Parts Work
PARTS WORK
Did you know we’re all composed of different parts?
I’m not talking like leg and arm parts, but parts within our soul. How about this. You know when you say something out of character—perhaps you yell at someone—and you say, “Sorry, I wasn’t being myself back there?” Well, I’d agree and disagree with you.
Yes, that wasn’t really you. The core you. That was just a part of you coming out.
Now, maybe you’re the type who only gets angry when you’re provoked 100 times. Or maybe you’re the type who, if someone looks at you the wrong way, you’re gonna whip your your angry NY accent and annihilate your opposite. Either way, that’s a part.
Did you know that if you do a lot of self-work, you’ll find you have 25+ parts to you? Did you also know that this a neural network of parts are communicating to one another all day? Some of these parts are definitely louder than others, but here’s the scary reality: often these parts get in the way of us experiencing the true you.
That’s true energy. True confidence. True identity.
Now parts are neither good nor bad. But they all serve a purpose. At one point in time a part began to develop in order to protect a different part of your soul from experiencing pain again.
Let me make this a little more tangible. Think of any semi-stressful area of life. Any semi-stuck point. In about 5 minutes of work, I bet we can start naming of parts that speak. The other day I was processing with a client about the idea of being single.
I hate that I’m single. (SHAME)
I’m working my ass off to do the right things to get into a relationship. (PRODUCTIVE)
I’m just a jerk. (SELF-DEPRECATION)
I don’t deserve a girlfriend right now. (SHAME)
I regret the way I treated my last partner. (REGRET)
I really want a relationship. (DESIRE)
There’s no way I can put myself out there (VICTIM)
Even if I got into a relationship, I’d probably mess it up. (PERFECTIONIST)
What if I don’t put myself out there and it’s too late? (FEAR/WORRY)
Maybe I’ll just be single the rest of my life (GIVE UP)
Screw it. I probably just need to be single right now anyway. (AVOIDANCE)
I should focus on work instead of a relationship (DISTRACTION)
I shouldn’t be ungrateful; I’m lucky to have what I have though. (RATIONALIZATION/MINIMIZATION)
Do you see all these parts at play?
I want to be real with you. Parts work is tough. You get to see what’s sifting through your unconscious. It takes a lot of work to dig up. Each of these parts—mostly “managers”—help a person cope with not channeling a deeper, more vulnerable set of parts, “exiles.”
Exiles are often repressed. They’re deep wounds, often stemming from trauma. Managers manage the exile from experiencing pain. So if an exile is “rejection,” we might use a manager of DISTRACTION or AVOIDANCE to not even experience the pain of rejection. So it might be a little lie of the parts, “There’s no way I can put myself out there” + “I should focus on work instead of a relationship.”
Make sense?
These parts play in the same loop, over-and-over. One part speaks. Then another part jumps in. Then another and another. Or sometimes, one part just completely dominates all the others. It causes silence over the whole communication network.
Have you ever heard someone who victimizes themselves all the time? Or maybe it’s the person who’s super upbeat and positive no matter what. Obviously, you can go negative too. Or maybe it’s the person who has learned to give others advice all day when they’re actually just speaking out of that one managerial voice.
I’ll give a last part of self that takes over. Sometimes when the Managers and Exiles are speaking all day long and you can’t experience internal rest, something called a Firefighter takes over. A firefighter is the ultimate suppressant—the quick fix. It’s getting drunk. Smoking to excess. Porn. Video games. Meaningless sex. Uncontrolled rage. It’s the thing that allows you to completely lose yourself for a moment. You numb out. Then you reset, and carry on with life.
So we’ve got Managers, Exiles, and Firefighters all working in tandem. Each part speaks to us. Each part acts.
When most people hear about it, there’s a natural response to get defensive and to avoid. You know what’s happening here? As the layers get stripped, you’ll find different parts begin to step in to shield the exiles. If you go deep enough, you might even find a new set of Firefighters and Managers emerging.
This is the like the person who goes from smoking weed to counting macros every day. It looks good on the surface but it never actually healthily addresses the issues. So how do you work with this?
If you’ve never worked with your true sense of self—or true identity—you’ll have a little more work, but it’s getting your Core Self to begin to form a relationship with these parts of self. Just like to have a healthy relationship with a friend means that you don’t just interact when everything is all good or all bad; you are also having different parts of yourself interact with different parts of themselves. You’re going to do the same with yourself. This is called your relationship with yourself.
Slowly but surely you’ll integrate healthy components of a core self. What are those? There are 8 C-words that are pretty common usage: 1) clarity 2) connectedness 3) creativity 4) compassion 5) calmness 6) curiosity 7) courage and 8) confidence. So that means when a shameful part of yourself fires up, you’ll consult with Self and, just like you would with a close friend, be a little curious and compassionate in talking with that shame part. Because here’s the thing. Whether you talk to that part of you or not, I guarantee it will speak to you.
Some of those 8C’s you might have on lock. You might always ask the why’s (curiosity). You might always be even-keeled (calmness). You might might always reach out to others (connectedness). But even those can often be one-sided. I bet some of the C’s might look a little foreign to you. If so, there will be Manager parts that are taking over. All we’re trying to do is, one-mini-percent-at-a-time, allow the Self to activate its energy a bit more to talk to these parts. That is the Managers, the Exiles, and the Firefighters.
At first this might look a little kooky. Why? You’re having conversations with yourself! Ever see the disintegration of Russell Crowe in a Beautiful Mind?! Fear not though. Once these conversations move from your unconscious—because Friend, they’re already happening—to your subconscious and then to your conscious layer, the more effectively you’ll be able to heal and rewire the conversations from your conscious to your subconscious to your unconscious. How might this look?
Instead of you just eating the tub of ice cream or battling yourself not to eat the tub of ice cream, as you develop a healthier relationship, with yourself, your Self might talk to that hungry part and strike up a conversation: “Yo, how much ice cream to you want?” Umm, the whole tub. “Really, the entire tub? That’s a lot wouldn’t you say?” Yeah, I guess that is a lot. Can I have some though. I mean, sure. I’m not a tyrant. I can also see you’re ravenous and exhausted. How about we do this? I’ll pour out half a bowl, but make sure you savor every bite okay? That totally sounds more than fair.
Now I didn’t do a whole dialog here. But I’m sure you can see I did a little calmness (non-reactivity), confidence (gave direction), compassion (validated feelings), creativity (went outside the box with half the bowl), etc. If you do this enough and begin to integrate more more parts of healthy self, you might even find that part of you that has depended on ice cream might at times say, “Upon further review I’m actually good. Thanks for asking me!”
Get it?
Anyway, I hope that this provides a little insight into the world of parts. I know with therapeutic work some people are often unsure of what it looks like to develop a healthier relationship with self. A healthy relationship with self isn’t a quick fix. It’s a process. Imagine each part is you getting to know a new person and all that goes with that. It’s also never a straight-line ride. As you get to know a new person, a year in you might find your relationship needs adjustment.
This is natural. This is expected.
Obviously there’s a lot here to unpack so if you have any questions with this, feel free to email.