Richard Schwartz — IFS, Psychedelic Experiences without Drugs, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show

1. 0:00 – 6:29

   Preface: IFS as a System for Working with Emotions

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

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   2. TFTim Ferriss3:34

      Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism with living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

   3. TFTim Ferriss3:59

      Greetings, friends. This is a rare preface to the intro. So there is a separate intro, but after recording this episode, which I was very happy with, I wanted to add a number of additional notes. First, IFS is an incredible system, and it really goes far beyond any type of trauma. So it applies to, I would say, each and every one of us. It will help you work with your inner critic. It will help you to befriend inner voices, not in the pathological sense. And at one point in this episode, I do a live demo as the patient with Richard of IFS. So that is a real life, real subject matter demo. And be patient. This is a dense episode at points, and you may find yourself wondering, "What the hell are these two talking about?" Be patient. Just sit with it for a minute or two, and it'll get back to terra firma, and you will have your bearings. And you can think of IFS also, which has been very helpful to me personally, and I've seen some incredible, I would say almost miraculous before and afters in video of therapeutic sessions, can be compared to perhaps GTD, Getting Things Done. So Getting Things Done by David Allen, incredible system, David's been on the podcast, is excellent for getting rid of all the stuff, right? The work, death by a thousand paper cuts, and open loops, and things floating around different systems, things that aren't captured, getting all that stuff, which a lot of people would think of in a work capacity, into some kind of flow and system so you can work with it and give yourself some peace of mind. Imagine if you could do that, if you had a system for doing that for your emotions, for the flare-ups of energy, of anger, of sadness, of self-flagellation. If you had some kind of system that allowed you to contend with all of that stuff. IFS is one such system. And also, this episode is the first time that I talk openly, and I did not plan on this, about everything that has happened since I published my episode on childhood abuse. So there you have the preface to the intro, and now To the intro, but before I get there, I can't help but read one quote which applies to all of this episode. It's a quote from Jack Kornfield: "If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete." And with that, to the intro we go. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.

2. 6:29 – 15:18

   Guest Introduction and Tim's Reflections After His Trauma Episode

   1. TFTim Ferriss6:29

      My guest today I've wanted to have on for years now, Richard Schwartz. He began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is now on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. But it was at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief, and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called parts. And we'll get into what that means. These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationships that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and thereby separated from their parts, they could shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence, and compassion. He called that inner essence the self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations, the Internal Family Systems, otherwise known as IFS model, was born in the early 1980s. IFS is now evidence based and has become a widely used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and classrooms. And I wanna add just a little bit more context which Richard may or may not disabuse me of, but one way to think about this is as a toolkit for reconciling parts of yourself that may have conflict amongst them or difficulties amongst them, parts of yourself that you've disavowed, and therefore it is not limited to heavily traumatized patients in a psychotherapeutic context. So what we're gonna be talking about in this episode I think applies to just about everyone. I'm gonna hedge by not saying everyone, although I, if I'm being honest, think everyone in many, many, many different contexts [chuckles] . So with all of that preamble said, Richard, welcome to the show.

   2. RSRichard Schwartz8:26

      Thank you, Tim. I'm honored by those words and also, uh, just so excited to be with you. I've been a fan and particularly a fan of the session you did several ago where you were so disclosive about your own history. Just, uh, thought that was amazingly courageous and a service to all, to everybody.

   3. TFTim Ferriss8:46

      Appreciate you saying that, and it's, it's been one hell of a journey [laughs] both since the podcast and leading up to it.

   4. RSRichard Schwartz8:56

      I was wondering what, what it's been like and what, uh, kind of feedback you've gotten.

   5. TFTim Ferriss9:01

      Well, let's, let's talk about it. I haven't spoken publicly about the after effects or the consequences, positive and unintended. I will say that for those people who, who don't know what we're referring to, I put out an episode of this podcast in September, you can find it at tim.blog/trauma, which disclosed history of sexual abuse, so suffering at the hands of an abuser from ages two to four at a babysitter's house and talked about my healing journey subsequent to that, my ups and downs, my battles with depression and all sorts of other things in conversation with a close friend of mine, Debbie Millman, who also is a survivor of sexual abuse, although we both take some issue with that word survivor. But nonetheless, putting that aside, that was the episode. And I expected, since it was i- in some respects many years in the making, I anticipated putting it into book form after my parents passed away, so it was always inside my head 15 or 20 years in the future something I would do. And as soon as it was published, my response to it on some level was that of feeling like I was in a surreal alternate reality because it, it was now current tense or in some sense past tense, right? I published this thing that I thought wasn't going to ever see the light of day or be shared with the public for 15 to 20 years. And it was bizarre. I had girded myself for a tsunami of emotions and difficulty and maybe attacks and so on. I set rules with my team and policies so that I could stay entirely off of social media. We turned off comments on certain types of posts really to stem the flow. And the first two days, I'd cleared my entire calendar for that week to have space. First two days were very tranquil [laughs] .

   6. RSRichard Schwartz11:13

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss11:14

      And, uh, I, I don't know if that's because I was genuinely at peace, if there was some type of shock. I, I couldn't tell you. I don't claim to have that level of self-awareness, but it was very, very calm. And then having so much space for the rest of the week was very challenging. I typically run pretty hot in the sense that I like traveling in sixth gear and doing a lot. So having that much time to ruminate or to experience consciousness uncluttered by activity, uh, in retrospect maybe was a, a little harder on me than filling my calendar, if you can imagine that.

   8. RSRichard Schwartz11:57

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss11:57

      I, I remember having Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on the podcast and he said, you know, I, to avoid depression after certain points, he just made his calendar very busy, and he said he would recommend it to anyone. And I did the opposite, and it was-

   10. RSRichard Schwartz12:09

       Mm-hmm

   11. TFTim Ferriss12:09

       ... very challenging. So I had a lot of, just as an example, and I haven't spoken to anybody publicly, but here we are And I'm pretty well caffeinated, so I'll try to cut short my, uh, my monologue here in a second. But I had a lot of anger and rage come up, but the, the way in which it came up was very surprising to me. I had this flood, I remember it was on the Wednesday after this podcast came out on Monday, th-this flood of memories of past slights, many of them really trivial [laughs] just like emails I didn't like, or rejections that hurt my feelings, or fill in the blank, and I was so pissed off all day on Wednesday. And I didn't try to fix it. I didn't worry about it, but I, I thought it was really quite surprising that this anger was coming to the surface, but it wasn't specific to any of the abuse. It was in just dozens of kind of trite or in-inconsequential slights from my past, and I was just pissed off all day long. And then when the podcast really hit escape velocity in the sense that it, it was widely shared enough that a lot of my friends had heard it.

   12. RSRichard Schwartz13:32

       Mm-hmm.

   13. TFTim Ferriss13:32

       That's when things got a little harder because I would say of my very close male friends, and I don't have that many close friends by design.

   14. RSRichard Schwartz13:42

       Mm-hmm.

   15. TFTim Ferriss13:43

       I, let's j- let's just arbitrarily say twenty. I would say seven or eight of them reached out to me to confess that they had been sexually abused and never told anyone.

   16. RSRichard Schwartz13:52

       Wow.

   17. TFTim Ferriss13:53

       And some of them sent me voice memos, really kind of tear-jerking, heart-shredding audio, and I mean, just thinking about it, I'm like welling up with tears a bit because it was fucking emotionally difficult for them and also very challenging for me to [sighs] act as a sort of recipient or support. And I'm glad they reached out. I'm really glad they reached out. I expected there would be a lot of this, so we received tons of emails, tons of blog comments, tons of handwritten letters from people describing their experiences. But that was really very difficult. And to wrap up, since, uh, this is [laughs] interview intended to ask you questions.

   18. RSRichard Schwartz14:38

       [laughs] Right.

