Ian Whitmarsh, MA, PhD
Ian Whitmarsh Psychotherapy
Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #150580
Center for Mindful Psychotherapy
Supervised by Chelsea Owens LMFT #100077
Welcome
I use a heart-centered approach to facilitate a sense of freedom and compassion for all that is inside you. I’m a Level 3 IFS practitioner, practicing therapy through the Center for Mindful Psychotherapy. I’m also a Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at University of California San Francisco where I lead research on IFS. IFS is a method for going inward and getting to know and welcome all parts of you. Every one of us is trying in the best way we know how, under the conditions in which we find ourselves, toward a positive purpose. To flourish. We all have a creative power within us that knows how to heal and that cannot be damaged. I help you connect with that power inside yourself.
I specialize in issues of relationships, anxiety, shame, trauma, grief, career, and parenting. I help people to reach their sense of freedom, creativity, and joy. I work with adults, teenagers, children, and couples. I have experience providing relationship therapy for monogamous, ethically nonmonogamous, and polyamorous couples. I affirm all different racial, gender, and sex identities.
I provide in-person therapy at my office in San Francisco and online throughout California. My hours are flexible: in addition to regular weekday hours, I have availability early morning, evening, and Sundays. I maintain a limited number of sliding scale slots. I currently have low-fee relationship therapy available.
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I also offer 2-hour intensive IFS sessions. These sessions provide space to deepen into knowing and healing parts that have difficulty being approached in the standard one hour of psychotherapy.
My approach to therapy (from a conversation about IFS)
Other IFS Offerings
The UCSF Center on IFS and Culture
My colleague Joseph Zamaria and I are collaborating with Dick Schwartz to create this Center that brings together university research and work beyond academic walls to think about new possibilities for IFS. We plan to have free talks and panel discussions posted this winter.
Trainings
I offer trainings, talks, and demonstrations of IFS. Most recently I’ve assisted with the IFS Institute’s Level 2 Training of psychotherapists and given demonstrations of IFS in UC Berkeley’s Master’s of Social Work Program.
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About me
I came to psychotherapy over a decade ago when a tragedy in my life changed me. I was a professor of medical anthropology at University of California San Francisco. I found my world coming apart because I couldn't find a way through the maze of grief alone. I turned to therapy, searching for a path that would transform me. I saw several therapists over the next five years before connecting with one who helped me see the ways that trying to keep out unwanted miseries and fears had narrowed my life. Through therapy, I came to experience how I could live a richer life, more attuned to all that was in me. Today, the part of me that finds the tragedy that happened to be an impossibility is still there. What has changed is my relation to this part. When it comes, sometimes because I go to be with it, sometimes without warning, I now invite it in—and I listen.
This path led me to a Master’s in Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. My work with Internal Family Systems began eight years ago. I experienced the healing IFS conviction that we are all made up of a multiplicity of beings, each trying to meet its needs in the best way it knows how. I eventually decided to become a psychotherapist in order to be able to share this sensibility with others. Since then I have immersed myself in IFS research and training. I have completed Level 3 Training at the IFS Institute and am currently leading a research project on IFS at the University of California San Francisco.
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I bring to my therapeutic approach my years as a medical anthropologist in the Caribbean. I have worked among those who manifest the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues, and others in Orisha Worship who engage with a range of deities to offer divination, protection, and healing. These healers and diviners take part in a world inhabited by spirits and entities that bring history to bear on the present, shaping power relations and afflictions. The medical anthropologist explores across a difference some resonance. Interpreting this resonance, she learns not only a contrasting way of living, but also the unexpressed in her own world. I bring this sensibility to the mutual exploration of psychotherapy.
Rates
Please contact me for my current rates. I do not take insurance but I maintain a sliding scale.​
