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Recommended Reading
Personal Growth and Development
No Bad Parts
Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness
Richard C. Schwartz
ISBN-13: 978-1-78504-511-0Penguin Random House (global.penguinrandomhouse.com)
2021
KEYWORDS:
- 8C-QUALITIES (CURIOSITY, CALM, CONFIDENCE, COMPASSION, CREATIVITY, CLARITY, COURAGE, CONNECTEDNESS)
- BODY-BALANCE
- BODY-SELF-AWARENESS
- CENTREDNESS
- FOCUS-INSIDE-SELF
- INNER-BEING
- MINDFULNESS
- ONENESS
- OPEN-HEARTED
- PART-OF-ME
- PERSONAL-DEVELOPMENT
- THE-SELF
- WHOLENESS
Story Leaders
Looking at ourselves and welcoming every personality part of who we are. There are 'No Bad Parts'.Discover an empowering new way of UNDERSTANDING YOUR 'MULTIFACETED MIND'—and HEALING the many PERSONALITY PARTS that inform you.
"We often find that the harder we try to get rid of—unwanted or negative—emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become. This is because our parts—like people—fight back against being shamed or exiled."
"The collection of our personality PARTS—traditionaly referred to as EGO—are actually PROTECTORS who are simply trying to KEEP US SAFE and are reacting to and containing other PARTS that carry EMOTIONS AND MEMORIES from past TRAUMAS that we have UNCONSCIOUSLY locked away inside."
Discover Your Multifaceted Mind
Is there some part of yourself that you wish would go away? Most of us would say yes, whether we call it addiction, the inner critic, "monkey mind", neurosis, sinfulness, bad habits, or some other disparaging name. Yet what if there were a different way to approach these aspects of yourself that leads to true healing instead of constant inner struggle? With 'No Bad Parts', Dr. Richard Schwartz teaches a revolutionary paradigm of understanding and relating with ourselves—a method that brings us into inner harmony, enhances self-compassion, and opens the doors to spiritual awakening.Dr. Schwartz is the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a paradigm-changing model of consciousness that has been transforming psychology for decades. Here, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, depression, and more. IFS overturns the idea that we have one "true" identity and recognizes that having multiple parts is not a pathology, but a normal and healthy function of the human mind. Dr. Schwartz shares insights and practices to help you recognize your own "inner family" of parts, understand how each part seeks to help and protect you even when it seems problematic, engage in inner dialogue to restore balance and self-love—and deepen your awareness of the higher Self that holds and encompasses every facet of your diverse consciousness.
Intro
As a psychotherapist, I've worked with many people who came to me shortly after their lives had crashed. Everything was going great until the sudden heart attack, divorce, or death of a child. If not for that life-jarring event, they would never have thought to see a therapist, because they felt successful.After the event they can't find the same drive or determination. Their former goals of having big houses or reputations have lost their meaning. They feel [lost] at sea and vulnerable in a way that's unfamiliar and scarey. They are also newly open[ed to their inner feelings / personality parts]. Some light can get through the cracks in their protective foundations.
Those can be wake-up call events if I can help them keep the striving, materialistic, competitive parts of them that had dominated their lives from regaining dominance so they can explore what else is inside them. In doing so, I can help them access what I call the Self—an essence of calm, clarity, compassion, and connectness—and from that place begin to listen to the parts of them[self] that have been exiled by more dominant ones [parts]. As they discover that they love the simple pleasures of enjoying nature, reading, creative activities, being playful with friends, finding more intimacy with their partners or children, and being of service to others, they decide to change their lives so as to make room for their Self and the newly discovered parts of them.
Those clients and the rest of us didn't come to be dominated by those striving, materialistic, and competitive parts by accident. Those are the same parts that dominate most of the countries on our planet and particularly my country, the United States. When my clients are in the grip of those particular parts, they have little regard for the damage they're doing to their health and relationships. Similarly, countries obsessed with unlimited growth have little regard for their impact on the majority of their people, or the health of the climate and the Earth.
Such mindless striving—of people or of countries—usually leads to a crash of some sort. As I write this, we are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It has the potential to be the wake-up call we need so we don't suffer worse ones down the road, but it remains to be seen whether our leaders will use this painful pause to listen to the suffering of the majority of our people, and also learn to collaborate rather than compete with other countries. Can we change nationally and internationally in the ways my clients are often able to?
