Parts work

I do a lot of parts work with my clients and I have done that work on myself as well. And to help normalize this work I want to share some parts stuff that comes up in my life.

These days I find myself thinking about my teenage self a lot and how connected I am to her these days, and in a much more appreciative way than I ever have been.

As I’ve grown and worked through my own attachment wounds, I have often been dismissive of my teenage self, writing her off as an emo girl.

More recently though, I have really connected with how grateful I am to my teen self.

I am grateful that she was so angry that she did not collapse into complete people pleasing or co-dependency, because she knew her needs mattered and that she had to advocate for herself. I am awed by her strength.

That part of me was so critical of herself in an effort to help me achieve, because that’s the only way she knew to motivate me.

And it’s her perfectionism that I still hear in my head when I feel like I made an obvious or embarrassing mistake. My teen holds my cringe.

And what I know from parts work is that when I get that feeling of being mortified, it’s my teen and I turn my attention to her and I offer her compassion and nurturing and it helps.

We all have parts, we all have younger parts of self and many of us need to learn to tend to those parts in healthier more loving ways.