Internal Family Systems Therapy for Shame and Guilt

by Martha Sweezy, Richard C. Schwartz (Foreword)

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.
 

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Mental Health

294 pages, Paperback

Published July 6, 2023

Reviews

[Tommy Keough · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is SO good. Read this with our team of Story Group facilitators. It’s clearly meant more for clinicians practicing therapists, but even as a regular dude I found a lot of comfort and hope within these pages. IFS as a modality feels like magic, but even further, adopting the mental paradigm of psychic multiplicity in my own mind and interpersonal relationships has allowed me to find new levels of compassion and curiosity for myself and others, letting me slow down enough to be gentle rather than reactive. In terms of writing, this book was really cool. At times it reads like a textbook, but is broken up with practical transcript examples of actual sessions. Recommend, if you’re into this sort of thing.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m so grateful for this book. While the theories around patterns in systems were a little dry to me, I loved all the transcripts and found them incredibly helpful for my IFS work. Of note, Sweezy actually cites sources when making assertions or else qualifies her assertion by noting it’s based on her clinical observations. I rarely see this in similar books (see: Waking the Tiger), and it drives me insane. I also really loved the section on toddler parts protecting baby parts, it just made so much sense. If I could change one thing, I’d want more on working with parts loyal to parents. She talks about how it happens, but I’d want more on working through that.

[Armen Shirvanian]

My interview with Dr. Martha Sweezy on "Internal Family Systems Therapy for Shame and Guilt" on The Armen Show:

http://www.armenshirvanian.com/podcas...

[Timothy L MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearly written with many good examples.

[foxy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read this book twice. It was just okay. There’s a lot of case vignettes, which I find difficult to translate into action

[chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

so many of us experience shame and guilt, however as a clinician trainings rarely focus on how to attend to both. this is a great book that focuses on how shame and guilt show up in the lens of multiplicity and internal family systems (ifs). great examples and anecdotes throughout the book. also as a book focused on ifs, this is probably my favorite book on the model so far due to how it's structured and written. sweezy has an ability to help the reader feel like they're actively building their knowledge and practice, whereas most ifs books, i feel, are hella circular and often are regurgitating the same message in each chapter.