Quora: May 1, 2023 - Working with Parts in IFS
What is your routine and structure for your parts work? Please share about the steps you take that have worked for you in connecting with your parts in a healing way.
This is a very insightful question that we are grateful for as it enables us to focus our attention and analysis on a review of our current perspective, approach, and circumstances. It will be great to hear comments from others.
Setting the scene
Since we became aware of our multiplicity, we have changed our approach to parts work to reflect the improved understanding of their needs.
Firstly, the host split twice. As our host has functioned as a gatekeeper amongst his many roles, that has meant that our whole "gatekeeping" has changed.
The original host was mainly a business manager. And he used to manage life as a business. He was incredibly efficient, and our system run like clockwork. He was the one who discovered our multiplicity, analysed it, and came up with a plan on how to develop our system fairly and efficiently. He was so good that even 2 years after he's "gone", we are still following his plan with only some minor adjustments to reflect new information that became available. That's why we consider him the "architect" of our system. Also, he was an INTP-A personality type.
I think the defining feature about him is that he had absolutely no sense of self. He was the system. The self included all his parts. With him, everything was "work" and was scheduled.
Next came Neuro. A friend suggested that name, and it stuck. Neuro had a hug-first-ask-later approach with our selves. He spent a lot of time in the inner space soothing the young ones that were just "waking up" at the time, developing relationships with the ones already known, and simply being there for them. Neuro was the first host to have a sense of self, and he began questioning who he was.
NOW
In November last year we had the new host develop. He had a sense of self developed enough to make the connection to the "Herbie" theory of our "architect" host. This theory states that one of the effects of structural dissociation so that the body gain its own consciousness to facilitate survival.
This additional layer of consciousness has brought a mixture of growth and imbalance.
Growth because of course all new awareness brings growth. Imbalance because with growth come new question that can be unsettling. Like "who am I" and "what is my purpose?".
The whole point of this long introduction, was to set the scene that we are at a stage where my "parts" (we do prefer selves as parts are components of selves, this could be a good introduction into the subject of "self") are saying:
"If we are a family, you don't 'work' with us, you spend time with us!"
And this has become an integral part of the inner cultural revolution that we have experienced. This includes avoiding terms like trauma holder, victim, exiled, persecutor, and any other terms that may instigate some form of self-limiting belief.
Spending time with the inner fam
This shift in perspective has enabled us to begin building appropriately productive rapports between our fam members just like one would in a "Normal" family.
Let me give you a few examples:
- Mealtime "what do you guys want to eat" is a typical question. Quite often I don't need to ask as someone will say "can we have …"
- Getting dressed: "anyone has any preferences?" This is usually an easy one for us as we have absolutely no fashion sense! One of the teens likes hoodies, but other than that whatever is hanging on the clothesline will often do.
- Shopping, at the till a little might say "I wanna pay" and obviously they mean left-handed, so they can easily take the debit card out of the wallet, hand it over, and feel like a productive member of the family.
- Cooking, some might want to join in, especially the young ones. They might want to cut the food, handle the frying pan, whatever …
- Listening to music: "you guys want a specific playlist?" Each has their own playlist of favourites as well as preferred genres. They often might ask to add a song to their playlist, or to stop playing something, etc.
- Doing chores. Today I was hanging the washing and the 7-year-old took over. I didn't even realise until they did their silly little laugh, and I felt the feeling of joy that only the littles and middles have (they do like to be involved!).
- Talking about them. They love it when I talk about them. Especially if I talk about someone in particular. Whether on here, or IRL, talking about them makes them feel validated and real.
- Answering questions on Quora: "do you guys see a question you want to answer?"
- Planning a meeting "does anyone have a preference when?" They don't interfere with meetings and essential tasks, but also I don't want to interfere with plans and intentions.
And so on …
So, this is why we stopped thinking of it as "work". It is simply spending time with the fam. In many respects, I find the whole process to be very similar to fostering/adoption.
Features (aka pros and cons)
Our Architect host had a wonderful way to manage the relationship with his parts. He was active for around 25 years, so he had a very well developed and mature system.
We aim to achieve a similar level of functionality with our newly awakened selves, however we are hoping it will take us less than 25 years. So, we are hoping that we can learn from previous systems to speed up the upskilling process.
As everyone active now in our system seems to be under the age of 16 in a 50+ year old body, we obviously need to "minimise downtime" so to speak, which brings me to the features of our approach to parts work. We prefer to call them features, rather than pros and cons to ensure we can see everything from a solution-driven perspective.
- Sometimes life goes on, some others, life stops. For example, we were working with parts last year, and everything was fine, and life could continue. However, when we had a split and lost our skilful host, we then lost a lot of functionality and became unable to function in the same way we did before.
- It is a full-time job. Working with selves is a little like working with body parts. We wouldn't want to spend the day with a hand tied behind our back, or one eye closed. Functionality requires fluidity and adaptability. For example, if we get pins and needle in one arm, we stop and deal with it. Similarly, if one of our selves is having a little meltdown, we would want to stop and deal with it. This too is connected to the point above as sometimes it is possible to manage life, others we need to devote all our resources to our inner selves.
