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• Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model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

The missing piece

I had my therapist recommend this book and it has become the missing piece in my healing of many decades and help to explain a lot of my behaviors that I was not even aware of in managing my emotions and why I’ve been stuck in my ability to move forward in positive ways of my life from Career to relationships.
Instead of spiritual bypassing and staying too busy doing all the time I’m now making friends with those parts of myself that I’ve simply been trying to protect me from more trauma and I’m beginning to regain my energy and sense of joy and possibility in my life.

Life changing... truths

I have done thousands of hours of training on yoga and meditation and personality work including the Enneagram. All of it extremely valuable. But IFS seems to bring all of that knowledge into a framework that is immediately more accessible by using the body and inquiry to find where we have buried things and to find the parts of us that hold us back in life. More importantly it gives a real system for talking with, getting to know, and changing our relationships with our parts so that we can heal and truly change, sometimes instantly.

So good. I just keep listening over and over

I love this book. My only wish is that they would have added a musical bumper at the end of each exercises before they jump back into reading the book. As is, it’s a little jarring.
I’m also glad Dick didn’t read the whole book. His voice is much better as the Therapist role.

Moving and thought provoking

This audiobook was a beautiful balance of theory and practice, Dr. Schwartz’s personal experiences and those of clients, history of IFS and hope for the future. I learned and I felt.
Thank you.

Excellent model, great explanation & exercises

I have listened to this book more than once, and have gotten something new out of it every time. The author reads the exercises. His voice is very calming. I go back and listen to these again and again. It’s one of the reasons I wanted the audiobook. The narrator who reads the rest of the book is good as well, but sometimes it feels a little disjointed when it switches back to the narrator after an exercise.

good, just weird roleplay

I appreciated the specific examples and roleplay but found that distracting from the overall message

Great book!

Amazing model by which to approach personal growth and therapy. I believe anyone can make sense of it and find it helpful! Would have been helpful to have more context on the therapy sessions.

Helpful!

Very informative, practical, and empowering. IFS is a technique myself and my clients have found very helpful and now I have more tools to utilize.

A blue print to true healing

This book Has changed my life significantly. I have read a million self help books but this gets to the core of what I needed and has made permanent change in my life.

Profoundly insightful and actionable.

The text is clear, concise, and provides questions and methods to identify, evaluate, and navigate through parts of one’s self, which inhibit or prevent one from living fully and being one’s “best”. self.