Self hate is real. An inner critic can look like an criticising, inner, monologue in your mind. Whereas, an inner conflict can look like this – if you want to do something, but a part of you is stopping you from doing it. In both of these situations, there are parts within you which are self-hating or creating inner resistance within you. In this podcast, I share the details about how to find those parts, create more awareness about your self-sabotaging patterns and some techniques to heal and align those unhappy parts within you.
This technique goes by many names (e.g. Internal Family Systems) in the scientific community. It is a proven method practised by therapists and psychiatrists for counseling people. I call it parts work, as learned from my favorite, spiritual teacher Teal Swan. Don’t worry, it is nothing complicated. I have read books, took courses, went through therapy myself. The reason I am sharing these techniques for free through my podcasts is there are many people who cannot afford therapy. Some of us don’t even realize we need therapy. And then there are those who have a stigma around visiting psychiatrists. These healing tools are meant to empower you with what you need to become a happier and self loving versions of you.
Here’s Teal video on live demonstration of parts work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxMD4tSHwfc
This is one of the 3 important healing tools that you can use in your daily life. The other healing tools are shared below:
Negative core belief healing: http://abetterliving.co/how-to-stop-feeling-upset/
Healing past pains & trauma: will update the link when this podcast is released
Intro music credits:
Track Name: Good vibes only
Artist: Elephant Funeral
Album: Unfinished tales
You can listen to more episodes of this podcast here.
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Today I’m going to talk about one of the three most important tools to help in your healing journey. It’s called the parts work. The two other tools: healing negative core belief, which I have covered in my podcast called- ” how to stop feeling upset”. And the next one will be released soon.
I will share the link of that third healing tool in this podcast description once that episode is released. That is doing the inner child work. Have you been feeling some resistance inside you when you are trying to do something? Say for example, you know that the going to the gym is good for your health.
But You just don’t feel like.
Or if you can relate with the inner conflict, say one part of you wants to do something. But the other part of you is saying, no, don’t do it.
You’re having this internal conflict and you’re not able to make up your mind.
And you procrastinate.
Or if you have an inner critic. Who’s constantly criticizing you.
Then you have been fragmented in your childhood or teenage. It’s very important that you understand what is parts work and what exactly you are healing and how it is healed before I even go into the process of how to heal it.
So the first part of the podcast. We’ll be talking about what are we even trying to do in the first place and give you a complete understanding. In the second half of the podcast, I’ll be sharing how to do it.
Now, what is fragmentation? Fragmentation is when your mind has a split into two or more parts of consciousness. And there is nothing wrong or bad with it. This usually happens when you have experienced some trauma in your childhood or teenage.
Everybody on earth has experienced some or the other kind of trauma.
Trauma does not mean that it has to be, high speed, the car accidents. Or tragedies that you’re faced in life.
So trauma doesn’t have to be a huge thing. Even small things can cause trauma.
Because in childhood, our entire world are our parents or our guardians. We are still learning how to live in the world. So even the slightest of rejection or slightest of scolding from them would turn our world upside down and traumatize us.
One part of them will want to establish closeness with the parent.
Because all children need intimacy. And the other part which actually wanted to play will be in a state of utter shock. That what just happened. What did I do wrong? This is how fragmentation occurs.
One of the fragmented parts takes job of trying to not piss the parent off. So that the child can survive. This is a way the brain rationalizes, whatever trauma it is experiencing. And if it can’t handle or rationalize it, then it fragments. Fragmentation is one of the primary coping mechanism that humans have.
And there is nothing wrong or abnormal in it. On an average, a person can have 22 fragments or it can even run up 100 fragments.
Fragmentation can even happen in the womb. When the baby is inside the mom.
Like I’ll give you one example from my life story. When I was doing parts work, I discovered a fragment or a part of me which was formed when I was in the mom’s womb.
And that part was formed because my mom had accidentally eaten something that infected her as well as, me who was inside the womb. So that fragment came into existence in order to protect me from that infection.
