IFS /IFIO Therapy with Martin Linton.

11/09/2025

Being in the you you really are, in your deepest clear essence, is instantly available when you learn the simplicity of access.

Instant liberation is available and possible. 🌀❤️

10/09/2025

🌀❤️🌀

09/09/2025

In IFS we have a term for reactive parts of the psyche called Firefighters. Fast parts that just react and act into things. Not you but emotively charged systems that have taken a particular position in a particular context to protect against feeling a particular part of the psyche that may have been wounded. These parts serve the system but manufacture what they protect against.
IFS undoes this to return to wholesomeness - All of you presence. 🌀

💡 Healing means learning to notice your reactions and giving yourself compassion in those moments.

Trauma isn’t who you are—it’s something you’ve been through. With awareness and love, you can break the cycle. 🕊️💜

07/09/2025

Circular approach 🌀 👍🏼

love love love.

💡 christineowensart

05/09/2025

Platform of existence…

04/09/2025

[article]

Pendulation, Vipassana, and the Spiral of Partswork: Returning to the Hub of Self

Healing does not travel in straight lines.
It circles, loops, oscillates—like breath moving in and out, like waves rising and falling, like awareness itself expanding and contracting. The body, the psyche, and the spirit all seem to heal not by holding one state, but by moving between.

To stay submerged in pain risks overwhelm.
To avoid it risks paralysis.
Both states are incomplete.
The path of healing is neither to drown nor to flee, but to learn the rhythm of approach and return—to trust the wisdom of moving back and forth until the unbearable becomes bearable, and the untouchable slowly softens into touch.

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Pendulation in Somatic Therapy

In somatic therapy, this rhythm is known as pendulation. Levine (1997) describes it as the natural oscillation between states of activation and states of calm. Rather than pushing directly into trauma, clients are invited to approach a fragment of sensation, then return to safety, then approach again. This gentle rhythm allows the nervous system to metabolize what was once overwhelming.

Ogden, Minton, and Pain (2006) echo this principle: transformation emerges not from catharsis or force, but through titrated, embodied oscillations that mirror the body’s innate regulatory cycles. It is like dipping a foot alternately into cold and hot water. With repetition—one, then the other, then back again—the body builds tolerance. Eventually, what once seared becomes survivable.

Polyvagal theory deepens this understanding. Porges (2011) reminds us that our nervous system seeks safety through rhythms of contraction and expansion. Pendulation gently engages this rhythm, allowing a shift from sympathetic charge toward ventral vagal safety—regulating the system through the oscillations of approach and return.

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Vipassana and the Loop of Awareness

The ancient practice of Vipassana meditation follows a similar rhythm. Attention is trained to travel across the body, sensation by sensation, field by field. Pain in the knee, warmth in the chest, tingling at the crown—each observed, then released, as awareness moves onward (Goenka, 1997). After circling the body, awareness returns to ‘start again’, looping and looping, each time less reactive, more equanimous, more infused with radical okayness.

This looping is not avoidance. It is systematic titration. By visiting each sensation briefly and moving on, the practitioner cultivates resilience and the deep recognition of impermanence. As in pendulation, healing emerges not from clinging or forcing but from rhythmic return—each cycle quietly loosening attachment, teaching the body-mind to rest in the law of change.

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Systemic Practice and Expanding the Field

Systemic therapy also embodies this rhythm through curiosity. Cecchin’s (1987) question—“What else is about?”—invites the field to widen. By shifting attention from a singular problem to wider contexts, new perspectives emerge. Shotter (1993) reminds us that meaning is generated through recursive loops of dialogue, not linear problem-solving.

Here, oscillation takes the form of conversation: focusing in, then widening out; circling back, then opening again. Just as the nervous system regulates through pendulation, so systems of meaning regulate through dialogue and recursive exploration. Each return is not static—it is an expansion, a widening spiral of understanding.

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Partswork and the Spiral of Self–Part Relationship

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), pendulation takes on a relational dimension. The rhythm is not only between states of arousal and calm, but between Self and parts, between what parts hold and what they long for.

We turn toward a protector, listen deeply, then return to Self.
We touch the pain of an exile, then step back into Self’s calm embrace.
We oscillate—part, Self, part, Self—until trust grows and the part learns that it is never abandoned to its burden, nor forced beyond its pace (Schwartz, 2021).

