You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For by Richard C. Schwartz, PhD (Book)
Are you wondering what couples therapy might be like or how it works? This book is a great place to start. It brings an Internal Family Systems framework to couples therapy, and, in the process, helps you see where your history of pain and relationship injuries shows up and what you can do about it..
Turning tormented into tormentored.
So often, couples bring their lives together with the best intentions only to wind up burdened by the troubling thought: “If I love my partner, why can’t I stand being around them?” Rather than enrich and appreciate, we inevitably torment each other daily.
““Tormentor refers to people who trigger you, they torment you, but they also teach you what you need to heal. It is tor-MENTOR. And this tormenting of us… can be a teacher in the sense that it will bring up the parts of us we need to heal.”
-Richard Schwartz, Ph.D, IFS Founder
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidence-based model that creates healthy, compassionate, and adaptive relationships between an individual’s wise and centered “Self” and their myriad parts, be they well-functioning, distressingly confused, or anything in between.
When part of you feels hurt, misunderstood, or simply annoyed by your partner, it’s natural for another part to step in and attempt to help by pushing back or pushing away. When we focus on these hurt parts of ourselves, ask where they may be stuck in the past, witness what they know about our pain, and then share these discoveries with our partner, we act to clear the minefields of our relationship. By stepping on our landmines, our partner becomes our most invaluable tormentor, opening avenues to our most powerful areas for growth.
Source: You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For by Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D
In couples therapy, you have the opportunity to reconnect with yourself, reconnect with each other, and turn tormented into tormentored.
Click here to learn more about couples counseling at Madison Behavioral Health.
Important Links:
Please know these summaries are not written with the assistance of generative AI. The only automated assistance comes through the spell check and grammar check features of Google Docs.