No Bad Parts Quotes

“Different parts maintain their separateness while communicating and collaborating with each other, while the Self conducts this inner orchestra.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“This is what healing means in IFS—wholeness and reconnection, and a Self who wants to facilitate that at all levels of a system. As Wendell Berry writes, “Healing complicates the system by opening and restoring connections among the various parts, in this way restoring the ultimate simplicity of their union…. The parts are healthy insofar as they are joined harmoniously to the whole…. Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health.”1”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“As you unburden your exiles, it allows your protectors to transform, and you begin hearing more from those parts of you that aren’t so obsessed and driven—the ones who love being truly intimate with others, the ones who want to create art and move your body, the ones who want to play with family and friends, and the ones who just love being in nature. When you’re more Self-led, you become a more complete, integrated, and whole person.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“When we have lots of exiles, our protectors have no choice but to be egotistic, hedonistic, or dissociative.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“So why is this important? For one thing, if you can become what I call the primary caretaker of your own parts, then you free intimate partners (or therapists, children, parents, etc.) from the responsibility of taking care of raw and needy exiles. Those people then can act as the secondary caretakers of your parts, which is a much more enjoyable and feasible role. Most of us have that reversed. Our exiles don’t trust our Self and consequently they and the protectors who try to get them to calm down are looking outside of us to get what they need. When we encounter a person who resembles the profile exiles have of their ideal protector, redeemer, or lover, they feel elated, infatuated, and relieved. Through what’s called positive transference, our parts put distorted images on such people, who can’t help but disappoint those extreme expectations. Then comes the negative transference from angry protectors. There are actually a number of people leading workshops on Self-led parenting. When parents are Self-led, they relate to their external children in the same way they do their internal ones—with patience, calm, clarity, love, firmness, and reassurance.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“An exile is healed when Self retrieves it from where it is stuck in the past. Then the exile can unburden and begin to reintegrate with all the other parts in the system. When that happens, the system feels far less vulnerable and protectors also feel freed up to unburden and take on new valuable roles. Thus, all the protective energy that went into keeping you from being triggered and keeping your exiles at bay is freed up for healthier endeavors and you have new access to the wonderful feelings and resources of your healed former exiles.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“In contrast to the managers who try to preempt anything that’s going to trigger the exiles, these firefighter parts are activated after an exile has been triggered and desperately (and often impulsively) try to douse the flames of emotion, get us higher than the flames with some substance, or find a way to distract us until the fire burns itself out. Depending on how much you fear your exiles, your firefighters will resort to desperate measures with little regard for the collateral damage to your health or your relationships. All they know is they have to get you away from those feelings right now or else! Sometimes their fears of your death are warranted, because suicide is an option for some firefighters if other solutions don’t work.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“managers are one class of protectors. These parts carry heavy burdens of responsibility for which they are ill-equipped because they are young too. In family therapy, we call children who take on these adult duties parentified children. Managers are parentified inner children. They are usually very tired and stressed out. They’re trying to keep the world safe for our exiles while at the same time keeping our exiles contained. They also have the ability to numb our bodies so we don’t feel so much, because if you don’t feel, then you don’t get triggered. Managers are working all the time—some of them never sleep.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“These exiles are what Freud famously called the Id, and he mistakenly assumed they were merely primitive impulses. As I discussed earlier, that negative take just added to Western culture’s detrimental view of human nature and was highly influential in psychotherapy’s disinterest in getting to know those parts of us. Once you have a lot of exiles, you feel far more delicate and the world seems more dangerous because there are so many things and people and situations that could trigger them. And when an exile gets triggered and bursts out of whatever container we keep it in, it can feel like we’re about to die, because it was exactly that scary or humiliating when the originating event happened. Or maybe, as Bly notes, we’re terrified because the exiles have become so extreme.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“In addition to the vulnerable parts of us that get hurt and then exiled, there are other lively and protective parts that don’t fit in our families, or maybe they scare people around us. Those become what I call protectors-in-”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Now you’re going to kind of be their therapist as they talk to each other about this issue. And again, your job isn’t to take a side—it’s just to help them get to know each other in a different way and make sure they respect each other when they talk. Remind them that they’re both a part of you, so they have that in common. Then, just see how they react as they get to know each other in this different way. Notice what happens to the dilemma. At some point, pause their discussion. Let them both know that you can meet with them more regularly in this way, and ask them if they would be willing to give you their input on dilemmas in the future, but then trust you to make the final decision. They would act more like advisors for you, rather than having the responsibility of making bigger decisions like this one”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“In the next minute or so, I want you to ask the part you’ve been speaking with to go into a separate waiting room. Then let the other one out so you can get to know it in the same way. And again, you’re trying to have an open heart and open mind as you listen to its side. You don’t have to agree. You just kind of want to get where it’s coming from, why it’s so charged up about this, what it’s afraid would happen if the other side won, and so on. After you’ve worked with that second part for a while, ask if it would be willing to talk to the other one directly. Reassure it that you are there to mediate and to make sure they stay respectful toward each other. It’s okay if the part’s not willing to do that. If that happens, you won’t take the next steps. But if it is willing, then invite the other one to come and sit down with the two of you.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Exercise: Dilemma Meditation Once again, I invite you to get comfortable and take some deep breaths. Now, think of a dilemma in your life—either one that you’re currently facing or one that you faced in the past. Pick an issue that you’ve experienced a lot of conflict around. And as you focus on this dilemma, notice the parts on each side of it and notice how they battle with each other. And then notice how you feel toward that battle or toward each part in the battle. Now let’s get to know each of those parts, one at a time. To do that, you’re going to ask one of them to go into a kind of waiting room. That will create a bit of a boundary that will allow the one you’re currently working with to relax a little bit. So get to know the one who’s not in the waiting room first. And again, notice what you’re feeling toward it.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“We went from unblending parts and releasing Self to witnessing, retrieving, and unburdening an exile, and then to helping a protector consider a new role. In addition, there was a point where I talked directly to a protector, a practice we call direct access. While many of Sam’s protectors interfered at different points, they quickly were willing to open space once he and I reassured them. This isn’t true for most people—it takes longer for their protectors to trust them and me—so don’t be frustrated if your sessions don’t move as quickly.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Liberate parts from the roles they’ve been forced into, so they can be who they’re designed to be. 2.​Restore trust in the Self and Self-leadership. 3.​Reharmonize the inner system. 4.​Become more Self-led in your interactions with the world.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“Why do parts blend? Protective parts blend because they believe they have to manage situations in your life. They don’t trust your Self to do it. For example, if your father hit you as a child and you weren’t able to stop him, your parts lost trust in your Self’s ability to protect the system and, instead, came to believe they have to do it. To make the parallel to external families, they become parentified inner children. That is, they carry the responsibility for protecting you despite the fact that, like external parentified children, they are not equipped to do so. Parts often become extreme in their protective efforts and take over your system by blending. Some make you hypervigilant, others get you to overreact angrily to perceived slights, others make you somewhat dissociative all the time”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“In our attempts to control what we consider to be disturbing thoughts and emotions, we just end up fighting, ignoring, disciplining, hiding, or feeling ashamed of those impulses that keep us from doing what we want to do in our lives. And then we shame ourselves for not being able to control them. In other words, we hate what gets in our way.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“In fact, most meditations can be seen as unblending practices. Whether you mindfully separate from thoughts and emotions by noticing them from a place of calm acceptance or by repeating a mantra that puts them to sleep, you are accessing the Self.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“This is a brief meditation that I do a version of each day, as do many people who follow the IFS path. I encourage you to try it out as a daily practice. Get comfortable and, if it helps, take deep breaths. Then start by focusing on and checking in with whatever parts you are actively working with. To do that, see if you can find each of them in or around your body and get curious about how they’re doing. That is, ask each if there’s anything it wants you to know or if it needs anything—like you might with a child that’s in your care. As you’re getting to know it, at some point help it get to know you better—the you that’s with it now—since most of the time these parts don’t really know you. Instead, they’ve been interacting with other parts in there and they often believe that you are still a young child. Often this is their first encounter with you—the you who’s curious about them and cares about them. So let them know who you are, even how old you are, since they often think you’re much younger. Let them know that they’re not alone anymore and see how they react. You can ask, if you like, how old they thought you were. You can even ask them to turn around and look at you.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“That is, Jesus went with compassion and curiosity and care to the exiles in the outside world and healed them—the lepers, the poor, the outcasts.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“The Self is indeed more than the sum of your parts. It’s also in everyone, although it needs a certain amount of hardware (i.e., brain capacity) to operate fully. Young children can’t fully access Self, although they can embody enough Self to heal themselves emotionally—a process witnessed and described by many IFS child therapists. Children don’t have the brain power to fully protect themselves in the world, regardless of how much their parts might allow them to be Self-led. And this is partly why your parts lost trust in your Self’s leadership when you were hurt as a young child—you couldn’t protect them at the time, and they think they have to take over.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“parts are sacred, spiritual beings and they deserve to be treated as such.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“these symptoms and patterns are the activities of young, stressed-out parts that are often frozen in time during earlier traumas and believe that you are still quite young and powerless. They often believe that they must blend the way they do or something dreadful will happen”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“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

