Internal Family Systems
What is Parts Work?
You might be familiar with the concept of “re-parenting” yourself while parenting your child. Or maybe you have heard people talk about “inner-child” work.
Basically, the idea behind these concepts is that we acknowledge that our parents got as far as they could in raising us; and that there’s some (often plenty of!) unfinished business that needs tending to.
In short, we need to pick up where our parents left off. Which involves learning to meet our needs that they were unable to meet; and oftentimes, heal the hurts that we experienced under their care.
And as you also probably already know, this is the most important thing that we can do for our children. Heal ourselves through compassionate reparenting.
What you may not have heard of though, is parts work.
Parts work, or Internal Family Systems, is an incredibly effective and compassionate way to connect with all of the different parts–or subpersonalities–that exist within us.
Yes, you read that right!
We all have a bunch of different sub-personalities. Each with their own beliefs, viewpoints, interests, roles and burdens. Every single one of our parts is inherently good, very loyal, and always well-intentioned.
And their intentions are beautiful: to help us in our relationships, including (especially) the one with our children.
They are like a group of inner children within us. Our inner family.
A family made up of protective parts that learned early on how to protect us from really hard emotions like pain, shame or fear. As well as another set of parts that have been carrying that pain; these exiled parts bear the burden of our fears and shame from the times that were too difficult for us to cope with.
For example, if you experienced rejection from one of your parents in childhood, you may have protectors who keep you from trusting others in order to avoid feeling the pain of rejection again.
In parenting, our protector parts can have a hard time allowing us to provide the leadership, connection and emotional care that our children need from us.
Basically, when our protectors work too hard, they keep our hearts guarded.
This is why, even if we want to parent well, we might find ourselves distant, distracted and short-tempered with our children. Or overwhelmed by our worries, frustrations and guilt.
Some examples of protector patterns might look like perfectionism, criticism and people-pleasing; as well as addictions, zoning out, and rage.
And guess what? WE are the loving leaders they need in order to heal and not only LET us parent well–but actually HELP us to do it.
We are already the deeply good, caring, loving parent and healer that our parts need and have been waiting for.
Parts work is how so many good parents like you, heal and restore their inner family, little by little.
And in turn bring felt care and leadership to your family.
And when you learn solid parenting tools to deepen your connection with your child, you are able to use those to bring better care to your own parts as well ("reparenting")!