How to deal with "difficult" parts of yourself

We all have parts of ourselves that are sometimes difficult to love. Learning to cope with and be with the difficult parts of ourselves is an essential step towards healing and self acceptance. Learning to accept these “difficult” parts is an important part of trauma healing, healing from depression, anxiety, or low self esteem.

[Transcription]

0:00:00: Hi everyone, Connor Moss here, and I want to talk today a little bit about how to deal with difficult parts of yourself that you might not like. So I think we all have parts of ourselves that are not our favorite parts, aspects of our personalities or younger parts that might still be there from earlier childhood that come up at inopportune moments. So you might notice this if generally, you're really well equipped to deal with your life, but then in one or certain instances, this other part of you comes out that might be really angry or get really fearful or get really depressed and lazy. So these parts of yourself, these different aspects of your personality that come out, I think it's really important to learn how to navigate them, learn how to be with them, and really learn how to love them, which I'll get into in a little bit, because this is you, this is part of you. So, especially when there's trauma, these types of parts can get stuck or you might have specific aspects of your personality that feel really unsafe or uncomfortable to be with.

0:01:25.1: So especially when there's trauma, but also just in general, and I think it's really helpful to learn how to navigate these different parts of yourself, and ultimately how to be kinder to yourself, because in the end, these negative parts of yourself that you don't like, if you're mean to them, if you're self-critical when they come up, then you're not being self-compassionate. And self-compassion is really important for a healthy mindset and a healthy self-esteem in general. So today, I'm gonna talk about four ways that you can deal with and be with parts of yourself that you might not like. So the first way that you're gonna be with them is you're gonna love them, okay? So this seems simple, and it's also really difficult, and it's also kind of confusing for some people, so there might be self-destructive parts or really anxious parts that cause a lot of problems, and the last thing you wanna do is love and accept this part of you that's causing so much problems in your life, but if you can't accept and appreciate yourself as you are, it's gonna be really hard to build positive self-esteem and build positive mental health in general.

0:02:41.3: So when a negative part of you or a negative aspect of you comes up in your life, I want you to think about, "How can I love, or if not love, how can I accept this part of myself?" So notice if there's a negative voice that comes in and says, "This is not okay, this behavior is not okay, this reaction is not okay," and starts to get negative and instead try to replace it with a positive or at least neutrally accepting attitude towards this part of yourself. So the second idea I have is that you can personify these parts and form a relationship with them. So I think I've talked about this in one of my other videos, but if you can give a name and a face, and a personality to this part of yourself, it can help you form a better relationship with it. So you can notice if you have a really fearful anxious part, you can notice it and assign it a name, or imagine what types of clothes it wears and what personality it has. I know it might sound a little strange, but in personifying, you're making it easier to form a relationship with this part. So rather than just thinking about this negative anxious energy you have, you're noticing that there's a part of you, there's this personality side of you that is really anxious, and when you notice it come in, you can say, "Hello, anxious part, I see that you're here," and really just talk to it like you would a friend or someone that you're trying to comfort.

0:04:21.5: So by personifying these parts and really identifying them, and giving them a name and a space, you can more easily have compassion and empathy for this part of yourself. So the third thing that you wanna do is, you wanna try to understand where this part might be coming from. So if you have a really negative or difficult aspect of your life that you're dealing with, most likely, there's some root cause that's causing this energy to come up in your life. So when you think about coping with, or being with, or loving these negative parts of yourself, it can be really helpful to try to understand where it might be coming from. If you have a really depressed part of your personality, a depressed persona, or a depressed part, and you notice it coming in, you can kind of take a step back and try to think, "What might be triggering this, or why might this part be present?" You can even ask it. You can say, "Hello, depressed part, why are you here today? What are you here to show me? What are you here to teach me?" Keeping that welcoming attitude and that curiosity to try to figure out what might have caused this and why this part might be here. If you can really understand more about why these difficult parts are coming in, then it can be a lot easier to attend to them.

0:05:49.7: So getting to the root cause instead of just saying, "Gosh, I wish I wasn't so anxious," or, "Gosh, I wish I wasn't so depressed," try and to understand where might this difficult part of your life or part of your personality be coming from. So the fourth idea I have, which comes a lot from Family Systems and Richard Schwartz, is to treat this part of you like a younger version of yourself. Now, this might sound a little complicated, but going back to what I was saying about trauma, a lot of these difficult aspects of yourself or difficult parts of yourself that you might be having trouble with, often originate from a trauma at a younger age, where a part of you got stuck in that one mentality. So if you've been through a really difficult childhood and in that childhood, your way of coping was to shut down, then this depressed part might be an expression of that shutdown that you experienced at an earlier age. Similarly, if you've been through a trauma at a young age and your response was to get really anxious and try to manage your situation, say your parents want a lot, and you as a young kid tried to make it better, then your anxious part might be an expression of this experience in earlier life, when your response was to try to get really anxious.

0:07:16.9: If you look at these parts of yourself and you try to understand that it's just a younger part of yourself that's a little stuck and a little confused and just kind of acting out, then it can really help with having compassion, having love, having empathy for yourself for this part of yourself. This is also where the idea of re-parenting comes in. When this depressed part or when this anxious part from your childhood comes up, you have the opportunity to re-parent how you would like this part dealt with. Just like how you might deal with, how you would have liked to be dealt with as a child when you were going through this. So I hope that's not too complicated, but the basic idea is to love, personify and then see this part of yourself as a younger version of yourself, and hopefully that will help you attend to this part and see that it's not just causing trouble, this depression is not just an impediment in your path, it's actually there for a reason, and it's probably there from your childhood, and you have this opportunity to really attend to yourself and re-parent yourself in the way that you'd like to be re-parented.

0:08:33.8: Dealing with these parts of yourself, as you can see, is a real opportunity for healing actually, it's not just how to get rid of your anxiety or how to get rid of your depression, it's how to heal where these energies might be coming from and how to attend to yourself and your younger self in a new way. So those are my ideas on how to love and be with these parts of yourself. Again, just to underline, you wanna be compassionate with yourself with all aspects of yourself, even the parts that you don't like so much. And hopefully through these suggestions that I have today, that might help you form a couple of ideas of how you might be kinder to yourself, how you might have more compassion for all parts of yourself, even the parts that you don't like so much.

0:09:22.7: So I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or you'd like to connect, you're always welcome to reach out. I do a lot of work with folks around this type of thing in trauma therapy, drug and alcohol counseling as well and couples therapy around relationships, so you're always welcome to reach out and I'd be happy to talk. Okay, that's it for today. Take care.

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