Live •  Interactive •  Online

The Path to Inner Justice

How To Heal When Your Perpetrator Expects A Hall Pass

With Lissa Rankin, MD

Live on Zoom • Once a week between August 26 and September 30, 2025
Tuesdays from 9:00 am to 11:00 pm Pacific Time • Six Two-Hour Sessions

* All sessions are recorded and can be viewed within ~24 hours.

Six Weeks to Inner Peace

  • Do you dream of reconciling and repairing with an abuser, but your perpetrator just refuses to admit wrongdoing? 
  • Does your compassion for other people’s trauma cause you to let those who aren’t sorry off the hook too easily?
  • Do you practice Internal Family Systems (IFS) or other compassion-inducing or trauma-informed practices, but you sometimes get confused about how to acknowledge that there are “no bad parts” while still holding other people accountable?
  • Did you grow up confused about justice or learn spiritual beliefs that interfered with your ability to hold an abuser accountable or seek justice for yourself? 
  • If so, you’re invited to join a six-week online Zoom course exploring justice, accountability, and compassion, through an IFS lens.

We know how spiritually confusing it can feel when you’re practicing compassion and nonviolence but still carrying the weight of harm that was never addressed. This course is here to help you release that confusion and develop a deeper, truer expression of both your strength and your tenderness. This isn’t about abandoning love, it’s about including yourself in the circle of compassion you offer to everyone else.

Dr. Lissa Rankin

New York Times bestselling author, doctor, researcher, and teacher.

PRESENTS

The Path to Inner Justice

How To Heal When Your Perpetrator Expects A Hall Pass

A 6-week live Zoom course with Lissa Rankin, MD for those who long to stop enabling, stand up for yourself, and hold others accountable- without abandoning trauma-informed compassion, Self, or soul

When someone hurts you, you deserve to have the people who hurt you acknowledge the harm done. You are entitled to a sincere apology from someone who expresses remorse and regret. You have every right to have the perpetrator of abuse participate in a real repair process that leads to restorative justice, such that both the victim and the perpetrator feel restored.

Yet, many perpetrators of abuse are not interested in admitting wrongdoing, apologizing, fully empathizing with the impact of the harm they’ve caused, making real attempts to make sure the harm never happens again, making amends, and restoring their victims as best they can. Many go to their grave swearing they didn’t do it, denying the abuse, attacking the person who tries to hold them accountable, and blaming their victims. And then, to make matters worse, the burden of forgiveness is often placed on the victim, rather than expecting the perpetrator to do what real forgiveness requires- relational repair.

If this is your story, you’re not alone. You’re not crazy. You’re not too sensitive. And you’re not failing your spiritual path by wanting accountability. What you’re feeling is real. What happened to you matters. And you’re allowed to want something better—for yourself, and for all those who’ve ever been silenced, minimized, or gaslit when they tried to speak their truth.

Life isn’t always fair. The injustices we experience can cause us to give up on seeking justice when we’ve been harmed. Especially if we’ve spiritualized our lack of justice-seeking, if we’ve inflated ourselves by thinking that people who seek justice are less spiritual or more mean-spirited than those who just forgive and forget 

Most of us, if we live long enough, have been both victims and perpetrators of harmful wrongdoing. How do we work with holding ourselves and others accountable? How do we avoid blaming only ourselves and avoiding confronting the people who’ve hurt us? How do we make sure we don’t pass on the generational wounds to our own children? How do we make real repair and find ways of seeking justice while still practicing IFS and being compassionate for both our own parts and the parts of those who hurt us, in a trauma-informed way?

This course won’t hand you simplistic answers or quick-fix techniques. Instead, it invites you into a brave, sacred exploration of the real terrain of healing when justice feels out of reach. It’s a journey of becoming whole—by letting every part of you have a voice, including the parts that are angry, betrayed, longing, and afraid. With care, community, and IFS as your guide, you’ll learn how to navigate this complexity without losing yourself in it.

