Dates: April 1 and 2, 2026 (Wednesday and Thursday)
Time: 9:00 am – 3:15 pm EST
Date: April 3, 2026 (Friday)
Time: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm EST
Format: Hybrid
- Livestream via Zoom, or
- In person: UNC School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
CE Credit: 12 CEs, read for full information on credit types awarded.
Fees: $180 (scholarships available)
Description:
Clinicians carry more than the stories of the people they serve—they also carry their own history, systemic pressures, and the unspoken emotional weight of the work. Yet, in the field of social work and mental health, we rarely make space to explore the clinician’s inner life. This 3-day, experiential training uses the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model to help social workers and mental health professionals identify, map, and tend to the “parts” that emerge in professional practice. Participants will explore parts that develop early in a clinician’s career, those that surface during burnout, moral injury, and vicarious trauma, and the often-unspoken parts that appear in moments of rupture, self-doubt, loneliness, and systemic strain.
Through a combination of didactic teaching, guided meditations, structured reflection, and experiential breakout groups, participants will:
- Identify clinician parts activated by challenging clinical situations, systemic inequities, and personal life events.
- Practice skills for unblending from activated parts and connecting to Self-energy in the moment.
- Explore how to tend to exiled parts carrying the emotional residue of client stories.
- Name and normalize experiences often left unspoken in the field, including grief, frustration, ethical dilemmas, identity fatigue, and financial strain.
- Develop sustainable, values-aligned practices for maintaining longevity and integrity in the work.
- This training offers a safe, compassionate space to acknowledge what it means to be a helping professional today—and to leave with greater clarity, self-compassion, and connection to the “why” that brought you to this work.
Format:
The course blends short lectures, large group discussions, guided meditations, journaling, and small group experiential exercises. The training emphasizes participant choice, emotional pacing, and the creation of a supportive learning environment.
Target Audience:
Social workers, counselors, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and other helping professionals at all stages of their careers. Suitable for those new to the field, seasoned clinicians navigating burnout, and professionals considering a career transition.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the training participants will be able to:
- Describe the IFS model as it applies to the clinician’s internal system.
- Identify and map parts that emerge in response to burnout, moral injury, vicarious trauma, and other professional stressors.
- Apply IFS-informed techniques to unblend from reactive parts in clinical practice.
- Engage in Self-to-part connection with exiles carrying vicarious trauma.
- Recognize and name commonly unspoken clinician experiences to reduce shame and isolation.
- Develop personal strategies for sustaining resilience and alignment with professional values.
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. She believes that healing happens most often when we are seen, heard, and understood by those who value our existence. She also believes 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. She most often provides a safe container for individuals seeking help due to generational trauma, ancestral trauma, inner child wounding, sexual violence, racism, sexism, oppression, sexual identity/romantic relationship stressors, 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 Skills Cohort Leader for Naropa University’s Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy certificate program. Tasha is the author of tell me where it hurts: poetry, meditations, and divinely inspired love notes and a memoir, What Children Remember. Her writing has been featured in She Lives Her Truth and 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.
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
- Earleywine, M., Oliva, A. B., de Leo, J. A., & Banks, R. (2025). An examination of internal family systems interventions for trauma with implications for ethical psychedelic-assisted treatment. Journal of Psychedelic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2024.00265
- 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
- Phillips, T. K., Rose, A. L., & Strickland, M. L. (2022). The mediating role of self-leadership in the link between racial identity attitudes, mental health outcomes, and race related stress. International Journal of Systemic Therapy, 33(3), 175–
- Turns, B., Springer, P., Eddy, B. P., & Sibley, D. S. (2021). “Your exile is showing”: Integrating sandtray with internal family systems therapy. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 49(1), 74–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2020.1851617
- Welch, T. S., White-VanBoxel, J., Timm, T. M., & Blow, A. (2025). A task analysis of key processes to access an exiled part in internal family systems. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2025.2472766
- Hughes, C. L., Horton, E., & Hammer, T. R. (2022). We’re still standing: Internal family systems and rocketman. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 17(1), 114-122. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2020.1842275
UNC Chapel Hill – Clinical Institute Program