Rich in clinical examples, this book offers a fresh perspective on the roles of shame and guilt in psychological distress and presents a step-by-step framework for treatment. Martha Sweezy explains how the principles of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy are ideally suited to helping trauma survivors and other clients who struggle with debilitating shame to understand and heal psychic parts wounded in childhood. Annotated case illustrations show and explain IFS techniques in action. Other useful features include boxed therapeutic exercises, decision trees, and pointers to help therapists avoid or overcome common pitfalls.
See also Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition, by Richard C. Schwartz and Martha Sweezy, the authoritative presentation of IFS.
"Human beings create and participate in interdependent external systems like families, work environments, schools, and places of worship. In addition to these physiological and external systems, our psyche hosts a complex social system. The premise of this book is that the psyche's social system includes numerous separate centers of motivation with different points of view who communicate by way of feelings, sensations, and thoughts. In this light, we can understand the aftermath of trauma as a systemic response that brings many perspectives to the overriding goal of safety. While others have written about internal family systems therapy with children, in this book we'll be looking at the child parts of adults. In the chapters to come, I show how we can heal from shame-related identity injuries and release young parts from burdened bonds using treatment strategies that any mental health practitioner can learn to use. You need not be trained in IFS to understand my examples or follow my argument"--