Inherent Goodness
We can't make the necessary changes without a new model of the mind. Ecologist Daniel Christian Wahl states that "Humanity is coming of age and needs a 'new story' that is powerful and meaningful enough to galvanize global collaboration and guide a collective response to the converging crises we are facing… In the fundamentally interconnected and interdependent planetary system we participate in, the best way to care for oneself and those closest to oneself is to start caring more for the benefit of the collective (all life). Metaphorically speaking, we are all in the same boat, our planetary life support system, or in Buckminster Fuller's words: 'Spaceship Earth'. The 'them-against-us' thinking that for too long has defined politics between nations, companies and people is profoundly anachronistic."Jimmy Carter [ex-US 39th President (1977-81)] echoes that sentiment [(in 2016)]:
"What is needed now, more than ever, is leadership that steers us away from fear and fosters greater confidence in the inherent goodness and ingenuity of humanity."
Our leaders can't do that, however, with the way we currently understand the mind because it highlights the darkness in humanity. We need a new paradigm that convincingly shows that humanity is inherently good and thoroughly interconnected. With that understanding, we can finally move from being ego-, family- and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric. Such a change won't be easy. Too many of our basic institutions are based on the dark view.Take, for example, neoliberalism—the economic philosophy of Milton Friedman [Chicago School of Economics] that undergirds the kind of cutthroat capitalism that has dominated many countries [macro economic policies] including the United States, since the days of Ronald Reagan [ex-US 40th President (1981-89)] and Margaret Thatcher [ex-UK Prime Minister (PM) (1979-90)].
Neoliberalism is based on the belief that people are basically selfish and, therefore, it's everyone for themselves in a survival-of-the-fittest world. The [neoliberal view is that] government needs to get out of the way so the fittest can help us not only survive but thrive.
"This economic philosophy [of NEOLIBERALISM] has resulted in massive inequality as well as the disconnection and polarization among people that we experience so dramatically today. The time has come for a new view of human nature that releases the collaboration and caring that lives in our hearts."
The Promise of IFS
I know it sounds grandiose, but this book offers the kind of uplifting paradigm and set of practices that can achieve the changes we need. It's full of exercises that will confirm the radically positive assertions I make about the nature of the mind so you can experience it for yourself (and not just take it from me).I've been developing Internal Family Systems (IFS) for almost four decades. It's taken me on a long, fascinating, and—as emphasised in my book No Bad Parts—a spiritual journey that I want to share with you. This journey has transformed my beliefs about myself, about what people are about, about the essence of human goodness, and about how much transformation is possible. IFS has morphed over time from being exclusively about psychotherapy to becoming a kind of spiritual practice, although you don't have to define yourself as spiritual to practice, as well. At it's core, IFS is a loving way of relating internally (to your parts) and externally (to the people in your life), so in that sense, IFS is a life practice, as well. It's something you can do on a daily, moment-to-moment basis—at any time, by yourself or with others.
At this point, there might be a part of you that's skeptical. After all, that's a lot to promise in the opening paragraphs of a book.
"All I ask is that your skeptic part gives you enough space inside to try these ideas on for a little while, including trying some of the exercises so you can check it out for yourself. In my experience, it's difficult to believe in the promise of IFS until you actually try it."
About the Author
Dr. Richard C. Schwartz is a systemic family therapist and creator of the revolutionary Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of therapy. He is currently in the faculty at Harvard Medical School and is also the author of Introduction to Internal Family Systems, and You Are the One You've Been Waiting For.Praise for No Bad Parts
An enormous gift – transformative, compassionate, and wise. These simple and brilliant teachings will open your mind and free your spirit and your heart.Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart
Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy… has been one of the great advances in trauma therapy. IFS is one of the cornerstones of effective and lasting trauma therapy.
Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score
In this highly readable volume, Dr. Richard Schwartz articulates and deftly illustrates his Internal Family Systems model, one of the most innovative, intuitive, comprehensive, and transformational therapies to have emerged in the present century.
Dr Gabor Mate,author of In the Realm of Hungary Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
This may be the most transformational book you'll ever read.
Dr Lissa Rankin, author of Mind Over Medicine
No Bad Parts is, I believe, Richard Schwartz's clearest, most comprehensive, and most inspiring manifesto. Anyone interested in IFS, indeed anyone interested in a happier, less conflicted life, should devour this life-changing, pioneering work.
Terry Real, author of The New Rules of Marriage