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Partswork Sept 2020
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… finally a chance to read all the posts and very late to the discussion…
Maria – Thank you for your share, I find myself caught in wanting to be able to create and play with a physical mandala, sticky notes on a wall or similar and then out into nature, but your session has made me think of how I might get my clients to create their mandala from things in nature. I’m looking forward to being able to play with parts work with clients in person.
Gina – I love how Gus plays a role in your sessions, I have myself done sessions with a Kinesiologist who has her dog and cat present, they interact with you as you need and I always found it to be very impactful.
Deanna – I love this question comparing parts to neural pathways and whether they can die, this has recently come up elsewhere for me so I was curious to read peoples thoughts.
Jen – your thoughts around the above really resonated, parts are so much more than I certainly gave them credit, when reflecting on the self and parts vs neural pathways I do feel that the parts are always there but perhaps not always getting equal amounts of air time and therefore giving the perception of death.
Leslie – I too have been curious about the interplay between language and our parts. It also reminded me of the empty chair exercise in Gestalt and exploring the inner child, the language differences in that, which then took me to being curious about using the empty chair exercise to further explore the interrelationships of parts.
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Summary post – I’ll keep an eye out for responses should the discussion continue but for me, parts work was the biggest earth shaker I’ve experienced in personal development in recent years. I really felt discombobulated through out the intensive, standing on the precipice of safety and what I may learn should I step off. The level of awareness of our inner selves was so much more than I expected to gain from being introduced to PW, I’m so curious to integrate it with my practice and see how it plays out for my clients.
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The integration of partswork into the NCC program was a large reason I chose to enroll in the program. With my prior experience as a partwsork client, I knew that it was something I wanted to learn to facilitate. I even participated in the partswork deep dive before partswork one and was feeling proficient in both my practice and my ability to facilitate. However, during partswork one I found myself on the edge of a similar precipice to the one Sophie described that manifested as pretty high anxiety. I found that I was unable to “step off” and learn what parts were being triggered, which is an uncomfortable experience that I’m still sitting with.
I have worked with a few clients who resonated with partswork and focused pretty heavily on that modality. I have found that by introducing the concept of partswork and trusting that my clients knowing what they need, I have had some pretty diverse experiences. One client preferred that we discuss the concept/framework of partswork during our sessions and journal from them at home in his own time, reading back to me what he discovered at the beginning of each new session. Ultimately, this client got a lot out of partswork, even though our experience together was more didactic than therapeutic.
The above experience is a reminder to trust the client, trust my intuition, and explore different ways to use the tools we are being taught in order to best serve our clients.
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Summary:
I love Partswork and I think it is a powerful tool to use in sessions and In my own life. My biggest challenge is actually practicing Partswork on myself. Michael consistently says that the only way to use Partswork in our coaching practice is to use Partswork on ourselves regularly. I have not yet committed to a regular Partswork practice on myself. However, when I have done Partswork sessions on myself, it has mostly proven to be helpful. I have also struggled with Partswork by trying to practice it at random moments throughout my day (e.g. asking myself, “what part of me is speaking/feeling right now?”), but sometimes this creates too much mind chatter and I become overwhelmed or dissociated from my body. I realize Partswork is most useful when we consistently return and ground back into Soul. Otherwise, it can become chaotic. I really appreciate that EBI offers an embodied version of Partswork. I have tried other forms of Partswork, such as IFS, and it doesn’t work for me as well. I have taken the embodiment piece a step further and practiced dancing as different parts of myself (I have a daily dance practice). This has proven to be really fun and interesting!
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The client I worked with is an adult who wanted to express some creative side to him he felt he couldn’t access. So in our session I asked what his goal was and it was to write poetry which up until that point he had not. We worked through severance for several sessions until just under the surface we had located a “part” where the poetry wanted to be communicated from.
We established the coaching agreement to do partswork when I asked if we could explore the voice of that part a little more. I introduced how parts work could help by explaining the basic orientation of how this is a soul-directed practice and to organize his parts and that there would be an interviewing process for them. I created a short term contract stating what we agreed to do in three sessions with the possibility of continuing our work together if the client desired. After consenting to do parts work together.
