We all have parts, sub personalities, ego states, competing beliefs/feelings/desires that exist internally –different people/theories/cultures call them different things but one common theme is we rarely are in full alignment within ourselves. Just this morning, part of me was feeling like I really needed some social time, while another part of me was wanting to have quiet time to myself. Part of me wanted to pack a healthy lunch and there was another part of me that just wanted comfort food. Part of me could acknowledge that I did the best I could in tough situation yesterday and another part was screaming that I had failed and still another part wanted me to just not think about it to avoid the feelings that come with it.
Earlier this year I came across IFS (Internal Family Systems) which has since given to me, a framework and language to begin to organize and communicate things I have already intuitively known and even written about (Head and Heart Minds Pt 1/Pt 2). It is also not the end all/be all and simply one way of understanding our parts. So today, I’m going to talk about parts through this lens. 🙂 There is so much that I could say on this topic and I’ve worked hard to simplify it to the biggest points.
To begin, in IFS, they talk about our SELF or Self Energy, which I think of as the most grown up, healthiest, grounded, self-assured, solid, most authentic us. I think of this as the us we would be all the time had we never faced any struggle or adversity. We know when we’re in self energy because we don’t experience self-doubt here. We trust in ourselves, our decisions and feel rooted. It would be great to be in our self energy all the time, however, inevitably, we do experience struggle and adversity in the way of trauma and attachment wounds. Trauma wounds being the bad things that happen to us and attachment wounds being the good things that were supposed to/we needed to happen and didn’t.
Often times, I find that attachment wounds are actually even more impactful than trauma wounds because we dismiss them, “because nothing bad happened/it could have been worse/they were doing the best they could/etc” and because they begin happening early in our life at the age and stage that we are developing our world and self views. **I could…and probably will write an entirely different post just on this topic of attachment wounds alone…adding that to my list now. :)** For now, just know that we all do experience these wounds on some level, beginning when we are very young.
When these wounds happen, we often aren’t able to heal through them at that time that the occur for any number of reasons: we don’t have models of healing, lacking healthy and adequate supports, don’t have enough safety, resources, knowledge, etc. Usually when I ask people what would have happened if they would have tried to heal from wounds they have experienced at that time, if they would have been vulnerable, showed/expressed what they were feeling and needed, that it would have made things worse either from the reaction from their parents or others around them (anger, abuse, shaming) or they would have been dismissed, ignored or experienced further rejection. As a result of being unable to heal through these wounds, we end up with hurt, younger, wounded parts that get stuck. In IFS, they call them EXILES. Any guess why they call them exiles? —because we want to and have to shut those parts down and away —we exile them internally. It isn’t safe for us to experience the pain these parts hold and so we have to lock them away. These hurt younger parts are where our negative self beliefs are held, our deeply rooted shame, our belief that we are fundamentally flawed.
In order to keep these exiles locked away, we end up developing Protector Parts, which IFS splits into two categories. The first is what they call the Managers, these are the proactive parts, the parts that are working all day, every day to keep the pain away in the first place. For me in my less healthy spaces, these are my perfectionist part (if I excel at everything I do, and do everything just right, then maybe I don’t have to feel like I’m a failure), or the part of me that people pleases (if I can make sure other people are happy then maybe they won’t hurt me), or the part of me that stays so busy that I don’t have time to think or feel, to name just a few.
However, have you ever noticed that no matter how hard you try to keep the pain away, inevitably, the exiles storm the gates and the pain comes up anyway? In IFS, they call the these parts Firefighters. These are the reactive parts, the parts that go, “the pain is already here so how do we get it to go back away”. These may be parts that abuse substances, self harm parts, suicidal parts, dissociation parts, angry parts. Just think of the things you do when you feel the pain and want it to go away, those are your firefighter parts.
Our protector parts act as a barrier between our self and our exiles, and let me tell you, they are exhausted. It is a never ending job and generally we experience shame and judgement towards these parts (especially our firefighters). We see them as behaviors that are bad and need to go away, rather than being able to acknowledge that all of these parts have the best of intentions. They exist for a reason and even if in this moment, they aren’t serving us, at one point, they did. They were necessary and they helped us to survive.
