Nancy's Book
Internal Family Systems (IFS) Health Therapy: Treating Trauma-Related Physical Illness & Toxic Stress by Nancy Sowell with Martha Sweezy and Richard Schwartz.
Many chronic health conditions—from inflammation, pain and digestive disorders to metabolic syndrome and autoimmune disease—are increasingly linked to the lasting effects of chronic stress and trauma. But how do these experiences become embedded in the body, and how can we help?
In IFS Health Therapy, Nancy Sowell, in collaboration with Martha Sweezy and IFS founder Richard Schwartz, draws upon thirty years of clinical practice and behavioral medicine experience to present a groundbreaking mind-body approach that identifies protective and vulnerable “parts” involved in physical health problems. From this perspective, relief emerges as clients come to know and care for the related parts of the personality by releasing the toxic stress, trauma, and other burdens carried in the mind-body.
Through vivid case examples, experiential exercises, and practical tools, readers will learn how this clear three-phase framework can be used to:
- Identify the shame, fear and unmet needs contributing to the illness
- Conduct an IFS-informed health therapy assessment
- Find and help protective parts who affect, or are affected by the illness
- Help vulnerable parts release trauma-related burdens
- Collaborate with other health professionals to support whole-person care
Adversity and trauma reverberate throughout the mind and body, but they do not extinguish the Self’s capacity to heal.
Now available for pre-order. Will be available September 1st 2026.
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Testimonials
Zev Schuman-Olivier, MD
Founding Director, Center for Mindfulness and Compassion,
Director of Addiction Research, Cambridge Health Alliance, Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
"Scientific research increasingly demonstrates that early life trauma and stress contribute to the onset and perpetuation of chronic illness...Those of us who treat and research how to support people living with chronic illness have eagerly awaited this book's publication. Learning how to calmly be with symptoms of chronic illness, how to have compassion for parts reacting to living with the illness, and how to alleviate the toxic stress affecting the mind and body, are at the core of not just surviving but thriving. The IFS model in this book lays out a compelling relationally driven approach to help readers learn how to do that themselves."
Toni Herbine-Blank, MSN
Developer of Intimacy from the Inside Out, IFS based relationship therapy, co-author of the IFS Couple Therapy Manual
“This book is a thoughtful and important extension of Internal Family Systems into the realm of physical health and illness. Nancy Sowell along with her co-authors brings a grounded, respectful voice to this work. She writes with clarity and compassion, honoring the protective roles of parts and the innate wisdom within every system. The book offers clinicians and clients a gentle yet impactful way to listen and restore internal balance to parts injured by trauma and other burdens that dysregulate the body and affect health.”
Charles Silberstein, MD
Medical Director, Martha’s Vineyard Community Services; Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Dept. of Psychiatry
“...Grounded in solid science and rare clinical wisdom, (IFS Health Therapy) traces the path from early adversity through the nervous system to the symptoms that fill our offices, and back out again through IFS-informed tools that work. The people who encounter these techniques will find not just symptom relief, but a fundamentally different relationship with their own suffering. This is a gift to every healer, and to every person who seeks their help. I am deeply grateful to these authors for writing it.”
Cece Sykes, LCSW
Author of IFS Therapy for Addictions; Senior IFS Trainer
“As the first book describing the intersection of IFS therapy, health and illness, this is a must read for clinicians but also serves as a compassionate and hopeful companion for those suffering with pain and chronic illnesses. Nancy Sowell picks up the thread from her collaboration in the groundbreaking IFS research study demonstrating improved outcomes for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Readers are walked thoroughly through the compassionate process of IFS health therapy to show us how well-being is possible for those with chronic illness.”
Nancy A. Shadick, MD, MPH
Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation & Immunity, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
"For those living with chronic illness whoever wondered whether they possessed any real agency over the course of their condition, this book is for you. Written by three experts in their fields, it guides the reader through a well-researched and explained path toward healing. This is an essential addition to any thoughtful bookshelf."
Risa Adams, MD
IFSI Trainer, and Co-Author of It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way: A Physician’s Guide to Radical Self Care
“IFS Health Therapy offers a much-needed map for clinicians entering the complex terrain of chronic stress and illness... My physician parts relax in the presence of this
de-pathologizing and compassionate approach, and feel hope towards shifting the language of “difficult to treat” to “what’s going on here?” The authors beautifully weave scientific knowledge with their extensive clinical wisdom in a gift to us all.”
Melissa Febos
Author of The Dry Season and Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Roy J. Carver Professor, Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa
"Nancy Sowell has written a groundbreaking and humane guide to understanding the indelible relationship between physical and psychological healing. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, this book should be required reading for anyone who suffers from chronic illness, pain, or the symptoms of unhealed trauma. That is, it should be required reading for almost everyone, but especially those interested in taking an active role in their own recovery. Destined to become a modern classic of health literature, it has already become a precious touchstone for me."
Mary Gail Sullivan, LMT
Former Captain of the Women’s National Rugby team (Rugby World Cup winners, 1991), Muscular therapist and former instructor at the Muscular Therapy Institute of Cambridge, MA.
“My experience as a national women’s rugby player who has had multiple injuries and my 30 years as a muscular therapist have shown me that injury and chronic pain are rarely just physical. Pain has a story that’s often accompanied by emotional trauma. This book provides the language for understanding that experience. The Internal Family Systems based treatment shows the reader how ‘parts’ live not only in the mind, but in the body, and how their healing can bring physical as well as emotional relief...I’m especially inspired by the potential for collaboration across disciplines.”
Tamala Floyd, LCSW
IFS Psychotherapist and author of Listening When Parts Speak: A Practical Guide to Healing with Internal Family Systems Therapy and Ancestor Wisdom
“IFS Health Therapy is a clear, compassionate, and deeply practical guide to understanding the mind–body system through the lens of Internal Family Systems. The authors illuminate how trauma, chronic stress, and shame shape internal experience, offering a nuanced explanation of autonomic states, chronic arousal, and allostatic overload. Although written for a broad audience, its insights into chronic stress pathways have powerful implications for understanding the cumulative impact of racial trauma on communities of the global majority. Readers and clinicians working with members of the global majority will find the framework especially helpful for recognizing how protectors adapt to ongoing experiences of discrimination, systemic inequities, and intergenerational stress —and how, through the healing of exiled parts, these burdens can be witnessed, unburdened, and transformed. IFS Health Therapy stands out as a comprehensive, invaluable, and highly relevant resource for clinicians, and anyone interested in healing through IFS.”