It goes without saying that humans are complex creatures. No one is a monolith of a single motivation, purpose, thought, or feeling. These different parts of us are supposed to work together and compliment each other.

However, sometimes they don’t. Trauma can cause this cohesion to “break,” causing internal conflict. Parts work therapy aims to bring back harmony.

Trauma-Informed Therapy at Inner Balance Counseling

Every therapist at Inner Balance Counseling is trauma informed—a badge we’re proud to wear that requires an extraordinary amount of training.

Parts work is part of our trauma counseling programming, which also includes eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Our goal is for our clients to live happy and healthy lives, free from the trauma that burdens them.

It starts with a phone call. Reach out today and feel better.

What Is Parts Work Therapy?

Parts work is an approach to therapy that is used when a person feels conflict within themselves. It’s often used as a type of trauma therapy, but not always. It’s the understanding that everyone has different parts and aspects to themselves, sometimes referred to as “subpersonalities.” 

Each of these different parts drives us in different directions. Often, that works out for the better. While someone may have a part of them that is career-driven and a hard worker, they may have a part that is happy to relax in their pajamas once in a while.

Parts work therapies ensure that these different aspects of ourselves are present, acknowledged, and respected. When they are, we can approach life with understanding, recognizing subtleties in how we should view our environment and events.

When these parts don’t work in harmony—one is dominating others, or one is repressed—it creates cognitive dissonance, which is the conflict we feel when different beliefs and feelings contradict each other. 

Cognitive dissonance is something we all experience from time to time, but parts work therapy can help resolve it by analyzing our beliefs and finding where they came from so we can adjust them.

What Does Parts Work Help With?

While parts work can be beneficial for anyone feeling internal conflict, it’s especially helpful for those who have experienced complex trauma. 

Complex trauma occurs when a deep trust is violated in a close relationship. It’s caused by abusive relationships, either from a partner, parent, or other close bond. It’s often seen in survivors of abuse in their childhood. This type of trauma causes people to doubt themselves, then repress the parts or subpersonalities that may aggravate the abuse.

Read our full guide on the causes and effects of complex trauma.

What Happens When Are Parts Aren’t Cohesive

Why is it so important that we work to make our parts work together? This discord within our psyche can lead to certain negative thought and behavior patterns:

• Low self-esteem
• Trouble making decisions
• Impulsive behaviors or decisions
• A need for frequent reassurance
• Emotional dysregulation
• Anxiety and depression
• Substance use and addiction

When our parts work together, we can regulate our thoughts and feelings more easily. When they don’t work together, it results in behaviors that affect relationships, professional success, and personal lives.

What is Structural Dissociation?

Structural dissociation is the theory of how childhood abuse causes dissonance of our parts. It states that we weren’t born with a cohesive psyche, but we learn how to create one over time. Childhood abuse prevents that from happening. 

Dissociation is when one part or more disengages from the present. Childhood trauma causes people to dissociate certain parts in order to cope with the trauma, and it’s something that they carry into adulthood. Structural dissociation can lead to severe emotional dysregulation, and is often a precursor to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Learn more about structural dissociation theory and other types of dissociation.

Types of Parts Work Therapies

Parts work is a lens, or approach to therapy, meaning there are different approaches that utilize a similar philosophy.

The different parts work therapies can be traced back to Sigmund Freud. He hypothesized that each person is broken into three parts that direct our unconscious thoughts and behaviors. You may have heard of them:

• The id—unconscious, evolutionary instincts
• The ego—decision making and filter to the id
• The superego—morality and learned values

Since Freud developed this theory, called the Iceberg Theory, more mental health professionals have developed ideas about how our psyches are organized. 

Internal Family Systems

Perhaps the most known parts work therapy is internal family systems, or IFS. Developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, IFS asserts that a person’s subpersonalities have specific roles and relationships to each other, and work together to create the Self. 

IFS can be used to treat trauma, but has also been effective at treating depression, anxiety, and addiction. 

Ego State Therapy

Ego state therapy also aims to create a cohesive, singular Self made of different parts of a person. However, this theory postulates that we develop different subpersonalities, or ego states, as a result of trauma, rather than being born with them.

Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy combines aspects of different therapies, including humanistic and experiential. It states that people are inherently good, and a “bad” piece of them, like behavior or thoughts, doesn’t define them as a person. The goal of gestalt therapy is to let the client explore their deeper selves through role-playing and art in order to resolve what they feel is holding them back. It emphasizes self-awareness and accountability.

Understanding the Parts

So what do we really mean when we talk about different parts of a person? Gestalt theory doesn’t identify specific rolls of subpersonalities, but the other parts work therapies do. These different parts are labeled to bring more understanding of how they interact with each other, and how they shape a person’s behavior.

IFS Parts

In IFS, the many different parts of a person take on three distinct roles:

• Managers—the protective, managerial, and daily maintenance parts
• Firefighters—the reactive parts that keep negative emotions at bay
• Exiles—the negative and painful emotional parts that you don’t want others to see

None of these roles are inherently good or bad. For example, while managers help with emotional dysregulation, they can also facilitate memory or emotional suppression. Firefighters can react to the exile and encourage emotional substance use, or they can cope with something healthy. The exile could be the memory of an awkward moment at a party one time. 

Ego State Parts

The roles that ego state therapy designates are more of created identities that a person puts forth as a reaction to their experiences. A person can be “stuck” in different ego states for a time after that state was useful to them, resulting in struggles with mental health. 

Each ego state refers to which identity is in a dominant role in the psyche at a given time:

• Vaded ego states—parts have unprocessed trauma
• Conflicted ego states—parts contradict and conflict with each other
• Retro ego states—parts used to be helpful, but are no longer needed
• Normal ego states—parts work together for a healthy, self-aware Self

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A normal ego state is the goal of this type of parts therapy. The other states aren’t always harmful, and are adapted in a reaction to life circumstances. 

Parts Work is Trauma-Informed Therapy

Trauma-informed therapy is counseling done with a deep understanding of how trauma impacts people, what causes it, and how to treat it. It’s a lens of therapy that shows how trauma can lead to other mental health struggles.

While parts work therapies aren’t always used to specifically treat trauma, there’s an understanding that our psyches can break apart as a protective mechanism as a result of trauma. 

One aspect of resolving trauma includes working to make our parts work together. While we can’t undo the underlying trauma, we can change how it affects us.

Learn more about trauma-informed therapy services at Inner Balance Counseling.