   19. TFTim Ferriss14:39

       Uh, I, I'm very, very, very proud of it, and I'm not proud often. That's something I have always had difficulty with. Um, I, I don't accept praise well, uh, or let it land well. I'm really proud of it, and it did a lot of good, and it was, uh, it was tough, but not in the ways that I had anticipated.

   20. RSRichard Schwartz15:00

       Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you can be proud of it because, uh, I agree. I think it, it really served us to have someone of your stature be that open about it and, uh, yeah, and live to see the light of day, like you said.

3. 15:18 – 22:39

   Roxanne and the Origin of IFS

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:18

      Let's talk more about living to see the light of day because you have worked in many places with many people, and some of those people perhaps have resigned to a life of darkness or a life that is shadowed by certain experiences, trauma, depression, suicidal ideation, et cetera. Could you, and I don't know if this name is gonna ring a bell because I'm not sure if you anonymized it or somebody else did, but there's a great piece in Medium inside the revolutionary treatment that could change psychotherapy forever. And in it, I read about the story of Roxanne.

   2. RSRichard Schwartz15:58

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss15:58

      Uh, and how that was part of developing IFS. Could you share that story, please?

   4. RSRichard Schwartz16:06

      This was in the early 1980s, and I was a fresh graduate of a PhD program in marital and family therapy, and I was trying to prove that family therapy was the, the thing, was... Found the Holy Grail. And so I did an outcome study with a bunch of bulimic clients, which was a syndrome that was new on the scene at the time, and she was one of them. And as I was trying to do this family therapy with all these clients and, and succeeded in actually reorganizing the families the way the book said to, they kept binging and purging. [laughs] They didn't realize they'd been cured. And so out of frustration, I began asking why, and they started talking this language of parts, which was sort of bizarre to me. I thought maybe they were sicker than I thought 'cause they were talking about these, what they called parts of them that could take over and make them do things they didn't wanna do and h- and had a lot of autonomy inside and, and they were talking about them as if they were sort of full range personalities. And so I, after I got over my fear about it, I got curious, and I started to try and get my clients to relate differently. So they would say something like, "Something bad happens in my life, and this critic attacks me inside, calls me all kinds of brutal names. And that brings up another part of me that feels totally worthless and alone and empty and desperate, and that feeling is so dreadful that to the rescue comes the binge to take me away from all that, but that brings back the critic." So, so I'm hearing about these interactions among different seeming to be entities inside of them, and as a family therapist, that was intriguing 'cause that's what I studied, these interactions among family members. And I began to explore trying to change some of this, but I was assuming that these parts were what they seemed to be, which is what the field sort of still s- assumes. That the critic is just a, uh, critical parental voice that they internalized, and the binge is an out-of-control impulse. And so from that frame of understanding it, you're limited what you can have your clients do. So I was getting my clients to stand up to the critic and don't take it and control the binge, and they were getting worse, but I didn't know what else to do when I didn't have-- I was like the man in a hole with a shovel, you know, you just dig deeper. So until this client who, in addition to being eating disordered, also cut herself on her wrists, and, uh, I knew had a bit of a sex abuse history. I didn't know the extent of it. And so I began to try and work with that cutting part in the way I had with these others. And so I would get her to have a dialogue with it in which she would try to tell it it couldn't do this to her anymore. You know, that was done. No more of this. And I was sort of saying that to the part too, and after a couple hours of badgering it that way, it finally, in her head, agreed to not cut her that week. And then I opened the door to the next session, and she has a big gash down the side of her face. And I just collapsed emotionally inside when I saw that, and I spontaneously said, "I give up. I can't beat you at this." And she said, the part said, "I don't really want to beat you." And that was a turning point because I shifted out of that controlling, coercive place to just being curious. And I said, "So why do you do this to her?" Uh, and I had her ask that, and the part said-- sort of told the story of how when she was being sexually abused, it had to get her out of her body and contain the rage that would get her more abuse. And I shifted again. Now, I don't see it as just, uh, you know, I had appreciation for it, but it was like a hero in her life. It, it really saved her during those abuse scenes. And as I listened to it more, it sounded like it was still living back in that time, like it still thought she was five years old, and it still had to protect her in this way. And that it carried these extreme beliefs and emotions that we call burdens about the world, about her, about how, uh, dangerous everything was that drove it. These extreme beliefs and emotions were like a virus, it seemed, the, like the coronavirus that drove the way it operated. And so as I got all that, I started to think, maybe these parts aren't what they seem. Maybe they are like kids in a family, a dysfunctional family, where they're forced out of their naturally valuable states to be in roles to protect the family or because of the dynamics of the family that, that aren't who they are and, and don't serve them but they think are necessary. And in exploring that, turns out that's true, that first of all, we all have these things, I'm calling parts, that they call parts, that from my point of view, aren't the product of trauma, which has been the way it's been viewed, you know, multiple personality disorders. The unitary brain got shattered by the trauma. Well, for me, it's the natural state of the mind to be multiple, to be-- to have these parts, and they're all valuable. We wouldn't be born with anything that wasn't valuable. And, and they come into our life from birth with us. And then trauma and attachment injuries and things like that force them out of their naturally valuable states into roles that they don't like, but they think are absolutely necessary to keep us safe, and then can become symptoms and problems. But they also, if they are listened to and actually loved ultimately by our clients and ourselves, will transform. So anyway, I, I got rolling on this, but, um.

   5. TFTim Ferriss22:34

      [laughs] Well, that's why we have a long-form podcast.

   6. RSRichard Schwartz22:37

      Right.

   7. TFTim Ferriss22:37

      You can get rolling. And

4. 22:39 – 29:11

   The Non-Pathologizing Stance on Symptoms

   1. TFTim Ferriss22:39

      I just want to say for people who are trying to envision what this might look like, and, uh, you and I will, will attempt to do a, a live demo of this using me as a guinea pig a bit later in this conversation. But I recall the first time that I saw IFS in action, and I will say that the-- and I'm sure you've heard this before, but the, the Internal Family Systems brand name, so to speak, initially led me to have a bit of a knee-jerk aversion because I assumed that I would have to s-- I, I s- I took it very literally. I assumed, although I didn't read the internal, I wasn't quite sure what that referred to, that I would have to sit down with my mom and my dad and my brother [laughs] and do family therapy of some type, and I was like, "I'm out. I don't want to do it."

   2. RSRichard Schwartz23:24

      Right.

   3. TFTim Ferriss23:25

      But, but when I saw IFS in action for the first time, it was when I was going through the MAPS MDMA-assisted psychotherapy training program as an auditor. I'm not in any way licensed as a psychotherapist or psychologist or otherwise. But as an auditor, I wanted to experience the program and was able to see session footage of people with severe PTSD, so post-traumatic stress disorder, uh, in many cases, vets who certainly with the amplification and assistance of MDMA, but nonetheless, i- in the-- in this particular case, under the care of Michael and Annie Mithoefer, going through IFS to see where someone could start with their, say, relationship or thoughts, perspective on rage and where they would end up was Truly mind-blowing. I mean, to watch it in video form was so impactful. Uh, and I, I wanna highlight one aspect of that that really struck a chord with me on a whole lotta levels, and I'm, I'm gonna do this by referring back to this Medium piece, and I'll, I'll link to this Medium piece in the show notes for people at tim.blog/podcast if you wanna read this as well. But I'm gonna read a paragraph and then I'm gonna dive into one particular aspect of it. So here we go. "Frank Anderson, a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, was working as a staff psychiatrist at Bessel van der Kolk's renowned trauma center in Brookline, Massachusetts, when he first encountered Schwartz and IFS." For people who don't know the name Bessel van der Kolk, he's the author of a book called The Body Keeps the Score, uh, which is a bit of a, a classic in, in this world. All right, so back to Frank Anderson. First encountered Schwartz and IFS, it flipped his world upside down. Quote, " 'I'd been working with severe trauma for a long time at the trauma center, and I was one of the many people who would go, "Oh, wow,"' Anderson recalls. 'Within the mental health world, it's a huge paradigm shift. IFS is very non-pathologizing. Every part, every symptom has a positive intention. That kind of blows therapists away. What do you mean shooting heroin has a positive intention? What do you mean cutting yourself or binging has a positive intention?' " End quote. So the non-pathologizing nature of IFS is, is what I want to hone in on because you very often hear if, and this is speaking as a layperson, if you start kinda wading through the books and literature and even in-person conversations in psychiatry, you very often hear the term maladaptive, right? This behavior is maladaptive. What this person's doing is maladaptive, meaning it's some kind of, like, perversion of an adaptation that doesn't fit, uh, at least the way that I hear it. You could correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding and the way that I've been able to finally find some compassion for myself and parts of myself is to recognize that the things that we view in ourselves as totally fucked up, totally self-destructive, totally fill-in-the-blank pejorative term, very often are not maladaptive. They are perfectly adaptive. They've just outlived their usefulness or they've, they've kind of expired, but they still remain, if that makes any sense. And so the, the non-pathologizing and any piece of what I just said, I'd love to hear you respond to.

