What You'll Experience
From intimate client footage and exclusive interviews with Dick, you'll walk away with enhanced and refined skills so you can use IFS with any client — no matter the intensity of the trauma.
Introduction to the IFS Model & Client Sessions
Richard Schwartz |
Dick will enhance your understanding of the evidence-based IFS approach and guide you to take your clients beyond their pain into lasting healing.
You'll get a step-by-step breakdown of what is happening in session for Dick and his clients — so you'll be prepared to start applying IFS techniques right away. This course will not only show you how to help clients heal, but also what to do when you're triggered as the therapist so you can intuitively know how to guide your clients to the healing they're so desperately seeking.
Client Sessions
Dan, Veteran with PTSD
Meet Dan, who suffers from PTSD after being a medic in an active war zone. Dan fights to cope with suicidal and homicidal thoughts, internal voices, dissociation, and an extreme tic. In just one session, you'll see Dick demonstrate how to break through the walls Dan has put up to keep others out, bring emotions where numbness used to be, cut through resistance and keep Dan digging deeper into his pain — so he can experience healing at the root of his trauma.
Skill building:
- Overcome language barriers with diverse clients
- Address dissociated parts so you can get to your client's feelings
- Get your clients to keep going into intense emotions, even if you're triggered
- Give your clients the skills to soothe their own internal pain
Bob, Survivor of Chronic Sexual Abuse with Intense Anger Projected at Therapist
In this rare session, Dick shows you that you don't need to end a session early if a client gets angry. You'll meet Bob, who projects his anger not only at himself and others in his life, but also at Dick. Learn how to validate how the hurt clients feel underneath visceral rage. See how inner child work from an IFS perspective integrates attachment theory, systems theory, and unconditional acceptance of the client.
Skill Building:
- Create an environment of validation, even when client parts are loud and violent
- Find the true source of your client's anger
- Empower clients to “keep talking” with their damaged parts long after therapy has ended
Kathy, Chronic Sexual Abuse Survivor
Dick walks you through subtle and overt moment-to-moment changes as he works with Kathy who, after years of sexual abuse, engages in chronic self-destructive behaviors. As Kathy moves deeper into her pain and closer to healing, her in-session behaviors become very triggering for most therapists. Dick will show you how IFS can guide you in what to do when clients have intense psychosomatic pain.
Skill Building:
- Manage suicidal parts immediately so you can get to deeper work
- Stay calm when clients engage in spontaneous and intense unburdening
- Build strategies to find meaning in clients' bodily movements during sessions
Jody, Survivor of Childhood Trauma
Meet Jody, a woman with deeply ingrained emptiness, fear, and a sense she's done something wrong after years of childhood trauma. In this session, Dick shows you how the fundamental ingredients of IFS come together to free Jody from parts of herself that prevent change and have been too frightening to feel — until now!
Skill Building:
- Get resistant parts of your client on your side in the first session
- Know what to do during moments of silence with clients
- Shutdown emotional flooding and help clients get back in control
- Help clients create gratitude and peace with parts of themselves they have pushed away
