No Bad Parts

Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

By: Richard C. Schwartz PhD, Alanis Morissette - foreword introduction

Narrated by: Charlie Mechling

Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

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. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this “mono-mind” theory. “All of us are born with many sub-minds - or parts,” says Dr. Schwartz. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us - and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.”

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• Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model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

IFS is a paradigm-changing model because it gives us a powerful approach for healing ourselves, our culture, and our planet. As Dr. Schwartz teaches, “Our parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they’re unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. When we learn to love all our parts, we can learn to love all people - and that will contribute to healing the world.”

©2021 Richard C. Schwartz, PhD (P)2021 Sounds True

Critic reviews

“An enormous gift - transformative, compassionate, and wise. These simple and brilliant teachings will open your mind and free your spirit and your heart.” (Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart)

“Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, and the understanding that we all contain valuable parts that are forced into extreme roles to deal with pain and disappointment, has been one of the great advances in trauma therapy. Understanding the role they have played in our survival and being able to unburden the original traumas leads to self-compassion and inner harmony. The notion that all of our parts are welcome is truly revolutionary and opens up a path to self-acceptance and self-leadership. IFS is one of the cornerstones of effective and lasting trauma therapy.” (Bessel van der Kolk, MD, author of The Body Keeps the Score)

“In this trim and highly readable volume, Dr. Richard Schwartz articulates and deftly illustrates his Internal Family Systems model, one of the most innovative, intuitive, comprehensive, and transformational therapies to have emerged in the present century.” (Gabor Maté, MD, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)

Changed my life

No Bad Parts had really helped me understand myself in an amazing way. I learned to love myself and all my parts like I do my own children. Even the parts that are critical and shame me are parts I love that have been protecting parts of me that I didn’t even know existed. These parts remember things that I didn’t until the reminded me. It’s amazing. I look forward to each new day as I get to know myself and give SELF the “keys to the bus.” Parts work therapy is WIN WIN for all of the people in my life AND myself. Thank you Richard Schwartz.

Most Life Changing Book Yet

I only ever listen to life changing books, and this one is number one. Cannot believe there's a way to stop fighting our "Ego" - an old paradigm that's only ever amounted in increasing turmoil and unhealthy behavior. The "Ego" is really a collection of mismanaged or unhealed parts that became that way due to unprocessed trauma. I think every human on earth should learn this practice

Ifs is life changing

I really related to this on audible because the examples felt more real and more relatable. Very helpful!

Excellent book

This book is life changing but is read a little too fast and some of the parts are read by actors and feels a little dramatized.

The exercise are read by the actual author and are great! Over all I would listen to it again and probably will listen to some of the exercises again

Must read! if looking to recover your true self

This book and IFS have both been huge help in my healing journey. I will read this again and again.

thank you IFS for instilling hope in me 🐥🎈❤️

i find the meditations and sessions in the book very useful and enriching. ifs gives a lot of theuraupeutic tools for sled healing which I appreciate.

As much a practical guide as a spiritual revelation

My thoughts have blocked my body from feeling and my heart from expressing. Richard Schwartz told me why, but not directly. He led me through exercise after exercise, inviting me to try on the possibility that each part of me is worth listening to. Ultimately, my default is to banish parts I hate; but this book's approach has given me an alternative. Now I have a way to attempt to make contact with my Self through guided meditation. And from that place I can experience a defrosting, a letting go, a relief. At one point during the book (in the first exercise) I was empowered to stop warring with myself, being freed from severe binge eating for 18 days. That was the first time in my life that eating well was effortless. If that can happen once, I wonder if it can happen again. I have hope.

Powerful

The theory behind IFS and its practical application to all systems is really cool. This book unpacks the concept well; the content is accessible, powerful, and empowering The sessions are somewhat painful (in a cringe way), yet very informative in terms of taking the reader through what parts work could look like.

Profoundly Affirming

Thank you Richard and all who were a “part” of making this book available! I learned so much as well as laughed and cried bc I’m finally seen, heard and understood. I feel more at “home” in my body and have sensed others more relaxed when in my presence and to me that feels like a blessing expanded! I’m grateful beyond words for IFS❣️

Empowering !

I would love it if I could motivate others to read this book. I realize that is not realistic. I plan to continue digesting and exploring IFS in order to heal myself and as a result do my part to facilitate healing my outer world!