   4. RSRichard Schwartz26:53

      Well, you said it really well. Um, and that's, it's been a tough sell in my field, but that is what I found back with that client and subsequently with thousands of clients, not just myself, but all the people using this around the world, are finding that these things we thought were symptoms are maladaptive in the sense that in our current context they may not be needed, but they were definitely needed. They were like heroes, like I was saying, back when we were being hurt, and they get stuck back there. So again, I'm a family therapist, so I'm under- trying to understand the context of all kinds of both external people's behavior and internal, and the internal parts' behavior made total sense back when you were being hurt, and they think they still need to do it because they think you're still in the same kind of vulnerability. So yeah. So it has been a tough sell.

   5. TFTim Ferriss27:56

      Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. The new year is here, and it marks a fresh start for your small business. Whether you're shifting business hours or hiring more remote employees, one thing that remains unchanged is the importance of having the right people on your team. When your business is ready to make that next hire, LinkedIn Jobs can help by matching your role with qualified candidates so you can find the right person quickly. And to lend a helping hand, your first job post is free. Getting started is easier than ever with new features to help you find qualified candidates quickly from LinkedIn's active community of professionals with more than 722 million members worldwide. Post a job with targeted screening questions to get your role in front of more qualified candidates. You can manage job posts and contact candidates on the familiar linkedin.com website, where functions are streamlined into one simple screen. And now you can do all of this from your mobile device, no matter where the day takes you. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/tim. Again, that's linkedin.com/tim to post a job for free. Terms and conditions do apply. [static]

5. 29:11 – 37:30

   Conceptual Overview: Exiles, Managers, Firefighters, and Self

   1. TFTim Ferriss29:11

      I would say that, you know, many of the most important and impactful inputs that I've had in the last handful of years from a healing perspective, and, and furthermore, not just from a healing perspective, getting back to whole, but even just becoming a, hopefully, I know this is a really generic term, but, like, better human, so not just getting to baseline, but actually going beyond baseline in some ways, has related to self-compassion.

   2. RSRichard Schwartz29:42

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss29:44

      And Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach would be a very, in some respects, Buddhist mindfulness approach to that. And I, I feel like IFS is a very tactical, practical framework for actually kinda getting after it almost in a tennis match type of way. I mean, not, not that it's adversarial, but with the assistance of someone else. And I'd love to explore what some of these parts are and to explore, for instance, protectors and some of these other labels, just to give people an understanding of what this looks like in practice. What do you think the best way to do that is? Is it giving a conceptual overview of some type? Is it just getting into it and you and I rolling up the sleeves and seeing what happens?

   4. RSRichard Schwartz30:33

      If I gave a brief conceptual overview, then What we tend-- what we do with each other would make more sense to people. So let me- Great. Let me do that. Let's do it. So as I was exploring this with clients back in the day, I'm a systems person. I'm looking for distinctions and patterns, and the big distinction that leaped out immediately as I was doing it with more and more clients, was between parts that were very young, and the culture has been called these, these wonderful inner children who were vulnerable and sensitive and often were the parts of us that are the most hurt by the traumas. They, they take it the most personally and they get the most frightened and they feel the most worthless often. And once those young, formerly happy-go-lucky, delightful, creative, inner parts of us, once they get hurt that way, they have the power to overwhelm us and give us all the burdened emotions that they carry. So not knowing we're locking up our most juicy parts, we tend to try and get away from them and put them in inner basements or, uh, abysses or caves. So I call them the exiles, and we've all done that to one degree or another. Even if you haven't had a lot of trauma, there are ways our culture or your family didn't accept certain parts of you, and so you had to move away from them. And we do it not realizing. We think we're just moving away from dreadful memories or sensations or emotions, but we are locking up these parts of us that are so wonderful and have so many talents when they're not locked up and when they're not stuck in the past. So when you have a lot of exiles, then the world becomes a lot more dangerous and you feel a lot more delicate. So other parts have to jump into other protective roles, some of which are designed to control the world so y-your exiles don't get triggered, 'cause if they get triggered, then it's like flames of emotion threaten to consume you and these protectors often think you're gonna die if you stay with that. So there are parts that'll keep you a certain distance from people. There are parts that'll control your appearance so you don't get rejected. Parts that try to make you-- your performance perfect, so you get a lot of accolades to counter the worthlessness. So all that we call protect-- those are manager protectors 'cause they're managing a lot. They're trying to-- They're like when in family therapy, we used to call parentified inner children. In a family where the parents abdicate, the kids have to become the parents, and they were called parental, parental children. This happens inside of us, too. These younger parts have to kind of run our lives, and they get extreme because they, they're in over their heads. Often they become these critics. They're yelling at us just to try and get us to behave. They don't know what else to do than to yell at us. And so those are some of the common manager roles. Others are these massive caretaking parts that don't let us take care of ourselves, only let take care of everybody else. There's just a lot of common manager roles. When that doesn't work and the world breaks through those quote-unquote defenses and triggers our exiles, it's a big emergency. And so there's another set of parts who's on call almost, who immediately goes into action to take us out, to get us higher than the flames of emotion, or to douse them with some substance, or to distract us until they burn themselves out. So those we call firefighters 'cause they're fighting the fire of this exiled emotion inside of you. And, and we all have some of those, and most of us have a kind of hierarchy of them. If the first one doesn't work, we go to the next one. If that doesn't work, the next one. And, and the top of the hierarchy is often suicide. It's a big kind of comfort to many people to know if things get bad enough, there's always that safety net. I can-- ex-exit strategy. But other kinds of firefighter activities include a lot of addictions and, and for me, it's-- it sounds like for you too, it's work is one of my firefighter activities. Eating was one of mine. It's not anymore. So, you know, those are s-some of the common firefighters. So most all of us walk around with some version of that system. The more trauma you experienced, the more exiles you have, then the more extreme your parts often are. In addition to all of that, though, and this is actually the big discovery in IFS, as I was doing this work, and I would, as a family therapist, try to have dialogues inside among these different parts like I was-- would in a family. Often I'd have to get one part to, to kind of separate or move back or step out for a second so I could have two others talk to each other 'cause the other was interfering. And as I started doing that process of getting parts to open more space inside and not, you know, be chattering all the time, slowed it down, it was like another person would pop out who took the lead and, uh, was just immediately curious about these parts or even had a lot of compassion suddenly out of the blue, and also had-- was calm and was confident and so-- And the parts would relate well to this person. And when I asked, "What part of you is that?" Clients would say some version of, "That's not a part like these others. That's myself." So I came to call that the Self with a capital S. And it turns out, and this is really totally amazing, but Given all the 40 years we've been doing this and the thousands of people doing it around the world, I can safely say that that Self, capital S, is in everybody, can't be damaged, and knows how to heal, and can be accessed simply by getting these parts to open space, 'cause it seems it's just beneath the surface of them. So when I'm working with somebody, I will wait until I hear some of those C words. In addition to the four I mentioned, there's also courage, clarity, creativity, and connectedness. So I'm, I'm waiting to hear when my client is in that, that place before I have them work with their parts. And when, when they work with their parts from that place, they just naturally know how to heal.

