Parts Work Therapy

On the surface, you may get by just fine.

However, inside, you feel you’re hanging on by a thread. You’re pushing your partner away again or creating chaos in your relationship because it feels familiar and comforting and maybe even evokes a sense of connection in your relationship.

When exploring in therapy, you realize this pattern feels familiar, and a memory forms of when you were eight years old and your parents were fighting for the fifth day in a row. You try to distract them by intervening and then eventually retreat to your room. The image you get is you sitting on your bed with your head hanging down. The feelings associated with this scene are sadness and fear.

When you further connect with this part, you understand it formed to preserve a connection with your primary attachment figures by joining in their form of communication and then eventually retreating to protect yourself from feeling rejected by their lack of attention toward you.

You have a lightbulb moment that this pattern is playing out in your adult life, and the good news is that you will have the tools to change it.

Our work together…

Ego-State Therapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach symptoms (like anxiety or depression) and behaviors (like picking the wrong romantic partners over and over) as parts of ourselves that usually developed out of necessity or protection and were useful somehow at the time they developed. Often, these parts are very young and have unsophisticated defense mechanisms, like shutting down or acting impulsively to get a need met.

Instead of pushing these parts down and ignoring, avoiding, or shaming them, parts work aims to understand their age, perspective, and function and ultimately to unburden them of the role they’ve had to play for so long.

We will also work to identify and enhance your wisest, most adult part that knows how to handle business and makes good decisions. I’ll ask you to identify this part through visualization and mind/body connection, and we’ll work to develop a clear sense of where it lives in your body and what it looks like.

That part will act as a leader to reduce the need for other parts’ roles and convey safety and assurance.

Once you integrate parts and operate from your wisest self, you will probably experience a deep sense of self-compassion, love, gratitude, and wholeness.