- Everything takes planning and time. For example, writing this answer is taking me longer than 3 days. There's a little team that looks after the writing. However, anyone can request attention at any point. So, while I am writing, it is quite common that some young ones will pop into my head, and we will have a conversation similar to this:
Child 1: What are you doing? 😁
Me: Answering a question on Quora
Child 1: Are you writing about me? 😁
Me: About everyone
Child 2: Are you writing about me? 😁
Me: Not specifically, why do you want me to?
Minute of silence while they think.
Child 1: I'm bored 🤷
Child 2: Yeah, I don't want to write either. You can do that later 🤷
Me: Ok, what would you like to do?
Child 1: Park! 😁
Child 2: Walk! 😁
Child 1: Ducks! 😁
Child 1 & 2: You need shopping, yay! 😁
Child 1 & 2: Ice-cream 🤤🤤🤤
Child 1: Ninja turtles! 😁😁
Me: Ok, let me finish this paragraph …
Child 1 & 2: 🙊 (murmuring) but I am bored now … 😬
Minute of silence while they "patiently" wait.
Child 1 & 2: 🙊 Can we go now?!
30 seconds of silence while they "patiently" wait.
Child 1 & 2: 🙊 Can we go now?!
10 seconds of silence while they "patiently" wait.
Child 1 & 2: 🙊😁 Can we go now?!
The young ones always get what they want, and the fronting team backs off. This however happens with the teens too.
Additionally, there are times when someone needs personal attention for any reason like mood changes, bad memories, nightmares, triggers, etc. So, we often interrupt activities to help out the young ones.
I think it is very similar to having children. The difference is everything is worked out with a degree of hindsight which should enable speeding up the development process.
However, development and healing are different things. So, our first goals is to achieve a sufficient level of system development to regain some functionality, then work on healing everyone once we have stabilised the system a little.
- Seeing all sides of a self/part. If we only work with our selves when they have a problem, or to deal with issues, we will only see their "dark" side. Spending time with them, will give the opportunity to see them in all kinds of environments and situations. I am always surprised at how positive and cheerful they can be.
- My teens like to share some of their "good" memories (which generally means less-bad!). When we don't look at the past as a problem, it is quite amazing to see how proud they are of what they were capable of enduring. That is a side of the story often overlooked. We tend to look at the sadness, at the victim-hood component of an experience. From their perspective, there is a survivor-hood perspective, and a sense of pride of simply not being dead. It is endurance. It is resilience.
- The younger ones don't have any of these "positive" memories. However, they do not allow that to dampen their zest for life. They can experience joy in a very unique way when they feel loved and included. And obviously, joy is infectious!
- Nobody wants to take full control in public, but they are always (or often) around. Watching, thinking, feeling, reacting … Backseat drivers, so to speak. And that can be very entertaining. I think it is probably comparable to driving a full school bus all day … Spending time together is an excellent way of bonding and gaining and sharing insights.
- Interactions between parts. These can be rather random, and they can be difficult to spot and understand. Getting to know everyone allows for "data leaks" so to speak informing of potential discreet networks. But I think also noticing interactions between parts can be very reassuring. I am always amazed at how much they share that I do not know about. And there are a lot of positive interactions that are very symbiotic. Personally, I think nurturing those can help spread stability.
- Life is full of triggers. Nine times out of ten I do not know what triggered me, or who has been triggered. Our aphantasia means that when we get a flashback, everything goes black, and we are flooded with emotions. So, this is something that obviously needs to be managed appropriately. Keeping close to my other selves helps reducing and managing flashbacks and negative experiences.
- The work on the point above is going to take time. Possibly a long time. We like being functional (in our own way, but still functional). However, the occurrence of flashbacks and negative emotions can be reduced when my other selves feel loved and accepted. Once again, by having a close relationship with them it will buy time, so to speak, to work on the trauma.
- For us identity is an issue. Discovering that everything we knew about us was a lie has shaken us somewhat. It is interesting that I used to think that all my selves had a clear identity. But it seems they don't. They have memories, they know what they have been through. But there are existential questions that they ask: Who am I? Why do I exist? We do not want to say "because you are victim", or "you were made to endure". They need to develop a sense of self that is separate and distinct from their past. The only way they can do that is by spending time in front, or co-fronting, or back-seat driving, or anything that enables them to express themselves and find their own answers.
TL;DR: Conclusion
We have the examples of previous versions of our own system that used to work very efficiently, albeit always there being room for improvement. We have now a more complex system than we did in the past, and following a destabilisation, we are dedicating all our time and resources at re-stabilising the system.
As a system, we are aware that continuous, consistent, and collaborative internal communication are essential in ensuring a "good" quality of life. I have given some instances of how this happens for us.
We do have an underlying stream of thoughts that seems to disapprove of our approach and that thinks we should compartmentalise our selves and focus on functionality. We tend to think that this is an introjected ableist bias, but obviously I would welcome any feedback and thoughts from others who are similarly trying to balance internal stability and IRL functionality
