No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
Richard C. Schwartz
Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind—and healing the many parts that make you who you are. Is there just one “you”. We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. more
216 pages, Paperback
First published Sounds True
4.18
Rating
7362
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792
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Richard C. Schwartz
39 books 375 followers
Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS.
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I liked this book’s compassionate approach to addressing our trauma and how we cope with it. In No Bad Parts, Richard Schwartz describes his psychotherapy Internal Family Systems, which centers on how we have different parts within ourselves that take on different roles in response to trauma we may have suffered in our childhoods. For example, we may have Exiles, which represent the psychological trauma itself and embody the pain and fear from our negative early experiences, as well as Firefighters, which symbolize coping mechanisms (e. g. , binge eating, substance use) that try to mitigate the suffering elicited by Exiles. more
DAMN I LOVED THIS BOOK. My favorite book of 2022 (even though it came out in 2021)Conventional psychology assumes that normal people are unitary in mind and personality, and deems the presence of “sub personalities” as a pathological outcome of trauma/dissociation. Author Richard C. Schwartz claims otherwise, asserting that normal healthy human psychology consists of many sub personalities, which he refers to as “parts”. more
As a patient, I've always felt something was missing in more traditional therapeutic modalities (i. e. CBT, DBT) and I picked up this book because IFS appeared to be an intriguing answer to my dilemma. While I doubt any of my past therapists would ever intend to shun, look down on, or demonize any part of me, even the most compassionate, open-minded, and accepting therapists have managed to ascribe to black and white or good vs. bad thinking in one way or another. more
Decided to try this book after hearing it praised by therapists I know, but I found it very off-putting. The author is the person who has developed the Internal Family Systems model, which apparently is widely used and widely thought to be a helpful approach. I don’t doubt those things, but I found this presentation of it to be very odd. The author waxes spiritual and philosophical on almost every page, without really offering any reasons for the claims he is making. It would be one thing to say, hey, if you adopt this perspective and help your clients to adopt this perspective, you’ll and they’ll get positive results. more
The theory behind Richard Schwartz' therapy modality (though one could argue it's much more than that--philosophy, life practice. ) is that none of us have a single mind, but that we are fragmented into what he simply calls 'parts'. He views those parts as individuals with their own needs and agendas, all of them well intentioned but, depending on their respective strategies, more or less destructive. Part of me was like: No way, that's whack. Another part was quite intrigued by this idea. more
This is a mess. I was excited to see something new from the founder of Internal Family Systems therapy, but I can't imagine that anyone unfamiliar with IFS would come away from this book with an understanding of it. Terminology is used prior to being defined. Exercises are given to the reader, and only later is the caveat made that certain things shouldn't be done solo, but only with a therapist. An editor was desperately needed to impose some kind of order, some structure, some coherence, onto the author's rambling flow of thoughts. more
Really interesting approach that is gentle and compassionate. Not too long of a read or too scientific or even dry. There is a ton of information, examples, exercises packed in to this gem. Anyone who likes self help or healing trauma books has to read this. It will change so much for you in the best way possible. more
TLDR: I wanted to like this book because the concept seemed really interesting, but it's basically Pixar's Inside Out in real life and is really mid. Considering that the title of the book implies that this is for those suffering from trauma, that may be harsh to say, but I don't find it to be so because the way that information is presented in this book and the author's purpose in writing it is to bring his model of Internal Family Systems therapy into the mainstream. It is meant to be accessible to anyone and apply universally and I find it to not do that. Dr. Richard (Dick) Schwartz is a trained family therapist who for the past few decades has been spearheading a new psychological model that he calls Internal Family Systems (IFS). more
I was super excited to read this book as I learned about IFS from my favorite teacher from grad school, who specializes in addiction and has actually done many trainings with Dick himself. I use it in practice often. Sadly I was not impressed with this book. I found myself having to force myself to finish it. As a psychotherapist and science believer, the spiritual aspect of this book made things iffy for me. more
