Love ALL Parts of Yourself

We tend to scour the world looking for love…through new experiences, other people, our pets. Where we first need to find love is in ourselves. We can be our own harshest critic. We don’t let ourselves get away with anything…”that was a dumb thing to say” or “I’m such an idiot” is often part of our internal dialogue. These voices of our Inner Critic really get in the way of loving our self. So you might think that we need to get rid of this Inner Critic and push it away. It seems that what we resist, persists and that doesn’t work well. We are actually being unloving towards a part of our self. We are disowning a part of self, the Inner Critic, and it doesn’t like that and starts yelling even louder.
So one way that I have found very helpful in learning to love myself more is to embrace ALL parts of me….and there are a whole bunch of parts. This is all based off of Roger Strachan’s work called Parts Work. For me, there is my Worrier, Perfectionist, 5 year old boy, and Warrior of Freedom just to name a few. There is also the True Self, which is comprised of all the different parts. So each part is a part of the True Self. Each has its own personality and way of seeing the world. Your face and body actually change depending on which part you are identified with in that moment. When you are identified with a certain part, that part actually believes it is the True Self and the only thing that matters and you are run by it. The goal is to notice which part is present and know that you are so much more than that part. You are the True Self, the voice of truth and reason, the wise elder, the part that hears all the others. Through dialoguing with my parts (yes I talk to myself) I have discovered that each one wants to be heard, to be understood, and to be loved.
So imagine that the True Self is the president and all the other parts are your cabinet members. It is the True Self’s job to listen to all the parts and honor them as unique and sacred. They all have an important message for you and they want to convey that. Each part is trying to communicate what is true for them. So each part has a truth but it is only part of the truth. As the True Self you listen to the parts with love and compassion and wisdom. Then the True Self as President gets to decide what he/she wants to do.
I want to add that the Worrier actually plays an integral part in my survival. If I never worried I would fall right off a cliff. So the Worrier needs to be listened to AND as True Self you get to decide consciously what you agree with and what you don’t.
Example: My Worrier is trying to tell me something…I may know this by feeling anxiety in my body. When I feel that anxiety, I am identified with the Worrier and not being the True Self. My mind may be racing saying, “you’re gonna fail, its not gonna work out, don’t even try.” First step is to be aware that the Worrier is present. Then you want to objectify the Worrier by acknowledging its presence, “I hear you and I love you and what are you trying to communicate to me Worrier?” “This might not work and we don’t want to fail so lets not try.” “Ok, thank you for your opinion, I am aware of that possibility and I have decided to go for it anyway.”
The key here is objectifying the part. When you do that, instead of being the Worrier, you zoom out to being the Witness (True Self) of the Worrier. You draw power away from the Worrier, which helps to relieve the anxiety, and you get to stand in your power as the True Self.
This powerful way of being with yourself is work that we can do together in a much deeper and more all-encompassing way. If you have any questions feel free to ask me. Be a unified self and love ALL parts of you. It feels so much better to love my Worrier then to hate him because it doesn’t feel good to hate part of myself.
Thank you Writer part for expressing all of me in such an eloquent way!

-True Nature Coach