6. 37:30 – 40:58

   IFS and Psychedelic Experiences without Drugs

   1. TFTim Ferriss37:30

      So if I, if I may ref- just reflect on what you said for a second. I mean, this is, for people who have never had a psychedelic experience, if we look at the etymology of psychedelic, I mean, it is mind manifesting in a s- [laughs] in a sense, if we wanna roughly translate it to English. And it's incredible how much your description of working with IFS parts and then the Self, right, this, this sort of a central observer who has, as maybe a Stan Grof would put it, you know, an innate healing intelligence or something like that, how much it mirrors what some people can only achieve with drugs, meaning psychedelic drugs, or plants, or fungi of some type, right? It, it's, it's pretty remarkable that you're able to sort of engineer and back into, without any type of pharmaceutical intervention, something very s- very similar and get to a very similar place.

   2. RSRichard Schwartz38:38

      I, I... Let me comment on that for a second. So-

   3. TFTim Ferriss38:40

      Sure

   4. RSRichard Schwartz38:40

      ... 'cause you mentioned Michael and Annie Mithoefer, and in phase one when Michael was using MDMA with these mostly combat vets, but, uh, PTSD clients, and he started talking excitedly about this, 'cause they're both well-trained IFS therapists. I started to feel more and more validated because for some reason the MDMA seems to get all your protectors to relax, and so you just by virtue of having taken the medicine, you're in Self with those C words that I described earlier.

   5. TFTim Ferriss39:17

      Right.

   6. RSRichard Schwartz39:17

      And he found, and he kept track of this. He, he tracked that phase one group, and he found that over 70% spontaneously started doing IFS without any coaching from, from him. Because in the protocol they s- they set it up where they couldn't lead the client. It was all kind of, you know, following. So-

   7. TFTim Ferriss39:41

      Yeah, non-directional. Right.

   8. RSRichard Schwartz39:43

      Exactly. So that confirmed to me that I had just stumbled onto a process that people naturally know how to do when they access enough Self, and they'll do it on their own, and that's true too. It's become a kind of life practice where people do this on a daily basis often.

   9. TFTim Ferriss40:02

      So how, how could we demonstrate this for folks? Uh, and I'm, I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous about, uh, [laughs]

   10. RSRichard Schwartz40:09

       [laughs]

   11. TFTim Ferriss40:10

       So opening, opening the kimono on the podcast, but, uh, it seems to be setting, s- I seem to be setting a, a trend in doing that with recent episodes, so I might as well just, you know, go for it. In for a penny, in for a pound. So what's, what's a good way to, for you and I to have a chat to try to illustrate some of these things?

   12. RSRichard Schwartz40:30

       Uh, well, if there is a part of you you'd like to get to know better or, or change your relationship with, or if there's something still getting in your way from... You mentioned that there was a very angry part of you that came up and had all these, what in retrospect seemed like minor quibbles, but we could go there. It's, it's really up to you. Whatever you wanna explore.

7. 40:58 – 52:22

   Live Demo: Befriending the Anxious Part

   1. TFTim Ferriss40:58

      Well, I, you know, I would say when I've looked at the anger and, and tried to work with it, and it's quite subdued, not exiled or not disavowed, but it's, it's not as, as high volume as it used to be even a few years ago. But I do think that the anger is very often a byproduct or a symptom of fear.

   2. RSRichard Schwartz41:22

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss41:23

      And so the fear, I think, could be worth digging into. And something that I've noticed as I have successfully contended with and healed from depression, that anxiety has become more pronounced, and this sort of vague sense of unease that something bad can and will happen, that type of anxiety that is, uh, that I, I then create narratives around because I'll say, uh, I'll, I'll sort of have this wave of anxiety and then explain it in all sorts of ways that may or may not be accurate. But that has become something that I've noticed more and more as depression has become less and less of a, an ongoing battle for me in the last five or six years.

   4. RSRichard Schwartz42:14

      Okay.

   5. TFTim Ferriss42:14

      And, uh, I'd love to kind of explore that because I've tried many things to move from a place of, uh, anxiety and fear to a place of trust and faith, and goddamn, is it hard. [laughs]

   6. RSRichard Schwartz42:33

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss42:34

      Um, you know, maybe I'm just exposed to too many ugly aspects of the world where I get to see really bad behavior and- Sort of Lord of the Flies type dynamics quite a bit, but that is something I wouldn't mind digging into, right? That, that just-

   8. RSRichard Schwartz42:50

      Ab- absolutely. Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss42:51

      Yeah.

   10. RSRichard Schwartz42:52

       Happy to help you with that. Uh, and, you know, that trust in the world is safe is, is tough to get through willpower. So we'll try it this-

   11. TFTim Ferriss43:03

       Yeah

   12. RSRichard Schwartz43:03

       ... we'll try it this other way. So are you ready?

   13. TFTim Ferriss43:06

       Uh, I, I'm as, I, I'm as ready as I'm gonna be. Yeah. [laughs]

   14. RSRichard Schwartz43:11

       [laughs] Okay. So the way we start is have you focus on that anxiety and find it in your body, around your body.

   15. TFTim Ferriss43:22

       Okay.

   16. RSRichard Schwartz43:24

       And as you notice it there, where do you find it, by the way?

   17. TFTim Ferriss43:28

       Uh, right now as I'm thinking about it, I feel it in the throat, and that's quite common, like a constriction in the throat.

   18. RSRichard Schwartz43:35

       Okay.

   19. TFTim Ferriss43:35

       Uh, I also will feel it basically right over the heart, like a constriction on the left side of my chest.

   20. RSRichard Schwartz43:43

       Okay. So-

   21. TFTim Ferriss43:43

       But right now I'm feeling it mostly in the throat.

   22. RSRichard Schwartz43:46

       All right. So let's start there. So as you notice it there in your throat, tell me how you feel toward that part of you that's so anxious.

   23. TFTim Ferriss43:59

       Well, if I'm being honest, I suppose I want it to go away. I want it to, uh, let go so that I can feel more... Certainly less constriction physically, right in the throat. It's not pleasant. It doesn't feel good to me.

   24. RSRichard Schwartz44:15

       Right.

   25. TFTim Ferriss44:16

       Uh, I, I would say there's anger towards that fearful part also, because-

   26. RSRichard Schwartz44:22

       Oh

   27. TFTim Ferriss44:22

       ... objectively I can look at my life and my surroundings and everything's fucking great. I mean-

   28. RSRichard Schwartz44:29

       [laughs]

   29. TFTim Ferriss44:29

       [laughs] Or like, you know, it's... So I get, uh, I, I get very upset at that part.

   30. RSRichard Schwartz44:38

       Which I can understand. It does get in your way and, and, uh, but we're gonna ask the one who's angry at it and the one who wants it to go away, both of those parts, we're gonna ask to give us a little space to get to know it just for a few minutes, and actually maybe try to help it in a different way rather than trying-
8. 52:22 – 1:05:19

   Live Demo: Witnessing and Unburdening the Exiled Boy

   1. RSRichard Schwartz52:22

      All right. So then go ahead and focus on that abused part of you and find him-

   2. TFTim Ferriss52:28

      Mm-hmm

   3. RSRichard Schwartz52:28

      ... find him in your body or around your body.

   4. TFTim Ferriss52:38

      Hmm. Okay.

   5. RSRichard Schwartz52:40

      Where do you find him?

   6. TFTim Ferriss52:45

      You know, I'm also f- I am still feeling, I mean, the dominant, uh, constriction is in the throat. And-

   7. RSRichard Schwartz52:54

      Okay

   8. TFTim Ferriss52:56

      ... you know, I, I also find myself wondering if this frightened part of me is one and the same with the abused, but I, I, I don't wanna-

   9. RSRichard Schwartz53:08

      Well, you, you can-

   10. TFTim Ferriss53:09

       I don't wanna, I don't wanna start-

   11. RSRichard Schwartz53:10

       You'll get the as- No. You'll, you'll get the answer if you just ask. Ask if that's the case and just wait for the answer.

