Internal Family Systems (IFS)
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No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz
Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind―and healing the many parts that make you who you are.
Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment―and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you’ll explore:
Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind―and healing the many parts that make you who you are.
Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment―and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you’ll explore:
- The IFS revolution―how honoring and communicating with our parts changes our approach to mental wellness
- Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model
- The ego, the inner critic, the saboteur―making these often-maligned parts into powerful allies
- Burdens―why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs
- How IFS demonstrates human goodness by revealing that there are no bad parts
- The Self―discover your wise, compassionate essence of goodness that is the source of healing and harmony
- Exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part’s triggers, and more
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Becoming Whole: Healing the Exiled & Rejected Parts of Ourselves. Richard Schwartz does a brief demonstration with the host, Soren Gordhamer.
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In this podcast you’ll learn how to identify the different parts within you, and the roles that they are playing, and you’ll also get a taste of what it’s like to be coming from “Self”. And at the end you will hear Dick Schwartz guide the host, Neil Sattin, through an actual journey of identifying a part and hear how he helps that part to heal and transform.
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We all have an internal system of countless parts that interact internally with each other and externally with other people. In addition, we all have a core resource that is not a part, which is characterized by balance, curiosity and compassion. This is called the Self. The goal of IFS is to embody the Self and heal our injured parts so that we can live with confidence. When we embody more Self and listen to our parts rather than trying to eliminate these aspects of ourselves, our inner dialogues change spontaneously. The extreme voices calm down and we begin to feel good things: safer, lighter, freer, more open, more playful.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) opens up a whole new way of dealing with difficult feelings. These problematic emotions and desires really come from the parts of us which are like little people existing inside of us—each with its own unique feelings, motivations, and view of the world. These can look like irrational feelings or out-of-control impulses, but they are parts who are doing the best they can to cope with discomfort and pain. They are doing their best to help protect us from feeling pain. In fact, if we get into battles with our parts, they will fight back, and if we try to disown them, they will feel even more lonely and worthless than they already do. However, if we treat them like little beings inside of us who have our best interests at heart, we become open to a brand new way of relating to our feelings. We can get to know them, understand what drives them, and actually befriend them. When this happens, these parts will change, so they don’t have to do things like overeat or flip out in rage anymore. They can relax and act sensibly.
Underlying this cast of characters, every human being has a true Self that is wise, deep, open, and loving. This is who we truly are when we aren’t being hijacked by painful or defensive voices. The Self is the key to healing and integrating our many parts through its compassion, curiosity, and connectedness. It is also the natural leader of our inner family, a guide through the adventures of life. Yet if the Self is truly at the center of each of us, you may be asking, why don’t we know it better? Because over the years we have experienced hurts, trauma, and grief, which have burdened us with shame, fear, and negative beliefs. These events have prompted some of our inner characters to take over in a desperate bid to protect us from harm. They blot out our pain, and, in the process, the light of the Self gets dimmed or lost. We don’t see what’s really happening because they cover over much of their activity as they construct a conventional life for us.
IFS can help you access your Self, and from that place of strength and love you can connect with your troubled parts and heal them. Your parts are naturally endowed with qualities such as joy, freedom, perceptiveness, and creativity, but these have been lost because of childhood wounds. The Self can help heal these wounds and allow these parts to reclaim their natural strengths and goodness. They can come to trust you to lead, if you do it from Self. They can learn to work together with each other as a harmonious inner family that supports your flowering in the world.
Understanding the psyche in this way gives you a great deal of power to change your inner world for the better. Since parts are like little people inside you, you can make contact with them, get to know them, negotiate with them, encourage them to trust you, help them communicate with each other, and give them what they need to heal. When you do, you will have an enormously increased capacity for understanding and transforming your psyche—for achieving wholeness. You may treat the idea of subpersonalities as simply a useful metaphor for viewing the psyche, which it is, but it is much more than that. If you treat the components of your psyche as real entities that you can interact with, they will respond to you in that way, which gives you tremendous power for transformation.
Most of us have had glimpses of the Self, experiences that give us an idea of what is possible. However, our extreme parts are frequently so prevalent that they obscure it. When a part is strongly triggered, it tends to take over and push out the Self. We identify with the part, feeling as if we have become it, and have little or no access to the wondrous qualities of the Self.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) opens up a whole new way of dealing with difficult feelings. These problematic emotions and desires really come from the parts of us which are like little people existing inside of us—each with its own unique feelings, motivations, and view of the world. These can look like irrational feelings or out-of-control impulses, but they are parts who are doing the best they can to cope with discomfort and pain. They are doing their best to help protect us from feeling pain. In fact, if we get into battles with our parts, they will fight back, and if we try to disown them, they will feel even more lonely and worthless than they already do. However, if we treat them like little beings inside of us who have our best interests at heart, we become open to a brand new way of relating to our feelings. We can get to know them, understand what drives them, and actually befriend them. When this happens, these parts will change, so they don’t have to do things like overeat or flip out in rage anymore. They can relax and act sensibly.
