Parts??? Not DID

Anyone else’s T’s go on about parts? Specifically parts developed from childhood trauma? How much of that is just fantasy? Making up a part and designating some kind of negative aspect of your personality to it. It feels like passing the buck in some ways. To blame a ‘part’ instead of owning the behavior yourself.

Or is it real? We really do have parts that aren’t our fault and something we can’t necessarily control. I’m so very confused.

I have this very mean part. It’s only mean to myself. I’m slightly afraid of myself within that ‘part’ but is it really just me. And I am actually mean and unkind 🤷🏻*♀️

"Parts" is a symbolic way to describe different aspects of the personality. Of course, these are not physical parts that assemble our minds the same way a machine parts assemble a machine.

Describing our mental and emotional processes as "parts" has nothing to do with "blaming" anything on anything and relieving the person from responsibility for how they behave. It's supposed to help one understand their own behavior in terms of its underlying motives. Regardless of the motives, one's choices belong to them, so they are always responsible for how they behave.

I've never understood the whole parts thing.... I don't feel any aspect of myself as "child like" or whatever. I would never blame any part of my personality on a part, I'd just say I was acting or feeling a certain way and that's how things panned out

No my T has thankfully never even mentioned parts, let alone went on about them.

My T has asked me to ask my protector part to let me remember that I am safe now.

Sounds like Internal Family Systems stuff. My T does some with me, I find it easier to talk about some aspects of my behavior and personality that way, but not the hard core version of IFS that some people do. I find it weird and it makes things worse for me. Its a fascinating concept though....

My T worked with this theory- and I believe that trauma fractures our personality and we can get stuck at the age when it occurred.

I always used to feel fragmented. The 7 year old part was always there. As we went on another child part emerged. Both of those ages are linked to events for me. I didn't remember the event for the 7 year old part, but actually recalled it following a dream which triggered a memory. The 4 year old part couldn't talk and only cried because at that age I didn't have words. We gave each a name and each one was allowed to talk and with time the 4 year old part found her voice.

T helped me see that even though I had those parts it was still me and a goal for therapy was integration . Close to two years in therapy I've realized that I actually don't feel each part as strongly.

Not specifically related but you might like the book the body keeps the score.

We've mentioned being disintegrated. We all have different aspects of the self. If things go wrong in childhood, these aspects can become polarised from each other.
Some put names to those bits. I think Hollywood has a lot to blame for that.
But to be a healthy functioning adult. Integration is the key.
Which Simply means, being conscious of who we are and owning all of ourselves, good and bad.

Ego State Therapy useses parts also. I have done parts work with past T and current T. T emphasizes that we ALL have parts. Everyone. It works for me and I can recognize when I get triggered what part is out by how old I feel. Usually it is a child part that holds the trauma because you ask yourself if you feel like your best adult self and if you do not well then you have a younger part active.

Thank you for your reply and insight.... I have been meaning to read that book. I have always felt triggered by things that change my behavior dramatically, actually always wondered if I had some degree of DID....
perhaps I should just embrace this talk of parts and see where it goes. I’m just nervous to display too much of my crazy to another person. I keep myself very controlled around others.

My former T used to ask me how old I felt during different times of talking about trauma. I had difficulty answering that question. I could say that I felt young. Or I felt the age I am now. But nothing specific. It was always a question that I had difficulty with. Kit.

yes, i highly recommend this book by Bessel van Der Kolk for anyone who is dealing with early childhood trauma and neglect.

another book that might be helpful for you is based on the concept of 'structural dissociation' by trauma therapist Janina Fisher, 'Healing the Fragmented Parts of Trauma Survivors'.