   12. TFTim Ferriss53:15

       [sighs] Yeah, I think it is the same. I think it is the same.

   13. RSRichard Schwartz53:24

       Okay, good. All right. Uh, and, and you're still across the table from him?

   14. TFTim Ferriss53:30

       Yep. Still across the table.

   15. RSRichard Schwartz53:32

       And ask if he trusts now that you care about him.

   16. TFTim Ferriss53:39

       Yeah, he does.

   17. RSRichard Schwartz53:41

       All right. Then if he's up for it and ready, then tell him to show you and let you feel and sense and see whatever he needs you to about how bad it all was. And again, don't think, Tim, just wait and see what comes to you. And you don't have to disclose any of it, but you can disclose what feels okay.

   18. TFTim Ferriss54:09

       Yeah. It's just a, it's just a horrible stream of images and scenes of like abuse and violence and a fearful little kid who-

   19. RSRichard Schwartz54:22

       Good. Yeah

   20. TFTim Ferriss54:22

       ... was just constantly hypervigilant because of that.

   21. RSRichard Schwartz54:27

       And are you okay watching all that?

   22. TFTim Ferriss54:32

       I mean, I don't enjoy watching it, [laughs] but I can, I feel like I can handle it.

   23. RSRichard Schwartz54:37

       Yeah.

   24. TFTim Ferriss54:38

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RSRichard Schwartz54:38

       So let him know you're okay so far, that-

   26. TFTim Ferriss54:41

       Yeah

   27. RSRichard Schwartz54:41

       ... you really, you really wanna get how bad it was for him as much as he wants you to. So-

   28. TFTim Ferriss54:47

       Okay

   29. RSRichard Schwartz54:47

       ... just tell him you're ready, and just see if there's more

   30. TFTim Ferriss54:59

       Yeah, there's more. Um, you know, and nothing shockingly new, but just painting a fuller picture of a, you know, pretty scared, pretty sad childhood for a-a-a l- a lot of the time. Not always, but for a lot of the time.
9. 1:05:19 – 1:09:56

   Post-Game Analysis of the Session

   1. RSRichard Schwartz1:05:19

      Yeah, we can do our post-game. So maybe let's start with you and what it was like.

   2. TFTim Ferriss1:05:25

      [laughs] I mean, this is... I'm gonna sound like a one-trick pony here, so you'll have to forgive me, and I'll, I'll beg forgiveness from, uh, my audience also, but it feels very psychedelic. I mean, it really... it is very reminiscent of the non-pathological therapeutic splitting of the psyche, or maybe it's just the recognizing of-

   3. RSRichard Schwartz1:05:55

      Yeah

   4. TFTim Ferriss1:05:55

      ... separate parts of the psyche, better put-

   5. RSRichard Schwartz1:05:58

      Right

   6. TFTim Ferriss1:05:58

      ... that, uh, I mean, it puts you in a very non-ordinary state. Or at least-

   7. RSRichard Schwartz1:06:04

      Yeah

   8. TFTim Ferriss1:06:04

      ... uh, that was my experience.

   9. RSRichard Schwartz1:06:06

      Very much, yeah, and it's the same state that shamans take people into. It's, it's a real other-

   10. TFTim Ferriss1:06:12

       Yeah

   11. RSRichard Schwartz1:06:12

       ... a real other world, and, uh, I stumbled onto this way of accessing it and operating it.

   12. TFTim Ferriss1:06:19

       Yeah.

   13. RSRichard Schwartz1:06:20

       And, and, uh, you know, in terms of my post-game, um, we could do all that because you had access very quickly to a lot of Self, with a capital S.

   14. TFTim Ferriss1:06:34

       Mm.

   15. RSRichard Schwartz1:06:34

       And I gauge that, I gauge that by when I asked you initially how you felt toward the guy in your throat, and you said you didn't like him and you wanted to get rid of him, and then I had those parts step back, and I asked, "Now how do you feel toward him?" Immediately you had empathy. You remember that?

   16. TFTim Ferriss1:06:54

       Yeah, I do.

   17. RSRichard Schwartz1:06:55

       And so that's what we find over and over. When these other parts step back, you enter that empathic, compassionate leader place, and once we got you in that place, I knew we would be able to do a lot 'Cause you, you just started to do it. I, I led you s- to some degree, but you, your parts responded really well to you as this leader that they didn't really know that well. And so, yeah, then we could get to know the anxious man, and so he turned out to be a manager in that classification I gave earlier. He was trying to keep you from taking risks probably and sort of manage your life through anxiety.

   18. TFTim Ferriss1:07:41

       Mm-hmm.

   19. RSRichard Schwartz1:07:43

       And, and then there was a point where I had you ask him if he protected somebody else. Remember that?

   20. TFTim Ferriss1:07:49

       I do.

   21. RSRichard Schwartz1:07:50

       And then he lets you know he protected this exiled boy who was still stuck back in those traumas, those scenes of abuse and, and bullying.

   22. TFTim Ferriss1:08:02

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RSRichard Schwartz1:08:02

       And so, uh, the way we heal those parts is what you did, which was to become a compassionate witness to the boy so he feels like finally you really get everything about how bad it was. And then to actually go to him in that time period and do a redo in the sense of being with him and, and talking to the people he, he needed you to talk to. And, and for him, you know, people say you can't change the past. For these parts in this inner world, that literally changes their experience of what happened.

   24. TFTim Ferriss1:08:38

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RSRichard Schwartz1:08:38

       And, and so then we could take him out to a safe place on your farm and at which point these exiles generally, if they trust they can stay there and you're gonna take care of them, are willing to give up the emotions and beliefs they've been carrying even though, I don't know how old you are, but it's [laughs] sounds like it's maybe been 30 years or so.

   26. TFTim Ferriss1:09:01

       Yeah. It's been a, been a long time. Yeah, I'm 40, 43. I forget how old I am. That's probably-

   27. RSRichard Schwartz1:09:05

       [laughs]

   28. TFTim Ferriss1:09:06

       ... a sign of getting older. [laughs]

   29. RSRichard Schwartz1:09:07

       Right. Well, wait till-

   30. TFTim Ferriss1:09:09

       Yeah. Uh-
10. 1:09:56 – 1:17:38

    Suicidal Parts, Hope, and Going Beyond Acceptance

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:09:56

       Parts work is just... I- it's, it-- [sighs] you would, you would think that at this point in my life, having been exposed to parts work in different ways, in different, very different contexts also, [laughs] in some cases enhanced and in some cases not, that it would just be another day at the office. But I am always, when I experience it firsthand, so impressed by how powerful parts work is and can be, and I would love to hear you speak to how this applies to people who might suffer from suicidal ideation. And I'm referring to another editorial piece, and there's a quote here that I'm gonna read from one such patient or client who had suicidal ideation, and here's the quote. "For me, the most amazing thing was learning about a, about a part of me that was suicidal and knowing that that was just a single part of me. It wasn't my entire being. That changed my world. I try to share that with a lot of people because I know a lot of people who get very depressed and sometimes feel suicidal. If you can step back from that feeling and realize that it's just a part of you that's trying to take away your pain and suffering, then you can move through it and find a different way to deal with it to help that part." Could you expand on this or speak to it?

    2. RSRichard Schwartz1:11:20

       Sure.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:11:20

       Give e- examples. However, whatever makes sense in terms of fleshing this out, because speaking as someone who's came very close to taking his own life, this is a, a very, very, [laughs] very big lens swap for someone who is suicidal or suffering from suicidal ideation.