All throughout my life, I had been very finicky about germs and cleanliness. And it is that fragment, which was insisting or controlling those aspects of my personality so that I don’t get infected again. Because of its traumatic experience in the womb where it got infected.
Trauma can happen to anybody at any given stage of the time. But majority of our fragmentation happens during her childhood or teenage.
If you’re experiencing self hate or the resistance or the inner conflicts or inner warfare that I spoke about, then you have fragments within you. So you think that you are one whole person. But actually that’s not the case. You have multitude of personalities in you. Each one of those parts of you or fragments of you have their own personality, likes and dislikes, energy levels, even body heat and temperature. Whatever conflicts or resistance that you’re going through is one part of, or one such personalities inside you stopping you from doing something. So remember, one thing, all the fragments that exist within us are trying to help us in some way.
They think they are helping us in their own twisted way. But they don’t realize that they are actually stopping us from doing something good.
Depending on the number of traumas we went through, if we have a multitude of fragments, like 20, 30, 100 fragments within us, then there are usually one or two fragments or the part of you will take control of the main personality. And the remaining fragments would be either in the subconscious. Or getting activated when specific situations arise. Those parts, which are lying in the subconscious and get activated only during specific circumstances, they don’t have the conscious experience of the timeline, the main personality, which is you, are living.
So they don’t know that if some fragmentation happened when you were five years old. If a part of you were suppressed, then when you are 30 years old, that part is still unconscious. It is still suppressed. And it is still at the age of five. It does not know what experiences you have gone through in between.
And what is your new reality.
Parts work is going to help you bring those fragmented parts of you into awareness. It is going to take your subconscious personas and bring it to light. Your mind, body, soul is eventually going to get into alignment. You will stop feeling any inner resistance or doubts or procrastination or even decision-making.
You will not feel internal warfare anymore. You will become more aware of who you are. And in fact, that is one of the steps in spiritual awakening.
But once you actually start doing the parts work where you are actually bringing your subconscious parts into awareness so that it stop resisting you, where you can disarm them and align them and integrate them with your main conscious self, you will become a whole new, different kind of a person. You will discover a lot of your superpowers, which you didn’t even know you had.
You will discover what are the things that you actually need. The needs which are there in the subconscious and you are not exactly aware of that.
You are indirectly trying to meet those needs because you are not even aware of that. And all the manipulation, all the coping mechanisms that you have, all of them will vanish. All the shopaholics, workaholics, food holics alcoholics, all the holics- these are all coping mechanisms. We indulge in excesses of things because we are trying to cope with the shitty reality. So all these coping mechanisms will vanish because there will be nothing left to cope.
Now, if you are wondering that, why should I even do parts work? If self-awareness is not your goal. Then what happens is if you are moving ahead in your life, despite the inner resistance or inner conflict that you’re facing, situations will get worse in your life. Because whatever you resist persists.
Your internal world actually reflects in what is happening outside in the world too. This is how the law of attraction works. The outside situations in your life are nothing but a reflection of your internal world. So if your internal world is full of conflict, you are going to face the same outside also.
Whether you are consciously aware of them or not.
I will give you some example of extreme forms of fragmentation. Usually for regular people like you and me, we can do parts work and bring those fragments into consciousness. There are like 1 or 2% of the population who have gone through extreme forms of fragmentation. When one fragment is conscious, the other fragment is completely unconscious. And each parts take turn to coming to consciousness. An example of that, you will see in multiple personality disorder. That is nothing but different parts of a person is awake and taking control of the main body, at different points of time. None of them are aware of each other. Or maybe some of them are aware of each other.
watch these movies like Machinist, Fight Club, one of my favorite movies, Split. All these three movies have one thing in common. The protagonist has multiple personality disorder. This is an experience of extreme fragmentation, which usually doesn’t happen to you and me.
Now, if you are doing parts work for the first time. It is going to be a little bit time consuming activity. So you should be mentally prepared that you find the time of the day where you are not going to be disturbed by anybody. For me when I did it for the first time, it took me three hours.
