Trauma, Dissociation, Parts - 4 session online workshop - Joanne Twombly

Join us for the 12 hour Trauma, Dissociation and Parts Workshop online with Joanne Twombly! This immersive event is the perfect opportunity to deepen your understanding of dissociation and enhance your practice using subpersonalities, non-verbal communication, and learning about hypnotic techniques - a coherent and powerful therapeutic combination.

Taking place online, this workshop series will kick off on morning of on 7 February 2026 for 4 sessions weekly, completing on 28 February 2026.

• Session 1 - Saturday, 7 February 2026 - 9:00am - 12.30pm AEDT
• Session 2 - Saturday, 14 February 2026 - 9:00am - 12.30pm AEDT
• Session 3 - Saturday, 21 February 2026 - 9:00am - 12.30pm AEDT
• Session 4- Saturday, 28 February 2026 - 9:00am - 12.30pm AEDT

Over the course of four sessions, you'll dive deep into working with Dissociation through the lens of IFS, EMDR and Parts work through a variety of lecture and engaging and interactive activities. Led by US-based Joanne Twombly, this workshop will provide you with the frameworks, approaches and knowledge to effectively and safely work with our vulnerable client populations.

Through experiential exercises, group discussions, and didactic presentations, you'll gain valuable insights and practical skills that you can immediately implement in your work. Whether you're a seasoned therapist looking to expand your repertoire or a newcomer interested in exploring a transformative therapeutic approach, this workshop is suitable for all levels of experience. Connect with like-minded professionals, share your experiences, and learn from each other in a supportive and collaborative environment.

Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to deepen your understanding of Trauma and Dissociation from the perspective of Parts. Register now and secure your spot at this inspiring and enriching event!

Note that the 'day attendance' version of Joanne's 2024 & 25 workshops and followup consult groups sold-out quickly - tickets or join waitlist today.

Joanne H. Twombly, MSW, LICSW

(Pronouns: she/her/hers) is a psychotherapist in private practice in Arlington, MA, USA. She has over thirty years of experience working with C-PTSD and dissociative disorders and provides trainings and consultation. In addition to her book, “Trauma and Dissociation Informed Internal Family Systems,” she has written on EMDR and Dissociative Disorders, on EMDR and Internal Family Systems, and on working with perpetrator introjects. Her commitment to helping her clients heal and to providing quality training has resulted in her becoming an EMDR Consultant and a Trauma and Recovery Humanitarian Assistance Program Facilitator, Internal Family Systems Certified, and an American Society for Clinical Hypnosis Consultant. She is a past president of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. In recognition of her achievements and her service on committees and the Board of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), she was honored with ISSTD’s Distinguished Achievement Award and is an ISSTD Fellow.

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Podcast - IFS Talks (82 min)

This 4 session online workshop will teach you to integrate IFS and EMDR with the wealth of knowledge from the Complex-PTSD and dissociation world. If your client is getting worse, struggling during the week, and needs increasingly more support from you, the information in this workshop can help by integrating dimensions into these frameworks.

The first 2 sessions will provide an overview of the diagnosis and treatment of C-PTSD and dissociative disordered (DD) clients, you will learn to give your clients a chance to have more safety, control, and choices by developing coping skills and learning how to titrate trauma processing in IFS’s witnessing stage.

The third and fourth sessions will address various styles of non-verbal communication specific to trauma clients including countertransference/transference patterns and the concepts of projective identification and enactment-reenactment.

Participants will learn and practice an 'enhanced IFS Firedrill' process which, along with its usefulness to clients, will assist therapists in sorting out their responses to non-verbal communication and countertransference. Learn and develop a useful road map for decoding, working with, and eventually resolving clinical material from clients for whom the non-verbal is a necessary and meaningful mode of communication.

These skills will help clients avoid backlash from parts becoming overwhelmed, assist clients in maintaining their highest level of functioning thus making it possible for more comprehensive healing. While not every client will need the strategies and knowledge base in this workshop, it’s practical to be able recognize when your clients do need them and, while not essential for others, how this knowledge base can be extremely beneficial enhancing therapeutic rapport (Self-to-Part relating, in IFS terms) in general.

You will learn:

• An overview of dissociative disorders.
• How to diagnosis and treat dissociative disorders.
• Where Trauma Informed IFS is necessary and useful.
• How to use hypnotic language to maximize the impact of therapy for all populations.
• How to teach and use coping skills, including Safe Space Imagery and Containers.
• How to use a protective format for Witnessing and Unburdening.
• To recognize dissociative symptoms in other diagnosis e.g. ADHD, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and schizophrenia.
• Identify different kinds of perpetrator parts.
• Describe enactments and common countertransference struggles.
• Develop resources and treatment strategies using IFS.
• Learn to unlock countertransference reactions through an 'enhanced Firedrill' process.

IFS is an elegant ego state model and a therapy which has appealed to a wide range of clinicians – some 10,000+ over the world have been trained. As we work with our more complex clients we may find some with trauma disorders require additional cues of safety, including attending to non-verbal signals, counter-transference (Therapist's activated parts), relational enactments (aka therapeutic entanglements), and timeliness.

The 4 sessions will be interwoven with live and recorded demo sessions, practice time, and discussion. This is an introduction to working with DD clients and complex client presentations, however is not an introduction to EMDR or to IFS - core concepts and language in common will be covered only briefly. Some preparatory online materials (articles and a recorded interview) will be supplied for enrolled participants to watch.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

This workshop will include a summary of the trauma and dissociation processes, as well as live demonstrations and exercises to foster an experiential exploration of how to create the powerful exercises that make Parts work so effective. This will be augmented throughout the workshop by didactic presentations, Q&A, case discussions, and processing of participants’ experiences safely. If you are in crisis or actively in therapy for trauma processing, this training may be highly activating. Please seek advice from your therapist if you are unsure.

