No Bad Parts Quotes

“Usually, they’ve been operating by themselves in there without any adult supervision, and most of them are pretty young. When you finally turn around and give them some attention, it’s like you’re a parent who’s been somewhat neglectful, but who’s finally becoming more nurturing and interested in your children.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“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.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“move from being ego-, family-, and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric.”
― Ph.D. Schwartz, Richard, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Well-known neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel has emphasized the importance of such integration in healing and has described IFS as a good way to achieve that. He writes, “Health comes from integration. It’s that simple, and that important. A system that is integrated is in a flow of harmony. Just as in a choir, with each singer’s voice both differentiated from the other singers’ voices but also linked, harmony emerges with integration. What is important to note is that this linkage does not remove the differences, as in the notion of blending: instead it maintains these unique contributions as it links them together. Integration is more like a fruit salad than a smoothie.”5 This, again, is one of the basic goals of IFS. Each part is honored for its unique qualities while also working in harmony with all the others.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Jeff Brown explores the phenomenon in depth in his film Karmageddon: “After my childhood, I needed the kinds of spirituality that would keep me from allowing the pain to surface…. I was confusing self-avoidance with enlightenment.”9”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Because our particle Self is an aspect of a vibrating field, it will resonate with the Self in other people and with the Self in our parts. Physicists are increasingly recognizing that everything in the universe is constantly vibrating or oscillating at different frequencies, even stationary objects. They have also noticed that when two things approach each other, they start vibrating at the same frequency—they synchronize.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“the client would become. The simple act of getting these other parts to open more space inside seemed to release someone who had curiosity but who was also calm and confident relative to the critic.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“transform into their original, valuable states. It’s as if a curse was lifted from an inner Sleeping Beauty, or ogre, or addict. The newly unburdened part almost universally says it feels much lighter and wants to play or rest, after which it finds a new role. The former addict part now wants to help you connect with people. The hypervigilant part becomes an advisor on boundaries.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“If, on the other hand, you believe that the part that seeks drugs is protective and carries the burden of responsibility for keeping this person from severe emotional pain or even suicide, then you would treat the person very differently.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Parts are often frozen in past traumas when their extreme roles were needed. •​When they trust it’s safe to step out of their roles, they are highly valuable to the system. Burdens”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“enlightened through compassion and love. Or, through a Christian lens, through IFS people wind up doing in the inner world what Jesus did in the outer—they go to inner exiles and enemies with love, heal them, and bring them home, just as he did with the lepers, the poor, and the outcasts.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Basically, what I found is that love is the answer in the inner world, just as it is in the outer world. Listening to, embracing, and loving parts allows them to heal and transform as much as it does for people. In Buddhist terms, IFS helps people become bodhisattvas of their psyches”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“For example, clients would talk about an inner critic who, when they made a mistake, attacked them mercilessly. That attack would trigger a part that felt totally bereft, lonely, empty, and worthless. Experiencing that worthless part was so distressing that almost to the rescue would come the binge that would take clients out of their body and turn them into an unfeeling eating machine.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“I did an outcome study with bulimic clients and discovered with alarm that they kept binging and purging, not realizing they’d been cured. When I asked them why, they started talking about these different parts of them.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Most of the mindfulness approaches I’m familiar with subscribe to the mono-mind paradigm and, consequently, view such episodes as the temporary emergence of troubling thoughts and emotions rather than as hurting parts that need to be listened to and loved.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“From the IFS point of view, the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place. Most of the mindfulness approaches I’m familiar with subscribe to the mono-mind paradigm and, consequently, view such episodes as the temporary emergence of troubling thoughts”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“That being said, the ubiquitous, Buddhist-derived practices of mindfulness are a step in the right direction. They enable the practitioner to observe thoughts and emotions from a distance and from a place of acceptance rather than fighting or ignoring them. For me, that’s a good first step.