Why “Part of Me Wants To...” Might Be More Literal Than You Think | Squamish Trauma Therapy
Have you ever said something like this?
“Part of me wants to leave the relationship, but part of me is terrified to be alone.” “Part of me knows I should rest, but part of me won’t stop working.”“One minute I feel totally fine, and the next I’m flooded and I don’t know why.”
Most of us talk this way without thinking twice about it. It turns out we’re onto something. A lot of modern therapy is built on the idea that the mind isn’t one single, unified “me.” It’s made up of different parts, each with its own feelings, beliefs, and job to do.
This isn’t about anything being wrong with you. It’s actually a pretty ordinary, human way the mind works, and understanding it can make a real difference in how you relate to yourself, especially if you’ve been through difficult or overwhelming experiences.
We’re All a Little Bit Multiple
Think about how differently you show up at work, with your parents, with your closest friend, or when you’re alone at 2am and can’t sleep. You’re still you, but different sides of you are in the driver’s seat at different times.
Therapist Richard Schwartz built an entire approach around this observation, called Internal Family Systems, or IFS. His idea is that we all have an inner “family” of parts, and like any family, some parts protect, some parts perform, some parts avoid, and some parts carry pain that hasn’t been dealt with yet.
Schwartz’s key insight is a hopeful one: no part is bad. Even the parts that cause us the most trouble, like the harsh inner critic, the part that shuts down, or the part that picks a fight, are usually trying to protect us in the only way they know how. Underneath all of that, Schwartz believed there’s a core “Self” in everyone, calm, curious, and compassionate, that’s capable of leading and caring for these parts once it has the chance.
When Parts Get Stuck
So why do some parts end up carrying so much weight?
EMDR therapy, developed by Francine Shapiro, offers a helpful piece of the puzzle. Shapiro’s model is built on a simple idea: our brains are naturally wired to process and make sense of what happens to us, filing experiences away so we can learn from them and move on. But sometimes, especially during moments that are frightening, overwhelming, or happen when we’re too young to make sense of them, that natural processing gets interrupted. The experience doesn’t get filed away properly. It stays “stuck,” almost frozen in time, still carrying the original images, emotions, and body sensations from when it happened.
This matters for our parts. A part that formed around a stuck memory can end up acting as though that difficult moment is still happening, even years or decades later. That’s often why a small, present-day trigger can suddenly bring up a reaction that feels bigger than the situation calls for. It’s not an overreaction. It’s an old part, responding to old pain, right here in the present.
The Part That Copes, and the Part That Remembers
There’s a third piece that helps tie this together, from an area of trauma research known as structural dissociation. In simple terms, this theory suggests that after very overwhelming experiences, especially ones that happened repeatedly, or early in life, the mind can develop a kind of split to help us survive.
One part learns to keep functioning: going to school or work, managing day-to-day life, often pushing painful memories and feelings out of awareness so we can keep functioning. Another part holds what didn’t get to be processed: the fear, the helplessness, the raw emotion from what happened. This split isn’t a flaw or a weakness; it’s an intelligent, protective response. It’s the mind doing exactly what it needed to do at the time to keep you moving forward.
The trouble is that this split, so useful in the moment, can outlive its usefulness. Long after the danger has passed, we can still feel like we’re either “carrying on” or “falling apart,” with not much room in between.
Why This Matters for You
Put these three perspectives together, and a picture starts to form:
We are naturally made up of different parts (Schwartz).
Some of those parts form around experiences that never got fully processed (Shapiro).
When those experiences were especially overwhelming, our functioning and our pain can end up held by different parts of us, rather than integrated into one coherent story (structural dissociation).
None of this means you’re broken, or “have multiple personalities,” or are somehow more complicated than everyone else. It means you’re human, and your mind did something adaptive to get you through hard things.
The good news is that parts can be understood, related to, and, with the right support, helped to feel less burdened and less alone. Therapy that takes parts seriously isn’t about getting rid of anything. It’s about getting curious about all of you, including the parts that protect, the parts that avoid, and the parts that still carry old pain, and helping them work together again, led by the calmer, wiser part of you that’s been there all along.
A Small Thing to Try This Week
You don’t need to do any deep digging to start noticing your parts. This week, try this:
Once a day, when you catch yourself feeling pulled in two directions, or reacting more strongly than the moment seems to call for, pause and get curious instead of judging yourself. You might ask silently:
“What part of me is showing up right now? What might it be trying to protect me from?”
You don’t need an answer right away. Just noticing that a part is there, and treating it with a bit of curiosity rather than criticism, is often the first small step toward feeling more at ease with yourself.
If any of this resonates with you, it might be worth exploring further together.
Understanding your parts is often the first step toward feeling more whole.