What People Are Saying about Joanne's recent book

Joanne Twombly’s book is the missing piece of the puzzle in treating dissociative disorders. Her book is an invaluable guide for clinicians applying specific therapeutic modalities to work with patients who have complex trauma histories and/or dissociative disorders. Although attachment and parts work modalities such as IFS, Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, AEDP, have much to offer treatment of complex trauma and dissociative disorders, none is truly sufficient to navigate the complexities of a deeply fractured inner landscape. Joanne Twombly draws on decades of experience working with dissociative disorders to offer hard won wisdom and practical interventions to provide an essential tool for all trauma clinicians.

Kari Gleiser, Ph.D.Senior Faculty Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) Institute

This is a lovely, highly accessible and informative book for therapists who use the Internal Family Systems model of treatment. Those of us who have worked for many decades in the field of complex trauma and dissociation have become accustomed to the idea of needing psychotherapy approaches “plus” specialized understanding and knowledge about treating dissociation. Joanne Twombly has masterfully combined IFS and the basic tenets of treating clients with dissociative disorders, emphasizing that ego state “parts” and dissociative “parts” require somewhat different, if complementary, approaches. She offers pragmatic modifications of IFS to fit for more dissociative clients. IFS therapists will find a wealth of practical information illustrated by a variety of case examples. A must read!

Kathy Steele, MN, CS

Winner of 2017 Pierre Janet writing Award from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation

This book is the missing link to integrating IFS with the treatment of complex trauma and dissociative disorders. It is needed on every IFS therapists’ bookshelf!

IFS Certified Therapist and Client

This long-awaited book is for clinicians both as teacher and learner who are trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Voice Dialogue (VD), and other models of ego state psychotherapy and wish to enhance their competency to treat patients/clients with complex trauma and dissociative disorders. Joanne Twombly, by x brilliantly demonstrating the use of basic IFS skills in concert with those skills from the world of complex trauma and dissociation, has provided new pathways for therapists to reduce their own stress while safely facilitating deep healing in clients/patients who mentally dissociate and develop high levels of anxiety and self-destructive behaviors even during treatment. Digesting these clearly written pages guides all therapists to integrate the evidence-based concepts and methods of subpersonality with those of EMDR, non-verbal and hypnotic communication, psychopharmacology, and psychodynamic countertransference. Twombly has provided a valuable resource for those who have the wish and courage to work with emotionally and physically traumatized children and adults.

John Livingstone, MD

Life Member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital

IFS is the signature work of Richard Schwartz. For more information on IFS, see https://ifs-institute.com

EMDR is the signature work of Francine Shapiro, further developed by the practitioner community. For more information, see EMDRIA.org and EMDRIAA.org.au

FEE

GENERAL TICKET - TOTAL COST AUD $ 850 plus Eventbrite fee

Includes GST, workshop, materials, and certificate of attendance as detailed. Attendees must attend in-person at the time of the training in order to receive the certificate of attendance (this meets most professional associations' requirements).

Deposit of $150 payable at registration here, with the $700 remainder to be invoiced. Ticketing fee additional and non-refundable. Payment plans (with final portion payable by 30th January 2026) are available on request. Credit card attracts 3% fee.

WHEN

From 7 February for 4 sessions weekly, completing on 28 February 2026. Sessions run 9:00AM-12:30PM AEDT (Syd/Melb timezone), online.

Please note we allow 25 minutes break in each session - contact time is 3 hours per session (12 hours total).

WHERE

Online using the zoom platform. Participants will register ahead of session 1, and use the same link for each session. Recordings will be made available for 90days to participants for their own study.

Who is this for?

Participation is for therapists and counsellors, mental health clinicians, or students in accredited mental health graduate training programs. Practitioners working experientially and wholistically will find this approach broadens and makes more acute their existing work through the assumption of positive intent through sense-making. Participants will be primarily clinically trained practitioners working with complex patient presentations. IFS Level 1+ and EMDR trained practitioners will find this workshop of high value.

Some pre-reading/pre-viewing of online material is recommended - we will send a short list to enrolled participants, and do recommend Joanne's book (available on Kindle, 3D and online booksellers).

An equivalent hours of specialised training that may be counted towards Continuing Professional Development according to requirements set down by your accrediting body. Registered health professionals have a responsibility to ensure that they continue to maintain, enhance and extend their knowledge and skills throughout their working lives.

FAQS

What should I bring to the workshop?

BRING:

curiosity, willingness to try things out ("Yes, and..."), a sense of humour, and a heart-oriented openness to the 'functionality and coherence of the symptom' and an openess the multiply-authored 'multiplicity of self'. Preparedness to do your own work - "if you are feeling it, it's probably yours".

Where can I contact the organiser with any questions?

See the link at the bottom of the brief bio to the right .

Is my registration/ticket transferrable?

Tickets are transferable to suitably experienced colleagues. Please advise if you do exchange tickets so we can update details.

What is the refund policy?

By registering for this training you agree to the following cancellation policy:

In case of written cancellation more than 12 weeks prior to the training, I will be refunded the full training fee minus an administrative fee of $75. In case of cancellation between 12 - 6 weeks out of the start of training, I will be refunded 75% of the full course fee. In case of less than 6 weeks notice of my cancellation or not showing up, the full course fee applies (except in case of a documented medical emergency, not including Covid).

If the Organiser cancels, I am entitled to a refund of the training fee paid to date - NOT including Eventbrite ticketing and bank fees, or any other incurred sundry costs.

We reserve the right to cancel due to insufficient registrations or other reasons beyond our control at our discretion. Workshop fees will be reimbursed in full should cancellation be necessary.