Have you ever wondered why you can KNOW you’re worthy of love but still feel anxious when someone you like takes hours to reply?
Why you can affirm that money comes easily to you, yet feel uncomfortable spending it, receiving it? OR YOUR REALITY IS STILL SHOWING YOU THAT YOU ARE BROKE DESPITE MANIFESTING WEALTH FOR YEARS????
Why you can genuinely want to be confident, visible, successful and loved, but find yourself doing things that seem to contradict everything you’re trying to create?
Girl, let’s talk. Because there is a reason you can consciously want one thing whilst experiencing a completely different emotional response underneath.
Understanding what’s happening requires us to look at the different parts of ourselves.
Welcome to parts work.
In this article, we’re going to explore what parts work actually is, why you might experience conflicting feelings within yourself, how your body fits into the picture, how to work with your protective parts, and, of course, what any of this has to do with manifesting your dream life.
Because if you’re serious about healing, developing your self-concept and becoming the woman you want to be, this is something worth understanding.
Let’s get into it.
1. What exactly is parts work?
Parts work is an approach to self-exploration and emotional healing based on the idea that we can experience different inner perspectives, feelings, beliefs, needs and protective responses.
Rather than seeing yourself as one fixed personality that always thinks, feels and behaves consistently, parts work invites you to recognise that different aspects of your inner world can respond differently to different situations.
For example, imagine you’re a woman who genuinely wants a healthy, loving relationship.
One part of you might be excited about meeting someone, falling in love and building a beautiful life together.
Another part might be frightened of being rejected, embarrassed or abandoned.
Another might want to keep your guard up so you never have to experience that kind of hurt again.
And another might be frustrated because you feel as though you’re ready for love, yet something inside you keeps pulling back.
Sound familiar?
You can want something with your whole conscious mind and still experience fear, hesitation or resistance when it starts becoming a possibility.
Parts work gives you a way to understand these different responses instead of fighting against yourself.
One well-known approach is Internal Family Systems (IFS), developed by Richard Schwartz. IFS uses the language of parts to explore our inner experiences and encourages a compassionate relationship with them.
There are other forms of parts work, too, and they don’t all use exactly the same framework.
For the purposes of this article, we’re exploring parts work as a way of getting curious about your inner experiences, understanding your protective responses and learning to respond to yourself with more compassion.
Sometimes, recognising that a part of you feels frightened is more than enough to begin.
2. Why do we have different parts?
Think about the experiences you’ve had throughout your life.
The way people treated you. The situations that hurt you. The moments when you felt rejected, embarrassed, overlooked, unsafe or misunderstood.
Think about what you learnt from those experiences.
Perhaps you learnt that being vulnerable could leave you hurt.
Perhaps you learnt that making mistakes meant being criticised.
Perhaps you learnt that you needed to be attractive, successful, helpful or agreeable to receive approval.
Or perhaps you discovered that staying quiet, keeping people happy or never asking for too much helped you avoid uncomfortable situations.
Over time, experiences like these can shape our beliefs, emotional responses and ways of protecting ourselves.
Imagine a little girl who repeatedly feels that she has to perform well to receive praise.
She might grow up with a part of herself that pushes her to achieve, work harder and constantly improve.
On the surface, this might look like ambition.
But underneath, that part might be carrying a fear that making a mistake means she’s not good enough.
Now imagine another girl who experiences rejection whenever she expresses her needs.
She might develop a tendency to people-please, avoid confrontation or hide what she really wants.
That response may help her feel safer in certain situations, even if it becomes frustrating later in life.
These responses don’t necessarily develop through one dramatic event. They can emerge through repeated experiences, the environments we grow up in and the meanings we attach to what happens to us.
A response that once helped you cope can sometimes become a pattern that no longer serves you.
And this is where parts work becomes interesting.
Instead of looking at a behaviour and immediately deciding that you need to stop doing it, you become curious about the reason it exists.
What might this response be trying to achieve?
What does it fear would happen if it stopped?
What has it learnt about the world, other people or you?
And what might it need now?
Those questions can open up a very different relationship with yourself.
3. The different types of parts
If you’ve ever explored IFS, you may have come across the terms protectors and exiles.
Let’s break these down in a way that actually makes sense.
Protective parts
Protective parts are the aspects of your inner experience that try to prevent, manage or minimise emotional pain and perceived danger.
They may encourage you to avoid certain situations, control your environment, seek reassurance, strive for perfection or keep people at a distance.
For example:
The perfectionist part
This part believes that if you do everything perfectly, you can avoid criticism, embarrassment or failure.
It might push you to overwork, obsess over details or delay starting something until you feel completely ready.
Its intention may be protection, even when its approach leaves you exhausted.
The people-pleasing part
This part might encourage you to agree when you want to say no, suppress your feelings or prioritise everyone else’s needs.
