This book felt like sitting down with two wise, compassionate guides who finally get it. As someone who’s been through more trauma than I sometimes know how to name, I’m always searching for books that go beyond surface level self-help, and Releasing Our Burdens absolutely delivered.

What hit me the hardest? The reminder that not everything I carry is mine. Some of my heaviest pain isn’t just from my own life, but it’s ancestral, cultural, collective. And realizing that doesn’t make it less personal… it makes it feel less shameful. It gave me permission to stop blaming myself for wounds that were never mine to begin with.

Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems work resonated with me, and adding Thomas Hübl’s perspective on collective and spiritual trauma was… honestly, eye opening. It connected dots in my own healing that I didn’t even know were related.

The exercises aren’t complicated, but they are powerful if you take the time with them. The biggest shift for me was leaning into curiosity and kindness toward the parts of myself I usually want to shove down. There’s something quietly revolutionary about approaching your trauma not with judgment, but with gentle gratitude.

I found myself crying, pausing, breathing deeply and sometimes feeling an actual physical release, like I was letting go of something I’ve been gripping for too long.

If you’re healing, if you’ve been through hell and are trying to make sense of the pieces, please read this. It’s not a “quick fix” kind of book. It’s a companion for the long, messy, beautiful work of becoming whole again.

✨ If you’ve ever wondered why you feel so heavy, and you’re ready to let some of it go… this is your book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Richard Schwartz, and Sounds True Publishing for the eARC of this book.

This is a great resource that answered quite a few questions I had about ancestral trauma and healing. I highly recommend.

In Releasing Our Burdens, Thomas Hübl and Richard Schwartz offer a deeply insightful journey into the healing of trauma—one that transcends the individual to encompass ancestral wounds and collective patterns. Rather than isolating pain as a personal struggle, they invite us to understand how deeply we're shaped by generational and societal aftershocks. Drawing from Internal Family Systems and group-based healing traditions, they present a compassionate roadmap for releasing emotional and psychological burdens, fostering resilience, and nurturing a more connected world. This thoughtful collaboration is both gentle and profound, serving as a lighthouse for anyone seeking not just personal restoration, but a chance to mend and transform communities as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I will certainly recommend it to others. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Releasing Our Burdens brings together Thomas Hübl and Richard Schwartz in a collaboration that seeks to connect Internal Family Systems (IFS) with collective and ancestral approaches to trauma. Having previously read Schwartz’s No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model and used IFS in my own therapeutic journey, I was curious to see how this work would expand on those foundations. IFS is a thoughtful modernization of Jungian archetypes and Freudian structures, and it has offered many, including myself, valuable ways of identifying and naming emotions.

This book continues that conversation while widening the lens to collective and ancestral experiences of trauma. Some of the most compelling ideas highlight how much of what we carry is not ours alone, but shaped by family legacies and cultural histories. The inclusion of Fatimah Finney’s chapter was especially meaningful; her reflections on social injustice and intergenerational wounds grounded the book in timely relevance, and I wished her voice had been given even more space.

That said, the structure of the book, particularly the reliance on extended transcripts, made the reading experience feel a bit dense at times. The prose leans academic and can come across as repetitive, which may limit accessibility for some readers. A clearer framing in the description about the use of transcripts would have set more accurate expectations. Still, those transcripts may prove illuminating to readers who appreciate seeing how theory translates into practice.

Overall, Releasing Our Burdens raises important questions about how individual, ancestral, and collective healing intersect. While I found some sections less engaging, the concepts themselves are valuable, and readers who are newer to IFS or trauma-informed approaches may find this a helpful introduction. Therapists and healing practitioners at the start of their journey will likely benefit most from its insights.

Following up the excellent No Bad Parts, this extends the healing work of IFS to collective and communal trauma. I can't think of anything more needed in our time, and will be rereading and recommending it highly.

RELEASING OUR BURDENS: A GUIDE TO HEALING INDIVIDUAL ANCESTRAL AND COLLECTIVE
TRAUMA
BY: RICHARD SCHWARTZ, THOMAS HUBL

About: 3.5 Stars rounded up to Four!

