Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness Using IFS, A Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy

This is a good book if someone wants to start with the basics of IFS- Internal Family Systems. It’s appropriate for therapists, clients & people who just want to self improve. It’s very reader friendly & I found it to be a good addition to my learning materials.

Extremely long book of 400 pages that feels like it is written by a 14 year old teenager into fantasy, magic, and Walt Disney! There is nothing scientific about this. At one point, it suggests that you must imagine shedding your childhood pain to one of the four elements: Water, Earth, Wind or Fire. Let me quote him, so you see how childish this is on page 99: ¨IFS has discovered that it is helpful to release a burden to one of the basic elements in nature, Water, earth, wind.... This signifies that the burden won't come back because it has been carried away by something elemental". Does this sound serious? IFS has discovered? Where? In a scientific laboratory?? The book relies on examples that are very childish, that only someone driven by fantasy would believe. It is hard to believe that after talking to a part of you that acts out, such as getting angry, that suddenly an image of you being 6 years old appears and then magically an image of you being a baby in the cradle appears and you see all this so clearly. This step just sounds too fantastic to believe. Most likely the author and his clients create these fantasy "child" images. I'm sure 40 years ago you were not walking as a baby with a selfie stick seeing yourself. So these people are creating these images with their fantasy and not recovering anything. Science would probably say that those memories are most likely lost because they were pre-verbal.

I've tried any learned so much about therapy methods, trauma, etc. This is by far the best approach and it just resonates deeply. Honestly, especially CBT is a joke compared to IFS. For survivors of complex PTSD I highly recommend to additionally use the 13 steps for flashback management of Pete Walker when your do the exercises in this book. This angel of a man has them freely accessable on his website.

Aside from being easily understandable for the layperson, it motivates one to try the therapy for oneself. Since therapy is presumably of the highest importance to anyone, this book accordingly is an excellent IFS guide to it.

An excellent book for those just learning IFS therapy. Geared to both professionals and those who want to try some self- analysis. Includes step by step instructions, case examples and a great appendix. I liked that the writing style was clear and neither too academic nor too informal.