Perhaps it fears rejection, conflict or disappointing people.
It may believe that keeping everyone happy is the safest way to maintain connection.
The avoidant part
This part might encourage you to procrastinate, cancel plans, withdraw from relationships or avoid opportunities.
It isn’t necessarily trying to ruin your progress.
It may anticipate discomfort and attempt to protect you by keeping you away from the situation altogether.
The controlling part
This part may want to plan every detail, anticipate every possible outcome and ensure nothing catches you off guard.
Uncertainty might feel uncomfortable, so control becomes its preferred way of seeking safety.
The part that seeks validation
This part might feel most secure when other people find you attractive, praise your achievements or reassure you that you’re wanted.
It may have learnt to look outside of yourself for evidence that you’re worthy.
None of these examples means you definitely have a particular part. They’re simply ways of recognising patterns you might relate to.
And protective parts aren’t inherently bad.
Being organised, wanting approval, avoiding danger and working hard can all have useful functions.
The question is whether a response is helping you navigate your present circumstances or keeping you stuck in a pattern you no longer want.
Vulnerable parts
In IFS, the term exiles refers to parts that carry vulnerable feelings and experiences, such as shame, fear, loneliness or rejection.
These are often the feelings that protective parts try to keep us from experiencing.
Imagine that a part of you carries a deep fear of not being chosen.
Another part might respond by constantly seeking reassurance.
Another might encourage you to become emotionally unavailable so that nobody gets the chance to reject you first.
Another might push you to become the most attractive, impressive or desirable person in the room.
Different responses, but they may all be connected to the same underlying fear.
This is why focusing exclusively on the behaviour doesn’t always give you the full picture.
You might successfully stop checking someone’s social media, for example, but still feel consumed by the fear of being replaced.
Or you might stop people-pleasing in one situation but find yourself doing it again somewhere else.
The behaviour is one part of the picture. Understanding the emotional experience underneath can help you approach the pattern more thoughtfully.
One important note: you don’t need to uncover a hidden childhood memory or identify a specific origin for every feeling. Sometimes the most useful thing is simply to acknowledge what you’re experiencing now.
4. Why fighting your parts can keep you stuck
Let’s say you have a part of you that becomes anxious whenever you start getting close to someone romantically.
You might respond by telling yourself:
I’m confident. I don’t care what he thinks. I’m secure. I never get anxious.
But underneath, you feel frightened.
Perhaps your chest tightens. Perhaps you start overthinking every message. Perhaps you suddenly want to cancel the date.
Now you’re dealing with two experiences at once.
There’s the original anxiety, and then there’s the frustration or shame you feel about being anxious in the first place.
You might tell yourself you’re ruining your manifestation, that you shouldn’t feel this way or that you need to fix yourself before you can have the relationship you want.
And the cycle continues.
Parts work invites you to try a different approach.
Instead of immediately trying to eliminate the anxiety, you might acknowledge:
A part of me feels frightened about getting close to someone.
Notice the difference.
You’re not declaring that your entire identity is anxious. You’re recognising that a particular response is present.
You can then become curious about it.
What is this part afraid of?
What does it think might happen?
What is it trying to prevent?
What happens in my body when I pay attention to it?
What would it be like to acknowledge this fear without criticising myself for having it?
You aren’t agreeing with every fear the part presents. You’re creating space to understand the experience before deciding how to respond.
You can validate a feeling without accepting every conclusion that comes with it.
A part might feel convinced that one unanswered message means you’re unwanted. You can acknowledge how painful that uncertainty feels without treating the conclusion as a fact.
This distinction is important.
Compassion doesn’t mean letting every fear dictate your choices. It means learning to respond to yourself without adding unnecessary shame to an already difficult experience.
5. What is the role of the body in parts work?
Now we’re getting into the somatic side of things.
The word somatic relates to the body.
Somatic parts work brings attention to the way emotions, memories, stress responses and inner experiences may show up through bodily sensations.
Have you ever received a message that triggered anxiety and immediately felt your stomach drop?
Or walked into a room and noticed your shoulders tense before you consciously realised you felt uncomfortable?
Perhaps rejection creates a sinking sensation in your chest. Perhaps embarrassment makes your face feel hot. Perhaps the thought of speaking up creates a knot in your stomach.
These physical sensations can accompany emotional responses.
Sometimes we recognise what’s happening emotionally before we can put it into words. Other times, noticing a bodily sensation can help us become more aware of what we’re experiencing.
This is one reason body awareness can be useful in parts work.
Rather than analysing every thought, you might slow down and ask:
What am I noticing in my body right now?
Does this feeling seem connected to something I’m experiencing emotionally?
Can I make a little space for this sensation without needing to get rid of it immediately?