It could take more or less for you because for individual case basis it depends and differs. But eventually when you keep doing it often, then this time would reduce and you can eventually, you will reach a stage where you can just do it any point of the day at any time. And it will also consume lesser time. But when you’re doing parts work, don’t rush it or don’t force it just because you don’t have time.
Let it organically unfold.
Because you cannot heal yourself, if you’re trying to rush it or push it or force it. That’s not how healing or alignment happens.
Now I’m going to discuss how to do the parts work. How will you know when to do it? Whenever you are facing any inner resistance or inner conflict or any kind of internal warfare or hearing an inner critic. That’s when you know you have to do the parts work. Choose a time of the day when you are not going to be disturbed by anybody for at least two, three hours.
And you have to also choose the place carefully where nobody’s going to interrupt you or disturb you. The point is if somebody comes and participates or breaks it in between, then the healing would not fully happen.
Take a voice recorder if you’re comfortable talking. Or a pen and paper if you are comfortable, more writing. That’s the first step.
If you have found a place where you’re not going to be disturbed, just have two chairs or two stools with you. Because if you’re doing it for the first time, it’s important that you are able to separately identify each of these parts and personalities. What we are going to do with those two chairs are we are going to put them in that room or wherever you are, face to face, and with some distance between them.
What we are going to do is we are going to invoke one part. And talk to it. And then we are going to invoke the opposite part. Which is resisting this part in the other seat, and talk to it. So both the parts will be sitting on two different chairs.
There will be a middle ground, which is your main personality, who is basically getting this entire activity coordinated. So that means central personality would be standing in between these two chairs. Now, what I want you to do is pick any one chair and sit down.
Once you feel ready then close your eyes. And ask yourself: that I want to talk to that part of me which is not agreeing to do- fill in the blanks. If you are facing resistance to go to the gym, You say that I want to talk to the part that doesn’t wants to go to the gym.
Or you can ask yourself that: I want to talk to the part that is ashamed of myself. Or I want to talk to the part that is criticizing me. And you imagine that that part is taking all over you.
You imagine that your main personality, which is you, is as if stepping out of your body and standing right in front of you. Staring at you. And you are letting this part that you just invoked completely take control of your body. As if your main identity and main personalities right outside your body, waiting for this part to speak up.
Don’t worry. You are still in control. You have not lost anything. Our personality is not going to run away, leaving you with this part or leaving your body. Those things don’t happen. You are still in, you. What we are trying to do is we are trying to invoke this part and hear what it has to say. And that can only happen when you allow the main controlling part or the personality to take the back seat. And allow this part to come into the driver’s seat.
Now that you have allowed this part to completely take control of your consciousness or awareness right now. Just notice what thoughts arise when you become this part. This part can have a lot of things to say. It can be very critical, dismissive of you. Or even might be saying things that it hates about you. Or it could just be saying normal things that whatever it is trying to resist you from. So it’s very important that you start recording what it has to say. So at this point of time, you may want to take a voice recorder in your phone app and start recording the voice.
Make sure your phone is in silent mode and a do not disturb mode, where nobody will call you and interrupt you at this point of time. Or even better: what I usually do is start writing instead of recording my voice. I write using my non-dominant hand. What do I mean by that?
Say for example, if I usually use my right hand to write, then I’m going to use my left hand to start recording what this part has to talk about. Because my left hand becomes my non-dominant hand. If you are a lefty who uses left hand to write, then the right hand will become a non-dominant hand. So use your non-dominant hand to write what this part has to say.
Now the best way to understand it is to ask questions to it.
Your sole objective is to understand and bring it into alignment.
So ask these questions. If you want, you can write down these questions so that when you’re doing this exercise, you have these questions ready made in your hand.
How do I feel like?
How big or small am I? Do I feel male or female?
Is it in human form or non-human form? How old do I feel? Where do I feel I am?
And the next set of questions: when did this start or change for you? When did this all begin for you?
What would you be doing instead, if you could do anything else and why?
