You’re never alone with Parts Theory – TWL Episodes 6-9

These are all the Parts Theory episodes of The Wandering Lightbulb all together in one long episode so you can sit down with a cuppa and lose yourself in the topic without having to click around on the website. Enjoy 🙂

Episode 6 – The Big Picture: Who else is in the room ..?

The July episodes of The Wandering Lightbulb could be the most life-changing of any of my newsletters. If you take on board the concepts, actions and uses of Parts Theory, there is a good chance you will see yourself, and others, differently. Maybe you’ll find yourself more compassionate and forgiving. Maybe you’ll realise you’re suddenly more understanding of others you clash with. Perhaps you’ll be less reactionary to the small stresses of everyday life. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll see your own potential in a very different light.

If you believe nothing can change in your life and what you have now is ‘it’, then July’s Lightbulbs may be exactly what you need.

If you have read The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need, you might remember my 14 Ladies. They are the 14 people I discovered way back in the 1990s, when I was learning about neuro-linguistic programming. Back then I was in a workshop, walking through an exercise helping me to gain perspective in a situation. It’s a great way to take the heat out of a conflict with someone, and I was experimenting with giving myself perspective by stepping in and out of different roles.

Towards the end of the exercise, I heard someone in my head say “there’s 14 of us”. Instantly I had an image of a semicircle of figures standing behind me, just out of my field of vision. They were vague and ethereal, but I felt a strong sense of support and belonging. Weird, huh?

As usual, after I finished my course, I mostly forgot many of the things I’d learned and didn’t really use them again until they became relevant in my life. But I didn’t forget the 14 figures and have been curious about what they might be and what their role is. Over the years I nicknamed them ‘The 14 Ladies’, as I began to see that they were ages of me. Over the 30 years or so that have passed since then, I noticed that, one by one, each became clearer and more defined as time passed. The youngest appears to be around 3 years old, and the oldest identified is 54. Thankfully, there are quite a few left as, at the older end of the semicircle, the figures are still vague, and some don’t appear age-related at all. Still a mystery, and I’m fine with not knowing. So, let’s get back to what I later discovered about these kinds of entities in people’s lives.

As I was researching the book, I discovered Parts Theory. Though I wasn’t sure at first if it was exactly what I was experiencing, the more I explored the different aspects of Parts Theory and how people have represented it, I realised it was EXACTLY what I had stumbled across all those years ago. And the more I learned, the more I wished I had understood the power and potential of what I had found.

As I write this in June 2024, I am in the middle of a five-month training course to understand Parts Theory and its applications in therapy.

It’s been more than fascinating.

Not only is Parts Theory a real ‘thing’ in human existence, but it’s also an easy-to-grasp concept and, best of all, the control and the direction of the exploration can be done entirely by anyone who wants to learn about it. You don’t need a therapist (although it might be a good idea to do some initial work with an experienced guide), you don’t need any fancy diagnostic test or assessment and you certainly don’t need to spend an hour a week on anyone’s (expensive!) couch, reliving your traumatic life.

In Parts Theory you are in charge and, once you understand a few basic concepts, you can discover things about yourself while doing the washing up or sitting on the bus. Or maybe at 3am when a dream has stirred you into consciousness. It’s simple, free and easy to access Parts Theory and, let me tell you, your discoveries will be both enlightening and, frequently, entertaining.

If it makes me sound mad then I’m going to risk it here, but then you know I have 14 people in my head, so I’m going to give it a go:

 

When you understand Parts Theory, you are never out of resources when times are tough.

When you understand Parts Theory, you are never at a loss as to what to do next in your life.

When you understand Parts Theory, you will never feel lonely or abandoned ever in your life again.

That’s not a promise, made lightly. That’s a guarantee.

 

This episode of The Wandering Lightbulb is my Big Picture on my WHY I want you to learn about this amazing concept. In episodes 7, 8 and 9 I shall follow the triangle (see June’s Lighbulbs) format of these newsletters and will explain the What (concept and knowledge), the How (framework and action) and the Why (energy and motivation) of Parts Theory so you can get enough of an understanding of it to be able to experiment with its role in your life.

TWL Episode 7 – What did Plato ever do for us?

Unlike my foraging for understanding of My Triangle Theory in earlier episodes, Parts Theory is a well-examined and documented concept. This is not only handy for me in writing July’s topic, but also means that any sceptics can relax: it’s a real and effective method to identify and release any ‘stuckness’ in life. Sceptic or not, this is the episode where you can enjoy learning more about the evolution of Parts Theory in psychology. Woo-hoo!

