Getting to Know Your Protector Parts: Perfectionist, Procrastinator & More

Hi, I'm Sara, and welcome to You Make Sense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner and expert on trauma resolution, attachment, parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense, all parts, always. So if you ever find yourself in your current life feeling overwhelmed by simple tasks, or maybe just life as a whole feels feels overwhelming to you, relationships are hard, it feels impossible to step into your purpose, or you just feel caught in this perpetual stress response. These are all clues that you may have young parts that are running the show in your life, and you might not even know it. Actually, I'll say most people have no idea this is happening, but if you're finding life in general to be really challenging beyond your capacity, that is a clue or an indicator that this is likely happening. So what I want to do is first explain what parts work is all about in case that's new to you, And then we're going to talk about how we can change this so that you can show up in your life with greater ease, so that when challenges arise, they feel like navigatable, like you can handle them. And of course, we're going to use the nervous system science and a lot of other things to make sense of it. First, I just want to go back to explaining what parts are all about. We have episodes on parts, many of them. It's interwoven in a lot of the work we do, but in case it's new to you, I want to explain this briefly. So I think of Parts as versions of ourselves. They certainly are a part of us, but they're a version of us. So think of it this way. We come into this world as one whole being, but along the way we experience different overwhelming things or traumas that really overwhelm our system's capacity to process what's happening. And if we don't have the conditions necessary for that experience to resolve and to heal, it's as if the part of us who experiences that gets fragmented off or stuck and locked in time. In that particular experience that they had. So think of it like a visual. I'm a whole being and it's almost like this part, let's say, let me give you a good example. Let's say when you were in third grade, you were bullied a lot and your caregivers weren't able to help you process that. Then that third grader, so that young you gets fragmented off and that, I can't even think what age you are in third grade. I don't know, you're probably 5, 6, 7, let's say 7 or 8. It's fragmented off. They're not a separate part of you, meaning they're not a separate person, they're still you. And I think of it like there's a rope connecting adult you to them. Okay. And so along the way, we have all these different parts. I might have a part that's, you know, 16 years old that experienced heartbreak for the first time. And then a part at 25 that was betrayed in a relationship and so on and so forth. So we have these different parts or versions of ourselves. They're still connected to us via a rope, but they aren't fully integrated in us. And so what happens is, as we're going about our lives, neuroception, remember that's your threat detector that lives in your brainstem. It's always looking out into the world to see if you're safe or not, every millisecond of your life, which is quite a lot. Millisecond, there's 1,000 of those in a second. So it's looking out to see if you're safe, right? And how does it decide? It looks to the thing we've talked about, which is your internal database or computer system that lives in your brain to see if you're safe or not. So if it sees anything that reminds it of something in the past, what it's going to do is it's gonna say, I don't think that thing is safe based in the past. So let's go back to that third grade example, right? The part of you that perhaps was bullied and experienced, um, you know, lack of safety in school and then your caregivers couldn't really support you to process that. So as you go out into the world, maybe you're in a social situation where you don't know anyone. The threat detector's gonna say, well, what intel do we have on being in a group environment where everybody knows everybody and I don't know anybody? Might look to this third-grade experience. And so all of a sudden what happens is it says, this must be like the past because it has enough similarities. So in that moment, it's as if the past is superimposed on the present, and that means that my third-grade self begins to inhabit my body. And it's no longer adult me navigating that social situation. I feel like I did when I was in third grade. I feel small, I feel insignificant, different, like something's wrong with me. We literally have the same vagal tone or shaping of our nervous system that that part had. Because essentially we have traveled time. And by the way, you notice this with people in your life or people in the world, right? Have you ever seen somebody out in the world? I see this in LA. I've talked about this before, but there's a lot of traffic here. So I see a lot of people in their cars who do not seem like they're their numeric age. They seem like an angry 14-year-old or 12-year-old or whatever. And they're like flipping somebody off and swearing. And they, you know, they look on their face, they do not look like the professional, 50-year-old that they actually are. They look like they're angry and 14, and that's because a part is present in their body. And that's really how parts work works. We have episodes on how we integrate our parts, 'cause the goal is that adult me is the one that's showing up predominantly in our lives, in my life. And the only way to do that is number one, being able to differentiate what is the difference between adult me and young parts. So how do they feel different in my body? And we have a whole episode that goes into that. And then doing something that I call internal co-regulation, which means Coming to the aid of those parts the way that nobody could in the past. This is so vital. When we do this, it's literally, I mean, this is like pretty cool stuff, everybody. We are traveling time. When you think, if you think that this work is boring and you know, you should be on TikTok looking at something that's more interesting, I have to tell you, I don't think there's anything more exciting than this because you're actually traveling time. Literally traveling time. Anytime you're activated in the past, you are no longer here in 2024 or whatever year it is that you're listening to this. You are in that, that place and time in the past, and you're having the same embodied response to it. So internal co-regulation is literally traveling back to that young part and being with them the way no one was there for them. And that means that we comfort those parts, we come to their aid, we hear them, we see them, we hold space for them. We don't try to make their their experience