Included in Session 1:
Trauma Basics! (3-hours)
How to read the room, taught step-by-step
How to lend Self-energy: Do’s and don’ts
How to build a ‘we’ container, where the therapist is ‘in’ the room (yes, some clients need this!)
How to work with your confused, fraudulent, and overwhelmed therapist parts
Targeted psychoeducation: Support for clients’ thinking managers
5 Parts to Start: Fight, flight, freeze, attach/submit, inner critic
When more skills are needed: DDNOS and DID
Lecture, recorded experiential exercises
What students say:
I learned a ton in this class. I watched it twice and got even more the second time. Colleen’s style is very reassuring. I feel ready to work with some of my hard clients in new ways.
—LMFT, IFS Level 1
I love Colleen’s teaching style. It makes sense of things that I have been struggling with, like how to do IFS when a client’s system is just too protected. It’s just what I needed.
—LCSW, Stepping Stones
Session 2:
Implicit and Explicit Direct Access: Essential Skills (3-hours)
This class will cover implicit and explicit direct access, skills which many clinicians have trouble with, but are so important for complex systems! When to use them, how to use them effectively, as well as the common therapist parts that interfere with their use.
Lecture, recorded live demos, recorded Q & A
What students say:
I left Level 1 with no idea how to do direct access. There just wasn’t time for me to learn it. Now I have a better understanding and will know when to swing into it when insight just isn’t working. I am super grateful!
—LMFT, Level 1
Session 3:
Implicit and Explicit Direct Access: Final Thoughts (1-hour)
This final class offers a high-level review of the previous two classes, things to remember and practice, as well as Q & A which tie the whole course together.
What students say:
This class has given me confidence and some new skills to try with some of my tougher clients. I loved it. Colleen is a wonderful teacher.
—LPC, Stepping Stones
About
Colleen West, LMFT, IFS Clinical Consultant has twenty years of training and experience resolving simple and complex trauma, and more than a decade training and supporting clinicians. She strives to be antiracist and culturally aware, and an LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent affirming consultant. Colleen lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and consults nationally and internationally, and the author of The IFS Flip Chart: A psychoeducational tool for unlocking the incredible healing potential of the multiple mind and We All Have Parts: An illustrated guide to healing trauma with Internal Family Systems.
Note from Colleen:
When I learned IFS in 2016, I knew it was a great fit for my clinical style (not coercive—!) and also transformative for my own system.
I have struggled with healing toxic core shame held by preverbal parts for 40 years! But I also had a full caseload of complex trauma clients. Sometimes my previous training in EMDR was helpful. Sometimes not. Sometimes standard IFS worked beautifully. But sometimes my clients who carried severe attachment trauma could not do IFS, the way I learned it in the Internal Family Systems Institute’s Level 1 & 2. I needed new skills!
So, this course teaches a lot of what I have learned complex clients need—the stuff to do before insight IFS can begin. Join me.
Cost: This course was originally $350. Now $197.