This movement is not a closed loop. It is a spiral. Each return to Self is slightly different, transformed by the encounter. Each visit to a part is softened by the memory of Self’s steady presence. The protector that once braced begins to ease. The exile that once hid begins to risk showing its face.

This spiral is drawn by what Martin Linton IFS calls the Gravitational Pull of Self (GPoS)—an inner field that steadily draws parts back toward wholeness. The whole inner system shifts through this oscillating spiral, not simply circling endlessly, but moving gradually toward integration under the constant gravity of Self.

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The Hub of Safety: Self and Dhamma

For oscillation to be safe, there must be a center to return to.
In IFS, this is Self—the qualities of calm, compassion, clarity, and connection that are unshaken by trauma’s storms.
In Vipassana, this is Dhamma—the essential law of nature, the ever-present ground of awareness.

The wheel turns because the hub holds the whole system—bearing the spokes, the movement, and even the dirt that temporarily clings to it along the way.
This dirt is the burdens parts have carried: trauma, shame, and painful internalisations. The hub does not resist them, nor deny their presence. It holds them lightly, allowing the turning to continue until, in time, the dirt falls away.

The hub does not reject; it contains.
It does not fracture; it steadies.
It does not force release; it allows return.

From Self, pendulation becomes bearable.
From Self, the spiral forward is made possible.
From Self, parts learn to risk, because they know there is always a place of return—home in safety.

Self is the absolute ground of safety—like water, like earth, like the breathing of space itself.
Oscillation is the path and its rhythm.
The spiral is the unfolding of transformation.
And GPoS is the quiet force that keeps the whole movement tethered to home.

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Toward a Unified Practice

When we weave these traditions together, a common wisdom emerges:
• Pendulation (Levine, 1997; Ogden et al., 2006; Porges, 2011) shows us that trauma dissolves not in one act but in rhythmic oscillations.
• Vipassana (Goenka, 1997) demonstrates that looping attention across the body cultivates equanimity and resilience.
• Systemic therapy (Cecchin, 1987; Shotter, 1993) teaches that shifting focus broadens the field and loosens stuck meanings.
• Partswork (Schwartz, 2021; Linton, 2025) reveals that oscillation between Self and parts is not a circle but a spiral, drawn by the Gravitational Pull of Self (GPoS)—each loop carrying us forward in trust and wholeness.

Together, these practices remind us: healing is a dance of rhythm.
We approach, we return.
We visit, we release.
We loop, and each loop is new.

Each loop brings us closer to home, drawn by the gravity of Self—holding even the burdens until they soften, fall away, and reveal the unbroken hub beneath.

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📚 References
• Cecchin, G. (1987). Hypothesizing, Circularity and Neutrality Revisited: An Invitation to Curiosity. Family Process, 26(4), 405–413.
• Goenka, S. N. (1997). The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation. Vipassana Research Institute.
• Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books.
• Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. Norton.
• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.
• Schwartz, R. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.
• Shotter, J. (1993). Conversational Realities: Constructing Life Through Language. Sage.
• Linton, M. (2025). The Gravitational Pull of Self (GPoS). [forthcoming].

03/09/2025

[New article] published.

Explore the overlap between CBT, REBT and IFS, and how each helps us heal emotionally.

03/09/2025

[Article]
🔄 Synthesizing IFS with an SFBT Orientation, Grounded in Self Responsible

(Full Version)

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🌀Internal Family Systems (IFS): Systemic Thinking turned inwards - A systemic Partswork approach to psychotherapy.
🌀Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT): Future orientated systemic psychotherapy.
🌀Self Responsible (SR): A non utopian Self Focus that takes self ownership of not witnessing Self in others or parts.
As the paper states:

"If you cannot see the Self in another, it is likely a part of you-blended and burdened-is doing the looking."

Step 1. Orient to the Present (Self)
• IFS: Identify a part that needs your attention (Schwartz, 1995; Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020). Ground awareness in Self and into your “body of Earth.”
• SFBT: Invite imagination of life when things are flowing better (de Shazer et al., 2007).
• Self Responsible Posture: Turn curiosity inward before judging Self in other (Linton, 2025). Notice if a judging or diagnosing a part is active. Anchor in the 13 qualities: 8 Cs + 5 Ps (Schwartz & Falconer, 2017), not as a standardised expectation pushed at others but as inner resources to be noticed in all others and all parts.