I like the concepts but hate this writer. I’m coming to an increasing level of conviction that most psychologist are egomaniacs. This guy is for sure. Jung and Freud definitely. But I was holding out that like the midtier dudes would be all right. more
This guy is real real kind- a tiny bit cheesy- but like really genuinely wants you to heal from your shit and live with more ease. He founded IFS, which is the idea that our traumatized younger selves get frozen as “parts” and can act out in bursts of big emotions as adults. If we can develop trust with these parts and help them heal their past, we can live more in our selves and not from reactions as adults. Took me a while to read because it’s full of exercises that are heavy but good. I think it maybe changed my life. more
IFS might be a great practice and has the potential to help a lot of people, but this book is not for me. The author and creator of the Internal Family Systems model has an off-putting writing style that disparages anything other than his therapy plan, but it is his misconception and incorrect description of Buddhist practice that I feel the need to correct. His disparagement of 12 step programs, followed by a description of a "better" method that is similar to and complimentary to both Buddhist and 12 step programs really drove my dissatisfaction with this book. As someone who has pieced together their own recovery plan, adhering both to a traditional 12 step program and a Buddhist meditation practice to observe my mind, I know first hand that each individual in recovery has to figure out what works for them. No two programs of recovery are identical, and I've seen where creating space for flexibility is the saving grace. more
IFS work is certainly a valid and helpful form of trauma therapy; however, this book is muddled, disjointed, extremely repetitive, grandiose, and at times reads as dogmatic pseudoscience. I find the author’s distaste and hesitancy for diagnoses and medication extremely problematic and dangerous. This book suggests that IFS is the best and most effective type of therapy for all, which is simply untrue. IFS should be looked at as a helpful tool to incorporate into your therapy but by no means do I agree it is the only or best method of healing for all people. This is reductive. more
More like a 3. 75 the issues I had are personal to me. I don't want to hear about my author's political or spiritual practice unless that is the book I specifically picked up. This is a good book, I just don't like reading through parts where he talks about politics and religion. Otherwise, really good IFS material and I would recommend the book with the caveat above to others. more
I was very intrigued as I started this book. The concept makes sense to me. However, perhaps it’s just that I’m neurodivergent, but I really struggled with the exercises. I really could not get a grasp on what the instructions were trying to get my mind to do. I also felt a bit alienated by how much religious talk there is in the book, particularly Christianity. more
I was introduced to IFS many years ago in my therapy sessions as I was healing from a difficult year of cancer surgeries and treatments. Learning about and exploring my own “internal family” made a huge difference in my healing process moving forward with my life. This new book by the founder of IFS is written in a style that is friendly, warm, and informative for someone who is new to the process as well as someone who has already learned the basics. I found the exercises and recommended suggestions to be powerful and transformative for me in the current life situation I am in. Richard shares many examples from the lives and experiences of his own clients and the included dialogs of some of his clients with their own inner parts I found extraordinarily helpful. more
Internal Family Systems therapy is so powerful. I’ve been honored to facilitate it some and to witness inner exiles be acknowledged, heard, embraced and ultimately unburdened. This book is a really helpful tool that’s helped me get more curious about my reactions, the sensations and pain in my body and to ask them what they are trying to tell me. “Listening to, embracing, and loving [our] parts allows them to heal and transform as much as it does for people. ” . more
I’ve been telling everyone that’ll listen about how much this book has shaped my worldview this year. Would highly recommend. I will also say I read this book with my therapist so maybe I shouldn’t be recommending it all willy nilly without that context. . more
Absolutely the worst mental health book I've ever read. it's basically Scientology OT-III body thetans, without the scifi. do not read this book. more
my therapist recommended that i read this and. it really fucking sucked. disclaimer. i know that this type of therapy can be really helpful to a lot of people. it's not helpful for me. more