Humankind has been known to dwell on its own existence, as recorded by philosophers through time, Plato was the first to ponder upon the nature of self – and that was in 375 BCE. He particularly pondered on the possibility that there might be different parts of self at work, the first two parts being: body and soul. The soul merely takes up temporary residence in the body until death, when it returns to wherever it came from. Plato considered the soul to actually be ‘the self’, and this was further divided into three parts:

• The Rational Soul – residing in the head and providing cognitive functions such as thinking, analysing and reflecting.
• The Spiritual Soul – residing in the chest and allowing the body to experience emotions such as joy, rage, disappointment and shame.
• The Appetitive Soul – is in the abdomen and drives the physical body to experience all its wants, such as hunger and pain.

 

Plato likens the balance of all these parts to a

charioteer (Rational Soul) trying to steer the

chariot (body) with the twin horses

desire (The Appetitive Soul) and spirit (The Spiritual Soul)

pulling in different directions.

Yup! I have days like that too.

So, if Plato had us all sussed more than 2,000 years ago, why is the concept of multiple parts of self so weird and suspicious to many people today? In an attempt to keep this episode to its usual size, I’ll just say: Church, Industrial Revolution, science. In one way or another, these three movements discouraged individuals from engaging in prolonged dwellings on self or protracted mullings about the meaning of life. Unless it suited that movement’s agenda, of course.

Yes, I know I’ve simplified 2,000+ years of history perhaps a tad too much, but I want to get you back to the era you’re living in as soon as I can. The Wandering Lightbulb is all about YOU, after all.

Our next stop is early in the 20^th century when Carl Jung parted ways with his former collaborator, Sigmund Freud. Jung believed in a ‘collective unconscious’, not unlike the place Plato had described the soul emanating from, and returning to after a body’s death. Jung’s collective unconscious consisted of a deeper level of subconsciousness, shared by the whole of humanity, where common symbols, architypes and patterns from our ancestors were held.

It was his work exploring his concept of ‘persona and shadow’ that is most relevant to Parts Theory. The persona is the social mask we show to the outside world and the shadow is the repressed and darker side of ourselves that we attempt to keep hidden.

Jung stressed that the aim is not to eradicate our shadow self, but to acknowledge its role in our life and make peace with it. This is a very important point.

Ahh, we’re at the deliciously muddy waters of ‘scientific proof’. I’m afraid I have to flex my research qualifications again, because a blinding revelation hit me when I was trying to get my head around the complexities of research design: scientific study is the ULTIMATE in creativity. All these years I’ve been involved with the arts, with education, with communities, and yet the most creative thing in the world was scientific investigation. Contrary to what I used to think science was all about – i.e. numbers, testing, tediousness (just me?) – it was in fact a place like the Wild West where you are free to study anything you want, in any way you wish.

You could pursue understanding though data collection, number comparisons and the production of hard facts. This is quantitative research. OR you could explore understanding through hearing opinions and attitudes, studying language used in interviews, collecting images, sounds and words, making observations and recording subjective responses. This approach was named qualitative research.

The use of qualitative data in research largely came about because Carl Rogers (1902–1987) wasn’t satisfied with the analytical approach to psychoanalysis prevalent in the early 20^th century. He invented the phrase ‘person-centred therapy’ because he maintained ‘the client knows what hurts’. A new era in psychotherapy was born: the phenomenological approach (also called ‘humanism’, which is slightly easier to say). Simply put: capturing the experiences of humans is the most accurate way to understand what it’s like being human. Exploring ‘how’ and ‘why’ humans do the things they do builds into hypotheses and theories that can be explored further.

A framework of ‘self-questioning’ began to evolve in the early 1970s with the work of Hal and Sidra Stone. They called this process Voice Dialogue, and it has become a cornerstone of Parts Theory. Other models of self emerged: in the 1980s, Richard Schwartz began to classify and organise parts he heard his clients refer to, into Internal Family Systems (IFS). Also, around this time, Bessel van der Kolk was setting up a clinic to specifically study the effects of traumatic stress with the aim to develop effective treatment interventions. In his book The Body Keeps the Score (2015), Dr van der Kolk devotes an entire chapter to ‘self-leadership’ in which he refers to the importance of mapping of the selves, as described in IFS, as part of an effective approach to healing from trauma.

In 2022, Jay Norricks published several books on his experiences working with clients using what he termed Parts and Memory Therapy. Norricks meticulously documented his conversations with his clients over 25 years, and the resulting books document fascinating insights into other people’s experiences of themselves and how that affected their experience of the world.

I’m sure by now you get it: Parts Theory is a real and beneficial approach to understanding and processing our human experience. It’s a well-documented approach to alleviating acute stress from trauma, identifying all forms of self-sabotage and it’s even useful for combatting indecision or procrastination.

In episode 8 of The Wandering Lightbulb I shall be illustrating the wonderful HOW you can start to map and understand the parts of yourself. If you were able to complete the exercises in the tirangle episodes then you might just start to see the connections between the work you did and identifying parts. If you haven’t had a chance to do those quick exercises, have a go before next Saturday’s episode, as there’s nothing like using yourself as your own guinea pig, is there?