Blend Prompt:
“As you notice this part, what is its deepest hopes for you? If that were happening, how would life be different—what would be happening, what would it feel like, and what are your senses doing?”

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Step 2. Inquire for a Deeper Hope (Self Responsible + SFBT)
• Self Responsible: Ask what the part wants or feels it needs for you. Then: “And if you received that gift, what would be even more important?” Continue until its essence activates. Hold humility—what arises is not to be measured or judged, but witnessed in clear compassion - radical okayness (Linton, 2025).
• SFBT: Use scaling to anchor this essence in realism and imagine its growth in daily living (Walter & Peller, 1992).

Blend Prompt:
“On a scale of 1–10, how alive is this essence about you today? What would a small move toward a higher number appear like?”

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Step 3. Joining Essential Nature (Self Responsible + IFS)
• Self Responsible: Allow the part to blend with you and guide you with its essential quality. Remember: intensity or emotion here is not “un-Self”—it may be the part’s truth moving toward integration (Krause, 2021; Linton, 2025).
• IFS: Affirm and deepen Self-to-part connection, honoring its gift (Schwartz, 1995).

Blended Prompt:
“What is it like to embody this quality right now? How does the rest of your system respond as you stay here?”
Notice the system reordering.

💡 This is Self-to-Self seeing, knowing, and feeling—Self Responsible (systemic reflexivity; Cecchin, 1987; Bowen, 1978).

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Step 4. Integrate Meaning (Self Responsible + SFBT + IFS)
• Self Responsible: Ask what this essence means for the part’s life and relationships. Notice if parts of you want to label or control the meaning—redirect inward - An off and on, off & on frequency (Linton, 2025).
• SFBT: Translate the meaning into embodied, future-oriented imagery (de Shazer et al., 2007).
• IFS: Welcome all responses—parts that feel relieved, skeptical, or unsure.

Blend Prompt:
“If more of this quality showed up now, what would others notice in you when you are about them?”

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Step 5. Experience Qualities in Living Flow (Self Responsible + SFBT)
• Self Responsible: Ask what is needed for this transformation to live fully in daily life, what’s in the way and not. Let the answer emerge without forcing certainty. Hold difference and flow with grace (Bakhtin, 1984; McNamee & Gergen, 2004).
• SFBT: Identify exceptions and practices that already hint at this essence alive in daily life—what Walter & Peller (1992) call a “curious detection process.”

Blend Prompt:
“What helps you keep this essence alive in real life? When have you already lived from this quality, even a little, and what extra qualities would generate its flow?”

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Step 6. Embody and Act (IFS + SFBT + Self Responsible)
• Self Responsible: Picture yourself moving with this essence in the world—not as performance, but as natural unfolding. Action is not proof of Self but expression of it (Linton, 2025).
• IFS: Invite parts to collaborate with Self in supporting embodiment (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).
• SFBT: Translate into specific, concrete, future-oriented steps (de Shazer et al., 2007). Move about that place.

Blend Prompt:
“How will you walk, talk, move, taste, smell, and feel in the world differently with this essence guiding you? What qualities did you invite to assist - how did it all happen? What’s one thing you’ll do this week that lets this shine through?”

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🌱 Why This Works
• IFS provides depth: inner harmony, Self leadership, and healing of parts.
• Self Responsible provides posture: reflexivity, humility, and relational presence.
• SFBT provides practicality: small steps, vision, and daily-life embodiment.

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✅ Simplified Step-by-Step Procedure
1. Orient to the Present Moment: Grounded body in Self; notice a part; invite imagination of improved flow.
2. Inquire for Deeper Hope: Ask the part what it wants / needs, then what is even more important; scale the essence.
3. Joined Essential Nature: Let the part guide you into its essential Self-quality; observe systemic response.
4. Integrate Meaning: Explore what the essence means for relationships and life (internal - external); welcome all parts’ reactions.
5. Experience Living Flow: Notice what supports the essence in daily life; detect exceptions. ie. where it’s already alive.
6. Embodied and Active: Moving naturally with this essence permitted in the world; involve parts; define concrete, future-oriented progression.