Sounds True Publishing which I have really been quite impressed with discovering several Five Star cutting edge Scientific theories to some Introductory Beginners Guides which the one that comes to mind was also a collaboration like this one in which the mutual efforts resulting in a more in depth and in my opinion the dual efforts are captivating & engaging reading experience. As I said above this Publisher has delivered all five star highly impressive prior works which was immersive and was part of the reason why I chose this. I have a background in psychology that I'm not a clinician, but with my wide experience keeping up to date with academic journals in extensive modalities I'm quite familiar with trauma, and Ancestral trauma which is not listed in the DSM-5, but is a widely known phenomena studied in the field of psychology. My familiarization is broken down into three sub groups in which descendants can experience it generally 1. Parenting Styles, 2 Communication, Epigenetics. It can be a witnessed event or direct exposure. Collective Trauma is also given equal coverage in this powerful ARC by which is approximately just under 200 pages in which Dr Richard Schwartz, PhD has incorporated scripts which he is known for among my most recognized, and has authored many books, but his work with Internal Family Systems or IFS is very effective when it comes to healing which this book has incorporated, and is co-written with Thomas Hubl and their combined efforts encourage us to approach as they model to become more curious and compassionate just like this book is written. Fatimah Finney has a very moving chapter that deals largely with oppression and racism of all kinds among much more , and I was totally impressed with her which is between the 40% and 50% mark. She is eloquent, erudite and also effective in her vast multitude of examples as she discusses marginalization in society of which one segment surprised me. Overall, this was informative with the approach of emphasizing that I came away with more of eye opening content that expanded on what I already suspected that not all individual trauma is rooted in our own experiences, but I have now more context to broaden my belief that generations of families and groups can share. This is a valuable resource in which the scripts serve as templates that further makes this another way to heal on your own. I'm so happy to have read this, and it's another great reading experience that deserves a wide audience.

Publication Date: December 2, 2025

Thank you to Net Galley, Richard Schwartz, Thomas Hubl, and Sounds True Publishing/St. Martin's Essentials/Sounds True for generously providing me with my ARC, in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own, as always.

#ReleasingOurBurdens #RichardSchwartz #ThomasHubl #SoundsTruePublishing #StMartinsEssentials #SoundsTrue

This book illustrates what trauma healing looks like when the best therapists in our field at the top of their game are doing their finest work. This book is a masterclass, and the premise of this book makes sense: true healing addresses not just the individual in isolation but the generations of familial and collective trauma that the individual carries by addressing painful legacy burdens. Illuminating, deeply moving, and heartfelt, this book lands in all the right ways. What the world would be if all our mothers and fathers and all of us did this kind of brave, exciting, truly exquisite work.

All the therapists featured in this book are excellent (Richard Schwartz, Fatimah Finney, Thomas Hubl). This book is for everyone, but I wanted to highlight something for therapists reading this book. Thomas Hubl’s level of presence is so next level. Please read his transcript. I felt something shift/heal in me just reading his words. His description of dissociation and his way of dealing with trauma were spot on.

Overall, for me, this book, more than anything, felt hopeful. I feel I am walking away feeling an abundance of hope and feeling reenergized in all the best ways.

A dynamic duo, Dick Schwartz and Thomas Hubl, guide readers on a wonderful inner journey. Internal Family Systems has become a popular therapy for many reasons, including the connections to lost and disowned parts of ourselves. Those familiar with IFS know that one of the practices--after building relationships with and witnessing parts--is releasing burdens.

Yet not all burdens belong to our parts. Some of them have been created by the society in which we live, including through racism and other institutional, societal, and individual prejudices. Some burdens have been carried through the generations, including by generational trauma, such as genocide, enslavement, and more.

This is not a book to race through. It's one to savor. It's one to re-read, to highlight or sticky note. There are various practices in the book to help apply the concepts.

Sometimes a reader comes across a book that shifts something within so profoundly that they emerge from the book changed. This is one of those books for me. It's one I will read and re-read, exploring it in different layers each time, gaining new insights, and more. I will be re-reading this with a journal next to me.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in IFS. It's a game-changer.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.