How does this part feel about the central personality? Which is you. The main you, whatever your name is. And how does this part feel towards the opposite part? Or the other side of it. What relationship does it feel towards the other part?
Also ask that: why is it resisting whatever it is resisting? Or why it is asking you to do whatever it is asking you to do?
What does it need? What does it want?
And how can you help it?
Once you have written those questions down, you can ask these questions one by one. And write down the answers or record the answers.
And don’t tone yourself down. If your part is being violent, let it be. No matter what the part wants to do, just let it be. If it wants to scream, let it scream. If it wants to say nice things, let it say nice things.
The point is you allow the part to be itself and voice its concerns to you.
And how will, you know these concerns? By asking these questions. You get a full understanding, ask all of these questions to the part. Only then you will have a complete understanding why it exists in the first place.
So once you have done this exercise, now get up from the stool. As if you are leaving that part of your consciousness in that stool. And your main middle-ground personality, which had stepped out of your body before we started this exercise it’s coming back to your body. As if you’re becoming you again.
Instead of that part.
So now from the middle ground perspective, what does this experience tell you about yourself? What did you just witness? What are your thoughts and feelings? Record that. How does this part which is still sitting in that stool that you just got up from looks like? Just look at it and record what your reaction is. Either in pen and paper or in your voice recorder.
Now, sit on the opposite chair or the opposite stool and do the same exercise. Here I want to invoke the part that is opposite of the other part.
You want to talk to the complete opposite of this part, which was fighting with the part with who you just spoke.
And repeat the same questions and exercises that you did with the previous part. So now that you have complete understanding about both of these parts, you come back into the middle ground perspective. You get up from that stool. And again, come to the middle ground perspective.
Look at these two parts on these two different chairs or stools as if they are sitting right in front of you. Tell them that- both of you reside in my own body. If you don’t come into alignment, the fight that we’re fighting is going to hurt me and cause me pain. From the middle ground perspective, tell both of them that, what are you experiencing because of the decisions that they’re making. If one of the parts is not letting you to go to gym. You tell them that- I’m becoming fat because of that, I’m not able to do exercise. I’m not feeling good because of that.
Or if it is the other part, which is wanting you to go to gym, but you don’t want to, because you have a back pain. You can tell that I don’t want to go to the gym because I have a back pain and my doctor has told me, but you are constantly making me feel guilty that I have to go. You tell them what you are pain point is.
To both the opposite part and bring those things into their consciousness, because they may not be aware what you are going through. They are thinking in their own way that they are helping you, they’re saving you or they’re protecting you in some way.
Remember, all the parts that you have in your self, in your mind are trying to help you in some way. At least they think that they are trying to help you. That’s why they exist. If they were not required, they would have integrated with your main personality. So your objective is to find what are they trying to help you with? What are you trying to save you or protect you from?
You have to tell them whether that protection or saving is needed anymore or not. You may not be needing any saving anymore. You may not be needing what they have to offer anymore because you have grown. You have learned to do it by yourself. And that part may not be aware.
So you have to find some kind of an alignment between these two opposing parts. Don’t make one part compromise and give up on what it wants. Don’t do that, then it will be extremely painful to you. The healing will not happen.
The objective is you have to get these two parts into alignment where they agree with each other. And come to agree to a common solution. So you have to keep changing seats and keep asking these parts. How can you agree to something that is for the highest good of the central personality.
Keep changing the chairs, keep hearing what each part has to say. Try to find a solution that both the parties agree to happily. And this exercise of going to and fro from different chairs will take some time. At least if you’re doing it for the first time.
And use a middle ground personality to mediate between the two. Now once both the parts have full understanding about each other and your main personalitie’s point of view and perspective, and the reality, one of the few things can happen.
Either one part will start deflating because it realizes that it’s purpose is not required anymore. You may feel dizzy when deflation occurs. And that is completely normal.
So go back to first and second part as many times as you want to create a resolve between them. Every time you sit in each of those chairs and stools notice how each of them may have changed physically. If a part has lost its purpose or a function, you can ask it to dissipate and dissolve and become one with the main consciousness.