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📚 References
• Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. University of Minnesota Press.
• Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. Jason Aronson.
• Cecchin, G. (1987). Hypothesizing, circularity, and neutrality revisited: An invitation to curiosity. Family Process, 26(4), 405–413.
• de Shazer, S., Dolan, Y., Korman, H., Trepper, T., McCollum, E., & Berg, I. K. (2007). More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. Routledge.
• Falconer, R., & Schwartz, R. C. (2017). Many Minds, One Self: Evidence for a Radical Shift in Paradigm. IFS Institute.
• Gergen, K. J., & McNamee, S. (1992). Therapy as Social Construction. Sage Publications.
• Krause, P. (2021). When “Self” becomes an emotional bypass [Podcast episode]. IFS Talks.
• Linton, M. (2025). Self Responsible: Holding the Reflexive Posture of Inner Witness. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19g6Wtprpq/?mibextid=wwXIfr
• McNamee, S., & Gergen, K. J. (2004). Social Construction: Entering the Dialogue. Taos Institute Publications.
• Schwartz, R. C. (1995). Internal Family Systems Therapy. Guilford Press.
• Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
• Walter, J. L., & Peller, J. E. (1992). Becoming Solution-Focused in Brief Therapy. Routledge.

01/09/2025

Lineal and Systemic Approaches: From Blame to Relational Healing

When therapists face human suffering, they often encounter a tension between two lenses of understanding: the lineal approach, rooted in traditional psychodynamic and medical models, and the systemic approach, grounded in circular or spiral patterns of relationship. This tension is not merely academic. It shapes how pain is understood, how blame is assigned, and how healing becomes possible.

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The Lineal Lens: Isolated Causality

Traditional psychotherapies often assume a cause-and-effect model: if a symptom exists, it originates within the individual psyche. The person who shows anxiety, depression, or disruptive behavior is therefore seen as the one who “has the problem.” The therapeutic task becomes identifying what is “wrong” within them and applying techniques to restore health.

This model has benefits: it offers clarity, linear progression, and the potential for personal empowerment. Yet it also carries risks. When context is ignored, the lineal lens can inadvertently place all the blame and responsibility onto the individual, turning them into the scapegoat for pain that is, in truth, relational or systemic.

As Minuchin observed in his early work on family structures, symptoms are rarely just intrapsychic — they are signals of relational stress and systemic imbalance. Yet the lineal lens often misses this, reinforcing a narrative that isolates the “identified patient” while excusing the system around them.

“In overwhelmed systems, it’s easier to scapegoat the ‘problematic’ individual than address root causes.” — Practitioner reflection

This mirrors broader cultural tendencies: societies often prefer to locate pathology in individuals rather than confront the collective structures that sustain suffering.

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The Systemic Lens: Circular Causality and Relational Fields

Systemic approaches emerged in resistance to this isolating frame. Drawing on cybernetics and general systems theory, family therapists proposed that symptoms cannot be fully understood in isolation from the relational patterns that sustain them.

Instead of asking, “What caused this problem inside you?” systemic therapists ask, “How is this problem maintained in the relationships around you?”

Circular Causality vs. Linear Thinking

Rather than imagining A → B in a straight line, systemic therapy emphasizes interdependent loops: A affects B, and B affects A, in a dynamic, ongoing dance. This shift allows therapists to ask:
• “How do each of our responses sustain this pattern?”
• “What are the roles each person plays in this emotional loop?”

Here, symptoms are not just individual failings but signals of systemic feedback — patterns sustained by the interactions of all participants.

Techniques: Circular Questioning & Structural Mapping

Systemic therapists use specific methods to reveal these loops.
• Circular questioning, developed by the Milan Associates, invites curiosity: “What happens next? How does that influence someone else?” This makes visible the pattern, rather than assigning blame.
• Structural mapping (Minuchin) charts hierarchies, boundaries, and alliances, showing how pain is distributed in the family or group. These tools shift the focus from isolated pathology to the systemic context of suffering.

As the Milan group argued, the therapist’s task is not to find “the cause” but to reveal the relational processes that perpetuate distress — a profound departure from lineal thinking.

