A modern sculpture composed of five metallic cubes arranged in a vertical and horizontal configuration, set against a black background. This image is meant to symbolize how our internal worlds seem to consist of different parts with their own needs.

  Parts Work

Parts Work

Parts work honors and engages the complexity of who we are and why we respond to life the way we do. With parts work, all is welcome. We invite all the many roles and personalities we have within to feel and speak; there is nothing black and white about this way of working.

This way of working is a verbal approach that draws on Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, an evidence based therapeutic modality that conceives of our internal world as made up of different “parts” that protect and manage our mind-body experience.

As we explore and befriend your internal world with parts work, we respectfully, gradually separate the tightly bound strands of what keeps you from changing the reactions and behaviors you know are making life hard for you. We respect your parts’ reasons for being there and doing their jobs. We help them to feel validated while also safe enough to let Self keep you safe and achieve your goals instead of them with their self-defeating ways of acting.

The four goals of IFS:

Parts can transform into roles they prefer, instead of acting like dogged soldiers fighting to protect you in the best ways they know how, which might actually keep you in pain and stuck.

Parts can trust Self as a leader. Self is the you you want to be, your best and highest self.

Parts get to know each other and work together in harmony for your highest good.

Parts allow you to be Self-led in the outside world, grounded in your values, with no need to interfere with reactivity and subversive planning.

As we get to know all your parts to learn about their fears and ways of keeping you safe, we learn to both meet their needs and reassure them that they don’t need to work so hard by helping Self, your core self, to lead. Parts are components that feeling like aspects of who we really are, but they are almost like characters that help us deal with life rather than our essence, our true Self.

When we take care of our parts, Self can emerge to take care of us adult life. With the assumption that we all have young parts, hurt inner children inside doing their best with what we had back then, we parent them in a sense, so we can stand in Self as our ultimate, loving and fierce inner parent. Maybe we never had a safe primary attachment figure or caregiver in our life as a child, or maybe we were unknowingly hurt by imperfect but basically good parents and caregivers doing the best they could with what they had.

Self is your source of wisdom, compassion, and healing. It's characterized by the "8 C's": Calmness, Curiosity, Clarity, Compassion, Confidence, Courage, Creativity, and Connectedness. When you are blended with your parts it is difficult to access and embody Self. Through the careful, gentle work of unblending—from you and each other—we feel seen and cared for and it becomes easier and easier to act from the beautiful qualities of Self more consistently.