“some of the similarities people describe: •​A sense that all things are one. “We become aware that, say, a tree and a river—or you and I—are only different in the way two waves of the sea appear to be separate and distinct. In reality they—and we—are part of the same ocean of being.” •​An awareness that not only are we connected to everything in the world, but we also tap into a “much more stable, deep-rooted, and expansive self, which can’t be damaged by rejection and doesn’t constantly hanker for attention and is free of the anxieties that oppress the ego.” •​Compassion and love for the people around us, but also for “the whole human race, and for the whole world.” •​A new sense of clarity and wisdom that includes the calming sense that everything is okay. “We have the beginning sense that all is well, that in some strange way the world, far from being the coldly indifferent place that science tells us it is … is a benign place. No matter what problems fill our life and how full of violence and injustice the world is … everything is good, that the world is perfect.” •​A vibrating energy that runs through our body and is accompanied by a feeling of intense joy. “This isn’t a joy because of something … it’s just there, a natural condition of being.” •​A diminished fear of death and the knowledge that death is merely a transition.12”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“each part is like a person with a true purpose.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“When people asked me if I was ready for my life to change, I don’t think I really understood what they meant. It wasn’t just that strangers would know who I was. It was this other thing that started to happen to me: when I looked in their eyes, sometimes, there was a little voice in my head wondering, Would you still be so excited to meet me if you really knew who I was? If you knew all the things I have done? If you could see all my parts?” Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness1”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

“You identify with your weaknesses, assuming that who you really are is defective and that if other people saw the real you, they’d be repulsed.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

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

“Would you still be so excited to meet me if you really knew who I was? If you knew all the things I have done? If you could see all my parts?”
― Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model