Presented By: Dr. Richard Schwartz, PhD.
Recorded on: Friday, September 16, 2022
Where: Virtual - Zoom Platform
*NOTE: Only Live Participants are eligible to received their 1.5 Hours Continuing Education Credits.
Session 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-to-Self connection in couples and families. Addiction is a complicated and devastating experience for many people and associated feelings of shame and failure often present a barrier between the individual and their true Self. Because addiction can also be a symptom of trauma, the IFS model is a compassionate means to revisit trauma and initiate healing, and in turn, help the individual to address the subsequent addiction behaviors. By looking at addiction as a means of self protection, staving off deep personal pain, and allowing for compassion and curiosity, IFS can be used to support the individual and empower them as they manage both the catalyst event and the coping mechanism simultaneously. Addiction and trauma can be treated and healed through IFS without shame and judgement, and instead create space for understanding and empathy which allow for healing of the whole Self and all of the suffering parts.
Educational Objectives:
1. Review the history and development of the Internal Family Systems model of therapy.
2. Review and have a general knowledge of the 3 categories of sub-personalities that most often present in therapy: Manager parts, Firefighter parts, Exiled parts.
3. Participants will be able to identify how the Internal Family Systems Model understands the primary route to healing trauma and addiction.
About Dr. Richard Schwartz, PhD.
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 relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and, thereby, 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.