    4. RSRichard Schwartz1:11:40

       So it really does help to know that all these things aren't you, they're parts of you that often are just trying to protect. So for me, there aren't alcoholics, there aren't... You know, I'm, I'm against all these monolithic labels because, yes, you've got a part that tries to protect you by getting you drunk all the time, but it's just a part of you, and it's one of your firefighters. And then most people don't realize that if they took away your drinking, suicide is the next one on the list, the next one on the ladder, and that would be jumping in if not for the drinking. So then you gotta [laughs] honor the drinking part for keeping you alive. And I'll go to suicide. So I've worked many, many years with highly suicidal clients, and they, as you can imagine, as you probably were, were terrified of, of that part of them. And like you said, they were so blended with it, they didn't even-- they thought it was who they were. So yes, that first step of seeing it as just a part, like you just did with the anxiety. Not only that, but if you began to get to know it, I can tell you the common dialogue we have. So I would say to you, "Tim, ask that part why it wants to kill you or what's it afraid would happen if it didn't kill you?" Do you wanna, uh, give a spontaneous answer to that?

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:13:08

       Oh, I wasn't-- [laughs] I didn't have my, uh, my shoes on ready to, with, for the starting gun. Could you say that one more time and then I'll- [laughs]

    6. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:14

       Yeah. Uh-huh. It's okay. No, I'll give you the common answers. So I, I would have you ask the part why it wants to kill you, what's afraid would happen if it didn't kill you. Generally-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:13:23

       Yeah, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is I just want it to stop. Like there's a loop-

    8. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:27

       Yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:13:27

       ... that I can't turn off.

    10. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:28

        That's right.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:13:29

        It's just a thought loop of hatred or self-loathing or-

    12. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:32

        That's right

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:13:33

        ... whatever it might be, and then there's another part that knows life is pretty good, and it's like, "Well, shit, if this is never gonna stop, what's the fucking point? I just want it to stop." That's-

    14. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:40

        Totally

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:13:41

        ... that would be the answer.

    16. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:41

        That's right. And so if we were doing the work, I would say, "Ask this part if we could get that loop to ch- to stop in a different way without having to kill you, would it still wanna kill you?" And most of these parts say no.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:13:57

        No. Yeah.

    18. RSRichard Schwartz1:13:58

        [laughs] But I didn't-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:14:00

        The answer would be no. Yeah

    20. RSRichard Schwartz1:14:01

        ... it would be no, but I don't think you can do that, or I wouldn't try to kill him, right?

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:14:05

        Mm-hmm. Yep.

    22. RSRichard Schwartz1:14:06

        And I'd say, "If you give me a chance, I can prove that we can. I guarantee it." So I'm what I call a hope merchant. I'm selling hope to hopeless systems.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:14:17

        Mm.

    24. RSRichard Schwartz1:14:17

        And, you know, I wouldn't do it if I didn't know we could follow through and actually stop that loop. So-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:14:23

        Mm

    26. RSRichard Schwartz1:14:23

        ... that's generally how we work with suicide and, uh, and once these suicidal parts trust that there is this alternative, they know they're going down with the ship. They don't wanna die. So if th- if there is an alternative, they'll go for it.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:14:39

        And do you stop the loop just, just to not leave that cliffhanger of a [laughs]

    28. RSRichard Schwartz1:14:47

        [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:14:48

        Uh, uh, of, of a, of a promise. If, if you say that to a client who's suffering from suicidal ideation, is the delivery mechanism doing what we just did in some fashion, getting them to the point where they are speaking from the place of the self where they can excuse and re-invite different parts, including the part with the loop? Is that how you shepherd them-

    30. RSRichard Schwartz1:15:13

        Yeah
11. 1:17:38 – 1:23:47

    IFS, Psychedelic Preparation, and Safety

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:17:38

       Let me return to, to psychedelics for a moment and the psychedelic experience. It's perhaps a... it's not, I wouldn't say it's a common misconception because I do try to be the voice of restraint and caution [laughs]

    2. RSRichard Schwartz1:17:51

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:17:52

       ... as often as possible. But just for the sake of f- making the point I wanna make, I'll say it, it could be a misconception that I want or think all people should have psychedelic experiences with strong compounds [laughs] whether it be, you know, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, ayahuasca, or otherwise, and that's just patently not true because it's not suitable for all people in all circumstances. It just simply is not, and there are risks involved. So I'm fascinated by the prospect, I mean, it sounds like for you a reality, that this is a, an alternate or complementary way of accessing, in some respects, the same space, uh, and the same workspace. Have you also f-found or heard anecdotally that IFS or working with IFS has helped prepare people to be more adept or, hesitate to use the word productive, but to be more prepared for psychedelic experiences with compounds?

    4. RSRichard Schwartz1:18:51

       Yes, and, uh, we're doing... ultimately, we're gonna do some training, but, uh, you know, I like Michael and Annie's training, uh, but I, I think it could be, there could be more IFS in there to, to use more IFS in those prep sessions and then after, in the aftermath, uh, to actually help people understand what they, they experienced and to follow up to help them keep going. So yeah, I'm hoping, I've been working at it That IFS can be kind of the map to that territory in general. And-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:19:29

       Mm.

    6. RSRichard Schwartz1:19:30

       So that, uh, yes, in addition to the prep sessions where you would first check the parts that might be scared to do it or, uh, you know, the kinds of parts that might come up during the time and just help the person get to know those a little bit in advance and get permission to do the, the psychedelic experience. And then-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:19:55

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RSRichard Schwartz1:19:56

       During it, as these parts come up, even scary ones, you know, there is such a thing as post-psychedelic trauma, uh, syndrome where-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:20:07

       Yeah

    10. RSRichard Schwartz1:20:08

        ... where people-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:20:08

        Yeah, please speak to that. This is important. Yep.

    12. RSRichard Schwartz1:20:10

        People do have really bad experiences. I've worked with people who were severely traumatized and, you know, and it set emotional kind of psychotic process. So these are delicate ecologies we're entering, and we need a very ecologically sensitive map. And so if that were to happen either during the psychedelic experience or as a kind of backlash afterwards, for the th- the guide to know what that is and not panic themselves and to be able to, to work with the part that, that, uh, has come out in a soothing way, which also involves the self energy of the guide so that IFS can also be used to help, uh, the sitters work with themselves and get their parts to open space for their Self to be very present, uh, which really makes a huge difference in the experience of the person doing it.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:21:18

        Yeah. Absolutely. And to just reiterate something you said, I mean, there-- the stories that are most commonly shared related to psychedelics are suffer from a survivorship bias, [laughs] right? So, uh, in the sense that just like if you pick up Barron's or one of these investment magazines or newspapers, the only mutual funds that are still advertising are the ones that survived, and it can create a very distorted picture of just how safe these things might be. And that's true also with drugs where [laughs] like the people who died of heroin overdoses aren't available for interview, so you don't get to hear from them. Psychedelics, generally speaking, physiologically not being any- anywhere close, at least if we're talking about the classic psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin. Physiologically, their LD fifty is gonna be nowhere close to something like an opiate. But the point being that if you are a clinician as you are, you get to see the whole spectrum of post-psychedelic experiences, and that includes people who have psychotic breaks or people who suffer from what some scientist friends of mine have called ontological shock, where they just-- they, they aren't completely unraveled, but they really don't know what is real anymore given how powerful-

    14. RSRichard Schwartz1:22:47

        Or, or who they are. Right.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:22:47

        Yeah. Or who they are. And you also have people, I'm a case study in this, who go into an experience thinking they have no trauma or a certain level of lowercase t trauma, and then under the influence of these compounds, have the opening of the floodgates where they suddenly realize that there's a lot more in Pandora's box. And once that is uncorked and they return to ordinary reality, don't know how to metabolize that or work with it or contend with it, which can lead to all sorts of problems. And I just wanna make it really clear that these are, these are very powerful experiences that I think require the same type of due diligence and forethought as going into neurosurgery [laughs] -

    16. RSRichard Schwartz1:23:37

        Mm-hmm. Yeah

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:23:38

        ... or, uh, or a pro- or s- a process like that. And you wouldn't look for your neurosurgeon on Craigslist-

    18. RSRichard Schwartz1:23:43

        [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:23:44

        ... or encourage them to buy their tools through the dark web.

