Working with Complex Trauma
Untangling Somatic Wounds
Includes 5 client demonstration-based training sessions with Dr. Frank Anderson and Dr. Diane Poole Heller
Course Description
Discover how Internal Family Systems (IFS) provides a powerful, evidence-based framework for helping trauma survivors move beyond coping and into deep lasting healing.
Watch a Preview of the Training
Get a first-hand look at the approach, teaching style, and format you can expect in our on-demand learning sessions.
What’s included in the training?
Here is everything you get for just $347!
Five 90-minute LIVE, Demo-Based, Interactive Training Sessions
Led by Dr. Frank Anderson, this training provides a structured, hands-on learning experience designed to help you integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS) into your practice with confidence. Each session includes expert teaching, real client demonstrations, and guided experiential exercises to deepen your understanding.
Led by Dr. Frank Anderson, this training provides a structured, hands-on learning experience designed to help you integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS) into your practice with confidence. Each session includes expert teaching, real client demonstrations, and guided experiential exercises to deepen your understanding.
Each session includes core teaching, real client demos (with thorough explanations of techniques by Dr. Frank Anderson), practice exercises, corrective techniques and additional resources you can apply to your own therapeutic sessions.
- Session 1: Meeting the Parts: The Core of IFS and Healing Trauma
- Session 2: Protection to Connection: IFS Work with Anxiety and Depression
- Session 3: Healing the Nervous System: How IFS and Neurobiology Work Together to Treat Trauma
- Session 4: Healing Attachment Wounds: How IFS Supports Secure Connection
- Session 5: Healing the Family System: Using IFS to Support Children and Parents
Includes practical exercises that reinforce concepts and help you integrate somatic skills and techniques with other modalities more easily.
Client Demos that help new and experienced practitioners apply IFS principles and somatic techniques together—supporting trauma healing through embodied awareness and Self-led presence.
Private Course Portal with Lifetime Access to Course Materials including video recordings, audio, transcripts, demos, and slide handouts and additional resources for each session.
BONUS #1: Introduction to IFS – Pre-Recorded Training with Dr. Frank Anderson
Get a head start with this 60-minute foundational training, where Dr. Frank Anderson walks you through the basics of Internal Family Systems (IFS). You’ll gain a clear understanding of self, parts, and how they interact—so you can dive into the live sessions fully prepared.
BONUS #2: The IFS Glossary – Key Terms & Concepts at Your Fingertips
Confused by IFS terminology? This quick-reference guide breaks down essential concepts, making it easier to integrate IFS language into your sessions and explain parts work to clients.
BONUS #3: The IFS & Attachment Reference Guide
Explore how attachment styles influence protective parts and how to use IFS to support secure connection. This clinician-friendly resource helps you recognize patterns in your clients and tailor interventions for deeper relational healing.
An $897 value. Now yours for just $347!
Why take this course?
When it comes to healing trauma, progress rarely moves in a straight line.
Many clients come to therapy with complex trauma and attachment wounds that show up as anxiety, depression, chronic tension, or behaviors they don’t fully understand. These symptoms are often the voice of protective parts working hard to keep pain at bay.
Traditional talk therapy may offer insight, but lasting change requires engaging the whole system—mind, body, and the parts within.
Through Internal Family Systems (IFS), we learn that every symptom has a story and every part has a purpose. When we bring curiosity and compassion to those parts—and pair that with somatic awareness—we help clients access the deeper wisdom of their body and the healing energy of Self.
This course will show you how to integrate IFS and somatic approaches to:
Recognize the protective systems underlying trauma responses
Work safely with parts that hold fear, shame, or pain
Support nervous system regulation through embodied Self-energy
Create conditions for lasting transformation, even when clients can’t recall or verbalize their trauma
The body and the internal system are always communicating. Our task is to listen—gently, skillfully, and with trust in the client’s innate capacity to heal.
What you’ll learn?
In this self-paced, on-demand training, you’ll learn how to…
- Combine Internal Family Systems (IFS) with somatic awareness to help clients release protective patterns, regulate their nervous system, and access the healing power of Self.
- Assess when a client is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze response that keeps them from releasing trauma.
- Explore the primary attachment wound—and build a supportive, nurturing bridge between the adult self and the wounded child.
- Tackle both the psychological and physical symptoms of trauma by releasing trauma that’s stored in the body.
- Help clients move beyond “top-down” cognitive processing using “bottom-up” techniques and exercises that connect any emotion, image, behavior, movement or thought to its partner in sensation.
- Build your client’s confidence in tolerating uncomfortable feelings as they move through and dissipate them.
- Integrate clinical somatic tools and techniques with existing modalities to resolve fixated physiological states quickly and effectively.
- Deepen your client’s ability to receive contact in order to strengthen embodiment and presence.
- Transform the wounds of emotional and early developmental trauma into healing, fulfillment and connection.
- Support clients in their healing process, so they can feel a greater sense of connection, safety and bodily ease.
- Support clients in their healing process, so they can feel a greater sense of connection, safety and bodily ease.