different. We don't try to fix them, but we hold a safe container for them. That's called being a mutually empathic witness. And we give them what they never got, like the listening, the protection, the comfort. And the more that we do that, the more that that part gets resolution on that past experience. And now they're no longer stuck there. They're a part of you. So the rope that was disconnecting you comes back into you, and now they're called, or they're what's called integrated. They're a part of the whole. And that's really our work. Why do we want to do that? Because when you integrate your parts, what occurs is as the threat detector looks out into the world at a social situation, it no longer says, oh, this reminds me of when I was in third grade, because I have actually gone back and made that third grade experience different. So you navigate that adult experience with ease or with greater ease as adult you. So that, that's why we do parts work here. That's how parts develop. And today, We're gonna talk specifically about how certain parts are showing up in our adult lives. I can tell you I've had every part I'm about to name in this episode show up in my adult life. I'm gonna give you examples of that to normalize this a bit for you. And I would say that most people have some parts running their adult lives. Now the parts that are running our adult lives are called protector parts. Generally speaking, I wanna explain what a protector part is and how they develop. So go back to, let's go back to the third grade example. Okay? So the kid that was bullied and no one protected them. So when we were not protected, those are our most vulnerable parts, the ones that were never protected. So the third grader would be an example of this. So when there wasn't an adult around to safely protect that most vulnerable part, what you did, what we all do is we develop these brilliant protector parts. I mean, I say this all the time, but when you've ever felt like you are broken, there's something wrong with you, my hope is that this work, which is all backed by science, shows you that that is unequivocally untrue. We have all developed protector parts. There is nobody who goes through life having an idyllic experience where every vulnerable part exposed was safe, right? So we developed these protector parts. So if we go back to that experience of that young third grader who was bullied, and let's say they weren't protected. They are very, very vulnerable in that moment. So what our nervous system brilliantly does is it says, we have to develop an internal protector to ensure that this young part is safe. And so that protector can look like a lot of things. One of them is what I call the doer. And so this doer develops, which by the way, begins, you know, if the third grader's 7, the doer might be 8 years old, like very young as well. And then these protective parts also grow up with us, but maybe they start at 8. This doer's job is to ensure that if they can just stay busy and keep doing, they can actually receive a lot of gratification from their doing. They can receive belonging from their doing. Like this, if they just achieve in school, they're gonna get positive reinforcement. If they just get everything right and they overachieve and they join every club and do everything, everything, then their parents are going to say, wow, you are worthy of love and you are good. The kids in school are going to say you are valuable. And that's all to protect that vulnerable part from ever having to feel the pain that they felt in the past. So if this is us, and I had and still do, who this part has taken, taken a, a backseat a bit, because I've helped unburden her, but I had a very strong doer part. And I used to say it this way, that this doer part would set a bar for me, like a goal, right, in my work. And, but this goal, this started way before I had my own company. This started when I was a kid. This part would set a bar. And when I got to that bar, all that it would do is raise the bar quickly. And then as soon as I got to that bar, it would raise the bar again. There was no celebrating of reaching a milestone or creating something wonderful or being proud of myself, I felt it for maybe a second and then moved on to the next thing and then the next thing and the next thing. And then the lie of the doer part is, well, once I get to this point, then we'll be able to take a break. But that's not true because the whole job of that part is to protect the vulnerable part that perhaps feels things like inherently unlovable, not valuable, like there's something wrong with them. So if I could just do all of these things to get positive reinforcement, to see that I am enough and I am worthy, unworthy, then I can protect the part from ever having to feel that way. For me, that started early, even in school. And another reason for the doer part for some of us is if you grew up in an unsafe home like I did, my doer part helped me stay out of my home. And so I joined every club. I did everything you could possibly think of. I was president of my class from like 6th grade till 12th grade. Only one year I didn't. It wasn't— by the way, I know that sounds impressive. It's not that impressive. I graduated public school with 45 people in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire. So it's not that impressive. Anyway, that doer part did a really good job. And the doer part, by the way, will put everything else after this primary goal. So that meant for me, like really sacrificing myself, sacrificing joy and play and connection and all these other needs, sleep. I would do this to the point of my body breaking down. Even in my work at the beginning of my company, like a decade ago, this is what I was doing. And for many of us, We have these doer parts who are literally running our whole lives, running our— certainly running companies. I won't name them, but there's a lot of big companies in the world that you know that likely, obviously I'm not the practitioner or clinician for these people, but from distance can say, yeah, probably there's some doer parts that are present there. And I want to name our doer parts can get a lot done, can create huge things in the world. They're also very, very tired. It is an exhausting thing for this part. It is because it's never enough and they have to keep going, going, going all the time. The other thing I want to name is this doer part can show up in our relationships, and that means you are the person who is always overly focused on your partner or your friends. You're gifting them things, you're wanting to meet their needs all the time, you are really attentive to ensuring that they are okay. And this part is so damn good at doing this. And part of healing, everybody, and we're going to get to this at the end, is unburdening our protective parts from this role. And the only way— I'm jumping ahead, we're going