One of my male's great fears was that he would cease to exist because I was doing healing work in therapy with T, and his protector role would become less and less important as the younger girl ego states healed. So he would throw up stumbling blocks to working with the girls and do stuff to try to get me to sabotage therapy, because he didn't want me to take his job away. T told me I needed to reassure him and tell him that there were lots of other things he could help me with and to list specific ideas for him. And to be firm with him that he should not interfere with my little girls' healing. I thought well that is great, he is so strong, I could really use him at times. I told him one thing he could help me with and he totally rejected that--didn't want to do my scut work, so I had to come up with other ideas. Yeah, passive he ain't.

searchingmysoul, is your 15 yo protector female or male?

Yes, this is fascinating stuff! It's actually really creative of our minds to create these "people" to populate our inner world and help us out or seek refuge there. It's soooo creative.... Makes me really appreciate being human.