These are parts of 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 formed in childhood, and a child part is any part still carrying a childhood wound. When we cannot be all of who we are, some parts are sent away, the Orphans, which shamanism can find and bring back; other parts stay behind to cope, the fort-holders, loyal protectors such as the inner criticInner critic. A fort-holder whose weapon is shame; deflated by self-compassion, not obeyed. Read the full answer or the pleaser. None of them is the enemy: they need listening to, caring for and an Adult to take charge.
What are child parts? #
Parts of us still living in childhood. We have many parts of self, and “Most of these are formed in childhood and, until we do the necessary healing, these childhood parts are the ones that we unconsciously and habitually inhabit.” And “any part of us that carries childhood wounds is a child-part, not an Adult.”1 What such a part needs is a loving parent, and that parent is our own Adult: “your wounded inner-child should really be an outer-child.”
How do these parts form? #
Through the conditions placed on our worth. In Carl Rogers’s terms, “We learn to turn a ‘condition of worth’ from others into a ‘condition of self-worth’; 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 What we become instead is the mask we wear.
What are Orphan parts? #
Parts we have sent away: our self-confidence, assertiveness, inquisitiveness, vulnerability, playfulness, sexuality, innocence and so on. The Orphan is cast out, exiled, parentless and abandoned, and needs to be found, healed and integrated back into the self, a process known as shamanic soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer. An Orphan is a lost soul partSoul-part. A small-s, middle-world part of the self that can be lost (sent away) and can be retrieved. Not the capital-S Soul. Read the full answer. This is where shamanism adds to psychotherapy, because sometimes “A part is not just repressed but has actually left altogether.” See What is soul retrieval?
What are fort-holder parts? #
The parts that stayed. When part of us leaves, “part of us stayed behind and carried on, ‘holding the fort’ so to speak.” The fort-holder is often the very part that sent the Orphan away, “to try and protect us, and help us to survive.”3 It is still at work: “The fort-holder in us does not realise that the war of childhood is over. They are ever on guard like the loyal soldier”.4 And it is, like the parts it protects, a child part.
What kinds of fort-holder are there? #
Many, each with its own strategy: the inner critic, the perfectionist, the pusher, the pleaser, the self-saboteur, the joker, the pacifier, the rebel. They are tired but faithful: “The fort holder parts of us are often exhausted, but keep loyally soldiering, trying to look after us in the only way they know how.” Meeting them, listening to them with kindness and thanking them can go a very long way in helping heal them.
What is a protector-controller? #
A term from another parts-of-self therapy. It is not used in Paul Francis’s books. How it lines up with Therapeutic Shamanism’s own map of the parts is explained in the student sections.
How are these parts healed? #
With respect, and with their consent. “I have come to have the utmost respect and admiration for the fort-holder. They are there to protect us.” And “no deep or permanent change happens without the fort-holder’s consent.”5 Healing can include journeying back to meet the fort-holder in childhood and asking the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this to help it, and thanking the present-day part so it can stand at ease. In time, the fort-holder steps back to become “the ‘body-guard’ of the adult person in charge”.6 Orphans are found and brought back by soul retrieval, and then welcomed into everyday life.
Why should forgiveness not be forced? #
Because forced forgiveness is denial. Jeff Brown calls it “forgiveness bypassing”. Rather than face and work through the anger, grief and pain, people choose to ‘forgive’.7 Forgiveness has its place, but only when it comes of itself: “When forgiveness is healthy, it is something that emerges in an organic way from working through the issues. And if forgiveness does not emerge, then that is absolutely fine too.” What harms is faking it.
Understanding is not the same as excusing. “It is perfectly possible to know your parents may have been doing their best, and still acknowledge that you did not get the kind of parenting you needed.” As the same chapter puts it, “Reasons do not cancel out impact.” Healing comes from facing the truth, not from forgiving on cue.