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Fragm.../dp/0415708230

I always find posts about "parts" here on PC intriguing, mostly because I am unable to truly grasp it in an emotional way, other than knowing about dissociation (not from personal experience) and finding it as an interesting symbolic way to understand the self and our many different motivations. Internally, I do tend to feel that approaching problems via designating them to parts in cases that do not involve serious dissociation and trauma can easily become a way of avoiding responsibility, so I am not a fan of this approach personally. But, as I said, I admit that I don't really have a good grasp as I never really felt there were child parts or other fragmented entities inside me - usually I see the many facets of my feelings, motivations, self-sabotage etc as elements of the same whole one person, myself. If it is meant to be perceived as those elements, then I understand it. But I tend to disagree with using this approach to claim someone is not responsible because it's some of these less developed parts of elements doing things. I kinda tend to feel that therapy encouraging that thinking could compromise one's integrity even further. Again, this is from the view of someone who has not experienced dissociation and severe childhood trauma. I did experience bullying by other kids that indeed led to conflicting motivations about myself earlier in my life and sometimes desire wanting to eradicate so of them (unsuccessfully), but they grew and evolved with every stage of my life and did not remain childlike or isolated. I find approaches like IFS work a very interesting metaphoric way to understand someone but I would not like Ts who use it to encourage clients to fragment blame and see things in black&white ways.

Thank you for your interesting thoughts and experience. I don’t think my T is trying to make me put blame on parts, but it does feel like she is trying to relieve me of certain responsibilities which makes me feel a bit skeptical. Some weeks she talks as if they’re real physical separate parts from me, others she’ll seem like it’s symbolic and just a part of me! I find it so confusing, I’ll tell her that and then she’ll take the time to explain it all again, which irritates me for brining it up and wasting 15mins on something I’ve heard over and over. Ah, therapy is SO hard!

I am not overly fond of “parts” and have not let my therapist take it too far. That said... sometimes it really does seem as though I am feeling something or reacting to something from a much younger place within myself and “parts” does seem like the best way to describe and discuss the phenomenon.

This is not merely a conflict between logic and emotion or having several different feelings about something. It legit seems as though there’s a young part of me that, for example, is very wary of the therapist all while being absolutely desperate for her love and can only discuss this with maximal difficulty and awkwardness. This is not how adult me relates to her at all: the adult part trusts her, communicates openly, appreciates what she offers etc

It’s not DID, more akin to how you might see a whole new side of someone when you observe them speaking their home language for the first time and you only knew them speaking the language of the majority culture before. Or how someone’s personality might change after drinking a bit but before drunkenness. Something new comes out but it’s not like the adult with the frontal lobe is gone. You can’t “blame” parts. You use them to understands aspects of yourself and your history.

This is my recommendation as well. It's not an easy read though. Some of the trauma descriptions and explanations were triggering for me. It took me a long time to get through the book.

i agree with this. in my healing, parts work and the concept came easily to me because i do identify as being fragmented, having parts or alters or what ever term you want to use. i found the concept helpful to understanding why i was having the experiences or reactions that i was, especially in relationship with others and it definitly helped me to uncover and come to terms with many of my truama memories and related emotions that i had dissociated from my self as a way to keep my younger self safe and sane. parts work was a major part of my healing work, which a lot of it i was doing on my own outside of therapy. it takes a lot of patience and self compasion to do...it is not about blaming or using it as an excuse for your actions. i don't reckon that parts work is for everyone, especially if they do not have a history of early childhood trauma or developmental truama since it tends to be is in the very early years of infant/child development that the truama causes a majority of the fragmentation that clients may identify with.

I'm not sure whether this is similar to schema therapy, but in schema therapy we label certain ways of thinking as 'lifetraps". For example one of my biggest lifetrap is the 'defectiveness lifetrap' which is constant thoughts and fears about being a bad person. (Well much better now and I probably don't have this any more )
Anyway the idea of labelling this as a 'lifetrap' and trying to see it as a separate thing is that it helps you to get over the thoughts and fears and move past them, precisely by not seeing it as a fundamental part of oneself and who you are, but rather some unhelpful ways of thinking and beliefs that have come about as a result of difficult experience or trauma. So its reminding me a bit of what has been written on this thread because in this case you are encouraged to see these things as *not* a fundamental part of yourself.

I don't know if this is helpful, it's just something that I thought was interesting!

Also I also highly recommend the book 'The Body Keeps the Score', and I'm grateful to this forum because it was someone here who recommended it and I found it really helpful and it really helped me to understand a lot of things. Also if anyone is interested in a better explanation of schema therapy than what I can really give, I recommend 'Reinventing your life' or also 'Schema therapy: a practitioner's guide' which is aimed at therapists and more in-depth.

I found it useful in getting to know myself and my drives at different times and learning how to comfort myself through talking to myself and getting to know what I want/am scared of. I find this hard to do in the actual therapy room though because it makes me too vunerable.