2023 reads, #14. This introductory guide to the psychotherapy process known as "Internal Family Systems" was recommended to me by Gabor Mate, in his own book on the psychotherapy process, The Myth of Normal, in that the two have a lot of overlap and Mate is actually friends with IFS creator Richard Schwartz. His main premise gels with a lot of what we're learning right this moment about the human brain through the latest generations of monitoring equipment, that what we call "ourself" or our "personality" is actually an amalgamation of a bunch of different parts in our mind, and that there's essentially an orchestra conductor we alternatively call "consciousness" or "the soul" that keeps them all in harmony, allowing some pieces to work together and forcing some to stay far apart. Schwartz contends (if I'm reading this correctly) that we have a core being largely determined by our particular DNA that he simply calls Self, inherently sweet and kind and generous because humans are born inherently sweet and kind and generous; but that as parts of that core Self perhaps get hurt or abused or otherwise mistreated in childhood and beyond (in either a small way or deeply, accidentally or on purpose), other parts step up to push that hurt part far away so they can't get hurt anymore (becoming what Schwartz calls an "exile"), with some parts that may for example become combative or engage in destructive behavior in their attempts to shield that exile (becoming "protectors"), and others that might work overtime to maintain a kind of homeostasis that allows the entire system to function (thus becoming "managers"). IFS therapy, then, is the process of examining our outward negative behavior as adults, then doing deep probing to identify what parts they're coming from and why that part thinks it's protecting us by engaging in that negative behavior, discover the exile it's trying to protect by doing so (some pushed so deeply into our unconscious, we forgot they even existed), and see if we maybe can't get these parts to talk to each other so they can understand that the threat is now over, that the protector can stop being a security guard for the exile, and that the exile can come back and be a normal, happy part of our kind and generous Self again. more
The forward by Alanis Morissette should have been a warning, jfc. more
A very good read. The ideas behind Integrated Family Systems are powerful. It’s the primary modality I use right now and it’s really helped me understand all the nuance behind what I do and how I react to things in my life. I knew the basics before reading this book, but this helped explain the full approach and filled in a lot of gaps. I liked listening to it because I could listen to the sessions they did with people. more
Dang this book just changed my whole life. The exercises in this book showed me some things about myself that I’m going to be thinking about for a while. I can see IFS work being an antidote to CBT and behaviorally focused therapy approaches that tend to dominate modern mental health. That being said, there were some wild and problematic ideas sprinkled throughout this book that I’m still processing. It had some overt ableism and at one point the author suggested asking parts if doses of medication were correct. more
I had a lot of thoughts about this book…. I was intrigued at first and then it slowly got weirder and weirder. Lots of psychobabble and ideas not rooted in science. I think my biggest qualm with this book was Dick Schwartz’ absolutely unnecessary and misplaced inclusion of his own political beliefs. As a therapist, I picked up this book to try and learn more about a therapeutic approach/theory, not have a rich white dude get on a soap box about how progressive he is. more
I went into this book very intrigued by the IFS model, and I remain thrilled by the compassionate and dignity-serving approach that it takes. However, I found myself disappointed by the grandiose, strangely political, and often reductive approach Schwartz took in the writing of this book. I went into “No Bad Parts” hoping to find some discussion of the foundational philosophy behind the model, but found instead a primary concern of the practical implications of the model, often involving the “macro” rather than the “micro. ” That said, I did enjoy the experiential approach which allowed me to process my resistance and “burdens” in real time. I think the model is a beautiful way to view human suffering and growth, but this book did not convince me that IFS is worth hitching my wagon to, as a psychotherapist. more
4. 25 ⭐️posso ter acabado o livro mas vou voltar a ele muitas vezes. more
What are the main ideas. * in constrast to mono-mind belief of most, we all have many-minds or parts that constitute how we think about and act in the world. this is not bad, shameful, nor should it be stigma inducing. * people whose unhealthy parts dominate their lives are the reason many of us fear and resist the idea of having many parts of ourselves. but intuitively, most of us know that we do have many parts. more
Like many other reviewers have said, I love IFS but did not care for this author. The first 3-4 chapters were very good. They clearly laid out the basic principles of IFS in a way that was easy to grasp. The concept of IFS is easy for me to buy into. A lot of its theories and principles are relatable and it’s easy to see how different “parts” are present in each of us. more