Appreciating Extreme Parts in Context: IFS, Food, and the Body

Jeanne Catanzaro, Sand Chang, and Richard C. Schwartz

About this program:

Disordered eating and eating disorders are increasingly prevalent conditions that are often challenging to clients and clinicians alike. Due to the fears, stereotypes, and biases our culture holds about food and bodies, these issues are commonly seen as individual problems rather than conditions that are firmly rooted in complex and corrosive social dynamics.

This program focuses on how the Internal Family Systems model supports the treatment of disordered eating and eating disorders by addressing the matrix of individual and cultural factors that give rise to disordered eating and eating disorders. Particular attention will be paid to the importance of getting to know and heal therapist parts.

This learning program was held live in Winter 2025.

Module 1: Widening the Lens on Disordered Eating

This module explores how eating-related behaviors function as protective strategies shaped by personal, familial, cultural, and historical burdens. You’ll examine common biases around food and bodies and how they influence diagnosis, treatment, and IFS spaces.

Module 2: Treating Disordered Eating: An IFS Perspective

This module explores the internal dynamics, polarizations, and alliances commonly present in systems affected by disordered eating. You’ll learn how the IFS model reduces shame by working respectfully with protective strategies and the fears held by parts that focus on food and the body.

Module 3: Working with Our Own Parts to Facilitate Others’ Healing

This experiential module focuses on the therapist’s own system and how internalized biases, fears, and legacy burdens can shape work with eating-related concerns. You’ll identify therapist parts that may limit listening or presence, and explore how increased self-awareness supports more effective, Self-led treatment.

Module 4: All Parts are Not Impacted Equally: Working Together to Heal Systemic Biases

This module examines how polarizations and alliances within and between systems, shaped by cultural bias, can perpetuate disordered eating. You’ll explore how IFS supports resistance to ongoing cultural pressures and offers pathways to disrupt anti-fatness and other body-related biases.

What’s included:

This course includes approximately 4 hours of core teaching on the program’s main topic, along with around 5 hours of recorded live Q&A sessions facilitated by the instructor.

You’ll also get approximately 4 hours of exclusive bonus content featuring Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS. These recorded demonstrations and case consultations offer rare, behind-the-scenes access to see the model in action. While these sessions may not always align directly with the program’s primary theme, they’re designed to deepen your overall clinical understanding and help you see how IFS principles show up across different contexts.

What are on-demand programs:

IFSI’s on-demand courses are recordings of some of our most loved advanced IFS programs led by IFS trainers and thought leaders who bring deep experience and insight. Learn anytime, at the pace your system needs.

Who is it for:

These offerings are ideal for those who are enrolled in or have completed IFS Level 1 Training, and those who have already participated in the IFS Online Circle. They’re designed to help you deepen specific skills, build confidence in niche areas, and feel more grounded in your work with clients.

CE Credit & Certificate of Completion:

Please note that these programs don’t offer professional CE, but each provides 14 IFS CE Credits to support your IFS certification or recertification path. An IFSI Certificate of Completion will also be available upon completion of this program.

Note: Materials and methods included in this course may include interventions or practices that are beyond your scope of practice. As a professional in your given field, you are responsible for reviewing the scope of practice, including activities that are defined by applicable law as beyond the boundaries of your practice, and applying your learning in compliance with your professional standards.

Meet Your Instructors

Jeanne Catanzaro

Jeanne Catanzaro, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has specialized in treating eating disorders and trauma for the past 25 years. She trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR before discovering the Internal Family Systems Model. An approved IFS consultant, she has written two chapters on using IFS to treat eating disorders, one in Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy (2017) and another in Trauma-Informed Approaches to Eating Disorders (2019). For the past ten years she’s been focused on healing eating issues across the spectrum. Her book, tentatively titled Unburdened Eating: An IFS approach to Healing Your Relationships with Food and Your Body, focuses on healing the cultural legacy burdens that keep people from having Self-led relationships with their bodies.

Sand Chang

Sand Chang, PhD (they/them) is a Chinese American nonbinary psychologist and DEI consultant who works at the intersection of trans health, eating disorders, trauma recovery, and body liberation. They are a Certified IFS therapist, consultant, and trainer, Body Trust provider, and EMDR therapist. They are passionate about integrating IFS and Somatic Experiencing. Supporting others’ learning process is one of their number one passions, and they feel grateful to have had opportunities to work with a wide range of groups and organizations. They started their teaching career in psychology graduate programs, and from there they branched out to provide trainings to educational institutions, medical systems, grassroots organizations, non-profits, startups, and the corporate sector. They have spent much of their career working in trans health and co-authored A Clinician's Guide to Gender Affirming Care, as well as the APA guidelines for working with trans communities and the WPATH Standards of Care Version 8. Eating disorders from an anti-diet, fat liberation perspective is also an area of emphasis in their work.

Richard C. Schwartz

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems, a highly effective therapeutic model with a growing evidence base that de-pathologizes the multi-part personality. Richard is also the founder of the IFS Institute, which primarily offers training for professionals. He is currently a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate. Richard has authored or co-authored more than ten books on Internal Family Systems and related topics, including No Bad Parts and Internal Family Systems Therapy. He lives near Chicago with his wife Jeanne, Vice President of the IFS Institute, close to his three daughters and six grandchildren.