In my coaching style and approach I always try to initially claim nature as a co-guide as well as the “knowing field” consisting of other than human world, ancestral relations, environment and vision council. As a foundational start my client was able to access that support and guidance as they needed. Doing this is an authentic practice I arrive at coaching already but it also serves as an act of humility releasing any notion of “knowing it all”. I make sure to ground that so clients can feel like their own knowledge is valid and there is no hierarchy between us.
Challenges I faced were strong emotions that were felt by a part that client wanted to explore. More specifically in interviewing that part there were long pauses and body language changed. I noticed discomfort in the client as they tried to organize themself. I think what is challenging in this is my curiosity to learn what is happening for them while respecting their rhythm and flow and bravery to approach this part. My mind goes in a million directions when that happens like “okay if trauma is surfacing then I can utilize resourcing” or “is there grief and what is happening in their brain?” All of this inner dialogue as coach while trying to maintain presence with the “unknown”. I have a little hyper vigilance about it, I notice. SO I try to keep redirecting myself to what they are noticing, so I can be guided by them instead of my agenda which sneakily seeps in. Just learning how to discern I think is the best way for me to support myself in those moments.
What flowed is when the relationship between parts was invited to communicate their needs through Soul it opened doors for my client. I could see a brighter complexion, wider eyes and even smiles as the insight poured in through my guiding and prompting questions. I made sure to ask for consent from his parts which helped him feel acknowledged. This is a universal human need so I witnessed this as flowing in a good direction toward healing and resolve. The client told me they got greater clarity on what was blocking them, which was an inner battle that had been fought for years by another party trying to protect them. I realized then establishing more safety would be critical for me and my client to go deeper. Experimenting with the part that needed protecting we co-created their version of safety for that part and wha tI noticed was they really blossomed in that experiment. The hiding ceased and a little more of that voice of the part, the one that wanted to express creativity was more accessible for my client.
What I’m seeing in this experience is that coaching can be hard work trying to guide a client to their goal. It isn’t straightforward to walk with them through the labyrinth winding around things that aren’t quite clear as to where you are but when you arrive a little closer to their goal it is for me a living story that takes us on an adventure. Which brings me to the Wander as a nature -connected practice as a literal and metaphorical concept excellent for partswork. This is exciting as guide to see client interact with the natural world on their “labyrinth” Wander and how I get to use deep listening and sacred questions to invited my client into what they are being taught or showed through nature about their parts. For me in this way It kind of feels like a secret world of enchantment that I have the honor to behold the intimacy of my client’s deep communing with nature.
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this is the initial post with typos
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Sorry about the typos hope you get what I’m trying to say. I tried editing but it wouldn’t let me and gave me a red alert!
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Summary Post
What I feel is my take away from this module is diversity in the varied ways we meet our clients. There infinite possibilities in approaching gestalt/partswork tools and integrating them at times when we as guide feel it will serve our client’s session. I enjoyed reading about how this is a tailored to meet the needs of client kind of experience. It kind of reminds me of the shapeshifter archetype who in the widest sense of the term changes form to meet the needs of the moment.
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As distant as I felt from Gestalt, is how hard in love I fell with Partswork. I know Gestalt and Partswork are connected, but I am not able to fully see how or why just yet. Gestalt baffled me, and Partswork empowered me. It instantaneously gave me a lens through which I could consider my feelings, my actions, and the world around me. Who, for example, is typing this right now?
I struggle with my Mandala, though. It’s a mess. I was a combination of ashamed, anxious, and determined when I saw Mandalas that others shared. I have parts on top of other parts, different colored stickies for parts based on what they bring to the system, and it is just a cacophony of words and colors! I even added pages to my Jamboard to make room for some reorganization, a “green room” if you will, for those parts I need to put off to the side for a bit, as I figure this all out. In Self, Soul, Spirit, I was comforted to see that there is no set number of parts. I also enjoyed reading the “descriptive phrases that give meaning” to their parts. Perhaps clearer, more articulated descriptive phrases that emerge over time will help to identify those parts on my Mandala that are truly parts. I also feel like some of the current names of my parts will eventually be absorbed by their descriptive phrases as their true names are revealed.
