Our guest this week was Richard Schwartz, PhD, who developed the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of treatment for trauma and other therapeutic issues:

Richard Schwartz began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.

A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS. You can read more about him and about IFS on his website HERE.

Our guest this week was Jess from the YouTube channel Multiplicity and Me.

The BBC Documentary they received an award for about Dissociative Identity Disorder can be seen here:

The “360 Project” Jess referenced is here:

On the podcast today, we shared about a disaster with the family therapist, where we froze up at simple questions and couldn’t speak or respond… but so much was happening so fast inside.

We said we were able to draw about it later, and wanted to share it so that clinicians could see what the experience is like for survivors, and so that other survivors would understand they are not alone in the experience.

This is raw and vulnerable, and somewhat triggering material, so please care for yourself, as always, before and during and after looking and listening to the podcast.

We recently had Scarlet from the Labyrinth System as a guest on the podcast, and they were one of the very first YouTube channels educating about Dissociative Identity Disorder. You can see their channel HERE.

They mentioned the genetic test that helps you know which medications may be more helpful than others. It is called the GeneSight test, and you can see their website HERE.

We also spoke with Ashton Parker, from the Infinite System, who has started a collaborative website about Self-Help for those with Dissociative Identity Disorder. You can see the website HERE.

In episode 14 of season 2, Emma shared the minutes from our first internal meeting. This was huge progress, and really took a lot of time to pull off and a lot of energy to figure out how to do. We have been working on this for over a year with our therapist, and then the last month in group as well. Our first big effort as a system was this meeting about meetings as we planned what our meetings would look like, and how we would gather people to come to the meetings. It was really a lot of work! It was also exhausting, and we slept for almost twenty hours after our first meeting.

But here’s what Molly’s Meeting Minutes looked like:

You can see it was fairly simple in the beginning, just noting the date and where we were and who was present. We also noted a few that watched without participating. The main section, then, was the actual minutes from the meeting, which Molly typed as they happened. At the close of the meeting, there were assignments made for everyone attending, as well as a list of topics brainstormed to cover at the next meeting.

Maybe that gives you some simple ideas for starting meetings for your system?

Be sure that everyone is invited, even if they cannot come!

It’s the same for those who do not wish to come - they are still invited, even if they don’t want to come.

But no one has to come. Everyone always has a choice. That’s a really important thing for everyone to know.