Basic IFS Course for Couples
Learn IFS and Essential Relationship Skills
This six-week experiential, online course for couples gives you the opportunity to learn how to use the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model on yourself for the purpose of mastering how to have hard conversations with your partner. In this class you will fine-tune parts of your personality and get on the right frequency prior to and during connection with your partner.
Early-bird discount has been extended! Course dates Sept-Oct (see below).
About IFS
IFS Therapy recognizes that our psyche is made up of different parts (feelings, thoughts, beliefs, behavior patterns or somatic sensations), sometimes called subpersonalities.
For example, one part of you might be trying to lose weight and another part might want to eat whatever you want. This is called natural multiplicity of the mind and is a radical paradigm shift from other psychologies that view the mind as either “normal” or “abnormal.”
Internal Family Systems theory teaches us that our parts take on distinct roles in order to protect us, navigate life, and survive. Two of these roles are what we call The Protectors: Managers and Firefighters. The third role is that of the parts being protected: Exiles. When you are working with parts using the Internal Family Systems model, you follow a set of steps that help you explore the parts from a consistent appreciative inquiry mindset. This is what Internal Family Systems calls Self.
"...it turns out that we are all multiple."
If you are new to IFS, I recommend that you watch its creator, Dick Schwartz, in this brief video below. You can also learn more by following the link below the video. I’ve devoted several podcast episodes to IFS, including this in-depth interview with Dr. Schwartz.
Connection Within Leads to Connection Between
The goal of this class is to improve your moment-to-moment ability to regulate your emotions, and bring compassion, calm, and courage into hard conversations.
Unlike typical couples therapy interventions, which focus on building strength in the attachment between each partner (communication skills, kindness, etc.), the IFS Course for Couples will focus on “Self-leadership” of your internal parts (mental habits, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs). Having a stable attachment to others depends on your ability to stabilize and care for your inner sub-personalities and their frequent conflicts (for example, a caretaker, procrastinator, and perfectionist parts). De-escalating inner polarities inherently leads to greater poise, tact, courage and ingenuity, all useful resources for resolving outer conflicts.
Required Reading:
Our text book will be Jay Earley’s book, Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness Using IFS, A Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy.
Recommended reading is Richard Schwartz’s book, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model.
Bootcamp for Transforming Shame and Fear into Connection
The main aim of this group will be to relieve burdens of shame, overwhelm, fear, and hopelessness carried by your hardest-working protective parts—the parts of you that manage the day-to-day business of partnership—with little time for authentic intimacy. Your teacher and guide is a twenty-year veteran couples therapist, Keith Miller (read more below).
The process: What will happen in our group time?
Our group processing time will focus on your experiences following the steps of working with your parts using IFS, integrating emotional experiences, and taking steps toward genuine intimacy. I will teach IFS concepts and ask you to work with your own parts during group meditations, exercises, and in between sessions. Each week you will have homework which includes watching a short video, reading a chapter in the book, and scheduling 40 minutes to practice working with parts with a partner. In weeks 1-3 you will be paired with one other person from the group to practice the steps we review in class of getting to know your parts. You will each take turns facilitating. In weeks 3-6 your homework partner is your relationship partner. Part of the class time will be devoted to teaching, demonstrations, and small group breakout sessions. You can learn more about the concept of “parts” and “working with parts” by watching Richard Schwartz speak about it in the video above. No experience with IFS is necessary. This course is helpful for both those highly experienced with IFS and those unfamiliar with it.
A powerful tool to disrupt projection: The You-Turn
I will teach and facilitate what is called the “You-Turn,” a technique designed to interrupt the intimacy-robbing pattern known as projection. Projection is the unsolicited attribution of your feelings onto the other, in a reflexive protective response.
For example, imagine that you feel intense anxiety and pressure about a report you’ve been asked to produce for your boss. At dinner, your partner asks you to pass the ketchup and you explode with irritation, “Why can’t you get it yourself?” By fixating on your partner, you’ve bypassed the harder work of sorting out, befriending, and speaking for your own feelings.
In our group, I’ll encourage best practices for relationship-orientated behavior (empathy, kindness, honesty, communication, forgiveness) but these skills won’t be taught directly. It is my experience that healthy between-partner behaviors naturally increase once each partner is given the chance to get a hold of themselves (the You-Turn), and allow the body to get in sync with the mind. Once you’ve opened up more clarity, calm, and connection within you through the You-Turn, then you are ready for what we call the Re-Turn, which is a clam and clear, productive dialogue with your partner.
In this group, you will have all the most powerful tools to support you in that work.
Who am I in conflict?
Rather than focusing on how to behave as a couple, (something taught in most conventional relationship enhancement programs), this unique group will exclusively focus on each partner’s internal mental habits, specifically addressing the question, “Who am I in conflict?”
It is during conflict that your most human and relatable sense of you—what IFS calls “Self”— disappears. Your primitive brain stem kicks into gear and stimulates parts of you that we call “protectors.”
Protector parts value self-protection over your whole system’s best interest. Like the military issuing martial law, your inner army of protective parts take charge of managing relations with your partner. Predictably, your partner’s army of protectors must march out to meet yours. In the blink of an eye, gone is the child-like playfulness, creativity, hopefulness, and vibrance that once flowed between the two of you. Unless both sides can get relief from the stress of being in conflict, qualities essential for growth–trust, curiosity, and hope—get exiled, leaving increasingly fewer reasons for wanting to make the relationship “home.”
Dates
Wednesday nights 6:45-8:45pm EST, on Zoom
2024
September 18
October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
COST:
Note: Course is only open to partners participating together (not for going solo)
$599 per couple
REFUND POLICY:
- A partial tuition refund of $499 will be given if you withdraw prior to 30 calendar days before the retreat.
- Tuition is non-refundable inside of 30 days before the retreat.
Location
Meetings will be held via Zoom video conference. Attendance at all six meetings is important but one absence is permitted and you may watch the recording. You will be asked to keep your cameras on unless there is an interruption or distraction on your end.
About Your Teacher: Keith Miller, LICSW
I’m a social worker with 20 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist in private practice. Since 2007, I’ve been the owner and Clinical Director of Keith Miller Counseling, a private practice that has provided mental health and couples counseling to thousands of people. In 2022, since a majority of our clients and staff preferred remote therapy, we closed our Dupont Circle location to focus on in-person care in Bethesda. In February, 2023 I founded Calliope Health Ketamine, offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
I completed my Level I training in Internal Family Systems therapy in 2008, going on to become a Certified IFS therapist, and completed Level III and Advanced IFIO (Intimacy from the Inside-Out), IFS-for-couples, training.
I’ve been a national speaker and educator on the topic of mindfulness in couples therapy and am the author of several books on personal growth and relationships, including many free webinars and courses, and Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy. I regularly teach my course for couples, Mindful Marriage, a mindfulness-based and IFS curriculum for relationship enhancement. In 2021, I started the psychology and spirituality podcast, The Soul of Life.
