VIDEO: Helping Traumatized Clients Heal their Inner Parts

According to Dick Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, all people have within them multiple “inner parts,” each with distinct emotions, beliefs, and roles adapted to help us cope with life’s challenges.

With trauma survivors, however, these parts—in an effort to protect a person from further hurt and pain—can often stand in the way of genuine recovery. In this brief video clip, Dick explains how to work with clients so they can manage their responses and deal with the root of trauma by having a dialogue with these different parts.

“The central task of IFS therapy is to work with these parts in a way that allows deep emotional healing to take place,” Dick says in his Networker article. “If each part—even the most damaged and negative—is given the chance to reveal the origin of its burdens, it can show itself in its original valuable state, before it became so destructive.”

In our Networker Webcast series The Trauma Treatment Revolution, Dick offers an actual demonstration interview showing step-by-step the process of deep healing at the heart of the IFS model.