing education units. Approval #PC- 042041 LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CEUs FOR MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS
- This program has been approved for 12 Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. NASW-MA Chapter CE Approving Program, Authorization Number #D91695-3 LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CEUs FOR SOCIAL WORKERS
- Check with your state board to determine whether our approved CEUs meet the criteria for your license
Read detailed information about CEUs here.
Pease Note: 12 CEU credits for IFS Institute certification renewal have been approved.
No refunds are available for cancellations by participants regardless of the reason or time frame. If participants cancel 30 days or more prior to the event beginning, they may apply the fee to a future program. Workshops may be cancelled by Therapy Training Boston if minimum enrollment requirements are not met or in the case of other unexpected circumstances. If this occurs, a full refund will be provided.