Dates and Times:
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. EST
Thursday, March 20, 2025
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. EST
Friday, March 21, 2025
9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST
Format: Hybrid
- Livestream via Zoom, or
- In person: UNC School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
CE Credit: 6 CEs, read for full information on credit types awarded.
Fees: $225 (scholarships available)
Early Bird Rate: $180.00 – Register by October 31, 2024
Description:
This Internal Family Systems (IFS) workshop provides information on IFS from the ground up and how to adapt it flexibly to meet diverse client needs and issues. This workshop brings together two IFS certified therapists who will share and demonstrate their perspectives, experience, and style of engagement with IFS. Participants will learn the IFS framework and language, how to introduce IFS practices to clients, and how to work with clients’ vulnerable parts that carry past hurts, protective parts that guard against pain and manage daily challenges, and self-energy that supports healing. The workshop includes the topics of legacy and cultural burdens and unburdening “exiles” – parts burdened with pain, shame, fear, and other intense emotions from past traumas, often suppressed due to their overwhelming nature. Participants will also explore different ways to apply IFS and gain insights on how to choose the best approaches for each situation. Therapists will practice skills for managing their own internal systems during therapy sessions, including tracking and managing triggered parts. Live demonstrations by Tasha and Deborah, and small group activities, will help participants integrate IFS principles into clinical work, fostering deeper therapeutic connections and transformative healing processes.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the training participants will be able to:
1. Describe the internal family system and its operational principles.
2. Identify and explain the roles of at three central parts (exiles, managers, firefighters) within the internal family system.
3. Develop adaptable language to discuss IFS concepts with diverse clients.
4. Introduce IFS model to new/prospective clients, as well as current clients who are unfamiliar with IFS or parts work.
5. Work with your own system, tracking and unblending your parts, as needed, during sessions.
6. Articulate the roles of protectors and employ strategies to shift their behaviors.
7. Identify the difference between InSight work and Direct Access work, knowing when to use each.
8. Define burdens and prioritize unburdening to facilitate system integration.
9. Integrate self-qualities (compassion, curiosity, etc.) into both personal and clinical practices.
Trainer:Tasha Hunter, MSW, LCSW is a Black, queer listener, healer, writer, teacher, and advocate. She is a liberation-centered mental health therapist who specializes in working with Black women, femmes, and LGBTQIA communities and believes that healing happens most often when we are seen, heard, and understood by those who value our existence, and that liberation isn’t possible without community and collective liberation. Tasha is a Level 3, Certified Internal Family Systems therapist who approaches healing from a non-pathologizing, decolonized lens, and most often provides a safe container for individuals seeking help due to developmental and ancestral trauma, inner child wounding, sexual violence, racism, sexism, oppression, sexual identity/romantic relationship issues, and spiritual/religious deconstruction. Tasha’s clinical practice also includes pre and post integration of psychedelic/ entheogenic medicine experiences, breathwork, somatic practices, spirituality, and ancestral wisdom. Tasha is a Clinical Cohort leader for Naropa University’s Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Certificate Program. Tasha is the author of the recently released, tell me where it hurts: poetry, meditations, and divinely inspired love notes, as well as, the memoir, What Children Remember. Her writing has been featured in the anthology She Lives Her Truth and Marla Taviano’s book, please cut up my poems. She is the host of the podcast, When We Speak. She lives in North Carolina and owns a mental health private practice.
Trainer:Deborah Klinger, M.A, LMFT, CEDS-S, is in private practice in Durham, NC. She’s been practicing therapy since 1990 and obtained her Eating Disorders Specialist certification in 1995. Deborah is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor, Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist and Approved Consultant, and Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner. Her journey with the Internal Family Systems model began with a Level 1 training in 2011. Deborah has given workshops at the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP), American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), National Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA) and North Carolina Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (NCAMFT) annual conferences, and the Carolinas Group Psychotherapy Society (CGPS) semi-annual workshop, among other venues. She periodically offers trauma-sensitive yoga and her own “Love Thy Body: Yoga for Eating and Body Concerns” series. She is published in “Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention” and was the Eating and Food Issues Topic Expert for goodtherapy.org from 10/09-1/15. She combines DBT, IFS, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and EMDR for a holistic, body-mind approach to healing.
References:
- Brenner, E. G., Schwartz, R. C., & Becker, C. (2023). Development of the internal family systems model: Honoring contributions from family systems therapies. Family Process, 62(4), 1290-1306. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12943
- Hodgdon, H. B., Anderson, F. G., Southwell, E., Hrubec, W., & Schwartz, R. (2022). Internal family systems (IFS) therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among survivors of multiple childhood trauma: A pilot effectiveness study. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 31(1), 22-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2021.2013375
- Janes, E. E., Trevino, Z. R., Koehl, H., & Hung, Y. (2022). Internal family systems and spirituality: Implications for supervision. Contemporary Family Therapy, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09625-2
- Lucero, R., Jones, A. C., & Hunsaker, J. C. (2018). Using internal family systems theory in the treatment of combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and their families. Contemporary Family Therapy, 40(3), 266-275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-017-9424-z
- McVicker, S. A. M., & Pourier, W. (2021). Two counselors envision IFS (internal family systems) therapy for addictions treatment in indian country. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 39(2), 175-197. https://doi.org/10.1080/07347324.2020.1846479
- Pate, K. D., Bankale, T., Daley, J., Smith, M., Swecker, K., & Soloski, K. (2024). Parts of me: An internal family systems lens on the LGBTQIA + coming out experience. LGBTQ+ Family : An Interdisciplinary Journal, 20(3), 157-170. https://doi.org/10.1080/27703371.2024.2309175
- Yong AG. (2020). Critical Race Theory Meets Internal Family Systems: toward a compassion spirituality for a multireligious and multiracial world. Buddhist-Christian studies, 40, 439-447.
UNC Chapel Hill – Clinical Institute Program