Live •  Interactive •  Online

IFS For Self Healing

Peer to Peer Parts Processing Training

With Dr. Lissa Rankin, MD & Emma K Harper

Live on Zoom • Saturday, November 1st and Sunday Nov. 2nd, 2025
from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Pacific Time

Taught By

Dr. Lissa Rankin, MD

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

WITH Special Guest

Emma K HaRPER

Certified Internal Family Systems Practitioner (Level 3 trained), qualified PsychoSexual Somatics® Therapist, and Lissa's Processing Partner


PRESENT

Peer to Peer Processing

A Weekend Workshop For Anyone Interested in Practicing IFS For Self-Healing 

Dear Friend,

  • Have you been interested in doing “parts work” using the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, but you can’t afford or access an IFS therapist to help you?
  • Are you looking for self-help ways to deepen your personal growth, trauma healing, emotional intelligence, relational depth, preventive or therapeutic health interventions, and spiritual development?
  • Are you interested in being part of a community of practice, to benefit from the group healing influences of IFS?
  • ​Are you seeing an IFS therapist but would benefit from learning how to use IFS as a daily practice in between therapy sessions, with the relational benefit of having a loving witness to your parts processing journey, while also empathizing with someone else’s journey?
  • ​Are you a Complex PTSD survivor with relational trauma who is interested in trying to rebuild trust in relationships, and you want a safe enough practice partner who isn’t a friend, date, or family member?
  • ​Do you feel called to give back because your IFS parts work has helped you so much that you want to help someone else while also continuing your own practice?

Then learning how to do Peer to Peer IFS Parts Processing might be the right next step for you.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way, introduced the term “believing mirror” as a way of encouraging artists to find someone who believes in your artistic dreams and mirrors back to you your capacity to achieve them. In this workshop, we’ll be using a peer to peer IFS parts processing method to play with the idea of a “believing mirror.” Trauma survivors are often retraumatized when we dare to speak up about our trauma- and then we are gaslight, invalidated, not believed.

Imagine if you had another human being who was your “believing mirror,” not just for artistic expression, but for healing. Imagine if someone believed you when you shared about what your parts have been through and then mirrored back to you what you shared with enough precision that your parts finally feel validated, not just by you in Self, but by someone else who cares.

This is what’s possible with the IFS peer to peer parts processing method. You can pair up with one other person to practice working with your parts while someone else witnesses, mirrors, and validates your experience. And in return, you do the same for them. This not only give you both believing mirrors; it also teaches a deepening of empathy, something that trauma survivors may lack but can absolutely be taught.

“Lissa, your peer to peer parts processing instructions are the “how” of how to build trust and love someone with Complex PTSD.”  -Frank Anderson, MD, IFS lead trainer and Lissa’s co-creator of the Write To Heal process

It’s Not Just For Trauma Survivors…

You don’t have to identify as a trauma survivor to benefit from peer to peer parts processing. You might be working with some parts that want to achieve an artistic, entrepreneurial, or professional goal and other parts that are hell bent on sabotaging that goal. And your parts processing partner can bear witness to both your dreams and your fears, helping you “unblend” and depolarize these parts so you can get some consensus in your internal family system.

Or you might benefit from someone who helps you parts process a difficult relationship you’re trying to heal. You might need to let angry parts vent to your parts processing partner, so you can discharge some of that angry energy, before having an important confrontation with someone you need to speak with more authentically and courageously.

Why practice Internal Family Systems? IFS is a game-changer for many people. Learning to master IFS as a self-help tool requires four basic goals- 1)​ Liberating parts from the extreme roles they’ve been forced into by trauma, so they can express their naturally valuable qualities 2) Rebuilding trust between Self and parts so you can be a more trustworthy person with good discernment 3) ​Reharmonizing your internal family system so there’s less polarization and confusion inside 4) Practicing Self-leadership in how you make your decisions in the world. 

Then, you can put your IFS work into real life practice with a practice partner, someone who is not your best friend, your therapist, your romantic partner, or your business colleague, someone safe enough to share even your most vulnerable firefighters and exiles with, someone who will help you love even the hard to love parts of yourself, while you offer the same gift to them.

Doing The YOU-Turn

We all get triggered sometimes in day to day life. When you can milk your inevitable triggers for all the healing potential contained within them and use that milk to heal yourself and others that you love, IFS can become a potent path for self-healing, whether we’re talking about physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health. We know IFS therapy can be expensive and hard to access, but there’s a lot you can do to either accelerate your trauma therapy or do what it’s safe to do on your own or with a peer support partner who is also learning and practicing IFS. While it’s not the right medicine for everyone, IFS can offer most trauma survivors mental and physical health benefits, even for those who can’t afford or access an IFS therapist.