TWL Episode 8 – How: So you want me to talk to myself?

If you read episode 7, you must now understand that Parts Theory is a very real and documented aspect of psychology. You might also acknowledge that maybe you have multiple aspects of self and that, perhaps, getting to know them might be interesting or even beneficial to you. So what do you do? Sit down with a cup of tea and say, “Hi, my name’s Bob. Who are you guys? ”Which, of course, you can do, especially if your name’s Bob. But there are a couple of other ways that might also work for you, and that’s what we’re doing this week. So grab that cuppa, by all means, and let’s get into it.

If you were able to complete the exercise in episode 3, that’s a really useful document to have with you right now. If you haven’t done it, grab a copy here and spend a few moments thinking of some answers. I suggest starting with this exercise first, as it becomes a clear demonstration of some of the different parts of yourself as the act of remembering and writing, or observing your thoughts involves those different aspects of self.

If you’re unwilling to do the exercise, or feel resistance to some of the questions, that’s even better! I’ll explain why a bit further on, but keep reading and keep noticing your resistance. If you can write down any words your resistance is using, that’s going to be really useful in a minute.

OK, so looking at the exercise from episode 3, you might start to notice some of the questions have a theme to them:

·     some are designed to evoke happy memories and safe places for you

·     some deal with different perspectives of you

·     some cause you to stretch up to explore your philosophy

·     some demonstrate different parts of you in action

·     some explore your inner landscape and resources.

Let’s look at your answers, or reactions, to the questions and see what different parts of you show up.

Any answers connected with happy memories of childhood, or events and places where you are experiencing happiness or peacefulness, are precious insights into what Plato termed the Spiritual Soul. Some people might refer to that as a core purpose. Whether you LOVED running around the garden with your dog, climbing huge trees, tucking yourself up in a chair to read a book or hanging out with your family, these are all indicators of your ‘purpose’ in life. Odd as it might sound, what you loved to do as a child can show distinct personality traits: a love of community, animals, adventure, imagination and learning. These traits are still with you today, whoever you are, whatever you do.

I used to draw and ‘write’ endless books and comics, even from a young age. Look at me now 😉

This is not a ‘law’. Most kids love doing lots of things. But look at the one thing you chose to write about. If you want to, you can explore more about the thing you LOVED to do as a child. You could write about it, think about it. Imagine walking through that world again as that child. See if you can experience what you loved again. Getting in touch with a younger, or joyful, part of ourselves is an essential key to understanding the parts of self. But sometimes people struggle with this part of the exercise, which is why I need to introduce: The Critic.

Hello Critic. I know you have already shown your face in this exercise. You were there when you didn’t want to answer a question, when you didn’t like the answer you’d given, when you thought this whole exercise was stupid or woo-woo or pointless. Critic, I see you and, in all sincerity, I want to THANK YOU. You have done a brilliant job keeping yourself safe. Possibly for years. That is genuinely impressive. How have you managed that so well?

Yes, this critical or resistant part of you is … A PART.

The Critic is an extremely protective and skilled part. You have to admit, it’s probably the reason you’re alive today. If you have a moment, please say a quiet thank you to your Critic. And genuinely mean it. You probably have no idea how it’s saved you over the years.

There’s one more part you might find useful to know: The Manager. Your parts may all be called completely different names but, for clarity here, I’m using the classic name/descriptions. The Manager comes into play when you need to react to something quickly, or if you need to solve a problem. It uses coping strategies it’s learned over the years and can also decide which part of you is in control at any one time.

I like to ask “who’s driving the bus right now?” if I need to understand a reaction I’m having to a situation or a person. Sometimes a young part is ‘driving’, and sometimes I find a defensive or scared part at the wheel. It’s useful to be able to step back and ask. However, The Manager sometimes needs supervision in selecting the right part for the job. The Manager can also be very protective of the parts and it’s always best to ask your manager if it’s OK to talk to the parts. Sometimes it will be fine, other times The Manager might say no. In which case you get to have a chat with your manager instead.

The limit of this format means I can only bring to your attention three main parts you might wish to get to know: The Young Part, The Critic and The Manager. Some people only have a few others. Some people have hundreds. I discovered I had 14 chronological parts way back in the 90s. But since I’ve been studying Parts Theory, I realised I have others. Some are connected to one of The 14 Ladies, but some are standalone or overseers.

Fascinating.

If you remember back in episode 3, I said this questioning exercise would help you decide how to take ACTION to get where you want to next in life. The key to that ACTION is to talk to your Young Part. They will tell you what makes your soul sing, and surely that’s what you want next in life, no?

