No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

The media could not be loaded. As a licensed social worker, "No Bad Parts" by Richard Schwartz offers a profound and accessible approach to understanding the complexities of the human psyche. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, which emphasizes that no part of us is inherently “bad,” provides a compassionate framework for both self-healing and client work. The book is filled with practical tools and exercises that are easy to apply, whether you’re working on your own growth or guiding others through their challenges.Schwartz’s clear, non-judgmental writing style makes it easy to grasp complex concepts and integrate them into everyday practice. It’s particularly valuable for helping clients recognize and engage with their different emotional parts without shame or self-criticism. This book is a must-read for anyone in the therapeutic field, offering deep insights into fostering acceptance, self-compassion, and emotional well-being.

“No Bad Parts” is a fascinating and inspiring book. Dick Schwartz shows how healing and liberating it can be to enter our inner world, and to lovingly care for the pain, the anguishes, and inner struggles that haunt us. He presents a captivating, groundbreaking, and deeply humane therapy approach. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is not just a model of psychotherapy — it becomes a way of life.In IFS, we become aware of our parts: those conflicting inner voices, feelings and beliefs that can overwhelm and confuse us. We also become aware of our Self: the healing force we all carry inside. These conversations, these compassionate inner exchanges, between our parts and our Self sustain and strengthen us throughout life’s challenges and changes.His concept of the Self is revolutionary because he does not see it as broken, but as present in all of us. The Self becomes concealed by alienated parts, who are burdened with feelings and beliefs of traumatic experiences as they were fighting for our survival, most often during our childhood.We learn about why parts are frozen in time, becoming stuck in feelings and beliefs formed by those traumatic experiences. We learn how we can help parts unburden and become supportive partners in our inner family. IFS is a healing journey that reaches beyond one’s own soul and life. It touches the lives of others.It has always moved me how honestly and openly Dick Schwartz shares about himself, his own struggles, the history of his suffering parts, the development of IFS, and his experiences with IFS in his life. He does this again with his new book “No Bad Parts.” He is not someone who wants to be on a pedestal. He wants us to get to know what is going on in our inner world. He supports us lovingly in gaining appreciation for our parts and our Self — and in living Self-led lives. He empowers us to create harmony within and around us.As his client some years ago, I had unforgettable experiences on this journey. I remember coming into a session after I had sent the final version of my essay “Facing a Wall of Silence” to the editors. As I listened inside, I did not notice any parts. Instead I had a strong feeling of being alive. He asked me to imagine walking up a path and leaving my parts behind. When I did this, the feeling of being alive only intensified. He invited me to ask this feeling what it had to tell me, and the first thing I heard was: “This is what you are here for.” The same feeling returned strongly and for some time, years later, when I wrote “Alice Miller: War and Betrayal Trauma.”Although I have a part who is very skeptical of spirituality, it acknowledges these experiences as real, valid and convincing. In retrospect, it seems that — without being aware of it — I was on a journey and had a calling, which IFS helped me fulfill.It is a profound relief not to be demeaned by some arbitrary diagnosis, but to understand how our history impacted our parts — and forced our Self into being locked away. It is deeply gratifying to come to value our Self and to live with Self-leadership.The experience that my Self can be there, reliably and lovingly, with compassion, for my parts when they come up, and struggle, and need to share, has been life-changing. It has brought hope and joy and love and courage into my life.Dick Schwartz shares his insights and experiences bravely and honestly. The wealth of those experiences and insights is comforting and invigorating. And comforting and loving is the IFS therapy approach, which is a blessing as we can actively heal our traumatized parts, harmonize our inner system, come to cherish our parts’ true essence, as well as our Self — and find our place in the world.I am grateful for my IFS journey, for Dick’s open heart and generosity when confronted with my vehement protectors, and for the encouragement that his book “No Bad Parts” provides in continuing my journey with IFS.

Absolutely fantastic overview of IFS therapy. Not enough to be able to practice it with others. A full training would be needed for that. But useful for an overview or for some mild Self work. Reads at an easy to understand level, any adult should be able to comprehend it.

I've been undertaking a "Year of Growth" since I hit age 42 and realized I still have a ways to go to really grow up. Out of many, many things I've tried, this book made the biggest difference in my life in the shortest time. It's not just a "therapy modality." It's a way of viewing human nature that is fundamentally kind and hopeful. And it's a way of actually healing trauma breathtakingly quickly, not talking about it endlessly for months and years, and not just trying to keep a lid on it with top-down approaches.You can make friends with even the most challenging parts of yourself. It's literally all good. Some old programs just need a little love and a little updating. IFS provides a genius "hack" for doing exactly that.You don't need willpower to change your life when you're actually healed. Life naturally and easily gets better. I barely recognize myself from three months ago when I first read this book. (I just listened to it a second time, and got a lot more out of it after doing many IFS sessions on myself for several weeks.)I could go on and on, but I'll just say this: If you're human, read this book. I understand so much more about everything since reading it, and life has gotten much better.It's not an immediate cure-all, and it requires tough inner work. There are other methods and modalities that have shed other kinds of light, and I'm grateful for all of it. But this helped me take a huge psychological and spiritual step forward. And it doesn't require you to believe anything. When you access your Self, you know. And it feels like a homecoming to a strange new world.With books like this showing new-old ways to find our best natures, it feels like a wonderful time to be alive. And I've seen some of the worst of what's happening these days. I don't come by my cautious and increasingly joyful optimism lightly or easily. Even if we destroy ourselves, it's fascinating and wondrous having a chance to find ourselves and each other in whatever time we have.P.S. This book works particularly well as an audiobook so you can do the exercises without having to refer to the text.

Well written, credible author and beneficial for self help and understanding the many parts of self.