Valery Rockwell, M.Ed LMHC

Childhood traumas, family and individual crises, and self-destructive scenarios often feel like irreversible life sentences, but they can be transformed from within. Over twenty years and many books ago, Schwartz developed a very different model for doing "talk therapy." Encouraging his patients to battle and "overcome" the parts of them that were getting in the way was, he realized, a futile exercise.

The more clients fought to overcome whatever was bothering them, the harder they found themselves battling these strong parts. Rather than fighting those bothersome parts, Schwartz had the key insight of trying to understand them. He extended a certain curiosity and compassion towards them -- these internal parts that make us tick.