to get to it at the end more deeply— but the only way to unburden the part is that you, adult you, comes to the aid of the most vulnerable part and protects them. If you don't protect them, this protector will continue to do that. And you can go a whole lifetime like this. My doer part was so strong that I could work 15-hour days every every day for years and years and years and years. My doer part always told me I was behind in life. It didn't matter how far ahead I got, always behind. And it was never enough and it was never enough. And I remember having friends say to me, like closest friends saying things like, "Sarah, you came from nothing." Like I grew up in poverty, serious abuse, and look where you've come and you don't even take one moment to acknowledge that. It's always the next thing. Because that was that part of me that was consistently focused on, I have to protect the vulnerable part. And that vulnerable part of me deeply felt inadequate, unlovable, like she wasn't enough. And so that, as you can see here, that protector did an incredible job ensuring that the most vulnerable part is safe. So you may have a protector who is a doer, who is constantly on the go, making sure everything happens, sets a high bar, it's never enough. This might be with your kids or in your work, or in your romantic relationship. And what you'll eventually find is your system will get burnt out, you'll feel depleted and exhausted. I felt all those things, chronic illness, and then starting to get really angry, which is a healthy response, feeling like I'm not getting to live. And it's us that, again, only us, adult us, can take the steering wheel back so we can unburden that part so that we can really be set free from this. We're going to talk about that in just a bit. But first, I wanna get to a couple of the other of these protective parts. One of them is the perfectionist part. I also have this one, and I just wanna name, I've done parts work personally for a decade. I've also done it professionally for that long. And we don't want our parts to die off, by the way, and they don't wanna die off either. The goal is that they integrate with us. So it's not that I am not still wildly driven, that doer part of me, I am. but I know that I can have a full balanced life. And that part isn't running the show, adult me is. That's the difference. With a perfectionist part, you know, the goal is that we are able to be free to make mistakes and get things wrong. And we're gonna talk about how we do that as well. So we're unburdening that part, but it doesn't mean that you never have experiences of those parts showing up. So I don't want us to be a perfectionist about our healing. Did you hear that? 'Cause that's really what that is. So here's the perfectionist part. Okay, the perfectionist part develops when we have a vulnerable part who experienced overwhelm or chaos and feeling utterly out of control. And so the result of that, if in your childhood you felt totally out of control, like, I can't control what's going on in my home, or maybe your parents got divorced and it was a toxic divorce and you had no control over it and there was nothing you could do. Those are just some examples of why this develops. But we develop this perfectionist, and the job of the perfectionist is to gain a sense of control when they feel so out of control. So that's the primary job. There are other ways that a perfectionist part develops. One of them might be if I was abandoned or was not unconditionally loved, then a perfectionist part comes in and says, well, if I can just be perfect, then maybe I'll be loved. So I can get that primary need met. Or in the first example I said, if I can just have control over everything, everything, I'll be okay. So what does that look like? Well, when we're young, that might look like having to ensure that in school we get every single thing right. And if we don't get it right, it really feels overwhelming for that part's nervous system, and they will go be entirely determined and focused on making sure it is perfect and right. I will say that this perfectionism part usually lives in our autonomic state of freeze, That's tonic immobility, or think deer in headlights, where we feel like I have to do this, but I can't put it out in the world if it's not perfect. And so then I can't put it out in the world, but I need to put it out in the world. And so we go back and forth and back and forth and can feel kind of stuck. This can show up in so many areas. So it might be with our schooling, rewriting a paper 4 times before you hand it in because it has to be exactly perfect, or staying up all night doing it. We can also be perfectionists around our appearance. Like, I am very rigid about the amount that I exercise and I have to, have my body a certain way in order for me to feel a sense of control and safety. I did that too, by the way. Everything you're hearing in this episode, I have done in my life. Um, and if I can control my eating, uh, then, you know, perfect that, like only eating really healthy things. I did that for a very long time, um, because that gave me a sense of safety. There was no getting messy. Um, so perfecting our looks, perfecting our body, what we intake in our body, perfecting the way that we achieve And then I wanna talk about how this can show up in a relationship. I had this happen too. So if we are a perfectionist with ourselves, what that's going to mean is the way I orient to me is that I am never enough and I am nitpicking in myself how I could be better or how I could do something differently to be better. And so I am not oriented towards loving self-compassion and acceptance. I'm oriented towards like, always being better, essentially. And by the way, this part doesn't have to be— it's not always like out loud rude to us. It can be, but it can just always seem like it's achieving this goal. Like, I just need to, you know, get every laser treatment or facial under the sun so I can try to look younger, so I can be perfect. I— and we'll have an episode on youth and body image coming up soon, but that's just one example. Or if I just keep my I have to have my house a certain way, then I'll be, you know, valuable or safe or whatever. So we internalize how this perfectionism and we're never enough. And so once you get into a romantic relationship, a close one, what we begin to do, we all do, is we project our experience of ourself onto our partner oftentimes. So what you might notice is at the beginning of being with someone, you might really see all the wonderful things But the closer you get, if I am not differentiated from them, meaning I'm not seeing that they are their own being and can make their own choices and be their own person, and I want them to be their own person, a lot of times we fuse with our partner and see them as a reflection of us. So what we can tend to do then is we might find ourselves