    20. RSRichard Schwartz1:23:47

        Right.

12. 1:23:47 – 1:27:57

    Making IFS a Daily Practice

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:23:47

       So, you know, s- similarly, how can one make, if they can, IFS or, or this type of work a daily practice? Is it a daily practice or is it something that you just go for the gusto with every once in a while in a really intense therapeutic session? Uh, how do you think about, how do you think about that?

    2. RSRichard Schwartz1:24:11

       Yeah. One of the things I like about it most is that it, it easily translates into a daily practice. So as I thought about, [laughs] as I thought about this interview, and also we ha-- the listeners don't know, but we had some technical snafus in the beginning, and I, I could feel my panic parts coming up and, and, uh, you know, I knew you were waiting. And, and so inside I'm saying, "I get it. I get you're s- you're scared this isn't gonna happen, but just trust me, just relax, just step back. I can handle this. Remember, it always goes better when I, when I'm in the lead. Just let me handle this." And during that, even that time when they were so panicked, I would just feel this parting of the seas and, and my Self would come back. I'd have access to it again, and my confidence is back and my... all those C words. And so I do that on a daily basis. If I'm gonna face something scary, I'll do a little prep session with my parts, a little pep talk about, "Okay, I know you guys, this will be triggering, but just let me handle it." And then a- if they get triggered during a session or during a, a time during the week And I can't unblend, I can't separate from them, then I bookmark that and I call my therapist and I do a piece of work around it, like the piece of work we just did. And so then I, I do a lot of unburdening in the session, but then I follow up after the session. So my homework for you is to check on that boy and that, that adult part of you every day for about a month and just make sure they're still doing okay. And treat it, you know, very seriously, like it's not your imagination, it's actually real. Even if you don't believe it, treat it that way and this will stick. Yeah. So when I'm working with clients and we've done a lot of work and at the end they'll say some version of, "You're a pretty good therapist, but I healed myself," and that's really what we're shooting for.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:26:25

       [laughs] I like that. Uh, how do you suggest people build in this check-in? I would imagine this is common homework where they are checking in on these parts. When do they do it? How long do they do it for? When they first get up? When they're eating breakfast? What does a check-in or what might a good check-in look like?

    4. RSRichard Schwartz1:26:46

       Yeah. It just-- it's very variable. Uh, different clients do it differently. There are some who will do a sit for an hour every day and just really keep it going, and they actually get to where they can do unburdenings on their own, and the first twenty minutes of our session they're just telling me all the stuff they did at home. And then I, "Okay, let's go in and do some more." And then there are people who are more like me who, you know, I'll remember, especially if I write it down, a part that I've been working with and needs my attention and, like I said, when I get up in the morning, I'll just lay in bed and, and check on it and see how it is and... But I, I can't do a whole lot more than that for some reason. I've got parts that interfere on my own. So I do a lot of the big healing work with somebody else and then I, I do the maintenance work on my own every day. So it, it just varies from person to person. But I can do that, notice the parts getting triggered and not think it's me. Know it's a part and separate from it in the moment is the process we've been talking about a lot.

13. 1:27:57 – 1:34:27

    Protector Wars in Couples and the U-Turn

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:27:57

       Let's talk about adding in some, some additional variables. Uh, so you've said that often when couples are fighting they're in a protector war, if I'm getting the reference right. Can you expand on that? What does that mean? What does... Yeah, what does it mean and then how do you-- how might you r- approach resolving it if, if there are couples listening who are in quarantine who might not have access to a therapist?

    2. RSRichard Schwartz1:28:23

       Yeah. So often I give my wife and I as an example, but she got tired of me doing that, so I'm not gonna [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:28:29

       [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. No, I-- that's understand- understandable. Yeah.

    4. RSRichard Schwartz1:28:37

       So when I'm working with couples, most of the time it is these protectors who've taken over each of them and are doing the talking. So it's maybe the man's angry part... Well, I don't wanna be gendered about this. It's, it's one partner's angry part-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:28:55

       It's-- Yeah, it's okay. I mean, you, you could give the hypothetical heteronormative [laughs]

    6. RSRichard Schwartz1:29:01

       [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:29:02

       Just to make it easy, uh, for just the example. Of course people, chill out, this can apply to any couple, but-

    8. RSRichard Schwartz1:29:10

       Any couple

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:29:10

       ... let's, let's just... Yeah, let's just go with, all right, so in this case we have a man and a woman. The man has the angry part.

    10. RSRichard Schwartz1:29:17

        Yeah. So he's really angry about something his wife said and she's in this big defensive part and is just trying to justify it and, and so on. And, and it's just these two parts interacting in a nasty way a lot of the time. And unbeknownst to each of them, or maybe even known to each of them, those protectors are triggering the exiles of the other person each time they say something. They're hurting these, these wounded children inside. And the more those exiles get hurt, then the more the extreme the protectors become, and that's the loop that most couples are in. There's a, I believe it's an Indian saying that goes something like, "When the water buffalo battle in the marsh, it's the frogs who suffer." So when these protectors go to war, both parties often don't even know the damage they're doing to the other person at all, 'cause all they see is the protective part. But that damage really can erode the relationship ultimately. So when we're working with such a couple, the first move is to do what we call a U-turn in their focus. That means get each of them to stop, focus inside, noticing the parts that are doing the talking, get to know them a little bit, come back out when they can speak for them rather than from them. So if, if you and I got into it, Tim, I, I'd say, "So Tim, it, it really, really-- I just can't stand that you just said that."

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:31:02

        Mm-hmm.

    12. RSRichard Schwartz1:31:03

        So that would be a protector speaking, speaking period. And if our therapist said, "Okay, Dick, just go inside, listen to that angry part who just spoke, listen to what it protects, and come back when you can speak from this open-hearted place for both of those parts." And I might say some version of, "Okay, I did that and I noticed this angry one and it really wanted me to ream you out-" And then I asked what it was protecting, and it was this, this boy who would hear something very similar from my father when he would yell at me. And this angry guy said, "I'm never gonna let that happen again. No one can talk to me like that." And so that's what was happening for me when I was saying that to you. So you see the difference?

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:31:59

        Mm-hmm. I do. And once you've had, let's just say, both people in the couple, right? So in our previous ex- example, like the man and the woman, they, they do the U-turn, they're both able to come back. Does that... Is, is like a problem half defined, half solved in this case? Is-- Are you kinda halfway there or, or is there a next step once each person can say, "This part was protecting this part, and I'm able to kinda speak from this calmer observer self about these two now"? And you get the man and the woman back in the room, what happens from that point forward?

    14. RSRichard Schwartz1:32:38

        Yeah, there are several next steps. So one side of IFS is having them interact with each other from Self, speaking for their parts, sort of in the way I just described. But my job then becomes simply being the parts detector. So as they talk to each other, I'll say, "Timeout. You're talking from these parts. I want you both to go inside, come back when you can be more in Self when you speak." And then when they can and they stay in Self, just hold them in that space as they talk about their issues. And what I find is just that, just being able to have a Self-to-Self conversation with somebody, you do start to heal on your own, basically. Just like Self can do that in the inner world, Self can do that in the outer world. Now, as we do that, there may be parts that aren't willing to step back and, you know, that are still quite burdened. And so the other thing I'll do is I would do a piece of work with you while your partner witnessed that work. So if, let's say that anxious part was really getting in the way in your relationship and your partner watched me do that and saw the backstory to why this part's so anxious, what's your partner gonna feel?

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:33:59

        Empathy.

    16. RSRichard Schwartz1:34:00

        Empathy, yeah. So rather than being critical of you for being so scared or whatever it was, now they have empathy for this part of you, and they wanna encourage you to keep working with it and healing it. So that's a major intervention in a, in a relationship as well. And so I'll have people work with the parts that are getting in the way of the relationship the most while their partner watches. So that's a whole nother side of IFS.

