No bad parts

Richard Schwartz was a family therapist in the 1980s who kept hearing his clients talk about themselves as if they were several people. "Part of me wants to leave and part of me is terrified." He'd been trained to treat that as a figure of speech. He decided to take it literally, and to ask the parts what they wanted. What he found became Internal Family Systems, IFS, now one of the fastest-growing therapies in the world.

The model: the mind is naturally multiple. We have parts, and the parts have roles. Managers, who run the day and keep things controlled. Firefighters, who rush in with a drink or a binge or a rage when something unbearable surfaces. And exiles, the young, hurt parts the others are protecting, carrying the old pain. Underneath all of them is what Schwartz calls the Self: calm, curious, compassionate, confident, and undamaged, no matter what's happened. The work is to help the Self lead, and to let the parts, one by one, be heard, unburdened and given better jobs.

His rule, and the title of his 2021 book, is that there are no bad parts. The part that drinks is trying to protect you. The part that rages is guarding something. Every part, once understood, turns out to have been doing its best with an impossible assignment.

Vault Human uses parts language in coaching, lightly, because it's kind and it works, and we point to an IFS-certified therapist for the real work with exiles, which is not a coach's job. The practice for everyone is the question Schwartz asks: when a part shows up, instead of fighting it, get curious. What are you afraid would happen if you didn't do this?