Time has helped me with this. As the adult part of me has grown stronger and more emotionally stable and competent, that younger, more freaked out part is better supported.

It is similar to the way that it is reassuring and necessary, if not always welcome, for a teenager to have a trusted, constant, stable parent in a household with rules and limits. That safety allows the young person to have difficult feelings and act in unlovable ways and still know that end of the day things will be okay. The relationship with the parent is strong enough to withstand all that and the parent will not wither and die, nor abandon them, nor kill them.

What helped me get there was for the adult part of me to get to trust my T and to experience therapy as useful. I kind of went in knowing I had to fix that troublesome part but it didn't come easily to me at all. The attitude of gentle, loving, non-judgemental curiosity about that part, that zooiecat and amyjay describe was not possible for me when I started therapy and almost 7 yrs later is only maaaaaaybe an idea I can wrap my head around. Trying to target that part for fixing was a dismal and traumatic failure with lots of PTSD acting up.

It took my adult life getting completely upended in a bad divorce for my generally competent adult self to really find therapy helpful. There was so much happening in my here-and-now grown up life that needed attention in therapy that the teenager part just went quieter. It was like the way you'll stop noticing that you were having a bad headache if a car suddenly drives over your foot.

About three years after the start of that shitshow, it suddenly dawned on me one day that it had been a long time since I'd had this horrible, unfulfillable yearning for love from my T. My attachment to her was now about working together and appreciating her presence and perspective, not so much about hoping she'd love me and take away my pain. I suspect that as the dust settles, I will need to give more attention to that adolescent part (T & I have addressed that intermittently over three years) and that will be hard. But now that adult me trusts T and adult me is a more effectual and confident person, teenager me trusts adult me to be the parent in the house. Adult me could be a way more loving parent to that teen (work to be done!) but at least she now won't let teen me burn down the house.