My IFS journey began in 1989 when I was in the second year of a Masters in Counseling and Human development at the University of Iowa. As many of you do, I remember the moment when I first came across IFS. A colleague and I, both students in a practicum in the Family Therapy Clinic were reading old copies of the Family Therapy Networker together in the clinic office during a break, when we came across an article by Richard Schwartz called “Our Multiple Selves”. At this point in my career I had a degree in Psychology and Chemistry from the University of Lancaster, UK, and had previously studied for A levels (English education systems last two years of high school) in sociology, human biology and English Literature, and had worked for two years in a family and adolescent psychiatric unit in Oxford, UK. It was very clear to me that we are all part of a system; of family, community, society, world, planet etc. and I was also clear that each of us has a body made up of a system of cells and working parts etc., but I had not considered that not only am I a system of body parts, living within a society of others who are all their own systems, but also within us we have a system of sub-personalities. I immediately started to hear my parts in my mind saying things like “this is the missing piece”. Heading towards a career as a family therapist I was quite sure that family therapy could change the world for the better, and I greatly admired Virginia Satir and wanted to emulate her gentle, powerful and open way of being with families, but when it came to the individuals who were sometimes put on our caseloads in the clinic, I didn’t really know where to go. Then here was this guy proposing that we take those same systemic family therapy principles, and use them with individuals too. What a concept!
As I finished up the Masters and started a PhD in Family Therapy, a private practice and a family, I did not spend a lot of time looking for more reading than that offered by my courses, but still was holding the idea of parts in the back of my head with everyone I worked with. Then at the end of 1992 I was offered the opportunity to do a compare and contrast style review of two family therapy books for Contemporary Psychology, one of which was Metaframeworks by Breunlin, Schwartz and MacKune-Karrer (Lawson, JM: Family Therapy: Reading the Subtitles, Contemporary Psychology, 1993, Vol. 38, No. 4.) Metaframeworks was brilliant and got me looking for what else I could find by Dick Schwartz. Then in 1995 “Internal Family Systems Therapy” came out and many of us in Iowa were very intrigued. Dick was invited to do a two day intro to IFS here in Iowa City in 1995 and knocked our socks off. He invited us to find a part of ourselves that we liked but kept hidden for some reason, and then he proceeded to walk us down a path of freeing that one up through a meditation. I found a part of me who was pure exuberant joy who had been shut down in various ways through the years, and was hiding behind a part saying things like “shush, not so big, not so loud etc”. And so you can all blame Dick for the re-emergence into the world of my enthusiasm (who no-longer likes the name “over-enthusiastic part” !!)
While Dick was in Iowa he told us about the annual conference in Evanston IL, and a group of us went to the 1995 one and brought back info on how to start a peer support group, thanks to Miche Rose’s group who presented how they had been doing it for the last few years. And we were off. After a few original meetings with 9 therapists, we found that 6 of us were committed to learning this model and practicing together every week for two hours. Whenever Dick presented anywhere, or we could find anyone else presenting, at least one of us went and came back to teach the others. We went to every conference, which at the time felt like a family reunion, always ending with us all holding hands and singing “It’s In Every One of Us” then we started to hear about trainings. Eventually I went to Basic Training in 2003, which was a fabulous experience consisting of 10 one day sessions with Dick in Oak Park IL, and 4 three day weekends at the lovely Tall Oaks retreat center in Michigan, with Dick and Susan McConnell. Paul Ginter was the Assistant Trainer (AT).
In 2004 I was a Program Assistant (PA) on a level 1 training for the first time and worked with an amazing group of other PAs and fabulous trainers, Dick, Kay Gardner, Paul Ginter, and Chris Mathna was the AT. Since then I have been a PA for level 1s in St Louis (twice), Sheffield UK, Sydney Australia, Austin TX, and am planning to PA a level two in Boulder Co this year. After the St Louis training, I was asked by a group of 3 local therapists to supervise their triad practice group, which I did for two years.
Along the way, my part who loves to learn new things took me to all kinds of trainings and I studied various models of couples therapy, including training with Terry Real in 1999 (his first training, which a part of me spent telling him he ought to know about IFS!), Imago Relationship therapy in 2001-2002, and Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with Susan Johnson in 2013. I loved all of these trainings, and every time I took a new one I had a honeymoon phase of practicing some of it with my couples, but then started to notice that for my own work, I was always turning to IFS, and found myself thinking that IFS was an umbrella over all of it. Dick’s Book, “You Are The One You’ve been Waiting For” is my favourite of all his books and I have given away many copies of it, including the one I gave to my partner on our second date 7 years ago.
My level 2 was with Toni Herbine Blank in 2012 and I have taken level 3 with Dick in Boulder (2016) and again in Sheffield UK (2019). At this point, I have just retired from the private practice in Iowa City I started with 3 friends in 1990 to focus on what I have discovered is my joy, which is passing on what I have learned to therapists/practitioners who are learning the model or more experienced IFS therapists who are needing some support in doing their own work.
The peer group that we started in 1995 is still running with 3 of the original members, and we are in the process of adding a couple more to the group. We love it that we are the longest running IFS peer support group.
I have presented on IFS in a number of contexts ( As part of a class I taught for 3 years at the University of Iowa on Counseling approaches, Visiting speaker in Social work class University of Iowa, Great Lakes Retreat, Frankfort MI, Western Illinois Counseling Association, Calliope Retreat Center, mini-conference in Cedar Rapids, IA) have co-created and co-taught an in-depth introductory course in IFS with Derek Scott in Toronto, and have been in a series of videos, also with Derek Scott interviewing him about his thoughts on IFS for IFS therapists. (Check those out at http://www.derekscott.co)
The IFS community has been profoundly important in my life and I have made some of my closest friends through it, and, much as I miss that family feel of the early conferences, I have continued to find more kindred spirits as the community grows. I look forward to getting to know you too, in all your glorious multiplicity.
Joanna Lawson 