Working with Parts

Why is there conflict between parts?
According to Structural Dissociation there are 2 types of parts:

Emotional Parts (EPs) who are trauma holders and Apparently Normal Parts (ANPs) who manage daily life.

There are often conflicts between these types of parts, because one type is focused on the external world and the other type is focused on the internal world. Sometimes Daily Life parts will deny the presence of Emotional Parts to allow them to focus on the external world, without the distraction of trauma. But this can leave younger emotional parts feeling abandoned and unheard. Often leaving them feeling like they need to ‘shout louder’ to make themselves known.

Why do my Parts ‘Act Out’?
Trauma holders (EPs) contain our painful emotions, they also hold any trauma responses known as the 6 F’s: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Flop, Fawn, and beFriend.

IFS proposes that Emotional Parts fall into 2 categories: Exiles which hold emotions that we ‘aren’t allowed to feel’, and Firefighters that shutdown these emotions so that they don’t affect the functioning of Daily Life Parts (ANPs).

For Exiled parts of us, they are often small and frightened, they need the love and care of an adult to protect them. They might attach to people easily and get hurt by rejection or abandonment. Whereas our daily life parts may avoid attachments, or relationships where someone else has control over us.

Firefighters will come out and shutdown emotional responses from exiled parts, they may do this with unhealthy coping strategies, amnesia or disorientation. But their aim is to assist the Daily Life parts in maintaining functioning in the external world.

It is important to understand that all parts seek to protect the system and body from harm. They all have different roles and behaviours that they use to do this. If we want to reduce the ‘intrusions’ from the internal world into our daily life functioning we need to make time to intentionally notice and respond to the needs of our internal world.

Some little parts may not know what year they are in or that the abuse is over (if it is). It’s important not to label our parts as being ‘the angry part’ or ‘the fight part’. Whilst parts might fulfil these functions, they are their own people with personality traits, likes and dislikes. Over identification with trauma roles can make it difficult for them to separate themselves from the trauma, choose new roles or focus on things that they enjoy doing.

How can I make it stop?
There are a few things to think about when communicating and building relationships with our parts.

- Be curious
Curiosity is a helpful tool in understanding the motivation behind our part’s actions and to getting to know them better. Often Emotional Parts just want to be heard. They have been holding a lot of difficult memories/feelings for a long time.

Shame and our feelings or reactions about their emotions can often get in the way of us really listening to our parts. If we can learn to ask questions and seek understanding of their needs, we can look for information rather than judging. Which will hopefully lead to our parts being more willing to communicate. Hearing our parts and trying to understand them is crucial to building trust.

- Get to know your parts
System mapping can be a helpful tool for understanding how your system functions and what motivates them. Many Daily Life parts go on fact finding hunts about what trauma is hidden but this often misses the fact that our parts have needs and are not just trauma holders. Try to get to know them, what activities does everyone like? Can you make time for them to join in with colouring or journalling? Often these methods of communication appeal to child parts and are a more contained way of expressing strong emotions without flooding Daily Life parts. It also helps to build internal secure attachment and trust.

- Understand emotions
Often our responses to emotions are a result of beliefs our abusers instilled in us. Many feel uncomfortable crying, feeling anger or pleasant emotions. When we understand the function of our emotions it can help us not to label them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They are a communication tool for our mind and body to let us know what is going on for us. They are like an internal barometer that lets us know our emotional ‘weather’. They can be a useful bridge to understanding how the internal and external worlds intersect.

For example, anger’s function is to point out a perceived injustice. Which gives us the energy to prompt us to change something. If something in the outside world is making us angry then it could be a sign that someone has crossed our boundaries and we need to take corrective action. If we find ourselves having angry outbursts for things that other people don’t have an issue with, it might be that we have some unresolved trauma in our internal world. Separating the two can be tricky at first, but with therapy we can learn how to identify and manage these responses.

- Negotiate coping strategies
Once you understand why a part behaves in a certain way and how it protects the system you can talk to them about alternative coping strategies. It is ok to negotiate the way something is done, but not the need itself. The need is always valid. An example might be that you have a little part who floods you with traumatic memories because they want to tell you how distressed they are. This can cause flashbacks for Daily Life parts. Instead you could ask them to draw or write out what they want to share with you or share with a trusted person like a therapist.

- Understand behaviours as a trauma response
Parts do what they do for a reason. Each part will have an action system that they are in control of, and the way they fulfil that action will depend on what was needed to survive the trauma. Action systems are our base functions like play, eating (attractive stimuli) and avoiding danger (aversive stimuli). When we have trauma that effects these action systems, this becomes a behaviour response to situations that require those action systems in daily life functioning.

Keep in mind the 6 Fs when you try to work out what parts respond to situations and in which ways. There can also be more than one part who has part of an action system. For example in our system we have one part who avoids food, one who eats it whilst it’s available, one that has rules about what to eat, another how to eat… all depending on the situations they had to eat in.

For reference I’ve provided a guide as to what behaviours might fit into which trauma responses, but if this doesn’t fit you that is ok. Every system is different and your part’s motivators/responses would be dependent on their personality traits and traumatic experiences.

Fight - We have the obvious responses of rage and fighting. But internalised fight responses can also show up as self harm or suicidal thoughts/actions.

Flight - Parts might come out and physically run away leaving you with amnesia about how you got to places. Internalised flight responses might be eating disorder behaviours or addictions.

Freeze - Parts might immobilise you or being hypotonic to feign death when we cannot fight or run away.

Flop - Collapsing and immobilising the body/speech to prepare for death.

Fawn - When you have been abused many times and fight, flight and freeze responses have not worked, parts might comply with the wishes of others, often at the detriment of their own needs. People pleasing might help avoid further abuse but is often at the detriment of your own wellbeing.

beFriend - Some parts might befriend abusers, by playing a part in the abuse. You might see this in families where multiple family members will scapegoat a specific family member. Or where you had to do a less bad action to avoid a worse one, such as in a double bind scenario.

All of these are valid responses to trauma, however they might all be helpful to continue as adults after the abuse has ceased.