What is parts work therapy? And why is it such a transformative healing modality when integrated with Effortless Mindfulness?

These days, parts work and parts therapy are exploding in popularity. To my own surprise, it’s even become a powerful complement to plant medicine and psychedelic integration work.

I practice and teach an original synthesis of IFS-style parts therapy and Effortless Mindfulness. Taken together, these two healing and awakening models offer a uniquely powerful path of growth that leads you to the deepest levels of the self.

What Is Parts Work Therapy?

The IFS model of parts work therapy describes the nature of the human psyche as organizing into subpersonalities, or parts, that all come together within the Self. The goal of parts therapy is not to judge, minimize, or get rid of these parts, but instead to notice and lovingly embrace all of our parts from our interconnected Self, which is also within all parts.

But before we get into the details of parts work therapy, let me briefly explain how this synthesis of Effortless Mindfulness and parts work therapy first emerged.

In the 1980’s, I traveled to Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal on an academic fellowship to study with some of the great meditation masters of the time. This immersion in Eastern contemplative science and tradition had a profound impact on my burgeoning clinical practice.

I began practicing a form of mindfulness-based psychotherapy that I called Effortless Mindfulness Based Therapy (EMBT). This was a unique mindfulness approach that was not based in cognitive therapy but instead in body and subpersonality psychotherapies, such as Jungian, Gestalt, and Psychosynthesis.

EM + IFS

Many years later, I started collaborating with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy. We soon discovered that we were each using similar systems of Self and parts. He had come up with a simple and clear way of accessing and defining parts, and I had focused on developing a simple and clear way of gaining access to and illuminating Self.

Both models of psychotherapy—EMBT and IFS—present paths toward the relief of suffering and becoming more whole and authentic. The centerpiece of each is our “capital-S” Self because only a limited level of psychological healing and growth can happen without realizing Self.

What’s more, this approach is empowering because it shows us that it is our own true Self—rather than another person or external teachings—that actively provides the deepest and most complete healing.

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Our Psyche Is Made Up Of Parts or Subpersonalities

Schwartz clearly explains how what we often call the ego personality, the psyche, or the small self is a composition of parts or subpersonalities that take on certain roles and interact with each other.

For example, we may experience a part of ourselves that feels anger and then another part of ourselves that feels shame about the anger and then another part of ourselves that tries to manage what we should do about that anger and shame.

In this way, our thoughts and beliefs can be experienced as little personalities within us that behave according to their own worldview. It’s the natural state of the mind to be multiple. Events from childhood burden parts, force them into extreme roles, and make them feel disconnected from Self.

For example, many of us have had early shame-based thoughts that are about trying to understand who we are, such as, “I’m not good enough,” or “I’m unlovable.” These are the mistaken views that are the burdens carried by our parts. When these burdened parts take over, our view of life is limited by their perspective.

The Ultimate Parts Therapy

However, as we get to know our parts—even the most difficult ones—we can discover the insight of IFS parts work therapy that all parts are looking for love, and there are no bad parts.

But how do you actually give that love to these difficult and burdened parts? This is where the fusion of parts work and effortless mindfulness is so effective.

I’ve combined Schwartz’s insights into parts work with my method of experiential ways of accessing Self—the whole of who we truly are beyond any part—as a technique for embodying and living an awakened life. And I particularly find this the most effective way of healing our shadows—those unconscious, repressed, or denied parts.

A Positive Feedback Loop For Awakening

This approach helps to create a positive feedback loop for awakening: First, our practice of effortless mindfulness helps us access our greater context of true Self, through which we can work with our parts.

In turn, doing our parts work heals and unburdens us on a psychological level so that we can more easily uncover and maintain the wholeness, coherence, and peace of our true Self, allowing for sustained awakening.

Learning effortless mindfulness as a foundation can change what would have been a “dark night of the soul” into more of a detox or thawing-out process, with more growing pains than unconscious suffering.

The way of effortless mindfulness grants usgives access to the resources of Self, allowing us towhich can bear what seemed to be unbearable.

Knowing and Liberating Parts

The clouds that obscure our already awake loving nature often take the form of hurt parts of us that are all trying to find safety and love. Our parts fit into distinct categories, each with different reasons for being.

Three Parts Categories

In the IFS model of parts therapy, our parts are categorized as:

• Managers (These protector parts try to protect through different daily roles.)
• Exiles (These are the hurt parts, which are often repressed, usually storing trauma.)
• Firefighters (These are the parts that emerge in crisis and act strongly when exiles are upset.)

We experience our subpersonalities when we say things like, “One part of me is angry at my partner, but another part understands why they said that.” Or we might discover in psychotherapy how a young part of us was burdened.

For example, someone dealing with low self-esteem might remember something like this: “When I was a child, my mother took a long time to come and feed me. I felt the pain of hunger and grew terrified that I had been abandoned. On some level, I started to believe that there must be something wrong with me: I must be worthless or unlovable.”

