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

to mistake the burden for the part that carries it. It’s common to believe that a person who gets high all the time is an addict who has an irresistible urge to use drugs. That belief leads to combatting that person’s urge with opioid antagonists, with recovery programs that can have the effect of polarizing the addictive part, or with the willpowe

Self also senses the Self in everyone and, consequently, has a deep sense of connectedness, as well as a strong desire to connect to the Self of others.

Another name for Self-leadership could be selfless leadership, and it sounds a lot like the servant leadership model of the business world. Started by AT&T executive Robert Greenleaf, servant leadership “begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. The conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sha

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.

Because this willpower ethic has become internalized, we learn at an early age to shame and manhandle our unruly parts.

Our parts long for connection to our Self—just as much as we long to connect to SELF.

Our deeper nature is simply what’s left when we put down the endless task of trying to be somebody.”

From that point on, however, this protector part continued to carry that burden of the perpetrator’s hatred and desire to dominate and punish vulnerability.

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.