PODCAST · society

The Hope Merchant Podcast

by Lauren O'Neill

The Hope Merchant Podcast is on a mission to find the world’s Hope Merchants and give their voices and offerings a platform to be heard. Through symbolism, spirituality, alchemy, and transformational journey work, we discuss the ways people can find more hope in their own inner systems. What is a hope merchant?Internal Family Systems Therapy uses this term “hope merchant” to, as founder Dr. Richard Schwartz explains, “sell hope to hopeless systems.” We are all living with parts that help us navigate the world and sometimes those parts hold extreme beliefs, patterns and agendas that can make the world feel overwhelming and at times, unmanageable. So the Hope Merchant comes in to offer hope to the parts of us that at times feel hopeless in an uncertain, and sometimes painful, world. There are parts that hold limiting beliefs, fears, and traumas and believe that they’re doomed to be stuck in their ways forever: exiles forever trapped in the pain