Parts Work 101 – Start Here!

Welcome to More YourSELF – The Blog. If you’re new here, this is a great starting point. Every post you see on here ties back to one wild, game-changing truth: you do not have a singular, static personality. You have a whole cast of mini-personalities living inside you at all times. 

Yeah, I said it. You’re complicated and messy in there. 

Think about it:

• One part of you wants to eat the salad, another part wants the fries (and maybe the cake too).
• One part wants to speak up in the meeting, another part wants to disappear into the background.
• One part loves your life and the people in it so much, another part sometimes wants nothing more than to jump on a plane all by yourself, fly to a Caribbean island, and live out the rest of your days reading books on the beach and bartending to make ends meet.

What’s really wild is that each of your various sub personalities (“parts”) carry their own agendas, fears, histories and memories of your past experiences, strengths, struggles, and judgements. They each have a unique way of helping you. They each also have their own special ways of biting you in the ass. If you’ve never done the introspective work to identify and understand your own multiplicity of personality, your world is about to get freaking rocked. 

What Is Parts Work, Really?

Parts work is about getting curious and willing to challenge what you think you know. It’s about really working to understand why you are the way you are. It requires you to consider that maybe some parts of you need to chill out, while other parts perhaps need to step up their game. Instead of hating and fighting with your inner critic, your worrier, or your perfectionistic parts, you’ll learn to partner with those pieces of you. And instead of allowing your point-proving, defensive, or control-based parts to run the show, you’ll learn to challenge their motives and soften how intensely they show up for you.

I’m going to teach you how to…

• Identify and observe your parts, on cognitive, emotional, and somatic levels
• Interact with your parts and learn their histories and where they’ve come from
• Understand their role
• Appreciate their intentions
• And become the leader of your system of parts so that they don’t hijack your thoughts, behaviors, reactions, and decision making.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the heavyweight model behind much of this, and it’s taking the world by storm – psychotherapy, leadership, education, even the military. Most people get access to parts work through therapy. My hope is to bring you the practical, everyday version of parts work so that you can start changing your life in whatever way it feels helpful to you, right now.

Why You Should Listen to Me

I’ve spent 15+ years, more than 10,000 hours, and worked with 300+ clients and companies doing parts work. I hold my LPC licensure and have spent most of my career specializing in work with teens, adults, and couples as a trauma-informed psychotherapist and as a corporate speaker and workshop facilitator. Now, I bring all that experience into my work as a Personal + Professional Development Coach, Author, Speaker, and Workshop Facilitator. 

Translation: I know this stuff works, I’ve seen it help, heal, and sometimes overhaul lives. I’ve watched it transform the pain and stagnation of corporate and organizational upheaval, transition, or stuckness into innovation, creativity, inspiration, and forward movement. And I’ve witnessed how profoundly it can shake up someone’s perception of… well, everything, for the better.

My work nowadays centralizes on two things…

• I make parts-based tools and perspectives accessible for non-therapy settings and situations.
• I teach individuals, couples, groups, and organizations how to utilize parts-work as a self-propelling, sustainable and maintainable approach to ultimate optimization.

Why It Matters to You and How it Can be Used

Once you start seeing your inner ecosystem in “parts,” the way you think about everything gets more clear. It’s like getting your windshield replaced after you’ve been driving around with one that’s dirty, dented, and has spiderweb cracks through it. My online content will provide a foundation for your parts-based exploration. My blog posts are divided into 4 categories:

• Personal Development: Get to know yourself on a completely new level. Rumble with parts that have been holding you back, making you unhappy, keeping you stuck, or causing you to self-sabotage. Find healing in places that you maybe don’t even realize you need it.
• Professional Development: Supercharge your leadership abilities. Learn a new way to understand the people you work with and those who work for you. Kick complacency to the curb as you get more clear, confident, and motivated to level-up your career trajectory and the impact you are able to make in the world. And find more space and simplicity in the most seemingly complex organizational struggles.
• Parenting: Adopt an entirely new context in which to understand, connect with, and communicate with your kids. Whether you’re parenting around teen anxiety or substance use or you’re just generally trying to raise kids who don’t grow up to be assholes, parts work is going to give you a phenomenal approach to make it happen in a healthy way.
• Relationships: People are weird. And complicated. You and I are weird and complicated. Being human is a circus of an experience. In this wild ride, there is perhaps no more important pursuit than that of person-to-person connection. We are living in a moment in time when disconnection is at an all-time high and it’s destroying some of the coolest parts of being alive on this earth together. If you are willing to consider laying down the sword and the shield and interested in leaning in (including toward your crazy-makers and those who think, live, believe, vote, or function differently than you), then parts work will give you perhaps the most impactful way to do that with grace, boldness, boundaries (of course), and a true intention to connect in more meaningful ways with your spouse, partner, friends, coworkers, and other fellow humans. 

Your First Challenge

Here’s a tiny but powerful exercise: today, notice a moment when you feel conflicted, reactive, stressed, weary, or contradictory. Pause and ask:

👉🏽 Which part of me is showing up right now?

Boom. That’s your starting point. Aside from “I have no parts,” there’s no wrong answer. This little shift will start the process of rewiring your neural pathways and thought patterns and will set you up to explore everything else on this blog. Every post you read will guide you in exploring yourself, other people, and the world around you through the lens of parts work.

Welcome. I’m sincerely really glad you’re here. Parts work has radically changed my life. I get pretty geeked out when I connect with people who dig it as much as I do. Get ready to meet your parts. It is such a wild ride, but I swear it will be something that you won’t be able to shut up about any more than I can. I hope you love it.

✦ Want to go deeper?

Purchase my book, More YourSELF – Question What You Think You Know to Realize Who You Are in paperback, hard cover, Kindle, or Audible on Amazon.

Join my email list for practical tips and insights (and to receive the first 3 chapters of More YourSELF for free!).

Visit my Contact Page to inquire about 1:1 Coaching and/or Speaking and Workshop Facilitation services