really focused on what we don't like or what isn't working in our partner, and we might become hypercritical. This is the perfectionist part. And by the way, again, that doesn't always sound mean. It just might be constantly saying things like, don't you think it would be better if you woke up a little earlier? I feel like that would be better for you. You know, doesn't it bother you that your car is a mess? Like, I just feel like it would be better if you had that organized, you know, more nicely. Hey, at that dinner we went to, it kind of bothered me you didn't ask my friend more questions. And it's just a constant berating of how they are getting it wrong. Why are we doing that? Because we are doing the same thing to ourselves. Ourselves, and that is that brilliant protective part trying to control via perfectionism. So the last— actually, we're going to go to two more things, but the last real protector part I want to name is the procrastinator part. Now, this part's job is to deflect or get things away from one of our most vulnerable parts and keep that part essentially living perhaps a smaller life than we might desire to be living. Because that, via our past, that most vulnerable part, when they were exposed in the world, when they were seen, when they were taking up a lot of space, it wasn't safe. And so it's almost like we build this, what I used to call, I had this part, a beautiful prison. At one point in my healing, I looked around and I was like, wow, this is a really beautiful prison that I am trapped inside of. And I had a procrastinator part who was a part of that process. The job was, I'm going to ensure that that young vulnerable part never experiences what they experienced in the past. And so for me, that looked like although I deeply wanted to step into my calling and my purpose, I just couldn't do it. This procrastinator part would just avoid it, or I'd find myself doing other things that were not even— didn't need to be done, like, like reordering toilet paper 7 times instead of actually sending that email that was going to help me step further into my calling. And that is the part saying, no, I have to get these things away from me. I also had a procrastinator part who tried to keep me from relationships, um, and first friendships for sure. I was married for 10 years, and after I got divorced, it was a beautiful celebration of the work that I had done, um, and, and had— still have so much gratitude for the container that my ex-husband of safety, enough safety for me to heal inside of that, that he was a part of with me. So a lot of gratitude towards him. And after, it was such a celebration of my own growth, and I was so excited to be single. But a procrastinator part came in and pushed that for many more years than maybe I would have deeply desired, so meaning not dating for a long time. So procrastinator parts can keep us from the things that they think are gonna be scary. Why? Because they don't want those vulnerable parts to be harmed or hurt. So if you find yourself doing doing things like I did, like, and I would tell myself, no, I'm just focused on my work, and you know, that's my primary relationship right now. But if that keeps happening long-term, well, that, that's a clue there might be a protector here. Or I avoid stepping into my calling again and again, even though I really want that thing. All of those are signs of a protector, this procrastinator. And in relationships, this looks like this part's going to keep us from anything it thinks could be dangerous, like weak, having to look at challenges in a relationship. Because when you look at a challenge, the relationship is either gonna go in two directions, get better or fall apart, and the relationship may end. What the procrastinator doesn't realize is when you don't address issues in a relationship, it's like a slow poison. So you can guarantee the relationship is not going to work when you don't address them. But that part is going to almost like their fingers in their ears, like, la la la, I'm not hearing this, I'm not doing this. Because it feels too much, too overwhelming. So we just avoid the thing. So those 3 primary protectors show up in so many of our adult lives, and we don't even realize it. The other thing that I just wanna focus on for a second is for so many of us, we are parenting from our parts. And that is something that I wish that every parent understood more fully because the, the role of a parent is the hardest, it's the hardest and most important job in the world. And what makes it even harder is when our parts are showing up and running the show. Now, remember I talked about at the beginning how neuroception works, right? That threat detector that looks out into the world and it says, what does this remind me of? And it looks to the past. Well, guess what happens when you have children? Your system is going to be reminded of your own childhood experiences every time you reach a numeric age that your child is, or your child rather reaches a numeric age that was challenging for you. For you, it is going to bubble up the experience of your past. Why? Remember the threat detector says, looks to your child being, I don't know, 13, and maybe at 13, you experienced a lot of challenges at school, maybe you were bullied. And so what occurs is at 13 years old, when your kid is having, you know, maybe just normal developmental experiences of friendships working out and not working out and all of that, Your threat detector is going to say, oh wow, this is like being 13. And all of a sudden, a 13-year-old you is going to inhabit your experience. And now it's as if that 13-year-old is present in your parenting. This is really, really common. So I just want to normalize that. And part of our work is to address our parts that are showing up inside of our parenting so that not only we can feel better, but we can actually parent from our adult selves. Another thing to name is lots of people have a doer part or perfectionist part parenting. So if I can just get everything right as a parent, then my kid's gonna be okay, and I can keep them from the pain that I experienced in the past. So, you know, I am very rigid with everything they eat. I am rigid about that they're picked up from school at this time, and I never miss it, and I'm, you know, on and on and on and on it. What I want to name is when you have this young part running the show and I'm trying to keep my child from suffering, that actually does them a disservice. Children need to experience challenge because it builds resiliency in their nervous system. If you try to keep your child from feeling pain and suffering and challenge, you are doing them such a disservice because they're not building the capacity in their nervous system that they need to be able to navigate in their adult life, challenges that are most certainly going to arise for them. And that is a clue of