Here’s what’s in the training curriculum…
Session 1
Meeting the Parts: The Core of IFS and Healing Trauma
Trauma fragments our internal world, creating protective parts that work tirelessly to keep us safe. But these parts, while well-intentioned, often block the path to true healing.
In this foundational session, Dr. Frank Anderson will introduce the core framework of Internal Family Systems (IFS), exploring how parts form in response to trauma and why Self-energy is the key to healing. You’ll gain a clear understanding of how IFS helps clients build a relationship with their parts instead of suppressing or fighting them.
By the end of this session, you will:
- Identify the three main types of parts—Preventative Parts, Extreme Parts, and Wounded Parts—and understand their roles in trauma responses.
- Learn how to recognize Self-energy and why it is the most essential healing force in IFS.
- Develop strategies for engaging protective parts without triggering resistance or retraumatization.
- Observe a live demonstration of guiding an individual through an Internal Family Systems (IFS) process to engage with their inner experience.
Dr. Anderson will walk you through real-world applications of IFS, showing exactly how to introduce clients to their internal system in a safe and structured way.
This session sets the foundation for the entire course, giving you a clear roadmap for integrating IFS into your practice and helping clients begin their journey toward true inner healing.
Session 2
Protection to Connection: IFS Work with Anxiety and Depression
Anxiety and depression are not just conditions—they are the voices of burdened parts that have been working overtime to protect us from pain. When therapists only focus on symptom management, these parts remain unheard, continuing their cycle of distress.
This session will explore how anxiety often manifests as hypervigilant, overactive protector parts, while depression arises from shutdown parts that have lost hope. Using the IFS framework, Dr. Frank Anderson will demonstrate how to help clients unburden these parts and restore inner balance.
In this training, you will learn how to:
- Identify how protective parts express themselves as anxiety and depression.
- Use IFS interventions to unburden parts without pushing past their defenses.
- Help clients reconnect with their Self-energy to shift from coping to true healing.
- Observe a live IFS session demonstrating how to work with anxious or withdrawn parts.
Dr. Anderson will provide clear, practical tools that you can immediately apply in therapy to help clients break free from the cycles of anxiety and depression—not by suppressing symptoms, but by addressing the protective system that keeps them in place.
Session 3
Healing the Nervous System: How IFS and Neurobiology Work Together to Treat Trauma
Trauma doesn’t just affect thoughts and emotions—it profoundly impacts the nervous system.
Dysregulation can show up as hyperarousal (panic, overwhelm) or hypoarousal (numbness, dissociation), making it difficult for clients to access their Self-energy and move toward healing.
In this session, Dr. Frank Anderson will bridge the gap between IFS and neurobiology, demonstrating how parts develop physiological responses to trauma and how IFS can support nervous system regulation.
By the end of this session, you will:
- Understand how trauma imprints itself on the nervous system and internal parts.
- Recognize the different ways trauma manifests in clients—through hyperactivation or shutdown responses.
- Learn IFS techniques to help clients regulate their nervous system through Self-energy.
- Engage in a discussion on working with body-based trauma and integrating somatic approaches.
This session includes a live demonstration of an IFS intervention designed to support nervous system regulation, giving you firsthand insight into how to work with dysregulated parts and help clients rebuild
a sense of safety.
Session 4
Healing Attachment Wounds: How IFS Supports Secure Connection
Attachment wounds don’t just disappear—they shape how we relate to ourselves and others for a lifetime. Clients with early relational trauma often develop protective patterns that block vulnerability and create relational difficulties.
In this session, Dr. Frank Anderson will show how IFS can repair attachment wounds by working directly with the parts that formed in response to relational trauma. You’ll also explore how your own parts may be activated in the therapeutic process and how to maintain Self-energy when working with deeply wounded clients.
Key takeaways from this session:
- Learn how attachment injuries shape protective parts and impact adult relationships.
- Explore how IFS helps clients create secure internal attachment by fostering Self-energy.
- Develop skills for recognizing and working with parts that resist connection due to past relational trauma.
- Engage in a discussion on therapist parts—how to recognize when your own system is activated and maintain therapeutic presence.
This session will provide practical interventions for helping clients rebuild trust, deepen connection, and access Self-energy to create more fulfilling relationships.
Session 5
Healing the Family System: Using IFS to Support Children and Parents
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation—family systems mirror the internal systems of each member. If one person is burdened by trauma, the entire family dynamic can be shaped by protectors working to maintain safety, sometimes at the expense of true connection.
In this final session, Dr. Frank Anderson will demonstrate how IFS can be applied in family therapy, helping both children and parents recognize and work with their protective parts to foster healthier relationships.
By the end of this session, you will:
- Understand how parts influence family dynamics and create generational trauma patterns.
- Learn how to help parents recognize and shift their own protective responses in parenting.
- Develop strategies for using IFS to facilitate secure attachment within family relationships.
- Observe a live demonstration on working with parents and children using IFS.