“You can forgive someone and still hold them accountable. Compassion and boundaries are not opposites—they are allies.” -Lissa Rankin, MD

This Course Is For You If

  • You have a tendency to empathize with abusers more than with the parts of yourself that were harmed; 
  • You’ve confused “compassion” with self-abandonment;
  • You want to hold someone accountable, attempt to repair a hurt relationship, reconnect a relational estrangement, or begin a legitimate forgiveness process- but you don’t know how to do it without becoming punitive, losing your compassion, collapsing into fawning, disappearing into spiritual bypassing, or hitting a wall of defensiveness and blame-shifting;
  • You’ve been taught that real forgiveness doesn’t require the perpetrator’s remorse—and you’re not so sure anymore;
  • You’ve tried to let it go—but something in your body won’t let you;
  • ​You’re tired of cleaning up the messes other people won’t admit they made;
  • ​You’re sensitive, compassionate, and you want to grow—not just spiritually, but relationally, emotionally, and ethically;
  • ​You’re motivated to find a way forward that doesn’t rely on denial, dissociation, dehumanization, or self-abandonment.

You don’t have to come to this work already knowing how to do it. You don’t have to be perfectly healed or spiritually “above it.” All you need is the willingness to stop shrinking yourself to keep the peace—and a desire to explore what real peace would actually require. You’ll be met right where you are, with gentleness, truth-telling, and the kind of compassion that doesn’t ask you to pretend.

“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
-Prentis Hemphill

This Workshop Will Show You

  • How to confront someone who harmed you without becoming what hurt you;
  • How to seek justice with humility and strength;
  • How to stop enabling people who refuse to grow or change;
  • ​How to navigate grief and letting go- when repair is not possible;
  • ​How to extend compassion without crossing your own boundaries;
  • How to use IFS to work with both your victim parts and your perpetrator parts with radical honesty and care.
  • ​How to reclaim your power without losing your integrity or compassion.
  • ​How to stop mistaking silence for maturity and speak your truth without shame.
  • ​How to break the cycle of harm with fierce love, clear eyes, and a steady spine.

This is not a course about “canceling” people, getting revenge, or clinging to resentment. It’s also not a course about pretending to forgive people who never asked for forgiveness. It’s a sacred space for people who want to explore...

We’ll face the hard stuff together, but not alone. This isn’t group therapy, and it’s not an echo chamber of blame. It’s a community of growth-minded seekers learning to tell the truth without becoming the villain in someone else’s story or their own. 

We’ll create a container where your pain is welcome, your parts are honored, and your vision for justice–whatever form it may take—is treated as sacred.

“There is a difference between someone being sorry and someone taking responsibility.”
— Brené Brown

A Gentle Way To Do Your Shadow Work 

IFS is a lifesaver for survivors of relational trauma who might be confused about your own behavior, yet trying to understand why relationships might be so hard for you. Daily IFS practice can help you learn to communicate more honestly and authentically with others. It can also increase your shame resilience, so you can actually do your shadow work with Self-compassion, without collapsing into a shame spiral that makes it impossible for you to go inside and understand your own behaviors.

The Workshop Program*

Six LIVE 2-hour Zoom Sessions with Lissa Rankin

All sessions will be recorded and are available within 24 hours of each session.

* Session content subject to adjustment.

9 am - 11 pm Pacific Time

11 am - 1 pm Central Time

12 pm - 2 pm Eastern Time

Session One
Tuesday, August 26th. 2025
9:00 am - 11:00 pm Pacific Time
Justice, Compassion & the Trauma-Informed Soul
After our opening circle, we lay the foundation for a new relationship with justice, one that honors both your tender, compassionate, trauma-informed heart and your fierce, merciful but boundaried wisdom. We'll explore how trauma, family conditioning, cultural and religious indoctrination, and spiritual bypassing may have shaped your beliefs about what you are (and aren't) entitled to ask for and expect when someone else has harmed you. 

