As the workshops progress the focus will be on understanding and releasing legacy burdens. Legacy burdens are powerful organizers of our minds and behaviors. You will be become more aware of the 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.” We will explore the sources of those burdens and the fears of releasing them. This work is critically important to create more peace and less divisiveness in our often fractured world.
New to this workshop, Dr. Schwartz will spend time focusing on how to support Self led activism. Dr. Schwartz will lay the foundation for and demonstrate how to work with personal and legacy burdens that get triggered in the context of political conflict and unrest. We will learn to work with what gets in the way of everyone’s innate abilities to be an effective advocate, ally and activist. This will support our work as clinicians and citizens.
Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems SM, in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the systemic relationships patterns among these parts that were similarly organized across clients. He found that when clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, they would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He will show us how to support clients in that state of Self, to facilitate their healing of their own parts.
Learning Objectives
• Participants will be able to identify the basic theory and principles of Internal Family Systems therapy as they apply to working with trauma
• Participants will be able to identify how the Internal Family Systems Model understands the primary route to healing trauma
• Participants will be able to identify the 3 major roles that wounded parts play in the inner system
• Participants will be able to list the 8 qualities that define Self
• Participants will be able to describe the IFS model as an internal attachment model
• Participants will be able to explain parallels between external and internal attachment styles
• Participants will be able to identify the effects of trauma on parts and Self including having 2 ideas about how utilize the model in releasing personal trauma
• Participants will be able to describe legacy burdens
• Participants will be able use 2 methods to help them stay in Self when working with traumatized clients
• Participants will be able to compare the way IFS works with other trauma to models that rely on psychoeducation and skill building to begin trauma work.
Target Audience
This learning event is designed for helping professionals including, but not limited to, social workers, psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage & family therapists, and nurses. We design the learning methodology to further develop beginning, intermediate, and advanced helping professionals by supporting improvement of skills for direct practice, supervision, and management positions.