14. 1:34:27 – 1:47:18

    Trailheads, Resources, and Closing

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:34:27

       Let's talk to another example of being a merchant of hope, as you put it, [chuckles] or a hope merchant. Trailheads. Uh, I wanna talk about trailheads. In an interview, I believe it was an interview, might've been a blog post. It is an interview on fourteenforty.org. Here's the paragraph I wanna unpack. Quote, "If I'm working with a client who's a former alcoholic and they come in and tell me sheepishly they went off the wagon this week, I say, 'That's great, because this is a trailhead, and if we follow the trail, it will lead us right to the part we need to heal that we haven't got to yet.'" Can you please elaborate on trailheads?

    2. RSRichard Schwartz1:35:08

       Yeah. As you can imagine, that's a bit of a radical statement in this field, but, um-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:35:13

       [chuckles] Yes

    4. RSRichard Schwartz1:35:14

       ... that's, that is my experience, that these-- whatever extreme belief, emotion, sensation... You know, you s- you mentioned on your farm there are a lot of trails, and those trails have trailheads where you start and if you start at the trailhead and then follow the trail, you'll come to some lake that's beautiful or something like that. If we take whatever, like in your case, it was this anxiety that you felt as the trailhead that led us to this adult part that was protecting the exile. So any kind of symptom becomes that, becomes a trailhead that'll take us to a pot of gold, really.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:35:58

       And, uh, I mean, that, that's also reminiscent to me in some respects of Gabor Maté and, "Ask not why the addiction, but why the pain?" And, uh-

    6. RSRichard Schwartz1:36:10

       I, I quote-- I use that line all the time. I, and I love-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:36:13

       Oh, no, no kidding.

    8. RSRichard Schwartz1:36:14

       Yeah. And he and I are good friends, and, uh, like a mutual admiration thing.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:36:20

       Yeah. He's a fascinating guy. [chuckles] He's-

    10. RSRichard Schwartz1:36:24

        He is indeed

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:36:24

        ... fascinating, fascinating guy. For people who want to further explore IFS or get to a better understanding of IFS, perhaps even find a therapist who is knowledgeable with IFS, what are some of the resources, tools that you would suggest people start with? And let's assume for the sake of argument that, or the sake of simplicity really, that these are, are laypeople, not practitioners, not therapists.

    12. RSRichard Schwartz1:36:53

        Yeah. So, uh, our website is ifs-institute.com, and on it, there's a store, and there are lots of books for the public. I've written two of them. One's called An Introduction to IFS, and the other is You're the One You've Been Waiting For, which is more about relationships. And there are lots of videos and, uh, there are books for kids, and there is a book called Self-Therapy that was written by a guy named Jay Earley that does sort of walk people through the process. I'm a little anxious about that because he tells people to go to their exiles on their own, which I have concerns about. But that is also something some people use successfully. I did a, um, audio course on Sounds True called Greater Than the Sum of the Parts that contains a lot of exercises that people like a lot. So I'd recommend that. And there are more technical books for therapists that lay people seem to get a lot out of too sometimes.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:38:05

        What are those books?

    14. RSRichard Schwartz1:38:07

        Well, the sort of bible for therapists is called Inter- oddly enough, Internal Family Systems Therapy, second edition, which came out just last year. And there's a, a, a manual we did for an organization called PESI that's kind of step-by-step, and Frank Anderson is the s- author of that.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:38:28

        For a lay person who really wants to get sort of a brass tacks grasp of how they might use IFS in their own lives, would the audio course you suggested with the exercises be-

    16. RSRichard Schwartz1:38:45

        Totally

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:38:45

        ... a good place to start? It can be overwhelming in a paradox of choice sense to have so many books available and not to know where to start. So to get people to step one, if we were to recommend, that audio course would be a good place to start?

    18. RSRichard Schwartz1:39:01

        Very much, yeah. And, and those exercises, I'm pretty careful about exiles, so they're-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:39:06

        Mm-hmm

    20. RSRichard Schwartz1:39:07

        ... they're, they're quite safe, I think. Yeah.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:39:10

        Great. Wonderful. Well, um, I will link to that and everything that we've discussed in the show notes for people. So that will be available all in one place at tim.blog/podcast. Well, Richard, this has been, as, as hoped, incredibly fascinating for me. I'm glad that we were also able to do a, a live, live demo of what it looks like in the wild, in a sense. Is there anything else that you would like to share, suggest to my audience, ask of my audience before we wrap up?

    22. RSRichard Schwartz1:39:45

        You know, just, uh, this is a very different paradigm for understanding human nature and, uh, it changes a lot [laughs] if, if you really get it and buy into it. And you know, I s- I told the story of in the early '80s, uh, when I finally got that Self was in everybody, I had this vision of possibility, like, this could change everything. I hope the guy comes along who can take it where it's supposed to go, 'cause I'm just a little kid. I'm still waiting for that guy, and I'm still trying to take it where it's supposed to go. It feels like it's got an energy of its own. And-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:40:24

        Mm.

    24. RSRichard Schwartz1:40:24

        'Cause it would change a lot to know that this Self is who everybody really is, and that these parts aren't even what you think they are, that they're actually very valuable qualities that who've been distorted by trauma and can transform this quickly. All of that make a huge difference in, in everyday life for most people. And also, you know, uh, we're working with, uh, high level mediators and so on just to try and bring more peace.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:40:55

        It's an incredible paradigm and set of tools that I will say was the first framework for talk therapy that I saw in living color via video initially, that really, really caught my attention, where I was like, "Holy shit. Okay. These, these before and afters are really incredible." And it would've been for someone who hasn't seen these types of transformations almost impossible to anticipate that you would get these outcomes in such a relatively short period of time given the starting points involved and the levels of trauma. It's really grabbed my attention, which is why I wanted to have you on the podcast and I appreciate you very much for taking the time and making the time to have a conversation.

    26. RSRichard Schwartz1:41:49

        Well, I'm very honored and moved actually by the depth at which you get this and, and for your support. And so I've loved our conversation. I really have. Having listened to you a lot, I kind of knew I would, but you know, I still have these anxious parts. So it's just been, uh, moving is the best word for it for me.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:42:11

        Well, I, I really appreciate you and the work that you're doing in the world. Hopefully we'll get to meet in person at some point in the not too distant post-COVID-

    28. RSRichard Schwartz1:42:21

        Post-COVID [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:42:21

        ... world. [laughs] And, uh, for everybody listening, thank you for tuning in. You can find the show notes, links to everything that we discussed, including the audio course that we mentioned towards the end at tim.blog/podcast. You can just search IFS and everything will pop right up. And until next time, thank you for tuning in. [upbeat music] Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is 5-Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And 5-Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up [laughs] in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The 4-Hour Body, this is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multi-mineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health and immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of. Of course, I focus on nutrient-dense meals to begin with. That's the basis. But Athletic Greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. For travel packets, I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. Right now, Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim. This podcast episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Sleep is super important to me. In the last few years, I've come to conclude it is the end-all be-all, that all good things, good mood, good performance, good everything seem to stem from good sleep. So I've tried a lot to optimize it. I've tried pills and potions, all sorts of different mattresses, you name it. And for the last few years, I've been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe Mattress. I also have one in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. It's something that they comment on. Helix Sleep has a quiz, takes about two minutes to complete, that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. With Helix, there's a specific mattress for each and every body. That is your body, also your taste. So let's say you sleep on your side and like a super soft bed. No problem. Or if you're a back sleeper who likes a mattress that's as firm as a rock, they've got a mattress for you, too. Helix was selected as the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by GQ Magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. Just go to helixsleep.com/tim, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for 100 nights risk-free. They'll even pick it up from you if you don't love it. And now, my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. These are not cheap pillows either, so getting two for free is an upgraded deal. So that's up to $200 off and two free pillows at helixsleep.com/tim. That's Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim for up to $200 off. So check it out. One more time, Helix, H-E-L-I-X, sleep.com/tim.

Episode duration: 1:47:28