Through guided IFS parts work, you’ll begin to meet the protectors who keep you silent, compliant, or over-responsible, so you can invite in the Self who is courageously, compassionately confrontational, ready to seek truth, accountability, and repair without collapsing into blame or bypass. We’ll also begin to practice a way to register a healthy protest, by speaking up for your parts in a kind, dignified way. It’s a way of saying “That’s not okay with me,” without going on the attack or lacking compassion for the person whose behaviors have hurt you. 

You’ll learn to practice making an IFS-informed protest- without turning into a shrew or an asshole when you do so.
Session Two
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025
9:00 am - 11:00 pm Pacific Time
No Bad Parts, But Still...Boundaries
Going deeper, we invite you into the paradox at the heart of this work: how to hold compassion for the wounded parts of others without letting them get away with hurting you without a real repair process. 

Using Internal Family Systems, we’ll map the parts of you that feel confused about whether accountability is “mean,” unforgiving, overly harsh, or spiritually immature. We’ll explore the difference between bad behavior and good-hearted essence, and begin practicing how to stand firm in your values while staying rooted in Self-energy, while you help any vengeful, demonizing, dehumanizing parts relax and get healing. 

You’ll begin to see that true compassion doesn’t require self-erasure, and that boundaries are not a betrayal of your spiritual path, but a fulfillment of it. When your parts are no longer afraid that asserting limits means you’re being cruel, you can begin to love more cleanly, without resentment or collapse. This is where love becomes both fierce and free.

You’ll learn that compassion and boundaries are not opposites—they are the conditions for real love.

Session Three
Tuesday, September 9th, 2025
9:00 am - 11:00 pm Pacific Time
The Truth About Real Forgiveness
In this session we dismantle harmful myths about forgiveness that have been used to silence survivors, enable perpetrators, and spiritualize injustice for millennia. You'll learn the difference between genuine relational repair and premature forgiveness, and how to listen to the exiles inside you who still long to be seen, protected, and restored. 

This week helps you shift from performative forgiveness to authentic healing, using IFS to explore the parts of you that have been pressured to “move on” before they were ready. We’ll also talk about what real forgiveness requires, and how you can set someone up for the opportunity to do real relational repair by preparing to write your Victim Impact Statement. 

This gives someone who hurt you the opportunity to do real repair so your heart can open if they’re up for it and so your heart can grieve- and you can create more distance or go “no contact” if they’re not.
Session Four
Tuesday, September 16th, 2025
9:00 am - 11:00 pm Pacific Time
Fierce Conversations & Compassionate Confrontation
This week focuses on the practical art of speaking your truth with kindness, strength, clarity, compassion, and care. You’ll learn how to prepare for and initiate hard conversations from a grounded, Self-led place—not from rage, collapse, or fawning, not from the long overdue but still abusive “doormat to diva” explosion. 

We’ll work with scripts, role play, and parts mapping to help you identify who in your system needs support before, during, and after confrontation. 

Whether you’re preparing to confront someone directly or choosing to write a letter you may never send, you’ll learn how to hold your truth with dignity, presence, and grace, but also, if repair is not possible, consequences.
Session Five
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025
9:00 am - 11:00 pm Pacific Time
What If They Never 
Apologize?

Sometimes, we get the healing our parts have always longed for and have probably tried to play out with other relationships. Sometimes, we do get what we want. We give the other person the chance to be restored, to mend the relationship, and maybe even to make amends in some meaningful way. 

But not every story or trauma, betrayal, or heartbreak ends with repair. In Week 5, we gently turn toward the grief of injustice that may never be made right, at least not by the person who hurt you. We’ll explore what it means to seek internal justice when external justice is unavailable, and how to let go not from forced forgiveness, but from deep integration, grief, and letting go.
 
