Richard Swartz on self-help
From Richard Schwartz: No Bad Parts · · Sounds True
“Many people can take some exercises or meditations from the book or online and do an enormous amount of work on their own, but for deep healing, I believe you need someone to guide you because parts can be very scary to face alone.”
On , Richard Swartz, President, Chief Executive Officer & Director at MYR GROUP INC, spoke about self-help during Richard Schwartz: No Bad Parts on Sounds True.
About Richard Swartz
Richard Schwartz, the developer of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy, has been active in discussing and promoting the model through various interviews and webinars. In a 2021 interview, Schwartz described the IFS model as one that posits the mind is not unitary but contains multiple "parts," and that everyone has an "undamageable, intact self" which, when accessed, possesses qualities like calm, curiosity, compassion, and courage. He stated that the model is "a model of total utter compassion for everything inside of you," and that learning to love one's own parts can change how one interacts with others. Schwartz also discussed the importance of respecting "protective parts" during therapy, noting that he learned this lesson after clients experienced negative reactions when he bypassed these parts to work directly with vulnerable "exiles." In a 2020 webinar, Schwartz applied the IFS framework to societal and global issues, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic. He described the pandemic as a "wake-up call" that could force individuals and societies to reconsider their values, and he compared the "unrestrained growth" driven by "striving parts" in individuals to the economic models of many countries. Schwartz stated that the pandemic has caused immense pain but also offered an opportunity for healing, and he argued that the more "self" people bring to the crisis, the more likely its lessons will be learned. Separately, in a 2019 customer spotlight, Schwartz discussed a successful digital marketing campaign for a retail sale, noting that it brought in 1,200 leads at a cost of about one dollar per lead and that the campaign was being rolled out for future events.