Introduction to Internal Family Systems

Super

great book with much information

The book is definitely very very written and has many a thought provoking questions to ask our inner-selves and introspect about our inner leadership. As a Clinical Counselor and a Clinical Hypnotherapist, I have a few solid takeaways and am definitely eyeing my next copy, the handbook of IFS for practitioners.

Having stumbled across Internal Family Systems in Gabor and Daniel Maté’s The Myth of Normal and Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, I was intrigued by Schwartz’ “methodology” for exploring of what John O’Donohue in Anam Cara refers to as “the landscapes of our inner world” which “never reveals itself cheaply”. A number of aspects of Schwartz’ Introduction to Internal Family Systems struck me as profoundly and refreshingly useful. Firstly, the way in which Schwartz describes the core of the human Self as having beautiful qualities such as curiosity, compassion, calmness, confidence, courage, clarity, creativity, and connectedness, the “original blessing”, which he contrasts with the post-Augustinian doctrine of “original sin”. Secondly, his acknowledgment that “on the rocky road of life, we are all, to varying degrees, rejected, humiliated, abandoned, and traumatized. We all have pools of pain and shame and protective strategies that are reinforced by our culture”, in which we “absorbed a great deal of disdain for weakness and impatience with emotional pain”. The third deeply impactful realisation was Schwartz’s assertion that, “just as our bodies know how to heal physical injuries, it seems that we all possess an innate wisdom for healing ourselves emotionally”, that resonated with Hegel’s beautiful phrase “The wounds of the spirit heal and leave no scars”. It seems that Schwartz’s monumental work provides readers with “directions” for exploring our inner worlds of which John O’Donohue describes the advantages in Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World: “If we can somehow bring the difficult things with us into the realm and the light of our souls, it is unbelievable the healing that will achieve itself in us”. I found the prospect that people “at war with themselves”, “knotted in dysfunctional inner relationships and … their outer relationships paralleled their inner ones” could change by “changing the way they regarded and interacted with their thoughts and emotions” so that “they felt less inner turmoil, liked themselves more, and got along better with the people in their lives” rather astonishing. I experienced the way in which Schwartz manages to integrate Western and Eastern philosophies (refer to Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now) useful in growing my own understanding, also of the role of psychedelics in the healing of trauma (even though Schwartz did not touch on this aspect). Lastly, I was deeply touched by Schwartz’ raw vulnerability and authenticity in honestly and openly describing his own internal and external challenges. While I understand that developing ideas of such deep dimensions may have required much time to refine, I cannot but wonder how different my life would have been had I read this book thirty years ago. I thank you for sharing your insights.

Excellent