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“We get tied up in knots as we desperately try to, and we generate brutal inner critics who attack us for our failings. As Van Ness notes, “I spent so much time pushing little Jack aside. Instead of nurturing him I tore him to pieces…. Learning to parent yourself, with soothing compassionate love … that’s the key to being fulfilled.”6”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Because this willpower ethic has become internalized, we learn at an early age to shame and manhandle our unruly parts. We simply wrestle them into submission. One part is recruited by this cultural imperative to become our inner drill sergeant and often becomes that nasty inner critic”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“The idea of taking responsibility for oneself and not making excuses is as American as apple pie.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“To summarize, here’s what I’m suggesting: 1.​We lead our lives from Self as much as possible and find ways to help increasing numbers of people do the same. 2.​We heal (unburden) ourselves and one another. In the same way, I’m convinced that there are ways to help large groups uncover and unburden cultural legacy burdens like racism, individualism, consumerism, materialism, and sexism. That being said, in this larger work, I think it’s a mistake to diminish the importance of unloading our individual burdens. Until our parts feel securely attached to us, to the Earth, and to SELF, we will have protectors that crave power, adoration, material things, and status—all the things that keep us separate from one another and keep us unaware of the consequences of abusing the Earth.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Parts are not imaginary products or symbols of your psyche; nor are they simply metaphors of deeper meaning. They are inner beings who exist in inner families or societies, and what happens in those inner realms makes a big difference in how you feel and live your life. If you don’t take them seriously, you’ll have a hard time doing what you’re here to do. You might be able to unburden your parts to some degree, but it will help you tremendously to enter your inner world with full conviction and treat your parts like the real and sacred beings they are. If you don’t take your parts seriously, you won’t become an effective inner leader or parent.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“This is one way to practice a new relationship with your body. Whenever a sensation or symptom comes up, pay attention to it. What message is it trying to send you?”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“In other words, when you refuse to listen, you can turn your parts into inner terrorists, and they will destroy your body if necessary. Unfortunately, our medical system—in much the same way as a repressive political system—too often is designed to kill the messenger rather than help us get the message.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Unless our parts are fully on board, they will ultimately sabotage our healthy solutions.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“some forms can bring you more into your body, but others are often employed by protectors to keep you more disembodied. For this reason, it’s always valuable (and often surprising) to inquire among your parts as to whether a medication or meditation is more or less embodying of your Self. Are you using it to promote healing or to bypass your exiles? Others reasons for disembodiment include unhealthy diets, lack of exercise, addiction to devices, and the over-busy and over-worked American lifestyle. Relatedly, obsession with your body’s size and appearance—our legacy burden of body shame and appearance consciousness—leads to more dieting and constant self-scrutiny, which is also disembodying.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Another reason that protectors keep you disembodied is that being in your body gives your exiles more access to you. When protectors keep you at least slightly dissociated, numb, or in your head, you never have to feel the exiles’ emotions, which means they’re less likely to get triggered. That’s why it’s often a tough sell to get permission from protectors to re-embody. They correctly fear that you’ll feel a lot more, and they worry that it will be too much for you, because they often believe you are still quite young and in jeopardy. Additionally, your protectors have more power to dominate your life when your Self isn’t embodied, and they’ll resist your embodiment attempts if it means giving up that power to protect.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“The way we relate to our parts translates directly to how we relate to people when they resemble our parts.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“caretaking manager parts. Too many leaders have exiled so many other parts of themselves that they become overextended and burn out. Real servant leadership only works when a leader has access to Self and all of their parts. The organization they lead will then reflect the leader’s inner harmony and connectedness.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“As people become more Self-led, they find themselves acting altruistically without effort and without so much inner debate, because it just feels natural to them to want to help others. This is because Self recognizes that you and the others are part of a larger body of humanity. It’s the same as when, say, your angry part starts to feel more connected and recognizes that the manager that it hated because of how much it tried to stifle the anger is also connected to the larger entity—you. This leads to parts recognizing that when one member of the system is hurt or burdened, it affects the larger system that they all belong to.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model