Peer to peer parts processing is a way to practice Internal Family Systems (IFS) as part of your self-healing practice with someone else who is IFS-informed but not necessarily a trained therapist. The advantage is that, if you and your partner are motivated, you can do this everyday, making more rapid progress through your IFS journey. Peer-to-peer parts processing can be profoundly healing, especially for survivors of Complex-PTSD or anyone with trust issues. But it’s not naturally intuitive for some trauma survivors, so it’s wise to get trained in how to do this effectively and safely.

Because people are finding it so hard to find good trauma therapists, because good trauma therapy is an expensive luxury good usually not covered by insurance or socialized medicine, and because, even if you have a great therapist, you usually only see your therapist, at best, once a week, parts processing with peer support can be a very effective, efficient, intimate and loving gateway to trauma healing, boundary repair, and transformation- as long as it's done safely enough.

The purpose of this training is to not only guide you through how to do peer to peer parts processing, but also how to facilitate parts processing with impeccable boundaries- so you don't harm someone you're intending to help or wind up harmed. Parts processing with the right partner can be very intimate, very healing, very tender and heart opening, and potentially also activating to our parts sometimes, if you and/or your partner are not careful. Engaging in parts processing is also a wonderful way to learn relational repair, because you and your partner won’t always get it 100% right, especially if neither of you are therapists. But you can learn how to speak up, stop people-pleasing, be more assertive in a relational way, ask for what you need, and learn how to receive.

This Weekend Zoom Workshop Will Help You

  • Learn how to work with your “protector parts” to get to know them so you can help them relax their extreme behaviors;
  • Develop more presence, psychological depth, capacity for intimacy, sensitivity, empathy, and personal accountability in how you show up with others;
  • Depolarize the inner conflicts we feel from parts that carry different opinions about how we live our lives;
  • ​Know when it’s safe to go inward—and when to seek external support with a licensed therapist;
  • ​Understand how to connect with parts through emotion, imagery, sensation, art, dreams, and more;
  • Learn how and begin to practice peer-to-peer parts processing (if desired)
  • ​Make a daily practice with pre-recorded IFS meditations you can use, until you don’t need them anymore and can do daily IFS meditations solo;
  • ​Get to know your inner parts with curiosity, compassion, and consent;
  • ​Identify parts that self-sabotage—and learn how to lead them from Self;
  • ​​Befriend your protector parts and help them soften their grip on extreme behaviors;
  • ​​Begin to rewire your nervous system to support healing and integration;
  • ​Access more Self energy—calm, clear, compassionate, and connected;
  • ​Understand your needs and make courageous, boundaried asks;
  • ​Unblend from spiritual bypassing parts and get real about what hurts so you can practice a more authentic spirituality;
  • ​Reparent yourself with fierce love and gentle structure;
  • ​​Practice daily IFS meditations safely, without overwhelming your system;
  • ​Cultivate a spiritual practice rooted in presence, not avoidance.

Why Learn & Practice IFS?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a beautiful lesson in how to love, not just other people, but even your own hard-to-love parts. Everyone talks about self love, but few people tell you the “how.” How do you love the parts of you that sabotage your dreams? Or the parts that make and then break New Years Resolutions? Or the parts that pick all the wrong people and get you betrayed and heartbroken- again? Or the parts that unwittingly hurt other people, like your kids, your spouse, or your best friend? Or the parts that can’t handle messing up and wind up getting defensive when it would be kinder to just own what you’ve done and make repairs?

IFS is the “how” of self love, self compassion, and healing parts that have been burdened by trauma and then reenact trauma in your adult life. And once you can hold compassionate space for your own parts, once you can stand up for your parts and have their backs, you can safely extend empathy and compassion to others without collapsing your boundaries or throwing your own parts under the bus to please others.

It’s the how of learning to contain parts that might cross boundaries or allow others to cross your boundaries without consequences. It’s the how of dealing with your inner polarizations, like the parts that want you to fulfill your big dream and the parts that are hell bent on making sure you don’t. Or the parts that desperately want intimate connection with others, as well as the parts that want you to be a nun or a monk hiding away in a cave.

What Will You Learn?

  • The “how” of peer to peer parts processing, what to do, what not to do;
  • Experiential learning during the training so you can practice parts processing out loud;
  • The logistics of making technology work for you during this process;
  • ​How to screen for the right parts processing partner;
  • ​How to make vulnerable requests for what would most support you from your parts processing partner;
  • How to communicate boundaries to your partner- and learn to respect theirs;
  • ​What to do if you start parts processing and it isn’t working, so you need to change either how you do it or who you’re doing it with;
  • ​The process of relational repair if you hit bumps in the road;
  • ​​How to protect yourself from being controlled or being controlling with your peer support partner;

“IFS gives us the tools traditional meditative paths often don’t. It’s the ‘how’ of how to deal with the ‘monkey mind.’ It’s a non-demonizing, non-pathologizing, non-bypassing path to radical Self love, healing, transformation, and compassion for all your many “parts.”
-Lissa Rankin, MD

The Workshop Program*

A weekend with Dr. Lissa Rankin & Guest

All sessions will be recorded and are available within 24 hours after the workshop ends.