As I am writing The Wandering Lightbulb, I realise each Lightbulb is only an introduction to any of the topics it covers. Parts Theory is an amazing, AMAZING tool, and I urge you to have some very gentle conversations with different aspects of yourself, either with a trained guide, or by simply writing to yourself and having yourself answer. Young parts are gold and should be cherished. But please also remember The Critic and The Manager are protecting the younger parts, so never be harsh with them, always thank them and get them to tell you how they became so good at their job.

If this is all a bit silly (The Critic is strong in the one Luke), then tune in to the next episode when I explain WHY you need to take a second look at Parts Theory if you’re dismissing it now. In episode 9, I get the crystal ball out and we take a look at how a life without meaning pans out for some people.

TWL Episode 9 – Why: Ready to know the most important four words you need to hear?

Over the years, I have worked with many people desiring some sort of change in their lives. This has mostly started off as work or ambition-related but, when we got into the nitty-gritty, it was pretty much always about personal unrest. It was clear some people were experiencing deep unhappiness, anguish and fear that their life was out of control. I told them then what I will be telling you in this episode: the four most important words you need to hear. Read on.

I want to give a little reference to frame this episode, the final one for July’s topic of Parts Theory. As always, the final part is WHY. Why should you bother to read this episode and why take on board the information I offer? Of everything I have written to date, this is the biggest WHY and always will be.

I have to credit Hal and Sidra Stone’s book Embracing Your Inner Critic for the basis of the following list, although I have altered and modified it to fit my purpose.

These are huge industries that feed off your unhappiness and turmoil:

• The psychotherapy industry
• The plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures industries
• The self-help industry
• The New Age industry
• The ‘beauty’ industry
• The weight-loss industry
• The over-the-counter and prescription medication industry
• Industries involving the sale of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and vaping, etc.
• The advertising industry

Let’s face it, if we were all secure, happy individuals, we wouldn’t need much of ANY of the above. There’s a lot of money to be made from dissatisfaction, and there are a lot of reasons to keep people dissatisfied and coming back for more.

What these industries definitely don’t want you to know is that four simple words completely disrupt them, and if every one of their customers believed these four words, their industries would disappear overnight.

Interested to read on?

You should be because, as demonstrated in June’s episodes the Self-Help Triangle is an important framework, as it shows the role of EMOTION in the desire to change. What Parts Theory does, very simply and sweetly, is give you the keys to understanding and affecting your EMOTION. You can cause change.

Perhaps you didn’t even notice that those are the four words you need to know: you can cause change. No big fanfare, no big reveal. Simple and direct, but I want to break it down just a little more:

YOU – not a huge industry or ‘expert’. You know you best; you are the expert.

CAN – it is absolutely possible. 100% doable.

CAUSE – inevitable outcomes of your thoughts and actions.

CHANGE – a difference.

If you look back to the exercises in episode 3 and episode 8 (above), you can see the start of the process of change. You need to understand YOU as fully as possible to ensure any change you want is authentic, sustainable and possible.

Here’s the Self-Help Triangle again:

In The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need I state that, if it’s affective, KNOWLEDGE + ACTION can temporarily override EMOTION. Understanding Parts Theory is the KNOWLEDGE and testing it for yourself is the ACTION. You have to do both and you have to believe and commit, or our friend The Critic will attempt to protect you by shooting down your ideas about change or belittling your efforts. Because it’s scared.

I said it was a simple process, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Tell me about it! All this learning has taken me more than 30 years to acquire 🙂

But I want you to understand the importance of starting a change process in the right way, so I have decided to make you an offer of a 1-2-1 chat with me (absolutely no charge or up-selling!) via Zoom over the next few weeks. If, by talking with you, I can clarify any of the process I’m outlining so that you then go on to adopt it yourself, then I consider that’s my time well spent. My aim with the chat is to help you understand the process I outline and to answer any questions you have about it. I’m also up for untangling knotty issues or dispelling fears.

If you’re interested in a 1-2-1 chat, there’s a link to book a slot on this page. Subscribers get VIP priority, so sign up to The Wandering Lightbulb here if you haven’t already.

August is a lovely month when holidays are talked of and, in the northern hemisphere, the promise of better weather is still believable. In the spirit of all possible things, I’m focusing on Creative Expression for the next four episodes of The Wandering Lightbulb. Don’t let your inner critic dismiss that phrase because you don’t believe you are in any way ‘creative’. Every single person is already creative: some in the arts, some in business, some in the fields of science and maths, some in communities, some in building strong families, some in just thinking …

So don’t let anything stop you from jumping in next week, as episode 10 is the Big Picture of why I feel Creative Expression is important for YOU.

See you there 🙂

If you’d like to ask me a question or make a comment, please get in touch here or, if you’d like The Wandering Lightbulb delivered fresh into your inbox every Saturday, you can join me here. A very warm welcome is always waiting 🙂