A part of you… A part of you..

My first ever face-to-face IFS training left me let down.

Hurt. Harmed. Hostile.

Thanks to COVID all my training and exposure to IFS had been via technology.

So not very interactive sessions.

Then I went to my first in-person training.

While many good things came out of that training. Connection, community and confirmation that I was on the right path.

I also came away with a part that was on high alert. A part that had a new job.

During the training the Lead Trainer, any time someone had said something had corrected them and said “a part of you..”

Every single different thought, feeling, sensation became a NEW part.

You couldn’t have a conversation unless you managed your language and broke it all down to individual parts.

Well my part didn’t like this. Not at all.

It was telling me that it didn’t like this because

Parts are whole beings which means they can have a range of feelings, thoughts and experiences AND It’s invalidating to have each part pulled out like that. It wasn’t allowing each part to seen. This was from both the splitting of each part and the sense that parts are allowed to do things - we let/allow/conduct them to be taking action because the Self can’t actually do these things.

Now I get this was training. Training means we usually need to break down and over exaggerate aspects before we can get to nuance.

BUT if we are working with the wrong building blocks then we aren’t going to get the house we want.

So while it’s important to be cognisant of the many parts that may come to the party, and the need to simply things when teaching - we run the real risk of alienating parts and slowing down teaching if we are too attached to the idea that every different thought, feeling, sensation, experience is a part.

I recommend that when teaching others about parts or helping the explore what parts may be coming up - rather than an external person DECIDING and ASSIGNING that something is a part, we use language that encourage that person to examine if this is a different part or if they want to speak from their part explicitly or implicitly.