this perfectionist part showing up. Or a lot of us have the doer part showing up with our kids where we might enable them. So I'm doing all their school projects, I'm doing everything for them, I'm writing their emails, I'm doing their college applications. And that doer part, by the way, as parents, can also keep you from leaning into your marriage because you are so overly focused on ensuring that your children don't have to feel what your young parts feel that I'm so focused on that that I'm neglecting these other areas of my own life, including the fulfillment that you get from being in a partnership. And just to say, having a healthy family dynamic, the parents' partnership must come first. Very, very important. Creates safety for the child. So a lot of us have these parts that are running the show in our lives. If you find life to be overwhelming, if you find life to be— and by the way, I will As our adult selves, life can be really fucking overwhelming, can't it? Sorry to swear for anybody who isn't into that, but it can be really overwhelming. Oh my God, it's so hard sometimes to be an adult. I say that a lot. I'm like, how are we all doing it? When everyone says, someone says they're bored, I'm like, how are you bored? There's so much to do. Can you possibly be bored? What? 'Cause I always have like 300 things that have to get done all the time. Time. So yeah, being an adult in our world currently is a lot. So much is asked of us. And for many of us, if we have these protective parts running the show, it is so much more overwhelming to navigate than when it's our adult self. Why? Because a 14-year-old can only navigate so much of adult life before it overwhelms or engulfs them. This is particularly true as you try to step further and further into a bigger life. Like, I had a doer part that was running my life in a very big way, and she was— she is— could get anything done, will make anything happen, until my life reached a level of bigness that was beyond what this part could handle. And she was basically like, wow, holy shit, I can't do that level of big, that level of exposure, I'm— that part of me is like 15. I can't do that. And then what happened was my nervous system would just stop me in the form of pretty intense dysregulation. There was no way I was stepping towards it because it was too much for that part. The only way you can step towards that bigger— the capacity that's outside of those parts is by getting into adult you, which brings me to the last bit of this part of the episode before we go to the questions. The solution. What do we do about this? So the number one thing that we must start focusing on is building our capacity to be in our adult self. And you might be saying, what do you mean? I'm in my adult self all the time. The more you do parts work, the more shocking and perhaps illuminating it is how little many of us are actually in our adults, full adult selves, and how often we are actually in one of these protector parts. Think of a moment, one moment of your life, where you felt totally capable and able and grounded. Maybe it was a moment in nature where you experienced awe and you felt connected to all things. You felt open and alive and expanded. Or maybe a moment with friends when you were laughing or dancing or feeling free. Or you felt like you could take care of another. I really want you to do this, not just like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you." I want you to really think about that for a second, one moment, bring it to life in your body, meaning go back to the experience, see the things you saw, feel the things you felt, bring it alive. And what you will notice is there is an experience of feeling grounded, anchored, present, here, capable, able, full, open, expanded, and it feels like we could flow. We are flowing down the river of life with ease, that all is well and all will be okay. That is adult you. Think about the rest of your life for a second. How often are you actually in that version of you? And it might be really illuminating. You might be thinking, not that much, not that much. So our work is, how do I embody that part of me, my truest self, again and again? Well, you know how you do it. You exercise your capacity to go back to that part. So I literally want you to think of a couple of times, 1, 2, 3 times where you have felt like your truest adult self, your soul self, your adult self, the same thing. Embody them again and again, every day, 2 minutes, marinate in what it feels like to be that version of you. This exercises your ability to be in your adult self. We must do that. The second thing that we must do is something called internal co-regulation, which we talk about in the Parts Work episodes. Internal co-regulation essentially means I need to come parent my parts. So in this episode, I want to talk specifically about unburdening the protector parts. That is absolutely vital in order for adult us to come into the driver's seat of our lives. Now here's the thing about our protector parts: they will not stop protecting the younger ones of us if they do not actually trust that adult us is going to do it. So what we don't need to do is get into the embodied experience of adult us, and then we want to invite in who are those protectors? Who is your doer? Who is your procrastinator? Who is your perfectionist? Maybe you have all three like I did. How old are those parts? Maybe think about when is the first time that those parts began doing their job. And then I want you to think about if I had a child came into my house who was doing that at such a young age, what would that make me want to do for them? How does that make me feel for them and begin building a relationship with these parts and slowly unburdening them from their role. The other thing that is imperative and must happen is we must get to know the most vulnerable part. So ask that protective part, who are you protecting? You know, when I asked my perfectionist part, who are you protecting? That part immediately reminded me of a memory of being really young my siblings who were doing the best that they could, but they were taking out on me that I was the result of an affair that their parents had and were really cruel to me and made me feel like I was stupid and wasn't wanted and all kinds of awful things. And so that perfectionist part said, I'm making sure that young one never feels that again. So what I had to do was connect to that young one that was feeling that that, and then begin reintegrating or parenting that most vulnerable part, the part of me that had to feel those things. And that means really coming to the aid of that part, softly, gently holding them, building this internal self-love. The more that I did that and could protect that part, the more unburdened that do— that perfectionist part, so the protector part that was doing her job to ensure that young one's safety. And