What is Parts Work?

You may have heard people talking about doing “parts work” or “inner child work” in therapy.  Parts work is becoming more popular, and people are asking for it more often.  I love talking about parts, so here’s an explanation of what that means.

What are parts?

When talking about parts, I usually start my explanation here: whenever we get really overwhelmed, the brain says, Hey, no problem!  I’ll just out separate those brain cells. Then the part that holds all that overwhelm will be separate from the rest of the brain.  That means that rest of the brain can go forward and carry on with normal life.  No problem!  I doubt that the brain actually rearranges things and shoves them off to the side, but it doesn’t need to.  The brain has an amazing ability to store a memory and yet cut off easy access to it.  When this happens, those brain cells (neurons) get disconnected from the part of the brain that keeps track of time.  The normal life brain moves on with things.  You grow up, get older, get more freedom, more competency, more control over your life.  The part that got cut off from time doesn’t know!  It stays stuck in time, connected to a sense of being that young age, still connected to feeling overwhelmed and whatever other emotions fit that past situation.

This doesn’t mean the brain is broken.  Disconnected, yes, but not broken.  This is exactly what the brain is designed to do.  This is how we move on and get through life day after day.  The brain is supposed to do this.

Bessel van der Kolk wrote about this phenomenon in his book, The Body Keeps the Score.  He writes about a couple who were in a terrible car accident.  The researchers ran PET scans while the people were thinking about the car accident.  The researchers noticed that only the area holding the memory of the accident lit up.  So many other important areas of the brain were dark, including the part that holds time and the parts involved in critical thinking.

Even though these parts are disconnected in lots of important ways, they still impact our daily lives.  When we have big emotions, when we feel or act younger than our age, when we keep doing the same things and feel like we can’t stop (substances, ruminating, controlling, criticizing), when we can’t get over a certain event. . . those are parts interacting in our lives.  They are disconnected enough that they don’t seem to get that there are other ways to respond and do life, but they are connected enough that they think they know what’s going on and how to “help”.

Everyone has parts

When my clients get squeamish about the idea that they have parts who act like younger versions of themselves, I say a couple of things.  One, the “parts” are really just a group of human brain cells.  Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that a group of human brain cells acts like a human.  We somehow have this idea that our brains are just like computers, just storing cold, hard facts.  They really aren’t like that.

Another thing that I tell people is that everyone has parts.  Everyone.  And that is a good thing.

We are not solid, homogeneous monoliths.  We are not “single-minded.”  That’s not even the goal.  Possibly it is because we have parts that we are capable of believing contradictory things.  We can have a goal and have concerns about reaching that goal.  We tend to get frustrated about that, but it’s actually good once we learn to work with our parts.  Why?  We need those competing thoughts and feelings and goals so that we can stay balanced.  Dr. Gordon Neufeld says that being able to hold conflicting thoughts and feelings is essential to maturity.

Some people have a concern that having parts means that they have multiple personality disorder, now referred to as dissociative identity disorder (DID).  Again, everyone has parts.  With DID, those parts are just even more disconnected.  That causes some extra challenges, but it’s not an altogether different or terrible thing.

There are different ways we can think about or talk about parts, and there are different schools of therapy that have their own words for all of this parts stuff.  Internal Family Systems with Dr. Richard Schwartz is probably the most popular right now.  He divides parts up into three categories according to the roles they play.  Janina Fisher is my favorite.  She wrote the book, “Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors.”   She takes a more trauma-informed approach and divides the parts into 5 main groups according to the 5 main ways we protect ourselves.  Her book is written for either therapists or clients to read, but it is admittedly a bit dense.  Slower reading.  I prefer Janina partly because I can just feel her kindness towards the parts when I’m reading her book or watching her on video.

Noticing the Parts

Just as there are lots of different ways of thinking about or naming parts, there are lots of ways we can notice parts in our lives.  Here are just some of them:

·      Whenever you have a big emotion.  The parts have the big emotions.  The adult self is the you who has to stay grounded so they have someone to calm them.

·      When you just can’t start or finish something.  You can assume there’s a part who thinks it’s a bad idea and is preventing you from doing it.

·      Whenever your emotion or thought really doesn’t seem to fit the situation.  For example, someone brings you flowers and that makes you want to cry or push the ordinarily kind person away from you.  Oh, that’s parts!

·      When you have a memory come up out of the blue, and you’re not sure why.

·      When you are lacking an adult skill or behavior just for that moment or maybe always.  I had a client who was perfectly capable and intelligent who constantly burned her food.  I finally realized, Oh!  You’re not the one doing the cooking!  When she started talking to her parts about cooking and they let her do the cooking for them, she stopped burning her food.  Though they still demanded pancakes all the time!

·      When you can’t make a decision.  Mm-mm, parts.  They may be digging in their heels and becoming even more extreme in their thinking to try to win their side.  Or they might just be too afraid of the outcome, so they stall.

·      When you are trying so hard to control a situation and you’re exhausted.  It’s a hard thing to describe, but the adult self is better at seeing the whole picture, better at recognizing what is and isn’t your responsibility, so she doesn’t wear out as easily.

·      When you find yourself using words like “always”, “never”, and “it’s not fair” really often.  Kids see things in black and white.  Kids are very concerned with things being fair.  It’s fine that kids see the world that way because it’s developmentally appropriate for them.  When adults do that, it might be parts.

One of the things I say over and over in session as I talk to my clients about parts is that when a part is stuck doing something, that’s just fine.  If a part is stuck thinking about fairness and failing to see the complexity of something, that’s okay.  Our parts don’t have full neurological access to the “adult” brain (otherwise known as the prefrontal cortex).  The parts haven’t failed when they do any of these things that I list above, just like a 5-year-old isn’t a bad cook when she constantly burns pancakes.  It’s not a thing that she’s supposed to be able to do.  That’s okay.

There’s so much more to say about parts.  I want to tell you more about this adult self that you have and how to spend more time in your adult self.  You’ll want to know how to connect with your parts and be helpful to them so that you can feel a lot more peace and reach your goals.  Keep your eyes peeled for more posts on parts!