ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the use of one-to-one IFS consultation to mentor, guide, and foster the clinician’s development of self-awareness and compassion for their inner system. It draws attention to the fact that therapists’ parts can be helpful partners in the therapeutic process, or they can interfere and distract. A detailed case study demonstrates the use of individual IFS consultation to provide short-term, focused concentration on activated therapist parts that were interrupting therapeutic connection and conversation. Targeted therapeutic interventions allowed a return to clinical Self-leadership. The author details a relational repair process involving acknowledging, taking responsibility for, and self-disclosing parts’ activation to support and deepen the therapeutic relationship. Although primarily showing the use of IFS therapy in the consultation setting, non-IFS clinicians will also find much of interest regarding the nature of both the therapeutic and supervisory or consultation relationship.
