Parts get stuck because they took on jobs in childhood to help us survive, and nobody ever relieved them. A loyal child part keeps protecting us in old ways, often without our knowing, until a true Adult turns up to take over. When the wrong part is in charge, we take a frightened child to work, let the ego rule rather than serve, or put Spirit above the rest of us, and the result is anxiety, conflict and ungrounded lives.
What does it mean for a part to be stuck? #
It means a part is still doing a job it took on long ago, as if nothing had changed. The fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer, the part of us that stayed and coped in childhood, is “both a part developed in our childhood (to fit in with family, school, religion, peers etc.), and it is a present-day part that is still running our everyday life.” Most people have no idea this is happening: the extent to which it runs their lives “is often entirely unknown and unconscious to them.”1
Why do parts get stuck? #
Because, as children, we learnt to survive by changing who we were. When a child is told they are unlovable for being angry, crying or answering back, they turn other people’s judgement into their own: “we turn other people saying to us ‘you are unlovable for being boisterous’ into ‘that boisterous part of me is unlovable’. We then learn to repress that part of us and send it away.”2 The part that stays has to cope. It learns “to bite our lip or hold our tongue; to always be ready for a fight; to not show weakness; to not speak out; to swallow our sadness”.3
These strategies made sense at the time. The trouble is that they carry on into adult life, where they are rarely needed.
Why don’t stuck parts just let go? #
For two reasons. First, they do not know the danger has passed: “The fort-holder in us does not realise that the war of childhood is over. They are ever on guard like the loyal soldier, ever ready to step in and protect us (albeit in ways that may now no longer be appropriate, or serving us anymore).”4
Second, there is often nobody to hand over to. A fort-holder is “a child part, and still acting out childhood conditioning if left to their own devices.” It can step back and become the Adult’s bodyguard, “kind of like the sergeant handing control over to a commanding officer, once (or, if!) a commanding officer actually turns up.”5 Without that commanding officer, the child part tends to stay at its post.
What part does our culture play? #
A large one. Hunter-gatherer cultures held initiations that helped young people leave childhood behind and become Adults. We no longer do, and as a result “we live in a society not of Adults but of adults; a society of children in adult-sized bodies.”6 Most people “are stuck in the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer identities they settled on when they were little, unconsciously playing out childhood patterns in their “adult” lives”.7
Childhood itself can make facing the truth impossible. “For a child in a dysfunctional family, it is often simply too psychologically and emotionally dangerous for them to face the truth of what is going on around them.”8 And on a larger scale, the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer was “an act of the mass suppression of the human psyche.”9 A culture that pushes whole parts of us away keeps those parts stuck.
What happens when a child part is in charge? #
We ask it to do things it should never have to do. Take someone anxious about an event at work, who realises the anxious part is their five-year-old self: “The obvious question now is why on earth they are thinking of sending their five-year-old child-part to work next week? No wonder that part is feeling anxious and overwhelmed!”10
“Any part of us that carries childhood wounds is a child-part, not an Adult.” Such a part needs care, not responsibility: “Your wounded inner-child needs your Adult to arrive and parent it.” Over time, “your wounded inner-child should really be an outer-child”, a part we look after, but one that is “no longer in charge.”11 See What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?
What happens when we mistake one part for “I”? #
We stop noticing the others. “We are constantly moving our sense of self from one part to another, usually without being consciously aware we are doing so.”12 Most often our awareness settles in the ego, “the part-of-self that most people are firmly and habitually conflated into.” Indeed, “For most people, most of the time their Aware SelfAware Self. The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this is in the stories, thoughts and beliefs of their middle-world self-identity.”13 The rest of the inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer goes unheard.
What happens when the ego is in charge? #
It becomes a tyrant, when it should be a tool. The middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer is necessary, but “The ego does need to be reined in, as an ego out of control is indeed a monster.”14 The Fall itself was “the left hemisphere of the brain and the ego seizing control”.15 The answer is not to destroy the ego. It needs a different place in the tribe: “The ego is not “bad”, it just needs to be of service and not in charge.”16
What happens when Spirit is put above the other parts? #
We become ungrounded. Hierarchical spirituality “tells us the “highest” and most “noble” part of us is our Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer part”, and that the other parts must be denied.17 Trying to transcend the middle-world self and Soul through Spirit alone “often results in becoming overly-detached, other-worldly, and ungrounded.”18
Inflating the Upper-World leads to “a top-heavy, imbalanced and ungrounded spirituality”. The healthy alternative is that no part rules: “a healthy human is someone whose different parts are in balance, and where no one part dominates any other part.”19
How does the wrong part being in charge show in our relationships? #
In blame and projection. The drama triangle of victim, persecutor and rescuer “is a game played by children, not by Adults.” It is not played in the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer: “It is a middle-world game.”20 Disowned parts also get pushed outwards. “In disowning things in ourselves, we often then project them out onto other people, and then find those people intolerable or disturbing.”21 Someone who has disowned their own vulnerability may despise weakness in others.
How do stuck parts get unstuck? #
By being listened to, healed and relieved of duty. With the fort-holder, the task is to “thank the present-day fort-holder part, and persuade them that the war is over and that they can now ‘stand at ease'”, and to give them “a new, more appropriate role in our adult life.”22 This involves “our stepping into being more adult and taking charge.” See How do we map, hold council with and work with the inner tribe?
