The IFS Clinician’s Guide: Restoring Self, Healing Trauma and Deepening Therapy
Learn how Internal Family Systems helps clients move beyond coping, working with the protective parts behind trauma so deeper healing can begin.
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Course Description
A five-session on-demand training led by Dr. Frank Anderson, with Dr. Diane Poole Heller, showing how Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a powerful, evidence-based framework for helping trauma survivors move beyond coping and into lasting healing.
Across five 90-minute sessions, Frank walks you through the core of IFS and how it applies to anxiety and depression, nervous system regulation, attachment wounds, and work with children and parents.
Through in-depth teaching, real client demonstrations with clear explanations of each technique, experiential exercises, and recorded Q&A, you’ll learn how to help clients build a relationship with their parts instead of fighting them, and how to bring Self-energy into the room.
Whether you’re new to IFS or looking for a structured way to use it with trauma, you’ll come away with practical tools you can bring into your sessions right away.
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?
Five 90-Minute On-Demand Training Sessions with Dr. Frank Anderson
Each session combines core teaching, real client demonstrations, experiential exercises, and practical techniques you can bring into your own sessions, covering parts work, anxiety and depression, nervous system regulation, attachment wounds, and family systems.
Client Demonstrations with Clear Explanations
Watch Frank work with clients and explain what he’s doing and why, helping new and experienced practitioners apply IFS principles and somatic techniques together.
Bonus: Introduction to IFS Video
A foundational training in which Frank walks you through the basics of IFS: Self, parts, and how they interact, so you can begin the sessions fully prepared.
Bonus Resources: The IFS Glossary, The IFS & Attachment Reference Guide, and IFS Meet the Parts
Quick-reference guides to key IFS terms and concepts, to how attachment styles influence protective parts, and to the parts themselves, so you can bring IFS language into your sessions with confidence.
Private Course Portal with Lifetime Access
Revisit the session recordings, slide handouts, and bonus resources whenever you need them, and learn at your own pace.
Why take this course?
A client’s trauma is never just a story from their past.
Even when clients develop deep insight, naming their triggers, understanding their history, and knowing why they feel the way they do, something inside them can still resist change. They stay caught in self-protective cycles that override their efforts to heal.
That’s because trauma isn’t only a memory. It’s a system. It fragments the internal world, creating protective parts that work to prevent future harm, even at the cost of well-being. When therapy focuses only on managing symptoms, those protective parts go unheard, and clients stay stuck.
Internal Family Systems offers a different path, built around three dimensions you’ll return to throughout the training:
- Understanding the Protective System: Recognizing the parts that hold fear, shame, or pain, and why they work so hard to keep a client safe.
- Working With Parts, Not Against Them: Engaging protectors without triggering resistance or retraumatization, so wounded parts can be reached and unburdened.
- Moving Beyond Coping: Helping clients access Self-energy and support nervous system regulation, so healing can go deeper than symptom relief.
Through teaching, real client demonstrations, and guided exercises, Frank shows you exactly how to bring IFS into your work, so you can help clients move beyond coping and into lasting healing.
Who is this course for?
This training is designed for clinicians, therapists, and mental health professionals who want to bring Internal Family Systems into their work with trauma, whether you’re new to IFS or looking for a more structured approach.
It may be especially valuable for:
No previous experience with IFS is required.
What you’ll learn?
In this on-demand training, you’ll learn:
Ready to put this into practice?
Watch on demand, at your own pace, with lifetime access.
Here’s what to expect from each class session…
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, and often block the path to healing.
In this foundational session, Frank introduces the core framework of IFS: how parts form in response to trauma, why Self-energy is the key to healing, and how to help clients build a relationship with their parts instead of suppressing or fighting them.
You’ll learn to identify preventative, extreme, and wounded parts, recognize Self-energy, and engage protective parts safely, with a demonstration of guiding a client through an IFS process.
Session 2
Protection to Connection: IFS Work with Anxiety and Depression
Anxiety and depression are often the voices of burdened parts working overtime to protect us from pain.
Frank explores how anxiety can show up as hypervigilant protector parts and depression as shutdown parts that have lost hope, and how to help clients unburden these parts without pushing past their defenses.