when all of that work What happens? Adult us gets to show up in our lives, and the result of that is you get to flow down the river of life with ease. Things are not overwhelming, they're not exhausting, they don't feel impossible or keeping you in chronic dysregulation. Even the challenging things seem, seem and are manageable for us. The last thing that I just want to say is in terms of protecting that most vulnerable part, something that can be really helpful when you invite the most vulnerable part in, so connect to your adult itself. And then invite in, who is that most vulnerable part? Who are they? Again, for me, that reminded me of when I was like, I don't know, 5 or 6. Invite that part in. And what I always invite in is, can we create communal safety for that young part? Because at first they might be like, I don't know about adult me, like, I don't know you yet. Can we bring in other things that create safety? So I'll often, when working with people, I'll put them in the middle of a sequoia tree forest. Like, we don't actually fly to the sequoia tree forest. I wish we did. But I put them in an imagined space, and then feeling the trees protecting them. And then we ask the young part, is there an animal that feels really protective? And let's say they say elephant. Then we imagine there's perhaps 100 elephants surrounding the perimeter of this forest and let the part feel into that safety. And then we ask, are there any other animals? Sometimes, by the way, when I work with people, there might be be like 10 different animals that show up. So we have a lot of protective fields. And then we might ask, were there any people in the past that were safe and protective? And we bring them in too. And we just let that part begin to sense into their bodies what it is like to have safety. The more we do this, the safer they feel, the less those protectors have to do their job, the more you get to show up in your adult life. And that is such a beautiful thing. I can tell you as somebody who spent most of my life with these protectors running the show, It is such a relief to be able to actually run my life as my adult self. And that's what's possible for you too. Want to learn more about your nervous system specific to you? Take my free quiz called What's Keeping You Stuck. You'll receive a personalized guide with in-depth somatic tools to help you regulate your nervous system. Check out the link in the description to get started. Okay, we're going to get to the question part of this episode. I love this part of the episode because it allows me to take in all of the teaching and the examples I've given and from my life and really integrate them into your life specific to you. And every time people submit questions, I have to say they all resonate deeply with me at some point in my healing journey. So I think you're gonna find other people's questions to be really supportive for you as well. And if you have not submitted a question for one of these episodes, please do. There's a link in the show notes on how to do that. You can submit a video, you can submit an audio question. You're gonna hear audio questions in a second, or you can even submit a written question if that feels more supportive for you. But please, please do. It's such an honor to hear all of them and answer them. So let's get to the first one now. Hello Sarah, this is Pam from Miami. I'm very interested in the IFS multi-part psychology. What I'd really like to know is how do we figure about how many parts of us there are and what do we do with those parts. I'm not really even sure how each of the parts relate to actions, thoughts, feelings that we have in the present. It's very interesting but also very confusing. Help us out. Thank you so much, Pam from Miami. It is really interesting and also very confusing because it's extremely and exquisitely complex, uh, thing, our parts. So the first thing I want to address is how do we know how many parts there are? We have many, many parts or versions of ourselves. But what I will say, because remember as I talked about in the beginning of this episode, um, every time we've experienced something that overwhelms our system a part gets fragmented off. And again, they're connected to us via a rope. They are still part of us. This is not dissociative identity disorder. They're still part of us. But anytime that they're reminded of the past, that part inhabits our experience or our bodies. Now, we have many, many, many of those, because think of all the experiences you've had in your life that have overwhelmed you. I will also just want to name this that I haven't said in this episode. We can also have parts that experienced wonderful things that show up in our bodies all the time. One of my best friends, her name is Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Her and I talk a lot about— she's a therapist, and so we actually met in our somatic experiencing training years ago. You don't need to know that, but she's one of my closest friends. We've talked a lot about Disney. So this company Disney is— I'm naming it like you've never heard of it before— is incredibly good at activating for people their younger parts that experienced a sense of safety and childlike wonder and all the yummy, wonderful things that we wanna experience. And so when people, so we also have parts, what I'm trying to say is that young parts that experienced wonderful things that might inhabit our experience. If you've ever been to Disney, you go there and you'll see adults, like full adults embodying a young version of themselves. They're fully dressed up in costume and they're just in such wonderment and people are getting married at Disney and engaged at Disney And they're dressing up with their coworkers and they're going into Disney in their outfits that they like sewed. And we were there, I don't know, a while ago together. And there was these two friends and they were lighting up, these like sweet, two sweet women were lighting up. And when we said, oh, you look so nice. And they were like 10-year-olds. And they were like, wow, you think so? Like just so glad to be seen and safely seen. And anyway, she and I were like, if we ever have time, let's write a book about parts Disney, because parts can show up in a positive way too. So anyway, we all have— sometimes we go on tangents with these Q&As. This is the fun thing about a podcast. It's an informal format. So anyway, think about that for yourself. There's times where you're probably really silly and playful, and that is a part. It's just a younger part that experienced safety. Now we have many, many, many parts, but we have headliners. Meaning the primary parts that show up the most. So what I have found in doing this work for a long time is that we tend to have, I would say, anywhere from 2 to 5 most vulnerable parts. So the parts that experience the most exposure to lacking of safety, women