Going Beyond Acceptance to Self-Compassion

Richard Schwartz

Mindfulness has become a popular and useful tool in psychotherapy, but therapists too often encourage clients to adopt a passive-observer stance in therapy, as if it’s enough to just observe thoughts and emotions from a place of separation. This workshop will provide a comprehensive overview of how to go beyond detachment into a more engaged and relational form of self-compassion and self-healing. You’ll explore:

• Strategies used in Internal Family Systems to contact the core Self and integrate the often conflicting parts that live within us
• The importance of shifting the role of the therapist from the primary attachment figure to a container who opens the way for the client’s Self to emerge
• Methods for honestly and transparently handling situations in which you get emotionally triggered by your client

Richard Schwartz, PhD, is director of the Center for Self Leadership and the originator of the IFS Model. He’s also the author of Internal Family Systems Therapy.