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“Hate cannot drive out hate.
Only love can.”
_Martin Luther King Jr., 1964 Peace Nobel Laureate

A Bridge Between Us

At a time of societal crises, doing what we each can to maintain and engage in dialogue with others and in our communities is our best contribution to establishing societal harmony, contribute to peacemaking, and put our shoulders to a movement toward a better future for all.

The Foundation is hosting a series of conversation entitled, A Bridge Between US, to take part in this important effort of building dialogue. Read more & join us.

Black and White

“We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”
__Exact attribution not accurately known

In today's society, extremely polarized in the face of a historic movement toward racial and social equity and justice, we're called upon to look inward in order to fully understand what comes up for us individually: pain, needs, concerns... and explore how to address them.

Please join the Foundation's innervention program that deal with such issues.

Black and White

“The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends toward justice.”
_Martin Luther King

We Stand with Equity & Justice for All

At the Foundation for Self Leadership, we stand in solidarity with all of those across the United States and the world who are seeking equity and justice for all.

The events of this past week remind us that our Black sisters and brothers continue to experience the effects of inequality and acts of injustice at the hands of individuals, institutions, and governments. We stand in solidarity with you, fully aware that we can no longer look the other way. We recognize that the pain of generations has spilled over. We hold you in our hearts, empathize with your struggles, and mourn the many senseless deaths and the suffering that ensues and lingers. We respect and defend your rights to stand tall, march with purpose, express your concerns with audacity and nonviolence, and speak truth to power. In so doing, you give voice not only to Black people everywhere but also to every member of a minority community who lives in fear for being who they are.

Read More

“A hero is an ordinary individual
who finds the strength to persevere and endure
in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
_Christopher Reeve

mask hope 2020

With gratitude and compassion, our hearts are with all of you out there… each of you a hero, whether serving on the front lines or struggling to breathe, committing special acts of kindness or helping to sustain our societies’ basic needs, trying hard to cultivate calm and hope while sheltering at home, without a home, or adjusting to a new reality of schooling and work.

We wish you health and resilience in this challenging and lingering crisis and beyond.

Please stay connected and tell us how you're coping and accessing Self leadership to find solace and strength during these unusually difficult months. Consider sharing your stories, drawings and illustrations, audio and video messages on the Foundation’s social media platforms.

And consider taking part in our innervention program, designed to provide you guidance on how to cope effectively in today’s crisis and what may come next. Share it widely. Invite others, schoolteachers and school staff, business owners and entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, and parents to listen in and use the collection of valuable tools. Many could benefit. We make this offering to lend a helping hand and a warm hug from afar.

You’re in our thoughts. Please stay safe.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
_Ralph Waldo Emerson

Envision with us a world in which…

Hope is resilient.

Individuals of any generation, profession, or background trust that they have what it takes within them to face any challenging moment or darkening hour.

Each of us is enabled to bring a healthy dose of compassion, curiosity, calm, and love to adversities around us.

This is the promise of Self-discovery and Self-leadership: that we each host inner wisdom that can guide us in the toughest periods of our lives.

Driven by this vision, the Foundation is leading efforts and programs to promote access to inner wisdom by fostering Self-discovery and development as a path to emotional healing and wellbeing.

The Foundation promotes the lens, language, clinical protocol, and paradigm of internal parts and Self leadership, which are key elements of the evidence-based IFS model, as a vehicle for personal growth, individual and relational healing, and greater harmony in our lives. We are working in many settings to foster peace of mind for a more peaceful world.

Our current priorities are to support deep healing for returning war veterans, building conflict resolution know-how and inner resilience in schools for teachers and students, and enhancing emotional awareness and fitness through Take5, our innovative global advocacy campaign for kids, parents and sports coaches.

Welcome to the IFS Community

  • HEALING
    How effective are conventional treatments of lingering effects of trauma that result from abuse, abandonment, violence, or terrors of war?
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  • HEALING

    HEALING

    There is experiential evidence that IFS brings healing to those suffering from PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

    We now need to mount empirical data to expand evidence and broaden its impact--by encouraging and funding independent research studies.

  • HARMONY
    Is our harsh judgment of ourselves and others standing in our way of feeling peaceful within and building good relations with others?
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  • HARMONY

    HARMONY

    Looking at the human psyche through the IFS lens helps us become less judgmental and more compassionate.

    This is where the journey toward inner serenity and emotional wellbeing begins.

    With abundant disharmony within us and around us, there is great urgency to act...and spread the model across the globe.

  • UNITY
    Are our families, organizations & communities trapped in conflict and dysfunctionality?
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  • UNITY

    UNITY

    Our own inner congruence, which we may gain through IFS, can lead to greater harmony for our group.

    Through integrative systems-thinking, IFS gives us greater awareness of our inner system and access to qualities of Self leadership.

    Let us take the IFS model to our households, neighborhoods, and places of work.

IFS, founded in the early 1980’s by Dr. Richard C. Schwartz, serves as both a psychotherapy modality & a mental paradigm

In clinical settings, practitioners and patients have seen positive outcomes using IFS to treat trauma, depression, and anxiety. This is affirmed by a recent published study showing effects of IFS in reducing depressive symptoms. IFS effectively lends itself to applications far beyond psychotherapy, including management of one’s physical health, legal mediation, school counseling, business coaching, and even peacemaking. Read more about IFS.

Foundation News

Details

The Foundation is pleased to publish the October 2021 issue of OUTLOOK, its semi-annual magazine. This is the 14th issue and by far the largest.

There is a richness of stories, from a series on IFS Therapy in groups to efforts for making IFS accessible to military veterans and servicemembers who stand to benefit significantly. Catch an update on the program that introduced notions of internal parts and Self leadership to school adults in Connecticut and the promising findings of its independent evaluation. And be moved and inspired by a collection of personal stories of transformation that individuals from various backgrounds, with different experiences, and in different settings are sharing.

This issue of OUTLOOK showcases the latest work on an IFS mobile app and on a popular podcast… and it commemorates through a heartfelt tribute the now sadly departed Foundation’s Chair Emeritus, Harley Goldberg, DO.

As has been the practice, OUTLOOK also features IFS trainers and Foundation donors... and invites you to “Imagine with Us.”

Details

Michelle Glass will oversee the publication of OUTLOOK, a semi-annual magazine by and for the IFS community, for the last time this fall. After managing 14 issues, Michelle is stepping down as editor to pursue professional endeavors. "The Foundation for Self Leadership is grateful to Michelle for having served as editor since the inception of the magazine," says Executive Director and founding publisher, Toufic Hakim, PhD. "Her work has helped build the IFS community by sharing news around the paradigm and practice." The Foundation is now searching for an Editor to take the magazine into its next phase.

Details

New IFS-related articles appear in professional journals

A new research article by Michael Fitzgerald, Assistant professor in Child and Family Sciences at the University of Mississippi was recently published in The American Journal of Family Therapy. In his study of 303 students at two different universities, his paper, Cool, Calm, and Collected: The Associations Between Self-Leadership and Adult Mental and Relational Health Outcomes, showed results that higher Self-leadership, as measured by the 25-item IFS Self Scale, was associated with lower anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and dissociation. Greater Self-leadership was also associated with greater positive relationship quality, and less negative relationship quality.