* Session content subject to adjustment.

10 am - 4 pm Pacific Time

12 pm - 5 pm Central Time

1pm - 7pm Eastern Time

Day One
Saturday, November 1st. 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm Pacific Time
The “How” Of Peer To Peer Parts Processing
10:00 am - 11:30 am Pacific Time
We’ll walk you through the instruction manual Lissa co-wrote with her parts processing partner Emma Harper, helping you learn the “do’s” and “don’t” of how to show up for your partner and what you can expect to receive in return. 

We’ll demo parts processing so you can get an idea of what it looks and feels like, so you can start working with your own parts while being lovingly witnessed by a peer support partner.
 Practicing With The Method
11:30 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time
Lissa will lead guided IFS meditations to help you get to know your own parts. Then you’ll have the chance to practice, in writing or verbally, sharing about what came up for you during your parts work. Lissa will take volunteers to do parts processing with students, while modeling what a “believing mirror” looks like. Then you’ll get a chance to practice with each other.

Lunch Q&A
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Pacific Time
You’ll have the chance to take a lunch break while Lissa answers Q&A after eating her own lunch. You can listen in live or watch the recording later to listen to the answers to your questions.
Boundaries & Safety For Parts Processing
2:00 pm - 400 pm Pacific Time
We’ll talk about how to avoid harming your parts processing partner and how to keep your own parts safe. If you’ve struggled with boundaries, this is a chance to practice with someone relatively low stakes in your life. 

You’ll get the chance to get clear about what you need and want from a parts processing partner- and what you have and wish to offer- or not. Learning what you need and how to communicate what you need is a key skill many trauma survivors struggle to learn. 

This will give you the opportunity to deepen your practice in a low risk way.
Day Two
Sunday, November 2nd. 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm Pacific Time
Lissa & Emma Harper Demo The Method
10:00 am - 11:30 am Pacific Time
Watch Lissa & Emma process their parts in real time with each other, as a way to understand how this can work- and how sweet it is when you get to be the welcoming committee for new parts your parts processing partner introduces to you as they get to know them. For Lissa and Emma, it’s like unwrapping a Christmas present each time they get to meet a new part and welcome it, with love, into awareness and integration. We know it’s a new concept to most people, but don’t worry. You’ll get plenty of time to get your questions answered and your curious parts satisfied with both Lissa and Emma.
Parts Processing “Speed Dating”
11:30 am - 1:00 am Pacific Time
Now that you know the “how” of peer to peer parts processing, we’ll give you the chance to pair up with several parts processing partners in breakout groups so you can get more experiential practice time with various parts processing partners. That way you can feel how your system responds to different energies and various internal family systems in someone else. If you meet someone your parts resonate with, you can make the vulnerable ask to see if that person wants to partner up for parts processing with you after the workshop. If they say yes, VOILA! You’ve found a parts processing partner! 
Lunch Q&A
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Pacific Time
You’ll have the chance to take a lunch break while Lissa answers Q&A after eating her own lunch. You can listen in live or watch the recording later to listen to the answers to your questions.
Get Your Mojo On
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Pacific Time
 Integrating Peer To Peer Parts Processing Into Daily Life
We’ll use Intentional Creativity, music, writing, movement, and sharing to create the field of possibility, of hope, of realistic optimism, of visioning. But we’ll also focus on some practical tools from Pia Mellody’s work that can help you do more than just vision, putting into practice trauma-informed ways of relating, including realistic expectations of yourself and others- that have the chance to deepen your IFS practice, Self to parts, and then outwards towards someone else, as you prepare to love again, not just someone else, but yourself.

++ BonuS PROGRAMS

Optional
# 1 Join Our Facebook Group And Find Your Match
Peer To Peer IFS Parts Processing in our private Facebook group.
In our private Facebook group you will find like-minded folks who are IFS-informed and committed to the process. You can post your interest and find your match!
Recorded Workshop
# 2 Healing The Trauma That Surrounds Medical Syndromes
A Two-Day Live Recorded IFS Masterclass with Dr. Lissa Rankin and Richard Schwartz, Ph.D
If you’re seeking self-healing for medical issues, this 16 hour prerecorded weekend workshop combining IFS and Lissa’s Six Steps To Healing Yourself from Mind Over Medicine might be just what the doctor ordered. 