The aim isn’t to force your body to relax or interpret every sensation as evidence of a hidden wound.
It’s to develop a more attentive relationship with your internal experience.
What does somatic parts work actually look like?
Imagine you’re about to go on a date.
You want to go. You’ve been hoping to meet someone you genuinely like.
But as the date approaches, you notice your chest tightening and thoughts appearing about cancelling.
Instead of immediately forcing yourself to be positive, you pause.
First, you orient yourself to the present.
You look around your room, notice the objects around you and remind yourself that you’re here, in the present moment.
Then you acknowledge the response.
A part of me feels frightened about going on this date.
You notice the sensation in your chest without trying to force it away.
You become curious about the part.
What are you worried might happen?
Perhaps you notice a fear of being rejected, feeling embarrassed or getting your hopes up only to be disappointed.
You don’t need to force an answer. You might notice a thought, an emotion, an image or nothing particularly clear at all.
You can then offer yourself some reassurance:
I understand that this feels vulnerable. We don’t have to rush. We can take this one step at a time.
You don’t have to make the fear disappear before deciding what to do.
You might still go on the date. You might decide you need more time. The important thing is that you’re making room for your experience instead of automatically treating it as something that must be suppressed.
And if focusing on your body makes you feel more overwhelmed, you can stop, open your eyes and return your attention to your surroundings.
Somatic work should not become another situation where you’re forcing yourself to push through discomfort.
6. What does parts work have to do with manifestation?
GIRL. Let’s get into this, because this is where things get particularly interesting for those of us who love working on our self-concept and manifesting our dream lives.
If you’ve spent time in manifestation spaces, you’ve probably heard about changing your assumptions, embodying your desired identity and aligning your thoughts with the reality you want to experience.
Perhaps you’ve used affirmations, visualisation, subliminals or other practices to cultivate a new self-concept.
These practices can be meaningful ways of focusing your attention, clarifying your intentions and mentally rehearsing the experiences you want.
But have you ever noticed that you can consciously desire something while another part of you feels uncomfortable about it?
Let’s explore some examples.
Manifesting your dream relationship
You want a loving, secure relationship.
You affirm that you’re worthy of love, that you’re chosen and that healthy relationships are available to you.
But when someone you genuinely like starts showing interest, you feel anxious.
You wonder whether he’s going to lose interest. You overanalyse his messages. You worry about saying the wrong thing.
Perhaps you find yourself wanting to withdraw before he has the opportunity to reject you.
From a manifestation perspective, you might immediately think you need to fix your self-concept.
But parts work invites you to look at the experience from another angle.
What if a part of you is frightened of the vulnerability involved in receiving love?
What if another part believes that getting your hopes up will only lead to disappointment?
What if one part wants a relationship, while another believes that remaining emotionally guarded is the safest option?
You don’t need to abandon your desired self-concept to explore these feelings.
You can continue cultivating the belief that you’re worthy of love while also acknowledging the part of you that finds intimacy frightening.
You can remind yourself that feeling anxious doesn’t make you unworthy of a relationship.
You can learn to tolerate uncertainty, communicate your needs and make choices that support the kind of relationship you want.
You don’t have to shame the frightened part of you in order to become a woman who experiences healthy love.
Manifesting money and abundance
Let’s say you want to become wealthy.
You visualise your dream home, imagine yourself driving your dream car and affirm that you’re capable of creating financial abundance.
But when an opportunity arises, you hesitate.
Perhaps you’re afraid of failing publicly.
Perhaps you worry about being judged if you become successful.
Perhaps spending money makes you anxious, even when the purchase is affordable.
Perhaps you struggle to ask for what your work is worth.
Instead of concluding that you’re blocking your abundance, you could explore what those responses mean to you.
Does a part of you associate success with pressure?
Does another fear losing what you gain?
Does receiving more money bring up concerns about responsibility, visibility or other people’s expectations?
These are questions worth exploring, not assumptions to make about yourself.
Parts work may help you understand your relationship with money and respond to financial decisions more thoughtfully.
You can combine that self-understanding with practical action: improving your skills, setting prices, managing your finances and pursuing opportunities.
Manifestation doesn’t have to mean ignoring the practical steps involved in creating the life you want.
Manifesting confidence and becoming your dream self
Perhaps your desired identity is a confident, secure woman who expresses herself freely.
You want to stop worrying about what people think. You want to be visible, take opportunities and feel comfortable being yourself.
Yet, whenever you consider posting online, speaking up or putting yourself out there, you feel exposed.
A part of you may fear criticism.
Another may associate visibility with embarrassment.
Another may believe that staying unnoticed is safer than risking judgement.
You can affirm that you’re confident while also giving yourself space to understand those responses.
You can begin taking small steps towards visibility without demanding that every part of you feels completely fearless first.
