Online Workshop
Heal Your Wounded Boundaries
An Internal Family Systems (IFS) Approach To Relational Boundary Negotiations
© Photo credit Jonathan McCloud
With Lissa Rankin, MD
Join Lissa Rankin MD and guests for a 2-day workshop plus six 2-hour recorded Video calls
Get support in setting, negotiating, and respecting boundaries using Internal Family Systems, so you can protect yourself and others in order to enjoy deeper, safer intimacy, trust, empathy & respect in all your relationships.
To become a sanctuary of refuge for another fellow journeyer, to allow ourselves to receive that same solace in the arms of another, to build a container of trust and safety, to dare to open our hearts without collapsing our right to have wants, needs, fears, and boundaries that keep us separate but still in the field of love, this is the promise of healthy, reciprocal relational boundaries. - Lissa Rankin, MD.
A Trauma-Informed Internal Family Systems Approach To Negotiating With Others What’s Okay & Not Okay
When our boundaries are wounded by trauma, usually in childhood, we tend to pair up with other boundary-wounded people, not just in romances, but in our families, friendships, and even at work, playing out our original traumas in retraumatizing relational dynamics because of impaired boundaries. Then we wind up getting hurt- and inadvertently hurting others- until our hearts are so bruised we might be tempted to erect “Out of Business” signs that keep us from being emotionally intimate with others, perhaps for a lifetime.
While many helpful communication tools exist to help us set boundaries, manage triggers, and negotiate conflict, most of them fly out the window the minute one of our past traumas gets lit up. Why? Because when our old wounds we get triggered, the prefrontal cortex tends to go offline, and now we’re reacting from our lizard brains and reactive parts of us that are less well behaved may jump in. While those reactive parts may think they’re protecting us, they may also cause harm in our relationships when we’re in distress. Because we either freeze and fail to protect our boundaries, fight in ways that may not be fair, flee in a manner that can feel like abandonment to someone else, or fawn when we should be standing up for ourselves, all those great tools can go out the window when we’re under stress. All those stress responses can inhibit the body’s natural self-healing mechanisms and make us vulnerable to chronic or even terminal illnesses. In this way, healthy boundaries are medicine, not just for your mental health, but for your body.
When people first learn boundaries, they often erect walls that push away the very intimacy our hearts yearn for. While a hit of empowerment can definitely help protect you from abusive relationships, it can also convert you from a disempowered doormat into an empowered jerk. To improve the quality of your relationships and enjoy the health benefits of safe connections, we need to learn to exercise good boundaries with both firm self-protection and also kindness and care for the impact of our boundaries on others.
Because of our boundary confusion, we often wind up on a quest for a
“soulmate” who becomes a “woundmate".- Lissa Rankin, MD
Because of our boundary confusion, we often wind up on a quest for a
“soulmate” who becomes a “woundmate".- Lissa Rankin, MD
This kind of boundary setting not only applies to romantic or familial relationships. Healthy boundaries are also crucial for close friendships, successful business negotiations, and conflict mediations of all kinds, including addressing collective traumas and cultural conflicts. Because you’ll learn to know your own “parts” before engaging in any relational boundary, it’s also a profoundly healing tool for personal growth, self-awareness, spiritual development, intimacy-building, and physical and mental health.
To impart the tools, practices, and psycho-education necessary to teach you what it took me a decade of therapy to learn and integrate, we’re offering anyone who is interested in learning healthy IFS-informed boundaries the online program-
HEAL YOUR WOUNDED BOUNDARIES.
THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR YOU IF:
The Medicine Of Opening Your Heart To Emotional Intimacy
While Keeping Yourself & Others Safe
The Medicine Of Opening Your Heart To Emotional Intimacy
While Keeping Yourself & Others Safe
- Renew your existing relationships with more clarity and decisiveness;
- Educate yourself about developmental trauma so you have trauma-informed compassion that allows you to avoid blaming or shaming yourself or others for the ways in which poor boundaries harm you and others (in other words, healing your boundary wounding is your responsibility, but no one is to blame);
- Stop tolerating the intolerable and learn to hold people accountable when they mistreat you;
- Gain insight and tools to help you practice the guidepost we’ll use over and over again in this program- “Unconditional love; conditional access”;
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Break the pattern of spiritually bypassing your healthy anger without letting your anger harm people (and without repressing it in ways that can make you vulnerable to illness);
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Gain compassionate and clarifying insight into all the ways your wounded boundaries cause self-harm and also harm others (while being gentle with yourself);
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Empower yourself to feel less victimized- so you can really protect yourself from those who are looking for easy targets who will tolerate boundary violating behaviors;
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Learn scripts you can personalize in order to initiate boundary conversations with people you struggle to relate with;
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Understand and practice Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Non-Violent Communication (NVC);
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Expand your understanding of healthy boundaries to include social justice activism and healing the collective trauma of our culture;
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Learn tools to help you decide who gets a ticket inside your greenhouse- and who you can still love- from far, far away;
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Prepare to enjoy the sweet nectar of the intimacy rewards that shoring up your boundaries will bring you.