Lissa Rankin and Dick Schwartz co-taught the sold-out IFS As Medical Treatment workshop at the last in-person IFS Conference and are expanding on what was taught there to learn an IFS-informed approach to working with the 6 Steps To Healing Yourself from Mind Over Medicine so you can help your patients, clients, yourself, or your loved ones optimize your chance for the best medical outcome.
Workbook
# 3 Write To Heal Workbook
This self-help manual Lissa co-created with Frank Anderson instructs you on how to guide your IFS practice through memoir writing.
We know that many of us have had parts that have been torn apart when we dared to be creative, and we seek to heal any parts of you that might have gotten hurt in the past when you dared to write, paint, sing, create songs, play an instrument, draw, act, or otherwise express yourself. You are so welcome here, as are all your creative parts, muse parts, vulnerable parts, brave parts, inner critic parts, scared parts, wise parts, goofy parts, perfectionist parts, fun parts, and anyone else who wants to show up and create!
Pre-Recorded
# 4 Lissa Rankin’s IFS Meditations For Daily Practice
with Dr. Lissa Rankin
Lissa created these guided meditations just for this course, so you can listen in the comfort of your own home to Lissa’s voice guiding you to get to know your parts. We’ll work with these meditations during live sessions so your system can get familiar with them. You’ll then be able to bring the safe, brave container of the group Self energy home with you, to extend and deepen your IFS practice between sessions.

IFS For Self Healing

Peer to Peer Parts Processing Training

EARLY BIRD PRICE IS ACTIVE
$297
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.

Lissa knows personally how transformational that kind of safety can be for the creative process. 

Lissa had never written a book when she first took Nancy's Writing From The Heart workshop at Esalen in 2007, right after her father died, she had a baby, and she quit her job as a doctor in the wake of her Perfect Storm (aka memoir-making material.)

After that workshop, her first memoir flew out of her. Nancy and the community of other memoir writers opened up her writing voice, and although that first book didn't get published (Lissa had no "platform" at the time), she's published seven books since then, including two memoirs.

Owning, writing, and transforming your own story from pain into magnificence is worth doing purely for medicinal purposes, regardless of whether anybody else ever reads your writing. But some trauma survivors feel passionate about sharing the lessons they've learned from their memoir-making material and have a bee in their bonnets about helping others who are still in hell when they've been to hell and made it back with holy grails of wisdom. >>>
While you certainly don't have to publish your memoir in order to receive the healing benefits of writing it, sometimes holding your story in a book in your hands helps you get it out of your body and into something beautiful that can help others, even if you self publish it.
Lissa Rankin, MD believes that writing and healing can be intimately related and teaches writing workshops infused with trauma healing and spiritual healing, both in person and virtually. Lissa agrees with Nancy Aronie that trauma is memoir-making material, and we can alchemize our pain into the most beautiful story-telling when we feel safe for the muse to come out to play, in a community of other writers who also feel safe and can help us hold our story while we rewrite it as art. 

Lissa has been writing since kindergarten and was offered her first book deal when she was 12, which she turned down, since they were her private stories. She was a creative writing major at Duke University and wrote her first fiction book as her thesis on African American women's literature while in college. Throughout her medical training while becoming an OB/GYN, she wrote stories inspired by her patients and used writing to heal the moral injury she felt while working within a corrupt medical system. 

When she quit her job as a doctor in 2007, she finally succumbed to her lifelong desire to be a career writer. Her first book Broken, a memoir about her journey through the wounded health care system, never got published because she didn't have an audience. So at the urging of her literary agent, in 2009, Lissa began blogging and publishing The Daily Flame, a daily email love letter from your "Inner Pilot Light" (Self) to your wounded parts, based on the healing model Internal Family Systems (IFS), a trauma healing spiritual path which Lissa incorporates into all the healing and writing workshops she facilitates.

Because her blog and Daily Flame emails quickly garnered a large readership, she was able to publish her first book in 2010 and has been blessed to have her last 7 books published. 
Her third book, the New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine, has sold over 300,000 copies in 28 languages. 

In addition to putting in her 100,000 hours and writing every day, in 2012, Lissa founded the Whole Health Medicine Institute, where she and a team of luminary faculty train physicians and other health care providers about “Whole Health” and the “6 Steps to Healing Yourself.” 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 and spiritual healing while eliminating the public health epidemic of loneliness, bringing Internal Family Systems and other healing modalities 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 bicoastally, half time in the San Francisco Bay Area with her daughter Mira, who is also a writer, and her puppy Gaia, who would tell great stories if only she knew how- and half time in Cape Cod with her partner Jeffrey Rediger, author of CURED, who is currently working on his own memoir-writing therapeutic journey.
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 its simply a choice. All classes are recorded and made available together with any material indefinitely on our teaching site.  Chose 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