Through ritual, IFS parts work, and sacred witnessing, you’ll learn how to mourn what was never acknowledged and feel your anger at what’s so unfair, so you can stop waiting, stop projecting onto other people, stop waiting for the justice that’s never coming, and start healing.

Session Six
Tuesday, September 30th, 2025
9:00 am to 11:00 pm Pacific Time
 Becoming an Ancestor of Accountability

In our final week, we turn our attention forward: How do we live out fierce accountability in our relationships, families, leadership, and legacies? 

We’ll explore how twelve step programs encourage us to take a “moral inventory” of our lives, so we can be honest with ourselves about where we’ve caused harm, whether we intended to or not, so we can take responsibility for making the first move when it comes to making amends, even if nobody ever modeled such behaviors for us. We’ll work on how to stop cycles of enabling, and how to raise children and communities in the image of truth, courage, restorative justice, and dignity for both victims and perpetrators. 

This closing session is intended to help you embody fierce compassion in action—so your integrity becomes your compass, and your compassion never costs you your dignity.

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

++ BonuS PROGRAMS

Recorded Workshop
# 1 Heal Your Wounded Boundaries
An Internal Family Systems (IFS) Approach To Relational Boundary Negotiations
Join Lissa Rankin MD and guests for a 2-day workshop plus six 2-hour recorded Video calls
The Medicine Of Opening Your Heart To Emotional Intimacy While Keeping Yourself & Others Safe 

An Internal Family Systems (IFS) Approach To Relational Boundary Negotiations with Lissa Rankin, Derek Scott, Resmaa Menakem.

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.
Recorded Workshop
# 2 Becoming Unf*ckwithable
6-part online program with Dr. Lissa Rankin and pre-eminent faculty
Finding Your Sacred “No”, So Your Yes Is A “Hell Yeah”. A transformational workshop with Lissa Rankin, Rachel Abrams, Jeff Rediger, Anasuya Godis.

Unf*ckwithable – the art of becoming emotionally stronger and using clear boundaries to develop your relationships to new depths.

Take back your power by taking responsibility for where you are not setting and upholding boundaries and enforcing consequences 

"What brought me here was a desire to live fully...wounds and all. I love the support of your community, Lissa. What better place to learn, love, and grow". – Donna, workshop participant

Advisory #1: There are many professional development programs through the IFS Institute and elsewhere, and for those of you longing to deepen your IFS education professionally, we recommend getting on the long waiting lists for IFS certification through official IFS channels. But there are so many of you yearning to benefit from the personal development aspects of IFS who don’t need a full certification process designed for therapists. Internal Family Systems For Self-Healing is designed for trauma survivors, spiritual seekers, people with chronic illness, and anyone who feels called to deepen your IFS practice for the purposes of personal development.

Advisory #2: If you have parts that severely dissociate, a group practice like this might not be the right medicine for you. We all dissociate sometimes, but some people dissociate more than others, which can make IFS inner work more risky, if you’re not being supported one-on-one. If you’re not sure whether you dissociate a lot, you can screen yourself with the DES-II, a 28 question screening tool. Take the DES-II here. If you have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder or severe Complex-PTSD, please talk to your therapist or psychiatrist before participating in this group program.

The Path to Inner Justice

EARLY BIRD PRICE IS ACTIVE FOR
24 HOUR EXTENSION
$297 Save $100
Only $197
USD
including all bonuses
If the cost of this workshop presents a financial hardship, we hope you will contact us for tuition adjustment options. Please write to support@lissarankin.com.

About Lissa Rankin, M.D.

Doctor, author, and trauma-informed medicine teacher Lissa Rankin, MD was on a decade-long quest to research her seventh book Sacred Medicine: A Doctor's Quest To Unravel The Mysteries of Healing when she bumped into the IFS model in 2013. Anecdote after anecdote from IFS therapists and their clients who were treating their traumas using IFS revealed a curious phenomenon: when people's traumas were getting treated with this cutting-edge treatment, at least sometimes, their mystery illnesses and chronic symptoms seemed to be improving.
 
