Normalizing Self-Energy

Making Self More Accessible in Everyday Life

On-Demand Training | 6.0 NBCC & ASWB CE Hours | $225 USD

About This Course

Self-energy is central to Internal Family Systems (IFS), yet it can be one of the most difficult concepts for therapists and clients to recognize and understand.

What does Self actually feel like? How do we know when we're experiencing it? And what if we don't feel particularly calm, confident, or compassionate?

This course challenges common assumptions that make Self-energy feel elusive, including the belief that we must be completely unblended, emotionally regulated, or internally peaceful to experience Self.

Originally developed from material I presented at the IFS Institute Annual Conference in 2025, this expanded on-demand course takes those ideas much further. Through in-depth teaching, personal stories, clinical examples, humor, and everyday experiences, I explore how to recognize Self-energy in practical, accessible, real-life ways. Rather than treating Self as an ideal state we must achieve, this course explores Self-energy as something that exists along a spectrum and can show up in small, ordinary moments, even when parts are present.

You'll learn to recognize, name, and cultivate these micro-moments of Self-energy in yourself and help your clients begin doing the same.

What You Will Learn

Rethinking Self-Energy

Explore a more flexible and accessible understanding of Self and its relationship with our parts.

• Understand Self-energy as a spectrum rather than an all-or-nothing state.

• Recognize how Self-energy and parts can coexist, even when we experience blending.

• Challenge common misconceptions about what Self should look or feel like.

• Explore why Self can feel elusive, particularly for therapists who are learning or practicing IFS.

• Recognize how therapist parts, expectations, and perfectionism can influence our relationship with Self.

• Understand how trauma, neurodivergence, cultural experiences, and protective systems can shape how Self-energy is recognized and experienced.

The 8 Cs in Everyday Life

Go beyond memorizing the 8 Cs to explore what each quality of Self-energy can actually look and feel like in ordinary life.

Through examples, stories, and clinical applications, we'll explore:

• Calm: Experiencing presence and non-reactivity without requiring complete stillness or the absence of emotion.

• Clarity: Seeing something more clearly without needing to have all the answers or immediately take action.

• Curiosity: Approaching our internal and external experiences with openness rather than judgment, urgency, or an agenda.

• Compassion: Being present with suffering without needing to rescue, fix, or change it.

• Creativity: Recognizing Self through imagination, flexibility, problem-solving, humor, and playfulness.

• Courage: Moving toward what matters, even when fear or discomfort is present.

• Confidence: Developing a sense of capability and trust in ourselves without requiring certainty or guaranteed success.

• Connection: Experiencing meaningful connection with ourselves, our parts, other people, animals, nature, and the world around us.

Throughout these sections, you'll learn to recognize the subtle ways these qualities already appear in everyday experiences and how to translate that understanding into your clinical work.

Microdosing Self-Energy

What if accessing Self doesn't require a dramatic internal shift?

This course introduces the concept of microdosing Self-energy: recognizing and cultivating small, manageable experiences of Self rather than expecting complete unblending or sustained access to all eight qualities.

You'll explore:

• How to identify brief moments of Self-energy that might otherwise go unnoticed.

• Why small experiences of curiosity, calm, compassion, or connection can be meaningful.

• How to help clients recognize and build familiarity with their own experiences of Self.

• Why some protective systems may experience qualities such as calm, clarity, or compassion as unfamiliar or unsafe.

• How titration can help make Self-energy more accessible without overwhelming protective systems.

• How to shift from evaluating whether you're "in Self" to noticing where Self is already showing up.

Therapist Parts and Clinical Applications

Our own parts can significantly influence how we understand and work with Self-energy, especially when we believe we should be able to access it consistently.

This training explores:

• How therapist parts may respond to expectations around being Self-led.

• Recognizing urgency, perfectionism, insecurity, and the desire to get things right.

• Approaching therapist parts with curiosity rather than trying to eliminate them.

• Understanding how Self-energy can support authentic therapeutic presence and connection.

• Helping clients recognize Self without imposing a particular emotional, behavioral, or physical presentation.

• Supporting clients who have difficulty recognizing or trusting their own experiences of Self.

• Applying these concepts when working with protective systems, including during Direct Access.

Beyond the 8 Cs: Choice, Capacity, and Everyday Self-Leadership

The course also explores related experiences that help us recognize Self-energy's impact in everyday life.

One important example is Choice. Although Choice is not one of the original 8 Cs, greater access to Self-energy can create more space between an internal experience and our response to it. As parts become less dominant, we may recognize more options and respond more flexibly. Choice is a byproduct of access to our Self.

We'll explore how experiences of capability, capacity, presence, and increased choice can help us recognize Self-leadership in practical, everyday situations.

A More Inclusive Understanding of Self

Self-energy does not have to look like quietness, stillness, meditation, or perfect emotional regulation. Throughout this course, I challenge narrow expectations of Self and explore how different nervous systems, neurotypes, identities, cultural experiences, and lived histories can shape how people experience and express Self-energy. The goal is to expand our ability to recognize and support the many ways it can show up.

Who This Training Is For

This course is designed for therapists, counselors, IFS practitioners, EMDR clinicians, coaches, and other professionals who work with internal systems.

It may be especially valuable if you:

• Understand the IFS model but still struggle to recognize what Self-energy actually feels like.

• Find yourself questioning whether you or your clients are really accessing Self.

• Want to move beyond an all-or-nothing understanding of Self.

• Work with clients who find traditional descriptions of Self difficult to relate to.

• Want a more neurodivergence-affirming and inclusive way of understanding Self-energy.

• Are looking for practical language, relatable examples, and clinical applications that make Self-energy easier to recognize and discuss.

Whether you're relatively new to IFS or have been practicing for years, this course offers an opportunity to revisit one of the model's foundational concepts from a different perspective.

Course Details

Format: On-demand, self-paced video training

Continuing Education: 6.0 CE hours through NBCC and ASWB

Cost: $225 USD

Stop Chasing Self-Energy. Start Recognizing It.

Self-energy doesn't have to be something we spend our lives trying to achieve. Sometimes it shows up as a moment of curiosity, a little more space before responding, the courage to do something difficult, or the recognition that we are capable of navigating uncertainty. This course is an invitation to notice those moments, understand their significance, and help make Self-energy more accessible for ourselves and the people we work with.