tend to have between, you know, I would say 2 to 5 of those. And then we tend to have the same amount of protectors, protectors, because remember, for every most vulnerable part, a protector develops. So usually when I'm working with people, let's say there's like 3 very, very vulnerable parts, and there might be 3 pretty strong protector parts, and they show up a lot in our lives. And so the goal isn't to know every single one that ever existed. The more that we come to the aid of the protector parts and unburden them from their role, every other part is also watching and listening, and it unburdens them too. And every time that you protect one of the most vulnerable parts, it actually helps to protect all of the other parts too. This coincides with Peter Levine's concept of trauma vortices. And a trauma vortice, think of it like a bubble. If you had a big piece of paper or a big white wall, it might be filled with every single trauma you've ever experienced in your life. Mine would've had tens of thousands of those. And so if you thought to yourself, oh my gosh, I have to, address 10,000 of those, how am I gonna live till I'm 10,000? There's no way. And you don't actually have to do that. Every time you address one trauma vortice, it shrinks down all the others. And so you don't have to address all of them. Same goes with your parts. And the other thing I just wanna name about parts is, well, for you and for anyone who hasn't listened to an episode on parts, please go back and listen to my, I think there's a couple of them. There's definitely one that's just predominantly focused all on parts. I literally walk you through the process on how to do what I call internal co-regulation. That's the work that needs to happen. That is me becoming, and which I've already talked about in this episode, my adult self, and then coming to the aid of the young vulnerable parts, which then also unburdens the protector part. The more that we do that, the more we set our parts free. And the last thing I just want to name is every part has its own autonomic tone. I find that so fascinating, meaning when you're in your adult self, your nervous system is shaped a certain way. You might, when you're adult self, feel capable, able, present here. And then when I was in my 6-year-old part, that part dissociated. So if anytime that part of me— that was when I experienced abuse— would be present, I would just shut off and dissociate. I felt like I was in outer space, not really here, wouldn't feel anything or remember what had happened. I also had a, like, an 8-year-old part that went into terror. And so when that part was present, I went into my autonomic state of freeze, where I had all this energy but I feel trapped in it. So different parts have different autonomic tones, and the more that we can understand who's in our body at any given time, then we can actually address them. But thank you for that question, Pam. I've never answered it in that way before, so I appreciate how you asked it. Let's go on to the next one we have today. Hi Sarah, I was wanting to know how do I develop develop a secure relationship with money, because right now I have more of an anxious attachment with money. And I feel like, um, there's a part of myself that I developed from childhood. Um, I named her Scarcer, and, um, and so she's always trying to make sure that I don't overspend. So I'm struggling in the money department with releasing it and even receiving it, just not able to make that much money at this point. So any tips on how to develop a secure relationship with money and how to get, uh, Skersa and any other parts on board so I can receive more as well? Well, I want to congratulate this person on the level of work you've done, that you understand everything that you do. I I can oftentimes tell just from hearing somebody the work that you've done. I don't want anyone who is thinking about submitting a question to say, no, I'm not gonna submit a question because you know the work I've done. I just mean, I can tell your understanding of yourself and all of it. So what I wanna say to you is, first of all, congratulations on meeting that part and knowing her. We cannot change what we don't know. So one thing about parts work, everybody, to understand is you must differentiate from your parts in order to help them help them. If you think you are all of your parts, you can't help them. You know, sometimes when we beat ourselves up, I'm like, why am I such a loser? Why do I, you know, avoid everything in my life? Why am I so lazy? What's wrong with me? Why didn't I speak up to that person? Why am I being, like, so serious? Or whatever it is that you do. Well, what you're actually doing in that moment is you're berating a part and you don't realize it. And when you speak to your parts that way, you certainly aren't going to progress your healing. That's just reprimanding them for their fear. And so we have to actually separate from who am I and who are they, and not cognitively. We have to know the difference between what does a young me feel in my body versus adult me. When we can do that, then we can successfully come to their aid in this process of internal co-regulation, which, which we talk about throughout this, this podcast, of course. And I already named in a previous episode, we talked about that. The first thing that I— the next thing I want to is that you so beautifully named in this question is we all have attachments to money. So when we talk about attachment theory, it's not just how we relate to other human beings, it's also how we relate to other things in our lives like finances, our purpose, our bodies, and so much more. So this tells me if you have an anxious attachment to money, so that means that my system is saying, I need to make sure that you don't go away, 'cause if you go away, I'm not gonna be okay. I'm not going to be okay. That tells us that we have a part that developed somewhere early in our lives, likely could be later in our lives, but likely early in our lives, where because of circumstance or verbal or nonverbal messaging, our system learned that there isn't enough and I'm not going to be okay, and I have to control it in order to be okay. And so let's say I grew up in poverty, like I grew up in poverty, you grew up in poverty, your system's going to be oriented towards there's never enough because that's what I knew. Or if you had caregivers who gave you the message that there's not enough, even if you had enough, they might have been anxious themselves. There's never enough. Then that's our orientation to it. The other thing that's very important in what you also named was, I struggle to receive it. Well, remember, our nervous systems like what they know, and receiving money, because money is energy, that means receiving greater energetic flow. It requires us to receive, you know, help. It requires us to usually be seen more