Martha Sweezy

Martha Sweezy grew up in Cambridge, MA, with two older siblings, assorted dogs, and many musicians coming and going. Her mother, Nancy Sweezy, who was instrumental in the functioning of the legendary folk music venue Club 47, later revived and managed Jugtown Pottery in North Carolina, founded Refugee Arts Group to work with refugees from Southeast Asia, worked with folk artists in Armenia, and was finally awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the NEA for her work in traditional arts. Her father, Paul Sweezy, the founder of Monthly Review magazine and press and the author of numerous books, including Monopoly Capital. She attended Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Palfrey Street School in Watertown, Boston University for undergraduate work and an MA in creative writing, where she studied with Leslie Epstein and Derek Walcott, and Smith College School of Social Work for an MSW and a PhD. Martha is an assistant professor, part-time, in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and a clinical and research consultant at the Cambridge Health Alliance Center for Mindful Compassion. Before opening a private practice in Northampton, MA (and more recently moving to Portland, ME) she worked in community mental health at the Cambridge Health Alliance for 18 years providing therapy, helping to run a DBT program, supervising, and teaching. Martha’s books and manuals include: 1) a book called Internal Family Systems Therapy for Shame and Guilt, published by Guilford in August, 2023 2) a co-authored manual called Internal Family Systems Couple Therapy Skills Manual: Healing Relationships with Intimacy From the Inside Out, published by PESI in March, 2021 3) a co-authored manual called Internal Family Systems Therapy for Addictions: Trauma-Informed, Compassion-Based Interventions for Substance Use, Eating, Gambling and More, published by PESI in March, 2023 4) a co-authored book called Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd edition published by Guilford in 2019 5) a co-authored manual called Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual: Trauma-informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD & Substance Abuse, published by PESI in 2018 6) a co-authored book on IFS couple therapy called Intimacy from the Inside Out: Courage and Compassion in Couple Therapy published by Routledge in 2015 8) two co-edited volumes on various application of IFS called Internal Family Systems Therapy: New Dimensions and Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy, published by Routledge in, respectively, 2013 and 2017 9) two peer-reviewed articles in 2011: The Teenager's Confession: Regulating Shame in Internal Family Systems Therapy in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, 65(2), 179-188; and Treating Trauma After Dialectical Behavioral Therapy in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 21(1), 90-102.