“Real love adores boundaries, because it is never loving to enable an abuser to violate another human being, nor is it loving to allow oneself to be repetitively abused or exploited. This is big love, because it may not feel loving to the one you’re saying no to, but it is love nonetheless, a love big enough to stand up to a bullying abuser and say “Brother, sister, beloved, I love you too much to let you get away with something so unkind, and I love myself too much to ignore the soul violence of what you’re doing.”
Real love knows that some behaviors are deal-breakers, and even if we really love someone, we might have to love them from the other side of the world or the other side of the veil of death. The mantra “Unconditional love; conditional access” is an act of self-love, protecting the sanctuaries of your tender heart and promising to gift yourself the same generosity of heart you might give other beloveds. It is also a gift to the one you’re walking away from since heartbreak can be a potent catalyst for transformation and healing, one that can wake up the abuser with the clutching ache of regret.” -Lissa Rankin
Special Guest Faculty*
Derek Scott
IFS-Informed Boundaries With Regard To Social Justice Issues
Derek Scott is a registered social worker and certified IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapist. He is the founder of IFSCA– an organization dedicated to bringing awareness of the IFS model to counsellors and therapists in Canada and beyond.
Derek has worked in the field of counselling/therapy for over 35 years, including 15 working exclusively as an IFS therapist and for 18 years as an AIDS counsellor specializing in multiple losses.
He is a popular guest lecturer in the department of Thanatology at the University of Western Ontario and has presented at numerous national and international conferences.
Resmaa Menakem
Healer, New York Times Best-Selling Author, Trauma Specialist
Moving from race to culture to creation is important, transformative, and takes work. And a lot of reps. I help people, communities, and organizations find strength in healing that is holistic and resilient.
Together let’s set a course for healing historical and racialized trauma carried in the body and the soul.
I am a healer. I help people rise through the suffering’s edge. I am a cultural trauma navigator. I am a communal provocateur and coach. I am a Senior Fellow with The Meadows Institute. I consider it my job in this moment to make the invisible visible.
*We reserve the right to make last-minute changes to faculty and scheduled appearances.
The Workshop Program
The Healthy Boundaries Program Includes
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Music Playlists to help support your nervous system and move through the material somatically
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Guided meditations led by Lissa to facilitate your IFS inner work
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Art prompts and creative practices to help you learn healthy boundaries with the aid of your muse
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Guest Faculty
+ This Program Also Includes
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Permanent Access to all recorded calls and bonus material on our learning platform
AND
2-DAY Workshop
Day 1
5 hours of content
- The Difference Between Love, Intimacy, Sex & Compatibility
- The Greenhouse(And Why Your Heart Isn’t Safe Without It)
- What is Boundary Wounding?
- Which Boundaries Are Yours To Protect?
- How To Leverage Privileges That Are Yours To Grant Or Withhold (Ethically)
- Why Empaths Can Be The Least Empathic (& How To Boundary Better Against Other People’s Emotions)
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The Intimacy Dial (& Why Love Can Be Unconditional But Intimate Access Cannot Be)
Day 2
5 hours of content
- The Difference Between Healthy Intimacy and Unhealthy Enmeshment
- Getting To Know Your Boundary Wounded “Parts”
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Introduction To IFS -Internal Family System
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A Primer in Non-Violent Communication (NVC)
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The “How” Of Boundaries 1.0
RECORDED VIDEO CALLS
Call #1
2 hours
A Trauma-Informed Lens on The Narcissist/Co-Dependent Pair-Off
• Integration
• The Psychological Roots Of Boundary Wounding
• How Healthy Is Your Ego Strength?
Call #2
2 Hours
Common Ways Boundary Wounded People Pair Up
• Integration
• How To Spot A Boundary Wounded Person
• What Are Your Relational Tendencies?