and lots of other things. So if our system doesn't yet have capacity for that, then we might struggle to feel our own value in the world to receive that. So it's very important that we begin building our capacity for receiving. You cannot think your way into that. You have to do that in an embodied way. Really simple. What I want you to focus on in order to receive more is how can— so we don't wanna just say like, I wanna receive $500,000 more this year? Probably too big of a jump. Can I begin receiving somatically in my body? So literally go feel the sun on your face and see if you can actually receive the pleasure of that. As you drink— and I am being very serious here, this is how it works. You have to build your capacity for goodness and receiving and pleasure. So can I feel the sun on my face and notice that? Can I get a hug from someone and really take that in? Can I smell a flower, eat a beautiful meal, and luxuriate in it? All of that is building my capacity for greater abundance in my body. That then translates for my ability to draw in and receive more abundance. Number 2, we want to work on our ability to receive from others because that then allows us to experience greater energetic exchange via money. So can I lean into, you know, when a friend asks me how I'm doing, instead of just saying, fine, how are you, can I lean into actually sharing how I'm doing and receive support? Can I lean into when your partner says, how can I help? Instead of saying you can't, think, well, what could I ask you to do? And can I lean into that kind of support? All of this then translates to money. The last thing I wanna name is we must unburden that brilliant part of you. She's young, so figure out how old she is, just ask her. That part of you that learned to be hypervigilant and controlling around money. And I want you to anchor into adult you so that I, the way I've talked about before, going into nature, experiencing a moment of awe, the you that feels present here, grounded, capable, able. And I want you to comfort that part, invite the scared part in and see if she can feel safety in your presence and feel the support of you so she can let down and relinquish the control that she's really, really holding onto so tightly. And then asking yourself, from adult me, what is actually true about my finances? What is true about what I'm wanting to receive? And marinate in that more and more. So all of those things are really imperative in allowing your system to grow your capacity to receive money and really change your orientation to being less of an anxious response, which is a survival response, and more of a security attachment to it. Let's go to the next question. Hello, my name is Ally. Um, I'm in my early 40s and thought really ultimately the purpose would be for my life is having a family, a partner, children. And, uh, I've come up with one roadblock after another and I'm feeling really stuck about what my purpose is now if I continue to have these roadblocks in this area that always— that I always thought was going to be my purpose. Thank you. When we experience roadblocks, like what we're calling a roadblock, that is often a protective part that's trying to keep us from the life that we desire the most. And why is that part doing that? Is it because they want to make us suffer? They want to keep us from the life we want? Absolutely not. The part is doing that because it's saying, I think that life is going to be so dangerous for you. You're going to have to re-experience all these things in the past that weren't safe, and I don't want you to ever, ever do that again. I can tell you, I had this roadblock part of me that, I'll share this personal story and I hope it's helpful for this person. I did two fertility egg retrievals in my early thirties, and those are very expensive. And it's also, you're pumping yourself with hormones. My doctor was like, wow, do you want to have a lot of kids? And I said, I don't even think I want kids. I was so disconnected from my desire for this, um, that I couldn't even feel it, although a part of me knew I wanted that because I was going through multiple egg retrievals, if that makes sense. But, but these roadblock parts are really good at keeping us from feeling our desire, knowing what it is, and then implementing on it. I later had parts that that would do their darndest to ensure that I didn't step into something safe and beautiful in terms of a romantic partnership and would fantasize about like, well, if I just met this person and if I just met this person, then everything would be amazing. Those were all protector parts keeping me on my sofa watching Bridgerton in order to never actually date because the fear was of that part. And I want you to check out what the fear is for your part but for my part was— and once I let this part speak, everything changed. But that part said, I don't ever want to be in a family again, because being in a family is hell. Being in a family means being abused. Being in a family means being neglected and being trapped forever. And so that part was dead set on me being, you know, 70 years old with a wildly successful career, that that part would I have a doer part that would've made sure that happened, or done their best to make sure that happened, and lots of animals and friends. But to keep me from one of the things that I wanted the most, because we've talked about this before, but wherein lies our greatest purpose or desires lies our greatest healing. So what I can say for you is it sounds very clear that you are deeply wanting a partner and family of your own, and likely have parts that are saying, I don't think that that is safe based on the past. Past. So the more that you can become the competent protector adult, you work the muscle of that like we talked about in this episode. Go watch the parts work episode, do that work, perhaps joining one of my programs. I've got lots of programs that support around this. We'll put some of the programs in the show notes so you can have a look at those. But that support specifically around your parts, coming to the aid of those younger parts so that we can show them family now, connection now, will not be what it was in the the past. In fact, it's going to be a way for you to relive— for our parts to relive— a beautiful childhood they never got in the here and now with us. And the more that you do this parts work, the more that they will feel safe to let you actually step into the life you're desiring. And, and lastly, the desires of your soul are meant for you. I believe that wholly and fully, and it's our healing work that gets us there. So everybody, thank you for the questions today. I hope you found this episode to be supportive for you, and I just wanted to give you a reminder that you make sense, all parts of you, always. And addressing our parts is what leads to the free, expanded life that we're desiring.