Master Class:

Objectives, Reading List, Outline

Treating Complex Trauma with Trauma-Informed IFS

Objectives

Part One: Stabilization the IFS Way | 18 hours

After completing this course, the participant will be able to:

1. Apply accurate assessment across the dissociative spectrum

2. Practice working with therapist parts to find Self

4. Practice stabilization techniques to ready clients for trauma resolution

5. Apply psycho-education methods for clients with complex trauma

6. Practice Polyvagal interventions for disregulation

7. Practice attachment repair interventions

8. Explain relational/polyvagal IFS intervention for co-regulation with client

9. Practice the Meeting Place for Parts intervention with EMD/BLS

10. Summarize three methods to help clients externalize parts

11. Practice three kinds of Parts Mapping for client stabilization

12. Analyze levels of Structural Dissociation and need for Stabilization

Part Two: Resolving Complex Trauma: Going Deeper | 18 hours

After completing this course, the participant will be able to:

1. Summarize signs of readiness for standard EMDR and IFS processing with complex trauma

2. Practice EMD and BLS with protectors

3. Summarize effective medication strategies with complex trauma

4. Identify sources of support for yourself as a mental health professional

5. Explain how trauma resolves using IFS, EMDR or both

6. Practice relational/polyvagal IFS intervention for co-regulation with colleague

7. Identify common protectors in clients with complex trauma

8. Explain and practice effective interventions with client protectors in complex trauma

9. Practice dissociative symptom management skills

10. Summarize three ways to combine IFS with EMDR in a session

11. Summarize symptoms of attachment trauma in clients with complex trauma

12. Summarize three effective attachment trauma interventions for clients with complex trauma

13. Identify common legacy burdens and summarize how to treat them

14. Practice the kitchen table variation of meeting place for parts to increase communication between parts, for use with addiction.

Reading List

Texts (Read/listen in the order suggested below)

Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation, Janina Fisher (On Audible. This is dense, but extremely useful. Start with the introduction and then read the appendices, as they are practical and very useful. Then go back and read or listen to the rest. This especially important for the first half of the course.)
The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk (On Audible. Just listen or read quickly to get the broad sweep. Many of you have read it before. If you feel you have really gotten it, you may skip this one, but so many of my students get a lot more out of it a second time through.)
We All Have Parts: An illustrated guide to healing trauma with Internal Family Systems, Colleen West, 2021. (Now available in French, Spanish and Korean. Available for purchase in the USA at Smart Therapy Tools, IFS Institute Bookstore, and internationally on Amazon).
Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition, Sweezy & Schwartz (on Audible, excellent narrator. The 2020 edition is terrific. Clear and succinct. If you read the first edition, this requires another read, as it is 70% new material.)
Transcending Trauma, Frank Anderson, 2021. (On Audible—very good narrator. I highly recommend this book if you treat trauma.)

Optional Texts

Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual, Anderson, Sweezy & Schwartz (I love this book. It is succinct and extremely practical!)
What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. Bruce Perry, Oprah Winfrey.
Dissociation Made Simple, Jamie Marich.
Every Memory Deserves Respect: EMDR, the Proven Trauma Therapy with the Power to Heal. Michael Baldwin, Deborah Korn.
There’s a Part of Me… Jon Schwartz & Bill Brennan (available on IFS Institute Bookstore, great simple introduction to IFS for clients)
Loving Like You Mean It, Ronald Frederick, (On audible) (Excellent resource for mending attachment wounds.)
My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem, (On audible, excellent narrator!)
Intuitive eating: A revolutionary anti-diet approach. Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). St. Martin’s Essentials.
Running on empty: Overcome your childhood neglect. Webb, J. (2012). Morgan James Publishing.
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity. Nadine Burke Harris.
Attachment: 60 Trauma-Informed Assessment and Treatment Interventions Across the Lifespan, Christina Reese.
No Bad Parts. Richard Schwartz.

Listen

Healing Your Attachment Wounds, Diane Poole Heller (Audio only)
Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts, Richard Schwartz (Audio only)

Supplemental Handouts

Will be provided for download and printing as we go, session by session.

Course Outline

Part One: Stabilization the IFS Way | 6 Sessions

Reading for March & April, and beyond:

4-Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition, Sweezy & Schwartz [on Audible, excellent narrator. The 2020 edition is terrific.]

5--Transcending Trauma, Frank Anderson (2021) [On audible, excellent narrator.]

Session 1 | Importance of the Frame & Assessment

9-12 noon PST

-Overview of the course content

-Importance of the frame with complex clients

-5 minute guided meditation

-Self-Energy in the therapy room (Internal Family Systems)

-Assessment across the dissociative spectrum

-Hard and Soft Signs of dissociation

-Structural Dissociation

-10 minute break-

-Most triggering client exercise

-Question & Answer

IFS Training Online

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