Joanne H. Twombly, MSW, LICSW is a psychotherapist in private practice in Arlington, Massachusetts. She has over 30 years of experience working with Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders and provides trainings and consultation.

She has written chapters on EMDR and Dissociative Disorders, EMDR and Internal Family Systems, and on working with Perpetrator Introjects. Her book “Trauma and Dissociation Informed Internal Family Systems: How to Successfully Treat Complex PTSD, and Dissociative Disorders” (2023) is the first book to integrate Internal Family Systems with knowledge from the trauma and dissociation field.

Her commitment to providing clients with healing and has resulted in her becoming an EMDR Consultant and a Trauma and Recovery HAP Facilitator, Internal Family Systems Certified, and an American Society for Clinical Hypnosis Consultant.

She is a past president of the New England Society of Trauma and Dissociation, served on various ISSTD committees and on the board. She received ISSTD's Distinguished Achievement Award and is an ISSTD Fellow.

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.