As I relaxed into somatic experiencing, which I haven’t done in years, I began to notice many amazing things.
I’ve found the natural link between somatic experiencing and integrating parts/Internal Family Systems therapy.
As you relax and feel the sensations of your body without judgement, slowly going from comfort to discomfort, you’ll find that after a while, you shift out of an ego dominated state.
You begin to return to your true self. Naturally grounded, curious, open. This is the backdrop of doing parts therapy. From this state, you can easily recognize when you split into your different parts.
I will give an example:
As I relaxed, I remembered that I had to drive to see my family. I dislike driving and I absolutely hate traffic. It makes me extremely anxious. Due to being in many accidents, and other stressful driving experiences, I seem to have exiled the part of myself that enjoys driving, and sees it as an easy, enjoyable experience.
There is a part of myself that now has to protect this part. It makes me anxious to drive because it believes the anxiety will help it avoid accidents and other negative events. Since feeling so anxious about driving wears me out, there is ANOTHER part of myself that is also protecting the exiled “Driver,” who makes me put off driving as long as possible.
Now this has created an internal conflict.
I want to go and see my family, but I don’t want to feel the fear of driving. The part of me that is putting off driving is also causing another part of me to feel immense guilt because it will make things much harder for myself in the morning.
It also activates parts of myself that feel shame because I’m an adult with a childish fear of driving. An adult who has put off driving all day even though I know I’m safe and am generally a good driver.
Instead of tuning in to this conflict I’ve chosen to ignore it, with rising levels of stress and anxiety all day – until now.
In IFS therapy, you go through a process of speaking to your parts and gently guiding them to a resolution, but just gaining an awareness of the issue helps a lot in resolving this.
An automated IFS therapy concept would be extremely useful for this field. Increasing psychic communication with parts of yourself, helping to guide them out of their negative roles and into positive happy ones.