The Parts of me

“What do you need today?” “Email me if you need anything.” “Tell me what you need from me.”

All very reasonable and supportive things for someone to ask. And my therapist has asked me all of these many times in the last 2 ½ years. But I don’t know if, in that whole time, I’ve once managed to answer.

The parts of me

I usually mumble an “I don’t know” whilst in my head the gremlin voice tells me if I don’t know then I clearly don’t need anything and, if I don’t need anything I’m fine and shouldn’t be bothering anyone, that I am in fact making up my emotional turmoil and should shut up and skip off into the sunset. Or, better yet, crawl off and die.

I also often end up explaining that I’m empty, when I go looking for a ‘need’ I am left blank. But when I really examine that myself it’s not an emptiness, in fact quite the opposite – it’s a barrage of emotions, a barely bearable noise and a confusion of conflicting needs, wants, thoughts, feelings and discomfort.

In the last few weeks, despite my best efforts to move forward and be more structured on the ‘work’ of therapy, to address some of the real issues and get away from the continuum of crisis, drama, acting out and simple avoidance, I’ve ended up even more deeply troubled by the gremlin-like voice and attempts to hijack all the good stuff.

And I think, at the very serious risk of a bit of amateur psychology, I may have begun to see why.

You see, for the last 2 ½ years my therapist and I have, in the fleeting gaps between my crisis’s, avoidances and sidelining dramas, talked a lot about the things I struggle with; the death of my father, my lack of emotional support as a youngster, some attachment figures and inappropriate relationships, my body image, the list goes on but lets just say the list is sizable! In talking and exploring some of this ‘stuff’ it’s become increasingly apparent to me that there are several elements operating inside of me, each originating from different challenges in my past.

Last night I stumbled upon an article (because I now spend a lot of time ‘stumbling around’ the topic of psychology and psychotherapy – partly because the subject fascinates me and partly, I suspect, in an attempt to intellectualise my experience as this is safer territory for me) about complex trauma. I was hooked. It is, not only a fascinating subject, but one that resonated with me. Not to say I’ve experienced complex trauma (note my earlier mention of ‘amateur’) but there was much that I related to especially around the idea of there being essentially ‘parts’ that got somehow stuck at the points of trauma.

I got to thinking more about this and realized I have actually very clearly defined 2 of these ‘parts’. One, ‘little C’ is young, about 8 and she has lost her dad and, with her mum barely functioning and other family members playing out their own agenda, has no safe and secure attachment figure. The other I’m calling ‘14’ and she is a wild teenager who has fallen foul of a predatory influence - she takes risks, she’s self-destructive, she is suspicious of everyone, but she is shit scared of the world and herself. Of course, there is me now, the adult doing adulty things and trying to be a parent, a wife and run a business. And all the other parts that we’re yet to really find I think.

So, when the I’m asked what I need these parts fight it out. Little C does struggle to know what she needs because she hasn’t yet found her voice. My adult knows little C needs love, she needs security and safety, she needs also not to have to pretend to feel a way she doesn’t. But 14 is loud and she does not to ask anyone for anything. She really dislikes my therapist (as she would dislike anyone who would want to support her), he hasn’t backed off when she does her usual of acting out or being too much. This is the tactic that has seen off anyone who has suggested she might need something from someone else and protected her when the people she has turned to have let her down. There is no way she is going to ‘need’ anything. And 14 is driven by fear, the strength of which can overpower the needs of any other part of me.

What’s the answer? I ponder. How do I hear these parts, allow them to repair from the points of their trauma and make sure one of them doesn’t run amuck and sabotage my attempts to be holistically slightly less crazy?!

I think I need to listen better to each of them, I need to facilitate the dialogue, not let 14 take all the airspace but also not dismiss what she says. She’s bloody right to be skeptical about change, she is definitely allowed to be scared of this man I’m putting trust in. She’s had a lot of rules about men, to the extent that my own husband does not know about the vast majority of my vulnerabilities in case he should use them against me. He’s been on the scene over 20 years and she’s yet to grant him access to our fears and experiences from the past.

14 needs me to manage her, to tell her what is happening and why, to sit calmly through her teenage strops and not rise to her attempts at self-sabotage. 14 needs to build trust, to know her feelings are valid and it’s safe to have them. She needs to know that her body, and what she does with it and to it, doesn’t define her. And that other people can handle her and not find her too much.

Little C needs care and a safe reliable adult who doesn’t need her to behave any certain way and someone who can patiently give her a voice. Ultimately she needs this from me, but she can get some of it elsewhere whilst I’m still finding that hard.

And adult me needs help with both of these. To keep 14 calm and acknowledged, to build her trust and help her to come through the shame she feels about every part of herself. But mainly right now I need help caring for Little C whilst I’m not able to give her the patience and kindness she deserves just yet, she’s a good kid and deserved better than she got.

That’s what I need, that’s what I need for the parts of me that I now see.