It’s healthy. Or what will happen is sometimes you may notice that one part, after it becomes aware of what is going on, chooses to dissolve in the other part, and both part wants to become one. Or they may want to become a new identity. Like they would want to merge it, become a new identity completely.
Or they might also want to integrate with the main personality. So notice what they want and how the integration is happening. Eventually, you will know that these parts have come into alignment when that war would have stopped. When there is peace inside you.
So keep on doing this. Sit in each of these chairs. And a sit as that part, whichever chair you are sitting on, and see how it saw that integration or alignment to happen.
Only once both of the parts have agreed, and there is peace and alignment, then stand up as a middle point person, and ask yourself: if you would like to choose and accept and integrate this newly agreed parts into your conscious mind.
So if it says yes, Only then you ask these parts to integrate with you. Close your eyes and you visualize whichever way you want to visualize these parts integrating with you. There is this video by Teal Swan on parts work, where she actually does a live demonstration of how it works.
And you can watch it. I’ve shared the link in the podcast episode. That is how I got started in my parts work journey. And it is also used by psychologists, psychotherapists counselors in their sessions with their patients to heal fragmentation. But I personally feel that this is not a tool that needs to be hidden in only the doctor’s office. This is something, even people like you and me who may not have gone to major traumas but who have still gone through some kind of trauma in their life can still use to heal themselves. This is something that should be accessible to every person on earth to do self healing and bring more conscious awareness about their subconscious parts.
If you want to do your own research and read more about it, then you can Google Parts work or inner child work or voice dialogue or internal family systems therapy. What you just did is a scientifically proven therapy.
That is used in cognitive behavioral therapies. And It is going to heal you. It is one of the most important healing tools that you can possibly ever have.
After doing the parts work, ask yourself: what does this change for me? How does this change things for me? How has this part’s work session made life different?
When I did my Part’s work for the first time, I came across parts that I didn’t even knew what suppressed. There was some traumatic experience in my childhood at the age of five and which caused this major fragmentation between me and my child self and this dominant part that came into existence at that time. That dominant part had been controlling me all throughout my life and literally put the other child part to sleep forever. It was put into subconsciousness and I didn’t even know it existed.
So during this part’s work, I discovered it. That was like a major revelation. I can’t even explain. Because I realized I am so much more than what I thought I was. I have these capabilities and these things that I know. I did not even know who I was or what I was.
So every time I face a resistance, I do the parts work. And this way, I think I’ve discovered at least what 50 parts in me. Sometimes I have experienced alien parts also, that are not from this world. I wouldn’t have even known some of my needs and wants if I hadn’t done those things. I used to think that I’m an introvert. I don’t need people around me. But I discovered a part of me that loved intimacy.
Because it was in my subconscious and I was not consciously aware of it. I was trying to get my needs of intimacy met in indirect ways, which was not working. It was causing me more frustration and happiness. Now that I know that I also have need for intimacy, but at the same time, I also like being alone sometimes.
Now I know when to balance it and how to balance it. So that it’s best for me. Now I don’t have to manipulate or indirectly meet my needs. I can just directly meet my needs and figure out a way as to how to go about my life. Because now I fully know who I am. And that’s the entire point of this exercise.
So I hope you have enjoyed it. Please do it again and again, until you have discovered every part of you. Remember that healing happens in layers. You will not discover all the parts at one shot. Every time you feel resistance or conflicts inside you, that’s when you start doing parts work. So eventually over a period of time, you would have discovered so many aspects and so many parts and personalities of you that you didn’t even know existed.
Each one of them have their unique personalities. They have unique even looks. You can even see how they look like in your mind’s eye. They may have unique body odors, body temperatures. You will be surprised with the variety you will meet within yourself and you didn’t even know it existed.
Enjoy! Have fun. Heal yourself. And become more self-aware. So if you have like my podcast or this episode please subscribe and leave a review. And shared it with your friends.
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