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choice quotes from the free sample of richard schwartz's IFS relationship book "you are the one you've been waiting for", part 2: chapter 1 (part 1 was the introduction): "Cultural Constraints to Intimacy" https://t.co/Z7z8sM2LMT https://t.co/PVu0hsWj9Q
"Sustaining intimacy wouldn’t be such a big problem if you had been encouraged by your family or culture to take care of your exiles.... It is likely that your family taught you the opposite—to lock away your parts when they felt hurt, needy, ashamed, or otherwise in pain." https://t.co/aoL5efPHAO
"Couples were once surrounded by communities of relatives and friends, by people who shared their values and helped them out. Today, couples are isolated, mobile units that are expected to survive on their own." https://t.co/CwohqipPXW
"In this society, we leave our parents and our children leave us; the only person who is supposed to be with us forever is our partner." https://t.co/093iJyBazM
"Without a constant stream of affirmation from an intimate partner, most of us will experience these feelings to some degree: worthless, empty, like a loser, lonely, rejected, desperate, ugly, boring, insecure, and afraid." https://t.co/R8yQpR0tvG
"Too often our partner becomes a life preserver, keeping our head above water in the dark sea of pain, shame, and fear in which we float. No wonder we feel so threatened and jealous if it looks as though our partner might leave us." https://t.co/DeRdFyk5Ac
"Our culture offers many other life preservers—television, Internet, shopping, working, smoking, legal and illegal drugs, alcohol, pornography, prostitution, plastic surgery, diets and exercise, fatty and sweet foods—all the common addictions." https://t.co/OpuZsWt42m
"These distractions themselves become part of a vicious cycle that keeps us addicted to the search for head-above-water happiness and away from a more sustaining happiness." https://t.co/gyAhFabESR
"Take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions.... 1. Are you aware of feelings of emptiness or unlovability inside you that you fear? 2. To what extent in your life have you expected your lover to make those feelings disappear?" https://t.co/tJEJfcOJnD
"Many reasons exist why most of us in this country contain a secret dark sea of lonely emptiness and quiet desperation. Later in the book we will discuss the psychological roots of this condition..." https://t.co/oIoeCCvPru
"American individualism lost its soul at that point to the huge pressures of industrial capitalism. Whereas before the war our individualism was tempered by a strong ethic of community service, afterward that changed." https://t.co/cHHEeCjUu5
"Their baby-boomer children inherited that virus and, in addition, experienced little of the extended family and community-focused upbringing that their parents enjoyed. Instead, many of us boomers grew up in anonymous suburbs and drew our values from television commercials."
"The result is the empty self, “a self that experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning.... a self that embodies the absences, loneliness, and disappointments of life as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger” (p. 79)." https://t.co/xQXUq5CZjG
"[Y]ou'll be convinced that... The person who will heal you, complete you, and keep you afloat is out there." "This is an impossible load for intimate relationships to handle." https://t.co/MzHbb7HSnn
"1. How much does your lifestyle allow time and space for intimate exchanges with your partner? 2. How isolated are you and your partner from a network of nurturing relationships? 3. How much does fear of poverty or competition with others drive your lifestyle?" https://t.co/x8ocYnpgri
"Another kind of happiness exists that you can feel steadily whether you are in a relationship or not. It comes from the sense of connectedness that happens when all your parts love one another and trust and feel accepted by your Self." https://t.co/3iMqvUda4r
"When you have that kind of love swirling around inside you, it spills out to people around you, and those people become part of your circle of love and support. You don’t need intimate others to keep you out of the inner dark sea because that sea has been drained...."
"As author John Schumaker (2006) writes: I never knew how measly my own happiness was until one day when I found myself stranded in a remote western Tanzanian village. I saw real happiness for the first time—" https://t.co/BpkbnKAl1G
"So we’ve all been set up—victims of a cruel joke. First we are loaded with emotional burdens by our family and peers, and then taught to exile the parts carrying them. Then we are told to go out into the world and find that special person who can make us finally like ourselves." https://t.co/otMUykDkAs
"Together we and our partner enter the striving, frenetic whirlpool American lifestyle that precludes time together, isolates us from community, depletes and stresses us out, and offers innumerable addictive distractions that further isolate us."
"Using structured communication packages, your therapist may convince you both to drop your defenses and open to each other once again.... Both of you are too depleted, vulnerable, and needy, and too focused on the other for any improvements to last." https://t.co/deB2z7ffHs
"1. How much do you feel like a failure in your relationship? 2. Given all the constraints to intimacy discussed so far, do you think your relationship ever had a real chance?" https://t.co/KH1K56ojug
new thread for part 3: https://t.co/sqdVx47F7h