Richard Schwartz - You Are The One You've Been Waiting For

I did some content editing last spring on Dick Schwartz's new book, You Are The One You've Been Waiting For: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships, which is now available at the Center for Self-Leadership website.

The book offers an introduction to using IFS parts work in couples counseling. The examples given and the clarity of the model make this an ideal book for therapists interested in doing parts work with the couples with whom they are working - and for the lay reader wanting to better understand why their relationship is failing and how to fix it.

One of the keys in this book is understanding how each person in a couple has parts that get "set off" by the other person, and how that can escalate into fights, alienation, and eventually the end of the relationship. The more time we spend relating from our parts, the less intimacy we experience in the relationship.

A big lesson in this work is that to have and maintain a healthy relationship, we need to be self-led, coming from that authentic part of ourselves that isn't caught up in possession, attachment, neediness, or fear.

I get nothing for plugging the book (I've already been paid), so please consider this an endorsement of the author and his work.

Richard Schwartz is a brilliant and compassionate therapist, and for those who have never seen him work, the "case studies" from this book will give you a taste of his skill, and even more, of the beauty of the IFS model.

Dick's New Book Is Now Available

The Center for Self Leadership and Trailhead Publications are pleased by the enormous response to Dick Schwartz's new book You Are The One You've Been Waiting For: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships. The book is available at CSL's online bookstore.

In this book, Richard Schwartz, the developer of the Internal Family Systems Model, applies the IFS Model to the topic of intimate relationships in an engaging, understandable, and personal style. Therapists and lay people alike will find this book to be an insightful exploration of how cultivating a relationship with the Self-the wise center of clarity, calmness, and compassion in each of us-creates the foundation for courageous love and resilient intimacy: the capacity to sustain and nourish a healthy intimate relationship. Self-leadership also allows us to embrace our partner's feedback and use it to discover aspects of ourselves that seek healing. The book includes user-friendly exercises to facilitate learning.

Here's a sample of what's being said about You are the One You've Been Waiting For:

"This Profound and readable book provides clear guidelines for therapists and clients alike. In ways that complement my won work, clients learn how to unload the cultural and family burdens that block intimacy by keeping them locked in rigid gender roles. Therapists learn an empowering and practical process for treating couples. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone serious about improving relationships in the world today!"
--Terrence Real, author of I Don't Want to Talk About It and The New Rules of Marriage

"It has been said that before you can love another, you have to love yourself. You Are the One You've Been Waiting For teaches us how to do that by offering a clear, compelling, intelligent model for loving our inner demons and freeing ourselves to embrace greater intimacy. Thank you, Dick, for this wonderful book."
--Janis Abrahms Spring, PhD, author of How Can I Forgive You? and After the Affair

"This highly original book offers critical new insights into obstacles to the dance of intimacy. Most of us have inner exiled parts that carry burdens of shame and abandonment from our past. These interfere with our capacity for intimacy. Dick Schwartz shows us how to use the exiles our partners trigger in us to find and heal the source-our original attachment injuries. This releases our capacity to be fully alive in relationships."
--Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, Medical Director, The Trauma Center, Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine

Tags: Richard Schwartz, You Are The One You've Been Waiting For, Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships, Center for Self Leadership, Trailhead Publications, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Psychology, relationships, books, parts work, subpersonalities