Even a suicidal part has the best of intentions – it may be saying “look, all of you other parts did the best you could, but we still feel pain, I don’t want us dead but maybe if we aren’t alive, we won’t have to hurt anymore”.
Our parts are working all the time, and it’s a thankless job. Can you think of a time where you worked your butt off on something, did the best you could, and someone walked in and started picking out every mistake, stating they should have just done it themselves, etc? That’s what we’re doing to our parts all the time, instead of being able to recognize that they are doing the best they can with what they have and know.
It’s also important to note that these parts (the protectors and the exiles) are stuck in the age and stage in which they came to be. That’s why sometimes we feel like we’re arguing with a toddler in our battles with ourselves, or look at things we do and think “what the heck was I thinking?”.
I often challenge my people, as they begin to identify their parts, to check in with the part and ask themselves how old that part feels? It’s strange how answers will start to materialize or there will be a felt sense… “that part feels like it’s 5 years old” or “that feels like a teenage part” or “it feels like it’s always been there”. These parts only have the skills and knowledge that they had when they came to be.
I also challenge my people to then consider how that part helped back then, what would have happened without that part or what did it protect from? When we can have compassion and appreciation for the part, it also is often willing to step back a bit and allow the Self to take over, and we can step out of a place of judgment and shame. We have to remember that the protector parts don’t trust the Self to experience the pain because at one point, we couldn’t, that’s why they had to come to be. When we can understand that it is a younger part and that it has positive intention, it often helps us to better understand and separate that reaction from the Self. You can actually begin to ask the parts what they’re trying to protect you from or what they need and can start working on helping the parts realize that “now is different than then”. They don’t know that you are older now, that you have choice and control that they didn’t. They just know that this is what they’ve always done.
I also recognize that when my people start to understand or connect with their parts, is often the point where they express worrying that this means something is wrong with and fears of having multiple personality disorder (officially this is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID for short). I want to start by reframing that even in DID, I struggle with the word “disorder” as it is a beautiful thing what our systems are capable of doing for our survival. The reality is dissociation is a spectrum and while we all have parts, the difference between someone with DID and someone without, is for someone with DID, due to the lack of safety and escape in their world, survival required more fragmentation between their parts to take place.
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My challenge to you, is to just start working on getting in touch with, understanding, and appreciating the positive intention of your parts. My goal is never to get rid of parts, rather, I want them to be able to take a break, to not have to work so hard; which happens when we can begin to heal the pain of the exiles. To help you begin to understand and connect, below are some examples of some parts I’ve encountered with some of my people and the intention that they’ve had, a similar part may exist very differently for different people so I’ve given more than one intention on many. Your parts may show up in entirely different ways or for entirely different reasons. You’ll also notice I use “we/us” which is the part speaking for the whole internal system.:
Depressed part – “we’ve been trying to tell you to slow down and you won’t listen, maybe if you feel depressed, you’ll finally have to pause” or “if you’re depressed, then you won’t have the motivation to do things and therefore can’t do something and fail” or “no one seems to pay attention or care unless we aren’t okay, so if we’re depressed, maybe people will care” or “if you never let yourself want more then I can save you from the disappointment when it doesn’t happen”
Drinking part – “no one liked us until we started partying and then we made friends, so if you drink right now, you can feel connected again” or “it’s too scary to feel the hurt, we need to escape the pain and drinking numbs it” or “we don’t have a voice or speak up for ourselves, but when we drink, we can say whatever we want/need to and then can blame it on the drinking if it isn’t received well”
The part that smiles through everything – “we learned that when we were upset, no one seemed to care/we got more hurt/our needs weren’t met, so if we act like we’re fine, we don’t have to be hurt when people don’t show up for us, or we aren’t vulnerable in a way that people can hurt us again”
Self sacrificing part – “if we focus on other people’s problems, we don’t have to deal with our own” or “we learned our worth is tied to what we do for others (at the time the part came to be), so we have to ignore our needs and take care of others or we risk being not good enough again”
Self critical part – “If we judge ourself first, maybe it won’t hurt so much when others judge us, or at least we won’t be caught of guard” or “nothing we’ve done has ever been good enough and if we aren’t critical of ourselves we won’t work on getting better”
Great post