Have you ever wondered why at times you feel conflicted? Like there are different voices in your head you but you don’t understand why? Well, it can be helpful to think that, at times there are different parts of us, saying or feeling different – contradictory – things. And we’re not necessarily consciously aware of it.

One approach that I use is parts work, which can be a very effective approach to healing childhood trauma.

Read on to learn more about parts, how they might show up in your everyday life and how you can help yourself to become aware of them.

What are parts?

Imagine your inner world as a house. The house has many rooms each representing a different part of you. Some rooms are sunny and inviting, filled with warmth and laughter. Others are locked up, dark and neglected – there but not pleasant to visit.

Parts work is about exploring the house, understanding and befriending all the rooms (or parts) so that the neglected ones can become part of an integrated, harmonious home where every part is given a voice to feel seen, heard, and valued.

Exploring parts in therapy can be transformative, but I want to say more about the different parts themselves.

Parts in conflict

There are various approaches and ways of thinking about parts. For instance, IFS (Internal Family Systems) is based on parts.

A simple way of understanding different parts is seeing them in terms of our day-to-day thinking, feeling, and behaviours and whether these reflect the past or the present.

Who are you today: parent, adult or child?

At times thoughts, feelings and behaviours might come from behaviour and beliefs that we copied and got instilled in us by our parents, caregivers or other authority figures during childhood.

If you ever catch yourself telling off your child in the exact same way that you were told off, then you’re most likely acting out your parent in that moment.

At other times, you might (without realising it) be behaving, thinking, and feeling in ways that you did as a child. These might reflect how you needed to adapt to survive. And they become patterns of relating that get triggered in situations that mimic your childhood experience.

For instance, whenever Sam (a fictional client) speaks up for herself, she’s plagued by doubtful thoughts and feelings of fear. She doesn’t understand why she feels this way. But, as an 8-year-old child, Sam’s critical mother responded angrily whenever she questioned something or shared her point of view. Sam would flee to her room where she felt safer. Her feelings of fear and doubt reflect this history and not the present reality where she is now a grownup who doesn’t need to fear her mother.

Hopefully you can see how this client is responding to the present in a way that repeats history. Our feelings don’t always tell us the truth about what is happening now.

In here and now we’re adults. And if we can become aware enough to respond to situations in ways that reflect this reality, we can lessen the impact of our history.

Conflict and confusion can happen when parts get suppressed but nevertheless show up as they get triggered. Remember the house? The door to that neglected room we’d rather forget about, gets unlocked.

Reconnecting the disconnected

Our personality can split into parts due to trauma, which makes it necessary to compartmentalise.

This is referred to as ‘structural dissociation’ and is evidenced within a neuroscientific approach to working with trauma.

Corresponding to the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the left brain allows us to get on with daily life while the right side holds the traumatic experiences (the locked room).

A person may function well at work but be flooded by emotion when they are triggered by things which (out of awareness) remind them of past trauma.

And depending on your experience, there may be other parts too.

How do conflicted parts show up in your life?

Parts can show up in different ways. Here are some ways that parts can manifest in your life.

• Remember the case of Sam above? the child within you, that adapted to survive, gets triggered regularly. At these times you might feel scared and young, even though you’re now an adult.
• Self-sabotaging behaviour. This can manifest as unhealthy coping behaviours which contradict what the adult part of you actually wants.
• Feeling disconnected and not ‘present’. The part of you that tries to get on with life wants to avoid thinking about the past, but the traumatised parts are fearful or sad and constantly focused on potential danger. So these will appear when you least expect it.

How you can help yourself

In my practice, I work with clients to help them unlock and reconnect the different parts of themselves so that over time, it’s not so scary to acknowledge the past.

But here are three ways that you can help yourself.

One..

Educate yourself about the impacts of trauma – there are some good self-help books that you can use to learn about how your experiences have affected you. This helps to build awareness, which can lessen the confusion and sense that there’s ‘something wrong with you’. This book by Janina Fisher called: Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma is a workbook and a good place to start.

Two..

Try differentiating between the different parts of yourself and understanding what happens with each. For example, there may be some activities associated with an adult, ‘going on with life’ part of yourself. How are you here, versus when you get triggered into feeling helpless, small or younger? It may be possible to link those feelings to past trauma.

Three...

If you can identify the adult part of yourself and separate it from more vulnerable parts that get triggered, you can try to nurture those (wounded) child parts through self-care and compassion, rather than self-blame.

In a nutshell, parts work honours that we’re all complex with different parts that might sometimes be in conflict. But by exploring, listening to, and accepting parts, therapy offers a path to understanding, self-compassion, and integration.

You can help yourself by learning about trauma and trying to identify how your own parts show up in your life. You can also link to some of my other blogs here:

A guide to trauma: PTSD, complex PTSD and how I help clients to heal.

Why don't I remember my trauma? why it isn't true that perfect memory is needed for healing.

I’ve experienced first-hand how empowering it is for clients to realise that they’re not broken, but beautifully multi-faceted. Healing isn’t about erasing parts of us but about inviting every part to the table and hearing they have to say.

If you’re curious about parts work or wondering if this approach could help you then please get in touch with me.