• How To Avoid Boundaryless Merging
Call #3
2 Hours
Know Your Hooks & Become “Slippery”
• The Strengths & Limitations of Boundaries 1.0
• How To Strengthen Your Boundaries While Still
• Considering The Feelings Of Others
• Why Your Right To Set Boundaries Does Not Give
• You The Right To Control Others
Call #4
2 Hours
Why You Can’t Have Healthy Boundaries Without Healthy Anger & Shame
• Using Your Anger To Protect Your Own Boundaries
• Attuning To Your Shame So You Don’t Violate The Boundaries Of Others
Call #5
2 Hours
The “How” Of Boundaries 2.0
• How IFS Can Help Us Negotiate Boundaries Relationally
• The Reward Of Boundaries 2.0 Is Intimacy
Call #6
2 Hours
Extending Compassion To Those Who Violate Our Boundaries (Without Letting Anyone Off The Hook Of Accountability)
• The Difference Between Unconditional Love & Conditional Access
• The Consequences Of Repetitive Boundary Violations
• How To Keep Your Heart Open With Your Boundaries Shored Up
Program Summary
Over 22 hours of live content
Special Bonus
If you purchase this program now you will also receive:
The Boundaries Handbook
How To Negotiate What's Okay & Not Okay InYour Relationships
A complete unpublished book about IFS-informed boundaries- The Boundaries Handbook- which Lissa wrote just for this course.
The manuscript is divided into seven sections, which includes lessons about how to shore up your boundaries in an IFS-informed way, as well as workbook activities to help you activate and apply the lessons in daily life and everyday relationships.
About Lissa
Lissa Rankin, MD, is a mind-body medicine physician, author of 7 books, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and a mystic who researches radical remission, trauma-informed medicine, and spiritual healing. Her TEDx talks have been viewed over 5 million times, and she starred in two National Public Television specials. Lissa’s interest in the link between loneliness and disease led her to spearhead her latest project, Heal At Last, a non-profit organization which aims to bring effective trauma healing and spiritual healing methods in an affordable, accessible group healing setting to anyone ready for the deep dive of healing.
Lissa is also a developmental trauma survivor whose parents had piss poor boundaries and who spent years in cutting edge trauma therapies learning how to protect herself from boundary violating people, while also learning how to protect others from her own boundary violating behavior. While protection of ourselves and others is tantamount for trust and safety, operating solely from self-protection can destroy intimacy. Most books and classes about boundaries fail to support people through how to set boundaries lovingly, fairly, firmly but gently, and through negotiation with others who also have a right to their own boundaries, needs, and preferences.
As part of her research and study into how to keep those who participate in her non-profit project Heal At Last safe from further boundary wounding, Lissa has rigorously studied the field of traumatology, including the study of healthy boundaries. To learn what's out there beyond the basic Boundaries 1.0 lessons taught in places like 12 Step programs and traditional therapy sessions, Lissa dove deeper into the study and practice of healthy relational boundaries, not just as a way to stay safe, but as a way to keep unenmeshed intimacy between two or more people safe, including not only how to practice good boundaries in families, intimate relationships, friendships, and work alliances, but also how to cult-proof our communities and protect the boundaries of individuals in groups.
Most teachings around boundaries are a necessary stop gap measure for people in abusive, boundary violating relationships. But Lissa wanted to take the practice of boundary setting a step further- into negotiations that allow two or more people to share power, rather than solely to use our firm boundaries as a way to become empowered when we're being overpowered by abusive people. If our boundaries are one-sided and we're trying to relate with healthier people who are not abusive, we might stay safe, but we can unwittingly push reasonably healthy people we love away or fail to consider their needs.
After years of treatment and trauma-informed education around boundaries as research for Heal At Last, and after many people had asked her if she could share the Cliff Notes of what she had learned in all that therapy and research, Lissa wrote a brand new, unpublished, full length book about Internal Family Systems (IFS)-informed boundaries called The Boundaries Handbook: How To Negotiate What's Okay & Not Okay In Your Relationships, upon which much of this course curriculum will be based and which will be exclusively released ONLY for those in this course.
Lissa is still seeing her own IFS therapist and tweaking her understanding of healthy boundaries, but it is her desire to stop the hemorrhage that can happen for those whose boundaries are too porous or for those who unwittingly crash into everyone else's boundaries. On the other side of good boundaries, healthy, safer intimacy and more real love are the reward worth seeking.
If the cost of this program presents a financial hardship then we hope you will contact us for other options. Please write to support@lissarankin.com
Frequently Asked Questions:
How do I contact customer service?
Please contact us by sending an email to support@lissarankin.com
Can I cancel and receive a refund?
Please review our policies here.
What kind of technology will I need in order to participate?
All you’ll need is a computer or a smartphone and internet access in order to participate. All live calls will be on Zoom.
Do you offer CEU's or certification?
We do not offer CEU's or certification for this workshop.
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