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The Clash Between Lenses

The tension between lineal and systemic approaches is not only theoretical but political. Therapists trained in traditional lineal modalities often resist systemic perspectives, seeing them as diffuse or diluting individual responsibility. Conversely, systemic thinkers argue that the lineal lens perpetuates scapegoating by cutting the individual out of their relational context.

This clash is felt most sharply when symptoms are embodied by one person in a family or group. A systemic therapist will see that individual as carrying something for the whole — a “symptom bearer” — whereas a lineal therapist may see them as the entire site of dysfunction.

In practice, these positions are often polarized:
• The lineal stance risks ignoring the relational field, collapsing responsibility into one person.
• The systemic stance risks over-contextualizing, potentially minimizing the agency or suffering of the individual.

Both lenses can serve healing — but only when their limitations are acknowledged and held with humility.

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Integrating Lineal and Systemic Wisdom

The deepest work may lie in integration. A systemic therapist can honor the reality of an individual’s pain without scapegoating them. A lineal therapist can recognize patterns of history, family, and culture without losing sight of the personal psyche.

“Symptoms often reflect system dysfunction. If a parent is depressed, we look beyond biology to relational stressors and systemic demands.” — Practitioner reflection

When systems and individuals are both seen as carriers of suffering, blame gives way to shared responsibility. Healing then becomes less about fixing one person and more about shifting the relational field in which all are embedded.

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Closing

The choice between lineal and systemic is more than methodological. It is a moral and political stance: whether to isolate suffering within the individual or to honor the wider webs of relationship, culture, and structure in which pain arises.

Neither approach is complete alone. But when brought together — acknowledging both the inner life and the systemic field — therapy can move beyond blame into the possibility of collective healing.

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References
• Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Harvard University Press.
• Selvini Palazzoli, M., Boscolo, L., Cecchin, G., & Prata, G. (1980). Hypothesizing-Circularity-Neutrality: Three Guidelines for the Conductor of the Session. Family Process, 19(1), 3–12.
• Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. H., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication. W. W. Norton & Company.
• White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. Norton.
• “Systemic Therapy.” (2025). Wikipedia
• “Structural Family Therapy.” (2025). Wikipedia
• Uhrlass, J. (2025). More Than Talk: Why Systemic Therapy Actually Works. Psychology Today.
• Systemic Perspectives. University of Queensland, Pressbooks (2025).
• “Rhetoric of Therapy.” (2025). Wikipedia
• “Scapegoating.” (2025). Wikipedia

31/08/2025

The Refusal Protectors: Polarity, Power, and the Spiritual Weaponization of Self

“When people refuse to consider that their behavior has hurt others, and they double down to defend themselves, it doesn’t convince me that they’re right. It convinces me that they’re unable to understand perspectives beyond their own, and unwilling to feel pain that’s not theirs.”
— JLK

This insight captures the essence of what Internal Family Systems (IFS) calls protectors in action. Refusal is never merely obstinacy — it is a protective strategy, shielding vulnerable parts of the psyche (exiles) from unbearable pain. Yet, it is also a mirror of relational and systemic dynamics, reflecting the outer world’s lack of empathy, pre-decided scripts, and demands for compliance or exposure while refusing responsibility.

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Refusal as Protection

In IFS, the psyche organizes into exiles, protectors, and Self. Protectors step in when exiles carry too much shame, guilt, or fear. Refusal, in this context, is a strategy of self-preservation:
• Doubling down defends against vulnerability.
• Refusal shields exiles from the judgment, blame, or shame that might overwhelm them.
• At the same time, internal refusal mirrors external systemic rigidity: when systems demand compliance or exposure but refuse responsibility, protectors respond in kind, creating a feedback loop between inner and outer defenses.

“What is presented as strength is often only the wall around unbearable vulnerability — and a reflection of the walls we meet in others.”

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Polarity: “I’m Unheard — You Must Listen”

Protectors rarely act in isolation. Polarity emerges when:
• One side insists: “I did nothing wrong — I must not be blamed.”
• The other side insists: “The harm must be acknowledged — I will not be silenced.”

Both are caught in a loop of mutual refusal, unable to recognize each other’s vulnerability. Self energy — clarity, compassion, curiosity — is obscured.

This polarity is often exacerbated by systemic demands: pre-decided compliance, insistence on exposure, or refusal to acknowledge responsibility in others. Internal refusal then mirrors external rigidity, amplifying conflict and relational pain.

