0:00
yell at that part or you shame or get angry, that part's going to get more anxious because now it's
0:05
afraid of both the outside threat and the internal threat. Okay. Or an angry part that gets louder
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because it feels ignored or an avoidant part retreats deeper because it feels unsafe to come
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forward. And so compassion is the anecdote. Compassion is how you become the leader of your
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system and you meet with camaraderie your inner world. And this is what we're going to have to
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learn to do, especially if the voices that were outside of us, our external world, didn't give us
0:36
an example. Now, I oftentimes will help a client with this by paralleling how would you treat your
0:44
child or if your child was talking like this about themselves, what would you say? But if you don't
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have children or younger people in your world where you can see the parallel that's more appropriate
0:54
This even works with pets. If you know how to be kind to your dog or your cat because they're just helpless and they don't know what to do and they rely on you
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you can bring that energy, that compassion, that love, that understanding to your inner parts
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So let me give you some examples if you're not familiar with what that can look like
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Because some of us really didn't have any example and maybe many of us have to watch movies or TV to even get an idea of what that could look like
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So let's just start with like a fearful young part. So you might need to lean in and say, hey, sweetheart
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Hey, little one. I can feel that you're scared. Thank you for showing me what's still hurting and what was dangerous
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I'm here now. You're not alone in this anymore. Oftentimes, our parts were alone at the time
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And so they can't heal without relationship. And that doesn't require someone outside of you
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It requires you to you So let me give you some more dialogue for maybe a part that more protective like anger or avoidance or perfectionism which a lot of people don understand as armor
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or withdrawal. So this is going to be understanding about overwork. So I see you working so hard to
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protect me. I know you're doing this because you care. I'm curious, what are you afraid would
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happen if you didn't do this? So what's the danger if you stopped getting so angry or so perfect or
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so avoidant? What would happen? What is the threat if that would happen? And so that's where the
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curiosity needs to show up because this is how we're going to better learn what caused the need
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for this adaptation. And it takes some practice and I know that this sounds so crazy, but it really
2:36
is impactful. Now the next adaptation is about shame and shame is our most inhibitory emotion
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It shuts us down. It is a full contact emotion, and it shuts us down more than anything
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So we really have to be kind to parts that shame. So we need to start with things like, I'm not here to judge you
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You've carried this pain for a long time. Thank you for surviving
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You were so strong and so brave, and you really did the best that you could
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that can help to soften and slow down a part that is full of shame and carries a lot of burden from
3:15
shame critical parents or just a lot of abandonment or neglect and then we might need to be more vague
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because we don't really understand what a part is doing so for a part that we're not sure about yet
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we might say something like I noticed that you're here I want to understand you you don't have to
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change or go away. I'm just listening. And for those of you who are adults thinking about this
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we don't want to, thinking about the metaphor I talked about before where we're the car and
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whoever's driving the car is who's kind of taken over as one of our parts or our inner children