Underlying this cast of characters, every human being has a true Self that is wise, deep, open, and loving. This is who we truly are when we aren’t being hijacked by painful or defensive voices. The Self is the key to healing and integrating our many parts through its compassion, curiosity, and connectedness. It is also the natural leader of our inner family, a guide through the adventures of life. Yet if the Self is truly at the center of each of us, you may be asking, why don’t we know it better? Because over the years we have experienced hurts, trauma, and grief, which have burdened us with shame, fear, and negative beliefs. These events have prompted some of our inner characters to take over in a desperate bid to protect us from harm. They blot out our pain, and, in the process, the light of the Self gets dimmed or lost. We don’t see what’s really happening because they cover over much of their activity as they construct a conventional life for us.
IFS can help you access your Self, and from that place of strength and love you can connect with your troubled parts and heal them. Your parts are naturally endowed with qualities such as joy, freedom, perceptiveness, and creativity, but these have been lost because of childhood wounds. The Self can help heal these wounds and allow these parts to reclaim their natural strengths and goodness. They can come to trust you to lead, if you do it from Self. They can learn to work together with each other as a harmonious inner family that supports your flowering in the world.
Understanding the psyche in this way gives you a great deal of power to change your inner world for the better. Since parts are like little people inside you, you can make contact with them, get to know them, negotiate with them, encourage them to trust you, help them communicate with each other, and give them what they need to heal. When you do, you will have an enormously increased capacity for understanding and transforming your psyche—for achieving wholeness. You may treat the idea of subpersonalities as simply a useful metaphor for viewing the psyche, which it is, but it is much more than that. If you treat the components of your psyche as real entities that you can interact with, they will respond to you in that way, which gives you tremendous power for transformation.
Most of us have had glimpses of the Self, experiences that give us an idea of what is possible. However, our extreme parts are frequently so prevalent that they obscure it. When a part is strongly triggered, it tends to take over and push out the Self. We identify with the part, feeling as if we have become it, and have little or no access to the wondrous qualities of the Self.
Curiosity - Being genuinely open and curious about why other parts or other people are reacting as they do, instead of becoming upset with them. An absence of an agenda to change another’s behavior, wanting instead to genuinely understand it.
Calm - Being centered and able to maintain a physical groundedness in the face of stressful situations or parts. Having a calming presence with other people. Experiencing a spacious, peaceful quiet inside.
Clarity - Maintaining a clear, undistorted view of situations and parts, with an absence of projections.
Connectedness - Feeling a sense of connection with all parts and other people or desire to reconnect. Recognizing that all life is connected in that sense of separateness is an illusion.
Confidence - Trusting that even if you’ve made mistakes, there’s an abiding knowledge that your truest Self holds goodness and worth. Internally Self trusts it’s competence even when parts are angry or distrustful. Self-confidence involves relating to parts and people in ways that are healing and effective.
Courage - Approaching formerly feared parts or situations and respond were consciously. Standing up to injustice well also speaking for your own extreme parts and apologizing for any negative impact on others.
Creativity - Being free to realize creative potential and to enjoy exploring novelty. Encouraging protectors to relax and allow parts to express themselves, unencumbered by burdens of fear, worthlessness, or shame.
Compassion - Seeing beyond others' angry or reactive parts and recognizing the fear or pain behind them. Feeling caring for another who is suffering and desire to help without being overwhelmed by their pain.
Calm - Being centered and able to maintain a physical groundedness in the face of stressful situations or parts. Having a calming presence with other people. Experiencing a spacious, peaceful quiet inside.
Clarity - Maintaining a clear, undistorted view of situations and parts, with an absence of projections.
Connectedness - Feeling a sense of connection with all parts and other people or desire to reconnect. Recognizing that all life is connected in that sense of separateness is an illusion.
Confidence - Trusting that even if you’ve made mistakes, there’s an abiding knowledge that your truest Self holds goodness and worth. Internally Self trusts it’s competence even when parts are angry or distrustful. Self-confidence involves relating to parts and people in ways that are healing and effective.
Courage - Approaching formerly feared parts or situations and respond were consciously. Standing up to injustice well also speaking for your own extreme parts and apologizing for any negative impact on others.
Creativity - Being free to realize creative potential and to enjoy exploring novelty. Encouraging protectors to relax and allow parts to express themselves, unencumbered by burdens of fear, worthlessness, or shame.
Compassion - Seeing beyond others' angry or reactive parts and recognizing the fear or pain behind them. Feeling caring for another who is suffering and desire to help without being overwhelmed by their pain.