Overcoming Trauma with Internal Family Systems Therapy

Publisher's summary

It Internal Family Systems model (IFS) offers a compassionate, evidence-based treatment method for clients with relational trauma and Complex PTSD. Almost every therapist encounters this form of trauma, which brings major challenges: clients struggle with intense emotions, dissociation and protective parts that try to hide their pain. In this book, psychiatrist Frank Anderson shows why IFS is a particularly suitable form of therapy for this type of trauma and how it can be used effectively.

Embracing and validating extreme trauma symptoms occupies an important place in this book. This is discussed in detail, working with protective parts, such as critical, avoidant, addiction-prone, caretaker, or perpetrator-imitating parts. When these parts are approached in a trauma-sensitive manner, clients gain access to their undamaged Self-energy—in other words, their self-healing capacity—and can begin to heal their wounds step by step.

With current neuroscientific insights, case examples, personal reflections, and exercises, this book helps therapists, among other things, to:

• to remain calm and steadfast with clients presenting extreme symptoms
• to work with more confidence with shame, neglect, and dissociation
• to integrate neuroscientific insights into their interventions
• to effectively address comorbidity
• recognizing when your own parts have been triggered and remaining present with them with compassion
• IFS to be combined with other forms of therapy