The burdens of exiles, managers, and firefighters emerge organically for everyone, regardless of the type or style of parenting we experienced. IFS and EMBT are ways of doing shadow work (aka parts therapy) with parts that are hidden, denied, or repressed, such as exiles and firefighters, to effectively bring those unconscious parts into the conscious light of healing.

Parts Work and Triggering Events

These patterns create neuronal networks in the brain that are like scenes from a movie that keep replaying. When these networks are activated and reactivated in the brain, nervous system, and body through a triggering event, they overtake us with primal force.

This can cause us to regress, making us think or even behave as if we’re the age when the trauma originally occurred. It can feel like we are that hurt child looking through our adult eyes. We may feel overtaken by a damaged worldview or by strong feelings and motivations, such as protective, defensive rage.

A triggering event is an event in the present that is similar to a traumatic event in the past that was too overwhelming. Even though the experiences may have been real when they happened, they are not happening in the present. Parts are not “you” now, but when triggered, they feel and act like they are you. If they are treated like they are only thoughts or feelings arising, they may seem to go away temporarily, but they return.

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A Unique Approach to Parts Work Therapy

Even though it seems counterintuitive, talking to these parts of us as if they were the little beings they think they are is the radical shift I offer in this healing paradigm. When parts are loved and healed back to their innocent childlike nature, they are liberated by your whole Self.

When the inner child is listened to, the misunderstandings unburdened, and its emotions felt by Self, parts frozen in time or stuck in an emotional loop can become integrated elements of a complete, healthy human.

Some of the initial parts work that needs to take place for this synthesis to occur can be done prior to initial awakening through psychotherapy and other personal-growth techniques.

However, it is only possible to do this work of waking up and growing up fully from Self, which is why practicing effortless mindfulness is key. It provides the capacity to access our Self. It’s a different kind of parts work therapy. When we’re able to shift our identity in this way, we have more capacity and deeper love to care for our parts.

Working with a Professional

Much of this healing can be done in our daily lives, but there is also great benefit to having someone, such as a therapist or experienced meditation teacher, guide and support you through the introduction of parts to Self. This kind of parts therapy leads to the moment when we realize that parts exist, why they arose, and that they are not ultimately the true Self. It is then that we can distinguish our true Self from the parts.

Often, the first step in this parts work model is experiencing our parts from our mindful witness, which is a Self-like part. A Self-like part is a manager, a spiritual ego that has many of the qualities of Self but still has the agenda of a part. Gradually, we can learn to access Self to embrace our parts with love and to integrate toward deep wholeness.

Eventually, we can treat other people’s parts with the same understanding we’ve given our own, so when we encounter someone acting from a hurt or manager part, we realize what’s occurring and find a way to respond with empathy rather than react with fear-based judgment.

Responding to Our Parts with Empathy, Feeling, and Love

It’s important to notice how we might be in the habit of trying to find solutions for our troubles by using tactics of our small mind and small self. Often, when we view our emotions from our small self, we view some emotions as “good” and some as “bad” and then try to transform destructive emotions into constructive emotions. In doing so, we may reinforce the manager part or small self that is trying to heal our emotions.

However, no small self, managing part, or ego identity can live a fully intimate, emotional life. This attempt will lead to some form of neurosis, anxiety, depression, or addiction. Instead, we can learn to access our original Self, which has the natural capacity to feel, create, and love.

Some parts react to this by trying to help, by becoming smart workaholics, angry managers, or protectors of the exiled inner children. For example, if an inner child part feels needy, an angry protector part, who believes that neediness will lead to rejection from others, may jump in, and in a faulty attempt at protecting may self-blame, telling the child part to “stop crying and get a grip!”

Our Parts Need Love

The unique beauty of the IFS approach to parts work therapy is that we don’t try to fight our protector parts, get rid of them, replace them, or even transform these “negative” managers or protectors into positive feelings.

Instead, like the exiled child parts, these manager and firefighter parts need love to be unburdened and release the role they feel they have to play. This is done when our true Self understands, respects, and appreciates the “difficult” parts and thanks them for trying to help as they deemed best.

I’ve learned from my own experiences and from my psychotherapy clients that it is best in parts work to meet each part in the way it appears. So rather than just witnessing thoughts, feelings, stories, and beliefs, the most healing approach seems to be listening to and unburdening these parts by interacting with them with love.

The primary way in parts therapy is to have a therapist lead you through this process to go inward and feel each part within your body and locate their shape, size, color, and emotional tone. Then honor and thank the part, and ask the part if it would give you some space.

Then, from that space, begin to feel a sense of true Self, which feels at first like open space. This allows for some detachment as well as some foundation of Self in awake awareness rather than another thought-based part. Then our Self is asked directly, “How do You feel toward that part?” When we are in Self, we feel a connection, which is called Self-energy, which feels compassion toward the parts.