A part of me wants to…

10th June 2022

A part of me wants this… but a part of me wants that…

How many times have you found yourself saying “a part of me feels this…”? 

How many times have you rejected a ‘part of you’ – the sad part, angry part, lonely part and convinced yourself that you SHOULD not feel the way you do?

When we do this, we end up in internal conflict between the parts of us that want to be happy and positive and enjoying life and very often the more challenging parts, that we reject and are often left unseen and ignored.

The problem is that we can’t selectively block out the dark without blocking out the light too. If you find yourself often feeling disconnected from your feelings, your life, the world then keep reading as this will help you. 

How about if you were able to acknowledge ALL the parts of you? That might make you feel uncomfortable because there are parts of us that we really don’t want to like. No matter how hard we try we just don’t want to feel sad or angry. But in order to see yourself as the amazing and truly WHOLE human being that you are you need to get clear on all those parts.

Becoming more emotionally literate will truly help. We often limit the description of our emotions to just a few – angry, sad, frustrated.. But there is so much more scope and depth to what we feel, and the clearer we get, the clearer we feel. 

Check out this wheel of emotion to help you. Screen shot it and keep it somewhere to use when you need to. Downloadable version here.

Start by naming the feelings and parts of you. How does it feel to get clear? Awareness is curative – often just by getting clearer on what is really going for us, we feel better. 

There is a quote that goes along the lines of “you’ve got to feel it to heal it”. I’m not really a big fan of the word heal, I think it gets misused but I do agree with the sentiment – we need to shed the light on what is really holding us back. 

So here is the first step to take, acknowledge your feelings and the parts of yourself, say them out loud, write them down, let them be seen and heard. 

Oh and by the way, this is a practice, not a one stop shop. Some days it will be easier than others and that is absolutely OK!.

Give it a try and then come back to this post for the next phase…

By ignoring any part of us – and I do mean ANY part of us (yes I’m talking about those parts that we wish would just do one.)’We end up in internal conflict and it might look something like this… You feel angry about a situation, maybe someone has treated you badly and you feel angry. That part of you will feel enraged, frustrated, wronged, the physical feelings that go with anger are not comfortable, we feel hot and bothered, our blood pressure goes up, we feel like we might explode.

Enter stage left, the ‘nice part of you’. Now this part of you is conditioned to not allow the anger to surface, this part of you says that you must be nice at all costs. You must avoid conflict and you are not allowed to express your ‘ugly’ emotions. So you end up suppressing the anger, shutting it down and convincing it to go away. It’s exhausting isn’t it?

In the short term this might work because we get to remove the angry feelings quickly. We convince ourselves that we are probably over reacting, that we don’t want to fall out with anyone. Phew. This is fairly typical people pleasing behaviour too. Long term this is will lead to resentment. Continuously suppressing your emotions in favour of keeping the peace or keeping others happy is not sustainable. Deep down we all know that but it can be hard to change our programming.

Here are some tips. 

1. Get clear on the parts of you that are trying to be heard. Name them – the angry part, the sad part, the rejected part….
2. Ask that part of you what it needs? Often, just being heard is enough, write down what comes up for you. Give that part of you space.
3. What further support does that part of you need? Is there any action you need to take? 
4. Rinse and repeat. This is a practice and trust me it gets easier over time. 

Try it out, remember there is no such thing as perfection, it is all about teaching your subconscious that it is safe to change and in order to do that we have to repeat new behaviours.

So how do we bring all of this sub-personality work together? I am going to use the analogy of an orchestra to explain…

Who keeps all of the different musicians playing in the correct order? The conductor. For us to hear that beautiful harmony we know that everything has to happen in sync with precision timing. 

You are the conductor of your own orchestra. If you tune up the instruments – by allowing them the space to really get to know their part and be feel confident to be heard. They are ready to play together! And by the way, we do to need to out pressure on ourselves to be the Royal Philharmonic, practice, practice, practice, things get better over time. (There is no such thing as perfection.)

The conductor analogy is helpful because it encourages us to remember that we are not our thoughts or the parts of us but we are the awareness of them and we get to step back and be aware of what is going on rather than become them.

Another way of looking at it is that if a part of the orchestra is playing out of tune, or too quickly or too loudly, you can take charge and change the pace or quieten them down, depending on what is needed.

If that inner critic has been particular noisy lately, imagine being the conductor and just quieting that part down – it’s not dismissing,  it’s all done with gratitude knowing that each part of the orchestra has a role to play. 

Ultimately, with mindful awareness, you can start to be the observer of your thoughts more than being hijacked by them. 

Play around with this analogy and see how you can make it work for you.

You get to make it your own as with any techniques I share.

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