Lissa's deep dive into IFS was a complete game-changer in her search for answers to why some people seem to have radical remissions from seemingly "incurable" or "terminal" illnesses- and others don't. This insight led her to write a revised edition of Mind Over Medicine, the New York Times bestseller published in 35 languages that was the centerpiece for a PBS special and several TEDx talks. Lissa has published 7 books, 3 of which include Internal Family Systems. Her 8th book, Relationsick, about the health impacts of narcissistic abuse, will come out in Spring 2026. She now trains physicians and therapists in the Whole Health Medicine Institute, using an IFS-informed approach to helping patients and clinicians optimize their chances of becoming "miracle prone." 

Lissa has since taught dozens of IFS workshops, in person at national and international retreat centers, as well as on Zoom. She and IFS founder Dick Schwartz presented a sold out full day workshop at the IFS conference in Denver in 2019. She has since taught two more IFS workshops with Dick Schwartz and three IFS workshops with IFS lead trainer and Harvard trained psychiatrist Frank Anderson, MD.
As much as she’s a fierce advocate for IFS, Lissa has also been a teacher of spiritual bypassing recovery, how people can heal after using spirituality to avoid holding people accountable, bypassing conflict, avoiding confrontation, and steering away from healing their traumas and seeking justice, when it’s an option. She is passionate about IFS and justice and seeks to dispel any myths that might cause people to misinterpret “no bad parts” as “no bad behaviors.” We can still seek justice for harmful behaviors inflicted upon us without failing in our IFS practice or lacking compassion for other people’s perpetrator parts.

Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials, her TEDx talks have been viewed over 5 million times, and she leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen, 1440, Omega, and Kripalu. Her latest health equity project is non-profit work committed to democratizing trauma healing while addressing the public health epidemic of loneliness, bringing IFS therapy out of its current status as a luxury good to anyone who needs it and is open to it, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender identity. 

Lissa lives in Sonoma County with her partner Jeffrey Rediger, her daughter Mira when she's not at art school in NYC, and their dog Gaia, also known as "The Moose." 
Frequently Asked Questions:
How do I contact customer service?
Please contact us by sending an email to support@lissarankin.com
What kind of technology will I need in order to participate?
In order to participate in this course, you will need to:
a. Access Zoom for the live calls and 
b. Access our learning platform through a web browser like Chrome or Safari. Teachable is a platform that hosts all the material for the course, including class recordings. 

You will need a good connection to the internet. You can use a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone.
Do you offer stipends or adjustments?
We believe that money should not be an obstacle to healing. If you currently do not have the means please write to support@lissarankin.com
I can't make some or any of the live calls
Many participants do not come to the live calls for many reasons ranging from time zones to work schedules or emergencies. For some it's simply a choice. All classes are recorded and made available together with any material indefinitely on our teaching site.  Choose what is best for you. You will not miss out on any content.
I am visually impaired
A person who is visually impaired will be able to navigate our content using a reader and other common navigational tools. We do not rely on slides or other visual representations.
Screenshot of Lissa Rankin teaching in a video
Where can I access the recorded calls?
Once you have signed up you will log in to our learning platform where you will find all recordings and material. It takes time to provide the content after a call. Usually we will post within 24 hours. You will have access to everything for the indefinite future.
Can you call me?
We are not resourced to make calls to individuals. You can reach us by email at support@lissarankin.com.
I don't have Facebook!
If there is an associated private Facebook group, we recommend you join. It is optional but not critical for the course so don't worry if you don't have Facebook.
Can I cancel?
Once you make a payment it triggers a series of events and expenses on our side from payment processing costs to adding you to lists and platforms. If you cancel, we cannot recoup those costs and will have to pass them on to you. Please read our terms carefully before you make a purchase. Terms
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If  the cost of this program presents a financial hardship then we hope you will contact us for a sliding scale option. Please write to support@lissarankin.com