I often refer to different parts of Self in counselling, and inevitably people look at me wondering if I think they are crazy. I don’t. The reality is that we all have different parts of ourselves, and these parts help to protect us, manage a range of situations and, sometimes, carry heavy burdens like grief and traumatic memories. Sometimes a certain part can be really strong and overwhelming, resulting in a feeling of imbalance or decision making that isn’t actually consistent with what we really want for ourselves. Lots of times, people will point to their heads and say “I KNOW it, but I don’t feel it.” There is something (a part) blocking the ability to feel fully present and congruent.
I got thinking about this at the worst time. It involved being on a steep (at least to me) trail in the mountains on a really expensive bike that didn’t belong to me. This weekend I did an amazing women’s mountain biking workshop. Mountain biking terrifies me. It hurts when you fall. And I did. Multiple times. But it also has always looked so fun and exciting to me, and I love being outdoors, even more so if it’s in the mountains. On a whim, after one too many cups of coffee, I hit “buy” on the workshop website ticket purchasing button. Then I spent the next several weeks cursing myself and thinking of reasons why it was a terrible idea, while a little part of me said “I’m excited”. This was the part I allowed to speak out loud. The other parts had to stay quiet, except for one part which copes through humour and delivered many self deprecating jokes about my own imminent destruction.
I became really aware of my own internal parts of Self through this experience. There was a hard core, super determined type A part that drives me to achieve difficult things. This part has come in handy to get me through school, but sometimes results in me being exhausted when it gets out of balance.
A panicky, life preserving part that forsaw impending doom around the next corner suggested I might walk down the hill and call it a day. There was a part that whispered, “you can’t do this. You’re not strong enough, not brave enough, not coordinated enough. What were you thinking? You should be home watching Netflix.” This part has been around for a long time, and carries burdens like not being able to swing all the way across the monkey bars in elementary school, being told I had poor hand eye coordination by my volleyball coach when I was 12, and feeling embarrassed to wear a bathing suit as a teenager. This part cringes as I write this, as it doesn’t want anyone to know about these shameful experiences and feelings of failure. Yet, I know it has always tried to protect me, and it’s intention is to maintain my dignity by not making myself too vulnerable. Yet out of balance, it can rob me of adventures and opportunities to learn new things, which inherently requires vulnerability.
Then there’s Self. I believe we all have a core true Self that is curious, compassionate, courageous, creative, and connected. We can relate to our inner parts from this Self. Self told me, “hey you’re trying something new and hard. You’re not going to be perfect the first time and that’s cool. You’re doing awesome.” In short, Self says, “it’s okay to feel what you feel, and we can get through this”. Also, “you can do more than you think you can, cause you already have.” It’s helpful under stressful circumstances to have other people around that mirror the voice of Self, and I was grateful for that this weekend, when some of those internal parts were screaming at me.
This framework is from Internal Family Systems Therapy, which is one of the theoretical models I draw from in my counselling practice. I like it because it recognizes that we do what we do for a reason, it was probably adaptive at some point, and might be still in some circumstances. We are not wrong, or crazy, or bad, when a part of us gets a little overpowering; it just might need to chill out a bit and let Self back in the drivers seat.