This closing session will bring together everything you’ve learned, helping you integrate IFS into a systemic approach that fosters healing within individuals and their families.
Meet Your Instructors
True healing begins when we stop fighting our pain and start listening to the parts of us that carry it.
Dr. Frank Anderson
is a renowned psychiatrist, trauma expert, and IFS trainer with over three decades of experience integrating neuroscience, psychotherapy, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. A former instructor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Anderson has dedicated his career to making trauma therapy more effective, accessible, and actionable for clinicians.
- Lead Trainer for Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
- Author of Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems
- International Speaker & Educator on Trauma Healing
- Featured in 60 Minutes, The New York Times, NPR, and Psychotherapy Networker
His work combines cutting-edge, brain-based psychotherapy with a deep, compassionate understanding of trauma healing, making complex mental health issues more accessible for both therapists and clients.
Our goal is to uncover secure attachment, allowing it to prevail over relational trauma or attachment disruptions—or to help us recover more quickly from distress.
Dr. Diane Poole Heller is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and teaching expert in the field of adult attachment theory and trauma resolution.
Her signature approach—DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning experience)—provides therapists and individuals with relevant skills and practical exercises that facilitate healing from attachment and trauma wounds.
Her work with adult attachment has forged a path for adults with childhood attachment injuries to develop Secure Attachment Skills (SAS) that lead to more connected and fulfilling adult relationships.
She has authored several books, including the widely acclaimed The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships. Her expertise in trauma healing has supported survivors, helpers, and families affected by events such as 9/11, Columbine, and other school shootings.
Through various training programs, books, lectures and her own work as a clinical therapist, Dr. Heller has helped a countless number of people in their healing journey towards experiencing greater intimacy, wholeness and more fulfilling relationships.
She believes that when we heal ourselves first, we heal our families, our communities and the world as a whole.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this course for?
This course is designed for clinicians, therapists, and mental health professionals looking to integrate Internal Family Systems (IFS) into their practice. Whether you’re new to IFS or want a structured approach for working with trauma, loss, and nervous system dysregulation, this course provides practical, evidence-based techniques that can be applied immediately.
Do I need prior experience with IFS to take this course?
No prior experience is required! You’ll start with a foundational introduction to IFS and progress through step-by-step guidance, live demonstrations, and experiential exercises designed to help you confidently apply IFS in clinical practice.
How long can I access the course materials if I purchase this training today?
You’ll have lifetime access to ALL training materials, including videos, transcripts, worksheets, demos, resources and bonuses too. You may also download, print or save materials at any time to your professional reference library for personal use.
In the interest of privacy, client demo videos are not downloadable.
Are the class sessions live or recorded?
All sessions were recorded live, including the Q&A segments. This reissued training features recordings of all five 90-minute sessions, along with client demonstrations, audio recordings, written transcripts, complementary resources, and exclusive course bonuses.
All of the training is on-demand, so you can learn at your own pace, or revisit sessions more than once.
Are CE credits available for this course?
Continuing Education (CE) credits are not available for this training at this time.
I’m having trouble completing the purchase. How can I get support?
If you have additional questions or need technical support, please contact our friendly Customer Support Team for help.
Is there a refund policy?
We’re confident this program will be a valuable investment in your education, personal growth and clinical practice.
Because this is a re-issue of previous of previous training (at a special promotional price) and course materials are downloadable, all sales are final.
If you have further questions, do not hesitate to reach out to our Customer Support Team for help.
What Our Students Say About This Training
“This was incredible Peter and Diane! Life changing. Amazing to see you work with clients, Peter.
I’ve never seen a therapist with so much compassion, wisdom and authentic love for his clients.”
––Carl A.
“Thank you so much for offering this course to ALL kinds of practitioners. It has been a true joy and gift to watch both Peter and Diane work and interact. Very helpful and affirming.
Thank you too for allowing us lifetime access to the material. You’re wonderful!
––Laura M.
“This was such a fantastic experience. Thank you so much Peter and Diane! As a body-focused Gestalt therapist, this knowledge is pure gold and it was an honor to witness your work in session Peter!
I absolutely loved the demos!”
––Lea F.
“The course has opened me up to a new way of seeing.
I have been feeling stuck in my work with a couple of clients—and my learning experience in the course is going to help for certain.”
––Martin M.
“Wonderful to get some more Peter ‘magic.’
I really appreciated the sessions last year and this has been equally valuable. I’m qualifying as an SEP in April and I feel so much gratitude for this work.”
––Fiona S.
“I just looooved it!
Thank you. I’m not an SE student, but I’ve learned so much—first for myself, and later on for others as well.
––Andrea B.
Dr. Frank Anderson
Dr. Diane Poole Heller
Get immediate access…
- 5 Recorded, On-Demand Training Sessions
- Real Client Demos with debriefs to identify techniques and show you how to apply the work
- Private Course Portal with Lifetime Access to Video Recordings, Audio, Transcripts, and Resources
- PLUS, Exclusive Course Bonuses!
Own It Now For Just
$347
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