How to Achieve Inner Peace & Healing | Dr. Richard Schwartz

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Richard Schwartz is the founder of Internal Family Systems Therapy, which is a unique form of therapy that's less centered on your relationship to other people, but instead focuses mainly on identifying the parts of yourself and your personality that tend to emerge in different situations and that tend to create anxiety, resent or depression. Another key feature of Internal Family Systems Therapy is that it's not just focused on fixing challenges within us, it also teaches you how to grow your confidence, openness and compassion. Now today's episode is different than any other episode of the podcast that we've done before. And that's for two reasons. First, Dr. Schwartz takes me through a brief session of IFS therapy so you can see exactly what it looks like in practice and then he takes you, the listener, through it as well. So as you'll soon observe and experience, internal family systems therapy allows you to work through challenging sticking points, basically the parts or feelings within you that you don't like to have. And then it shows you how to convert those feelings into more functional aspects of yourself. So as you'll soon see, internal family systems therapy is both super interesting and it's an incredibly empowering practice. It's also a form of therapy that's now been studied and for which there's a lot of peer-reviewed science to support its efficacy. By the end of today's episode, Dr. Dick Schwartz will have shown you that a lot of the negative reactions that we tend to have with different people and things tend to originate from a few basic patterns that once we understand, we can really transmute into more positive responses. It's a really interesting practice. It's one that you can apply today during the episode and that you can return to in order to apply going forward in your life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Dick Schwartz, welcome.

**Richard Schwartz** (2:14)
Thank you, Andrew. It's delightful to be with you.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:17)
I've heard so much about you and your work and internal family systems models.
I've had the opportunity to do a little bit of that work. To be honest, I don't know whether or not the person I did that work with was formally trained in it. So I'd like to start off by just asking you what is internal family systems and what are the different components? And as we do that, I'm sure people are going to be thinking about these various components for their own life and the people in their lives. Great.

**Richard Schwartz** (2:50)
Well, originally, I developed it as a form of psychotherapy, which is probably the way it's used most now, but it's also become a kind of life practice and just a paradigm for understanding the human mind and as an alternative to the culture's paradigm. So that's saying a lot and it's been quite a journey.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:17)
I know of Freudian psychoanalysis. I know of any number of different branches of psychology that have a clinical slant to them. There's cognitive behavioral therapy. What are the core components of internal family systems?

**Richard Schwartz** (3:31)
Yeah. So one basic assumption is that the mind isn't unitary, that actually we're all multiple personalities, not in the diagnostic sense. But we all have these, what I call parts, other systems call sub-personalities, ego states, things like that. And that it's the natural state of the mind to be that way, that we're born with them because they're all very valuable and have qualities and resources to help us survive and thrive. But trauma and what's called attachment injuries and the slings and arrows we suffer force these little naturally valuable parts into roles that can be destructive. Often they don't like it all. But because they're frozen often in time and during the trauma, and they live as if it's still happening, they're in these protective roles that can be quite extreme and interfere in your life. And yeah, so I just stumbled on the phenomena of 40, now I think it's 41 years ago. And it's been, you know, amazing ride.

**Andrew Huberman** (4:52)