You might post something without checking the reactions constantly. You might express an opinion even when you feel slightly nervous. You might allow yourself to be seen without trying to control everyone’s perception of you.
Over time, experiences like these can help you develop new evidence about what you’re capable of handling.
And that brings us to an important point.
8. How does parts work support your self-concept?
Your self-concept includes the beliefs, perceptions and assumptions you hold about yourself.
Perhaps you see yourself as attractive, capable, worthy, intelligent or deserving of love.
Perhaps you also hold beliefs that feel less supportive.
You might believe that you’re difficult to love, that people always leave or that you have to work hard to prove your worth.
Sometimes, these beliefs can coexist.
You can consciously believe that you deserve a healthy relationship while still experiencing a strong fear of rejection.
You can know that you’re capable while feeling frightened of failure.
You can want to be visible while worrying about what people will say.
Parts work gives you an opportunity to explore these experiences without reducing your entire identity to the most uncomfortable belief you hold.
For example, rather than saying:
I’m so insecure. I always ruin things.
You might say:
A part of me feels insecure when I start caring about someone, and I want to understand that response.
That shift creates space between you and the feeling.
You can recognise that the feeling is present without treating it as the complete truth about who you are.
You can then practise responding to yourself from a more grounded perspective.
You might remind yourself that you can care about someone without abandoning yourself, that uncertainty is a normal part of relationships and that another person’s response does not determine your worth.
This doesn’t mean a single conversation with a part will permanently transform your self-concept.
Change often involves repetition, reflection, new experiences and practising different responses over time.
But you can begin building a relationship with yourself that is less dependent on criticism and more rooted in understanding.
And that is a worthwhile change in its own right.
9. How to Begin Your Parts Work Journey
Exploring your inner world on your own can sometimes feel confusing. You might recognise that you’re triggered without understanding what you need, or find yourself overthinking your feelings instead of connecting with them.
A guided experience gives you space to slow down and turn your attention towards yourself in a more intentional way.
With a personalised approach, the experience can be shaped around the particular patterns, feelings and situations you want to explore. Rather than following a generic exercise, you can have a guided audio created with your individual experiences and goals in mind.
This can be especially meaningful if you’re working towards a specific vision for your life, whether that’s a healthy relationship, greater confidence, financial abundance, a successful business or simply feeling more secure in who you are.
I make Bespoke Somatic Parts Work Audios, personalised guided experiences created around your individual emotional patterns, inner experiences and personal goals.
10. Common mistakes to avoid when doing parts work
As with any self-development practice, it’s possible to turn parts work into another thing you feel you have to get right.
Let’s avoid that.
Mistake 1: Trying to get rid of a part.
The intention isn’t to eliminate every fearful, angry, insecure or protective response.
You can learn from a part, understand its concerns and develop new ways of responding without demanding that it disappear.
Mistake 2: Forcing yourself to uncover a childhood wound.
Not every current difficulty has one obvious childhood origin. You don’t need to search for a hidden memory or assume that a particular experience caused everything you’re struggling with.
Start with what you actually notice.
Mistake 3: Treating every thought as a message from a part.
You don’t have to analyse every thought, sensation or passing emotion.
Parts work is a tool for understanding your experience, not a requirement to interpret everything that happens in your mind.
Mistake 4: Expecting every session to feel profound.
Sometimes you’ll notice something meaningful. Sometimes you’ll feel very little.
Neither experience determines whether you’re making progress.
Mistake 5: Using parts work to avoid taking action. (oop, this was deffo me at one point)
Understanding your fear of rejection is valuable, but it doesn’t mean you must wait until rejection no longer scares you before you date.
Understanding your fear of failure doesn’t mean you must completely resolve it before pursuing an opportunity.
You can make room for your feelings while taking manageable steps towards what matters to you.
Mistake 6: Pushing beyond your capacity.
You do not have to revisit painful memories, remain with overwhelming sensations or force yourself to keep going.
A gentle practice that respects your limits is preferable to treating emotional intensity as proof that you’re doing deep work.
11. Does parts work replace affirmations, subliminals or visualisation?
Absolutely not.
These approaches can serve different purposes, and you can choose the practices that feel useful to you.
Imagine that your affirmation is:
I am worthy of a healthy, loving relationship.
You might use that affirmation to reinforce the belief that you deserve healthy love.
But if you notice a part of you becoming frightened whenever someone gets close, you can explore that response rather than treating it as a failure of the affirmation.
You might work with the part, acknowledge its concerns and then continue practising the beliefs and behaviours that support healthy relationships.
Similarly, you can visualise your dream life while exploring any discomfort that arises when you imagine yourself experiencing it.
These practices don’t need to compete.
The key is to avoid turning any of them into another way of criticising yourself for not being further along.
-Lots of love,
Quantum Leaping baddie