Through a demonstration with anxious and withdrawn parts, you’ll see how to help clients reconnect with Self-energy and shift from coping to healing.
Session 3
Healing the Nervous System: How IFS and Neurobiology Work Together to Treat Trauma
Trauma doesn’t only affect thoughts and emotions. It shapes the nervous system.
Frank bridges IFS and neurobiology, showing how parts develop physiological responses to trauma and how dysregulation shows up as hyperarousal or numbness and dissociation.
You’ll learn IFS techniques that support regulation through Self-energy, see a demonstration with dysregulated parts, and explore how to integrate somatic approaches.
Session 4
Healing Attachment Wounds: How IFS Supports Secure Connection
Early relational trauma shapes how clients relate to themselves and others for a lifetime.
Frank shows how IFS can repair attachment wounds by working directly with the parts that formed in response to relational injury, and how to work with parts that resist connection.
You’ll also explore therapist parts: how to recognize when your own system is activated and keep a grounded therapeutic presence with deeply wounded clients.
Session 5
Healing the Family System: Using IFS to Support Children and Parents
Family systems mirror the internal systems of each member.
In this closing session, Frank demonstrates how IFS can be applied in family work, helping children and parents recognize their protective parts and foster healthier relationships.
You’ll explore how parts shape family dynamics and generational patterns, how to help parents shift their own protective responses, and how to support secure attachment within the family, with a demonstration working with a parent and child.
Start with the first session today.
Watch on demand, at your own pace, with lifetime access.
Meet the Experts
Meet the Expert
Dr. Frank Anderson
True healing begins when we stop fighting our pain and start listening to the parts of us that carry it.
Dr. Frank Anderson MD is a world-renowned trauma expert, Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and global speaker. He is co-author of the IFS Skills Training Manual, author of the bestselling Transcending Trauma, and author of the memoir To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma and Transformation.
Dr. Anderson has a long affiliation with Bessel van der Kolk, is on the board of the Trauma Research Foundation, and is a former Lead Trainer with the IFS Institute. He is passionate about integrating current neuroscience with cutting-edge models of therapy, and is the director and cofounder of the Trauma Institute and Trauma-Informed Media.
Dr. Diane Poole Heller
Diane Poole Heller PhD is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and teaching expert in adult attachment theory and trauma resolution. She created the Dynamic Attachment Repatterning Experience™ (DARe), an approach that gives therapists and individuals practical skills for healing attachment and trauma wounds.
Her work helps adults with childhood attachment injuries develop Secure Attachment Skills (SAS) that lead to more connected and fulfilling relationships. Her expertise in trauma healing has supported survivors, helpers, and families affected by events such as 9/11, Columbine, and other school shootings.
She has authored several books, including The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships and The Attachment Workbook.
Learn directly from these experts.
Learn directly from this expert.
Watch on demand, at your own pace, with lifetime access.
Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers to common questions about course access, the training format, continuing education, and purchasing. If you need more information before enrolling, our support team is always happy to help you choose the right training.
Do I need prior experience with IFS to take this course?
No. Frank starts with a foundational introduction to IFS, and the bonus Introduction to IFS video gives you a head start. Step-by-step teaching, demonstrations, and experiential exercises help you apply IFS with confidence.
Are the sessions live or recorded?
All five 90-minute sessions were recorded live, including the Q&A segments and client demonstrations. The training is fully on demand, so you can learn at your own pace and revisit sessions as often as you like.
How long will I have access to the course materials?
You’ll have lifetime access to the session recordings, slide handouts, and bonus resources in your private course portal. In the interest of client privacy, demonstration videos are not downloadable.
Are CE credits available for this course?
Continuing Education (CE) credits are not available for this on-demand training.
I’m having trouble completing my purchase. How can I get support?
Please contact our friendly Customer Support Team at help@traumasolutions.com and we’ll help you as quickly as we can.
Is there a refund policy?
Because course materials are available immediately and can be downloaded, all sales are final. If you have questions before purchasing, please reach out to our Customer Support Team.
Are CE credits available for this course?
Continuing Education (CE) credits are not available for this training at this time.
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 a previous training 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.
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.
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