When I reopened my Mandala after being away from it for a while, my head felt like it was buzzing with indistinct chatter, conversations, and activity, like you might encounter in an exhibit hall at a conference. I felt welcome in that chaos because I knew who everyone was, and I was in familiar territory, which was a happy place to be after feeling so untethered in Gestalt. I knew, however, that if I was going to be able to do deep work WITH my Mandala, I was first going to have to do deep work ON it. I am grateful for the struggle with my oh-so-many parts and the process of sifting, sorting, and streamlining because it will help me as a Guide in doing Partswork with my clients.
I am also fascinated by the idea of making a Mandala in nature and wish we’d had the opportunity to that during this intensive. I picture my parts in a 3D sphere of sorts, outside of myself and usually above my head, with Soul at the center. I think the experience of working with my Mandala in Nature will bring it to life for me in a way that the Jamboard can’t.
I know that Dr. Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight focuses more on the brain, but as I was going through it, I kept thinking about Partswork. The ways in which she characterized the personalities of her hemispheres and the tasks and activities at which they each excelled made sense to me. The way she described how people could know, by how she carried herself, “who” walked into a room, felt very much like a description of her parts. What are the relationships between the two hemispheres of our brain and our parts? I am curious about what it would be like to drop into a part and consider whether it was in more of a right or left hemisphere space. Can a part flow between the two in the same ways Dr. Taylor describes?
Dr. Taylor also talks about the storyteller “portion” of her left brain, and then refers to it outright, as she describes observing “my storyteller”, as if referring to a part. She then goes on to describe the elements of her left brain that she chose not to recover because of how they made her feel and how they manifested physically in other ways. I keep thinking that her choice not to activate a certain neural network, and instead focus on activating and strengthening other neural networks, is somehow related to Partswork. For example, perhaps that “circuitry” she chose to leave behind is connected to introjects somehow, and that circuitry no longer served her and her system.
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When thinking about radical acceptance, I also think about the ways in which I strive to extend grace and kindness outward and to be compassionate with others. Going back to Dr. Taylor, something that stood out for me was when she said, “For me, it’s really easy to be kind to others when I remember that none of us came into this world with a manual about how to get it all right.” I believe it is vital that we strive to extend all of that grace, kindness, and compassion inward to ourselves as well. When I struggled with my well-populated Mandala while learning about and practicing with Partswork, I immediately connected with the concept of always starting with strengths. Instead of describing it as a mess, I need to reframe that and instead see my Mandala as fertile ground for the Partswork I will do on my own. Partswork feels to me to be big and vast, as we lean into the unknown, and simultaneously familiar and accessible, as we connect with what we can identify and name.
In the limited experience I have had with Partswork so far, I have felt like those parts that are best-known to me are a source of comfort and safety in my system. I also wonder if those parts will keep me from readily connecting with the rest of my system and being able to bring more order to it. One of my biggest takeaways from Partswork is that we have to practice it ourselves in order to be able to do it with a client. During the intensive, we experienced that it is possible to introduce Partswork into a single session and that it can be profoundly impactful. There is such a rich array of entry points and invitations into the work, and it feels like a modality that can be infinitely effective when used in long-term coaching as well.
On a different note, I was pulled to change my setting for this intensive and to go somewhere with access to a different space for Nature connection and awareness, and I am feeling pulled now to share this with you all. My daughter, puppy, and I stayed in a hotel on the beach. The entire week, I couldn’t bring myself to close the sliding glass door- I wanted to hear the wind and waves without a barrier! I left it open every night, and the last night there was a rainstorm. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep because I wanted so badly to listen deeply and take in every possible minute of the storm. It was like the last night of camp when I didn’t want it to end. I always “knew,” and now I KNOW that I need to live on the water someday. Or in the mountains. I need to be able to hear Mother Earth’s waves of water on the shore or wind in the treetops. I also need to be able to walk out the door and just. be. there. I have a pond off of my backyard, and I am grateful for the natural space in my house’s immediate vicinity. I am planning for my next space now.