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The System as Many vs. One

When refusal occurs in group dynamics, the pattern intensifies:
• Groups have collective protectors that reinforce shared narratives of righteousness.
• The one dissenting voice is pressured to collapse, comply, or fawn.
• The demand to fawn reflects the group’s own protective strategies: maintaining cohesion while avoiding recognition of harm.

“Refusal is not merely obstinacy; it is a mirror reflecting the unrelenting demands and unacknowledged rigidity of the world outside.”

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Weaponizing Self: When Spiritual Authority Is Misused

A subtle danger arises when groups claim Self energy as collective authority:
• “We are more correct because we are Self-led together.”
• Self becomes a protector masquerading as divinity, justifying coercion or dismissal.
• Spiritual bypassing and gaslighting enforce fawning while silencing dissent.

This spiritualized refusal magnifies the cost: compliance is mistaken for agreement, difference is pathologized, and empathy erodes.

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Shamanic Resonances: Healing vs. Control

Shamanic traditions complement IFS:
• Healing involves restoring balance and attending to fragmentation, not erasing difference.
• Energy, spirits, or relational dynamics are worked with holistically, honoring multiplicity.
• The goal is harmony across differences, not dominance or pre-decided narratives.

“Healing is about guiding the fractured parts into harmony — not erasing difference or silencing truth.”

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Lineal and Circular Approaches to Understanding Refusal

After establishing the dynamics of refusal, polarity, and systemic influence, we can explore them through two complementary analytical lenses, deepening insight into both temporal and relational dimensions.

Lineal Approach

Viewed linearly, refusal unfolds as a sequence over time:
1. Trigger: Evidence of harm reaches the individual.
2. Protector Activation: Shame- or fear-driven parts step in.
3. Doubling Down: The individual defends themselves, insisting on rightness.
4. Blocked Empathy: Perspective-taking is inaccessible; relational repair is hindered.
5. Reinforcement: Each iteration strengthens protective barriers, making resolution more difficult.

Interventions focus on gradual unblending of protectors, increasing access to Self, and supporting the person to step outside the defensive sequence.

Circular Approach

The circular lens emphasizes present, ongoing dynamics:
• Refusal is co-created in the relational field, interacting continuously with others’ defensiveness or avoidance.
• Doubling down mirrors the system’s pre-decided expectations and lack of empathy, forming a feedback loop in real time.
• Empathy is blocked here-and-now, not only as a function of past events, but as a sustained relational pattern.

Interventions from this perspective involve shifting the relational field, helping the system and individual simultaneously access curiosity and Self energy, rather than only altering one party over time.

JLK’s insight captures both: the doubling down shows a temporal reinforcement (lineal), while the inability to feel others’ pain highlights the systemic relational blockage (circular).

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Returning to Self (Without Weaponizing It)

Self energy is ever-present, luminous, and stabilizing. Vipassana meditation and shamanic traditions describe it as a ring of pure energy, a halo of clarity and compassion that can witness without being consumed.
• For groups, Self allows listening without annihilation.
• For individuals, Self allows resistance without fawning.
• The halo metaphor underscores the circular presence of Self: always available, both lineally developed and present in the moment.

“True Self is not a banner of superiority but a wellspring of compassion, always willing to be touched by another’s pain.”

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References

Internal Family Systems (IFS):
• Schwartz, R. (2019). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford.
• Haddock, S. A. et al. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of Internal Family Systems therapy for depression.
• Shadick, N. A. et al. (2013). IFS for rheumatoid arthritis: Pilot study.

Systemic & Group Dynamics:
• Janis, I. (1972). Victims of Groupthink.
• Golec de Zavala, A. (2018). Collective narcissism: Antecedents and consequences.

Trauma & Fawning:
• Taylor, S. E. et al. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress: Tend-and-befriend theory.
• Bailey, H. N. et al. (2017). Appeasement as an emotion regulation strategy.

Spiritual Bypassing & Abuse:
• Welwood, J. (1984). Principles of spiritual bypassing.
• Oakley, L. & Kinmond, K. (2014). Spiritual abuse in Christian communities.

Shamanic Healing:
• Eliade, M. (1964). Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy.
• Winkelman, M. (2010). Shamanism: A biopsychosocial paradigm of consciousness and healing.